Category Archives: Psyops

Mysterious global warming "hiatus" blamed on sudden ocean cooling

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Photo: Steve Ryan/Flickr CC

Scientists don’t want us to get bogged down in the details — the ups-and-downs of global temperatures. The mercury is still rising, they say…

That is, except in large parts of the globe, and during certain decades:

“The suddenness of the drop in Northern Hemisphere ocean temperatures relative to the Southern Hemisphere is difficult to reconcile with the relatively slow buildup of tropospheric aerosols,” Thompson said.“We don’t know why the Northern Hemisphere ocean areas cooled so rapidly around 1970. But the cooling appears to be largest in a climatically important region of the ocean,” Wallace said.

via Sudden Ocean Cooling Likely Aided Mid-20th Century Global Warming Hiatus in Northern Hemisphere.

More potential evidence of Tylenol's toxicity

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Photo: Eric Lewis/Flickr CC

It might be time to throw out your Tylenol. Consider: filthy manufacturing facilities, mounting evidence of disease and overdose risk from the drug, and viable alternatives for pain reduction… MB

Asthma and other diseases are far more likely to occur in kids who get even a single dose of acetaminophen per month, a study finds:

There was a significant association between acetaminophen use and risk of asthma and eczema. For medium users the risk of asthma 43 percent higher than non-users; high users had 2.51 times the risk of non-users. Similarly, the risk of rhinoconjunctivitis allergic nasal congestion was 38 percent higher for medium users and 2.39 times as great for high users compared to non-users. For eczema, the relative risks were 31 percent and 99 percent respectively.

It’s not a causal link, the authors note. But it is a strong association.

via Acetaminophen Use in Adolescents Linked to Doubled Risk of Asthma.

Second Life shocker: Avatars betray our true selves to marketers

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Photo: Mauro Monti/Flickr CC

You might think that each time you inhabit your World of Warcraft character, or Second Life avatar, you are escaping reality and being creative.

Truth is, you are doing neither.

By looking at an avatar’s physical characteristics, researchers now say, marketers “can form accurate personality impressions about targets.”

(“Targets,” in case you were wondering, are those individuals being targeted to receive advertising messages.)

From an announcement:

The findings support the premise that real-life companies that intend to expand to virtual worlds can use member avatars as a proxy for member personality and lifestyles. As a future research direction, avatars and other consumer-generated media could be used as the basis for targeting and segmentation of online consumers.

via Avatars as information: Perception of consumers based on their avatars in virtual worlds. Jean-François Bélisle. 2010; Psychology and Marketing – Wiley InterScience.

Verizon's "Rule the Air" message: "Be the surveillance you fear"

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Rules nothing. Photo: Ed Yourdon/Flickr CC

Given that Verizon allowed the NSA to secretly tap millions of calls in the past decade, it’s stunning to see the company selling surveillance as sexy and empowering.

I am referring, of course, to Verizon’s new “Rule the Air” campaign.

In what might pass for a scenes from a remake of John Carpenter’s “They Live,” Verizon’s ads have buildings, a parking meter and other objects flowering into antennae that stalk cell phone-wielding models.

One blogger (excerpt and link below), notes the disturbing surveillance theme in “Rule the Air.”

But it is not enough to say that “Rule the Air” is Orwellian, just because it evokes a surveillance state nightmare. (Invariably, when people say, “Orwellian,” they are referring to “1984.”)

Even more insidious, and Orwellian, is the ad campaign’s vague and contradictory slogan. (Orwell warns of the perils of using imprecise language in his 1946 essay, “Politics and the English Language.”)

The truth, dear Verizon customers, is that you rule nothing.

Rather, as you can read here, Verizon and the US Federal Communications Commission “rule you.”

If you ask me the whole thing seems a bit Orwellian and the Verizon red coupled with the vintage logo and the tag line, “Rule the air”, strangely evoked old-time war propaganda to me, but the effects are cool—and who doesn’t like the concept of reception everywhere.

via Verizon Sets Out to “Rule the Air”.

North Korean healthcare "the envy" of developing nations, says UN boss

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Embarrassed by a damning Amnesty International report that surprised no one — detailing amputations without anesthesia and other horrors in the Hermit Kingdom — the UN World Health Organization is still going to bat for Pyongyang.

The rationale for lying about North Korea, according to a spokeswoman for WHO Director-General Dr. Margaret Chan is that only by kissing ass, can the the UN and nongovernmental organizations gain access to the country:

Major global relief agencies have been quietly fighting for years to save the lives of impoverished and malnourished North Koreans, even as the country’s go-it-alone government joined the exclusive club of nuclear weapons powers and wasted millions on confrontational military programs.

via WHO criticizes Amnesty report into NKorea health – Yahoo! News.

The Secret Sun sees a new symbol in ISS

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Christopher Knowles (The Secret Sun), taking his typically sweeping, epic view of the symbols being hurled at us, notes that the otherwise ugly International Space Station resembles the cross of Lorraine, the alchemical symbol to which some have attributed the religious meaning, “As above, so below.”

From Knowles’ blog:

But it’s all good. Very clever, actually- keep the malcontents busy with celebrity gossip while the real action goes on under our noses – or over our heads. For instance, we all know about ISiS- the International Space Station- but did you know it was shaped like the Cross of Lorraine?

via The Secret Sun.

Striking while the iron's hot: Heat waves common in coming decades, scientists announce

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Photo: Lucy Boynton/Flickr CC

The body forgets pain easily. Perhaps that’s why Stanford scientists are taking this opportunity to do a little imprinting.

The Stanford scientists — one of whom is now working for a US DOE lab — insist that heat waves “and other hot events” might be commonplace by 2039.

The researchers also determined that the hottest daily temperatures of the year from 1980 to 1999 are likely to occur at least twice as often across much of the U.S. during the decade of the 2030s.

“By the decade of the 2030s, we see persistent, drier conditions over most of the U.S.,” Diffenbaugh said. “Not only will the atmosphere heat up from more greenhouse gases, but we also expect changes in the precipitation and soil moisture that are very similar to what we see in hot, dry periods historically. In our results for the U.S., these conditions amplify the effects of rising greenhouse gas concentrations.”

via Heat waves could be commonplace in the US by 2039, Stanford study finds.

China syndrome: Media sanitizes brutal spacecraft return

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Photo: Mike Licht/Flickr CC

In case you’d forgotten how weird and controlling the Chinese government is, and how much of the news in China is the product of stagecraft, there’s this reminder, from The Raw Feed:

According to the official, Yang was subject to enormous G-forces during re-entry, splitting his lip and covering his face with blood. When the hatch was opened and the crew saw his bloody face, they cleaned him up, strapped him back in the seat and did a do-over for the cameras. The sanitized version of the hatch opening was presented to the Chinese viewing public as the live first-opening of the hatch.

via How China staged space capsule opening – The Raw Feed.

Childfree movement gets its greenwash

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Part of the problem. Photo: Alan Turkus

I am  sure that some in the childfree movement feel so self-conscious about their choice not to raise kids that they need, occasionally, to create a smug, in-your-face manifesto.

The latest missive from the childfree movement, which has been around since the 1960s, comes in awash in green.

Lisa Hymas, in an essay at Grist*, claims that humans who choose not nurture other humans are making an admirable choice for the planet, and their pocketbooks.

Hymas, a disciple of Al Gore and Stephanie Mills of the Post Carbon Institute (think about that one, for a moment), writes that being childfree is a “luxurious indulgence that just so happens to cost a lot less for me and weigh a lot less on the carbon-bloated atmosphere.”

Hymas does not avoids mentioning adoption, abortion or infanticide, issues that would have introduced some ethical complexity to the piece.

The green solution, according to a Grist editor and blogger.

Hymas also uses a hackneyed rhetorical technique — the false premise — to get her point across.

She suggests, without any supporting evidence, that people with kids typically look down on those who have none.

A link to HuffPo’s coverage of Hymas’ manifesto, is below.

via Ultimate Way to Go Green? Don’t Have Kids, Writer Lisa Hymas Says – AOL News.

*Note: I have written for Grist myself, about environmental issues.

Inventor of H-Bomb and Mars mining expert to fix spill

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The president has called together America’s most devastatingly brilliant men to fix the spill.

But who will deliver the explosive charge in that terribly dangerous world, 5,000 feet down?

Who’s writing this script?

Doug Owen at the Oracle Broadcasting Network suggested this week that depleted uranium be used to stop-op the Gulf oil spill. Place your bets…

“Dispatched to Houston by President Barack Obama to deal with the crisis, Chu said Wednesday that five ‘extraordinarily intelligent’ scientists from around the country will help BP and industry experts think of back-up plans to cut off oil from the well, leaking 5,000 feet (1,500 meters) below sea-level.”

via Obama Sends Bomb, Mars Experts to Fix BP Oil Spill (Update1) – BusinessWeek.