Biographer predicts News Corp. will oust Murdochs within 60 days

Rupert Murdoch's biographer and Vanity Fair scribe Michael Wolff predicts that both Rupert Murdoch and his son James will be out of power at News Corp within sixty days, according to a Retuers report.

Wolff says that the recent phone-hacking and police bribery scandals that have roiled the company put the family's dominance at the company in doubt and may bring it entirely to an end. "To restore credibility and to restore trust to this company," he said, "the newspapers have to go and the Murdochs have to go."

He claims that the Murdoch name is now "toxic" and that if the company retains members of the Australian media dynasty at its helm, News Corp will face "a lifetime of litigation."

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Higgs boson particle near discovery

Scientists at the European Organisation for Nuclear Research (Cern) expect to discover – or disprove - the existence of a key particle in Big Bang theory by 2012.

Cern director Rolf Heuer says the latest findings from the world's most powerful particle accelerator, the Large Hadron Collider, have been enough to convince the centre that progress is being made in their hunt for the most sought-after of particles – the Higgs boson.

"I would say we can settle the question, the Shakespearean question - 'to be or not to be' - end of next year," he told reporters at a major conference in Grenoble, France on Monday attended by around 700 leading particle physicists.

Sometimes referred to as the “God particle”, the Higgs boson is the linchpin of the Standard Model of particle physics theory on the Big Bang. It is believed to give mass to other objects and creatures in the universe.

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Terrafugia Transition brings flying cars one step closer to reality

It’s the year 2011, and we aren’t commuting in our personal flying cars, which means we are at least 11 years behind everyone’s prediction. Well Terrafugia is trying to change that with a flying car called the Transition. The Transition is basically a plane that folds up into a car-sized vehicle, which allows you to drive and fly in the same vehicle.

The Transition has been in development for quite some time now, but it has been lacking one key feature: legality. Today’s announcement from Terrafugia states that the company has received exemption from certain National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) laws. The two exemptions focus on the tires and the windshield of the Transition. The NHTSA requires that all vehicles that travel on a highway have a windshield that is made out of laminated safety glass, but in order to keep the weight low the Transition needs a polycarbonate windshield. The company claims that not only would a glass windshield be too heavy, but it could also crack and cause a loss of visibility while flying. The Transition’s tires also received an exemption, even though they are highway-rated for speed and weight, but they do not fit into the NHTSA’s definition of “multi-purpose” tires.

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Genetic revolution: Human Genome Project finally offers help against diseases

When the long-awaited Human Genome Project succeeded in 2003, mapping all the DNA, genes and chromosomes that operate the human body, it was hailed as a medical miracle, compared in scientific significance to the Apollo moon landings.

But the glow quickly faded. Progress has been slower and setbacks greater than expected, prompting some to say the whole idea is overblown, and research dollars could be better spent on other ways of fighting disease.

That’s about to change.

Researchers in South Florida and across the nation now are working on advances they say could soon create an explosion of new ways to prevent, detect, treat and someday even cure scores of intractable diseases.

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Iceland's Citizens Are Writing Its New Constitution Online

In the 18th century, if you wanted to draft a democratic constitution you crowded a handful of men into a room and hashed out the finer points of policy and philosophy until you had a document that was declared the law of the land. Same for the 19th and 20th centuries. But nowadays, the Internet--that great democratizer--is bringing a new kind of power to the people. Icelandic authorities overhauling that county’s constitution post-financial meltdown is tapping the power of the Web to allow citizens to give their two cents on how a new governing document should look.

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To Keep Innovating, We Need to Rethink the CPU

And even beyond the preservation of Moore's Law or market relevance, the need for companies pushing CPU design forward is important for the future of science. Take for example, this New Yorker piece on quantum computing and the leading mind behind it, David Deutsch. It's big idea is that if we build a working quantum computer, it could theoretically process more numbers than there are believed particles in the universe.

What's that good for? It could prime factorize absurdly large numbers in a matter of seconds. And it could prove the validity the Many Worlds Interpretation. The theory essentially supposes that there is a different universe for every possible permutation of anything in the universe. One scientist, Peter Shor, developed an algorithm for quantum computers that would potentially support this theory, if we ever had a quantum computer powerful enough to run it on.

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Sending Humans to Mars

SpaceX will send humans to Mars within 10 to 20 years, according to an interview with its CEO in the Wall Street Journal. Elon Musk says his company will send people to space within three years, and he wants to colonize other planets next.

“I want SpaceX to help make life multi-planetary,” he said. “We’re going all the way to Mars, I think. Best case, 10 years, worst case, 15 to 20 years.”

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SpaceX sets launch date for world's most powerful rocket

SpaceX, the American space transport company founded by PayPal and Tesla Motors co-founder Elon Musk that is responsible for the Dragon space capsule and Falcon 1 and Falcon 9 rockets, has announced a late 2013 or 2014 launch date for the world’s most powerful rocket, the Falcon Heavy. Overshadowed by only the Saturn V moon rocket that was decommissioned after the Apollo program, the Falcon Heavy will be able to carry payloads of 53 metric tons (117,000 pounds or 53,070 kg) into orbit, which is more than the maximum take-off weight of a Boeing 737-200 loaded with 136 passengers, luggage and fuel.

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Richard Branson's extreme submarine

CNN interview here.

Their submersible, designed by Graham Hawkes, is one of the more interesting parts of the journey. Shaped more like a dolphin than a traditional submarine, the Virgin Oceanic craft has an operating depth of 37,000 feet--about seven miles--which means it has to be able to withstand outrageous pressure, 1,500 times that of an airplane. Constructed of carbon fiber and titanium (with a quartz dome), the craft is currently undergoing tests--at that depth, the smallest crack would result in certain death for the pilots, both due to the immense pressure (13 million pounds) and the simple fact that there exist no other vehicles capable of a rescue mission. The sub travels at a maximum of three knots, and can dive at 350 feet per minute, so a dive to the bottom of the Mariana trench and back would take around five hours.

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Americans of all political stripes are in the throes of a “radical democratic awakening,”

GRITtv: Dennis Kucinich: What Is Economic Democracy?

After Earth: Why, Where, How, and When We Might Leave Our Home Planet

Earth won’t always be fit for occupation. We know that in two billion years or so, an expanding sun will boil away our oceans, leaving our home in the universe uninhabitable—unless, that is, we haven’t already been wiped out by the Andromeda galaxy, which is on a multibillion-year collision course with our Milky Way. Moreover, at least a third of the thousand mile-wide asteroids that hurtle across our orbital path will eventually crash into us, at a rate of about one every 300,000 years.

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Kucinich introduces resolution to end war

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- U.S. Representatives Dennis Kucinich (D-OH), Walter Jones (R-NC) and eight others today introduced a bipartisan, privileged resolution which, if enacted, would require President Barack Obama to withdraw all U.S. Armed Forces from Afghanistan by the end of 2011.

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A post shows how corporate media lies to Americans

Via Crooks and Liars

Jack Cafferty Calls Social Security a 'Social Welfare Program'

You know, I used to have some respect for Jack Cafferty even though I knew back then that we were on primarily opposite ends of the political spectrum because he spoke out against the Bush administration when that wasn't necessarily the most popular thing for a conservative to be doing, but he just lost me completely here. Calling Social Security a "welfare program" is just shameless.

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My comment

Whether you call Social Security welfare or entitlements, as always the Corporate Monopoly Media treats Americans like idiots. It's time to evolve out of a primitive representative republic and into a real Citizen's Democracy with real time Internet based democratic Controls.

Solidarity from coast to coast

IN DOZENS of state capitals and cities across the country, workers from both the private and public sector, political activists, students and community members organized rallies to demonstrate their support for the struggle against Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker and his union-busting attack.

The outpourings of support--from Los Angeles to New York City, and from Boise, Idaho, to Miami--showed how fed up people are around the country with the politicians' pro-corporate, anti-worker agenda, and how much they sense the importance of the fight in Wisconsin.

Read more here

U.S. needs its own democracy movement

The Egyptians want to establish a viable democracy, and that’s a long, hard road. Americans are in the mind-bogglingly self-destructive process of letting a real democracy slip away.

I had lunch with the historian Howard Zinn just a few weeks before he died in January 2010. He was chagrined about the state of affairs in the U.S. but not at all daunted. “If there is going to be change,” he said, “real change, it will have to work its way from the bottom up, from the people themselves.”

I thought of that as I watched the coverage of the ecstatic celebrations in the streets of Cairo.

Read full piece here

Egypt, Jordan, and the Arab world's 'watershed' moment

(CNN) -- The protests that have spread through parts of the Arab world led to dramatic change in another country Tuesday, as Jordan's king dismissed his government.

King Abdullah II made the decision following protests in recent weeks in which several thousand people demanded economic and political reforms.

Experts on the region said Tuesday Abdullah's decision was aimed at warding off larger-scale demonstrations in the wake of the huge protests in Tunisia and Egypt. The Tunisia protests, which began the movement, toppled that country's government. In Egypt, President Hosni Mubarak has fired his Cabinet, but protesters in massive demonstrations continue to call for his ouster.

The protests -- which have also caught on to various extents in Algeria, Yemen, and Sudan -- have proved to be "a real watershed event for the Arab world," said Blake Hounshell, managing editor of Foreign Policy magazine. "It's really unprecedented."

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Sci-Fi To Fact: Planet Hunters Find Worlds Like Earth

As recently as 20 years ago, no one knew if planets outside our solar system existed. But now we know of more than 500. The biggest astronomy headlines in 2010 came from the quest for planets far outside our solar system that are similar to Earth.

Here

Archive Gallery: PopSci's Most Fantastic Space Colonies

Let's face it, sometime within the next century or so, overpopulation, the exhaustion of natural resources, an alien invasion -- or perhaps the optimistic spirit of adventure -- will force us to leave Earth in search of a new habitat. Earlier this week, NASA and DARPA announced a preliminary "Hundred-Year Starship" program for sending pioneers on permanent missions to Mars. To many, relocation from Earth sounds like a glorified exile, but some retro-futuristic eye candy from the Popular Science archives will surely change their minds.

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So called "Progressives" don't get it

The idiots at Crooks and Liars claim to hate republicans and conservatives, yet day after day they refer to the rethugs as the GOP! I could scream, this is beltway talk and it goes against everything they claim to stand for as a beltway critics. I will never use this offensive term because I don't kiss anyone's ass and do not believe they are the grand ole party, to say that as a left leaning person is stupid, always was, always will be. Will people wisen up? I don't have much hope for this ass kissing nation brainwashed by an omnipresent, greedy, relentless corporate media that represents the rich over everyone else. If a site, any site, that claims to be for the people, unbiased, and independent uses the Village line g.o.p., that instantly sends up a red flag that it is lying and is indeed speaking by and for the D.C. beltway village in concern troll fashion.

Democracy has been perverted by capitalism.

Democracy in practice only benefits the upper class, the lower class is not ignorant to their status and knowingly participates in their own subjugation. It's really quite remarkable, and even with this knowledge the middle and working classes don't seek a better life alternative. History will show how the idea of being fair, democracy, was intentionally used by the rich unfairly for decades until a point of enlightenment for society. Unfortunately we are still in the murky age of deception, enlightenment is within reach as the stinking rich reach with ever more greed which will no doubt backfire on them altering democracy, society, and equality for the better. Democracy needs to work for everyone, for this to work right capitalism must be phased out.

92% of Americans prefer Swedish style Democracy

The respondents were presented with unlabeled pie charts representing the wealth distributions of the U.S., where the richest 20 percent controlled about 84 percent of wealth, and Sweden, where the top 20 percent only controlled 36 percent of wealth. Without knowing which country they were picking, 92 percent of respondents said they'd rather live in a country with Sweden's wealth distribution.

As the new Forbes billionaires list, released Wednesday, testifies, the richest Americans are getting richer, even as the country as a whole gets poorer. After 2005 income inequality continued to balloon.

READ the study:

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The Progressive Politics of Happiness

Here of some examples of the kind of policies we should promote:

Paid family leave. Only the United States, Swaziland, Liberia and Papua New Guinea don’t guarantee at least paid maternity leave. Most wealthy countries also offer paid leave for fathers.

Paid sick days. Only a handful of desperately poor countries and the United States, don’t guaranteed paid leave when you’re sick. 86 percent of food service workers get no paid sick days and they come to work sick and get you sick—they can be fired if they don’t.

Paid vacation time. Only the United States, Guyana, Suriname, Nepal and Burma don’t guarantee at least some paid vacation time. Every European gets at least four weeks off with pay a year. We should support the Paid Vacation Act of 2009, sponsored in Congress by a true progressive, Representative Alan Grayson of Florida. It’s a very modest proposal, but a step in the right direction.

Here’s another idea: the choice of shorter work-time. In the Netherlands and some other European countries, workers have a legal right to reduce their hours without losing their jobs. They keep the same hourly pay, pro-rated benefits and full health care. This is an enormous expansion of personal freedom—the right to choose time over money, to select shorter hours of work without losing one’s livelihood.

Each of these policy reforms is essential to good health. Indeed, our lack of these rights is part of the reason Americans have the worst health in the industrial world, despite paying twice as much as everyone else does for healthcare. We are almost twice as likely to suffer chronic illness in old age as Europeans are, for example. Workplace stress in America is a killer, the “new tobacco” in the words of one cardiologist.

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Fake Mars Mission: 'Real World' Meets Space Travel

A fake mission to Mars is getting under way at a research institute in Moscow, where six men will spend the next year and a half inside a mock spaceship.

The international "crew" includes two men from Europe, one from China and three from Russia. They'll spend the next 520 days living inside just a few bus-sized modules at Russia's Institute for Biomedical Problems.

The team will have to put up with endless astronaut food, the grind of exercise and maintenance work, science experiments, fake emergencies — plus extreme isolation from the outside world.

"We get to see what happens to them over the course of an awful long time, and that's not been done before," says Nick Kanas, a psychiatrist at the University of California, San Francisco who worked on a 105-day pilot study leading up to this new Mars simulation.

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No Longer a fan of Rachel Maddow!

Tonight I tuned into her show, which I rarely do anymore since she became a mouthpiece for republican jerks using her to spread their talking points. Tonight was the last straw. There is a ridiculously stupid saying in liberal blog land, iokiyr, which mean these weak kneed "liberals" and "progressives" believe the thugs can do as they please with impunity. Retarded, that's putting it mildly. How can you be an opposition party and believe such a counterproductive thing? To add insult to injury Maddow said, "iokiyr always and forever" I was boiling mad, and refuse to watch her show again. It's never okay, forever we must fight them, prove them wrong. Always. Sadly the transformation to corporate drone is now complete. Only Keith Olbermann still defends progressive values, although that is will no doubt change if MSNBC happens to read this post. Americans better wake up to the media monopolies who now brainwash them on all stations at all times, radio and the printed press are not better and sometimes much worse. God bless America and the independent thinkers that made her great.