“Is this another false-flag staged attack to take our civil liberties ….” That question was actually asked by an asshole working for conspiracy monger Alex Jones at Boston presser today. And note the delicious false assumption implied, is this another false …
I enjoyed this diary because it had two important info age features: it was short and informative. This part was well written especially and it brings up something — a way corporations are exploiting employees at every level except, of course, the very tippy-top — I may do a full feature article on in the next month or two: [Read more…]
Twitter hashtag #Boston; FBI Tipline is 1-800-CALL-FBI prompt #3
The festive atmosphere of the Boston Marathon has turned into a grisly murder scene this evening after shrapnel ripped through hundreds of excited onlookers and joyous partipants, killing at least three people. The toll stands at 2 3 confirmed dead with 23 at least 113 injured from two timed bombs that went off seconds apart at the packed finish line, presumably as intended, and a third that was intentionally detonated by a police bomb squad (Yet another bomb has been reported at the JFK library in Boston). The only silver lining is there were significant medical assets at the attack site, so many victims lives’ were saved from what would otherwise have been fatal injuries. It is widely reported emergency responders treated victims on the scene who suffered partial or full traumatic amputations. The injured now being treated at local area hospitals span the gamut, from a two year-old with head trauma to several elderly victims with injuries ‘threatening life and limb’.
I checked with a couple of friends who live in Boston and work downtown, one said he heard it across 20 blocks. Tax day, Patriot Day, Boston, and JFK; all consistent with targets hit by terrorists looking to maxmimize casualties and therefore news coverage. FWIW I am seeing speculation from demo experts saying the smoke shown in video suggests black powder or some other flaggelany and not explosive C4 or TNT. Nevertheless these bombs were designed and carefully placed to kill and maim, no question about it.
A number of groups may try and take credit for this, be true to your skeptical roots folks. Also bear in mind that in the past — the Centennial Olympic bombing comes to mind — the early and strongly suspected person, a local police officer named Richard Jewell, turned out to have nothing to do with the attack[s], Jewell was in fact a hero on that scene in 1996. The actual perp was a right-wing anti-abortion terroist who remained at large for years afterward.
I’ve always thought the communists made a big mistake, especially the Soviets. Well, they made a bunch of mistakes in retrospect, not the least of which included the transfer of power. That was never worked out very well, paving the way for allegories like Animal Farm and real-world tyrants like Stalin. But another mistake — purely from an experiemtnal history view mind you — was the exclusion of religion. Suppose, instead of becoming the global face of a perverse form of atheism, Lenin and Marx had embraced those elements of religion that supported their ideology in the same way fundamentalists here and elsewhere have done for capitalism? Suppose, instead a state sponsored link had been established and heavily hyped between the Sermon on the Mount or analogous words found in the Koran, uniting the teachings of Jesus and Mohammed, bearing on the benefits of socialism as seen by down trodden peasants, promising social justice and economic equality for all? It might have been a very different cold war, leading to a very different outcome.
We’ll never know … or will we? [Read more…]
Giga-brain Stephen Hawking gives the species a millennia to get our shit together and get off the planet, presumably with heavy industry to avoid Easter-islanding the entire planet and all of us. I’ll go with the Elysium trailer above as far as predicting the time and look of the looming disaster: [Read more…]
So goes the creationist mantra, perhaps sung to hymnal-like notes on an organ or flute or something both deliciously neolithic and middle eastern. But if there were transitional fossils, and we happened to have an example of a transitional fossil specimen bridging the gap between modern humans and more ape-like ancestors, we’d want something roughly 2 to 3 million years old with features from both clades. Say for example: [Read more…]
Maybe Mars Inspiration should hold off on their proposed flyby launching in 2018. A new grant by NASA will reportedly develop a revolutionary engine that could reduce time travel to the Red Planet and other celestial destinations to a few weeks within a decade: [Read more…]
Interesting post from Redstate (Now keep an open mind!) by Erickson: [Read more…]
Rumors flying, nothing official, but …
No one’s sure where Google Fiber will arrive next, but the Internet is abuzz about a press conference on Tuesday, April 9 during which Google may announce that the service is headed to Austin, Texas
Why is this so cool? Mainly, because I live in Austin. And G-fiber is roughly 100 times faster than high-speed broadband, which is the maddening, clunky network that I battle with every day, and sometimes lose to, trying to post here. Better video explanation below the fold. [Read more…]
We all have our weaknesses, one of mine happens to be muscle cars. Which over my fifty year lifetime has always meant oil-powered carbon-spewing road monsters. But it doesn’t have to be that way, and in fact it cannot remain that way, for a bunch of reasons I’m sure you all know well. So it’s good to see people at least trying: [Read more…]