100% Proof Google is Keeping Conspiracy Sites Down

As if it were not bad enough that we are censored by the main stream media, now there's a new type of suppression being implemented upon conspiracy related websites and alternative media sources.

It's called Link Relevance Suppression, and it's being used on most of the alternative media websites to lower traffic being driven to them by the popular search engine Google.

Now, isn't that interesting?

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Bearing Arms

The men who founded our nation understood that government was necessary to preserve the people's freedoms. But they also knew that government agents could not always be trusted to use their authority justly, and that government remains the single greatest threat to the rights and liberties of the people.

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The Science of Gaydar

If sexual orientation is biological, are the traits that make people seem gay innate, too? The new research on everything from voice pitch to hair whorl.

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“We’re reaching a consensus on a broad question,” says J. Michael Bailey, a psychologist at Northwestern University. Is sexual orientation “something we’re born with or something we largely acquire through social experience? The answer is clear. It’s something we’re born with.”

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Female Vlogging

No Light, Just Tunnel: The Bipartisan Guarantee of Continuing War in Iraq

We've said it before and we'll say it again: anyone who advocates leaving even a "residual force" of American troops is Iraq is actually supporting the continuation of the war, on largely the same terms as it is being waged now. There is no "middle way," there is no magic, bipartisan compromise. There is only no war, or more war.

"And the wars go on with brainwashed pride..." ~ Guns 'n' Roses

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Military families live in dread, while the rest of America is busy shopping

US military leaders deny the army is strained. But in recent years they have lowered standards and changed entry requirements in order to bolster flagging recruitment, including a push to attract non-citizens and to lift the upper age limit for new recruits. Since 2001 it has raised by half the rate at which it grants "moral waivers" to potential recruits who have committed misdemeanours and lowered the educational level required. Steven Green, the former soldier who now faces the death penalty on charges of raping a 14-year-old Iraqi girl and murdering her family in Mahmoudiya, entered the military on one such waiver.

On Friday the president's new war adviser, Lieutenant General Douglas Lute, said it was time to think about restoring the draft.

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There is gruesome irony in the fact that such a possibility should come from an administration headed by a president who dodged the draft and a vice-president who "had other priorities" than serving in Vietnam. But American conservatives have a curious inability to put their children where their mouth is when it comes to the war. All of the main Republican contenders back it; none of their children are in it.

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Aussies Now Face Prison Time for Porn Possession

The New Zealand Herald reports that a bill presented to the Australian Parliament Tuesday would brand anybody caught with five or more pornographic items in the aboriginal communities of the Northern Territory a "trafficker," punishable by up to two years in prison.

Introduced to the Parliament by Indigenous Affairs Minister Mal Brough, the draft laws would prohibit the delivery of pornographic materials into the area, and charge anybody possessing the forbidden five or more items with trafficking, regardless of whether they have any intent to profit from them.

Don't look at any "pornographic" (whatever that means) items here.

US not considering draft: Pentagon

The Pentagon sharply rejected Monday a key general's assertion that a return to the military draft has always been "an option on the table" and should be considered.

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Church Attacks 'Ideology of Science'

A spokesman for the Russian Orthodox Church said Wednesday that the country's schools should teach religious principles and moral values, and accused some leading scientists of trying to impose the "ideology of science" on the school system.

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At Last A Comic Book Atheist Hero

America, the most religious country among all the developed nations, does have a puzzling willingness to tolerate injustices which, particularly given the country's great wealth, should be considered intolerable. If God exists, he's doing a lousy job, so much so that one wonders if life might improve if we stopped believing in him and started doing some of the heavy lifting ourselves. Might Americans, for example, suddenly see that it is insane not to have a health care system that works, or that there is something wrong about a country wherein some people are billionaires while others can barely afford to eat? In short, might reality snap into focus?

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Of course, people can and do have it both ways. When prayers are answered, God is credited and thanked. When God fails, the devotee questions his own faith not God's existence. Heads God wins, tails you lose. Exempt from this equation -- by definition, in my view -- is an accurate analysis of existence. To quote Voltaire, "Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities."

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Because I have written on the subject of religion, I often talk to people about faith. I rarely meet anyone who thinks as I do. Even at the skeptical end, I usually find, if I probe a little, that people believe "there has to be something," some force, some supernatural meaning. Finally, and always, comes the fear of oblivion. There must be some kind of afterlife. "This can't just be it," is the final plaintive but insistent appeal.

Why not? What evidence exists for any of these ideas? Why this God as opposed to that one? If one is invented, why not all? But reason is no match for fear and never will be.

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The Best and Brightest Fanatics

Doctors and engineers, after all, are professionals. They are well-off, well-established members of society, not marginal figures whom we might expect to be drawn to desperate acts of violence. Moreover, they come from a scientific background, and science is usually not associated with religious zeal or political fanaticism.

Of course, only a minority of zealous Muslims espouses political violence, and only a tiny number of Muslim professionals set off bombs. Nevertheless, the presence of doctors and engineers in fundamentalist movements stands out. In fact, fundamentalist leaders often have professional backgrounds. Doctors who organize groups based on literalist readings of scripture and engineers who lead Islamist political parties are familiar figures throughout the Muslim world.

One reason for this is the difference between the cultures of basic science and applied science.

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Science and the Islamic world—The quest for rapprochement

The question I want to pose—perhaps as much to myself as to anyone else—is this: With well over a billion Muslims and extensive material resources, why is the Islamic world disengaged from science and the process of creating new knowledge? To be definite, I am here using the 57 countries of the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) as a proxy for the Islamic world.

It was not always this way. Islam's magnificent Golden Age in the 9th–13th centuries brought about major advances in mathematics, science, and medicine. The Arabic language held sway in an age that created algebra, elucidated principles of optics, established the body's circulation of blood, named stars, and created universities. But with the end of that period, science in the Islamic world essentially collapsed. No major invention or discovery has emerged from the Muslim world for well over seven centuries now. That arrested scientific development is one important element—although by no means the only one—that contributes to the present marginalization of Muslims and a growing sense of injustice and victimhood.

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Believe it or not: the sceptics beat God in bestseller battle

The boom surpasses the rise in sales of books in categories such as history, which have grown by 38 per cent, and politics, up by 30 per cent, confirming that religion has become a pivotal topic in the early 21st century.

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The e-cigarette: Nicotine fix, without the toxins

For smokers who want to quit, there are pills, patches, and gum. But how about an electronic nicotine delivery device that looks and feels like smoking -- without the smell or the carcinogens?

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If you thought software patents were bad...

Okay, this is going to get controversial. Just bear with me.

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The processes for manufacturing clothing are certainly patentable; almost every new method of weaving and stitching has always been patented. Why shouldn't the processes for making movies be just as patentable?

He isn't speaking here of the mechanical process of aiming a camera at actors, editing together the film, and projecting it in front of an audience--that's old news. I don't know if anyone ever got a patent on live-action movie production, but Walt Disney got a patent on animation.

Instead, he's talking about what amounts to the instructions for making a specific movie: a script.

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Workers suffering from 'email stress'

Trying to keep up with a stream of incoming mail interrupts normal work and leaves staff tired, frustrated and unproductive, it concluded.

Employees also feel under pressure to check and respond quickly to emails, with some checking their inbox up to 40 times an hour.

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Sex video causes outrage in Nigeria's Muslim north

An amateur video of a northern Nigerian film actress in a sex scene has caused a public outcry in the Muslim north, prompting a movie industry body to expel actors deemed "immoral", a local newspaper reported on Monday.

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Not So Fast: E-Z Pass Data Used To Catch Cheaters

E-ZPass and other electronic toll collection systems are emerging as a powerful means of proving infidelity. That's because when your spouse doesn't know where you've been, E-ZPass does.

And this goes beyond just E-ZPass and beyond just infidelity.

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US Slipping in Life Expectancy Rankings

Americans are living longer than ever, but not as long as people in 41 other countries.

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Murray, from the University of Washington, said improved access to health insurance could increase life expectancy. But, he predicted, the U.S. won't move up in the world rankings as long as the health care debate is limited to insurance.

Policymakers also should focus on ways to reduce cancer, heart disease and lung disease, said Murray. He advocates stepped-up efforts to reduce tobacco use, control blood pressure, reduce cholesterol and regulate blood sugar.

"Even if we focused only on those four things, we would go along way toward improving health care in the United States," Murray said. "The starting point is the recognition that the U.S. does not have the best health care system. There are still an awful lot of people who think it does."

There's nothing to see here, people. Move along.

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Reuters gets that sinking feeling

News agency Reuters has been forced to admit that footage it released last week purportedly showing Russian submersibles on the seabed of the North Pole actually came from the movie Titanic.

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