Thursday, December 30, 2010

More China crackdowns

Its pretty sad when I see one of my favorite people, the Chinese, being so abused by their government. They are such a great people (the average Chinese person, not the Communist Party) and they are capable of so much. They just need to sort out their government. The government serves the people, the people do not serve the government.

China cracks down on P2P telephonic services like Skype and declared them illegal. This is done under the pretense that only government regulated telecoms may offer telephone calls, but its really because P2P telephonic services take the control out of the Communist Partys control and into the hands of the citizen.

Skype joins a long list of famous online applications like Facebook to be banned by the corrupt Chinese government.

Revenge against Mormons

This video is pretty funny. Ever had a Mormon or a Jehovah`s Witness come knocking on your door? In the second part of this video a group of atheists decide to give the Mormons a dose of their own medicine.



Sunday, December 19, 2010

Dishonest political companies you should avoid

Below is my current list of companies that the CIA can use to manipulate you with their political agenda`s. These companies are not to be trusted and are involved in dirty politics:


All these companies are strongly against free speech and are intent on keeping the current dishonest polictical/financial status quo. These companies will go after Wikileaks for being honest but happily still take money from dictators around the world.

I will expand on this list as more companies throw their integrity away. 

Monday, December 13, 2010

Zapiro`s look at China`s new "Peace" Prize

I thought todays cartoon about China`s new "Confucius Peace Prize" ( a cheap insubstantial knock off of the original Nobel Peace Prize)

Click on the image above to view in full size and at the original host.

Friday, December 10, 2010

Wikileaks now has a South African mirror

Yeah its official. South Africa now has an official Wikileaks mirror. This can be accessed by the address http://www.wikileaks.za.org .

The site is currently hosted on multiple servers with hosting in the United States, South Africa, Sweden as well as two off the grid solutions. It will basically be impossible to take down the South African copy of the site for any extended length of the time.

The server and site is currently hardened against anticipated attacks from American secret services. A special thanks to the guys and girls at http://www.mybroadband.co.za for help in motiviation and support for getting wikileaks.za.org up. Please note that MyBroadband in no way endorses wikileaks.za.org and this is a private project by individual MyBB members.

We also recommend a special form of protest for those fighting against wikileaks and free speech. For the big detractors we are offering them white feathers.

Wikileaks is most likely the most important tool for Free Speech since the inception of the Freedom of Information act.

Thursday, December 9, 2010

Reproductive scientists create mice from 2 fathers

This is a reproduction of the original article. Original article link can be found at the end of this post.




The study was posted today (Wednesday, December 8) at the online site of the journal Biology of Reproduction.
The achievement of two-father offspring in a species of mammal could be a step toward preserving endangered species, improving livestock breeds, and advancing human assisted reproductive technology (ART). It also opens the provocative possibility of same-sex couples having their own genetic children, the researchers note.
In the work reported today, the Behringer team manipulated fibroblasts from a male (XY) mouse fetus to produce an induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cell line. About one percent of iPS cell colonies grown from this XY cell line spontaneously lost the Y chromosome, resulting in XO cells. The XO iPS cells were injected into blastocysts from donor female mice. The treated blastocysts were transplanted into surrogate mothers, which gave birth to female XO/XX chimeras having one X chromosome from the original male mouse fibroblast.
The female chimeras, carrying oocytes derived from the XO cells, were mated with normal male mice. Some of the offspring were male and female mice that had genetic contributions from two fathers.
According to the authors, "Our study exploits iPS cell technologies to combine the alleles from two males to generate male and female progeny, i.e. a new form of mammalian reproduction."
The technique described in this study could be applied to agriculturally important animal species to combine desirable genetic traits from two males without having to outcross to females with diverse traits.
"It is also possible that one male could produce both oocytes and sperm for self-fertilization to generate male and female progeny," the scientists point out. Such a technique could be valuable for preserving species when no females remain.
In the future, it may also be possible to generate human oocytes from male iPS cells in vitro. Used in conjunction with in vitro fertilization, this would eliminate the need for female XO/XX chimeras, although a surrogate mother would still be needed to carry the two-father pregnancy to term.
Using a variation of the iPS technique, the researchers say "it may also be possible to generate sperm from a female donor and produce viable male and female progeny with two mothers."
The authors also caution that the "generation of human iPS cells still requires significant refinements prior to their use for therapeutic purposes."
Provided by Society for the Study of Reproduction

Original link : http://www.physorg.com/news/2010-12-reproductive-scientists-mice-fathers.html

China - A sad nation of knockoffs

\Well one thing that can be said about China is that in the last 1000 years they have being incapable of original thought. Basically everything they have today was imported from the west or knocked off from the west. Their latest knock-off is the Nobel Peace Prize, which they are calling the Confucius Peace Prize.

This knock off is pretty ironic as its the moral equivalent of a back street whore offering out awards for virginity.

The Confucius Peace Prize will of course include other countries with crappy human rights records and abuse like Pakistan, Iran, Sudan, Russia, Kazakhstan, Colombia, Tunisia, Saudi Arabia, Serbia, Iraq, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Venezuela, the Philippines, Egypt, Ukraine, Cuba and Morocco.

Well those crappy countries just admitted they are have sold out to China and are going to get crappier. Thats basically what happens to anyone who sleeps with China.

Its a pity the Chinese government are throwing such a childish temper tantrum in their attempt to rubbish the name of the Nobel Prize. Just goes to show you that Chinese rulers lack in their humanity and are nothing but rich despots of an enslaved nation.

Friday, December 3, 2010

Everydns.net cowardly drops Wikileaks.org domain

In a downright cowardly and disgusting move, the DNS host; Everydns.net has dropped the wikileaks.org domain. Everydns.net is an American owned DNS host. I have several domains hosted with Everydns.net and I will no longer be hosting my DNS with them.

To Everydns.net. You skunk like cowards! No longer can Internet users trust Everydns.net to have any type of character or honor. They are just another pawn in American manipulation.

What does this mean to all of us? It means that if you host at EveryDNS.net, and you do anything remotely that they do not approve of politically, you will have your DNS and domain dropped by them.

One thing this wikileaks saga is doing is separating the cowards from the real men who want to do good. Wikileaks is probably the single most important tool to journalism outside of Access to Information Acts world wide.

For an official spin on this story you can read more at Times Union.

Scientologists own Kayalami Castle

Its pretty disturbing to hear that this landmark in  Kayalami Johannesburg is now owned by the cult of Scientology. This sick and evil religious group have taken control of one of our local landmarks. You can be assured that this landmark (Kayalami Castle) will be used to fleece South Africans of their hard earned cash (all that cash will be sent back to the USA), and that the location will be used to abuse and hold people against their will.

I came across this terrible news while watching XenuTV. XenuTV shows personal attacks by Scientology against Anderson Cooper for his in depth hard hitting reporting.

Here is the VERY dishonest propaganda piece done by the Cult of Scientology that attacks Anderson Cooper and that mentions their conquest of Kayalami Castle in Johannesburg (Johannesburg is mentioned around 5:25 seconds into this shrill piece).



We like to think as South Africans that we are excluded from this type of stupidity but when I watch a propaganda piece like this it reminds me that South Africans are just as much at risk of being abused by Scientology as anyone else. 

Cocaine... so much cocaine!

To err is human... to aar is..

The exact date of the end of the world

According to Jehovah`s Witness`s. I once dated a JW and it was a pretty interesting experience. A normal conversation would go something like this:

Me, "So what do you think on kids and marriage"
JW, "Oh no, I wont have kids, do you know how evil it would be to bring them up in a world that is about to be destroyed?"
Me, "wtf?"
JW, "Yeah the world is about to end so I cant get married or have children"
Me, "wtf!"

Anyways, one thing about Jehovah`s Witness`s is they are constant in their predictions about the end of the world. Constantly wrong. Every single generation has believed it to be the last generation.

Dates we are or where meant to die


  • 70 AD: the fall and desecration of Jerusalem ended the world, according to the Preterists. Whoops.
  • 500: Hippolytus of Rime worked out the Biblical ’6,000 year rule’ to apply to this year. For more fun with that same figure, keep reading.
  • 989: Halley’s Comet always brings impending doom. Just ask Mark Twain.
  • 1000: very little of an apocalyptic nature happened this year, aside from a bunch of Christians getting worked up about the rather flexible millennium date.
  • 1874: the Jehovah’s Witnesses begin a long and lucrative career of predicting Armageddon, starting with this year. BTW: it didn’t happen.
  • 1878: It didn’t happen this year, either.
  • 1881: no, really…the JW’s were on a roll.
  • 1910: again? Well, if you Witnesses say so.
  • 1914: people are probably starting to wonder about Jehovah’s Witnesses.
  • 1918: we like the four-year cycle, but could the Jehovah’s Witnesses maybe split it up into a summer apocalypse and a winter apocalypse?
  • 1925: about this time, people may be forgiven for hoping that the world ends just to shut the Jehovah’s Witnesses up about it.
  • 1975: they gave us a 50-year break (which included WWII, which was chock full of apocalyptic signs) but those scrappy Jehovah’s Witnesses aren’t done yet.
  • 1982: “The Christ is Now Here”, according to the Tara Center, who later state that He’s not ready to reveal himself after all.
  • 1984: Orwell buffs and Jehovah’s Witnesses alike considered this to be a significant year. Unless Van Halen is the antichrist (not unproven), they were probably all wrong.
  • 1994: Nostradamus tries posthumously to beat the Jehovah’s Witnesses record for most failed predictions. Luckily, he’s much more vague and obscure, so he’s never really wrong
  • 1997: No, really, the Christ is Now Here, according to Share International (a.k.a. the Tara Center). Interestingly enough, The Christ (a.k.a. Maitreya) tops the list of several groups who believe him to be the Antichrist instead. Either way is okay with us — we still get apocalypse!
  • 1998: This is the year, says Nostradamus and others (and maybe not even him). For example, Eli Eshoh proved that the Rapture was going to happen, and by golly, it did (didn’t you notice?). We’re still not sure who were raptured, but those of us Left Behind should watch out for 2028. Two ends of the world for the price of one? Good deal!
  • 2000: the change of the millennium makes a great date for the End Times. However, even the Y2K Bug turned out to be little more than a minor inconvenience, even for online slots.
  • 2003: Ah, those wacky Zetas. They seemed so sure, and now Nancy and the rest of the earthworm-eaters simply claim that the Pole Shift of May 15th, 2003 was some sort of smokescreen or conspiracy, and the real day is still coming. But they won’t say when.
  • 2008 2009 2010 2011: The Lord’s Witnesses (absolutely NOT Jehovah’s Witnesses, despite strikingly obvious similarities) are pretty sure that it’s all over one of these years. Well, as long as there’s still a World War I veteran alive, we’ve got nothing to worry about…so at least a year or two. Additionally, Harold Camping of Family Radio is pretty sure it’s all over in May. Or maybe October. Either way, he’s 100% sure.
  • 2012: a very popular choice lately (and will probably remain so, up until the end of December). The basis for this date is Mayan calendars, Nostradamus, and sunspot predictions — and possibly a savvy marketing campaign by the Cults and Survival Gear coalition.
  • 2014: Hey, this one comes from a Pope, so it must be true. In 1514 Leo IX gave us 500 years. You’d think that would be long enough to get our act together, but noooooooo…
  • 2017: and then there’s the “Sword of God Brotherhood” (great name) who will be the only ones surviving this year, tasked with repopulating the planet. Hopefully there’s a Sisterhood as well. Or not…
  • 2028: Eli Eshoe again. Anybody left after the great Rapture of 2008 (remember that?) and the ensuing tribulation (i.e., now) has until 2028 to prove themselves. Get to work.
  • 2240: the Talmud says that the world as we know it will only last 6,000 years, starting with the creation of Adam (which apparently happened about 5770 years ago…sorry, Lucy). The Talmud is pretty discouraging about how much fun our final two centuries are going to be, but the world after Armageddon should be very nice.
  • 2280: the Qur’an gives us 40 more years than the Talmud, according to Dr. Rashad Khalifa and a computer-assisted numerical analysis of the holy text.
  • 2743: if online casino usa is still around, there’s plenty of reason to hope.
  • 3797: this one comes from Nostradamus, but so have quite a few other dates (past and future). Just in case this was the year that he really meant, clear your schedule.

Goats in a tree



This picture was taken in Morocco by Gavin Oliver. These goats are well known by the local to climb the Argon tree to eat its fruit.

Are Aliens Among Us? Sort of, NASA Says


This discovery by NASA is pretty interesting. In a nutshell most known life has two things in common. Carbon and phosphorus. What NASA have found is a life form that is made of arsnic. These newly discovered lifeforms have their DNA chains held together by arsenic! 

This is pretty big because this means they could be from a totally different biosphere to us. Lets see what Fox News has to say about this (apologies for using such a dishonest source as Fox News, but it was the best link avaliable at the time.)

Alien life has been among us all along, according to new biological findings announced by NASA Thursday.
Research conducted by biochemist Dr. Felisa Wolfe-Simon from the U.S. Geological Survey has turned the quest for alien life on its ear, suggesting that phosphorous, carbon, and the other fundamental elements found in every living thing on Earth aren't the only signs of life. Wolfe-Simon explained the findings at a hotly anticipated NASA press conference on Thursday.
After a two-year study at California's Mono Lake, near Yosemite National Park, Wolfe-Simon found that a bug will grow in the presence of the toxic chemical arsenic when only slight traces of phosphorous are present. It's a radical finding, says molecular biologist Steven Benner, who is part of NASA's "Team Titan" and an expert on astrobiology -- forcing the space agency to redefine the quest for other life in the universe.

Sauce 

Thursday, December 2, 2010

Fantastic lightning photography

Click on the image to enlarge
From the photographers website;


This is a photo sequence of 42 stacked shots, caught in Olympic Stadium, Athens during a severe thunderstorm. It only took me aproximatelly 30 minutes to capture 51 lightnings.
Nine shots were destroyed because of the excess brightness. See also the waterdrops from the drain pipe. They seem 'still' as they instlantly illuminated from the lightnings.
The answer to the crucial question: No... The big one didn't hit me on the head! It stroke a few hundred feet in front of me..

Canon EOS 550D, 28/6/2010 1:16 - 1:48, Shutter Speed 3.2 sec x 42 shots, Aperture Value 4.0, ISO 100, Lens Canon EF 15mm f/2.8, Focal Length 15.0 mm

Original link. 

And The Winner of the 2010 Bad Sex in Fiction Award Goes To...

...The Shape of Her by Rowan Somerville. Here's an excerpt:

He caught her rhythm, pulling and releasing, cradling and crushing; pushing up through his fingers with each swing, mining up, like an otter through wet sand. Her sounds shifted from moans to grunts, insistent, almost desperate cries from the throat … He unbuttoned the front of her shirt and pulled it to the side so that her breast was uncovered, her nipple poking out, upturned like the nose of the loveliest nocturnal animal, sniffing in the night. He took it between his lips and sucked the salt from her. He hooked his fingers into her waistband, caught the elastic of her underwear and began pulling down. The knot on her light cotton trousers held fast as the fabric reached the curve of her backside. She twisted from him and stepped back.
Read more terribly bad sex from The Shape of Her at the Guardians website, or have a look at other contenders for worst sex story books.

Angry noodle

Demands explanation! Thought this noodle was hilarious so definitely worth a share!

No Senior Citizens Discount

Not everyone has the same feeling about pensioners and discounts.

An advantage to being color blind

Worlds scariest airstrips

Ever wondered what it would be like landing on some of the... shorter runways around the world? Here are a couple of runways I dont think I would be too happy landing on.








Mercury poisoning makes male birds homosexual

This is an interesting story for a Thursday. Apparently mercury poisoning makes male ibis homosexual. For those of you not ornithologically inclined; an ibis is the same type of family that our beloved (annoying) Hadeda`s belong to.




Low levels of mercury in the diet of male white ibises cause the birds to mate with each other rather than with females. As a result many of the females can't breed, and fewer chicks are produced.
It's the first time a pollutant has been found to change an animal's sexual preference. Many chemicals can "feminise" males or reduce fertility, but males affected in these ways still prefer females.
Mercury is extremely toxic, particularly in the form of methylmercury, which reduces breeding in wild birds by disrupting their parenting behaviours. To find out if it also affected mating, Peter Frederick of the University of Florida in Gainesville and Nilmini Jayasena of the University of Peradeniya, Sri Lanka, captured 160 young white ibises from south Florida. They gave them food laced with methylmercury and monitored them closely.
The birds were split into four groups. One group ate food with 0.3 parts per million methylmercury, which most US states would regard as too high for human consumption. A second group got 0.1 ppm, and the third 0.05 ppm, a low dose that wild birds would be exposed to frequently. The fourth group received none.
All three dosed groups had significantly more homosexual males than the control group. Male-male pairs courted, built nests together and paired off for several weeks. Higher doses increased the effect, with 55 per cent of males in the 0.3 ppm group affected. Male-male matings were responsible for 81 per cent of unproductive nests in the dosed groups.
Meanwhile the heterosexual pairs courted less and were bad at parenting – patterns of behaviour that were both already known to be caused by methylmercury poisoning. The combined effects of male-male pairing and poor performance by male-female pairs could be severe. "In the worst-case scenario, the production of young would fall by 50 per cent," says Frederick.
Looking for effects on courtship and mating is novel, says Tony Scheuhammer of Environment Canada's National Wildlife Research Center in Ottawa, Ontario. "People normally study pairs that have already mated to see how good they are at parenting," he says.

The source of the full article can be found at the fantastic New Scientist website.

A look at Russia in color from 1900 to 1915

My last blog post that had pictures of America in color from the early part of the 20th century went down pretty well so I thought I would share pictures I found from the same source of Russia in color right at the beginning of the 20th century.

It is a pity that communism effected Russia on such a drastic scale as it looked like they were well on their way by some of the beautiful buildings shown. One is also reminded of the strong contrast between early developed Russia and early rural Russia.








There are loads more pictures where these came from all of them available online from the Denver Post

Wednesday, December 1, 2010

What does John Stewart have to say about Wikileaks?

For some reason our South African conservatives are as thick and uneducated as their American counterparts and in the local MyBroadBand forums our local conservatives are behaving like idiotic Republicans.

They are acting as though the diplomatic cable release is the end of the political world and everyone is going to die and this leak is bad for everyone.

Rubbish! I say. The more transparent and accountable governments and corporations are the less corruption and human misery there will be. John Stewart pretty much echoes my sentiment but in a much more humorous way. Have a look at this clip from his latest show!

Buy your own Tron motorbike - Really cool!

 For those of you that are not in the know. There is a new Tron movie coming out called Tron: Legacy. A Florida motorbike shop have developed 10 custom-built, street legal Tron Light Cycle lookalikes. For only $55 000 you to can purchase one of these elite bikes.




Read more about these fantastic bikes at Wired Magazine.


Twilight for Bernice

My best friends wife is a bit fanatical about her enjoyment of the Twilight series so I thought I would share this short summary of the series for her :D