“In a long life of scholarship and dissent, Gene Sharp has been imprisoned and persecuted, but never silenced. His ideas continue to inspire resistance movements across the world.” (New Statesman).

‘…The so-called intelligence “Fusion Center” sifted through data on 29 major mass killings in the U.S. since 1999, starting with the Littleton, Colorado school shooting. Its practical advice is to be more concerned by your co-worker with the bad hygiene who mutters about putting his “things in order” than by the war veteran in the next cubicle.

The basic pattern found by the New Jersey DHS fusion center, and obtained by Public Intelligence (.PDF), is one of a killer who lashes out at his co-workers. Thirteen out of the 29 observed cases “occurred at the workplace and were conducted by either a former employee or relative of an employee,” the November report finds. His “weapon of choice” is a semiautomatic handgun, rather than the rifles that garnered so much attention after Newtown. The infamous Columbine school slaying of 1999 is the only case in which killers worked in teams: they’re almost always solo acts — and one-off affairs. In every single one of them, the killer was male, between the age of 17 and 49.’ (Danger Room | Wired.com).

Related articles

• Mass Shooters: Mostly Solo White Guys, Lots Mad at Their Jobs, Still Not Much We Can Do in Public Policy Terms
• Ammo clips key in mass killings
• (U//FOUO) New Jersey Fusion Center Mass Shootings Analysis
• Everyone of the mass murderers were Democrats
• Was the Sandy Hook Elementary School Shooting a False Flag Operation to Ban Guns?
• Shooter risk factors: rejection, bullying
• Why should mass school shootings get media attention?
• Top 10 myths about mass shootings

‘…most of the top 20 “happiest” countries according to the index are in western Europe. So what gives? What do these nations have in common that can somehow explain their prosperity?Being an electoral democracy is virtually a given – of the top 20 most prosperous countries, only Singapore and Hong Kong aren’t democracies. Being small also seems to help. Big countries with heterogeneous populations are more unwieldy; disparate groups make it harder for a society to build social cohesion and trust.What else? They are all borderline socialist states, with generous welfare benefits and lots of redistribution of wealth. Yet they don’t let that socialism cross the line into autocracy. Civil liberties are abundant consider decriminalized drugs and prostitution in the Netherlands. There are few restrictions on the flow of capital or of labor.So where does the United States rank? It’s at 12th place this year, slipping from 10th. According to Legatum, the U.S. has slipped in the areas of governance, personal freedom, and most troubling, in entrepreneurship & opportunity. America is supposed to be the land of opportunity, but Legatum notes “a decline in citizens’ perception that working hard gets you ahead.” ‘ (Yahoo! Travel).

“For 40 Years, This Russian Family Was Cut Off From All Human Contact, Unaware of World War II.” (Smithsonian via steve) Never mind being unaware of WWII; they were essentially unaware of the 20th century.

“The Atlantic pulled an advertorial package singing the praises of the Church of Scientology and its leader, David Miscavige, last night after the sponsored content drew the attention—and ire—of both reporters and readers, and no doubt sparked an untold number of newsroom conversations about the ethics and optics of such revenue-generating efforts.

In place of the the advertorial headlined “David Miscavige Leads Scientology to Milestone Year” that trumpeted the opening of a dozen new Scientology churches around the world, the magazine is now running a note to readers alerting them that the ad campaign has been temporarily halted while the magazine reviews its official policy for such sponsored content.” (Slate).

“A gift exchange between Asian rulers several centuries ago may have inadvertently saved a population of elephants from extinction, according to a new study.

Today a small population of unusually placid and genetically distinct elephants lives in the northeast corner of Borneo…” (National Geographic).

‘People applying for gun licences could be asked to prove that their current or recent partners have consented to the application, Theresa May has suggested.

The home secretary said it was “not appropriate” for people with a history of domestic violence to own guns.

Ministers are examining if the extra check could “reduce the risk to domestic violence victims”, she said.’ (BBC News).

“Rather than mouth empty platitudes, so-called shy and silent Finns may actually be showing respect, says Michael Berry, the latest in a line of linguists to explain the phenomenon of the stereotypically quiet Finn.”  (yle.fi).

“Next year features an anomaly for American Jews – The first day of Hanukkah coincides with Thanksgiving, on 11/28/2013 (meaning the first night of Hanukkah is actually the night before Thanksgiving). I was curious how often this happens. It turns out that it has never happened before…and it will never happen again. (Correction: it happened once before, in 1888: see Addendum.)” (Jonathan Mizrahi).

“Researchers have claimed that they have found the ultimate brew – a tea made from coffee leaves – that is healthier than both the drinks.

According to experts, the coffee leaf tea – said to have an ‘earthy’ taste – is less bitter than tea and not as strong as coffee, boasts high levels of compounds, which lower the risk of diabetes and heart disease.

The brew carries far less caffeine than tea or coffee and contains antioxidant, which reportedly help combat heart disease, diabetes and cancer, and anti-inflammatory properties, the Daily Mail reported.

The coffee leaves were examined by researchers from the Royal Botanic Gardens in Kew, South-West London, together with researchers in Montpellier, France.” (Yahoo! News India).

The article talks about a method of dismantling skyscrapers floor-by-floor, lowering the roof as you go. Lots of people tweeting about this technological marvel.

Massive reduction in release of dirt and debris to the environment. The technique has been developed in Japan, where

“…there are 797 skyscrapers over 100 metres tall, around 150 of which will be between 30 and 40 years old in the next decade, says Ichihara. This has historically been the age when such buildings are earmarked for demolition, but conventional methods are not suitable for such tall skyscrapers.”  (New Scientist)

The real issue for me is why in the world so many massive buildings are built with a 30-40 year lifespan! That would be the real cause for environmental concern! (Me, I am unapolgetic about my love for tall buildings…)

Related articles

• You: Razing skyscrapers from the inside
• How to demolish skyscrapers in crowded cities
• Not a big year for tall buildings: the world’s new skyscraper count is low
• Watch a skyscraper slowly vanish as it gets demolished from the top down
• The First Forested Skyscraper is Almost Here
• The New Art of Gentle Demolition
• Build ’em High: Skyscraper Culture, for Better or for Worse
• China Plans to Build the World’s Largest Skyscraper in Just 90 Days
• Top 10 Skyscrapers

Does anybody know what Jorn Barger is up to these days? Philip Agre?

The unjustified use of psychiatry for preventive detention?

‘According to the largest study of released prisoners, conducted by the Bureau of Justice, the re-arrest rate for sex offenders is lower than that for perpetrators of any violent crime except murder. But the notion that sex offenders have a unique lack of self-control has been repeated so frequently that it has come to feel like common sense. In 1997, the Supreme Court ruled that sexually-violent-predator state laws are constitutional, because they adhere to the medical model of commitment, by which patients who pose a danger to themselves or others can be prevented from leaving a hospital. To be detained, inmates must have a psychiatric illness or “mental abnormality”—typically sexual in nature—that renders them out of control.

…

The science of perversion is decades behind the rest of the field. The diagnostic criteria for sexual disorders were tested on only three patients before being added to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, in 1980. No field trials have since been conducted. Most offenders labelled “sexually dangerous” receive a diagnosis of pedophilia, sadism, exhibitionism, fetishism, hebephilia (attraction to pubescents), or “not otherwise specified,” a category in the D.S.M. reserved for insufficiently studied disorders. Michael First, the editor of the two most recent editions of the D.S.M., told me that there is no scientific research establishing that abnormal desires are any harder to control than normal ones. “People choose to do bad things all the time,” he said. “Psychiatry is being coöpted by the criminal-justice system to solve a problem that is moral, not medical.” ( — Rachel Aviv, The New Yorker).

Related articles

• Paedophilia: bringing dark desires to light (guardian.co.uk)
• “Sex Offender Exceptionalism and Preventive Detention” (sentencing.typepad.com)
• Ponerized society: UK’s Guardian publishes favourable article on pedophilia – ‘Bringing dark desires to light’ (familysurvivalprotocol.com)
• Sexual abuse – the enemy within (ruleofstupid.wordpress.com)
• Ethics and Religion Talk: Welcoming sex offenders into worship (mlive.com)
• Half of registered sex offenders are paedophiles (standard.co.uk)

‘You might have heard about the “kill list.” You’ve certainly heard about drones. But the details of the U.S. campaign against militants in Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia — a centerpiece of the Obama administration’s national security approach – remain shrouded in secrecy. Here’s our guide to what we know—and what we don’t know.’ (ProPublica).

“Few of us use all–or even most–of the 3,000 English-language words available to us for describing our emotions, but even if we did, most of us would still experience feelings for which there are, apparently, no words.In some cases, though, words do exist to describe those nameless emotions–theyre just not English words. Which is a shame, because–as todays infographic by design student Pei-Ying Lin demonstrates, they often define a feeling entirely familiar to us.” (Popular Science).

 

Joshua Lang: “Since its introduction in 1846, anesthesia has allowed for medical miracles. Limbs can be removed, tumors examined, organs replaced—and a patient will feel and remember nothing. Or so we choose to believe. In reality, tens of thousands of patients each year in the United States alone wake up at some point during surgery. Since their eyes are taped shut and their bodies are usually paralyzed, they cannot alert anyone to their condition. In efforts to eradicate this phenomenon, medicine has been forced to confront how little we really know about anesthesia’s effects on the brain. The doctor who may be closest to a solution may also answer a question that has confounded centuries’ worth of scientists and philosophers: What does it mean to be conscious?” (The Atlantic)

“It may sound less likely than hell freezing over, but physicists have created an atomic gas with a sub-absolute-zero temperature for the first time1. Their technique opens the door to generating negative-Kelvin materials and new quantum devices, and it could even help to solve a cosmological mystery.” (Nature)

Adam Green: “In magic circles, Robbins is regarded as a kind of legend. Psychiatrists, neuroscientists, and the military study his methods for what they reveal about the nature of human attention.” (New Yorker).

Related articles

• Video: The Art of Pickpocketing (newyorker.com)
• Video of the Week: The World’s Best Pickpocket (lawprofessors.typepad.com)
• A handy guide to pickpocketing (washingtonpost.com)
• The Best Pickpocket in the World (neatorama.com)
• Watch This Man Reveal His Pickpocketing Secrets (fox4kc.com)
• The neuroscience of pickpockets (kottke.org)

Deborah Blum, author of The Poisoner’s Handbook: “When I first started writing about poisons, I had a certain image of poisoners in mind — creepy, yes, but cool, collected. After all, a poison murder is always premeditated. It’s a colder kind of killing, one that I used to imagine was somehow infused with extra intelligence.

But over the last year, I’ve come to realize that I might be overrating the poison killer… The poisoners of 2012 didn’t seem to be carefully planning as much as they seemed to be grabbing up the first bottle lurking in the medicine chest or under the kitchen sink. I’ve been picking up a pattern of bumbling rather than capability.

And, over all, I’ve realized that’s something to be appreciated. We don’t actually want our would-be killers to be too smart. The dumber and the more easily caught the better.” (Wired.com)

A map showing laws about abortion around the World.

“We have found that there are no mental health consequences of abortion compared to carrying an unwanted pregnancy to term. There are other interesting findings: even later abortion is safer than childbirth and women who carried an unwanted pregnancy to term are three times more likely than women who receive an abortion to be below the poverty level two years later.” (io9 ).

“The past year provided no shortage of futureshock. We watched a cyborg compete at the Olympic Games, and marveled at the news that NASA was actually working on a faster-than-light warp drive. It was also a year that featured the planet’s first superstorm, the development of an artificial retina — and primates who had their intelligence enhanced with a chip. Here are 16 predictions that came true in 2012.” (io9).