Dark matter, dark energy and now dark flow: it seems we live in an increasingly darker universe, and the current teen fascination with vampires has nothing to do with it!
In 2008 scientists reported the discovery of hundreds of galaxy clusters streaming in the same direction at more than 2.2 million miles (3.6 million kilometers) an hour.
Now the same team has found that the dark flow extends even deeper into the universe than previously reported: out to at least 2.5 billion light-years from Earth.
As you probably know by now, yesterday Eric Cantor, the second-ranking House Republican, falsely claimed to the national press corps that his campaign office had been targeted by a gunman in the wake of Sunday's health care reform vote.
Here's a video showing Cantor's claim, explaining why it was false, and documenting Fox's breathless promotion of the tale:
Here's a bit more detail on what happened: an office in the same building where Cantor has an office (it's unmarked and not in his district) was hit by a bullet that had been randomly fired skyward. The bullet could easily have been fired a half-mile away, but even setting that aside, the fact that Cantor had an office in the building was not widely known (it's not listed on his website). Anyone actually targeting Cantor would have picked a different location.
Cantor's tale was an an obvious attempt to give the national media a "Fair & Balanced" narrative that both sides are doing it when it comes to threats of political violence. But that narrative is not true. So Cantor simply lied. Made it up. Saw himself some Tuzla sniper fire. Carved a virtual backwards B into his cheek.
He abandoned any pretense to honesty and accuracy, and demonstrated his utter contempt for the national media by crying wolf straight to their face. And Fox ate it up and spit it right back out at their audience, completely, wholeheartedly, and absolutely uncritically.
Just as Eric Cantor is a liar, this incident shows (yet again) that the crew at Fox News are not journalists.
Dudes from the future! If we're about to annihilate ourselves, next monday would be a good time to stop us... (Come to think of it, if the LHC does indeed destroy us, who's trying to stop us from the future? The surviving roaches? But why would they do that? Seems to me it benefits them? There has to be some more nefarious plot at work here...)
CERN announced that on March 30 they will attempt to circulate beams in the Large Hadron Collider at 3.5 TeV, the highest energy yet achieved in a particle accelerator. A live webcast will be shown of the event, and will include live footage from the control rooms for the LHC accelerator and all four LHC experiment, as well as a press conference after the first collisions are announced.
“With two beams at 3.5 TeV, we’re on the verge of launching the LHC physics program,” said CERN’s Director for Accelerators and Technology, Steve Myers. “But we’ve still got a lot of work to do before collisions. Just lining the beams up is a challenge in itself: it’s a bit like firing needles across the Atlantic and getting them to collide half way.”
Meanwhile, here's some light music to entertain. Alpine Kat, and her Large Hadron Rap comes from the very heart of the LHC, since in her day job, she's Katherine McAlpine, journalist and webmaster for the Atlas experiment.
A few years back Adrian Sherwood and Doug Aubrey's worlds met and mixed somewhere in North London. A shared interest in noise, silence and a mutual hearing loss, caused by Bombs, Drum and Bass, led the Godfather of dub and Aubrey starting to talk about trying to make a film together...Aided by a few fellow conspirators from On-U-sounds world: Ghetto Priest, Doug Wimbush, Mark Stewart and a passing cat, they produced a short never seen video...until now. The dubmaster and the filmmaker again met recently in Edinburgh and at Graham Fagan's fantastic 'I Murder Hate' event in Stirling and there's now rumour of a major film collaboration for the 30th anniversary of the seminal On-U-sounds in 2011, which will form part of a DvD box set, a work for cinema and who knows even television...? Enjoy !
If I told you that a brand new analog synthesizer existed that costed about the price of a couple cases of beer and was small enough to fit in your coat pocket, I would probably be laughed out of this century. However, Korg seems to think differently, and just announced the Monotron, which is precisely this. Operating as an analog synthesizer the utilizes a ribbon touch surface for the keys, this thing borrows technology that was derived directly from their classic MS-20 synthesizer from the 1990s. The Monotron has nothing more than your basic, everyday controls. It utilizes a single oscillator, one filter, and one LFO which modulates the oscillator signal (essentially, for non-synth people, it uses a waveform to automate it’s volume over a span of time). It also includes an auxiliary input which you can hook anything from an iPod to a Kaoss Pad to even another synth to further mangle up the sound with, and the headphone jack doubles as the line out, allowing you to easily hook up to an amp or recording device.
Although there are other modular analog synth kits out there that are also about as cheap as the Monotron, this package is great for beginners or people looking to tweak sounds without having to fuss with cables or learning curves. More info on Korg’s website.
Over the last few years, WikiLeaks has been the subject of hostile acts by security organizations. In the developing world, these range from the appalling assassination of two related human rights lawyers in Nairobi last March (an armed attack on my compound there in 2007 is still unattributed) to an unsuccessful mass attack by Chinese computers on our servers in Stockholm, after we published photos of murders in Tibet. In the West this has ranged from the overt, the head of Germany's foreign intelligence service, the BND, threatening to prosecute us unless we removed a report on CIA activity in Kosovo, to the covert, to an ambush by a "James Bond" character in a Luxembourg car park, an event that ended with a mere "we think it would be in your interest to...".
Developing world violence aside, we've become used to the level of security service interest in us and have established procedures to ignore that interest.
But the increase in surveillance activities this last month, in a time when we are barely publishing due to fundraising, are excessive. Some of the new interest is related to a film exposing a U.S. massacre we will release at the U.S. National Press Club on April 5.
The spying includes attempted covert following, photographng, filming and the overt detention & questioning of a WikiLeaks' volunteer in Iceland on Monday night.
I, and others were in Iceland to advise Icelandic parliamentarians on the Icelandic Modern Media Initiative, a new package of laws designed to protect investigative journalists and internet services from spying and censorship. As such, the spying has an extra poignancy.
The possible triggers:
our ongoing work on a classified film revealing civilian casualties occurring under the command of the U.S, general, David Petraeus.
our release of a classified 32 page US intelligence report on how to fatally marginalize WikiLeaks (expose our sources, destroy our reputation for integrity, hack us).
pending releases related to the collapse of the Icelandic banks and Icelandic "oligarchs".
We have discovered half a dozen attempts at covert surveillance in Reykjavik both by native English speakers and Icelanders. On the occasions where these individuals were approached, they ran away. One had marked police equipment and the license plates for another suspicious vehicle track back to the Icelandic private VIP bodyguard firm Terr. What does that mean? We don't know. But as you will see, other events are clear.
U.S. sources told Icelandic state media's deputy head of news, that the State Department was aggressively investigating a leak from the U.S. Embassy in Reykjavik. I was seen at a private U.S Embassy party at the Ambassador's residence, late last year and it is known I had contact with Embassay staff, after.
On Thursday March 18, 2010, I took the 2.15 PM flight out of Reykjavik to Copenhagen--on the way to speak at the SKUP investigative journalism conference in Norway. After receiving a tip, we obtained airline records for the flght concerned. Two individuals, recorded as brandishing diplomatic credentials checked in for my flight at 12:03 and 12:06 under the name of "US State Department". The two are not recorded as having any luggage.
Iceland doesn't have a separate security service. It folds its intelligence function into its police forces, leading to an uneasy overlap of policing and intelligence functions and values.
On Monday 22, March, at approximately 8.30pm, a WikiLeaks volunteer, a minor, was detained by Icelandic police on a wholly insignificant matter. Police then took the opportunity to hold the youth over night, without charge--a highly unusual act in Iceland. The next day, during the course of interrogation, the volunteer was shown covert photos of me outside the Reykjavik restaurant "Icelandic Fish & Chips", where a WikiLeaks production meeting took place on Wednesday March 17--the day before individuals operating under the name of the U.S. State Department boarded my flight to Copenhagen.
Our production meeting used a discreet, closed, backroom, because we were working on the analysis of a classified U.S. military video showing civilian kills by U.S. pilots. During the interrogation, a specific reference was made by police to the video---which could not have been understood from that day's exterior surveillance alone. Another specific reference was made to "important", but unnamed Icelandic figures. References were also made to the names of two senior journalists at the production meeting.
Who are the Icelandic security services loyal to in their values? The new government of April 2009, the old pro-Iraq war government of the Independence party, or perhaps to their personal relationships with peers from another country who have them on a permanment intelligence information drip?
Only a few years ago, Icelandic airspace was used for CIA rendition flights. Why did the CIA think that this was acceptable? In a classified U.S. profile on the former Icelandic Ambassador to the United States, obtained by WikiLeaks, the Ambassador is praised for helping to quell publicity of the CIA's activities.
Often when a bold new government arises, bureaucratic institutions remain loyal to the old regime and it can take time to change the guard. Former regime loyalists must be discovered, dissuaded and removed. But for the security services, that first vital step, discovery, is awry. Congenitally scared of the light, such services hide their activities; if it is not known what security services are doing, then it is surely impossible to know who they are doing it for.
Our plans to release the video on April 5 proceed.
We have asked relevant authorities in the Unites States and Iceland to explain. If these countries are to be treated as legitmate states, they need to start obeying the rule of law. Now.
—Julian Assange (editor@wikileaks.org)
