Dvorak News Blog

Stimulus Checks Mistakenly Sent to 1,700 Inmates, Federal Agency Says

By John C Dvorak Wednesday August 26, 2009

Stimulus Checks Mistakenly Sent to 1,700 Inmates, Federal Agency Says – FOXNews.com — Meanwhile where are the checks for Cash for Clunkers? Also which dummy in prison gave up this information?

The federal government mistakenly sent out stimulus checks to 1,700 inmates, the Social Security Administration said Tuesday — a $425,000 error. Social Security spokesman Dan Moraski told FOXNews.com in a written statement that the money went out because official records “did not accurately reflect that they were in prison.”

Found by Steveo.

Homeless Man Tasered…Then Bursts into Flames!!!

By McCullough Wednesday August 26, 2009

23 Comments

A homeless man caught fire after U.S. police shocked him with a Taser gun, it has been revealed.

Daniel Wood, 31, was allegedly sniffing gas from an aerosol can as he ran through traffic when he was chased by two officers in Lancaster, Ohio. One officer caught Wood and got him on the ground, where Wood continued to resist, according to the police report.

Another officer shouted a warning, then zapped Wood with the Taser, the report said. Wood immediately burst into flames that covered his torso. The officers were forced to drop their weapons and beat out the flames. Wood said: ‘My complete right half of my upper body is burned. ‘I have bandages from my wrist all the way up my arm and across my chest.’

He admitted he had been inhaling vapours from a chemical cleaner in an attempt to get ‘high’. Wood had been resisting arrest by attempting to bite the officers and lashing out with his feet.

Hey…this is NOT funny. I mean really, it’s NOT.

Busted: 1 Crime Solved Per 1000 Surveillance Cameras In London

By Uncle Dave Wednesday August 26, 2009

24 Comments

Only one crime was solved by each 1,000 CCTV cameras in London last year, a report into the city’s surveillance network has claimed. The internal police report found the million-plus cameras in London rarely help catch criminals. In one month CCTV helped capture just eight out of 269 suspected robbers.

David Davis MP, the former shadow home secretary, said: “It should provoke a long overdue rethink on where the crime prevention budget is being spent.”

He added: “CCTV leads to massive expense and minimum effectiveness. It creates a huge intrusion on privacy, yet provides little or no improvement in security.

In other vaguely unrelated crime news:
– Brit gov may inact laws that cut off Interwebitube access for file sharing.
– And from our side of the pond, Texas admits they executed an innocent man whose entire prosecution was based on lies.

Caption This Photo

By Uncle Dave Wednesday August 26, 2009

38 Comments

Antidepressants Aren’t Just For Breakfast Anymore

By Uncle Dave Wednesday August 26, 2009

36 Comments

Well, this is a depressing report.

Earlier this month the Archives of General Psychiatry released a much publicized study that one in 10 Americans is now taking antidepressants within the course of a year, making antidepressants the most prescribed kind of medication in the country. […] One has to wonder: Are we really that miserable?

Manipulated might be a better word than miserable. If we were to pick one factor that explains the dramatically increased number of selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (the technical name for drugs like Prozac, Paxil and Zoloft) that now run through our collective bloodstream, it would be direct-to-consumer advertising, otherwise known as television commercials for prescription drugs. […] The pharmaceutical companies concentrated on their best-selling “blockbuster” drugs — Lipitor, Claritin, Nexium, Viagra, as well as the psychiatric drugs Prozac, Paxil and Zoloft, and more currently, Effexor and Lexapro — and soon enough these drugs became, quite literally, household names, the celebrities of pharmaceutical agents.

U.S. Senator Edward Kennedy dies

By John C Dvorak Tuesday August 25, 2009

Comments Off

U.S. Senator Edward Kennedy dies | Reuters

U.S. Senator Edward Kennedy, a towering figure in the Democratic Party who took the helm of one of America’s most fabled political families after two older brothers were assassinated, has died, his family said. He was 77.”Edward M. Kennedy, the husband, father, grandfather, brother and uncle we loved so deeply, died late Tuesday night at home in Hyannis Port Massachusetts,” the Kennedy family said in a statement.

‘Paris Syndrome’ leaves Japanese tourists in shock

By John C Dvorak Tuesday August 25, 2009

32 Comments

‘Paris Syndrome’ leaves Japanese tourists in shock – msnbc.com The Japanese are the worst at doing some cultural research before they go someplace. This is what happens.

Around a dozen Japanese tourists a year need psychological treatment after visiting Paris as the reality of unfriendly locals and scruffy streets clashes with their expectations, a newspaper reported on Sunday.

“A third of patients get better immediately, a third suffer relapses and the rest have psychoses,” Yousef Mahmoudia, a psychologist at the Hotel-Dieu hospital, next to Notre Dame cathedral, told the newspaper Journal du Dimanche.

Already this year, Japan’s embassy in Paris has had to repatriate at least four visitors — including two women who believed their hotel room was being bugged and there was a plot against them.

Found by Eric Blumenfeld.

London Police ‘steal’ from unlocked cars

By John C Dvorak Tuesday August 25, 2009

16 Comments

BBC NEWS London | Police ‘steal’ from unlocked cars — The logic is lost on me. If a copper sees an open car with valuables out they themselves steal it. And, yes, it does get returned. But why doesn’t the cop LOCK THE DOOR and be on his or her way instead?

“It might also be worthwhile for officers to take a photo like traffic wardens.”

The new tactic, launched last month, is aimed at tackling thefts from cars in the area which rose by 40% until July.

Mr Davis, from Richmond upon Thames police, said officers on patrol are only targeting unlocked cars with a valuable item on display.

Officers try to contact the owner, failing which they remove the item and leave a note for the driver to retrieve it from Twickenham police station.

Microsoft Edits Black Man Out of Photo, Apologizes

By John C Dvorak Tuesday August 25, 2009

32 Comments

Microsoft Edits Black Man Out of Photo, Apologizes – FOXNews.com — This is too funny. But there is no real explanation for this gaffe.

Software giant Microsoft Corp. is apologizing for altering a photo on its Web site to change the race of one of the people shown in the picture.A photo on the Seattle-based company’s U.S. Web site shows two men, one Asian and one black, and a white woman seated at a conference room table. But on the Web site of Microsoft’s Polish business unit, the black man’s head has been replaced with that of a white man. The color of his hand remains unchanged.

Pirate Bay Will Not Die

By John C Dvorak Tuesday August 25, 2009

10 Comments

Apple Tablet is all they are talking about. I discuss the discussion.
Jessica Biel is number one on the net — for malware!
Pirate Bay is back up.
Wikipedia cracks down.
Microsoft going into regular phone business.
The US is 15-years behind Korea in Internet speeds.
Yahoo claims to still be competing with Bing. How?
UK will pull Internet connection for anyone trading music or films.
Show brought to you by Squarespace at www.squarespace.com use the code TECH.

click ► to listen:

Right click here and select ‘Save Link As…’ to download the mp3 file.

Sketchy video of Michael Jackson alive after helicopter transport to coroner

By Jacob Galt Tuesday August 25, 2009

39 Comments

A short video posted in LiveLeak.com claims to show the late Michael Jackson walking out of a Los Angeles coroner’s van and into a building. The user, LosAngelesCot24, claims the video is from a trustworthy source and shows that Michael Jackson is still alive.

Michael Jackson died on June 25, 2009, from a cardiac arrest, believed to be caused by an injection of the powerful sedative propofol, allegedly from Dr. Conrad Murray.

I don’t buy it, but it’s starting to get some press.

Powerful PSA on Texting while Driving

By McCullough Tuesday August 25, 2009

45 Comments

’nuff said?

Obama Reappoints “Helicopter Ben” to 2nd Term

By McCullough Tuesday August 25, 2009

34 Comments

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Ben “Heckuva Job” Bernanke

OAK BLUFFS, Mass. – President Barack Obama announced Tuesday he wants to keep Ben Bernanke on as Fed chairman, saying he shepherded America through the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression.

“Ben approached a financial system on the verge of collapse with calm and wisdom; with bold action and out-of-the-box thinking that has helped put the brakes on our economic freefall,” said Obama, with Bernanke standing by his side. “Almost none of the decisions he or any of us made have been easy.”

Obama made the announcement while on vacation on the island of Martha’s Vineyard off the coast of Massachusetts after aides said initially that the president intended a news-free week there. Both he and Bernanke sported the open-collar look.

Bernanke, 55, is credited with turning the economy away from its deepest and longest recession since the 1930s. Now he faces the challenge of meeting White House expectations to chart the full economic recovery considered critical to Obama’s legacy.

In sticking with a Republican for the nation’s top banker, the Democratic president was aiming for stability at a time of continuing, though easing, crisis. The move was designed to reassure the U.S. financial sector as well as foreign central banks that the Obama administration isn’t changing course on its largely well-received approaches to the financial meltdown and overall monetary policy.

The announcement also came nearly concurrently with a piece of bad economic news. Obama interrupted his vacation to telegraph his decision just ahead of a White House report that gave more bleak assessments of the nation’s deficit picture.

To borrow a quote from the Obama campaign…”That’s not change, it’s more of the same”.

Exposing ‘The Family’, The Secret Self-proclaimed Christian Mafia that will Rule the World

By McCullough Tuesday August 25, 2009

150 Comments

How would you feel if you knew that your elected representatives belonged to a secret religious cult that praised the likes of Hitler, Pol Pot, Papa “Doc” Duvalier, Mao, and other despots. According to this insider, these politicians make up as much as 30% of our elected officals of mostly Republican and a handful of Democrats. They feel they are chosen by God to be our leaders, and because of this all their transgressions from simple adulterous behavior to the toppling and ruin of foreign governments are forgiven and protected by the Family.

In a new August 17, 2009 Maddow Show segment, Rachel Maddow and Jeff Sharlet discuss, among many new revelations, the disturbing fact that the “Christian Embassy” scandal, propelled by a complaint to the Department of Defense from the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, was investigated by a Pentagon Inspector General who is in fact a Family member.

The Family, also known as “The Fellowship”, is a secretive fundamentalist Washington DC ministry which runs the National Prayer Breakfast and Bible study groups attended by numerous US Senators and Congress members, wields global influence, and celebrates the leadership lessons of Hitler, Lenin, and Mao.

Over the course of the summer of 2009, Washington’s Family-run “C Street House” has become notorious as a string of sex scandals have engulfed national GOP political figures who live at, have lived at, or attended Bible study classes at the secretive former convent turned church-cum cheap-rent high end boarding house: Senator John Ensign, former Congressman Charles “Chip” Pickering, and South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford.

By far the story has been driven, first, by Jeff Sharlet, who wrote the 2008 book The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at The Heart Of American Power, which followed Sharlet’s 2003 Harper’s expose Jesus Plus Nothing. But MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow, who has pursued breaking new aspects of the festering scandal with a long-term dedication only rarely seen in mainstream media news coverage, has played an invaluable role in giving the mafia-like “Family” widespread public exposure.

“I bet you aced that class in stupidity at Occidental College.”

By Uncle Dave Tuesday August 25, 2009

54 Comments

Oh, so many jokes, so little time…

180. STUPIDITY.

Stupidity is neither ignorance nor organicity, but rather, a corollary of knowing and an element of normalcy, the double of intelligence rather than its opposite. It is an artifact of our nature as finite beings and one of the most powerful determinants of human destiny. Stupidity is always the name of the Other, and it is the sign of the feminine. This course in Critical Psychology follows the work of Friedrich Nietzsche, Gilles Deleuze, and most recently, Avital Ronell, in a philosophical examination of those operations and technologies that we conduct in order to render ourselves uncomprehending. Stupidity, which has been evicted from the philosophical premises and dumbed down by psychometric psychology, has returned in the postmodern discourse against Nation, Self, and Truth and makes itself felt in political life ranging from the presidency to Beevis and Butthead. This course examines stupidity.