Speculation Dominos

MASSIVE WORLD SPECULATION DOMINOS
by Christopher Laird
PrudentSquirrel.com
March 20, 2006

Last year, many Asian and other foreign stock markets went up as much as 50%. There is a synchronized world housing bubble that is a very analogous follow on bubble from the Japan collapses in the early 90’s, and the Fed loosening following 911.

We had the tech bubble crash in 2000/1, and a have now a general US stock bubble that is yet to really pop. Right now, we are about at the same DOW level before the market collapses in 2001/2.

There is a massive US and Japanese bond bubble because interest rates are so low, and have been for over ten years, at least from Japan’s perspective. Japan has acted as a virtual central banker for the world, with their zero interest rates. That has caused both a multi trillion dollar value Yen carry trade (borrowing cheap yen then lending the money in the US for example for a net gain of about 3%). The massive Yen carry trade has also financed much of the world stock bubbles as of this point. Also, that money has found its way into the world real estate market bubbles through various forms of mortgage backed securities. This list is endless for the Yen carry trade.

For bonds, in general there is a huge increase in risk taking because interest rates world wide are so low. Fixed income investors like insurance companies, mutual funds and individual savers have no choice but to send their hard earned money into the under priced bond markets. There is no other place to get ‘safe’ returns.

The ultra low US interest rates of late have created the huge US and world real estate bubbles, and these are all synchronized and are going to crash together within 6 months of a public/investor consensus that a pop in the real estate bubble has occurred. This public and investor consensus has not completely formed yet, but is now forming. Housing data is now coming out every week with very significant statistics that prove the housing bubble is cooling. With over 30% of homes in the last few years being purchased as second homes or investment/speculation properties, the now 6 months backlog of houses on the market is going to cause a rush to the exits for speculators. That will ultimately bring down the housing market all by itself, even if many people did wish to keep their overpriced homes for a few years.

There is an unprecedented derivatives atom bomb waiting to collapse. The derivatives outstanding according to the Bank of International Settlements (BIS) has grown from roughly $20 trillion of value in the early 1990’s to about $300 trillion now. The Fed and US banking authorities have had two meetings in the last year to address the fact that there is a very large percentage of these derivatives agreements that are not closing their paperwork within even a month of their creation! The Fed and other regulatory agencies are very concerned that the Banking industry cannot handle the volume. -more-

Dropping Knowledge

dropping knowledge is an independent, web-based platform for multiple viewpoints. dropping knowledge produces daily question ads, films, a magazine called Questions and the Table of Free Voices event, all of which invite your participation.
So, what's your question?

I Flaunt the Law

Bush challenges hundreds of laws

President cites powers of his office

By Charlie Savage, Boston Globe Staff | April 30, 2006

WASHINGTON -- President Bush has quietly claimed the authority to disobey more than 750 laws enacted since he took office, asserting that he has the power to set aside any statute passed by Congress when it conflicts with his interpretation of the Constitution.

Among the laws Bush said he can ignore are military rules and regulations, affirmative-action provisions, requirements that Congress be told about immigration services problems, ''whistle-blower" protections for nuclear regulatory officials, and safeguards against political interference in federally funded research.

Legal scholars say the scope and aggression of Bush's assertions that he can bypass laws represent a concerted effort to expand his power at the expense of Congress, upsetting the balance between the branches of government. The Constitution is clear in assigning to Congress the power to write the laws and to the president a duty ''to take care that the laws be faithfully executed." Bush, however, has repeatedly declared that he does not need to ''execute" a law he believes is unconstitutional.

Evolution of Laughter

The Sunday Times April 30, 2006

Sorry old Bean, the apes got there first

Roger Dobson

THE old ones really are the best. Evolutionary biologists have traced the origins of laughter back 4m years to pre-humans slipping and stumbling in their first faltering attempts to walk on two legs.

According to the theory, when they saw a member of their group lose his footing they would laugh as a sign to each other that something was amiss, but nothing too serious. The theory could explain why, to this day, the ungainly walk remains a staple element of slapstick humour from John Cleese’s “Ministry of Silly Walks” to Rowan Atkinson’s accident-prone Mr Bean.

“Becoming bipedal means there was a greater chance of tripping and falling. Essentially, the suggestion is that slapstick and humour evolved from that time,” said Matthew Gervais, an American evolutionary biologist who led the study.

“When we laugh at slapstick, we are laughing at the same things that amused our early ancestors. That’s why we find them funny.”

According to the study, the next basic elements of human behaviour that sparked laughter were flatulence and mild sexual mischief. Language appeared only 2m years after the first laugh, enabling people to combine laughter and words into numerous refinements, from amusement at a joke to sneering at a rival.

Marcus Brigstocke, the comedian and scriptwriter for the BBC television series Have I got News for You?, said that the idea of a primitive origin for laughter could be supported by the observation that farts and adults stumbling are among the few things that the smallest children find funny.

Do or Die

Voices from the Ecological Resistance

This site is an archive of Do or Die magazine. Do or Die was an occasional journal published in the UK from 1992-2003, crammed with reports and analysis from the world-wide ecological frontlines. The voices collected here are not those of outsiders, journalists or academics, but of those involved in the struggles themselves. In these times of concrete alienation these voices shine hope from movements that take action to defend nature, create revolution and re-wild humanity.

Crooks and Liars

Rove Worried: Fitzmas coming?

Things aren't looking good in Camp Rove. David Shuster once again does a great job of putting the pieces together.

Video-WMP Video-QT

Raw Story:

"WHILE HIS SUPPORTERS CONTINUE TO PUT ON A GOOD FACE, SOURCES CLOSE TO KARL ROVE SAY THE PRESIDENTIAL ADVISOR IS NOW MORE WORRIED, NOT LESS, THAT HE IS GOING TO GET INDICTED. THE SOURCES SAY ROVE WAS SURPRISED BY SOME OF THE QUESTIONS HE WAS ASKED AND BY THE FACT THE SESSION STRETCHED ON FOR THREE AND A HALF HOURS....read on

(sorry for the caps)

This is not how Tony Snow would want to start off at his new job. MSNBC is reporting that the grand jury will meet again on Friday.

---

via: Crooks and Liars

Premonition

‘Premonition’ leads father and son to man after crash

By Kailtin Manry - Daily World writer

Thursday, April 27, 2006 11:10 AM PDT

DAILY WORLD / KEVIN HONG Early Tuesday morning, Clifford “Jesse” Foss Jr., 22, and his dad, Clifford Sr., noticed this damaged guard rail alongside Highway 101 near Lake Quinault. The night before, the elder Foss says, he had a “premonition” of someone trapped in a creek.

Print Version | E-mail This Story

AMANDA PARK — Clifford Foss had a vision. A child was trapped in Prairie Creek and couldn't get out. The vision awoke him at 3 a.m. It gnawed incessantly at him. He tried to ignore it. He was tired, wanted to sleep. But the vision was unrelenting. He went for a drive and found a black, mangled pick-up truck, partially obscured by trees, at the bottom of a shallow creek. A man hung halfway out the driver’s side window, covered in blood. via: The Anomalist

Plot to Squelch Internet

American Samizdat

John Steinberg - Raw Story Columnist
Published: Monday April 24, 2006

Raw Story is in danger. Your right to read news stories and writing that disrupt the government/Big Media symbiosis is under attack. And you probably don’t even know it.

There has been so much going on lately, what with plans to nuke Iran and the rolling mutiny among the top brass that you may well have missed another growing menace to all that we have built here.

The Internet phenomenon – the dizzying evolution from Netscape to Yahoo to Google to the new world of blogs and wikis – is the result of an essential structural attribute of the medium: the content-neutrality of the pipes we use to connect to it. It is the natural tendency of the powerful to silence and hinder anything that threatens their dominance, but the phone companies could not stop AOL, AOL could not stop Yahoo, and Yahoo could not stop Google, because the folks who owned the pipes used to carry all those ones and zeroes to and from your computer were not permitted to discriminate against bits they didn’t like. (The concept of the “common carrier” dates back at least to the earliest regulation of railroads more than a hundred years ago.) That level field has also resulted in the current flowering of our participatory democracy. But that flower is about to pruned or even torn out by the roots.

The Orwellian “Communications Opportunity, Promotion, and Enhancement Act of 2006,” sponsored by Congressman Joe Barton (R, Texas), will, if it becomes law, allow your Internet provider to charge you extra to read this column. It will allow your provider to block this column entirely. Congressman Ed Markey (D, Mass), who sponsored a defeated amendment that would have explicitly preserved neutrality, explains:

The Joe Barton (R-TX) sponsored telecommunications bill that is moving through the Energy & Commerce Committee in the House would fundamentally change the way the Internet works. … In short, the Barton bill opens the door for the Bells and other ISPs to throw out a key principle of net neutrality and enact a new era of telecom taxes and tolls, roadblocks that would shut down the avenues of innovation that have allowed the Internet to become what it is today.

TechGnosis

Growing Your Own

Recently, Torley went looking for foliage in-world that grew and developed over time, because by default, the trees and shrubs of SL are pre-fabricated and unchanging, like so many chickenwire and canvas sculptures that set decorators use for live productions of Midsummer Night Dream. Someone had already created a whole school of clown fish, after all, even programmed them to have genes and pass those on to their offspring. Surely a Resident had scripted artificial flora that responded to sunlight and water, and grew?

Unsurprisingly, Torley finally found what she was looking for.

Also unsurprisingly, the first credible genus of artificial plant life to appear in SL is cannabis-- leafy, green, the weed with roots in hell (but legal for medicinal use in the state of California).

The praying animation is embedded in the pot, too, so you need to get close enough to summon the rain gods, and trigger the system to acknowledge it's being "watered". (I.E., to grow more.)

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via: New World Notes

Velvet Noose

Goss was 'given instructions' to purge Democrats from the CIA

Now that Mary McCarthy has "categorically denied" disclosing classified information on Bush's secret prisons, the political debate shifts a bit. Instead of assuming that McCarthy was responsible for leaks, we now have to wonder why, exactly, CIA Director Porter Goss sacked a veteran intelligence analyst. It's too soon to say with any certainty whether Goss, who personally oversaw the investigation into this leak, was driven by partisan motivations, but there's reason to believe the director of central intelligence was not acting on principle. After all, McCarthy was a Democrat and hold-over from the Clinton years -- and Goss is a former House Republican who has tried to purge top-ranking CIA officials of anyone who wasn't loyal to Bush. Let's not forget this Newsday report from November 2004 and how it might apply to the McCarthy controversy.

The White House has ordered the new CIA director, Porter Goss, to purge the agency of officers believed to have been disloyal to President George W. Bush or of leaking damaging information to the media about the conduct of the Iraq war and the hunt for Osama bin Laden, according to knowledgeable sources. "The agency is being purged on instructions from the White House," said a former senior CIA official who maintains close ties to both the agency and to the White House. "Goss was given instructions ... to get rid of those soft leakers and liberal Democrats. The CIA is looked on by the White House as a hotbed of liberals and people who have been obstructing the president's agenda." (emphasis added)

And now we're supposed to believe that Goss, whose history of rigid partisanship is overwhelming, ran a fair and objective investigation of McCarthy? Please.

-- Guest Post by Steve Benen, The Carpetbagger Report

permalink10:34:30 AM
via: Crooks and Liars

YURI KOZYREV FOR TIME

SHROUDED: Amna, 18, says she was sent to work in brothels in three cities.

From Time Magazine | World

Stolen Away

As criminal gangs run amuck in Iraq, hundreds of girls have gone missing. Are they being sold for sex?

By BRIAN BENNETT/BAGHDAD

Posted Sunday, Apr. 23, 2006
The man on the phone with the 14-year-old Iraqi girl called himself Sa'ad. He was calling long distance from Dubai and telling her wonderful things about the place. He was also about to buy her. Safah, the teenager, was well aware of the impending transaction. In the weeks after she was kidnapped and imprisoned in a dark house in Baghdad's middle-class Karada district, Safah heard her captors haggling with Sa'ad over her price. It was finally settled at $10,000. Staring at a floor strewn with empty whiskey bottles, the orphan listened as Sa'ad described the life awaiting her: a beautiful home, expensive clothes, parties with pop stars. Why, she'd be joining two other very happy teenage Iraqi girls living with Sa'ad in his harem. Safah knew that she was running out of time. A fake passport with her photo and assumed name had already been forged for her. But even if she escaped, she had no family who would take her in. She was even likely to end up in prison. What was she to do?

Century

100 Years Ago In America

The year is 1906. One hundred years ago. What a difference a century makes!

Here are some of the U.S. statistics for the Year 1906:

The average life expectancy in the U.S. was 47 years.

Only 14 percent of the homes in the U.S. had a bathtub.

Only 8 percent of the homes had a telephone.

A three-minute call from Denver to New York City cost eleven dollars.

There were only 8,000 cars in the U.S., and only 144 miles of paved roads.

The maximum speed limit in most cities was 10 mph.

Alabama, Mississippi, Iowa, and Tennessee were each more heavily populated than California.

The tallest structure in the world was the Eiffel Tower!

The average wage in the U.S. was 22 cents per hour.

The average U.S. worker made between $200 and $400 per year.

A competent accountant could expect to earn $2,000 per year, a dentist $2,500 per year, a veterinarian between $1,500 and $4,000 per year, and a mechanical engineer about $5,000 per year.

Sugar cost four cents a pound.

Eggs were fourteen cents a dozen.

Coffee was fifteen cents a pound.

Most women only washed their hair once a month, and used borax or egg yolks for shampoo.

Canada passed a law that prohibited poor people from entering into their country for any reason.

-more-

Chinese Fake-Out

The Great Chinese Fake-Out

by Maureen Dowd
The New York Times
April 22, 2006

Dick and Rummy are in Karl's old office, eating Chinese leftovers.

"Serves Karl right, by golly," Rummy says. "He's so arrogant. Won't listen to anybody about anything. Goodness gracious, imagine having somebody in such an important job who doesn't take any advice or pay attention to dissenting opinions. An autocrat ruthlessly ruling over his own little kingdom. Even Laura can't stand his peacock-preening."

Dick grunts his assent, his mouth full of ginger-scented dumplings.

The Bush mandarins are feeling more sweet than sour. It's been a fun week, sidelining Rove, firing the C.I.A. officer who was a source for reporters (including for The Washington Post's Pulitzer-winning articles) on the agency's overseas gulag, plotting against Iran, messing with China's head, rolling like a Tiananmen tank over the retired generals who tried to lead a democratic uprising against Rummy.

"Here's to winning the Battle of the Potomac," Rummy said with a wolfish grin, clinking Scotch glasses with Dick. "Another tactical mistake by the military."

-cont.

Lancet calls for LSD

Lancet calls for LSD in labs

James Randerson, science correspondent
Friday April 14, 2006

"Use more psychedelic drugs," is not advice you would expect from your GP, but that is the call from an influential UK medical journal to researchers.

An editorial in the Lancet says that the "demonisation of psychedelic drugs as a social evil" has stifled vital medical research that would lead to a better understanding of the brain and better treatments for conditions such as depression.

The journal's editor Richard Horton said he was not advocating recreational drug use, but championed the benefits of researchers studying the effects of drugs such as LSD and Ecstasy by using them themselves in the lab.

"The blanket ban on psychedelic drugs enforced in many countries continues to hinder safe and controlled investigation, in a medical environment, of their potential benefits," said the editorial, "...criminalisation of these agents has also led to an excessively cautious approach to further research into their therapeutic benefits."

Booming Mystery

What's behind mysterious booms?

Phenomena produce theories, but no answers By Alex Roth UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER April 23, 2006 Life can serve up a good mystery every once in a while. Weird things happen that defy explanation, that make us wonder how much we really know about the world. Something of the sort happened in San Diego County shortly before 9 a.m. Tuesday, April 4, and so far no one has come forward with an explanation. “My garage door is double steel and it weighs about 500 lbs. It was rattling back and forth like a leaf in the wind for about 3 or 4 seconds.” – e-mail from University City resident on April 4 disturbance Whatever it was, it caused a woman's bed to shake in Lakeside. It created waves in a backyard pool in Carmel Valley. It set off car alarms in Kearny Mesa and rattled windows from Mission Beach to Poway to Vista. At various spots throughout the county, people reported a rumbling sound or a booming noise. Scientists insist it wasn't an earthquake. The Federal Aviation Administration has no record of any planes producing a sonic boom by breaking the sound barrier. Camp Pendleton officials say no activities on the Marine base could have created such a disturbance. There were no large explosions in San Diego County that day, and no meteor fireballs were reported in the sky that morning. What was it, then?

Skeleton Key

Gene discovery could be a skeleton key

By Thomas Maugh in Los Angeles
April 25, 2006

---

Breakthrough … a scan of an affected skeleton.

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Photo: AP

RESEARCHERS have discovered the gene that causes one of the rarest congenital disorders, a disease called FOP that turns muscle and tendons into bone, forming a second skeleton that eventually renders the patient immobile like a statue.

The disease strikes fewer than one in every 2 million people and is so rare most doctors misdiagnose it, prescribing treatments that generally make the condition worse.

Only about 600 patients are known, and the majority of them become bedridden by their 30s. There is no treatment; removing the excess bone only makes it grow back faster.

The discovery of the FOP gene could eventually lead to the first treatments for the disease, says researcher Dr Frederick Kaplan, the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine.

I Pinch

Unbelievable

Murtha: “Nobody Can Believe These Guys Anymore”...

AP

(HuffPo) comments (904)

Seeing & Believing

Seeing What You Believe, Believing What You See

-Forbes

"My prediction is that we will see ourselves more and more connected to the quantum field, not physically but through the mind. ... As our prejudice in favor of solid, concrete things fades away, certain fringe phenomena will become everyday. Healing without touch will be legitimized... Telepathy and clairvoyance will seem ordinary... Intuition and epiphanies will be explained as subtle field interactions." - Deepak Chopra

New York -

There is a prejudice in modern society that we need to get over. It’s the prejudice in favor of things that are concrete, tangible and three-dimensional. We feel that a rock is real because it is solid and heavy, and our senses can easily locate it in time and space. So what are we to make of a reality where seeing isn’t believing? Snails have very slow nervous systems. It takes them several seconds to record each new visual impression. What this means is that if someone walks by very quickly and drops a penny in front of a snail, the person will be invisible and the penny will seem to appear form nowhere. In reverse, if a snail is picked up and moved very quickly, it will believe it has teleported from one place to the other.

Our senses play the same trick with reality at large. Our brains are too slow to register that every concrete object is winking in and out of existence at the quantum level thousands of times per second; therefore, we see solid objects where none in fact exist.

The five senses imprison us in ways that are unconscious and invisible. Years ago, I read accounts of congenitally blind people who were given sight overnight thanks to innovative surgery. On being exposed to light for the first time, they were often completely disoriented. They wondered why people dragged black patches around with them wherever they went (we call them shadows). If asked how big a cow was standing a hundred yards away, they’d guess three inches tall; stairs were frightening two-dimensional ladders climbing straight up the wall. Sometimes these bizarre perceptions were so disturbing that the newly sighted preferred to sit in the dark with their eyes closed. Aren’t we doing much the same by clinging to the world of the five senses?

Sex Spray

Let us spray

Billed as libido in an atomiser, PT-141 will finally offer women the chance to turn on their sexual desire as and when they need it. Or so the science says. But there are concerns. Will sex in a spray usher in an age of 'McNookie' - quick easy couplings low on emotional nutrition? Julian Dibbell reports

Sunday April 23, 2006
The Observer

Horn of rhinoceros. Penis of tiger. Root of sea holly. Husk of the emerald-green blister beetle known as the Spanish fly. So colourful and exotic is the list of substances that have been claimed to heighten sexual appetite that it is hard not to feel a twinge of disappointment on first beholding the latest entry - a small, white plastic nasal inhaler containing an odourless, colourless synthetic chemical called PT-141. Plain as it is, however, there is one thing that distinguishes PT-141 from the 4,000 years' worth of recorded medicinal aphrodisiacs that precede it: this one actually works.

And it could reach the market in as little as three years. The full range of possible risks and side effects has yet to be determined, but already this much is known: a dose of PT-141 results, in most cases, in a stirring in the loins in as little as 15 minutes. Women, according to one set of results, feel 'genital warmth, tingling and throbbing', not to mention 'a strong desire to have sex'.

Strange Sky

daVinci Institute Futurism

Thomas Frey - Senior Futurist
Executive Director of the DaVinci Institute

"The greatest value in understanding the future comes from spotting the major cultural, demographic, societal, and economic shifts early and translating them into viable business opportunities," says Tom.

As the Executive Director and Senior Futurist at the DaVinci Institute, he has developed original research studies, which enables him to speak on unusual topics, translating trends into unique opportunities.

Tom continually pushes the envelope of understanding, creating fascinating images of the world to come. His talks on futurist topics have captivated people ranging from high level government officials to executives in Fortune 100 companies including NASA, IBM, AT&T, Hewlett-Packard, Lucent Technologies, First Data, Boeing, Ford Motor Company, Qwest, Allied Signal, Hunter Douglas, Direct TV, National Association of Federal Credit Unions, and many more.

Because of his work inspiring inventors and other revolutionary thinkers, the Boulder Daily Camera has referred to him as the "Father of Invention". The Denver Post and Seattle Post Intelligence have referred to him as the "Dean of Futurists".

______________________________________

Past Speaking Topics

1.)
The Future of Money - Emerging Trends - The year is 2050, and you are standing in front of a vending machine. What form of payment will you put into it? The research team at the DaVinci Institute has spent years analysing the forces of change focusing closely on emerging trends. We looked at many of the new public policies, technology breakthroughs, and emerging business strategies. What are the overarching trends likely to have the greatest overall impact in the future?

2.) The Future of Libraries - The Great Transformation - Their existence is being threatened by information instantly accessible from every computer in every home. But libraries won't go away. Rather, information is soon to become far more complicated as technology expands our understanding of what information is. And Public Libraries will be transitioning from a center of information into a center of culture, evolving into an entity with function and purpose that is currently unrecognizable in today's world.

5.) Future Inventions - A Hidden Force of Nature - Some would say the future is drawing us towards it. If you listen closely to the pulse of technology today you can feel the directional beams, the same beams that give life to embryonic new industries in their wake, pulling us into the unknown future ahead. But as we put our ears to this invisible track, listening for unusual sensory queues, we begin to sense the patterns, like inter-dimensional crystalline structures forming between today and the world of tomorrow. Inventions are a force of nature, and this talk will help listeners understand how inventors are hard at work crafting the world of tomorrow.

Three Volcanoes Blow

Three volcanoes blow their tops

It seems it's volcano season - with three mountains blowing their tops in Indonesia and South America.

Mount Merapi in Java, Lascar in Chile and Ubinas in Peru have all been spewing smoke and ash.

Mount Merapi

Merapi appears to be posing the biggest danger at the moment, with 30,000 people being moved away from the area.

Scientists think it could properly erupt in the next 10 days. "The motion of lava inside the crater is becoming more active," said one.

The volcano last went up in 1994, sending out a cloud of gas that killed 60 people.

Click here to find out all about volcanoes

Ubinas in Peru

Lascar in Chile has sprayed ash and smoke up to 3,000m into the air, but local people were in no immediate danger.

It is considered one of the most active among dozens of volcanoes in Chile.

Ubinas in Peru has been belching smoke for several weeks.

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BBC

Hallucinatory Fish

Men hallucinate after eating fish

Rabbit fish are one of several species of fish known to cause hallucinatory fish poisoning, but the problem is very rare outside the Indo Pacific.

Two men have suffered terrifying visual and auditory hallucinations after eating a popular local seafish in Mediterranean restaurants.

According to a clinical study on the patients, which is due to be published in the journal Clinical Toxicology, the men started seeing and hearing things after contracting a rare form of hallucinogenic poisoning from the Salema fish they were dining on.

The species is a popular food fish and is not normally hallucinogenic.

Ichthyoallyeinotoxism, or hallucinogenic fish poisoning, is caused by eating the heads or body parts of certain species of herbivorous fish and has previously only been recorded from the Indo Pacific.

The effects of eating ichthyoallyeinotoxic fishes, such as certain mullet, goatfish, tangs, damsels and rabbitfish, are believed to be similar to LSD, and may include vivid and terrifying auditory and visual hallucinations. This has given rise to the collective common name for ichthyoallyeinotoxic fishes of "dream fish".

Evolving Constants

A universal constant on the move

Is the proton losing weight, or has the fabric of the Universe changed?

Mark Peplow (Nature.com)

How heavy is a proton compared to an electron? The answer seems to have changed over the past 12 billion years. © Punchstock

It seems that nothing stays the same: not even the 'constants' of physics. An experiment suggests that the mass ratio of two fundamental subatomic particles has decreased over the past 12 billion years, for no apparent reason.

The startling finding comes from a team of scientists who have calculated exactly how much heavier a proton is than an electron. For most purposes, it is about 1,836 times heavier. But dig down a few decimal places and the team claims that this value has changed over time.

The researchers admit that they are only about 99.7% sure of their result, which physicists reckon is a little better than 'evidence for' but not nearly an 'observation of' the effect. If confirmed, however, the discovery could rewrite our understanding of the forces that make our Universe tick.

Fickle forces

This is not the first time physicists have suspected physical constants of inconstancy.

Bull's-eye Earth

Former Military Air Traffic
Controller Claims Comet Fragments
May Hit Earth On 5-25-6
4-20-6

KEALAKEKUA, Hawaii (U.S. Newswire) -- Eric Julien, a former French military air traffic controller and senior airport manager, has completed a study of the comet 73P Schwassmann- Wachmann and declared that a fragment is highly likely to impact the Eart on or around May 25, 2006. Comet Schwassman-Wachmann follows a five-year orbit that crosses the solar system's ecliptic plane. It has followed its five year orbit intact for centuries; but, in 1995, mysteriously fragmented. According to Julien, this is the same year that a crop circle appeared showing the inner solar system with the Earth missing from its orbit. He argues the "Missing Earth" crop circle was a message from higher intelligences warning humanity of the consequences of its destructive nuclear policies. He links this crop circle to May 25, 2006, and identifies the comet Schwassmann-Wachman as the subject of higher intelligence communications. Using NASA simulations of the comet's path, Julien concludes that impact is likely around May 25 precisely when the comet crosses the Earth's ecliptic plane. While the first fragment will cross at approximately 10 million miles, lagging fragments threaten to collide. While astronomers have stated that the comet poses no direct threat, Julien argues that some fragments are too small to observe. Astronomers have predicted possible meteor showers indicating some cometary debris will enter the atmosphere.

---

via Rense.com ---also see this

Little Bigfoot?

Malaysia denies capturing baby "Bigfoot"

Malaysian wildlife officials denied capturing a baby "Bigfoot," amid fevered speculation over the existence of the mythical creature in the nation's southern jungles.

The Berita Harian newspaper reported that a young Bigfoot was caught by a group of men thought to be from the Wildlife and National Parks Department (Perhilitan) near the southern town of Kota Tinggi two weeks ago.

The paper quoted local residents as saying they had spoken to men who described shooting the creature with tranquiliser darts. The locals then peeked into the back of the their truck to see a large, hairy creature.

But the department's director-general Datuk Musa Nordin denied the report.

"During the period reported, Perhilitan did not mount any operation in the area," Musa said in a statement carried by the official Bernama news agency.

Freddie Long, the Tourism and Environment Committee chairman in southern Johor state, said that if a Bigfoot had been captured, it should have been given to local authorities for research.

Bigfoot fever erupted last December when some workers claimed to have spotted three of the beasts, two adults and a youngster, on the edge of a Johor forest reserve.

The Walrus He's Not

I'M THE DECIDER
(Koo-Koo-Ka-Choo)

I am me and Rummy's he, Iraq is free and we are all together
See the world run when Dick shoots his gun, see how I lie
I'm Lying...

Sitting on my own brain, waiting for the end of days
Corporation profits, Bloody oil money
I'm above the law and I'll decide what's right or wrong

I am the egg head, I'm the Commander, I'm the Decider
Koo-Koo-Kachoo

Baghdad city policeman sitting pretty little targets in a row
See how they die when the shrapnel flies see mothers cry
I'm Lying...I'm Ly-ing...I'm Lying...I'm Ly-ing

Yellow cake plutonium, imaginary WMD's
Declassifying facts, exposing secret agents
Tax cuts for the wealthy leaving all the poor behind

CHORUS

Sitting in the White house garden talking to the Lord
My thoughts would be busy busy hatching If I only had a brain

CHORUS

---

(courtesy of Paul Hipp) via: HuffPo

Busted

Fake Breast Doc Busted

Florida man, 76, fingered in door-to-door free screen scheme

APRIL 19--Meet Philip Winikoff. The 76-year-old Florida man was arrested this morning and charged with sexual battery after he posed as a doctor and went door-to-door--black doctor's bag in hand--offering women free breast exams. According to a Broward County Sheriff's Office report, two women--ages 33 and 36--fell for the scam, which Winikoff allegedly ran in Lauderdale Lakes. Charged with several felonies, Winikoff was booked into the sheriff's lockup, where his mug shot was snapped. Police are now investigating whether other women may have been tricked into impromptu examinations. (3 pages)

Portrait of a Miracle

Help us with our research into physical proof of miracles and angelic appearances. We are collecting real photos and the stories that go with them. Our desire is to have physical proof that miracles are real.

Click on this link to take our Miracles Survey.

Take a look at some of the photos that we have already received. If you have anything like them that you would like to add, please contact us.

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"Praying" squirrel bathed in light.

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Technically, it's a chipmunk... -Ib

Worse than Watergate?

Senate Hearings on Bush, Now By CARL BERNSTEIN In this VF.com exclusive, a Watergate veteran and Vanity Fair contributor calls for bipartisan hearings investigating the Bush presidency. Should Republicans on the Hill take the high road and save themselves come November? Worse than Watergate? High crimes and misdemeanors justifying the impeachment of George W. Bush, as increasing numbers of Democrats in Washington hope, and, sotto voce, increasing numbers of Republicans—including some of the president's top lieutenants—now fear? Leaders of both parties are acutely aware of the vehemence of anti-Bush sentiment in the country, expressed especially in the increasing number of Americans—nearing 50 percent in some polls—who say they would favor impeachment if the president were proved to have deliberately lied to justify going to war in Iraq. John Dean, the Watergate conspirator who ultimately shattered the Watergate conspiracy, rendered his precipitous (or perhaps prescient) impeachment verdict on Bush two years ago in the affirmative, without so much as a question mark in choosing the title of his book Worse than Watergate. On March 31, some three decades after he testified at the seminal hearings of the Senate Watergate Committee, Dean reiterated his dark view of Bush's presidency in a congressional hearing that shed more noise than light, and more partisan rancor than genuine inquiry. The ostensible subject: whether Bush should be censured for unconstitutional conduct in ordering electronic surveillance of Americans without a warrant. Raising the worse-than-Watergate question and demanding unequivocally that Congress seek to answer it is, in fact, overdue and more than justified by ample evidence stacked up from Baghdad back to New Orleans and, of increasing relevance, inside a special prosecutor's office in downtown Washington. In terms of imminent, meaningful action by the Congress, however, the question of whether the president should be impeached (or, less severely, censured) remains premature. More important, it is essential that the Senate vote—hopefully before the November elections, and with overwhelming support from both parties—to undertake a full investigation of the conduct of the presidency of George W. Bush, along the lines of the Senate Watergate Committee's investigation during the presidency of Richard M. Nixon. How much evidence is there to justify such action?

Kevin Benderman Timeline

Read Kevin Benderman's Memorandum Request for Parole/Clemency Consideration - February 13, 2006

The purpose of the BendermanTimeline is to present a chronology of facts surrounding Sgt. Kevin Benderman’s Conscientious Objection case. It is to provide all the tools needed for people to become educated in how the military service is able to use its self-imposed power to control a soldier who has proven himself honorable in his commitment to defending his country and its constitution, but refuses to lose his integrity and principles in the process.

Sgt. Kevin Benderman is a Conscientious Objector to war. His public statement to this has angered the US Army. Conscientious Objection is not something the Army wants soldiers to be aware of. It is not something the Army wants soldiers to consider. It is the worst enemy of the United States Army. But it is a legal enemy, legally accessible to any soldier who wants to take the arduous path to his own peace, and ultimately wage war with the mighty military machine.

The US Army Regulation 600-43 is the regulation which governs a soldier’s conscientious objection to war. It is twenty-three pages of legalese - designed as a deterrent to any soldier whose personal experiences might have brought him to the conclusion that he can no longer participate in war. Read More >>

America and Empire

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20060414_gore_vidal_america_and_empire/

Posted on Apr. 14, 2006

Editor’s Note: The following essay by Gore Vidal is the full-text foreword to Robert Scheer’s new book: “Playing President: My Close Encounters with Nixon, Carter, Bush I, Reagan, and Clinton--and How They Did Not Prepare Me for George W. Bush.” Ordering information here. Read Scheer’s introduction here.

America and Empire

by Gore Vidal

The twentieth century produced a great deal of writing about American politics, much of it bewildered when new notions like empire started to sneak into nervous texts whose authors were not quite certain if “empire” could ever be an applicable word for the last best hope of earth.

The bidding then changed dramatically after World War Two, when Harry Truman armed us with nuclear weapons and gave us an icy sort of permanent war against Godless Atheistic communism, as personified by Joseph Stalin, standing in for Hitler, whom we had got rid of with rather more help than we liked to admit from the new world demon Stalin. How, why did Truman lock us all into a national security state, armed to the teeth? The simple story was dread of communism everywhere on the march, but those of us who had served in World War Two knew as well as our political leaders that the Soviet Union, as of 1950, was not going anywhere very soon: They had lost twenty million people. They wanted, touchingly, to be like us, with consumer goods and all the rest of it.

Purchase Robert Scheer’s New Book Playing President My Relationships with Nixon, Carter, Bush I, Reagan, and Clinton--and How They Did Not Prepare Me for George W. Bush

What actually happened was tragic for the Russian people and their buffer states: Truman, guided by that brilliant lawyer Dean Acheson, was quite aware that by 1940 the world Depression of the early ’30s had returned. The New Deal of Franklin Roosevelt had largely failed. What was to be done? FDR took a crash course in Keynesian economics. As a result, he invested $8 billion into re-arming the United States, in order to hold our own against the Fascist axis of Germany, Japan, Italy. To the astonishment of Roosevelt’s conservative political enemies, the U.S. suddenly had full employment for the work force and a military machine of the first rank with which we were able to defeat Fascism, and just about anyone else who defied us.

Truman and friends learned and never forgot an important lesson: It was through war and a militarized economy that we became prosperous with full employment. After victory in Europe and the Pacific, Truman himself began to play the war drums. Stalin was menacing Turkey and Greece (Acheson threw in nearby Italy, and why not France?). We must stop the rising Red tide, while acquiring that era’s latest propaganda toy, a TV set. This wearisome background was well known to historians like William Appleman Williams, but hardly suspected by too many of the usual publicists of the American way of life.

Robert Scheer has had the good fortune to observe first-hand the last half-dozen Presidents, from Nixon to “W”. He has also had the perseverance as a journalist to insist that he be able to conduct one-on-one conversations with the odd sort of men who were playing (or trying to play) President. This makes for a fascinating immediacy in the book at hand, particularly when he is giving his protagonists a harder time than they had expected. Scheer has always suspected that he would be one of the last journalists able to use the print medium fully in the electronic age that had dawned around 1960.

-more