AGAINST THE TIDE

23-year-old Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab.
(saharareporters.com)

Father warned US about plane bomb suspect's behaviour
The father of a Nigerian charged with trying to blow up a US jet on Christmas Day had voiced concerns to US officials about his son, it has emerged.The father, a top Nigerian banker, warned US authorities weeks ago about 23-year-old Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab's extreme views.
Officials in Washington, speaking on condition of anonymity, told news agencies that Mr Abdulmutallab's name had been added to a security watch-list of more than half a million individuals, known as Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment (Tide).

Homeland Stupidity
The single biggest worry that I have is long-term quality control,” said Russ Travers, in charge of TIDE at the National Counterterrorism Center in McLean.
”TIDE has also created concerns about secrecy, errors and privacy. The list marks the first time foreigners and U.S. citizens are combined in an intelligence database. The bar for inclusion is low, and once someone is on the list, it is virtually impossible to get off it. At any stage, the process can lead to “horror stories” of mixed-up names and unconfirmed information, Travers acknowledged.
"TIDE is a vacuum cleaner for both proven and unproven information, and its managers disclaim responsibility for how other agencies use the data. “What’s the alternative?” Travers said. “I work under the assumption that we’re never going to have perfect information — fingerprints, DNA — on 6 billion people across the planet. . . . If someone actually has a better idea, I’m all ears.” — Washington Post.

SEA OF CONSCIOUSNESS

Wilkins went somewhere far distant from Sherman, who, at intervals, was supposed to "see" and describe the locale of where Wilkins was, what he was doing, and what was going on around him.

Sherman recorded his telepathic impressions three nights a week, and promptly mailed copies of them to a Mr. Samuel Emery, identified as a "resident of the City Club of New York," and to Dr. Gardner Murphy at Columbia University. Sherman’s "impressions" were therefore in good hands long before any confirmation of them could be achieved.

Sherman’s success rate and the specificity of many of his hits was extraordinary.
In his introduction to the Studies in Consciousness reissue of the book, renowned remote viewer Ingo Swann said he’d been “amazed and staggered” by Sherman’s accomplishment, which he originally stumbled upon in a used book bin in 1970.


THOUGHTS THROUGH SPACE, Sherman, Wilkins. First published by Creative Age Press, New York, in 1942. A revised paperback edition was later published by Fawcett Publications, New York, 1971.]

Real Story: Chapter 55

TIMES NARROW

Image credit: cguu.com.

Physicist Proposes Solution to Arrow-of-Time Paradox

Entropy can decrease, according to a new proposal - but the process would destroy any evidence of its existence, and erase any memory an observer might have of it. It sounds like the plot to a weird sci-fi movie, but the idea has recently been suggested by theoretical physicist Lorenzo Maccone, currently a visiting scientist at MIT, in an attempt to solve a longstanding paradox in physics.

Loschmidt’s paradox:
1. Physics says universe is time-invariant. That is, laws still hold if time is reversed.
2. Second law of thermodynamics: entropy increases or is static but never decreases.

COP OUT

Eyewitness: How China sabotaged climate talks

"I am certain that had the Chinese not been in the room, we would have left Copenhagen with a deal that had environmentalists popping champagne corks in every corner of the world," he wrote in the The Guardian.
"The truth is this: China wrecked the talks, intentionally humiliated Barack Obama, and insisted on an awful 'deal' so Western leaders would walk away carrying the blame.

[ CENSORED ]

Computer says no: Google slams filter

In a post on Google Australia's official blog, the company said the plan raised concerns about censorship.

"At Google we are concerned by the Government's plans to introduce a mandatory filtering regime for Internet Service Providers (ISP) in Australia, the first of its kind amongst Western democracies," the post said.

"Our primary concern is that the scope of content to be filtered is too wide."

While Google accepted there must be some limits on internet content, it condemned the Government's filtering approach as heavy-handed.