Source: http://news.feedzilla.com/en_us/stories/politics/top-stories/303044554?client_source=feed&format=rss
mario manningham williams syndrome hoya casa de mi padre corned beef and cabbage diners drive ins and dives jeff who lives at home
Friday, May 3, 2013
How A Holocaust Denier Fooled The Internet With Nazi Jetpack Soldiers
One of the great accomplishments of Nazi Germany's war machine was a jetpack that propelled their soldiers into the sky. It was a fantastical device whose story has been told many times on the web and it would be even more impressive if it weren't the propaganda of a Holocaust denier disguised as history.
I recently wrote The Great American Jet Pack which chronicles the history of the ?Individual Lift Device.? You know: The thing James Bond flew in the opening of Thunderball.
As you might imagine, I got to run down all sorts of crazy stories and wild rumors about things that flew or might have flown during the Cold War. One story that cropped up too often for me to ignore involved ? well, let me just give you the headline from Gizmodo because Gizmodo always does the best headlines: Real Bloody Flying Nazi Soldiers with Jet Packs
According to the common story, (and we can?t blame Gizmodo, this story has a good amount of traction on the internet), the Germans developed a primitive man-rocket by strapping pulse jet engines (plural) to a soldier and saw successful tests where a soldier cleared 180 feet at a height of 50 feet. The dual pulse jet arrangement ?consumed very little fuel, never ran hot, and didn?t require special clothing.? And oh, American scientists at Bell stole the idea, which led to the development of the Bell rocket belt. All of it is nonsense.
Despite Wendell Moore?s well-documented invention of the rocket belt, stories and folklore abound of inventors whose roles in the creation of jet pack technology were somehow overlooked or suppressed. According to the Nazi jet pack story, the Germans experimented by strapping pulse-jet engines onto soldiers and launching them over obstacles on the battlefield. The pulse-jet was the same engine that powered the V-1 ?Buzz bomb,? and seems a highly unlikely thing to strap to anyone if you expected them to survive the experience. No one has any photographs of the Himmel St?rmer ? German for Sky Stormer ? and the story is shrouded in mystery.
It is said that Americans captured the technology along with some other secret weapons and brought some of the devices back to America. Some websites go so far as to say that Bell Aerospace obtained one of the devices and Wendell Moore dissected it before coming up with his own rocket belt which he would eventually patent. A book called The Rocketbelt Caper devoted two pages to the mythical device with the caveat, ?a lack of evidence suggests the Nazi rocket packs may have been pure propaganda.?
?Propaganda? implied that the Germans said they had one, which is something that was also not supported by any evidence.
Websites that described the Nazi jet packs cite each other for support and when pressed, the creators of some of the sites admitted they had no evidence that any such device ever existed. One site sold dolls ? ?action figures? ? made up to look like storm troopers wearing little jet packs and photographs of the dolls appeared on another website as evidence that the Himmel St?rmer was real. One writer claimed that the lack of evidence on the device proved its existence; if it wasn?t real, why had the US government hidden the evidence?
People familiar with jet belt and pulse jet technology point out that the Himmel St?rmer could not have possibly been real. The engine in a V-1, known as an Argus As 014, was 13 feet long. Presumably, that would be a rather difficult thing to strap to one?s back. Of course, the engine could be down-sized, but then the resulting engine would have been much less powerful. Could this have been done?
Disproving negatives can be a difficult thing. In this instance, it makes more sense to try and track down the ?Himmel St?rmer? story to its source. Where did the story start? A writer using the name Christof Friedrich first wrote about Nazi jet packs in a book called German Secret Weapons and Wonder Weapons of World War Two in 1976. He also wrote a book called The Hitler We Loved & Why.
His real name was Ernst Z?ndel and he ran his own publishing company in Toronto. At first, many of his books ? written under the pen name Christof Friedrich ? were about UFOs and how the Germans had developed advanced technology during World War II which was kept secret from the general populace. Z?ndel explained how Hitler ran Secret Nazi Polar Explorations, in a book by that title in 1978, and about Hitler at the South Pole, in 1979. Somehow, a few readers who didn?t see the lack of credibility in Z?ndel?s writing saw his German secret weapons book and believed it to be true. It wasn?t. One writer summarized Z?ndel?s theories:
Some hollow Earth believers exhibit not just fascination with but open sympathy for Nazi Germany. The chief figure in the Nazi hollow-Earth movement is a Toronto man named Ernst Z?ndel, who writes under the name Christof Friedrich. Z?ndel operates a clearinghouse for Nazi materials and contends, as do other neo-Nazis, that the Holocaust never took place. In UFOs ? Nazi Secret Weapons? (1976) he claimed that when World War II ended, Hitler and his Last Battalion boarded a submarine and escaped to Argentina; they then established a base for advanced saucer-shaped aircraft inside the hole at the South Pole. When the Allies learned what had happened, they dispatched Adm. Richard E. Byrd and a ?scientific expedition? ? in fact an army ? to attack the Nazi base, but they were no match for the superior Nazi weapons.
We do not know if the Nazi soldiers defending Antarctica after World War II flew Himmel St?rmers or not during their epic battle; Z?ndel didn?t mention the devices in that story. Perhaps a bigger concern was that Z?ndel had an ulterior motive for spinning his crazy UFO stories. He was a rabidly anti-Semitic Holocaust denier who used the UFO theories as a platform from which to preach his theories on what ?really? happened during World War II.
Maybe his book The Hitler We Loved & Why should have tipped off his readers but the other titles he published certainly should have, such as Auschwitz, Dachau, Buchenwald: The Greatest Fraud in History, and Did Six Million Really Die? Z?ndel was a bizarre character in that he openly spoke about his beliefs and granted interviews to almost any journalist or reporter who approached him. One such writer named Frank Miele interviewed Z?ndel in 1993 and later wrote an article that included excerpts in Skeptic magazine. The article focused on Z?ndel?s revisionist statements regarding the Holocaust and Miele asked him about his UFO literature. Z?ndel told him that it was the people who believed in UFOs ? not the Holocaust deniers ? who were the ?real lunatic fringe.?
In a later phone conversation, Z?ndel told me that the UFO book was in fact a ploy. ?I realized that North Americans were not interested in being educated. They want to be entertained. The book was for fun. With a picture of the Fuhrer on the cover and flying saucers coming out of Antarctica it was a chance to get on radio and TV talk shows. For about 15 minutes of an hour program I?d talk about that esoteric stuff. Then I would start talking about all those Jewish scientists in concentration camps, working on these secret weapons. And that was my chance to talk about what I wanted to talk about.?
The ?UFO book? he was talking about was UFOs ? Nazi Secret Weapons? Clearly, Z?ndel has no credibility regarding anything he wrote about these topics. He wrote the books because they sold and he used them as an entr?e to talk shows because the topics were so popular. He had no evidence of UFOs, South Pole Nazi submarine bases, or of the Himmel St?rmer. He made them all up. The Himmel St?rmer was a figment of his imagination.
So, no: There never were Real Bloody Flying Nazi Soldiers with Jet Packs. But try telling that to Wikipedia. (Next time when we have a few minutes, I'll tell you about the crazy Romanian who has his whole country convinced that he invented the jet pack, and the Americans stole it from him.)
Steve Lehto wrote Chrysler's Turbine Car: The Rise and Fall of Detroit's Coolest Creation and The Great American Jet Pack: The Quest for the Ultimate Individual Lift Device both published by Chicago Review Press
Source: http://jalopnik.com/how-a-holocaust-denier-fooled-the-internet-with-nazi-je-482770651
nicklas backstrom discovery shuttle allure jane goodall saturday night fever glamping forgetting sarah marshall
Tiptop Speakers Launches On Kickstarter To Take Advantage Of Your Room's Natural Acoustics
Look over to one of the upper corners of the room you?re in. What?s there? If you?re like me, probably nothing. Three Stanford product design majors are building a speaker to take advantage of the wasted space and natural acoustics of the corners of your room. The Tiptop speaker is a small pyramid that can stand alone or fits into a mold made for the upper corners of a room.Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/75uvc8yFPRI/
dez bryant Kitty Wells Marissa Mayer Jon Lord Colorado shootings
Free Market Energy Policies Can End Economic Malaise - OpEd ...
Published: May 1, 2013
By Albany Tribune
Non-comprehensive, none-of-the-below, Washington-dictated energy policies guarantee decline
By Craig Rucker
?We can?t have an energy strategy that traps us in the past,? President Obama proclaimed in March 2012. ?We need an energy strategy for the future ? an all-of-the-above strategy for the Twenty-First Century that develops every source of American-made energy.?
At first blush, this sounds like common sense.?The US economy and lifestyle ?depend on inexpensive and plentiful energy,? the Congressional Research Service noted in a 2005 report, but people tend to forget this until world events cause gasoline prices to spike. Then Washington reacts, CRS continued ? passing the Energy Policy Acts of 1992, 2005 and 2007. However, the US still does not have a ?comprehensive long-term energy policy? that balances increasing supply with conservation and defines the proper interplay between government and market forces.
Forty years ago, President Nixon announced ?Project Independence,? in response to the 1973 oil cutoff by Middle East and other OPEC nations, with the goal of ensuring that ?Americans will not have to rely on any source of energy beyond our own.?? His broad-based strategy begat the trans-Alaska pipeline (to get North Slope oil to Lower 48 markets), expanded onshore and offshore oil drilling, an all-of-the-above strategy for electric power generation that brought lignite mining and natural gas into prominence, and a host of conservation measures, including 55-mph speed limits.
President Carter brought very different thinking to Washington ? policies that many believe led to declining US oil and gas production and economic ?malaise.? President Reagan reversed Carter, but his successors, Congress, courts, environmental activists, regulatory agencies and disparate corporate interests launched American energy policies on a roller coaster ride. This history helps explain why comprehensive long-term energy policies and strategies are less logical and desirable than at first blush.
The term itself suggests policies devised and dictated by Washington, DC politicians, bureaucrats, lobbyists and pressure groups ? many of whom have no real knowledge of or hands-on experience with energy, economics, science, technology, business or job creation.
In too many cases, the policies, strategies, laws, programs and regulations are crafted to promote specific ideologies, benefit companies and organizations with the best lobbyists, and secure tax breaks, subsidies and preferential treatment for political cronies, campaign contributors and politically correct ideas.
?All of the above? too often means all of the above ground and little or nothing below the Earth?s surface: wind, solar, biofuels and wood, for example ? but little or no oil, gas, coal or uranium. In fact, more than any other in history, the Obama administration is using its executive powers to delay, obstruct, hyper-regulate, penalize and bankrupt the proven energy that is the foundation of modern living standards.
Similarly, the notion that proven energy strategies ?trap us in the past? fails to recognize that ?past? energy technologies (oil, gas, coal, nuclear and hydroelectric) actually provide 94% of the energy that powers America today; are abundant, reliable and affordable; and represent a monumental improvement over the wind, solar, wood, dung and water wheel power that feebly energized mankind for millennia.
Suggesting that we can abandon these vital 94% energy sources ? in favor of new variations on antique technologies that Mr. Obama promotes as energy of ?the future? ? ignores the fact that these politically correct sources are expensive, intermittent, heavily subsidized and wholly dependent on fossil fuels. Moreover, any honest and meaningful cradle-to-grave analysis of wind, solar and biofuel energy reveals that these PC sources are land- and resource-intensive, environmentally damaging, and unsustainable.
The ?comprehensive long-term energy policies and strategies? slogan also ignores where the real progress of recent years has been made: in the private sector, especially the petroleum industry, where revolutionary horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing technologies have unlocked centuries of oil and natural gas worldwide. In fact, ?fracking? on state and private lands has sent US petroleum production to new heights ? even as Washington politics and policies have ensured that production from federally owned and controlled onshore and offshore lands continues to decline.
Hydrocarbon, hydroelectric and nuclear have undeniable problems: oil spills, air and water pollution, radiation and accidents. But laws, regulations, technologies and greater corporate responsibility have greatly reduced their frequency and severity ? and errors are quickly and severely punished.
By contrast, human health and environmental impacts associated with wind, solar and biofuel energy are routinely and systematically ignored, and almost never punished. The slaughter of millions of birds and bats annually by US wind turbines is a case in point, and when the impacts are considered in the context of the minimal energy produced via these ?renewable? technologies, the damage is especially egregious.
These ?alternative? technologies ALSO require perpetual subsidies, taken from hardworking taxpayers and productive sectors of our economy, and given to crony corporatists whose schemes slide repeatedly into bankruptcy. They employ rare earth metals and other raw materials that require vast amounts of fossil fuels, monumental earth removal and widespread land degradation ? to build and operate facilities whose energy is so expensive it kills 2-4 jobs for every ?green? job created, drives families deeper into poverty, and impairs human health and welfare.
Forty years ago, President Nixon actually sought to develop and utilize ?all of the above? energy ? every practical source on every list. Today, amid an anemic economy and joblessness far worse than official government figures admit, President Obama balks at approving the Keystone XL pipeline, cancels leasing and drilling on federal lands, tells our budget-sequestered military to buy $26 to $67-per-gallon ship and jet fuel, punishes refineries for not buying cellulosic ethanol that doesn?t exist, and happily lets EPA shut down coal-fired power plants and kill countless thousands of mining, utility and other jobs.
Thoughtful Americans find little comfort in these policies. Twelve million still cannot find work in this moribund, DC-dictated economy. Red-state Democrats like Joe Manchin (D-WV), Mark Begich (D-AK) and Mary Landrieu (D-LA) tremble at the prospect of facing voters in 2014.?And outrage is properly growing over the massive failures of wind, solar and biofuel startups whose executives (mostly Obama and Democrat campaign angels) skimmed millions of tax dollars for themselves but let their companies go bankrupt and their employees go on unemployment and welfare rolls.
And still President Obama and his minions push for punitive carbon dioxide regulations and carbon taxes, while the European carbon market collapses, EU jobs head to China and India, and thousands die of hypothermia in England. The European emissions trading system is ?below junk status,? according to The Economist, and the collapse has been felt as far away as Australia, whose political leaders prepare to reap the whirlwind of carbon taxes that are now 5.5 times higher than in Europe. Is this America?s ?future??
Will ideology continue to trump sanity in the Obama energy and climate policy arenas??The President is putting all his eggs in the basket of ?hope? that Democrats will ?change? the House leadership and extend their Senate majority in 2014.?He has shown little desire to compromise on energy and climate change.
America does not need ?comprehensive? energy policies devised and dictated by Washington. It needs policies that unlock our creative genius and allow free enterprise and private sector innovators to operate on a level playing field ? one that applies the same reasonable, responsible environmental, endangered species, tax, subsidy and other laws and standards to all companies, investors and energy technologies.
We need simple laws and policies that let our ultimate energy resource (our creative intellect) work ? without ideologues, pressure groups and regulators promoting failed, subsidized energy schemes, while continuing to block affordable, dependable energy that actually creates jobs and generates revenues.
Craig Rucker is executive director of the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (www.CFACT.org)
Source: http://www.albanytribune.com/01052013-free-market-energy-policies-can-end-economic-malaise-oped/
the watchmen whitney houston dies dolly parton i will always love you beverly hilton hotel whitney houston found dead i will always love you whitney houston 2012 grammy awards
China Is Investing $810M In Beidou, A Navigation System It Hopes Will Eventually Rival GPS
China is investing $810 million into the development of Beidou (BDS), the navigation satellite system that it is positioning as a rival to the U.S.-developed GPS. According to China Daily, the money will be used to build an industrial park that will house 30 to 50 companies focused on developing an ecosystem for Beidou. Based in Tianjin, the industrial park is expected to welcome its first 20 companies in June. The Chinese government not only wants Beidou to eventually dominate China’s $19.2 billion navigation service sector, but also sees it as a way to make China’s military less dependent on foreign technology. This would protect the country if the U.S. decided to deny it access to GPS and also potentially give it a strategic advantage. As DefensePolicy.Org writes, “Aside from the commercial applications of Beidou, the placement of an independent global navigation system would give China a considerable strategic military advantage in the event hostilities should break out in the Asia-Pacific Region. Most notably, such an advantage would be useful in countering foreign naval forces and with particularity those of the United States.” Beidou can also offer China more quotidian advantages. For example, developers hope that the system will allow taxi drivers to quickly locate nearby passengers, which in turn would cut down on emissions and improve the capital’s air quality. Watches synced to Beidou navigational satellites can identify a user’s location within 10 meters and clock synchronization signals to within 50 nanoseconds. In a March interview, the chief commander of China’s lunar exploration mission Chang’e-3, Ye Peijian, said that Beidou will achieve full-scale global coverage by around 2020 and will be able to provide highly accurate and reliable positioning and navigation with the aid of 35 satellites. China has so far launched 16 navigation satellites. Beidou has been used by the Chinese government and military for transport, weather forecasts, fishing, forestry, telecommunications, hydrological monitoring and mapping since December (it originally launched on a trial basis back in 2003), but more than 95 percent of navigation terminals used in China still rely on GPS. According to industry statistics cited in China Daily, the total output of China’s navigation service sector in 2012 topped 120 billion yuan ($19.2 billion). In addition to its navigation and timing functions, Beidou’s terminals will also be able to communicate with the ground station with short messages in Chinese characters. China’s government hopes that its languageSource: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/f-ohvAmpnEI/
thursday night football Butch Jones Star Trek Into Darkness Heisman watch John McAfee Jenny Rivera Pacquiao vs Marquez 4
France defends interest in blocking Yahoo deal
French Minister for Industrial Renewal, Arnaud Montebourg gestures with the media as he leaves after the weekly cabinet meeting in Elysee Palace in Paris, Thursday May 2, 2013. (AP Photo/Jacques Brinon)
French Minister for Industrial Renewal, Arnaud Montebourg gestures with the media as he leaves after the weekly cabinet meeting in Elysee Palace in Paris, Thursday May 2, 2013. (AP Photo/Jacques Brinon)
PARIS (AP) ? The French government has defended its veto over Yahoo Inc.'s attempted takeover of video sharing website Dailymotion, even as the move draws jeers for discouraging much needed foreign investment.
Yahoo this week abandoned plans to take a 75 percent stake in Dailymotion, a deal sought by the managements of both companies, after the government blocked it.
In an interview, Arnaud Montebourg, the minister for industrial renewal, said Thursday that the government's ownership stake in Dailymotion's parent company, France Telecom, gave it the right to overrule a deal if it deemed it unfair.
"We are a shareholder in France Telecom so it's natural that we bring up" questions of the company's strategy, Montebourg told The Associated Press.
Montebourg also rejected accusations that the deal's collapse signaled France was pulling in the welcome mat to foreign investors. Montebourg said Yahoo was "welcome" as long as it accepted a 50-50 split with France Telecom.
France Telecom says it will continue searching for "a solid strategic partner outside Europe" and declined to comment on specifics surrounding the breakdown of talks with Yahoo or Montebourg's reaction.
French governments of all political stripes have a long history of intervening in the affairs of private companies in which it owns stakes, such as Airbus parent EADS, carmaker Renault, and Air France.
While France's strategic interest in a website used for sharing funny cat videos and the like may not be obvious, Montebourg insisted it was in the state's interest to keep Dailymotion from falling into foreign hands.
"Across the European Union governments are sensitive to online content businesses," the minister said to explain France's interest in keeping a hand in Dailymotion.
"I told the boss of Yahoo that to guarantee balance we wanted a 50-50 split" between Yahoo and France Telecom. "We want to respect the company's identity and for its development to be win-win."
Dailymotion declined to comment.
Associated Pressburger king mary j blige google project glass google goggles one tree hill projectglass
Is Google Glass Bad for Your Eyes?
Google Glass is capable of some amazing things
Google has a pretty strongly-worded warning for potential wearers under the Glass FAQ section (emphasis added):
Glass isn?t for everyone.
Like when wearing glasses, some people may feel eye strain or get a headache. If you?ve had Lasik surgery, ask your doctor about risks of eye impact damage before using Glass. Don?t let children under 13 use Glass as it could harm developing vision. Also, kids might break Glass or hurt themselves, and Google?s terms of service don?t permit those under 13 to register a Google account. If Glass is not for you and you wish to return it, do so before the end of the applicable refund period.
So no Glass for kids under 13. But that's basically just legalese with a heaping dose of caution, Dr. Jim Sheedy, Director of Optometric Research at Pacific College of Optometry's Vision Performance Institute told Gizmodo.
"I don't see any particular reason why smart glasses would be especially harmful to children. The manufacturer warning about usage by children is given out of caution and from a position of legal prudence. As smart glasses become more commonly used, as I expect they will, we will all become more comfortable with advocating their usage by children."
So probably okay for kids, but what about the rest of us? We already stare at laptops and phones and tablets all day long, which isn't exactly ideal. You've probably experienced eye ache, dry eyes, and other common symptoms of discomfort. But Google Glass is a different use case. While we're married to our computers for hours a day, Google Glass was designed to spend less time in action. Maybe you're always wearing Glass, but you only use it when you need it, whether you're just responding to a message or listening to Glass tell you to take a right at the next street. There's not a display constantly running in front of your retinas, though. In fact, even if you did use Glass continuously, you'd only get about a full hour of battery life.
Experts aren't particularly concerned. Sheedy said he doesn't foresee any degenerative risks stemming from wearing the glasses and he doesn't see any reason that they would cause any damage to your eye balls.
Glass has some built-in limitations, that, intentional or not, actively limit eye strain. For example, video records in 10-second snippets by default. And you can write a text message just by telling Glass what to say, rather than having to stare at a screen. From that standpoint, your eyes might prefer that you text on Glass rather than your smartphone's LCD. Sure, donning Google Glass might make you look like a cyborg, but it was engineered to get tech out of the way. It's understandably difficult to think of it that way when you're, you know, wearing a computer smack on your face?or looking at someone else who is. But that's another topic
As far as any real vision problems go, Sheedy says the potential risk posed has more to do with the eye's shift from different visual fields of reality. When you're moving through space, you have certain receptors that tell your brain where you're situated. But when you're given some sort of stimulation?a map flashing before their eyes, for example?the brain gets confused, and that can cause symptoms like dizziness, or in the most extreme cases, nausea, which Sheedy has seen in his the Vision Lab's studies on 3D.
But the spatial recognition problems aren't something most people experience. In a recent Q&A with Google, Harvard ophthalmology professor Dr. Eli Peli says these problems are probably minimal.
"Some people's eyes take a bit longer to adjust to these systems," he said. "That's to be expected. Theories about potentially serious consequences like confusion or disorientation were raised in the media and had echoes in the literature in the 1990s, but they were associated with virtual reality type displays that completely enclosed the viewer."
A Google spokesperson told us in a statement:
"We've studied design comfort and safety very closely, and we haven't found cause for concern. It's something we'll continue to watch carefully. We have been working with ophthalmologists throughout our development process."
Of course, it's only natural that Google's outlook on this is all going to be positive. They're the ones selling the $1,500 Star Trek shades. And for most of us, this is all still very hypothetical; right now Glass remains in the hands of a very few beta-testing Explorers. But if and when Glass does go mainstream, you shouldn't worry one bit about your eyes. Which is just as well; there are enough cost and privacy concerns
Source: http://gizmodo.com/is-google-glass-bad-for-your-eyes-484466332
moses tulsa shooting doug fister the perfect storm mickelson how to tie a tie sweet potato recipes
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)