Scientists declare war on sugar in food.
Like alcohol and tobacco, sugar is a toxic, addictive substance that should be highly regulated with taxes, laws on where and to whom it can be advertised, and even age-restricted sales, says a team of UCSF scientists.
In a paper published in Nature on Wednesday, they argue that increased global consumption of sugar is primarily responsible for a whole range of chronic diseases that are reaching epidemic levels around the world.
More after the link.
Six Times Size of the Milky Way - The Creation of One of the Largest Galaxies in the Universe.
In a galactic replay of merging of the Earth’s tectonic plates into a massive supercontinent known as Pangea 250 million years ago, the Spitzer Space Telescope caught images of four massive galaxies slamming into each other and kicking up billions of stars like grains of sand! As the largest galactic pileup in the known universe, it will produce a huge offspring.
The massive collision will eventually cause the four galaxies to become a single behemoth galaxy that will be about 10 times bigger than our Milky Way. From a scientific perspective, this rare sighting provide and unprecedented look at how the most massive galaxies form.
Read more here.
Waking a Sleeping Giant: Tobacco smoke contains the radioactive substance polonium-210.
The major tobacco manufacturers discovered that polonium was part of tobacco and tobacco smoke more than 40 years ago and attempted, but failed, to remove this radioactive substance from their products. Internal tobacco industry documents reveal that the companies suppressed publication of their own internal research to avoid heightening the public’s awareness of radioactivity in cigarettes. Tobacco companies continue to minimize their knowledge about polonium-210 in cigarettes in smoking and health litigation. Cigarette packs should carry a radiation-exposure warning label.
Read more here.
Our future is discussed right now: Bilderberg meets in St. Moritz.
The 2011 Bilderberg meeting kicked off in St. Moritz, Switzerland. As the Bilderberg group operates behind closed doors and under Chatham House rules, it attracts very little mainstream media attention, despite the fact that hundreds of the worlds most important CEOs, banking elites, politicians and influential media figures annually attend to discuss policy. For example here is a map of participants of the 2009 meeting and their connections.
A large scale peaceful protest would draw media attention to the gathering and help further expose the group’s history and previous actions. On Saturday at noon there will be a gathering of protesters. The bigger it gets, chances might grow to get some coverage on this. Below you find the exact location of the meeting.
Cast Adrift in the Milky Way, Billions of Planets, All Alone.
Is the galaxy full of orphans? Astronomers said Wednesday that space was littered with hundreds of billions of planets that had been ejected from the planetary systems that gave them birth and either were going their own lonely ways or were only distantly bound to stars at least 10 times as far away as the Sun is from the Earth.
There are two Jupiter-mass planets floating around for each of the 200 billion stars in the Milky Way galaxy, according to measurements and calculations by an international group of astronomers led by Takahiro Sumi, of Osaka University in Japan, and reported in the journal Nature.
Read more over at NY Times.
Patriot Act Signing Just the Latest in Autopen Infamy.
Minutes before midnight, after a landslide House vote of 250-153, President Obama signed legislation backing a four-year extension on the controversial USA PATRIOT Act. (Did you know that’s an acronym for Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism? Now you do.) Yay, habeas corpus denials, warrantless searches and carte blanche wiretapping! Four more years! Four more years!
Because the president was in France, he was required to sign it using an autopen machine: that rare and wonderful device favored by politicians, sports stars and celebrities, that can mechanically reproduce the act of signing one’s autograph. (See one in action here!)
Since first being patented in the U.S. in 1804 by English inventor John Isaac Hawkins, the autopen has scribbled its way into American history — and infamy — over and over again.
Read more via Wired.
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Björk launches new website for Biophilia.
A multi-media project encompassing music, apps, internet, installations and concerts, Biophilia celebrates how sound works in nature, exploring the infinite expanse of the universe, from planetary systems to atomic structure. Looking forward to it!
US Defense Department consultant says Bin Laden is dead since late 2001.
Top US government insider Dr. Steve R. Pieczenik, a man who held numerous different influential positions under three different Presidents and still works with the Defense Department, shockingly told The Alex Jones Show yesterday that Osama Bin Laden died in 2001 and that he was prepared to testify in front of a grand jury how a top general told him directly that 9/11 was a false flag inside job.
Pieczenik cannot be dismissed as a “conspiracy theorist”. He served as the Deputy Assistant Secretary of State under three different administrations, Nixon, Ford and Carter, while also working under Reagan and Bush senior, and still works as a consultant for the Department of Defense. A former US Navy Captain, Pieczenik achieved two prestigious Harry C. Solomon Awards at the Harvard Medical School as he simultaneously completed a PhD at MIT.
Recruited by Lawrence Eagleburger as Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Management, Pieczenik went on to develop, “the basic tenets for psychological warfare, counter terrorism, strategy and tactics for transcultural negotiations for the US State Department, military and intelligence communities and other agencies of the US Government,” while also developing foundational strategies for hostage rescue that were later employed around the world.
Pieczenik also served as a senior policy planner under Secretaries Henry Kissinger, Cyrus Vance, George Schultz and James Baker and worked on George W. Bush’s election campaign against Al Gore. His record underscores the fact that he is one of the most deeply connected men in intelligence circles over the past three decades plus.
Back in April 2002, over nine years ago, Pieczenik told the Alex Jones Show that Bin Laden had already been “dead for months,” and that the government was waiting for the most politically expedient time to roll out his corpse. Pieczenik would be in a position to know, having personally met Bin Laden and worked with him during the proxy war against the Soviets in Afghanistan back in the early 80′s.
Pieczenik said that Osama Bin Laden died in 2001, “Not because special forces had killed him, but because as a physician I had known that the CIA physicians had treated him and it was on the intelligence roster that he had marfan syndrome,” adding that the US government knew Bin Laden was dead before they invaded Afghanistan. Marfan syndrome is a degenerative genetic disease for which there is no permanent cure. The illness severely shortens the life span of the sufferer. “He died of marfan syndrome, Bush junior knew about it, the intelligence community knew about it,” said Pieczenik, noting how CIA physicians had visited Bin Laden in July 2001 at the American Hospital in Dubai.
“He was already very sick from marfan syndrome and he was already dying, so nobody had to kill him,” added Pieczenik, stating that Bin Laden died shortly after 9/11 in his Tora Bora cave complex.
Hear the whole interview here.
Genetic secret of a happy life?
Some people are born happy, scientists say. Researchers have identified a “happiness gene” that makes people more likely to feel satisfied with their lives. Their sunny dispostion is an accident of birth, at least in part.
Those who carry the less efficient version of the gene are more likely to be pessimistic. Their tendency to see the glass half empty is equally a part of their inheritance.
Read more via the Independent.
