Odd News

When I collect odd stories I put them in a folder marked miscellaneous. As the folder fills with odd news and tales I check it for interesting things I think you might be interested in. Well it was time to go to that folder again as it was getting full, so here are some of the odd things which have happened lately.

Some sites on the internet have been posting that Goldman-Sachs Head Peter Sutherland has said Europe should permit unlimited African immigration. Permitting unlimited immigration from any areas in the third world which have large populations will ultimately destroy the economy of a western country especially those small ones. I have to wonder if he did say this, what the purpose was.

Dr. Rupert Sheldrake asked the question what is a human being? Dr. Steven Hawking says, “I think the brain is essentially a computer and consciousness is like a computer program. It will cease to run when the computer is turned off.” Richard Dawkins calls human beings lumbering robots. Dr. Sheldrake is a biologist and author of many papers on the subject. He tells us that there is more than one view on what consciousness is. While some like Dr. Hawking have one view, a materialistic one which says it is the product of our brain, others have a different view that it might not even come from us. Would this mean when we die consciousness still exists? Maybe. He admits the brain is involved in consciousness, but says it may not be everything. If consciousness comes from inside the brain only then we don’t have free will, because our brain would force us to do things. The doctor tells us we can’t even prove all memory is stored in the brain. Therefore if our consciousness comes from outside the brain either partially or fully, then we may or may not be carrying out the orders of others depending on the setup.

The X-37B space plane is garnering a lot of interest about what it actually does and probably most of all, what its secret missions are all about. There is only one thing worse than the government keeping secrets from us and it is telling us they are carrying out a secret mission. What the heck is the point of that?

We all know Greece is in trouble, but according to an economic hit man, a guy who takes advantage of certain financial situations in companies and even countries, Greece has fallen victim to that kind of situation. Here is what he has to say about that. He said the IMF (International Monetary Fund) and the World Bank claim to be helping countries, but they pull a bait and switch on at least some of them. This causes these countries to be the victims of a crippling and unsustainable debt burden. When this happens the economic hit men come in and try to squeeze every drop of wealth from these places and this is what has happened to Greece.

Edward Snowden is the person who worked for the CIA and leaked classified documents. To most of the world outside of the United States he is a hero while to the US he is a traitor. Apple Co-founder Wozniak said Edward Snowden gave up his life for his country. History will be the judge of Edward Snowden and it would be interesting to see what he is thought of a hundred years from now.

The pentagon said we have a new security risk. No it is not terrorists, it is climate change. A lot of the Republicans in Washington have stated there is no global warming. If they really feel this way will they go against any attempts by the Department of Defense, which issued the warning, to try and do anything about the threat? The report from the Department of Defense states these problems will be exacerbated by, ”poverty, social tensions, environmental degradation, ineffectual leadership and weak political institutions that threaten stability in a number of countries.”

ZME Science ran an article stating Exxon had evidence of climate change since 1981. It states an email was found by one of their own scientists which blames Exxon, because it says they had data which showed this to be true in 1981. It goes on to say instead they chose to fund the deniers for the next 27 years. If this is true why did they do it? The answer is simple, they didn’t want to be shackled with regulations which might hurt their business.

Sometimes things happen which seem to be bizarre. This is what happened when an Italian company was hacked. The company develops hacking tools and supplies them to different governments. It turns out we are spending millions of dollars to buy this stuff from foreign companies. This doesn’t seem very safe to me, what do you think?

Since we have been able to examine DNA we have found out a lot. Now we are finding out there has been a battle going on for over 40,000,000 years between pathogens and primates. Scientists have examined the DNA of 21 species including humans and were surprised at these findings.

Most of us know elephants are smart. They exhibit a lot of human tendencies such as sorrow and worry. During the civil war in Angola they were slaughtered for food and ivory. After the fighting ended in 2002 almost all the elephants were gone. Other elephants came in from neighboring countries but millions of land mines existed. It took a little time and a few elephant lives, but they discovered how to identify land mines and then avoid them.