What The Guardian’s Banned From Telling You
Earlier this evening The Guardian was served with a gagging order forbidding it from reporting parliamentary business. To quote the article in the paper itself:
Today’s published Commons order papers contain a question to be answered by a minister later this week. The Guardian is prevented from identifying the MP who has asked the question, what the question is, which minister might answer it, or where the question is to be found.
The Guardian is also forbidden from telling its readers why the paper is prevented – for the first time in memory – from reporting parliament. Legal obstacles, which cannot be identified, involve proceedings, which cannot be mentioned, on behalf of a client who must remain secret.
The only fact the Guardian can report is that the case involves the London solicitors Carter-Ruck, who specialise in suing the media for clients, who include individuals or global corporations.
Full article over at The Third Estate (via Charlie B)
Jim Morrison ghost picture: not a fake
As always – we create a program and the newspapers jump on it. You can read the Sunday paper for more on “ghosts on film” or simply head over to the Science of Scams page and take a look at how we made them.
Follow @KatAkingbade1 on twitter for more ghosty insider bits and each week she presents a new scientific explanation about paranormal theories along with our very own Mr Brown.
Currently Kat is trying to summon the Stay Puff’d demon with a Ouija board. Updates on twitter.
Beau Lotto: Optical illusions show how we see them
Beau Lotto’s color games puzzle your vision, but they also spotlight what you can’t normally see: how your brain works. This fun, first-hand look at your own versatile sense of sight reveals how evolution tints your perception of what’s really out there.
Japanese Gangsters Forced To Sit Exams In Crime
The battle-scarred gangsters of Japan’s most infamous underworld group, the Yamaguchi-gumi, are being forced to study for an exam covering the key aspects of their trade.
Gang bosses have introduced the written tests for their subordinates since the Anti-Organised Crime Law was revised last year, making the group’s leaders responsible for the actions of street-level members.
In September 2008, two top members of the Sumiyoshi-kai underworld group agreed to pay Y97.5 million (£640,000) to the relatives of a man shot dead when three gunmen opened fire in a bar in Gunma Prefecture.
Three customers were killed when the gangsters tried to assassinate a rival gang boss – who survived the attempt on his life.
Police discovered an exam paper containing 12 questions on appropriate action in a given situation that a gangster might find himself involved in as they investigated the murder in Shiga Prefecture of a member of a gang affiliated with the 40,000-strong Yamaguchi-gumi, which is based in Kobe.
Telegraph (thanks, SarahWoo)
The Future of The Internet: Mind to Mind Communication?
Not long ago HotHardware.com gave you a look at a product manufactured by OCZ that made use of brainwaves as a futuristic but in-the-here-and-now game controller. Dubbed the NIA, for Neural Impulse Actuator, instead of buttons and joysticks, this device gave user the ability to control in-game movement with their mind.
At the time, it sounded almost a little crazy but it worked, at least in novel sort of way, perhaps for some freaky party fun. In reality, for us, the product was more of an under-pinning that if mankind can dream it up, for the most part anything can be built. Today’s science fiction is tomorrow’s reality, as they say.
And so say the rather brainy folks at the University of Southampton as well. They’ve taken the concept of brain power technology and applied it to communication- as in brain-to-brain direct.
The Colour Of Sound
For nearly two decades, artist Rafael Lozano-Hemmer has planted motion detectors, searchlights and surveillance equipment in public plazas and parks around the world. Each time, he invites the public to activate his gadgetry with their shadows, heartbeats or some other form of interaction.
This fall, the Montreal-based artist plans to turn people’s voices into colors. On Sept. 16, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York will unveil “Levels of Nothingness,” his interactive installation that will allow people to speak into a microphone connected to a computer that can match their voices’ traits, such as pitch and tone, to certain colors. A network of roving spotlights around the museum’s theater will instantly send the corresponding hues shooting around the room like at a rock concert. Actress Isabella Rossellini has already signed up to speak first, according to her spokeswoman.
Mr. Lozano-Hemmer, 41, represented Mexico in the Venice Biennial two years ago, and his collectors include New York real-estate magnate Jerry Speyer, Mexican beverage king Eugenio López Alonso and Miami entrepreneur Ella Cisneros. The Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Tate Modern in London also own his work, which can range in price from $90,000 to over $700,000, according to his dealer.
Wall Street Journal (thanks, Tammy)
Original translation of Old Testament a bit off. Oops!
The notion of God as the Creator is wrong, claims a top academic, who believes the Bible has been wrongly translated for thousands of years.
Professor Ellen van Wolde, a respected Old Testament scholar and author, claims the first sentence of Genesis “in the beginning God created the Heaven and the Earth” is not a true translation of the Hebrew.
She claims she has carried out fresh textual analysis that suggests the writers of the great book never intended to suggest that God created the world — and in fact the Earth was already there when he created humans and animals.
Telegraph (Thanks Brendan)
O’Reilly vs Dawkins. God help us!
More shouting at Dawkins. This time Bill O’Reilly manages to best himself with the claim that Dawkins is a fascist. I won’t pass comment – I’ll allow you to do that.
Ghost Hunter Killed In Fall From Building
TORONTO — A first date with a playful, late-night search for ghosts inside a University of Toronto landmark ended in tragedy yesterday when a 29-year-old woman plunged to her death.
Leah Kubik, just two weeks shy of her 30th birthday, was found without vital signs inside a courtyard just before 2 a.m.
“They were believed to be exploring an old building because it’s rumoured to be haunted,” Toronto Police Const. Wendy Drummond told the Sun.
The Gothic-style, 134-year-old Connaught medical research building was the site of a grisly murder in 2001 but paranormal experts stress it’s not haunted, only rumoured to be cursed.
Police said the pair managed to enter the ivy-covered building through an open window and then climbed three flights of stairs to the roof. There was still dust used by forensic investigators to recover fingerprints around the window yesterday.
The man crossed from one roof to the other, but a wire the woman was holding onto gave way and she plunged several storeys to her death, Drummond said.
Police tape was still blocking people from one stairway, which is suspected to have been used by the pair to gain access to the roof.
Police said they are still trying to determine whether it was death by misadventure.
Edmonton Sun (thanks, Kirsty)
Check out more ghostly activity over on the science of scams page
