Showing posts with label Scientology. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Scientology. Show all posts

12.03.2015

12-3-2015 | Heat Death



"Science! I'm going to plant a bomb under its ass!" - Wilhelm Reich

The Great Statistical Schism - Quillette

Biology, Symmetry, Sexuality - Robert Trivers

The Inference of Ringworlds & Dyson Spheres - Adam Gopnik

Autonomous Nature and the Prehistory of Complexity - Carolyn Merchant

11.25.2015

11-25-2015 | Dead Indians



"There is increasing concern that most current published research findings are false." -- PLoS - John P. A. Ioannidis

Homage to Gaudi - Paul Laffoley, RIP

John McCloy - Spartacus Educational

Reminder: 05-09-2014 | Colonel Blotto

4.04.2014

04-04-2014 | Hollow Bones



Gaby Breitenbach's Ritual Abuse Shelter Vice UK (???)

The Dark Side of Antioxidants by Kas Thomas

The Five Kinds of Nanotechnology by Eric Drexler

"It's not merely logical to expect that numerous classified aircraft programs exist: it's almost a necessity under the principle of Occam's Razor, because if they don't, you have to contrive some sort of explanation for what Area 51 has been up to all these years." -- Aviation Week

7.03.2013

07-03-2013 | Brain Teasers



“The models that have been thought to predict what should happen are all incorrect. We essentially have absolutely no reliable roadmap of what to expect at this point.” - Stamatios Krimigis

Voyager 1: Unexpected Results from the Solar System's Edge - WIRED

Adderall: America's Favorite Amphetamine - James Kent

Global IQ: 1950 - 2050 - John Walker

Scientific Persuasion - IP

2.25.2013

02-25-2013 | Stranger Still



PDF: How the Ought Became the Is - N. Taleb

Thanks to Nick Dunbar for this hugely entertaining read. Pure surrealism: a short, evangelically passionate defense of Black-Scholes-Merton formula from one Nicholas Nassim Taleb, at the time a senior advisor for Paribas. It is remarkable to see the same sweeping Old Testament tone being put to use arguing the total opposite of everything Taleb has since become famous for.

"Antifragile," indeed. May we all change our minds so freely in the future.

2.23.2013

02-23-2013 | We All Gotta Serve Somebody



Via: Bill McKibben's Grassroots Sensation is a Rockefeller / Schumann Foundation Production - Financial Post

"Back in 2007, the 1Sky Education Fund had starting revenues of US$1.6-million. Of that, US$1.3-million was from the Rockefeller Family Fund. In 2008, 1Sky received a further US$920,000 from the Rockefeller Brothers Fund as well as US$900,000 from the Schumann Center, tax returns show. What this means is that from the get-go, McKibben’s campaign was bankrolled by the Rockefellers and the Schuman Center.

Bill McKibben has been a director of 1Sky since it began, so one would think that he was aware of the organization’s finances. And yet, to hear McKibben tell the story, he started the climate movement and the protests against Keystone XL with nothing more than a few students and “almost no money.”

In a 2010 article by McKibben, posted on at least 10 websites, he writes, “Last year, with almost no money, our scruffy little outfit, 350.org, managed to organize what Foreign Policy called the ‘largest ever co-ordinated global rally of any kind’ on any issue.” In another article that McKibben penned for Tikkun magazine, he says that he built the climate movement with seven graduate students at Middlebury College and “no money or organization.” During the fall of 2012, in interviews with Jed Lipinski and Grand Valley University, McKibben again told the story of starting 350.org with seven students and “almost no money.” But that’s not what tax returns indicate.

1Sky began in 2008. In its first year, 1Sky reported expenditures of US$2.6-million, tax returns show. Of that, US$2.2-million was payroll, including US$1.2-million for consultants. In 2009, 1Sky’s campaign director, Gillian Caldwell, a lawyer by training, was paid US$203,620 through the Rockefeller Family Fund. A salary of more than US$200,000 is hardly typical of a “scruffy little outfit.”

During 2011, the most recent year for which tax returns are publicly available, 350.org again had a US$2-million payroll, including US$622,000 for consultants. 350.org spent US$1.2-million on grassroots fieldwork, partnership with other organizations and media coverage, and US$356,000 to recruit participants through emails, blogs and social networking.

The next time McKibben pens an article or gives a speech, he should acknowledge the US$10-million that his campaigns have received from the Rockefellers, the Schumann Center and other sources."

2.22.2013

02-22-2013 | Postcards from Davos



PDF: Global Risks 2013 - World Economic Forum

"Digital Wildfires in a Hyperconnected World: In 1938, thousands of Americans confused a radio adaptation of the H.G. Wells novel The War of the Worlds with an official news broadcast and panicked, in the belief that the United States had been invaded by Martians. Is it possible that the Internet could be the source of a comparable wave of panic, but with severe geopolitical consequences?"



2.18.2013

02-18-2013 | Trade Secrets



Renaissance is under increasing pressure to stay ahead of the pack--and to keep its secrets under wraps. Save current employees and a few former ones, nobody knows precisely how the firm makes its millions. Medallion stopped taking new money from outside investors in 1993 and returned pretty much the last of their capital 12 years later. Today, the fund is run almost exclusively for the benefit of Renaissance staff. The wise-cracking Simons himself is mum on virtually all of its details.

What can he say about Medallion's trading strategy? "Not much," Simons says with a chortle, and then takes a drag on one of the Merit cigarettes he often smokes.

What kind of instruments does it trade?

"Everything."

How many different strategies does it use?

"A lot."

Simons says his Ph.D.s laugh when they read the far-fetched theories about what their fund might be doing. One chat room participant speculated that Renaissance uses audio hookups to futures exchanges and analyzes the noise from the pits with voice- recognition software.

"All of us in the quant business have conjectures and hypotheses but very little data," MIT's Lo says. "So we like to speculate about what Renaissance could possibly be doing. They are so far ahead of everybody else that it's both challenging as well as exciting to engage in that kind of idle speculation." For his part, Simons says he once explored whether sunspot activity affects the markets. He doesn't say what he found.

Via: The Code Breaker - Bloomberg

See Also: Information Asymmetry | FUD (Fear, Uncertainty & Doubt | The Long Con

2.03.2013

02-03-2013 | Survival Questions



Out There pg 79: "Colonel Phillips was hoping to recruit agents who would be sympathetic to the possibility of extraterrestrial life, and he knew he would find believers in the Dundee Society, an elite, almost fraternal group of career officers within the NSA. It functioned as a secret society within a secret - arguably the nation's most secret - organization. And it was also a group that from its inception had proselytized within the NSA that flying saucers had, most probably, already visited Earth.



The founder of the Dundee Society was Lambros Demetrios Callimahos, flutist, linguist, cryptologist, the author of perhaps more classified monographs and books than any other non-nuclear thinker, and generally a man who was, thanks in no small part to his own elaborate efforts, the stuff of legends. He would preside over meetings of the Dundee Society resplendent in a fitted beige Nehru jacket, white trousers woven from the hair of virgin llamas, and matching white shoes...

The meetings of the Dundee Society were free-wheeling discussion groups, the subjects ranging from cryptology to Kantian philosophy to animal rights. One of the most frequent subjects of debate, however, was inspired by a classified paper the society's founder had written. Entitled "UFO Hypothesis and Survival Questions," and written for restricted intra-agency distribution nine years before his death in 1977, this seven-page Socratic discussion of the issue was, by shrewd design, determinedly argumentative..."



3. All UFOs Are Natural Phenomena.

If this hypothesis is correct, the capability of air warning systems to correctly diagnose an attack situation is open to serious question.

A. Many UFOs have been reported by trained military observers to behave like high speed, high performance, high altitude rockets or aircraft. The apparent solidity and craft-like shape of the objects have often been subject to radar confirmation. If such reports can appear to trained military men as rockets or aircraft and if such objects should come over the Arctic from the direction of Russia on the United States, they could trigger 'false reports of missle attacks.'

B. Many responsible military officers have developed a mental 'blind spot' to objects which appear to have charachteristics of UFOs. Such an attitude is an open invitation to the enemy to build a replica of the phenomena in order to penetrate the 'hole' in his aversary's defenses...

C. Sometimes the phenomena appear to defy radar detection and to cause massive electromagnetic interference. Surely it is very important to discover the nature of these objects or plasmas before any prospective enemy can use their properties to build a device or system to circumvent or jam our air and space detection systems--Any nation certainly could use a system or device to penetrate enemy defenses.--Was this the purpose of the lense shaped reentry vehicle tested by the USAF in 1960?

4. Some UFOs Are Secret Earth Projects.

The above-referenced U.S. Air Force reenetry vehicle and an often publicized Canadian 'saucer' project leave little doubt as to the validity of this hypotheseis. Undoubtedly, all UFOs should be carefully scrutinized to ferret out such enemy (or 'friendly') projects. Otherwise a nation faces the very strong possibility of being intimidated by a new secret 'doomsday' weapon.

5. UFOs Are Related to Intra-terrestrial Intelligence.

According to some eminent scientists closely associated with the study of this phenomenon, this hypothesis cannot be disregarded. (The well documented sightings over Washington, D.C. in 1952 strongly support his view.) This hypothesis has a number of far-reaching human survival implications:

A. If 'they' discover you, it is an old but hardly invalid rule of thumb, 'they' are your technological superiors. Human history has shown us time and again the tragic results of a confrontation between a technologically superior civilization and a technologically inferior people. The 'inferior' is usually subject to physical conquest.

B. Often in the past, a technologically superior people are also possessors of a more virile or aggressive culture. In a confronttion between two peoples of significantly different culture levels, those having the inferior or less virile culture most often suffer a tragic loss of identity and are absorbed by the other people.



Out There pg 82: "...in the end, the Dundee Society won out. The National Security Agency, contrary to all its public statements, has since 1972 been secretly monitoring and often assessing worldwide allegations of UFO activity. For the past eighteen years, NSA listening posts throughout the world have operated under a standing order. It is mandatory to Flash-report Fort Meade on all intercepted foreign-intelligence signals intelligence that pertains to unidentified flying objects; and these installations are required to track and Flash-report on any signals or electronics intelligence that might have an extraterrestrial origin.