http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/10/04/crisis-reality-check/
http://www.democracynow.org/2013/10/4/as_congress_stalls_on_immigration_deal
http://thinkafricapress.com/drc/corruption-congo-how-china-learnt-west?utm_content=bufferc0785&utm_source=buffer&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=Buffer

http://www.democracynow.org/2013/10/4/a_corporate_trojan_horse_obama_pushes
http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=10820
http://thecable.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2013/09/24/obama_to_world_bad_news_the_american_empire_is_dead

http://www.truth-out.org/buzzflash/commentary/item/18209-decadent-homosexual-activity-marijuana-and-abortion-caused-colorado-floods-talk-radio-minister-charges-denying-global-warming

http://www.nature.com/news/higgsogenesis-proposed-to-explain-dark-matter-1.13883?WT.mc_id=FBK_NatureNews

i like how they dance around the question of photons being massless.
(i don't think they are entirely massless, just of very very small mass. and i think that eventual realization will blow up a lot of physics in a good way.)
http://www.symmetrymagazine.org/article/october-2013/light-rays-do-the-twist

hrmmmn. i guess i'm posting this as a psa. be careful with assigning authority to journals with fancy names.
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/342/6154/60.full

yes, i'd rather ghadaffi were still in power....
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2013/10/03/liby-o03.html

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2013/10/01/the_army_of_islam_is_winning_in_syria
http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=10732
http://rabble.ca/news/2013/09/quebec-charter-and-me#.UjtEw4FaXAI.facebook
http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/09/20/the-military-turns-really-ugly-in-egypt/
http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/09/24/us-credibility-in-syria-and-the-world/

this post is really horrific. i'm appalled.

the proclamation of 1763 was a british land claim that, for the first time, put large swaths of north america under direct colonial administration. it's primary purpose was not to acknowledge native ownership of the area but to state british claim to the area after the seven years war. it is true that a large swath of land was designated as "indian", but the purpose of this was to allow expansion under imperial terms, rather than the terms being developed in the colonies. the crown was looking to expand slowly and methodically, conquering one tribe at a time, while the colonies wanted to overrun the land as they pleased. this was a primary cause of the american revolution.

indigenous reaction to the proclamation was largely negative, as they rightfully viewed it as an unjust land claim. in response, a war erupted to drive the british out. many indigenous groups in the area were expecting the french (who claimed trade rights, but never land ownership) to come back and kept up small scale wars.

so, to claim it was the first time that the british acknowledged indigenous sovereignty? no. in fact, it was the first time a european power *rejected* indigenous sovereignty.

you're taking a document of colonial expansion that should be denounced and celebrating it for exactly the opposite thing that it was.

now, it's true that the courts have recently used the document to try and correct some of the theft that has happened, but the arguments they've used have been very creative and that doesn't excuse the historical revisionism in this post.

==

that ^ is going to get read.

it turns out the call-out on this is from some well-known activists. i'm not clear on what their goal in presenting this day in these terms would be. some kind of reclamation? but, this ought to be a day of deep mourning.

i want to clarify a few points that these organizers probably already know.

aboriginal title, as it existed in the proclamation, wasn't about indigenous sovereignty, it was about crown control of property. the proclamation is clear and explicit in asserting crown ownership of the land and the people that lived on it. the reason it was written is that the crown was concerned about things like settlers buying the land and selling it to france or spain. as there was no existing category of title for this land, and settlers would likely win a court battle as a result of that, they had to create a new class of land ownership to ensure crown control. this is aboriginal title.

the way the proclamation is written is to ensure two things:

(1) only the crown can purchase land under aboriginal title
(2) all land under aboriginal title will eventually be sold to the crown

regardless of how recent court cases have interpreted the proclamation, i don't understand what the aim is in rallying around historical inaccuracies, and i think that this tactic, whatever is underlying it, has the potential to make the action look foolish.

i mean, this is literally a celebration of the day that indigenous people in canada *lost* their sovereignty.

http://rabble.ca/blogs/bloggers/daniel-wilson/2013/10/royal-proclamation-1763-heritage-moment#.UlCjSv0KlVc.facebook

speaking of conspiracies, i'm rather convinced that the only reason the us government cares about looking for life on mars or titan or anywhere else is that where there is life there is oil. well, the flip side is what, exactly?
http://www.astrobio.net/pressrelease/5719/ingredient-used-in-plastics-found-on-titan

here's a good use of gmos, so long as some company somewhere doesn't patent a way to monopolize a three or four step payment process...
http://phys.org/news/2013-09-nitrogen-fertilizer-uncovered.html

i was hoping they'd analyze questions of carrying capacity. as it is, this is speculative, and somewhat specious.
http://popular-archaeology.com/issue/09012013/article/the-first-great-human-population-explosion
http://rabble.ca/news/2013/09/quebec-charter-and-me#.UjtEw4FaXAI.facebook

note that 26 states, so far, have opted out of this. that doesn't mean the government shutdown is "stupid", it means it's a trick.

i'm sorry, but the idea of gravitational waves strikes me as trying to ram a square peg into a circular hole. i think it's an idea that should be fully explored. i mean, everything else is waves, right? but just 'cause everything else is waves doesn't mean...

conceptually, it just doesn't make sense to me to think that matter pulls like that. it seems more like it's going to work the other way, somehow. some kind of vortex. imaginary black holes or something.

of course, i don't know. it just strikes me as backwards.

jour•nal•ist
/ˈjərnl-ist/
Noun
A person who writes for state-vetted newspapers or magazines or prepares state-written bulletins to be broadcast on state-vetted or state-controlled radio or television.
Synonyms
propagandist – publicist

http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=10803

i think the article is partially missing the point. i'm pretty solidly convinced that i don't learn well socially, and pretty convinced that i do learn well when given a lot of space and time to explore things independently. does that mean that some abstract type exists that describes me? that it can be quantified? only very weakly.

i never interpreted the idea underlying this as a strict separation of people into types. this isn't some absurd exercise in platonism. it was always a question of individuality v. conformity. and, on that level, i don't think it would be hard to find examples of students increasing their score by trying a different approach than the standard learning model. whether those individual shifts are then applicable to anybody else is a different question.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=is-teaching-to-a-students-learning-style-a-bogus-idea&WT.mc_id=SA_MindFacebook

PHOTONS HAVE MASS.

well, of course they do. it's really crazy to think they don't.

http://phys.org/news/2013-09-scientists-never-before-seen.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photon#Experimental_checks_on_photon_mass
http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/ParticleAndNuclear/photon_mass.html

i'll believe this. ultimately, i don't think it matters a whole lot. i mean, it's interesting, sure. it's just....

i think we're philosophically mature enough at this point to realize, without too much debate, that whatever kind of explosion created the observable universe wasn't a unique event. maybe it was two slabs of energy smashing into each other in some distant dimension, as m-theory proposed. maybe it was some magic creature farting. or maybe it was something falling into a black hole. what's the difference, really?

whatever it was was some kind of explosion that happened in some kind of....structure....that already existed. we have no concept of that pre-existing whatever and aren't likely to gain one any time soon.

so, "something went boom" is good enough for me. the details are just academic.

http://www.nature.com/news/did-a-hyper-black-hole-spawn-the-universe-1.13743

there's probably something to this. but, correlation coefficients work as follows.

1 - completely positively correlated; if x then y.
0 - no correlation at all.
-1 - completely negatively correlated; if x then not y.

anything between 0 and 0.5 is pretty weak. 0.09, 0.13? that's evidence of almost no correlation, suggesting almost no relationship. the math suggests the opposite of what the article is saying.

https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2013/10/vaccine-denial-conspiracy-theories-gmos-climate/

so, now the rebels in syria are fighting each other.

this is also curious:

"Meanwhile, with fighting between rival factions of the so-called rebels erupting on the border, the Turkish parliament Thursday approved, over stiff opposition, a resolution extending an authorization for the government to send troops into Syria.

...

Last year, the government of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan seized on the downing of a Turkish military plane by Syrian fighters and the killing of Turkish citizens by stray shells from the fighting inside Syria to push through the original resolution. This time around, it used the supposed threat posed by chemical weapons as the main pretext."

note that it seemed obvious at the time that the plane was sent into syrian airspace in order to be shot down.

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2013/10/04/syria-o04.html

sending turkey into an arab country as an occupying force is....problematic....for the region.

that being said, i'd rather have the turks as the hegemon in the area than the other options - saudis, israelis, iranians....egyptians....

despite the recent shift away from secularism, turkey remains the most moderate state in the region. it's just that there's this sort of nasty history thing about five hundred years of turkish colonialism over arabic speakers...

the other major option the americans have been working with has been the saudis. gotta wonder if the infighting in the rebel army has something to do with a turkish/saudi split. well, i say wonder. it's pretty clear. that's dangerous.

on the one hand, british/american strategy in the area has long been to divide and conquer, which means maintaining a system of ever shifting, highly dynamic alliances. they want to, and can be, everybody's primary ally, while subtly manipulating everybody against each other. everybody is aware of this and how to play the game of lobbying for influence while not giving the impression of being too powerful. on the other hand, the americans need to be very careful about not upsetting the saudi aristocrats too deeply. see, they're prone to violent outbursts.

a little more subtle than turkey fighting with the saudis. it's more like the qataris fighting with the saudis/turks.

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2013/10/01/the_army_of_islam_is_winning_in_syria?page=full