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Thank heavens for the Internet; it’s put the surprise back in October Surprise.

Here is the latest big-picture conspiracy theory, which has been gathering strength on the blogosphere the way a hurricane feeds on Caribbean waters: It is widely believed, both online and, increasingly, offline, that the Bush administration intends to declare martial law and postpone next month’s elections. To prevent Barack Obama’s inevitable ascension to the Oval Office, obviously.

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This theory/rumor/delusion dates back almost a year and a half, with the appearance on the White House website of National Security Presidential Directive 51, which outlined a policy for “continuity of government” in the event of a national emergency. Such emergency is defined as “any incident . . . that results in extraordinary levels of mass casualties, damage, or disruption severely affecting the US population, infrastructure, environment, economy, or government functions.”

White House spokesman Scott Stanzel says the new directive supplants a Cold War-era emergency memorandum that is no longer valid in the post-9/11 world, with the country at risk of a “no-notice terrorist attack.” But on websites with names such as justanothercoverup.com and abovetopsecret.com, the public document – often described as “secret” – was read quite differently. “FEMA Official States Bush Is Planning to Implement Martial Law,” is a headline from justanothercoverup. “Pelosi Declared Martial Law Last Night,” was a September headline from abovetopsecret.

Like a much-awaited Messiah (I am channeling the famous sociological text “When Prophecy Fails”), the date of the martial law takeover keeps moving forward. This spring it was to coincide with the bombing of Iran, this summer with the devastation wrought by Hurricane Ike. In the minds of conspiracy theorists, the current economic crisis seems like a propitious moment for the suspension of the November election.

The martial law paranoia has an engaging adjunct: the “FEMA coffins” story. If you Google those words, you will find pictures, videos, and reams of text explaining that the Federal Emergency Management Agency has stockpiled 30,000 – or is it 50,000? – coffins (or are they coffin liners? or . . . boxes?) in anticipation of a vast civil disturbance, presumably triggered by the imposition of martial law. “We do not have FEMA coffins,” says spokeswoman Debbie Wing.

On the one hand you say, OK, this is Internet madness. On the other hand, you note that Ireland’s largest bookmaker, Paddy Power, is laying 20-1 odds that the American election will be postponed. When I first checked that site on Tuesday, the odds were 40-1.

We’ve seen this movie before, right? Writer Ron Rosenbaum remembers a 1972 story averring that Richard Nixon asked the RAND Corporation to study whether he could postpone that election, which he won, handily. University of California historian Kathryn Olmsted, author of the forthcoming “Real Enemies: Conspiracy Theories and American Democracy, World War I to 9/11” notes that Franklin Roosevelt’s many enemies were convinced that he would assume dictatorial powers and cancel the election of 1944, which he won handily.

[tags]election postponed, martial law imposed election, world police election[/tags]

It would strike terror into the hearts of most sane people but Australia’s newest tourist attraction involves coming face to face underwater with giant saltwater crocodiles.

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The newly-opened attraction, Crocosaurus Cove in Darwin, offers the chance to be lowered into a tank full of crocs, among them suspected man-eaters, wearing nothing more than a mask, snorkel and swimsuit or trunks.

The ‘Cage of Death’ is said to be “perfect for serious adrenalin junkies” who have perhaps become jaded with swimming with dolphins or cage diving among great white sharks.

The cage is hexagonal-shaped to stop the crocodiles from getting a grip on it with their fearsome teeth.

It enables tourists to come within a few feet of several ‘salties’ measuring more than 16ft long, some of the largest in captivity in the world.

A maximum of two tourists at a time climb into the purpose-built acrylic cage which is then lowered into one of four separate crocodile enclosures.

The cage stops just short of full immersion so that the visitors can still come up for air.

But they are free to dive down to the bottom of the 15ft-high enclosure, where the crocs are barely an arm’s length away.

The big crocs include Burt, the 15ft long star of the first Crocodile Dundee film, Chopper, who lost his front teeth in a vicious fight with a rival and Snowy, an albino crocodile which was trapped and removed from a river in the Northern Territory on suspicion of having killed and eaten a man.

Although the cage is meant to be croc-proof, visitors have to sign an indemnity form which warns of the risks of panic attacks, hyperventilation, nervous shock and even cardiac arrest which might occur on coming face to face with one of nature’s most deadly predators.

Before taking the plunge, nervous participants would do well to avoid talking to Crocosaurus Cove’s keepers, who claim that crocodiles have the most powerful bite force of any animal, stronger than lions, hyenas and great white sharks.

The jaws of a 15ft long saltie exert two tons of pressure – enough to punch through plate metal.

Crocosaurus Cove, in the centre of Darwin, is a three-storey attraction which boasts eight big adult crocs and 200 juveniles.

A large aquarium contains animals native to the waters of northern Australia, including turtles, stingrays and barramundi, a fish species popular with anglers.

Australia is home to an estimated 140,000 wild saltwater crocodiles, of which more than half are found in the Northern Territory.

This week the suspected remains of a British man, Arthur Brooker, 62, were found inside a crocodile after it was trapped by rangers in the Endeavour River of northern Queensland.

Mr Booker, who was originally from Scotland and served with Australian forces in the Vietnam War, vanished from the banks of the crocodile-infested river on the Cape York peninsula last week while checking pots used to catch crabs.
[tags]crocodile tank australia, crocosaurus cove pictures, crocosaurus australia info, tank crocodiles australia, up close crocodiles australia[/tags]
Source: Telegraph.co.uk

With the recent collapse of Iceland stock market, it may seem that they are trying to sell part of their country to gain money and use it to try and restore their economy. They have also asked Russia for money to help save their economy.

Iceland will provide the winning bidder with a habitable environment, Icelandic horses, and a unstable financial situation.

Venezuela’s government has shut all branches of restaurant chain McDonald’s for 48 hours, citing tax irregularities, officials have said.

The head of the country’s tax agency, Jose David Cabello, said the chain had inconsistencies in its accounts.

By this point, you should fully understand that “Dubai” and “world’s largest” go hand-in-hand, so it’s quite fitting that said city is receiving the planet’s most humongous LED screen. Designed by UAE development company Tameer Holding, the 33-story high display will reportedly be “embedded on an intended commercial tower in the Majan district of Dubailand,” where it will stand tall and blast out advertisements to onlookers some 1.5-kilometers away.

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Dubbed Podium, the building will also house 33 levels of “premium commercial office space, two floors dedicated to retail and four floors for parking.” There’s no word on when the project will be completed, but we don’t suspect Tameer will be dragging its feet in getting this up.

[tags]worlds largest led screen, led screen dubai, led dubai screen, new led dubai screen[/tags]

Picture this: you’re sat down for the Football World Cup final, or a long-awaited sequel to the “Sex and the City” movie and you’re watching all the action unfold in 3-D on your coffee table.

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It sounds a lot like a wacky dream, but don’t be surprised if within our lifetime you find yourself discarding your plasma and LCD sets in exchange for a holographic 3-D television that can put Cristiano Ronaldo in your living room or bring you face-to-face with life-sized versions of your gaming heroes.

The reason for renewed optimism in three-dimensional technology is a breakthrough in rewritable and erasable holographic systems made earlier this year by researchers at the University of Arizona.

Dr Nasser Peyghambarian, chair of photonics and lasers at the university’s Optical Sciences department, told CNN that scientists have broken a barrier by making the first updatable three-dimensional displays with memory.

“This is a prerequisite for any type of moving holographic technology. The way it works presently is not suitable for 3-D images,” he said.

The researchers produced displays that can be erased and rewritten in a matter of minutes.

To create television sets the images would need to be changing multiple times each second — but Peyghambarian is very optimistic this can happen.

He said the University of Arizona team, which is now ten-strong, has been working on advancing hologram technology since 1990 — so this is a major step forward. He believes that much of the difficulty in creating a holographic set has now been overcome.

“It took us a while to make that first breakthrough, but as soon as you have the first element of it working the rest often comes more rapidly,” he said. “What we are doing now is trying to make the model better. What we showed is just one color, what we are doing now is trying to use three colors. The original display was four inches by four inches and now we’re going for something at least as big as a computer screen.”

There are no more great barriers to overcome now, he said.

The breakthrough has made some long-time researchers of the technology believe that it could now come to fruition.

Tung H. Jeong, a retired physics professor at Lake Forest College outside Chicago who had studied holography since the 1960s told NJ.com; “When we start talking about erasable and rewritable holograms, we are moving toward the possibility of holographic TV … It has now been shown that physically, it’s possible.”

And what might these holographic televisions look like?

According to Peyghambarian, they could be constructed as a screen on the wall (like flat panel displays) that shows 3-D images, with all the image writing lasers behind the wall; or it could be like a horizontal panel on a table with holographic writing apparatus underneath.

So, if this project is realized, you really could have a football match on your coffee table, or horror-movie villains jumping out of your wall.

Peyghambarian is also optimistic that the technology could reach the market within five to ten years. He said progress towards a final product should be made much more quickly now that a rewriting method had been found.

However, it is fair to say not everyone is as positive about this prospect as Peyghambarian.

Justin Lawrence, a lecturer in Electronic Engineering at Bangor University in Wales, told CNN that small steps are being made on technology like 3-D holograms, but, he can’t see it being ready for the market in the next ten years.

“It’s one thing to demonstrate something in a lab but it’s another thing to be able to produce it cheaply and efficiently enough to distribute it to the mass market,” Lawrence said.

Yet, there are reasons to be optimistic that more resources will be channeled into developing this technology more quickly.

The Japanese Government is pushing huge financial and technical weight into the development of three-dimensional, virtual-reality television, and the country’s Communications Ministry is aiming at having such technology available by 2020.

Peyghambarian said there are no major sponsors of the technology at present, but as the breakthroughs continued, he hopes that will change.

Even if no major electronics company commit themselves, there is hope that backers could come from outside of the consumer electronics industry, he said.

“It could have some other applications. In training it’s useful to show people three-dimensional displays. Also it would be good to show things in 3-D for defense command and control and for surgery,” he said.
[tags]holographic television, three dimension holographic, 3-d television, realistic television[/tags]
Source:CNN.COM

Above you can see the first image taken by the GeoEye-1, Google’s very own satellite. They don’t own it outright – they share it with the American National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, which collects and analyses geographical data for national security purposes.

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It’s got a whoppingly good resolution – it can read car number plates from orbit, but reassuringly Google won’t have access to images that good. This is due to US governmental restrictions and the fact the Google is sharing the satellite.

Most low-down imagery on Google Maps is currently sourced from aerial and satellite photography – something that isn’t widely available in many areas across the globe. The new satellite will allow Google to spend less on buying up that sort of imagery, as well as increasing the resolution of more rural areas across the globe.

[tags]google new satellite, google satellite image, google high resolution satellite[/tags]
Source:Techdigest.tv

Markets tanked Thursday – with the Dow falling nearly 700 points during the session – as panicked investors dumped stocks across the board.

Bank lending remained tight as nervous institutions continued to hoard cash. Treasury prices fell, raising their corresponding yields. The dollar gained versus the euro and the yen. Oil, gas and gold prices fell.

WMR has learned from knowledgeable Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) sources that the Bush administration is putting the final touches on a plan that would see martial law declared in the United States with various scenarios anticipated as triggers. The triggers include a continuing economic collapse with massive social unrest, bank closures resulting in violence against financial institutions, and another fraudulent presidential election that would result in rioting in major cities and campuses around the country.

The days grow ever darker in Reykjavik. Gone is the almost eternal daylight, which washes across Iceland’s capital in the height of summer. A darkening gloom arrives earlier each day now. An icy wind blows in from the east. Darkness will be a constant presence here soon as winter sets in.