Hackers apparently broke into at least two of North Korea's government-run online sites Thursday, as tensions rose on the Korean Peninsula.
The North's Uriminzokkiri Twitter and Flickr accounts stopped sending out content typical of that posted by the regime in Pyongyang, such as photos of North's leader Kim Jong-un meeting with military officials.
Instead, a picture posted Thursday on the North's Flickr site shows Kim's face with a pig-like snout .... Underneath, the text reads: "Threatening world peace with ICBMs and Nuclear weapons/Wasting money while his people starve to death."
"In August 2001 two new crop formations were reported near Chilbolton radio telescope in Hampshire, UK. Both were very impressive looking and consisted of a large number of small 'pixels', which when viewed from the air formed a recognisable shape - unlike many other crop formations.
One represented a "human face" and the other resembled AN ANSWER to the Arecibo message. A radio transmission that SETI (the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence), sent from the Arecibo radio telescope in 1974.
Then one year later, in August 2002, another impressive formation was discovered just to the west of Winchester (only about 8½ miles to the southeast of the Chilbolton formations). An "alien face" with a circular grid containing a coded message.
When the code is broken, it reads:
"Beware the bearers of false gifts & their broken promises. Much pain but still time. There is good out there. We oppose deception. Conduit closing."
Are these circles genuine? We cant know for sure, since no one investigated them to see if there were significant crop/soil anomalies. But they do seem very sophisticated.
How should we interpret this possible response? And what about the coded message?"
It is highly unlikely that we are the only form of life in the entire universe. And although I have often admired the complex beauty of crop circles, it has been difficult for me to accept their validity as an actual means of 'alien communication'.
"The Book of Mormon is one of the boldest hoaxes of all time. And millions of people have fallen for it. Joseph Smith Jr. claimed that an angel gifted him—an uneducated farm boy—with ancient golden plates and the ability to translate their hieroglyphics. From that improbable premise sprang The Book of Mormon and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, with its millions of followers, known as Mormons. In Book of Mormon, Book of Lies, authors Meredith Ray Sheets and Kendal M. Sheets expose The Book of Mormon and the story surrounding its creation as one of the greatest deceptions in the history of America, if not the entire world.
The result of twenty-five years of research, Book of Mormon, Book of Lies will alter the course of global religion, finance, and politics. Book of Lies proves that Smith’s manuscript, which he published in 1830, is nothing more than cleverly disguised plagiarism of The Travels of Marco Polo, the voyage of Christopher Columbus to the New World as recorded by his son, histories of the Spanish conquest of Mexico, and travel journals . . . all readily available to Smith. In Book of Lies, Meredith Sheets, a retired petroleum executive, and Kendal M. Sheets, an experienced intellectual property attorney, compare content from historic books with the content of The Book of Mormon. The results are astonishing. For the first time ever, the authors show exactly how the American-born religion of Mormonism and its religious scriptures were created by man and not by God."
Historical facts , linguistics, and archaeology all indicate that the Mormon religion is based on a fabrication of lies and deception, but will that convince someone who believes in the LDS faith? Sort of doubt it.
"The shelves at the Wonder Hostess Bakery Thrift Shop in Glendale on Friday were nearly bare as customers made runs on Twinkies, Ho Hos and Ding Dongs after the iconic snack food company asked a judge for permission to go out of business and lay off 18,500 workers nationwide.
At the Glendale plant on San Fernando Road, 138 bakery workers will lose their jobs, but others, including delivery drivers, will also be affected, although the total number has yet to be determined, said Hostess Brands spokeswoman Tammy Taylor.
"Everybody will eventually lose their jobs, some sooner than others," Taylor said, noting that a small group of employees are being kept on board to clean up and close the plant.
By 11 a.m. Friday, many of Hostess' most popular treats, including Twinkies and cupcakes, had been scooped off the shelves. Signs apologizing for the lack of supplies were inside the store. ....."
A confession. During my nearly 4 decades of living in the U.S. I never once ate a Twinkie.
Ancient Aliens Debunked is a 3 hour documentary and refutation of the theories proposed on the 'History Channel' series Ancient Aliens. It is essentially a point by point critique of the “ancient astronaut theory” which has been proposed by people like Erich von Däniken and Zecharia Sitchin as well as many others [including Giorgio Tsoukalos and David Childress].
Recently the tern 'History Channel' seems to have become somewhat problematic considering the nonsense that this TV channel is presenting.
The internet has become one of the greatest inventions of humanity, especially in the processing and sharing of information, BUT it has also become a means of transmitting absolute bullshit and nonsense. Just because something is in 'print' does not necessarily make it true.
This new crop circle is from the Netherlands, and it comprises some 15 acres. Now as an adolescent I lived on a farm Kansas, and I know the size of an acre of ground, and fifteen acres is one big assed area.
Who made it, and how was it constructed? The perfection and execution of the design rules out amateurs, and the Dutch guy who claimed credit for making it has been debunked by other locals.
So I guess, lacking any definitive proof as to how it came into beiing, we will just have to accept it as a rather wonderful piece of art. .
If you have seen the National Geographic's TV series "Doomsday Preppers" it becomes immediately evident that there is large subculture of the USA addicted to fear. I would agree that it is important to prepare for the occasional natural disaster, but as the title of this series states these people are actaully gleefully watiing for the end of the world.
And for almost everyone of them, it's a question of when, not if, the world will end. Every hour segment begins with the subjects stating the particular scenario they're prepping for, which naturally comes across as myopic. The likelihood of the various scenarios range from "possible but unlikely" to near-impossible to "hard to be sure without more data" to "you're paranoid and need help". But the thing about obsessing about the apocalypse is that you might end up looking forward to it. There's more than a hint of glee in many of the interviewees as they envision themselves and their [mainly nuclear] families safely tucked in their bunkers while the rest of society goes to hell in a handbasket.
And for some of them, this may be more than a figure of speech. While the series stays clear of discussing their political and religious beliefs, most of them are Caucasians who think that social collapse is inevitable, whatever their preferred catalyst: EMP pulse, thermonuclear war, mega-earthquake, global pandemic, hyperinflation. It all leads to the same thing, and they want to be counted among the chosen few, not just another "victim".
Not surprisingly for this "us vs. them" mode of thinking, a lot of preppers are armed to the teeth and trained in hand-to-hand combat. It's almost like they're chomping at the bit for the day when they can unload hot lead on someone for merely stepping on their lawn. One married couple practices navigating their home in the dark like some TV SWAT team, which is stashed throughout with various hidden caches of firearms. One man accidentally blows-off his thumb with his gun during a training exercise. Good thing the camera crew was there that day, or he'd still be missing his entire digit. Another household wants to turn their two pet German Shepherds into attack dogs. They watch as an actual trained dog is let loose on a simulated attacker, who is rather unfortunately cast as African American.
They seem to have a toggle switch, black or white, "us vs them", mentality that I am simply not comfortable with. [And fortunately it is not a part of daily life here in Thailand].
"...the National Geographic Channel introduced “Doomsday Preppers,” a reality series about people who are stockpiling, arming and otherwise preparing for some kind of apocalypse. Last week it was the Discovery Channel’s turn. Its new “Doomsday Bunkers,” on Wednesday nights, is about Deep Earth Bunker, a company that builds underground getaways for the types of people seen in “Doomsday Preppers.”
Watch either show for a short while and, unless you’re a prepper yourself, you might be moderately amused at the absurd excess on display and at what an easy target the prepper worldview is for ridicule. Watch a bit longer, though, and amusement may give way to annoyance at how offensively anti-life these shows are, full of contempt for humankind. . . . .
But then what is the attraction of continuing to live in a world that forces people to cower in an underground box and spend all their time fending off those who want their freeze-dried apricots?
Even more seriously, what is the attraction of continuing to live in a world that will almost certainly not have television or the Internet, depriving doomsday types of the shows and Web sites that fuel their paranoia and sell products exploiting it?
CBN News wonders if prayer moved Isaac away from Tampa to guard Republican delegates. so Rev. Justin Peters of the 'Pray Tampa Bay Team' explains all. Are these idiots at all aware of the nonsense they are spouting?
Pertinent comment: "So, they prayed to save themselves and for their God to send the storm on to hit some other city instead? Seems like a very Christian thing to do."
The New Yorker has published a quite objective article, albeit rather lengthy, on the history of the Mormon church [of presidental hopeful Mitt Romney]. A rather bumpy ride for all concerned, especially when the LDS founder, Joseph Smith, was a consumate lier, cheat, more than questionable translator and well known confidence man. But in his defense, he did have a very active imagination, as attested to by his invention of 'The Book Of Mormon'.
"Stereotypes and pigeonholes can, in a stable multiethnic society, act as sanctuaries as much as cells. In the heyday of urban ethnic immigration, even anti-Semites allowed that Jews were good at selling drygoods and producing movies, just as Irish Catholics were known to keep a good saloon and walk a decent beat. The ugliest of these pigeonholes suggests a comparative advantage, anyway: to be thought to tap-dance well implies that you can, at least, do that.
American Mormons, in this sense, seem to have been rather flatteringly typed. The Mormon executives and advisers around Howard Hughes were famous for their probity, their clean living, and their loyalty. As with the blond Scandinavian bodyguards who attended the Byzantine emperors, their uprightness was all the more starkly evidenced by the shiftiness of the guy they were protecting. The details of their religious views had nothing to do with the social role they played. The Osmond family was the Mormon family: too many kids and too many teeth, maybe, but always solid, always smiling, always temperate—no alcohol, no tobacco, not even caffeine. In an entertaining new autobiography, “The Book of Mormon Girl: A Memoir of an American Faith” (Free Press), Joanna Brooks recalls ecumenical birthday parties as a young Mormon in California, and the anxiety she felt about simply seeing a bottle of Coke; Mormon parties featured (non-caffeinated) root beer. Nor were the Osmonds an outsider’s image: to this growing girl’s self-conception, the Book of Marie—“Marie Osmond’s Guide to Beauty, Health & Style”—seemed far more important than the Book of Mormon. Be perfect even as Marie on television is perfect, and you will be happy. ......
Mark Twain read the Book of Mormon and, knowing what Smith would have read, not to mention knowing about frontier fakery, came to conclusions about both the sources of its prose and the sequence of its composition:
The book seems to be merely a prosy detail of imaginary history, with the Old Testament for a model; followed by a tedious plagiarism of the New Testament. The author labored to give his words and phrases the quaint, old-fashioned sound and structure of our King James’s translation of the Scriptures; and the result is a mongrel—half modern glibness, and half ancient simplicity and gravity. The latter is awkward and constrained; the former natural, but grotesque by the contrast. Whenever he found his speech growing too modern—which was about every sentence or two—he ladled in a few such Scriptural phrases as “exceeding sore,” “and it came to pass,” etc., and made things satisfactory again. “And it came to pass” was his pet. If he had left that out, his Bible would have been only a pamphlet."
