Category Archive: Dis-Info

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Direct Action In Action: Occupy Piccolo

[This is a syndicated post. Read the original atDisinformation.]

Occupy PiccoloAaron Cynic writes at Diatribe Media:

A group of parents, students, teachers and activists occupied an elementary school in Chicago over the weekend to protest what the city calls a “turnaround,” which would shake up the staff and put the school under the authority of the Academy for Urban School Leadership, a private organization opponents say fails to produce results. Parents of students at Piccolo Elementary School in Chicago’s Humboldt Park neighborhood voted overwhelmingly against the proposed turnaround measures and developed a counter proposal, but their voices were ignored by City and Chicago Public Schools officials.

About 15 people stayed inside the school, while more than 100 helped to set up tents out front to show solidarity. Despite the cold, a few dozen stayed in shifts throughout the night, and well more than 100 supporters came back the next day to show their solidarity. Despite being denied food and in one person’s case,…

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Distant ‘Water-World’ Planet Confirmed

[This is a syndicated post. Read the original atDisinformation.]

Will the hazy exoplanet GJ 1214b be the spa-resort getaway of the year 2100? BBC reports: Astronomers have claimed the existence of a new class of planet: a “water-world” with a thick, steamy atmosphere. The exoplanet GJ 1214b, just 40 ligh… Continue reading
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You Are What You’re Infected With?

[This is a syndicated post. Read the original atDisinformation.]

Crazy CatVia the mermaid’s tale:

Rats infected with the parasite Toxoplasma gondii do crazy things. They find the scent of cat urine sexy and attractive, they don’t run from the actual beasts; they are more active in running wheels, which might indicate that the parasite induces increased activity which may more readily attract a cat’s attention. When an infected rat is eaten by a cat, the T. gondii is passed on in the cat’s feces to infect again. T. gondii can only reproduce inside the cat. Great survival strategy on the part of the parasite, this trick of making the rat no longer fear cats — now that’s really building a better mouse-trap! Did this strategy evolve by adaptive selection, or is it just something that happened?

Czech biologist, Jaroslav Flegr, thinks T. gondii infections do much the same to humans — his story is told in the March 2012 Atlantic Monthly. Toxoplasmosis, the infection caused…

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Effective Advertising (Video)

[This is a syndicated post. Read the original atDisinformation.]

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Google To Sell Smart-Glasses By Year’s End

[This is a syndicated post. Read the original atDisinformation.]

techGet ready for augmented-reality glasses that stream information to your eyeballs about the people and places surrounding you. Also, they will look like Oakleys worn by dads on motorboats. The New York Times writes:

People who constantly reach into a pocket to check a smartphone for bits of information will soon have another option: a pair of Google-made glasses that will be able to stream information to the wearer’s eyeballs in real time.

According to several Google employees familiar with the project who asked not to be named, the glasses will go on sale to the public by the end of the year. These people said they are expected “to cost around the price of current smartphones,” or $250 to $600.

The people familiar with the Google glasses said they would be Android-based, and will include a small screen that will sit a few inches from someone’s eye. They will also have a 3G…

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Israel To Demolish Palestinian Solar Energy Program

[This is a syndicated post. Read the original atDisinformation.]

West BankVia Common Dreams:

A sustainable energy program in ‘Area C’ of rural West Bank is being threatened by Israeli authorities. The program, which recently installed solar panels and wind turbines in 16 communities, is providing 1,500 Palestinians with electricity — who were formerly without reliable energy.

The foreign aid program, thus far successful, has become a new target for Israel as it threatens to demolish the structures that supposedly lie within Israeli ‘administration’.

Der Spiegel reports:

The best part is when the lights in the tents go on, one by one, says Elad Orian. Electricity here, in the hills south of Hebron, was long unreliable. Either it was not available or it was too expensive, produced for just a few hours each day by a noisy, diesel-guzzling generator. That changed when Elad Orian and Noam Dotan, two Israeli physicians who had tired of conflict, came along three years ago and installed solar panels and erected…

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Science Overturns View Of Humans As Naturally Barbaric

[This is a syndicated post. Read the original atDisinformation.]

herzog-boys-wrestling-1969-timeAFP on the mounting body of evidence that people and other advanced animals are, on a biological level, driven largely by empathy and caring — undermining the classic view of man possessing a nasty, violent nature tenuously kept in check by the thin veneer of civilization:

Biological research increasingly debunks the view of humanity as competitive, aggressive and brutish, a leading specialist in primate behavior told a major science conference.

“Humans have a lot of pro-social tendencies,” Frans de Waal, a biologist at Emory University in Atlanta, told the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. New research on higher animals from primates and elephants to mice shows there is a biological basis for behavior such as cooperation, said de Waal.

Until just 12 years ago, the common view among scientists was that humans were “nasty” at the core but had developed a veneer of morality — albeit a thin…

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Black Farmers Suffer At The Hands Of Monsanto

[This is a syndicated post. Read the original atDisinformation.]

drboydAn interesting take on the disastrous effects on agriculture resulting from Monsanto’s control of seeds, by Dr. John Boyd of BlackFarmers.org, at Roland Martin Reports:

Black farmers in the United States are disappearing. Their numbers shrank from approximately 900,000 in the 1920s down to about 43,000 in the last U.S. Census — down to less than 1 percent of America’s farmers.

But the staggering 98 percent decline in Black farm ownership does not tell the whole story. With each farm closure, those farmers, their families and their employees all lost a way of life that had existed for generations. Despite the horror stories behind Black Americans’ link to the land throughout our national history, these losses represent an erosion of cultural, geographic and heritage bonds far greater larger than the Black farmers’ small presence in American agriculture…

For most of the NBFA’s history, racial discrimination was the biggest threat to Black farm ownership.…

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Alien Implant In The Back Of Obama’s Head

[This is a syndicated post. Read the original atDisinformation.]

Just like the Egyptian Pharaoh, can you see it? The most amazing part? “This is our tax dollars at work” — the disturbing aspect of there being a reptilian implanted inside the president’s head apparently is that the procedure was paid for by taxpayer money rather than super PAC funds. Continue reading
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How Feminism Hates Women?

[This is a syndicated post. Read the original atDisinformation.]

Caveat: My posting of this article is not meant to imply my agreement with it. Via Owning Your Shit:

Okay, so let’s pretend we’re talking about me, and what we’re talking about is me crashing my car into another vehicle, killing the driver. The act of crashing my car into his and killing him is the actus reus, and let’s say that this fact is not in dispute. Once it has been established that I did indeed crash my car into another and kill the driver, an investigation will be done (I would hope!), and the attendant circumstances examined, and it will only then be determined whether I have committed a crime.

Let’s say I undergo a breath test and am found to be legally impaired. In this case, I will be found to have the mens rea of recklessness—I engaged in conduct a law-abiding person would have refrained from, and that conduct resulted in a…

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Internet Makes Smart People Smarter, Dumb People Dumber

[This is a syndicated post. Read the original atDisinformation.]

Or so claims Kevin Drum, writing for Mother Jones, and using his attempt to Google the price of milk as a supporting anecdote. The theory (that the internet increases “cognitive inequality”) has yet to be tested via scientific study, but, d… Continue reading
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The Inbred Appalachian Family With Blue Skin

[This is a syndicated post. Read the original atDisinformation.]

bluefamilyA real-life blue-blooded family exists, ironically, in the impoverished hills of Kentucky. As they have mingled with the broader population, the number of blue children has dwindled, sadly. Via Daily Mail:

Dating back to the early 1800s, an isolated family in eastern Kentucky started producing children who were blue. As a result of a coincidental meeting of recessive genes, intermarriage and inbreeding, members of the Fugate family were born with a rare condition that made them visibly discoloured. Looking at the portrait, they appear to have been either Photoshopped, but science proves that the condition is in fact real.

It began when Martin Fugate, a French orphan, settled on the banks of eastern Kentucky’s Troublesome Creek to claim a land grant in the early 19th century. He married a red-haired American named Elizabeth Smith – who had a very pale complexion – and their union formed a genetic mutation that resulted in…

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Daniele Bolelli Vs. Joe Rogan: Round 2

[This is a syndicated post. Read the original atDisinformation.]

Daniele Bolelli, martial artist, philosopher, professor of comparative religion, and author of 50 Things You’re Not Supposed To Know: Religion, returns to the Joe Rogan Podcast: Continue reading
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Bahrain: Social Media, Graffiti Art and Revolution

[This is a syndicated post. Read the original atDisinformation.]

‘Social media’ conjures up thoughts of instant internet communication, global chatter over the web, computers, mobiles, tweets, posts etc. But there is a communication form that predates these modern tools – political street art. Street art can be dated back to ancient Egypt and throughout history it has been employed by those with a political point to make. Continue reading
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10 Scariest States to Be An Atheist

[This is a syndicated post. Read the original atDisinformation.]

AtheistsInteresting article from Greta Christina on Alternet last year. How many people agree with the list?

Let’s be clear. It’s not like it’s easy to be an atheist anywhere in the U.S. Atheists are the most distrusted and disliked of all minority groups — more than blacks, Hispanics, Jews, Muslims, immigrants, and gays and lesbians — and polls show that Americans are less likely to vote for an atheist than they are for a person in any other minority or marginalized category. And this hostility can have serious consequences, in the form of harassment, bullying, ostracism, vandalism, alienation from family, loss of jobs, and more.

But to be honest, there are parts of the country where being an atheist really isn’t all that awful. Heck, I live in one of them. There’s some bigotry, some discrimination, a fair amount of misunderstanding and even hostility … but all things considered, it’s pretty okay. And…

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