David Koch Now Taking Aim at Hurricane Sandy Victims

This is just sickening :

Billionaire David Koch’s prime political organization, Americans for Prosperity (AFP), having failed in its $125 million quest to oust President Barack Obama, is now aiming at a slightly less sophisticated political target: victims of Hurricane Sandy.

Hurricane Sandy was the second most costly in American history, leaving 100 lives lost, over $50 billion in devastation and tens of thousands of damaged or destroyed homes. Legislative efforts to help those who survived Hurricane Sandy’s wrath will reach a major stumbling block.

Earlier this week, AFP, which is chaired by Koch and believed to be financed by several other plutocrats from the New York City region, released a letter warning members of Congress not to vote for the proposed federal aid package for victims of the storm that swept New Jersey, New York City and much of the surrounding area in October. An announcement on the group’s website says that the vote next week for the Sandy aid package will be a “key vote”—meaning senators who support sending money for reconstruction could face an avalanche of attack ads in their next election. Already, opposition to the bill is growing, although it passed one procedural hurdle last night.

There is some legitimate criticism with aspects of the legislation, including the fact that some of the money will go to non-Sandy related reconstruction efforts in disaster areas. For AFP, however, the whole bill must die and victims of the storm deserve no help from the government.

Source :  David Koch Now Taking Aim at Hurricane Sandy Victims

Space Portals

Apparently space portals aren't so science-fiction after all, and are actually real, according to NASA...

NASA THEMIS spacecraft and some European probes seem to be detecting portals that are magnetic, and which open and close several times a day. They're linked from the Earth's magnetic field and go all the way to the Sun, over 90 million miles away. The whole idea of it is explained in this video :

The text of the video and some other info is on this page : Hidden Portals in Earth's Magnetic Field

Other links for reference :

THEMIS - Understanding Space Weather - NASA

Heliophysics - Studying the Sun-Earth Connection - NASA

The Science of “Intuition”

"The word intuition comes from the Latin intuir, which appropriately means ‘knowledge from within.’ Until recently, intuition, like consciousness, was the sort of thing that self-respecting scientists stayed clear of, on penalty of being accused of engaging in New Age woo-woo rather than serious science. Heck, even most philosophers — who historically had been very happy to talk about consciousness, far ahead of the rise of neurobiology — found themselves with not much to say about intuition. However, these days cognitive scientists think of intuition as a set of nonconscious cognitive and affective processes; the outcome of these processes is often difficult to articulate and is not based on deliberate thinking, but it’s real and (sometimes) effective nonetheless."

Source : The Science of “Intuition” - Brain Pickings

The Spot-and-Shoot Game: Israeli female soldiers kill by remote control

It is called Spot and Shoot. Operators sit in front of a TV monitor from which they can control the action with a PlayStation-style joystick.

The aim: to kill.

Played by: young women serving in the Israeli army.

Spot and Shoot, as it is called by the Israeli military, may look like a video game but the figures on the screen are real people – Palestinians in Gaza – who can be killed with the press of a button on the joystick.

The female soldiers, located far away in an operations room, are responsible for aiming and firing remote-controlled machine-guns mounted on watch-towers every few hundred metres along an electronic fence that surrounds Gaza.

Source : The Spot-and-Shoot Game: Israeli female soldiers kill by remote control - Sabbah

"There Is No Such Thing As Time"

An article from Popular Science that offers a new way of looking at the concept of time:

Julian Barbour's solution to the problem of time in physics and cosmology is as simply stated as it is radical: there is no such thing as time.

"If you try to get your hands on time, it's always slipping through your fingers," says Barbour. "People are sure time is there, but they can't get hold of it. My feeling is that they can't get hold of it because it isn't there at all." Barbour speaks with a disarming English charm that belies an iron resolve and confidence in his science. His extreme perspective comes from years of looking into the heart of both classical and quantum physics. Isaac Newton thought of time as a river flowing at the same rate everywhere. Einstein changed this picture by unifying space and time into a single 4-D entity. But even Einstein failed to challenge the concept of time as a measure of change. In Barbour's view, the question must be turned on its head. It is change that provides the illusion of time. Channeling the ghost of Parmenides, Barbour sees each individual moment as a whole, complete and existing in its own right. He calls these moments "Nows."

Source "There Is No Such Thing As Time" - Popular Science

First Post

This blog will be covering the same type of themes that my main site is doing, which is alternative news and research : Alternativenow.org

Am also on twitter and tumblr.

The offshoots of the main site are usually more random and more frequently updated, and this blog will hopefully do the same. :)