DARPA’s Simulated Cat Brain Project a ‘Scam’: Top Scientist

Last year, the Pentagon’s premiere research arm gave IBM (International Business Machines Corporation) nearly $5 million to make electronics that mimic the “function, size and power consumption” of a cat’s brain. Last week, IBM’s lead researcher on the project, Dharmendra S. Modha, announced that he had made major progress [...]

Courtroom First: Brain Scan Used in Murder Sentencing

A defendant’s fMRI (functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging) brain scan has been used in court for what is believed to be the first time.
Brain scan evidence that the defense claimed shows the defendant’s brain was psychopathic was allowed into the sentencing portion of a murder trial in Chicago, Science reported [...]

The Department of Gomer Pyle

I was an average high school student. I had to attend summer school between my junior and senior years just to graduate with my class and even then, on graduation night, I wasn’t sure there’d be a diploma waiting for me. I was always more interested in playing ball and [...]

Inland Valley Hispanic College Fund taking scholarship applications

The Hispanic College Fund has opened up its student applications for the 2010-11 scholarship season.
More than $2 million will be awarded in scholarships to about 500 Latino students from the United States and Puerto Rico.
Entries will be open until Feb. 16.
This is the 17th year the Hispanic College Fund has supported [...]

Climate Scientists’ E-Mail Hacked

This archive presents over 120Mb of emails, documents, computer code and models from the Climatic Research Unit at the , written between 1996 and 2009.
The CRU has told the BBC that the files were obtained by a computer hacker 3-4 days ago.
This archive includes unreleased global temperature analysis [...]

Google Provides Free Access to Full Text of Court Opinions

Google is taking a swing at the Lexis/Nexis / Westlaw duopoly by offering free searches and free access to the full text of state, district, and appellate court opinions. Law journals, too.
Starting today, we’re enabling people everywhere to find and read full text legal opinions from U.S. federal and state district, [...]

Free Legal Help to Online Journalists

The Citizen Media Law Project announced the launch of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University’s Online Media Legal Network (OMLN), a new pro bono initiative that connects lawyers and law school clinics with online journalists who need legal help. OMLN will provide [...]

CCR Files Opening Brief in First Supreme Court Case to Challenge Patriot Act

Obama Administration Defending Law that Makes Speech Advocating Human Rights a Terrorist Crime
November 17, 2009, New York – Yesterday, the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) filed the first brief in Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project, the first case to challenge a portion of the Patriot Act before the [...]

Christian leaders unite to teach youth intolerance

A group of 145 evangelical, Roman Catholic and Orthodox Christian leaders have signed a declaration saying they will not cooperate with laws that “could be used to compel their institutions to participate in abortions, or to bless or in any way recognize same-sex couples.”
Citing Martin Luther King, Jr. [...]

The Coming Nuclear Crisis

The world is about to enter a period of unprecedented investment in nuclear power. The combined threats of climate change, energy security and fears over the high prices and dwindling reserves of oil are forcing governments towards the nuclear option. The perception is that nuclear power is a carbon-free technology, [...]

White House nominates a new slate to the Broadcasting Board of Governors

The Broadcasting Board of Governors oversees the United States Government’s non-military broadcasting. Its function is to provide managerial guidance from talented private sector leaders. The combined audience of the broadcasting it oversees is over 171 million, an increase of 71% over 2003, according to the BBG. Programming is in [...]

Soldier charged with making threat at school

SEDALIA, Mo. — The Pettis County prosecutor has charged a soldier who had been reported missing from Fort Leonard Wood with making a terrorist threat at a Sedalia high school.
Pettis County Sheriff, Kevin Bond, says 19-year-old Michael John Frederick of Kansas City was charged Thursday after being arrested in [...]

FBI kept tabs on Pulitzer-winning author Studs Terkel for 45 years

The Federal Bureau of Investigation, which acted as America’s political police during the Cold War, spent several decades watching Pulitzer Prize-winning author Studs Terkel, who died earlier this year at age 96.  The revelation was made by the City University of New York’s NYCity News Service, which [...]

When It’s Crunch Time at College, Students Turn to Adderall

Can ADHD (attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder) stimulants like Adderall (amphetamines) be the answer for college students looking to increase academic performance? They think so.
It’s a week before final exams and you haven’t begun studying. These general education classes are, simply, a drag and you’re already tired from fraternity, sorority or [...]

In The End, Fall Of Berlin Wall Was Gorbachev’s Call

Twenty years ago, the world was transfixed by images of spirited Germans clambering on top of the forbidding Berlin Wall and beginning to dismantle its legacy with each swing of their pickaxes and hammers.
The events of Nov. 9, 1989 — the day the wall fell — became the primary symbol [...]

Analysts: US capitalism on verge of collapse

The declining state of the US economy has convinced a growing number of American analysts that the US capitalist financial system is doomed to disintegrate.
Citing the works of other leading economists such as Jack Bogle and Marc Faber, Market Watch commentator Paul B. Farrell gives 20 reasons, in [...]

Ohio designs single-drug execution

COLUMBUS – Ohio yesterday announced it will become the first state in the nation to switch to a one-drug method of execution, essentially administering a massive barbiturate overdose.
The state also will employ a back-up of injecting drugs directly into a muscle when prison medical technicians can’t find useable veins, [...]

Global survey on free market capitalism: Majority say fix it or ditch it

Twenty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, a new BBC poll has found widespread dissatisfaction with free-market capitalism (laissez-faire).
In the global poll for the BBC World Service, only 11% of those questioned across 27 countries said that it was working well. Most thought regulation and reform of the capitalist [...]

Increasing number of corporations toppled by industrial espionage

Industrial espionage is no longer the part-time job of secret agents from spy movies. It is prospering in everyday life and growing at a phenomenal rate.
Billions of dollars and thousands of jobs are being lost due to the theft of trade secrets.
In recent years the definition of industrial espionage has [...]

Earth to Lou: It Could Have Been Different

It didn’t have to end this way for Lou Dobbs. He could have been a contender.
But Dobbs, a supremely self-confident man who often mentions his Harvard University education in private conversation, just wouldn’t listen. Time after time, as the “Lou Dobbs Tonight” show he has hosted on CNN (Cable [...]

Preschool Hype: National Security Edition

Retired officers push early childhood benefits to help national security
A bipartisan group of retired military officers says without more educational and health investments in children the country will face a growing “national security threat.”
Now, the group is pushing for significant investments in early childhood education, parenting guidance as well as [...]

Flaw in Fed Wiretaps Could Allow Circumvention

People who think they are being wiretapped by the cops could disable the taps by sending a stream of text messages or making numerous VOIP calls to overwhelm the system’s thin bandwidth, researchers in Pennsylvania postulate.
The researchers say they’ve found a vulnerability in U.S. law enforcement wiretaps, if only theoretical, that [...]

AMA Urges Feds to Reconsider Classification of Marijuana as a Dangerous Drug

John Hoeffel reports in the Los Angeles Times:
The American Medical Association has urged the federal government to reconsider its classification of marijuana as a dangerous drug with no accepted medical use, a significant shift that puts the prestigious group behind calls for more research.
The nation’s largest physicians organization, with [...]

University of Phoenix’s Curious Take on the Law

The University of Phoenix has 190 campuses operating in 39 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico. The school says it has 420,000 students and tens of thousands of employees at its schools of nursing, business and education, among others.
But it does not have a law school. Maybe it [...]

Secret Copyright Treaty Threatens Internet Freedom

Awkward Science Fair Projects

See some more of these here.

EndGame full length version

County Immigration Enforcement Plan Prompts Profiling Concern

Over the objections of eleven county residents, the San Bernardino County Board of Supervisors this week renewed a commitment to have the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department cooperate with federal authorities in identifying illegal immigrants and targeting them for deportation.
While a representative of the county sheriff’s department indicated [...]

National Defense University Press Releases New Security Studies Journal

Prism: A Journal of the Center for Complex Operations
The National Defense University Press has released the first issue of Prism, a quarterly journal “tailored to serve policy-makers, scholars and practitioners working to enhance U.S. Government competency in complex operations by exploring whole-of-community approaches among U.S. Government agencies, [...]

The Strength of the Pack: The People, Politics and Espionage Intrigues that Shaped the DEA

Through interviews with former narcotics agents, politicians, and bureaucrats, this exposé documents previously unknown aspects of the history of federal drug law enforcement from the formation of the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs and the creation of the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) up until the present day. Written in [...]

iePolitics: San Bernardino County to major U.S. Corporation (Google): Go away!

The news of this unbelievable episode was presented to me a couple weeks ago and I wasn’t able to gather more details until this weekend.
It looks like a major U.S. corporation recently embarked on a mission to San Bernardino County.
That mission? Establish a campus in the Victor Valley region of the [...]

DODEA wants answers to students’ declining performance on SATs

SAT math scores for students at Department of Defense schools are falling further below the national average.
For the third straight year, Department of Defense Education Activity students have seen their math scores dip, from 512 in 2006 to 498 in 2009. A perfect score is 800.
In 2006, DODEA’s math [...]

US Humanism Campaign Sparks Debate

Government adviser fired for saying alcohol is more dangerous than drugs

Professor David Nutt, the government’s chief drug adviser, has been sacked a day after claiming that ecstasy and LSD were less dangerous than alcohol.
Nutt incurred the wrath of the government when he claimed in a paper that alcohol and tobacco were more harmful than many illegal drugs, including LSD, [...]

Fairchild instructor charged with rape

A former soldier who teaches at the US Air Force Survival School at Fairchild Air Force Base, Wash., is accused of taking a date into the school and raping her, choking her unconscious at one point.
Michael W. Fassbender, 32, of Spokane faces one count of first-degree rape in the alleged [...]

University of Akron to employees: Hand over your DNA!

In a new expansion of the total surveillance state, the University of Akron is now reserving the right to demand DNA samples from all new employees, CBS News reports:
But the University of Akron has taken this to a surprising new level.
The Ohio school now reserves the right to require any [...]

Noteworthy New Publications

Former Federation of American Scientists President Jeremy J. Stone has published a memoir of his efforts to promote constructive dialogue in several of the world’s most intractable conflicts through his own organization, Catalytic Diplomacy.  Remarkably, writes Morton H. Halperin in a Preface to the memoir, “The conflicts [...]

Kindergarten kids stabbed with ‘discipline syringe’

A 24-YEAR-OLD female kindergarten teacher has been detained in south-west China after allegedly stabbing more than 20 children with a syringe to discipline them.

The woman, Sun Qiqi, was taken into custody at the weekend in Yunnan province after angry parents complained to police about the alleged abuse at [...]

Students for Sensible Drug Policy (SSDP.org) Testifies at CA Marijuana Legalization Hearing

Drugs chief: Alcohol more dangerous than ecstasy, LSD and cannabis

The British Government’s chief drug adviser has sparked controversy by claiming ecstasy, LSD and cannabis are less dangerous than cigarettes and alcohol.
Professor David Nutt, chairman of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs, attacked the decision to make cannabis a class B drug.
He accused former home secretary Jacqui [...]

Anti-corruption Group Discusses Strategy

The new organization dedicated to rooting out political corruption in San Bernardino County held its first public meeting on October 6 in Redlands. The meeting was relocated at the last minute when the San Bernardino Public Employees Association (SBPEA) reneged on its agreement to allow the group to use its [...]

***DANGER***: Bill aims to update, grow Troops to Teachers

Just search this site for anything military, and see if you want this scum infiltrating the educational system to propagandize, indoctrinate and poison your child’s mind.  Here are some examples:

Military Accepting Neo-Nazis, White Supremacists, Probe Finds
The rise of low-IQ in the US military
The US military and its cult of cruelty
America’s Child Soldiers: [...]

From the Ashes of Dying Newspapers Will Come Authentic News

A company called the Audit Bureau of Circulations measures how many actual newspapers are sold by US dailies and has just released its September 2009 six-month report. Newspaper companies pay the Audit Bureau to conduct this measurement to be able to show potential advertisers how many readers – especially the upscale [...]

Che Guevara’s daughter campaigns for Cuban 5

On the 11th anniversary of the detention of the Cuban Five in the United States, Dr. Aleida Guevara says that they are national heroes.
The five Cubans, Antonio Guerrero, Raman Labaino, Gerardo Hernandez, Fernando Gonzalez, and Rene Gonzalez were arrested in Miami in 1998 and are now entering their 12th year of incarceration.
The [...]

How Washington Learned to Love Nonviolence

Nonviolence can be a major force for democratic social change, but not when it becomes a tool for covert intervention.
A close-cropped, no-nonsense infantry officer, Col. Robert Helvey was studying at Harvard’s Center for International Affairs on an Army fellowship. One day in 1987, he happened upon a seminar led by Gene [...]

Community Groups vs. Military Recruiters

Military recruiters today have unprecedented access to students and other young people, particularly in poor neighborhoods. There are generally more Army recruiters at high schools than there are college counselors, says Elmer Roldan, fundraising director at Community Coalition of South Central Los Angeles, and there is “a more [...]

Military Children in Crisis

A seven-year-old second-grader attempted suicide while his father was serving yet another tour in Iraq. Seven years old. Seven. His mother was one of half a dozen military spouses I have spoken with about soldiers’ kids who have attempted suicide during their fathers’ deployments.
When I was seven, it was 1972, and [...]

Jailed cop had history of exposing himself

A former college police officer arrested for exposing himself had previously been accused of flashing women while on patrol in metro Atlanta.
Steven Wayne Turner, a former Carver Bible College officer, remains in the Fulton County jail.
Turner, 28, was arrested last week on charges of false imprisonment, public indecency and distributing obscene materials.
This [...]

10 Steps to End Democracy

Military Recruiters: Criminal, Abusive or Suspect Activity

Eight-year Chronological Review of Public Reports as of August 28, 2009 Compiled by Learning Not Recruiting – Toledo, Ohio
Click here for report