Robot Olympics Planned For 2020 Powered By Japans’ ‘Robot Revolution’ — video included
by Lucas Cort
Canadian Awareness Network
Aug 3, 2014
ROBOT OLYMPICS PLANNED FOR 2020 POWERED BY JAPAN’S ‘ROBOT REVOLUTION’
Written By: Jason Dorrier – Posted: 08/2/14 8:00 AM
Japan likes robots. And while some Americans raised on a confusing sci-fi diet of Star Wars, Terminator, and iRobot are perhaps a little wary of advanced AI and robotics—Japan simply can’t wait for the “robot revolution.”
In a recent tour of Japanese robotics firms, Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe declared his intention to create a government task force to study and propose strategies for tripling the size of Japan’s robotics industry to $24 billion.
And one more thing, Abe said, “In 2020, I would like to gather all of the world’s robots and aim to hold an Olympics where they compete in technical skills.”
While mere mortals compete in the 2020 summer Olympics in Tokyo—in a stadium somewhere nearby, the world’s most advanced robots may go head to head in events showcasing their considerable prowess (hopefully by then, right?).
Holding an all-robot competition is by no means a new idea. A number of competitions exist. These range from fun (RoboCup and RoboGames) to serious (the DARPA Robotics Challenge). And recently, a Swiss group announced they’ll host a 2016 Olympics of robotically enhanced humans called Cybathlon.
Incentivized competitions can lead to advancements. The Ansari X PRIZE or DARPA Grand Challenge in autonomous cars, for example, whipped up excitement, real improvements, and the teams competing went on to form more permanent projects.
Now, we have Virgin Galactic and Google’s self-driving cars.
Currently, the highest profile competition in robotics is the DARPA Robotics Challenge. The contest, whose first round took place in December, incentivizes teams to engineer useful, autonomous bots to be used in disaster zones. Tasks include climbing ladders, driving cars, using tools, and navigating uneven terrain.
But the current landscape in robotics is a mixed bag. To the untrained eye, the DRC’s bots may appear slow, clumsy, and at odds with viral videos of robots like Boston Dynamics’ bipedal Petman (in fatigues, Petman looks like Terminator in beta).
Don’t get me wrong, these robots are amazing. But beyond performing simple tasks (for humans) like balancing and walking, robots aren’t very autonomous or skilled outside the lab. And power is a perennial challenge.That said, while we’re still dreaming about owning C-3PO, it isn’t accurate to say that robotics hasn’t already had a significant impact. Industrial robots have been invading manufacturing plants for years, and as they’re becoming more and more intelligent and aware of their environments, they’re also becoming more ubiquitous.
Foxconn, China’s controversial maker of the iPhone (and many other industrial products), makes no bones about its plans to replace as many human workers as it can in the coming years. The firm recently said 10,000 of their homegrown Foxbots are set to begin work soon, and in the future, 30,000 more will come online annually.
And even absent Abe’s proclamation, Japan is already a mecca for advanced robotics engineering and robot culture.
Big Japanese tech firms like Toshiba, Hitachi, and Toyota all work on robots. Indeed, the robot that dominated the DRC’s first round, SCHAFT, is the creation of a Japanese firm since acquired by Google. And did I mention Japanese plans to build a 60-foot moving Gundam robot (from the classic anime series Mobile Suit Gundam) by 2019?
The robotics revolution is already underway, and it’s only going to accelerate from here.
While a 2020 Tokyo Robolympics (if it happens) might be a great incentive to innovate further, it might also showcase robots already capable of feats that seem only a distant possibility given today’s level of capability. After all, self-driving cars went from failing to finish the DARPA course in 2004 to logging 140,000 miles on public roads by 2010.
Image Credit: Humanrobo/Wikimedia Commons
Read More Here
Creepy! Are Cereal Box Characters Designed to Make Eye Contact With Your Children? — video included
by Lily Dane
The Daily Sheeple
April 4th, 2014
If you needed another reason to avoid taking your children down the cereal aisle at the grocery store, here it is: insidious cereal box characters seem to be trying to make eye contact with your kiddos.
While it’s no surprise that marketing techniques like product package design and placement in stores are used to attract buyers, some methods are more exploitative than others. Directing advertising to adults who understand marketing tactics and have the ability to make informed decisions is quite different than employing psychology-based tricks designed to lure innocent kids into brand loyalty.
According to the American Psychological Association:
Most children under age 6 cannot distinguish between programming and advertising and children under age 8 do not understand the persuasive intent of advertising. Advertising directed at children this young is by its very nature exploitative. Children have a remarkable ability to recall content from the ads to which they have been exposed. Product preference has been shown to occur with as little as a single commercial exposure and to strengthen with repeated exposures. Product preferences affect children’s product purchase requests and these requests influence parents’ purchasing decisions.
Cereal companies know this, and they have long exploited that vulnerability through the use of charming and engaging cartoon characters in their commercials and on their packaging. They are the third biggest food marketer to children – and they spend millions trying to entice children to buy their products, according to a 2012 report by The Yale Rudd Center for Food Policy & Obesity:
Companies spent $264 million in measured media on kid-targeted cereals last year, up 34% from 2008, according to the report, which analyzes the nutritional content and advertising habits of 16 brands the center determined to be aimed directly at children. General Mills, which accounted for eight brands in the report such as Lucky Charms and Trix, spent the most at $142 million, a 27% increase from 2008, according to the report. Kellogg Co. hiked spending by 47%, shoveling $108 million into five kid-targeted brands, including Frosted Flakes and Froot Loops. Post Holdings increased spending by 17% to $13.8 million on its two child-targeted brands, Pebbles and Honeycomb.
Researchers at the Cornell University Food and Brand Lab conducted a study to examine the influence of cereal box spokes-characters. The results of that study were published earlier this week, and the findings were interesting.
The Ebola Outbreak: The “Pandemic” That Isn’t
Zen Gardner
Aug 3, 2014
There have been many many moments over the past few years that have made me ponder my past and the experiences and knowledge that I have gathered along the way. I cannot tell you how many times in the last two years alone that I have had major personal revelations about things that I have gone through or learned in the past that are suddenly so relevant in the NOW. Last night was one of those moments.
For almost 20 years I have had an almost morbid fascination with the Ebola virus, and Haemoragic fevers such as Marlburg and Lassa, in general. It started when I read the book “The Hot Zone” in 1996, and continued when I worked with a former US Special Forces Military doctor in Thailand who had a vast amount of knowledge on the ebola virus. Ever since then I have read possibly hundreds of medical reports and studies on the topic…. reports and studies that were written before this so called “outbreak” and the very blatant editing that has been perpetrated across the media.
….. obviously to prepare myself for this article today.
…. Very interesting that the Wikipedia listing for Ebola Zaire doesn’t specify how the virus is transmitted, don’t you think?
If you’ve read any main stream media news outlet or alternative news site, you’ve heard all the panicked fear mongering about the purported “Ebola” outbreak in west/central Africa. These reports started appearing in the main stream media news in February 2014 while I was in Malta. I immediately started following the news and kept abreast of the latest developments. I also immediately started to smell a rat. The Media banged on the fear porn drum for a few weeks and then it all just sorta disappeared (they couldn’t seem to keep people’s attention on “world war III” starting in the Ukraine AND the “pandemic of Ebola” at the same time). Then in the past few weeks they’ve ramped up the Ebola fear porn drama again…..
…. Distract Distract Distract.
Ukraine didn’t work out the way they wanted so they needed another distraction. Enter the insanity of Netanyahu and the debacle being played out in the gaza strip. But now that is not working out for them either as the world is standing up and shining the light of outrage on Gaza. So another distraction is necessary. Enter: ebola panicked “pandemic” in Africa.
I am not going to get into all the main stream media ebola circus- open any news website and you can read it all- but I will discuss several glaring pieces of obvious bullshit, and “facts” that the so called medical professional associations have invented to perpetuate this travesty.
“Their” goal is only one thing: FEAR & DISTRACTION. They need to keep the public distracted from the fact that their entire financial world empire has crumbled to the ground and they have lost everything they have. …. I’ll be going into details on this subject in my next article. For this moment I will focus on the fear porn campaign that “they” are currently pushing onto the public.
Before I start posting the links and my commentary, I will post this note that I wrote in one of my skype rooms as an intro to the topic:
D.breakingthesilence: “they’ve” been trying to weaponize ebola for over 40 years. they can’t do it because the Mayinga strain of ebola (the only known strain to be contagious through aerosol transmission) kills people too quickly for it to work as a broad spread bio weapon. they’ve been playing with the Marlburg/ebola crosses to create a virus with a longer gestational period so that cross infection/contamination will spread farther. but Marlburg cancells out the aerosol transmission factors of the Mayinga strain of ebola, which leaves them with oral/mucous membrane transmission, which isn’t effective as the virus dies very quickly unless it’s in a very hot humid climate (hence the fact that they do their testing in western Africa in jungle climates). Air conditioning kills the virus almost instantly.”
+++
Ebola: covert op in a hypnotized world
by Jon Rappoport
August 2, 2014
You show people a germ and you tell them what it is and what it does, and people salute. They give in. They believe. They actually know nothing. But they believe.
The massive campaign to make people believe the Ebola virus can attack at any moment, after the slightest contact, is quite a success.
People are falling all over themselves to raise the level of hysteria.
This is what is preventing a hard look at Liberia, Sierra Leone, and the Republic Guinea, three African nations where poverty and illness are staples of everyday life for the overwhelming number of people.
The command structure in those areas has a single dictum: don’t solve the human problem.
Don’t clean up the contaminated water supplies, don’t return stolen land to the people so they can grow food and finally achieve nutritional health, don’t solve overcrowding, don’t install basic sanitation, don’t strengthen their immune systems so they can ward off germs, don’t let the people have power—because then they would throw off the local and global corporate juggernauts that are sucking the land of all its resources.
In order not to solve the problems of the people, a cover story is necessary. A cover story that exonerates the power structure.
A cover story like a germ.
It’s all about the germ. The demon. The strange attacker. (See, for example, this March 27th, Reuter’s article entitled “Beware of bats: Guinea issues bushmeat warning after Ebola outbreak”.)
Forget everything else. The germ is the single enemy.
Forget the fact, for example, that a recent study of 15 pharmacies and 5 hospital drug dispensaries in Sierra Leone discovered the widespread and unconscionable use of beta-lactam antibiotics.
These drugs are highly toxic. One of their effects? Excessive bleeding.
Which just happens to be the scary “Ebola effect” that’s being trumpeted in the world press.
(J Clin Microbiol, July 2013, 51(7), 2435-2438), and Annals of Internal Medicine Dec. 1986, “Potential for bleeding with the new beta-lactam antibiotics”)
Forget the fact that pesticide companies are notorious for shipping banned toxic pesticides to Africa. One effect of the chemicals? Bleeding.
Forget that. It’s all about the germ and nothing but the germ.
Forget the fact that, for decades, one of the leading causes of death in the Third World has been uncontrolled diarrhea. Electrolytes are drained from the body, and the adult or the baby dies.
Any sane doctor would make it his first order of business to replace electrolytes with simple supplementation—but no, the standard medical line goes this way:
The diarrhea is caused by germs in the intestinal tract, so we must pile on massive amounts of antibiotics to kill the germs.
The drugs kill off all bacteria in the gut, including the necessary and beneficial ones, and the patient can’t absorb what little food he has access to, and he dies.
Along the way, he can also bleed.
But no, all the bleeding comes from Ebola. It’s the germ. Don’t think about anything else.
Forget the fact that adenovirus vaccines, which have been used in Liberia, Guinea, and Liberia (the epicenter of Ebola), have, according to vaccines.gov, the following adverse effects: blood in the urine or stool, and diarrhea.
No, all the bleeding comes from the Ebola germ. Of course. Don’t think about anything else.
Reporter Charles Yates uncovered a scandal in Liberia centering around the Firestone Rubber Plantation—chemical dumping, poisoned water.
And skin disease.
“Rash” is listed as one of the Ebola symptoms.
So is diarrhea.
Liberia Coca Cola bottling plant: foul black liquid seeping into the environment—animals dying.
Chronic malnutrition and starvation—conditions that are endemic in Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Guinea—are the number-one cause of T-cells depletion in the world.
T-cells are a vital component of the immune system. When that system is compromised, any germ coming down the pipeline will cause epidemics and death.
Getting the picture?
Blame it all on the germ.
Allow the corporate-government domination to continue.
Jon Rappoport
The author of three explosive collections, THE MATRIX REVEALED, EXIT FROM THE MATRIX, and POWER OUTSIDE THE MATRIX, Jon was a candidate for a US Congressional seat in the 29th District of California. He maintains a consulting practice for private clients, the purpose of which is the expansion of personal creative power. Nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, he has worked as an investigative reporter for 30 years, writing articles on politics, medicine, and health for CBS Healthwatch, LA Weekly, Spin Magazine, Stern, and other newspapers and magazines in the US and Europe. Jon has delivered lectures and seminars on global politics, health, logic, and creative power to audiences around the world. You can sign up for his free emails at www.nomorefakenews.com
SaskPower ordered to remove all smart meters in the province — video included
by Lucas Cort
Canadian Awareness Network
Aug 3, 2014
SaskPower ordered to remove all smart meters in the province
By Shawn Knox Global News
REGINA – SaskPower has announced that they are removing all the smart meters that were installed in the province.The minister responsible for SaskPower Bill Boyd said the utility company will be taking out all 105,000 smart meters around Saskatchewan.
“I think the concerns about safety are paramount here, the concerns are significant enough, anytime families are at risk in Saskatchewan, actions have to be taken and that’s why we’ve directed SaskPower accordingly,” said Minister Boyd.
The removal of the smart meters over the next six to nine months will cost around $15 million, according to SaskPower.
“We view it as similar to a recall situation and the people of Saskatchewan shouldn’t be responsible for the costs of this and we’ll do everything we can to recover those costs,” said Boyd.
Boyd will also be reviewing why the new meters weren’t properly studied or tested before they were installed in homes.
“I don’t know whether there was enough testing done. We’ll certainly be conducting, along with SaskPower, an internal review of the procurement procedures around this around the safety concerns people had,” added Boyd.
“We want to determine when these were originally ordered, if there were safety concerns known at that point in time, so we have a lot of questions we’re going to be discussing with SaskPower about how this came to be.”
Earlier this month SaskPower temporarily suspended its installation of smart meters around the province after half a dozen caught fire.
Read More Here
The Benefits Chocolate has on Blood Pressure, Weight, & More
by Elizabeth Renter
Natural Society
Updated 08/02/2014 at 4:02 am
The health benefits of chocolate are many—soothing a broken heart, celebrating a promotion, or commemorating a birthday. Oh, and the health benefits are impressive too. Originating in Central America, where they were believed to have even magical and divine benefits, cacao beans are now processed into thousands upon thousands of delicious creations, the best of which could help keep your heart healthy.
The cardiovascular benefits of chocolate come largely from its anti-inflammatory and antioxidant properties. It’s loaded with flavanols like quercetin and theobromine.
It’s these flavanols that were credited in a recent study for providing better coronary artery protection than coffee and green tea. An ongoing study, according to NaturalNews, is looking at the preventative effects of cacao’s flavanols and polyphenols on coronary heart disease.
This Is What Is Going To Happen If Ebola Comes To America
by Michael Snyder
The Economic Collapse
Jul 30, 2014
If the worst Ebola outbreak in recorded history reaches the United States, federal law permits “the apprehension and examination of any individual reasonably believed to be infected with a communicable disease”. These individuals can be “detained for such time and in such manner as may be reasonably necessary”. In other words, the federal government already has the authority to round people up against their will, take them to detention facilities and hold them there for as long as they feel it is “reasonably necessary”. In addition, as you will read about below, the federal government has the authority “to separate and restrict the movement of well persons who may have been exposed to a communicable disease to see if they become ill”. If you want to look at these laws in the broadest sense, they pretty much give the federal government the power to do almost anything that they want with us in the event of a major pandemic. Of course such a scenario probably would not be called “martial law”, but it would probably feel a lot like it.
If Ebola comes to America and starts spreading, one of the first things that would happen would be for the CDC to issue “a federal isolation or quarantine order”. The following is what the CDC website says about what could happen under such an order…
Isolation and quarantine are public health practices used to stop or limit the spread of disease.
Isolation is used to separate ill persons who have a communicable disease from those who are healthy. Isolation restricts the movement of ill persons to help stop the spread of certain diseases. For example, hospitals use isolation for patients with infectious tuberculosis.
Quarantine is used to separate and restrict the movement of well persons who may have been exposed to a communicable disease to see if they become ill. These people may have been exposed to a disease and do not know it, or they may have the disease but do not show symptoms. Quarantine can also help limit the spread of communicable disease.
Isolation and quarantine are used to protect the public by preventing exposure to infected persons or to persons who may be infected.
In addition to serving as medical functions, isolation and quarantine also are “police power” functions, derived from the right of the state to take action affecting individuals for the benefit of society.
“Isolation” would not be a voluntary thing. The federal government would start hunting down anyone that they “reasonably believed to be infected with a communicable disease” and taking them to the facilities where other patients were being held. It wouldn’t matter if you were entirely convinced that you were 100% healthy. If the government wanted to take you in, you would have no rights in that situation. In fact, federal law would allow the government to detain you “for such time and in such manner as may be reasonably necessary”.
And once you got locked up with all of the other Ebola patients, there would be a pretty good chance that you would end up getting the disease and dying anyway. The current Ebola outbreak has a 55 percent percent mortality rate, and experts tell us that the mortality rate for Ebola can be as high as 90 percent.
Once you contracted Ebola, this is what it would look like…
Sudden onset of fever, intense weakness, muscle pain, headache and sore throat. That is followed by vomiting, diarrhoea, rash, impaired kidney and liver function and internal and external bleeding.
The “external bleeding” may include bleeding from the eyes, ears, nose, mouth and just about every other major body cavity.
So how is Ebola spread?
Well, medical authorities tell us that it can be spread through the blood, urine, saliva, stools and semen of a person or animal that already has Ebola.
If you are exposed to the disease, the incubation period can be from anywhere from two days up to 21 days. But the average is usually about eight to ten days.
In other words, you can be spreading it around for over a week before you even know that you have it.
There is no vaccine for Ebola and there is no cure.
Not everyone dies from the virus, but most people do.
PN 
