18 U.S. Code § 2441 - War crimes

(a) Offense.— Whoever, whether inside or outside the United States, commits a war crime, in any of the circumstances described in subsection (b), shall be fined under this title or imprisoned for life or any term of years, or both, and if death results to the victim, shall also be subject to the penalty of death.

A sergeant with the U.S. Army was sentenced today to 51 months in prison for accepting bribes from Afghan truck drivers at Forward Operating Base (FOB) Gardez in Afghanistan, in exchange for allowing the drivers to take thousands of gallons of fuel from the base for resale on the black market, announced Assistant Attorney General Leslie R. Caldwell of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division and U.S. Attorney Michael J. Moore of the Middle District of Georgia.

In connection with his guilty plea, Norris admitted that he conspired with other soldiers stationed at FOB Gardez to solicit and accept approximately $2,000 per day from local Afghan truck drivers in exchange for permitting the truck drivers to take thousands of gallons of fuel from the base. Norris admitted that he was personally paid a total of $100,000 over the course of the conspiracy.

NYPD vs Crime

I know it's a stretch -- but maybe if we don't make people feel like criminals, they won't feel that being a criminal is their only option. Now, I'm sure someone will reach back into the 80s and bring out that worn down belief that 'No one can Make you Feel anything - It is their choice to feel that way...' Bullshit. It's called Marketing, and it is a Multi Billion Dollar industry based on cutting edge technology with a razor wire grip on the human brain. Not only CAN I make you feel anyway I want to - I can do it whether you know I'm trying to or not -- with an accuracy rate of near perfection. And I guarantee you, that being stopped and frisked twice a week -- right out on the street in front of all your neighbors -- affects your emotions and beliefs about yourself.

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On the Use of Chloroform

It is perhaps unfortunate that James Y. Simpson stressed the ease with which chloroform could be used to produce unconsciousness without resort to specialised equipment [1]. The potential advantages were not lost on the criminal fraternity who were quick to attempt a variety of crimes including rape and robbery under its influence. Unlike the use of the cudgel, the garrotte and the pistol it was not a felony in English Law to administer chloroform to another unless the purpose was murder or abortion!.

As early as 1851 it was public knowledge that chloroform had been used for various criminal purposes as witnessed by a well-known cartoon in Punch magazine of that year [2].

Sandra Bland, A Different Perspective

UPDATE: The REPORT released is not from the Original Autopsy - but the one that was put out from the Second Autopsy done the following day -- On July 14th... not the 13th. So the Conclusions I reached in this post are false. Time lines will need to be addressed to the Original Autopsy which they have not released. Also, the Medical Examiners "Time of Death" continues not to be published.

Events that morning with Sandra Bland

Bland apparently refused a breakfast tray about 6:30 Monday morning, according to the Sheriff's Office.
When a guard checked on the prisoner a half-hour later, Bland reportedly said, "I'm fine," according to the Sheriff's Office.
At 8 a.m., Bland apparently asked to make a phone call from her cell, the Sheriff's Office said. There is no record of her making a call.
Bland was found at 9 a.m., hanging in her cell, according to the Sheriff's Office.

Get DNA on Amazon

Nanotechnology has helped gene therapy reach new heights, but not everyone is granted access to treatment. Defending the powerless has fallen into the hands of Alta Williams, the only known survivor of a full nanoCell organ transplant and host to the mysterious program D.N.A. Alta, able to change her genetic code at will, can fight those who take advantage of the Non-Generation – but at what cost?

This has me excited. I've heard off and on that Alex was working on this and just now saw it was release back on the 19th~ so, I'm missing out! I hate missing out!

So, here's the blurb she has on her site and I'm going to run off and get my copy. You should do that too. Hey, if you like Sci-Fi, this is going hit all the rivets right. Up to you. Here's the Link

Atrocity propaganda is a term referring to the spreading of deliberate fabrications or exaggerations about the crimes committed by an enemy, constituting a form of psychological warfare.

Similarly to propaganda, atrocity rumors detailing exaggerated or invented crimes perpetrated by enemies are also circulated to vilify the opposing side.

R-Sen. Bill Cassidy(LA), former D-Sen. Mary Landrieu and Reps. D-Cedric Richmond and R-Steve Scalise(LA) have sent letters on Taylor Energy's behalf since December 2014. The lawmakers pressed officials from the Justice Department, Interior Department and Coast Guard to meet with company representatives to discuss the company's proposed resolution, but their letters stopped short of explicitly endorsing the August 2013 proposal.
R-Sen. David Vitter also made a telephone call to request a meeting between company and government officials, but the Louisiana Republican didn't send a letter on Taylor Energy's behalf, according to a spokeswoman.

Using the murders of Navy and Marine Service men in a media ploy of Propaganda is probably the sickest thing the Republicans in Congress have done so far, and they have done some sick fricken stuff.

The tactic is called Self Evidence -- it is used in this case by making a point of lowering their flag, telling no one -- Knowing that the flag is NOT normally lowered in case like this -- and then having FOX News spread the word that Congress did but the White House didn't -- giving you the feeling that -- they should have.

Congress needs to be taken out and slapped publicly.

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Susceptible to Aggressive Persuasion - When and Why?

What are the main psychological forces that explain when and why we are likely to be persuaded by others? Here’s what the science shows:

In a recent article in the Harvard Business Review
(Persuasion Depends Mostly on the Audience, 6.2.15),
Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic, Professor of Business Psychology at University College London and a faculty member at Columbia University, explores how persuasion is emotional first and rational second. Effective persuasion, he tells us, highlights the irrationality of human thinking; “we may be living in a data-driven world, but that does not make people more logical.”

Get inspired by the spirit of past decades and transport your designs back in time with this compilation of retro fonts that will cost you nothing!

Here is a great selection of free fonts in vintage or retro styles. The aim of a retro design is to transport the audience to the past, so it's important to choose typography that reflects the era that you're representing. There are hundreds of free typeface collections available online, ranging from the hip and happening to the cheap and cheesy. We've selected our favourite ones so you don't have to spend time searching - here are some awesome zero-cost designs...

So, let's look at some Noir - Retro Fonts

When was the last time you thought about how you influence others — how you change minds, shape opinions, move others to act? Have you thought about it at all? Perhaps you have been under the impression that Influence is not a skill?

The ability to influence is one of the essential skills for leaders at all levels. It’s more art than science, and it can be tough to get your arms around. But the bottom line is that influence matters. And as we continue to morph (at breakneck speed) into an interconnected, interdependent, increasingly global workplace, it will matter more.

What's the best way to get laid?

Advertising is a force that makes it possible to sell more merchandise due to its persuasive nature. As a tool of marketing communication, advertising is the structured and composed, non-personal communication of information. It is usually paid for and usually persuasive in nature. The language of persuasion is employed for successful advertising campaign thereby, boosting patronage of idea, product or service.

Advertising has been vigorously attacked on the ground that it is unnecessary and wasteful and that through it, people are induced to buy worthless products. It is further argued by the objectors that much advertising is misleading and untruthful.

MOST STATES HAVE CONSUMER PROTECTION LAWS, which protect their citizens against fraud, falsehoods and scams. Such laws in action say that there are expectations inherent in products, which any reasonable person would regard as expected to exist, and to function without explicit claim by the seller, for which the seller is liable.

Most of the time you will find your state's consumer protections in the same areas as statutes regarding contracts, and agreements

For the second time in a decade, the believability ratings for major news organizations have suffered broad-based declines. In the new survey, positive believability ratings have fallen significantly for nine of 13 news organizations tested. This follows a similar downturn in positive believability ratings that occurred between 2002 and 2004.

The falloff in credibility affects news organizations in most sectors: national newspapers, such as the New York Times and USA Today, all three cable news outlets, as well as the broadcast TV networks and NPR.

Remember your childhood visit to Disney World?

Cinderella's castle glistening, the cartoon characters laughing, grouping for photos, the many rides with their height requirements, the smells of freshly cooked food, and Bugs Bunny shaking your hand? As you bring that experience to mind, you may have the feeling you are reliving it, seeing your childhood pass through your mind's eye, much like reviewing a videotape.

But the way human memory works is very different from that of a video tape recorder—our memories are actually reconstructions of bits and pieces of information we have obtained over time.

Sometimes those reconstructions are very similar to what we experienced; other times we are "tricked" and remember things differently than how they actually happened.

In Fact, Most of what you recall didn't happen.

Emotions are a set of physiological and psychological changes within the body and brain which come as a response to external, situational stimuli (Damasio, 1994; Lazarus, 1991; LeDoux, 1996; Marcus, 2002; Marcus, Neuman, & MacKuen, 2000).

The impact of emotions on electoral behaviour has been shown in a number of studies (Abelson, Kinder, Peters, & Fiske, 1982; Conover & Feldman, 1986; Kinder & Sears, 1985; Simon, 1985), but a systematic theory of the political relevance of emotion has only recently been formulated by George Marcus and colleagues; it is referred to as the Theory of Affective Intelligence (1993, 2000). The theory is based on the neuropsychological approach to emotions developed by Damasio (1994) and LeDoux (1996).

The disposition system is responsible for “managing reliance on habits and previously learned strategies” (Marcus, 2002, p. 46). Relying on sensory information, it performs a comparison: is the plan going as usual? If it is the habit is continued and the emotional reaction is enthusiasm.

Enthusiasm has been shown to stimulate the increase of the turnout intention.

When you want to quit playing around with sticks and balls, and get into the serious areas of Aggressive Persuasion, this is the area you start in.

If we're all in sales, as the old saying goes, then we're all in the persuasion business. And this is particularly true for entrepreneurs. Whether you're asking investors to hand over their money, potential customers to try your product, or employees to give their best, much of your day is probably spent persuading people. So how do you do it well?

Perception of color stimuli is found to trigger corresponding emotional and behavioral responses within human beings including certain psychological, physical, biological and metabolic reactions (Hettiarachchi & De Silva, 2012). Based on some studies such as Kaya and Epps (2004), color can produce emotional arousing effect but the range of arousal varies depending on the emotional element that is being attached with specific type of color (cited in Mustafar & Dzulkifli, 2011).

Americans were once notorious in their cynical views about politicians, and for good reasons. We complain that they all lie to us to get elected. Most politicians were too smart to tell outright lies. They may have exaggerated or distort the truth or used a quote out of context in order to mislead you without actually lying

Smart politicians made sure there was some small truth behind what they said so they couldn’t be nailed for lying to us. It use to be rare for a politician to tell an outright lie – not so much any more.

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Pass the Puffers Man...

You think they's so Smart,

But really these are the bad boys of the Oceans

The dolphins' expert, deliberate handling of the terrorized puffer fish implies that this is not their first time at the hallucinogenic rodeo

A dolphin with its drug of choice. (John Downer Productions)

Humans aren't the only creatures that suffer from substance abuse problems. Horses eat hallucinogenic weeds, elephants get drunk on overripe fruit and big horn sheep love narcotic lichen. Monkeys' attraction to sugar-rich and ethanol-containing fruit, in fact, may explain our own attraction to alcohol, some researchers think.

Now, dolphins may join that list. Footage from a new BBC documentary series, "Spy in the Pod," reveals what appears to be dolphins getting high off of pufferfish. Pufferfish produce a potent defensive chemical, which they eject when threatened. In small enough doses, however, the toxin seems to induce "a trance-like state" in dolphins that come into contact with it, the Daily News reports:

The dolphins were filmed gently playing with the puffer, passing it between each other for 20 to 30 minutes at a time, unlike the fish they had caught as prey which were swiftly torn apart.
Zoologist and series producer Rob Pilley said that it was the first time dolphins had been filmed behaving this way.

At one point the dolphins are seen floating just underneath the water's surface, apparently mesmerised by their own reflections.

The dolphins' expert, deliberate handling of the terrorized puffer fish, Pilley told the Daily News, implies that this is not their first time at the hallucinogenic rodeo.

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The Checklist of Character

What we got here is a infograph of suggested check points for your MC and the Protagonist. I read through these and thought on the surface they looked like a good idea. Most of them are. What I balk at myself is the full list - the shear volume of them.

I haven't used this checklist against any of my own novels -- I'm sure they all fall short at some point. However - it is a comprehensive list of points, which will improve the character area of a novel. I tend to write characters who are Not extraordinary in some way, as the first point suggests. the idea of 'regular people' being pitched against extraordinary events is more appealing and normal people are all that normal.

Much like construction and manufacturing work-flows, waterfall methodology is a sequential design process. This means that as each of the eight stages (conception, initiation, analysis, design, construction, testing, implementation, and maintenance) are completed, the developers move on to the next step.

Agile came about as a “solution” to the disadvantages of the waterfall methodology. Instead of a sequential design process, the Agile methodology follows an incremental approach. Developers start off with a simplistic project design, and then begin to work on small modules. The work on these modules is done in weekly or monthly sprints, and at the end of each sprint, project priorities are evaluated and tests are run.

Agile methodologies (e.g. Scrum, XP, Kanban, Crystal etc) are often more difficult to understand than linear, sequential ones – at least initially.
In waterfall Solution designers often aren’t able to foresee problems that will arise out of the implementation of their designs.

25 brainstorming techniques you can use to break out of the usual crap and get some life into the plot of your story.

Some Basics of the Book Process

Self publishing

Just off the top, Identifying the "Ideal" reader is NEVER a good idea before you finish your novel. In fact -- it is just about guaranteed that you won't ever finish your novel if you start in that manner.

Other Than being So basic as to be useless, this looks legit. huh?

Beta-Readers aren't listed in that graphic, and I highly recommend using at least three after your second edit.

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How Important is an
Emotional Connection

Are you old enough to remember Baby Jessica?

When you write without an emotional connection, it comes across like News.

Eighteen people died when a train collided with a stalled bus on the tracks just outside of Hong Kong this morning. The reported counts of injured passengers continue to rise. Last report was over 100 and many of those are in critical condition with life threatening injuries. Volunteers are searching the wreckage. Officials working on the scene are handling this catastrophe with expertise, but have admitted they expect the death toll to rise….

I am emotionally affected when I read stories like this one, but not connected. First of all, I don’t know any of the victims. That sounds cold, I agree, but we react stronger to events when we personally know people who are involved.^{^[i]}I also don’t have any names, and that is another detail we react to. People we are personally concerned about, have names.^{^[ii]}

PROPAGANDA IS EFFECTIVE BECAUSE it works on an emotional level. Most of our decisions are based on a combination between the perceived results of previous experience, the emotions we experience regarding the current situation, and logical analysis of the problem. Inside that mess is also perceived estimations of our skills, probable success, and evaluation of the forces and elements against us, if any.

What motivates us is not logic however, but emotion.

The propagandist uses symbols, attitudes and morals that are embedded in the target audience to control and limit the emotional state of his target. This is desirable because the emotional response is deep, powerful, long-lasting -- and not controlled by rational awareness or evaluation of the situation. An intellectual, rational response is not desired and is not sought.

There is a novel, one of my favorites by Philip K. Dick, We Will Remember It for you Wholesale, which posed a question -- If you remember spending six weeks as a Billionaire touring Europe and socializing among the world trenders. If it is a pure memory, wired into your matrix, did it happen? Did it? -- if it did, if the vacation could be authored, crafted by experienced and expert travelers, and tailored to your preferences and desires, would not that experience (which you could acquire in only a few hours, rather than six weeks) be more appealing than real travel to foreign lands with its reality of bungles and lost luggage and missing reservations, menacing dark streets, and weird toilet paper in the bathroom?

A while back I wrote up a post about the Malable Variance of Time, where I showed how inaccurate our minds can be on a given topic which -- for the most part-- has been exactly the same from the day we were born. We have a ton of awareness experience with time, and it would seem on the surface that we should be pretty good at guessing how long we have been waiting for an event to occur. But we're not. We suck at recalling amounts of time something has been going ont, or how long we have been waiting on it to happen, or how long it has been since it happened last.

In this post we are going to look at how easy it is for our minds to tell us that what we are eating is just fine, and that simply putting a beer into a short round mug, instead of a tall thin mug wouldn't possibly be a factor in consuming nearly twice as much as we think we did. That would be silly. Right? --- At least you can be of comfort in knowing that I'm just as suseptable to this as you are. Because Knowing about it won't stop it from happening to you.

Want to see a grown writer roll his eyes into the back of his head, stick his fingers into his ears and start chanting "na na na na na" like a four-year-old? Easy, just start talking about structure. Things like outlines and guidelines and scene structure and anything that smacks of planning and non-creative activity that will stifle the flow of electric wow-ness.

This paradigm of belief is based on the misconception and confusion regarding creativity vs creation. Creativity is a force, an energy, and a chaos, which if guided through a filter of brainstorming often results in plots, ideas, characters and dramatic paradigms for a story. Creation, is the process of structure applied to the wild energies.

2001 in Afghanistan

October 7: (9 p.m. local time): the United States, supported by Britain, begins its attack on Afghanistan, launching bombs and cruise missiles against Taliban military and communications facilities and suspected terrorist training camps. Kabul, Kandahar, and Herat were hit.
October 9: A cruise missile kills four U.N. demining employees and injured four others in a building several miles east of Kabul.
October 26: Abdul Haq killed.
November 6 - Zari, Keshendeh and Aq-Kupruk fall to the Northern Alliance¹
November 8 - Pakistan, being the only nation that still had diplomatic ties to the Taliban, asked Afghanistan's rulers to close their consulate in the city of Karachi.
November 9: Battle of Mazari Sharif.
November 10 - The Taliban and Northern Alliance fighters both claimed that the strategic northern Afghan city of Mazari Sharif was taken by Northern Alliance fighters.
November 11: Journalists Pierre Billaud, Johanne Sutton, and Volker Handloik are ambushed and killed.
November 12 - Taliban forces abandon Kabul ahead of advancing Northern Alliance troops.

2001 uprising in Herat.

It's been a long time since I wrote anything on the technique and usage of propaganda. So let's drop down and talk about a common technique used in our media today which has been a standard due to its reliability.

The Self-Evidence Technique has the longest list of methods for use, it is also quite possibly the oldest technique in recorded history, dating back to Aristotle. A list of the commonly known methods for this technique are posted on a page here

In this article the questions and counter view points are to lead you through the methods of countering this technique and understanding the power it has to stop the victim from questioning facts which are likely not presented in clear terms, and often, while the article using this technique may not 'lie', the context and composition doesn't presentt the information in true form either.So whether you agree with the argument or question -- keep in mind that those are the points, not the simply there to be argumentative.

So, what is this technique, and how is it being used by our Government and current Media today?

Sometimes news articles assume US policy statements are true and treat such statements as matters of fact rather than political argument. We can call this self-evidence, as in "We hold these truths to be self -evident."

Favorite Wonder Woman Fight

What really throws Wonder Woman as a serious warrior, is that damn name. Who thought up that name anyway? Believe it or not that was psychologist and writer William Moulton Marston.

Her real name is Princess Diana of Themyscira. When outside her homeland, she is sometimes known by the secret identity Diana Prince. She is gifted with a wide range of superhuman powers and superior combat and battle skills. She possesses an arsenal of weapons, including the Lasso of Truth, a pair of indestructible bracelets, a tiara which serves as a projectile, and, in some stories, an invisible airplane, Mental Radio, and Purple Ray that could heal otherwise lethal injuries. We don't see much with the Mental Radio and Purple Ray these days and I'm just fine with that.

The best fight scene ever was Diana deciding that she needed to slap Super Man around a bit.

Why Does Iran Not Like Us Much?

A common myth is that America is pro-democracy. We're not. Far from it in fact. America is, was and will likely be (until long after my life on this world) -- pro America. If we can do it under the guise of promoting Democracy then we will, because that is a much easier propaganda campaign to run and husband than a non-democracy propaganda campaign. But if it comes down to a choice between Democracy and money, money is going to win every time. Just ask Iran.

Ever wonder who the Shah of Iran was, and how he got into power, and why when they finally got his ass out of office, Iran didn't want to talk to us anymore?

After the United States helped chase out the Taliban government in Afghanistan in 2001, it came across a legacy of its earlier intervention in the region. As The Washington Post reported in 2002, the United States had spent millions of dollars beginning in the 1980s to produce and disseminate anti-Soviet textbooks for Afghan schoolchildren. The books encouraged a jihadist outlook, which was useful propaganda at the time for a Washington driven by the imperatives of the Cold War.
"The primers, which were filled with talk of jihad and featured drawings of guns, bullets, soldiers and mines, have served since then as the Afghan school system's core curriculum,"