Not Just Buses, Street Lights Are Also Recording Conversations -

Not Just Buses, Street Lights Are Also Recording Conversations - 


News that the government is set to expand the nationwide installation of surveillance bugs on buses that record conversations serves as a reminder that similar systems are also being readied for street lights, along with a host of other devices.

“Government officials are quietly installing sophisticated audio surveillance systems on public buses across the country to eavesdrop on passengers, according to documents obtained by The Daily. Plans to implement the technology are under way in cities from San Francisco to Hartford, Conn., and Eugene, Ore., to Columbus, Ohio.”
Michael Brick warns that the device will be able to, “transcribe the individual conversations of every passenger riding on a public bus,” at the behest of authorities adding that the DHS-funded project represents a horrendous affront to privacy laws.
However, as we have previously documented, buses are by no means the only place where big brother will not only be watching, but listening too.
As we first reported last year, high tech street lights with “homeland security applications” are now being installed in major U.S. cities.
A press release put out by Amerlux earlier this year announced the company’s partnership with Illuminating Concepts to further advance the rollout of ‘Intellistreets’. The announcement confirms that the street lights will have a number of “homeland security features” including a loudspeaker system that will be used to “engage captive audiences”.
Not only can the street lights, now being rolled out in Detroit, Chicago and Pittsburgh with Department of Energy backing, act as surveillance cameras, Minority Report-style advertising hubs, and Homeland Security alert systems, they are “also capable of recording conversations,” according to a report by ABC 7.
According to the companies behind the system, Intellistreets spying hubs that double as street lights are expected to “become commonplace” not only on regular streets but also for “retail malls, sports venues, on college campuses, and in new construction.”
In addition to the Intellistreets system, gunshot detectors which have been installed in major cities for years are already recording public conversations.The ACLU responded by noting that, “It is not generally legal for law enforcement (or anyone else) to make audio recordings of conversations in which they are not a participant without a warrant.”
Televisions, computers and cellphones are also set to utilize technology that records conversations in order to bombard users with invasive targeted advertising. Verizon recently followed Google’s lead and officially filed a patent for a set-top box that will actively spy on Americans in their own homes.
In an article we published back in 2006, we highlighted the fact that, “Digital cable TV boxes, such as Scientific Atlanta, have had secret in-built microphones inside them since their inception in the late 1990′s.”
App providers on the Android network also now require users to agree to a condition that, “Allows the app to record audio with the microphone,” on cellphones and other ‘smart’ devices. “This permission allows the app to record audio at any time without your confirmation,” states the text of the agreement.
Virtually every new technological device now being manufactured that is linked to the Internet has the capability to record conversations and send them back to a central hub. Is it really any wonder therefore that former CIA director David Petraeus heralded the arrival of the “smart home” as a boon for “clandestine statecraft”?
People are now willingly planting bugs on their own property with scant regard for basic privacy considerations, while the world around them is also being turned into a 24/7 surveillance grid that outstrips Orwell’s worst nightmare – all in the name of convenience, safety and security.

Read more -
http://www.prisonplanet.com/not-just-buses-street-lights-are-also-recording-conversations.html

Smugglers have come up with yet another creative way to get drugs in the USA - Cannon used to shoot drugs into US -

Smugglers have come up with yet another creative way to get drugs in the USA - Cannon used to shoot drugs into US - 



U.S. Border Patrol agents say smugglers have come up with yet another creative way to get drugs in the country - a cannon.

Authorities say 33 cans of marijuana were spotted Friday in a field near where the Colorado River crosses the U.S.-Mexico border. They believe the cans were launched about 500 feet into the U.S. using a pneumatic-powered cannon.

After searching the area, agents recovered a carbon dioxide tank.

Mexican authorities were also notified and searched their side of the border.

The 85 pounds of marijuana found in the cans had an estimated value of $42,500.

Authorities say Border Patrol agents in the Yuma sector near the Arizona-California border are adapting and shifting resources as smugglers come up with new ways of transporting their contraband.

Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/2012/12/11/5047569/border-patrol-cannon-used-to-shoot.html

3-mile-wide asteroid to buzz planet Earth tonight -

3-mile-wide asteroid to buzz planet Earth tonight - 


A giant asteroid will make a flyby of Earth over the next few days, and armchair astronomers can watch the action live on their computers.
The near-Earth asteroid 4179 Toutatis, which is about 3 miles wide, will zoom within 4.3 million miles of Earth during its closest approach early Wednesday morning, Dec. 12. That's too far away to pose any impact threat on this pass, but close enough to put on a pretty good show through top-notch telescopes, researchers say.
And some of those scopes will be tracking Toutatis' movements for the benefit of skywatchers around the world. The online Slooh Space Camera and Virtual Telescope Project, for example, will both stream live, free footage of the asteroid from professional-quality observatories.
Slooh will webcast Toutatis views from a scope in the Canary Islands off the west coast of Africa beginning at 3 p.m. EST (2000 GMT) Dec. 11. Another show will follow at 10 p.m. EST tonight (0300 GMT Wednesday), with footage from an instrument in Arizona. You can watch them at Slooh's website: http://www.slooh.com.
Both shows will feature commentary from Slooh president Patrick Paolucci and Astronomy Magazine columnist Bob Berman. [Photos: Asteroids in Deep Space]
"Slooh technical staff will let the public follow this fast-moving asteroid in two different ways. In one view, the background stars will be tracked at their own rate and the asteroid will appear as an obvious streak or a moving time-lapse dot across the starry field," Berman said in a statement.
"In a second view, Toutatis itself will be tracked and held steady as a tiny pointlike object, while Earth's spin makes the background stars whiz by as streaks," Berman added. "Both methods will make the asteroid's speedy orbital motion obvious as it passes us in space."
Meanwhile, the Virtual Telescope Project — which is run by Gianluca Masi of Bellatrix Astronomical Observatory in Italy — will offer its own free webcast Thursday at 3 p.m. EST (2000 GMT), complete with commentary from astrophysicists.
You can see that video stream here: http://www.virtualtelescope.eu/webtv/


Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/science/2012/12/11/huge-asteroid-to-pass-earth-tonight/

Mix-Up Causes Gas Stations to Pump Jet Fuel Into Cars -

Mix-Up Causes Gas Stations to Pump Jet Fuel Into Cars - 



Officials say aviation fuel was pumped into cars after it was mistakenly delivered to three New Jersey gas stations.
Authorities closed a station in Lawrence, and two in Hamilton after the error was discovered.
Mercer County spokeswoman Julie Willmot tells The Times of Trenton (http://bit.ly/YWcquW ) the stations will remain closed until all underground storage tanks, lines and filters are emptied and cleaned.
State officials are investigating how the mistake happened.
Several cars stalled on Friday when a gas station in Keyport and one in Manasquan unknowingly pumped jet fuel into their tanks.


Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/us/2012/12/11/jet-fuel-pumped-into-cars-at-3-new-jersey-gas-stations-after-mistakenly/

A new condom has been developed that prevents pregnancy and protects against STD's by dissolving inside of the body -

A new condom has been developed that prevents pregnancy and protects against STD's by dissolving inside of the body - 




A new, discreet condom has been developed that prevents pregnancy and protects against sexually transmitted diseases by dissolving inside of the body and releasing preventative drugs after use.

Researchers at the University of Washington developed the condom from tiny microfibers where strength, solubility and shape can all be adjusted for best personal use. Published in the Public Library of Science’s “PLoS One” journal, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation gave the researchers nearly $1 million to pursue the new “electrospinning” technology.

The “electrospinning” method uses an electric field to charge fluid through air to create the very fine, nanometer-sized fibers.

“Our dream is to create a product women can use to protect themselves from HIV infection and unintended pregnancy,” wrote corresponding author Kim Woodrow, a UW assistant professor of bioengineering. “We have the drugs to do that. It’s really about delivering them in a way that makes them more potent, and allows a woman to want to use it.”

“Electrospinning” has existed for decades, but it’s only recently been automated to make it practical for applications such as filtration and tissue engineering. This is the first study to use nanofibers for vaginal drug delivery, wrote the researchers.

The versatility of the fibers allows many more effective options of delivering medicines and supplements than current technology. Gels, tablets and pills aren’t able to incorporate components such as proteins and antibodies that can assist women in prolonged protection against STD’s and unwanted pregnancy.

At a meeting last year, Woodrow presented the concept, and co-authors Emily Krogstad and Cameron Ball, both first-year graduate students, agreed to pursue the project.

“This method allows controlled release of multiple compounds,” Ball wrote in a Washington press release. “We were able to tune the fibers to have different release properties.”

One of the fabrics dissolves within minutes, potentially offering users immediate and discrete protection. Another fabric dissolves gradually over a few days, providing an option for sustained delivery, similar to the birth-control pill, to provide contraception and protect against HIV.

The researchers agreed that this technology is more discrete, but that there is never a single answer to whether or not this form of contraception will be adopted by for use.

“At the time of sex, are people going to actually use it? That’s where having multiple options really comes into play,” Krogstad told the University of Washington in a press release. “Depending on cultural background and personal preferences, certain populations may differ in terms of what form of technology makes the most sense for them.”

Read more - 
http://seattle.cbslocal.com/2012/12/10/university-of-washington-researchers-develop-dissolving-condom/

Climatologist suggests Arctic Circle be a no-fly zone - says commercial jets could be major cause of arctic melting -

Climatologist suggests Arctic Circle be a no-fly zone - says commercial jets could be major cause of arctic melting - 



A climatologist in the United States says the Arctic Circle should be a no-fly zone for major commercial flights.

In a new report, Mark Jacobson, a professor of civil engineering at Stanford University in California, says black soot from commercial jets is attracting heat from the sun.

Airlines first started flying over the Arctic in 1998, when Russia agreed to allow other countries to fly planes in its airspace.

Now, more than 50,000 planes fly through the Arctic Circle every year. Jacobson says that could be a major cause of Arctic melting.

“One of the effects of the aircraft is they emit a lot of soot into the upper atmosphere and the sunlight is absorbed by that soot, and the air heats up, so you get this kind of elevated, heated air layer where the aircraft fly,” Jacobson said.

However, if large planes flew outside of the Arctic Circle, they would burn more fuel. However, Jacobson argues the warming effect would not be as great.

The professor says he doesn't expect airlines to start rerouting flights around the Arctic Circle anytime soon: he said airlines save more than $100 million a year in fuel costs by using the Arctic Circle as a shortcut.

Read more - 
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/north/story/2012/12/09/north-arctic-circle-flights.html

Secretive X-37B space plane ready for next flight - An Atlas V rocket has the green light for a planned liftoff Tuesday -

Secretive X-37B space plane ready for next flight - An Atlas V rocket has the green light for a planned liftoff Tuesday - 



It's round three for the mysterious X-37B space plane.
An Atlas V rocket carrying the unmanned craft, which looks like a miniature space shuttle, has gotten clearance for a planned liftoff tomorrow at just after 10 a.m. PT from the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida.
If the previous two trips into space are any indication, don't expect the X-37B to come home anytime soon -- or for the U.S. Air Force to say much about what the vessel is up to. Is it spying? Might it eventually carry weapons? Is there extra cash lying around at the Pentagon for joy rides? Maybe it's a psychological operations ploy to mess with government types in Beijing or Tehran or Pyongyang! The speculation has risen to meet the near silence.
The one detail of any substance that the Air Force and X-37B maker Boeing have shared is that the previous X-37B trips into space went on and on and on. The first, which ended in December 2010, lasted 224 days, and the second, which ended last June, endured for 469 days, or a year and four months.


Like the space shuttle, the 29-foot-long X-37B can return to Earth for reuse, and is designed to do so autonomously. The Air Force does acknowledge that this return capability allows it to "test new technologies" with less of a risk -- and at a more reasonable cost, as aerospace missions go -- than other programs might allow. And this would account for the spacecraft's other name: the Orbital Test Vehicle.
A blurb on the Web site of the United Launch Alliance, the Boeing-Lockheed joint venture responsible for the Atlas V liftoff, puts it this way:
 The OTV, also known as the X-37B, supports space experimentation, risk reduction and concept of operations (CONOPS) development for long duration and reusable space vehicle technologies.
The Air Force had hoped to get the spacecraft back into orbit in October, but unrelated problems with the separate ULA launch of a GPS satellite (aboard a Delta rocket) pushed the schedule back. "All credible crossover implication from the Delta anomaly for the OTV-3 Atlas vehicle have been thoroughly addressed and mitigated, culminating in the flight clearance decision for the OTV-3 launch," ULA said in a press release Friday.

Read more -
http://news.cnet.com/8301-11386_3-57558309-76/secretive-x-37b-space-plane-ready-for-next-flight/

10 Reasons Why It’s Not The End of the World As We Know It -

10 Reasons Why It’s Not The End of the World As We Know It - 



Despite the fact that there are innumerable genuine crises and real economic problems all over the world for which people should be making serious preparations, manufactured hysteria surrounding supposed Mayan prophecies about the end of the world on December 21 has dominated the headlines and stoked panic amongst significant numbers of people.

Here are ten reasons that suggest December 21st will not herald the end of the world as we know it.
1) Doomsday adherents cannot seem to agree on precisely what catastrophe will befall the earth on December 21st. Will it be the emergence of Planet X or a combination of crippling global superstorms and extreme weather events? Unlike Y2K, which at least was a single, quantifiable threat, the Mayan prophecy comes with no specific warning attached, leaving it open to wild and inaccurate speculation.
2) Astronomer and NASA scientist David Morrison put out a YouTube video containing, “Detailed rebuttals of five separate apocalyptic scenarios on its website, including a meteor strike, a solar flare and the so-called polar shift, whereby the Earth’s magnetic and rotational poles would reverse.” And if you don’t believe NASA, there are millions of amateur astronomers who are constantly stargazing and would notice any celestial threat to the earth many weeks or months in advance.
3) The establishment media and entertainment industry in the west has exploited the 2012 hysteria for their own commercial and tabloid-driven ends. Rest assured, you know it’s fraudulent when the system itself is pushing it. Real threats to people’s livelihoods like the declining value of the dollar, food shortages or threats to private retirement funds including 401K’s and IRA’s are all too real but not sexy enough to be turned into blockbuster Hollywood movies or prime time documentary specials. Real threats to our environment like genetically modified food, chemtrails or unstable nuclear reactors are sidelined in favor of obsessing over inane fantasies about armageddon.
4) The Mayans themselves were not too smart as a culture in comparison to others, so why should we pay much attention to what they said anyway? The Mayans were incapable of inventing the wheel and thought that life was a dream of the Gods, which is why they routinely made human sacrifices to stave off the fear that the Gods would awaken and the world would end. Why should we indulge in the same deluded fears of such a primitive culture?
5) If you do think we should be paying attention to the Mayans, then that also indicates armageddon is some way off yet. During a recent speech, the National Council of Elders Mayas, Xinca and Garifuna pointed out that the end of the Maya calendar has nothing to do with the end of the world, noting that it merely represents the end of one cycle leading to the beginning of a new one. “It’s the time when the largest grand cycle in the Mayan calendar—1,872,000 days or 5,125.37 years—overturns and a new cycle begins,” noted Anthony Aveni, a Maya expert and archaeoastronomer at Colgate University in Hamilton, New York.
6) The Mayan prophecies contain absolutely zero evidence that anything catastrophic will actually happen on December 21st. “The very few ancient texts that refer to Dec. 21, 2012 treat it as a calendar milestone, but do not contain prophecies of doom,” says John Henderson, professor of anthropology at Cornell University.
7) The Mayan leaders once exploited manufactured hysteria about the end of the world to make their inferiors follow orders. Possessing advanced knowledge of when solar eclipses would occur, the elders would claim that a snake was about to eat the sun and that only by obeying commands would the elders permit the sun to return. Watching a subsequent solar eclipse, the peasants believed the scam, thinking the elders had divine powers to make the sun disappear – ensuring total obedience.
8) Most of the individuals whipping up the frenzy are doing so for personal profit. In China, “Scam artists had been convincing pensioners to hand over savings in a last act of charity,” reports the Telegraph. Others have been selling ‘end of the world’ survival kits (a delicious contradiction in terms) – cashing in on the hysteria.
9) Some people have used the supposed end of the world in 2012 as an excuse to make apologies for the very real tyranny that we see unfolding on a daily basis in a myriad of different ways. Armageddon hysteria has been hijacked as a useful psychological justification for laziness and procrastination when it comes to educating others or making personal preparations for genuine crises that the world could face in the coming years.
10) Many Christians have earmarked December 21, 2012 as either the date of armageddon or the second coming of Christ. However, this ignores the Bible itself which quite clearly states that the end of the world will not be foreseen by man. “No one knows the day or hour when these things will happen, not even the angels in heaven or the Son himself. Only the Father knows,” states Mark 13:32.
Forecasting that the world will not end on December 21st is hardly a bold prediction. However, 2012 hysteria has been an interesting study in affirming the fact that the establishment media will only talk about such a “threat” at length when it really poses no threat at all – while ignoring or downplaying very serious issues that do pose a real danger to the future of the species.

Read more -
http://www.infowars.com/10-reasons-why-its-not-the-end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it/

Cool Video - Killer Catfish Hunting Pigeons -

Cool Video - Killer Catfish Hunting Pigeons -

Parrot drives robot buggy with beak -

Parrot drives robot buggy with beak - 



An engineer has created a homing robot buggy capable of being driven around the home by his pet parrot.

Andrew Gray, a student at the Electrical and Computer Engineering department of the University of Florida, designed the BirdBuggy to solve a problem he was having with Pepper, his loud bird.

"Our parrot, when he's left alone, screams. It's ear piercing even if you're several rooms away," explained Gray to the university's WUFT radio station. Now Pepper can manoeuvre himself from room to room by standing on the box-like buggy's perch and manipulating a joystick with his beak.

The buggy was not the first attempt at solving the noise problem with technology. "What we normally do is spray him with a water bottle and it shuts him up for a little bit," said Gray. "So I built a voice-activated squirt gun. It worked really well at first, but then he started using it as a bird bath and would scream just to get squirted."

The new solution came when Gray decided to tackle the underlying separation issue rather than its squawky symptoms.

"What's the underlying issue? The problem is that he's not in the room with us. When he's in the room he's fine, so I thought 'how do I get him around the house?'"

The BirdBuggy's final design took Gray four months and includes infrared sensors to prevent Pepper barging into things and a type of homing mechanism which can be activated after Pepper has abandoned the craft, allowing the vehicle to locate and travel to its docking station using green and orange reference spheres.

Read more - 
http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2012-12/07/parrot-birdbuggy