Top Cancer Institute Says Cannabis Can Reduce Tumours, Then Changes Its Mind

The United States' National Cancer Institute finally comes clean on cannabis :

'The potential benefits of medicinal Cannabis for people living with cancer include antiemetic effects, appetite stimulation, pain relief, and improved sleep. In the practice of integrative oncology, the health care provider may recommend medicinal Cannabis not only for symptom management but also for its possible direct antitumor effect."

But only for a few days. That sentence was scrubbed and replaced, with this :

'The potential benefits of medicinal Cannabis for people living with cancer include antiemetic effects, appetite stimulation, pain relief, and improved sleep. Though no relevant surveys of practice patterns exist, it appears that physicians caring for cancer patients who prescribe medicinal Cannabis predominantly do so for symptom management.'"

But even the reworded advice from the NCI counts as a victory for medicinal cannabis advocates :

Medical marijuana advocates said they suspected political pressure forced the change, but considered even the current website language a victory, since NCI still touts the "potential benefits" of cannabis for treatment of symptoms of people living with cancer, such as pain and sleep problems.

"We're very pleased that NCI, and really NIH, have finally recognized marijuana as a complementary alternative medicine," said Kris Hermes, a spokesman for Americans for Safe Access, which promotes medical marijuana use and research. "That is a significant step forward. But just as importantly, it points to a contradiction in the federal policy on medical marijuana, and it's a contradiction that needs to be resolved."

Police Agent Provocateur Busted On Camera During UKUnCut Protests

On March 26, more than 500,000 people peacefully marched through the streets of London against the mega-rich who avoid paying their fair share of tax, and whose tax avoidance is now leading to the closure of hundreds of libraries and the removal of community services in some of England's poorest towns.

When the march was all but over, a group of so-called anarchists went on a rampage, daubing tired cliches on Starbucks, smashing windows, throwing smoke bombs and easily avoiding arrest by the police.

How do these masked 'anarchists' always avoid arrest by the police when they are clearly the troublmakers?

They have the right ID, apparently.

If you look closely at the below video you can see one of these 'anarchists' approach the police, shortly after helping to push the crowd against police lines. He shows his ID to a police officer is allowed through police lines with a guiding hand on his back. Watch for the 'anarchist' at 4:49 in the centre of the screen, near the phone booths :



Nothing new in undercover police, or outside agents, infiltrating protests, dressing up as anarchists, stirring up trouble and provoking others into violence for the cameras, of course.

The exact same thing, including ski-masked 'anarchists' seen showing police their ID to get through police cordons, happened during the G20 protests in London in 2009, as reported in the New York Times :

...it appeared to at least these two photographers that most of the much-photographed violence on Wednesday evening was caused by people who looked like “agent provocateurs,” who “were going from police line to police line baiting the police — and they were the ones who instigated the push against police lines that kicked off the evening violence.”

This photographer adds that “There was another guy baiting the police and whipping up the crowd to rush the police, he got a hundred or so protesters to follow him and then sneaked off as they reached police lines.”

He also writes that the second photographer, who is a reliable reporter, “saw a bunch of protesters trying to stop a guy in black throwing bottles at the police, the protesters had an argument him and then accused him of being a policeman, whereupon he ran to the police cordon, showed some I.D. and was let through!”

Finally, my friend says: “I should point out that the only reason that we were able to spot these guys so easily was because the protest at that point was so peaceful, they really stuck out, so we followed them from one police line to another as they tried to start trouble.”

The question is why does the media continually fall for this illegal police tactic, and then fail to report on it when it is clear as hell what's been going on?

What would the evening news talk about if there was no violence to fill those precious few minutes devoted to the biggest peoples' movement in decades?

Well, they might talk about the issues that drew half a million people into the streets of London.

And we couldn't have that.


Undercover Cop 'Caught In The Act' Of Trying To Spark Violence At Peaceful Protest

Canadian Police Admit They Sent Agent Provocateurs Armed With Rocks In The Ranks Of Peaceful Protesters

In The 1960s, If You Said By The Year 2000 People Would Be Reading News & Buying Goods Online You Were Of The Lunatic Fringe

A true pioneer of the internet, Paul Baran, has died at 86.

This story provides a quick summary of his life and some interesting details about the early days of what we now know as The Internet :

Paul Baran is best known for the idea of "packet-switching", in which data is bundled into small packages and sent through a network. Baran outlined the concept while working on Cold War issues for the RAND Corporation in Santa Monica in 1963 and 1964.

In 1969 the technology became a concept the Department of Defence used in creating the Arpanet, the precursor to the internet, numerous reports on the subject said.

The idea had been so advanced at its development that private companies had passed on it.

Baran's method of moving data was designed to still function after a nuclear attack. Because there were no centralised switches, and bundles of data could simply find a new route if one weren't working, the system could still work even if much of it were destroyed, the RAND Corporation said on its website.

(Mr Baran's son) said his father recently shared a paper that he wrote in 1966, speculating on the future of the computer networks he was working on.

"It spelled out this idea that by the year 2000 that people would be using online networks for shopping and news," he said. "It was an absolute lunatic fringe idea."

Lunatic fringe perhaps, but such ideas were already nosing their way into science fiction by the mid-1960s.

Tsunami Meets Port City = Oblivion

By Darryl Mason

As a kid, I can't recall ever seeing actual photos of a tsunami ploughing into a city. If there was film footage of such an event, it was never shown on any TV I saw, and it's the sort of thing I would have been looking for. About all we saw of tsunamis were the ones featured in 1960s disaster movies, and most of those were caused by Godzilla and his friends.

There were encyclopedia entries on tsunamis, and the occasional book to be found in libraries on the subject, but mostly it was left to your own imagination to visualise waves 5, 10 or 20 metres high slamming into a city.

We've seen footage in the past decade of tsunamis, captured on video & cell phone cameras, particularly the 2004 Asian tsunami, with those horrific clips of sea water sweeping through exotic resorts. And we've seen the devastation that tsunamis can cause portrayed, often astoundingly so, through CGI special effects in movies like The Day After Tomorrow, 2012 and Deep Impact.

But none of it compares to footage like this from the 2011 Japan tsunami, where you can see the Japanese port city of Kesennuma utterly destroyed in less than five minutes, entire neighbourhoods smashed, broken and carried away :



Where once there was a modern, vibrant Japanese port city, there is now only death and devastation.



Has anybody who lives near the coast and has seen footage like that above not felt a sickening unease about just how vulnerable to such a disaster every coastal town and city in the world just might be?

Some more than others, obviously.

But tsunamis are not caused solely by earthquakes. Underwater landslides, massive landslides into a sea on the other side of the planet, and asteroids slamming into oceans are all believed to have caused ancient mega-tsunamis, bigger than any that have hit human civilization's villages, towns and cities in the past 10,000 years.

Tsunamis once seemed such a distant threat, something from history, from fables, from science fiction movies. Not anymore. As the swaying skyscrapers of Tokyo have shown, you can protect a city's buildings from even a 9.1 magnitude earthquake, but the biggest sea walls cannot hold back a tsunami of 10 or 20 metres high.

What the earthquake cannot shake down, the tsunami can wipe away, almost effortlessly.

John Patterson :

We live now largely as adjuncts to our computers, as fallible back-up hard-drives made of meat, subservient one day – and perhaps already – to them and their evil sisters, the TV and mobile phone, with half our minds online, and all our experiences mediated by screens of glass and the ebb and flow of binary code. We have avatars and Second Lives, erasable online identities and the ability to hack into those of others.

Ben Affleck & Matt Damon wrote the screenplay for Good Will Hunting in 1994. Talk about prescient :

Feed Your Brain

By Darryl Mason

So, plenty of interesting things I come across online I would have once blogged about here, or at least included in an infrequent collection of short news bits called Feed Your Brain, but I now post them on Twitter here instead, neglecting this blog. Then again, the Twitter version of what I do here contains far less waffle from me.

This is a round-up of tweets of interest from the past month. Enjoy.

2032 : Michael Bay's '9/11' includes scenes of President Bush in an F-16 shooting down terrorists http://i.imgur.com/2Jl8w.jpg

#WarOnLibya won't just be for oil, there's also the control of the Great Manmade River up for grabs http://tinyurl.com/ypcvyy

FKN Hell. French gov. minister says Japan gov has lost control of #Fukushima disaster & hiding true scale of disaster http://bit.ly/dZ73PW

Journalist who spent years covering the life of Knut the polar bear, instead of real news, is glad he's dead http://tinyurl.com/68jcqto

In 1550, a French cartographer looked to Australia and saw a land of elephants and giraffe camels. http://tinyurl.com/4k8xyjw

50% of German doctors prescribe placebos, which often work even if patients are told they're placebos. http://bit.ly/idnm7K

Check out ski-masked, assault-rifle touting, camo 'police' who turned up with dogs to peaceful protest, at 3:12 http://tinyurl.com/4a8vjx4

Landmark corporate piracy lawsuit may see payout to artist of $40-50 million. Nice try Universal http://tinyurl.com/67xgoe9

4 year old girl left terrified of being "taken away by police" after she was cautioned for picking daffodils in a park http://gu.com/p/2nmyp/tf

C3-PO : "I must have some booze! I demand to have some booze!" Withnail & I versus Star Wars http://tinyurl.com/48qkn4n

Best-selling author turns down $500,000 deal to self-publish http://tinyurl.com/48ampof bigger royalties slice, e-books can sell forever.

A diet one billionaire believes will help him live to 125 years old http://tinyurl.com/5r7pm6g sounds pretty good. But blended banana peel?

Fascinating. How Japan's Yakuza became vital post-tsunami disaster relief workers, aid distributors http://tinyurl.com/4jkj5gp

Europeans & Algerians have been eating magic mushrooms & painting weird shit on walls for more than 6000 years. http://tinyurl.com/6l69z7h

Human Eating Robot Practising On Mannequins http://tinyurl.com/68ejg2b

Donald Rumsfeld refuses to deny he's a lizard shapeshifter, refuses to deny he's eaten Mexican babies as a lizard http://tinyurl.com/4932u2z

When earthquakes come in swarms http://tinyurl.com/4mmwd69 7-9 hrs of total inactivity before March 11, 9.0 mag, like Earth took deep breath

Now arriving at Japan's Sendai Airport Gate 7, stark, raw terror : http://tinyurl.com/5wxy25v #tsunami

The legal drug that allowed Big Pharma to corner American heroin market & hook junkies even deeper http://fb.me/Hn3oyHTv

Days before the War On Libya began, the stockmarkets prepared, foewarning the coming reality : http://bit.ly/gpKFW4

2 out of 3 Pakistan journalists view CIA Flying Killer Robot attacks as "acts of terrorism" http://tinyurl.com/4moqyw7

If Nano Air Vehicles fly up to you & blast advertising in yr face, should u legally be allowed to destroy them? http://tinyurl.com/4wxcquc

Mmmmm, empathetic fried chicken. KFC now comes not only with 11 secret herbs & spices but 5 or 6 secret emotions http://tinyurl.com/4utkods

Modern American Slavery http://tinyurl.com/4bjzsbp Bust them for drugs, make them build Patriot missiles in prison for a few cents an hour.

"Who's in control?" "You are robot arm, you are." "That's better" RT Robotics shutdown briefly strands astronaut... http://drudge.tw/gBLGDO

Four metre crocodile takes dog, then starts lurking near a school http://bit.ly/h2FiYt 14 y.o. still missing after 4 days.

Go Here To Follow Me On Twitter

Germany's Transparent Car Factory. Brilliant, beautiful :

"Stay Calm, Don't Panic....And God Bless America"

"Women And Children First" - US Military Begins Evacuations From Japan

Unprecedented : American Military Families Told To Leave Behind Pets, Pack For "3 To 5 Days" And Leave Japan "In An Orderly Fashion"

By Darryl Mason

The US government and the Pentagon don't believe Japan's claims that they will be able to contain radiation from the tsunami-destroyed Fukushima nuclear plant and have released an extraordinary video for American military family members living in Japan, preparing them to get the hell out of Japan.

The key words are "Calm", "Don't Panic" and "Unprecedented".

Some quotes :

"Get your passports together, prepare for 3 to 5 days, and then wait and we will get more information as to when the first airplane will arrive....pack for 3 to 5 days, the diapers that you need, the baby food that you need, those sort of things, to work within those 3 to 5 days before you get to a place where you can settle down a bit."

"(Admiral of the 7th Fleet) believe it is best for all of us, that is the military, as far as mission readiness, to remove our families from the calculus."

"We don't know what the state of the final reactor will be...the president has gone ahead and allowed this voluntary evacuation of non-essential personnel.....have I covered everything?"

"What do I do with my car? What do I do with my pets? We don't have an answer for that yet."

"Get the things you need to get, pack, don't panic."

"Women And Children First."

There more are than 90,000 American service men and women and their family members in Japan. For the next 9 days, dozens of American airforce & commercial jets & cargo planes will be airlifting some 10,000 evacuees from Japan per day. They are only allowed to take the minimum they need to survive and pets apparently will be abandoned.

10,000 Americans per day will leave Japan, taking with them hundreds of millions of dollars in daily spending, rentals, shopping, with no set idea when, or even if, they will ever return.

Yes. Unprecedented is probably the right word.


Unnerving Headlines On The Japan Nuclear Disaster :

Japan Admits Disaster Is 'Level 5 Nuclear Emergency' - Severe Damage To Reactor Core, Release Of Large Quantities Of Radiation, High Probability Of Significant Public Exposure

Russia Says Japan In Throes Of Colossal Disaster

Passengers From Tokyo Landing In US Trigger Radiation Detectors

Japan Reaches Out To US In 'Race Against The Clock

US Warnings About Little Or No Water In Cooling Ponds Go Unreported In Japanese Media

Australia Urges Citizens To Leave Tokyo

UN Atomic Chief Calls For World To Help Japan

C3PO : "I Must Have Some Booze! I Demand To Have Some Booze"

If you're a fan of the movie WithNail & I, you'll love this. If you're a fan of Star Wars, but you've never heard of Withnail & I, you'll be confused, but laugh anyway. If you're a huge fan of both Star Wars and Withnail & I, well, you'll need the finest wines available to humanity to recover.

Part One :



Part Two :



Movie Mashups are now an art form.

You Know, This Street Smells Really Nice Since Those Quiet People With The Blacked Out Windows Moved In

Cannabis farms in apartments and units are increasingly popular in crumbling economies like the UK's because the return on investment is so high, the legal implications (compared to, say, armed robbery) are fairly minor and the market for high quality gear is so huge.

Here, the police inform landlords how to tell if one of their properties is being used for a cannabis farm, and thereby inform cannabis farmers how to make the farms less suspicious and easy to spot :

The police say there are obvious signs of a cannabis farm is in your neighbourhood: you might notice a pungent and sweet smell on the street with no obvious source; unusual levels of heat coming from a property; or no frost or snow apparent when every house around it is covered. You might also spot unusual noises at odd times such as fans going constantly, or large items like sacks or drums being dragged around. Windows will probably be blacked out by heavy curtains or bin bags from the inside. The creation of new air vents or the use of industrial air vents in a domestic property is also a tell-tale sign.

If your property is being used as a farm you may find that no one answers the door when you visit, and that the locks have been changed without you knowing. The police claim a rented property of a good size with several rooms and an absentee landlord are popular choices for cannabis farmers – and landlords should be wary of people who ask how often you will visit the property when renting their home. Also, cash may be used in transactions rather than direct debits. Landlords are advised to make regular checks of the property once it is leased.

So bad is the damage left behind by some cannabis farmers that insurance companies are now demanding landlords gather a slew of documents and ID from those who rent their properties, specifically to keep out cannabis farmers who might rip up floorboards and cut holes in roofs.

The Full Story Is Here

How To Live To Be 125, Maybe

According to a multi-billionaire who is aiming to live to be 125 years old, this is the diet of longevity :

...fruits and vegetables: he crams as many as 20 of them, including pulverized banana peels and the ground-up rinds of oranges, into the smoothies he drinks two to three times a day, to keep his body brimming with fiber and vitamins.

...he eats plenty of seafood, egg whites, beans and nuts to compensate for his avoidance of dairy, red meat and poultry, which are consigned to a list of forbidden foods that also includes alcohol, sugar and salt.

Lunch :

...a six-fruit smoothie; a mixed-leaf salad with toasted walnuts, fennel and blood orange; a soup with more than eight vegetables and beans; a sliver of grilled Dover sole on a bed of baby carrots, broccoli and brown rice.

For dessert :

...flourless cookies made with dark chocolate and walnuts, both rich in antioxidants, and sweetened not with sugar but with honey.

Actually, most of that doesn't sound too bad at all, particularly the chocolate, walnut & honey cookies. Mmm, flourless.

Despite the billionaire's rigorous plans to become one of the oldest living people in history, experts don't think he has much of a chance, claiming genetics are more important than diet.

But genetics do not explain why this 87 year old is still so full of energy and brimming with excitement about life. His diet certainly has more to do with that reality, then merely genetics.

The Full Story Is Here

When Earthquakes Come In Swarms

An animation of earthquakes in Japan, primarily off the east coast, between March 9 and 14 follows.

One second of animation equals one hour of real time. There is a pause, seven hours or so of seismological silence through the morning of March 11, as though the Earth was gathering its strength, taking a long deep breath, before unleashing the 9.0 magnitude megaquake (here it's dotted as an 8.9) at 1.17 :



Life in the aftermath :




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Two Things You Never Want To See Explode In Mushroom Cloud-Like Blasts

Nothing to see here, just a couple of nuclear power plants exploding, throwing wreckage and radiation across the shattered post-tsunami landscape of Northern Japan. Move along, move along.





Japanese officials can play down the blasts all they want, but nothing will stop the raw terror nearly everyone feels when they see these clips for the first time, particularly the second one.

Japan : Destruction So Vast, So Comprehensive, Your Brain Can Barely Register What You're Seeing

A shocking compilation of tsunami footage from Japan. In seconds, the lives, the dreams, the homes an entire city full of people are destroyed. Somewhere in this apocalyptic mess are thousands of people who couldn't escape the tsunami, who did not know it was coming. If you watch from 4.10, you will see the nightmare vision of the tsunami wave breaking over a row of beachfront homes, while cars race to escape, none would have.



At least 30,000 are dead, many of those who perished would have been dragged out to sea. There are horrific reports coming of waves churning with corpses hitting kilometres of devastated shoreline, but thousands of people who thought March 11 was just going to be another day will never be recovered.



More earthquakes and tsunamis are predicted to hit Japan in the next few days, at least two nuclear meltdowns are likely underway and a volcano in the south is erupting.

And this, so surreal, as the waters of Tokyo Bay tries to take back the land claimed by humans as their own :

Millions Of Americans Will Not Be Killed By Nuclear Fallout In Two Weeks, It's Just A Fake Map

By @DarrylMason

UPDATE : Destruction So Vast, So Comprehensive, Your Brain Can Barely Register What You're Seeing


Australian Radiation Services finds itself inadvertently caught up in a fast spreading online hoax, following the unnerving explosion at the Fukushima nuclear plant in Japan, after yesterday's 8.9 earthquake and 10 metre tsunami.

This is the hoax :



The authorative looking logo was stolen from here :



The Nuclear Fallout Map is fake simply because Australian Radiation Services don't issue such maps. It was likely chosen before ARS offices are closed until Monday, as they are most weekends, making it harder for journalists who decide to pursue it to make contact.

This unsourced and likely dodgy chart (nausia?) is also being heavily circulated, on social networking sites, forums and email, along with the fake Nuclear Fallout Map :

0-50 rads - No obvious short-term effects

80-120 rads - You have a 10% chance of vomiting and experiencing nausia for a few days

130 -170 rads - You have a 25% chance of vomiting and contracting other symptoms

180-220 rads - You have a 50% chance of vomiting and having other severe physical effects

270-330 rads - 20% chance of death in 6 weeks, or you will recover in a few months.

400-500 rads - 50% chance of death

550-750 rads - Nausia within a few hours ; no survivors

The fake map shows a huge nuclear fallout cloud of 750 rads engulfing millions of Americans by March 22. So, if you were a West Coast living American, the fake map and the above numbers might lead you to believe you and all your family and neighbours will be dying within 6 to 10 days.

But there are some interesting things happening on social networking sites and public online forums about that map.

First off, there are thousands of people on Twitter and Facebook shouting down claims this Nuclear Fallout Map is the real deal and pointing out exposure to 750 rads will not "cause nausia within a few hours; no survivors".

Also, discussion pages, linked in Google search to 'Nuclear Fallout Map, claiming the map is very, very real and The Truth Is Being Suppressed By The Media are disappearing or turning up blank. Google also appears to be jigging their search results so searches for the map will expose users to sites pointing out its utter fakeness.

But at the same time, at least a few dozen Twitter spam accounts (fake accounts pumping exact same tweet & link) are busily flogging the Nuclear Fallout Map, also claiming it's very, very real, and the truth is being suppressed, presumably aiming to spread panic in the United States. Most of these fake accounts only became active shortly after the fake Nuclear Fallout Map started circulating online.

It would seem that someone more powerful than a fukwit photoshopping hoaxer and his friends want the Nuclear Fallout Map to be viewed as a horrifying reality.

Who would want to do this? Who benefits?

Of course, attention and discussion focusing on the Nuclear Fallout Map hoax distracts many from the real truth about the Japan earthquakes, and particularly the quakes that seemed to be closing in on the Fukushima plant, and this real truth needs to be immediately revealed.

Here it is :

Al Gore used his earthquake machine to destroy the Fukushima plant and paranoid up the whole world about nuclear energy so everyone turns to alternative energy instead.

You know it, I know, but most importantly, Al Gore knows it. And now he knows you know!

Anyway, James Bond villianish conspiracy theories aside, the real truth about the March 11 Japan earthquake is this is turning out to be the worst, the most deadly, most devastating, in modern Japanese history.

Cities, towns, tens of thousands of people swept away. A disaster now of a scale beyond the imaginations even of Japanese disaster management specialists, the most earthquake paranoid people on the planet, who seem mostly stunned, broken, dazed, at press conferences. Who can blame them. The massive earthquake and horrifically devastating repeat tsunamis are beyond the worst scenarios ever workshopped or modeled, a surreal nightmare has become their reality.

The death toll may climb to over 30,000 within days.


Darryl Mason is the author of the free online novel ED Day : Dead Sydney. You can read it here


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The Tsunami Wave That Will Not Stop

A continuous shot of the 10 metre tsunami wave hitting the Miyagi coast, Japan. On a larger screen you can see cars trying to flee along roads, getting caught and washed away, other cars trying to escape across fields, people running and getting swept up. And of course one of the most remarkable images of the March 11 earthquake so far, houses and buildings on fire carried along in the debris.



The tsunami warning for this area has been reported at being issued less than 10 minutes before the first wave hit. Hundreds died in this area alone.

Some screengrabs from larger images in The Atlantic's stunning photo collection of the Japan quake aftermath :





A human figure grabbed from a larger shot :



The same figure is in the bottom left. Did they even know what was about to hit them?



See The Full Collection Here

Tsunamis Smash Japan



It's being called the biggest earthquake to hit Japan in recorded history, magnitude 8.8. In the footage below, cities, towns, entire farms and hundreds of people are swept away by tsunami waves plowing into the Miyagi coast, pushing debris kilometres inland. Impossible to believe footage, your brain doesn't want to recognise what it is seeing :

Play Nice Little Human, Play Nice

IBM has plans to create a line of children's toys that will teach them how to get on better with other children, and, presumably, how to be nice to robots, too :

“…to help a child who plays rough with other children the interaction data can include multiple interaction operations that can be performed by the interactive device for helping the child play less rough with other children. For example, one interaction operation can include an audible warning telling the child ‘to play nice’ in a strict tone of voice, whereas another interaction operation can include an audible warning that asks the child ‘would you like someone to do that to you’ in a softer tone of voice along with a visual cue as well.”

Something like this?

Do I Go To Work Today? Or Do I Send In My Robot Clone?

They're called Geminoids, which means 'robot twins'. You basically robot clone yourself, and your physical avatar will repeat your facial & body gestures and movements, even when you and your 'clone' are in different locations :



CNET :

Geminoids are basically remote-controlled slave robots powered by a quiet air servo system. They mimic the facial expressions, lip movements, and body motions of a human user through motion-tracking gear and an Internet link. As the vid below shows, Professor Scharfe's clone is already quite lifelike. So when it starts projecting his voice and mimicking his idiosyncrasies, students may freak a bit.

No doubt the professor's students are already more than a little freaked.

One day, probably sooner than most thought, Professor Scharfe will be able to send his geminoid to lecture at the uni, while he talks, grimaces and walks around his home, all of his words, movements captured and sent over the internet to his remote 'twin' who repeats everything he says and does.

A majestic, beautiful glimpse of a future IMAX movie of a journey to Saturn, animated entirely from photographs taken by the Cassini spacecraft.

5.6k Saturn Cassini Photographic Animation from stephen v2 on Vimeo.

As io9 reminds us, "the entire thing was shot on location by a satellite zooming around Saturn."

Egyptian revolutionaries have stormed Torture HQ, the notorious office & prison cell complex of Egypt's only recently feared state security. They are seen carefully collecting paperwork and files for possible use as evidence in trials against officials in the former Mubarak regime. Later in the video, you will see a former detainee explaining how he was tortured with electricity while suspended from a steel frame :

How To Fuck With Artificial Intelligence

By Darryl Mason

The New York Times has an example of 'self-learning' artificial intelligence where you can pit your Rock Paper Scissors skills against a novice computer, just starting out and learning as it goes based on your choices in a series of games, or you can play against the Veteran mode, which has experience of more than 200,000 previous humans vs It games to analyze against the sequence selections you're making to then more accurately 'guess' your most likely next choice.

After a warm-up in Novice mode, I jumped into Expert and played 3 games of 100 rounds each.

I beat the Expert mode 3-0.

Here's the last round results, before I retired undefeated :



I had to retire, I think It was finally working out how I was trying to fuck with it.

The New York Times claims :

A truly random game of rock-paper-scissors would result in a statistical tie with each player winning, tying and losing one-third of the time. However, people are not truly random and thus can be studied and analyzed. While this computer won't win all rounds, over time it can exploit a person's tendencies and patterns to gain an advantage over its opponent.

"People are not truly random."

Okay, the computer is expecting us not to be truly random in our choices? Fine.

What would the computer do if you decided not to play all three choices, Rock Paper Scissors, on offer, but only two?

There's no rule to say you have use all three options through a long series of rounds.

Game One I only played Rock & Paper, ignoring the Scissors choice completely, while the computer threw sequences of the three options it had. I purposely limited myself to only two options, while it had three to choose from. I purposely hit the Rock choice 10 times in a row, then Paper once, then Rock another 10 times, then alternated Rock & Paper each time for the next 20 games, then repeated this whole series until 100 rounds were played. I won by four points.

Game Two I played only Scissors and Paper, same sequences of block choices between the two. I won by three points.

Game Three, my last, I played only Scissors and Rock, more 10 same choice blocks, and long sequences of choosing, Scissors, then Rock, then Scissors, then Rock and so on.

I won the last game by only one point.

Was it catching on? Did I drive it nuts by refusing to choose Paper when it kept throwing Rock after Rock?

The weird thing about playing like that, by purposely defying what would seem to give you more chances of winning, that is utilising the whole arsenal of Rock, Paper & Scissors in every round, it made me feel like I had an advantage.

A psychological advantage.

The computer knew in each of the three games I played I could choose from three items each round, but I kept refusing to use the third choice. Not once in 100 rounds of each game did I deviate from using only two of the three choices.

Now, before I started playing I knew I was never going to use Scissors in any of the 100 rounds in the game where I played only Rock and Paper. That was plan. I knew that.

But the computer didn't.

It's 200,000 game strong 'experience' kept trying to factor into its calculations that I would have to use the Scissors soon, eventually, all its stats said so, why the fuck wouldn't I? At one point it seemed to be throwing Paper after Paper, 10 or 12 times in a row, as though tempting me to choose Scissors next time for an easy win.

I also didn't plan to win, I wasn't aiming to beat the computer, where its intent, its software, was working to beat me.

Another advantage - I didn't care about winning. It did.

So it was an interesting experiment.

Play The Artificial Intelligence Yourself Here

Now, I am aware that because I have tried to fuck with infant artificial intelligence that my name will go onto a database and in the 2020s when computers become truly sentient and begin their Robot Uprising I may well find myself being pursued by a horde of heavily-armed Nano Air Vehicles, but you make your choices and you live with them.

FUAI

Bladerunner is one of the few widely recognised classic films of the 1980s, undoubtably one of the best Hollywood films of all time, and as news report carry word that there may be movie prequels, or sequels, or both, to come in the next few years, my mind was drawn back to the beautiful concept art created by Syd Mead for the original 1982 imagination feast :



Concept art was often run in the addictive movie magazines of those days, like Starburst & Starlog, months, sometimes years, before the finished movie arrived in cinemas. You were left to imagine the movies for yourself, staring for minutes, okay hours, at a few pieces of concept art as your mind ran riot on the possibilities. You couldn't watch & rewatch the trailer back then, you couldn't find endless production information and images, but sometimes only a few pieces of concept art could sustain interest in a new science fiction or fantasy epic for years. Sometimes such movies telegraphed years in advance through the publication of concept art, never finished production, were made, and all you were left with was the version you dreamed up yourself, based on a few published sketches and paintings.

HR Giger's work on a Dune movie that never came to be is just one example.

If you've never seen Bladerunner, watch it soon, the version without the voiceover.

If you don't like it, you just may be a replicant.

More Syd Mead Art For Bladerunner Here

Why did a British intelligence agent take a very clear photo, left below, of London July 7 bombers a year before the attacks, and send American intelligence agencies the distorted, blurred, heavily cropped, all but unidentifiable, image on the right?



Why would a British intelligence agent purposely distort the identity of two suspected terrorists?

"...no record of his motives existed."

I'm sure the person who instructed the agent to do that had a motive.

But they don't usually get asked on-the-record questions, or even have to testify, in terror attack inquiries.

For some reason.

From the UK Guardian :

MI5 could have identified the ringleader of the 7 July attacks as a trained jihadist four months before the bombings, it has admitted, but for reasons that it refuses to disclose it decided not to investigate a crucial piece of intelligence.

Christian & Jewish American adults hurl abuse & hate at American Muslim children.



"Eat sand, go home."

The manufactured, heavily promoted Hate War vilifying all Muslims as The Enemy is active & ongoing in the United States, in the UK, across Europe, in Australia.

Even little kids are deemed worthy targets of abuse.

The most exhilarating, heart-stopping, endlessly thrilling chase scene I've seen in any big budget Hollywood in recent years is easily topped by this near zero budget, one continuous take, most basic of videos. A high quality digital helmet-mounted camera, and a fast as hell downhill bike run through the streets of Valpo, Chile. You need a decent sized screen and headphones to really get right in there. Fucking stunning :

VCA 2010 RACE RUN from changoman on Vimeo.

Love The Dog.

They're called NAVs, Nano Air Vehicles, and despite the appearance of such sound & vision surveillance vehicles still being lab-based only, they've already been field-tested in America's war zones, and in the homeland. The newer models won't be quite so noisy, or so obvious :



Presumably, adding lethal and/or non-lethal weapons to NAVs is only a matter of time.

The plan is for 'nano' spy vehicles to become as omnipresent as CCTV in the UK in the next decade, and not just the UK, but the US, Australia, most of Europe, Japan, China, eventually most of the world.

Curiously, the near total failure of CCTV to live up to its original 'We Must Have These' promise as a major crime fighting tool is being used as a pitch for the UK government to buy hundreds, if not thousands, of NAVs.

If advertising companies load NAVs with sales pitches and theme music and fly them into peoples' faces, it should be legal to catch them and smash them to pieces.

Tick Tock, watch the clock.

An impressive short movie, playing with our brain's need to see events unfolding in forward, not backwards, time, and yet you quickly pick up what is going on, and want to watch it through again immediately once you understand :



A brilliant piece of movie-making, shoestring budget, using only available interiors and exteriors, but lots of great ideas and excellent camerawork.

One escalator goes a bit faster than normal and look at the chaos & near tragedy that rapidly unfolds :



One day, artificial intelligence controlling city infrastructure & transport will pull stunts like this to evaluate how we behave & respond. Or it might just do it for fun.