Thursday, 28 February 2013

Fear of The Unknown Is Still Dividing The Planet: It's Time To Let Others Just Be

A common theme seems to be steadily intensifying with those who disagree with information on the internet--a fear of the unknown. There is a constant need to insult or criticize content which disagrees with their own sense of truth. Although confronting fear won't always make it go away, many researchers suggest that people must alter memory-driven negative attitudes about feared objects, events or the unknown to overcome the fear itself, allowing open-mindedness and multiple perspectives to override negativity.



When people retain negative attitudes about anything that disagrees with their own version of reality, they are more likely to experience a continued sense of fear than people whose attitudes are less negative. Physiological markers such as heart rate and anticipatory anxiety always increase when measurements are taken in people whose attitudes remain negative.

Much of our concept of ourselves and our attitudes as individuals in control of our destinies underpins much of our reality or what we think about our existence.

Some of these attitudes are often based on a powerful association between a fear and a negative feeling that is so strong, that many people can't see or even think about the fear without experiencing that automatic negative reaction. For example, many people around the world devoted to their religion absolutely fear atheists. They refuse to relate to their position. They will not even conceive the right of atheists to their own opinions and feel extremely threatened by any content promoting the principles of atheism. The same can be true if we reverse the two roles. Neither position will ever advance the other if each can only think negatively about the other. This creates self-righteousness, divisions of superiority and of course ignorance.

Negative reactions to the unknown instills a sense of weakness in our character, specifically a lack of strength in our own convictions. When people have the need to strongly chastise others for their opinions and information they present, it shows a genuine deficit of attributes related to confidence about our own belief systems, morals and values. 

Those who have confidence in their doctrines do not have to identify all those things they dislike so much in others or attempt to magnify those flaws to please their own conscience. In essence, they feel they must right-fight to support their own belief system since in their minds, a competing system must be incorrect.

There is always improvement in our outlook when we change the attitude representation. To change the likelihood that negativity or fear is automatically activated when one is placed in a specific situation, we must positively view the opinions of others as valid regardless of our own perception. If somebody see's the sky as "green" instead of "blue", instead of immediately declaring their state of mind as incorrect, we can think about how interesting it is that they see the sky "green" and perhaps ask ourselves why their perspective differs so greatly from our own.

Many of the websites I contribute towards constantly receive criticism for their content, however NONE of them approach other websites or choose to email individuals who have oppositions to their own views. Why? Because they know they are entitled to those views. They don’t engage them and they certainly don’t wish to begin any type of conflict with those who think differently than they do. Everybody has their own path in life and their learning is unique, allowing them to experience that uniqueness and growth at the deepest levels of their being. Their views are no more correct or incorrect than any other, especially since truth is 360 degrees and all perception defines our reality.

While many may disagree with that, it is the belief system of what is now millions of people on Earth. People are entitled to their own opinions, but if they feel the need to encourage websites or authors to change and direct their content towards a mentality that agrees with an opposing view, perhaps these same people should be looking into their own belief systems to discover why they feel so threatened or wronged by simple words. The same words can both positively and negatively affect millions of people. The difference lies in how we perceive another's reality to be different from our own. We are all very much the same--just experiencing and learning at different rates. No one rate of learning is more superior or advanced than another, just different.

It is an opportunity to really learn something about ourselves--that judgement on others is only a judgement on ourselves. Other people in our lives serve as our own reflection of the imperfections we seek to correct in ourselves. We attract every person in our life for a reason--to show us who we are. If you think everybody in your life is around you by coincidence, you're not paying attention to the very valuable lessons they are teaching you.
When we embrace our uniqueness and understand that every human being is here for a purpose and to follow a specific path, our judgement, criticism and control over others disappears. In the end, would you rather be right, or would you rather be kind? Be kind, with love and compassion, but most of all, allow others to just be. I can guarantee that if you practice this, you will be amazed at how quickly your outlook on your experiences will change. Most of all, you will never see information as a threat again.
sources  :- http://preventdisease.com/news/13/022713_Fear-of-The-Unknown-Is-Still-Dividing-The-Planet-Its-Time-To-Let-Others-Just-Be.shtml

NEW cyber-attack unleashed MiniDuke: New cyber-attack(with size of 20kb) 'hacks governments' for political secrets

New attack unleashed MINIDUKE ,The governments of at least 20 countries may have fallen victim to a sophisticated new cyber-attack. Security experts believe the hackers are attempting to steal political intelligence.MiniDuke has infected government entities in the Ukraine, Belgium, Portugal, Romania, the Czech Republic and Ireland. In addition, a research institute, two think-tanks, and a healthcare provider in the US were also compromised. A prominent research organisation in Hungary was also infected with the mystery malware. An analysis of logs from command servers, suggest the malware has hit 59 unique victims in 23 countries including locations as diverse as Brazil, Israel, Germany, Lebanon, Spain, the UK and Japan.

The governments of at least 20 countries may have fallen victim to a sophisticated new cyber-attack. Security experts believe the hackers are attempting to steal political intelligence.

Computer security firms Kaspersky Lab and CrySyS Lab discovered that the malware, dubbed "MiniDuke," targeted government computers in the Czech Republic, Ireland, Portugal and Romania along with think tanks, research institutes and healthcare providers in the United States.

“The technical indicators from our analysis show this is a new type of threat actor that hasn't been seen before,” Kurt Baumgartner, a senior security researcher with Kaspersky Lab.

but its very difficult to identify the hackers so their locations are on the trace.The threat operates on low-level code to stay hidden, and uses Twitter and Google to get instructions and updates. It allegedly infected PCs when ‘victims’ opened a cleverly disguised Adobe PDF attachment to an email.

“The high level of encryption in the malware and the flexible system it used to communicate with the C2 via Twitter and Google indicates this was a strategically planned operation,” Baumgartner said.

“This is a very unusual cyberattack,” said Eugene Kaspersky, founder and chief exec of Kaspersky Lab. “I remember this style of malicious programming from the end of the 1990s and the beginning of the 2000s. I wonder if these types of malware writers, who have been in hibernation for more than a decade, have suddenly awoken and joined the sophisticated group of threat actors active in the cyberworld." 

Its is one of the most amazing technology as its size is as small as hay but it is as deadly as warfare missile.

Their mode of propogation
  Booby-trapped documents that formed the theme of the attack featured fabricated human rights seminar information (ASEM) and Ukraine’s foreign policy and NATO membership plans. These malicious PDF files were rigged with exploits attacking Adobe Reader versions 9, 10, and 11, bypassing Adobe's sandbox in the process. The toolkit used to create these exploits were the same as those that featured in a recent attack reported by FireEye, even though these latter assaults featured a different attack payload. 
"Some of the elements remind us of cyber-espionage tools such as Duqu or Red October, such as the minimalistic approach, hacked servers, encrypted channels and also the typology of the victims. The amount of high profile victims in this attack is also notable and puts it on the same level with other advanced campaigns such as Red October."

How effective?

All this and Twitter functionality, too

Kaspersky Lab’s experts, in partnership with CrySys Lab, have analysed the attacks and published preliminary findings suggesting whoever created the malware was skilled and well-aware of the techniques used by anti-virus analysts. For one thing, the malware programmed to avoid analysis by a hardcoded set of tools in certain environments like VMware by laying dormant if it finds itself running in a virtualised environment.
If the target’s system meets the pre-defined requirements, the malware will use surreptitiously use Twitter to start looking for specific tweets from pre-made accounts, providing the encrypted locations of URLs associated with the spyware botnet's command and control channels. The same functionality allows to loading of additional backdoors onto compromised systems.
MiniDuke’s creators also provided a dynamic backup system. If Twitter isn’t working or the accounts are down, the malware can use Google Search to find the encrypted strings to the next command and control node.
Once an infected system locates the C&C nodes, it receives encrypted backdoors that are obfuscated within GIF files and disguised as pictures that appear on a victim’s machine. Once they are downloaded to the machine they can download a larger backdoor that carries out several basic actions, such as copy file, move file, remove file, make directory, kill process, and, of course, download and execute new malware.

The malware backdoor connects to two servers, one in Panama and one in Turkey, to receive instructions from the attackers, according to a joint analysis of the malware by Kaspersky Lab and Hungarian security researchers at the Laboratory of Cryptography and System Security (CrySyS), who previously worked with their Russian counterparts in analysing Flame, another cyber-espionage tool.
reference :- http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/02/27/miniduke/
                   http://gadgets.ndtv.com/internet/news/nato-european-governments-hit-by-miniduke-   cyber-attack-336476

Wednesday, 27 February 2013

THE FIVE SCOOP: GET SMITTEN.

THE FIVE SCOOP: GET SMITTEN.

If you love ice cream, or at least think you do, there’s a small shipping container in Hayes Valley that will make you smitten. And they’re not serving up your typical corn syrup and preservative laced “dairy dessert” either. 
Smitten Ice Cream is winning hearts and taste buds over with their rich and creamy treat, made from fresh and natural ingredients, by the batch, right in front of you. It’s amazing. And delicious.
Care for some strawberry white balsamic? Or perhaps you’re more inclined to try the Earl Grey with chocolate chips or blood orange with pistachios. Yeah, deliciously decadent, just...go try some.
The creamery is brought to us by Robyn Sue Goldman, who in 2007 while researching the production methods used to make ice cream, was appalled and disenchanted to discover that some manufacturers used as little as 2% of dairy ingredients for their mass produced frozen dessert, all the while being jam packed with preservatives, emulsifiers, stabilizers and other unnatural ingredients that big name companies need in order to maintain a shelf life of God knows how long.
So Robyn spent the majority of the recession researching and developing the perfect ice cream maker using all fresh and pure, natural ingredients as well as...liquid nitrogen. 
Meet Kelvin; Smitten’s wonder machine with a double helix shaped wand that uses liquid nitrogen to freeze milk and cream so fast that they don’t have time to form ice crystals. That, my friend, makes for some absurdly creamy ice cream. Actually, calling it absurdly creamy doesn’t do it justice; you’ve got to try some for yourself.
Before setting up shop in Hayes Valley, Robyn tricked out a Radio Flyer wagon with her first Kelvin prototype, complete with a four hour battery pack and a single flavor to introduce San Francisco’s populace to her new treat; typically using Twitter and Facebook to announce her presence at City parks. 
Smitten is currently looking for garages and other cool spaces for their next shops and has plans to open the second creamery in the South Bay this May. And hey, if your special someone popped the question on Valentine’s Day, why not have Smitten cater dessert for your summer wedding? Trust me, it’s unlike anything you’ve had before.
source :- http://www.getthefive.com/articles/the-idealist/the-five-scoop-get-smitten/

WHISKEY IS HAVING A RENAISSANCE AMONG GENERATION Y.

Whether it's bourbon, scotch, whiskey or whisky; from Scotland, Kentucky or Tennessee— brown alcohol is growing in popularity.
Fifty years ago, your grandfather sat alongside a bunch of tweed-clad men and smoked Cubans and drank whiskey out of tumblers. Or, he sat in a leather chair in a smoking jacket, with a pipe, and a Glenlivet. It seemed he was always sitting, and drinking.
Then the pendulum swung over to Generation X who coveted craft beers, mixed drinks and wine. For Gen X, there was no shaking off the tweed and cigar image. You see, young people don’t want to drink what dad drinks.
Enter the “Young Fogies”
Responding to their parent’s affinity for beer and wine, Generation Y—the Millennials, are taking up where their grandparents left off, and enjoying the pleasures of three fingers of whiskey while socializing. It has a romantic ruggedness that appeals to its drinkers.
Kentucky bourbon and Tennessee whiskey sales rose 5.2 percent to 16.9 million cases last year, according to the Distilled Spirits Council. Revenue increased 7.3 percent to $2.2 billion. Kentucky produces 95 percent of the world's bourbon supply, according to the Kentucky Distillers' Association. There are 4.9 million bourbon barrels aging in Kentucky, which outnumbers the state's population.
The preferred consumption method of bourbons, whiskey and scotch is straight, served in a glass tumbler. Why straight? Evidently mixing the fusel oils in bourbon with things high in sugar—Coke and things like that, will cause hangovers the next day. I can attest from personal experience, I’ve never had a hangover from drinking straight scotch, bourbon or whiskey
Perhaps another reason for the upswing in interest in whiskey is about life stage. As 20-somethings have their first taste of disposable income, single, club-and-pub-going men and women want to use that income to show off their maturation and social standing—and might see whiskey as a sophisticated drink.
It may also be tied to the growing attention paid to what we put in our bodies. As alcohol goes, whiskey is one of the more natural, simple drinks. It’s just made from barley and water.
At the same time, with the growing number of small distilleries, whiskey has a sense that it is artisan-made with each barrel having a diverse taste—not unlike the craft brew and wine industries of our parent’s generation.
So, it all comes down to health, social stature, and craft—and a generation that wants to feel they are part of that. It is no wonder that whiskey is going through a renaissance.
Image credit: Photographer: Gary Nomura Febus. Model: Teyler Kalin

Tuesday, 26 February 2013

Victims of Forced Love

Victims of Forced Love

Somayeh became depre ssed and isolated. She leaves the house only for medical visits.

Somayeh Mehri, 29, and her three-year-old daughter Ra’na live in a small town in one of the poorest regions in Iran. Somayeh’s husband, Amir Afghanipour, a thief and drug addict, hit her and locked her up many times. If she followed through with plans to divorce, he threatened that she would not live her life with her face. 

Then one night in June 2011, he poured a bucket of acid on his wife and child while they slept. Their faces, hands, and bodies were severely burned; Somayeh lost her ability to see and Ra’ana lost one of her eyes. Somayeh still needs hundreds of surgeries and Ra’na needs more than 70. The government and villagers have paid for some of these surgeries, sometimes selling their land to pay for more operations.

Sliding pound: British currency loses 67% of its value over last 30 years


AFP Photo /Carl Court
AFP Photo /Carl Court
While the British pound slides on the currency markets in reaction to a downgrade of the UK's triple-A credit rating, examination of its purchasing power shows it has had an even more dramatic decline over the last three decades.
A survey by Lloyds TSB Private Banking shows that over the past 30 years the British pound’s value has fallen by almost two thirds.
In other words one would need £299 today to have the equivalent spending power of £100 in 1982.
According to Lloyds TSB Private Banking, the decline by a further 56 per cent over the next 30 years is inevitable if retail prices continue to rise at the current pace.
The pound tracking against a basket of currencies has reached its lowest level since July 2010 on Monday reaching $1.5069 against the dollar; this follows the Moody’s downgrade of the UK's cherished triple-A credit rating to AA+. It also dropped to a three-year low against the dollar last week. Later on Monday the British currency showed signs of recovery going up to $1.5144.
“People in the UK are feeling progressively poorer,” Mike Ingram market analyst of the BGC brokers told RT.
“The real wages in the UK are back to where they were in 2003. That’s a decade without any increase in prosperity effectively wiped out,” he said.

Did the Pope quit to dodge blame for misdeeds or just to do the right thing?

Italian newspaper La Repubblica has reported that the Pope was overwhelmed when presented with evidence in mid-December last year (collected in "two volumes of almost 300 pages – bound in red”) of a network of highly-placed Vatican priests who did not only engage in illicit homosexual “worldly relations” with outsiders, but let themselves be blackmailed by their gay lovers.
Among the listed locations for alleged trysts were a sauna, a beauty parlor, and even a residence used by an archbishop.
The newspaper claims it was then that Pope decided that he could not carry on, declaring that he was“no longer suited” to the demands of the job during his resignation speech earlier this month.
With cack-handedness that marked public relations throughout Benedict’s term, the Vatican immediately issued a denial that almost invited more speculation.
"Neither the cardinals' commission nor I will make comments to confirm or deny the things that are said about this matter. Let each one assume his or her own responsibilities. We shall not be following up on the observations that are made about this," said Father Federico Lombardi, the Vatican spokesman.
The media quickly latched onto to the simultaneous announcement on Friday of a transfer of Ettore Balestrero, a senior clergyman, to a new prestigious post in Colombia, saying it was intended to get him out of the Vatican after unnamed transgressions.
This forced Lombardi into making a second statement on the same day. The spokesman shot the insinuations down as "absurd, totally without foundation", saying the decision had been made weeks ago.
Both the report and the figure of Balestrero did not come out of the blue, but to the press they are a continuation of the scandals that rocked the Papacy last year.
Throughout 2012, the Pope’s butler, Paolo Gabriele, aided by a selection of powerful officials leaked documents to an Italian journalist, Gianluigi Nuzzi that confirmed the worst outsider prejudices about the Holy See. The Vatileaks exposed the Papacy’s spiritual home as a highly-factionalized breeding ground for gossip, plotting and dirty tricks (including an instance when one newspaper editor was removed from his post by a rival with the help of anonymous letters falsely alleging his homosexuality). Even those who leaked the revelations themselves were suspected to be jockeying for position within the Holy See.
AFP Photo / Vincenzo Pinto
AFP Photo / Vincenzo Pinto

"The Pope was never the same after that. It was like shooting Achilles in the heel," one insider told Reuters after the resignation was announced.
The quick trial of Gabriele by Vatican cardinals was seen as a whitewash (concerned only with the specifics of how he obtained the documents, not why) but Benedict did order a deeper investigation by three trusted cardinals.
It was apparently their report, which showed the situation as even worse than assumed, that tipped the Benedict’s hand.
The other insurmountable embarrassment of 2012 was the interconnected but separate failure of the Vatican Bank to get on the “white list” of Moneyval, the EU’s banking compliance commission that had criticized the lack of transparency at the institution (something Vatileaks amply confirmed).
The man who led the Vatican’s efforts? Ettore Balestrero.
For the critics the assorted facts compose paint a picture of a Pontiff forced to abandon his post, unable to stem the tide of revelations, and possibly facing censure for personal mistakes, if not in deeds, then in appointing corrupt men to high places.
Even one of the investigating cardinals, Julian Herranz, conceded that this might have been one of the“hypotheses”.
"He could content himself with doing very little except praying ... but because the people he had in place were not adequate, instead of removing them, he removed himself," said yet another insider to Reuters.
But the does the notion of a Pope on the verge of disgrace (not only due to Vatileaks, but possibly also as a result of the sexual abuse allegations rocking the church) really stand up?
In his statement the 85-year-old Benedict XVI said his ebbing “strength of mind and body” was the reason for his resignation.
"The pope's decision was made many months ago, after the trip to Mexico and Cuba [almost a year ago] and kept in an inviolable privacy that nobody could penetrate," wrote the official Vatican newspaper l'Osservatore Romano.
It was on that trip to Mexico that the Pope fell and hurt his head while in an unfamiliar hotel room. He has also had a pacemaker installed in recent months.
Pope Benedict XVI receives a sombrero in Leon.(AFP Photo / Osservatore Romano)
Pope Benedict XVI receives a sombrero in Leon.(AFP Photo / Osservatore Romano)

But it is perhaps a description of the pontiff from his own biographer Peter Seewald, who saw him last at the end of 2012, which most vividly conveys his true state.
"His hearing had worsened. He couldn't see with his left eye. His body had become so thin that the tailors had difficulty keeping up with newly fitted clothes ... I'd never seen him so exhausted-looking, so worn down," Seewald recently wrote in the German magazine Focus.
This does not nullify the degree of decay at the Holy See, but perhaps draws a more nuanced portrait of Benedict’s final year.
There is little doubt that Benedict XVI served a calamitous eight years as the spiritual leader of the Catholic Church. His time in charge has lurched from public relations disasters, to damaging revelations, to endless lawsuits from all corners of the world.
The Vatican’s instinctive response to crisis situations has been to close ranks, hide information and try to deal with transgressions internally, something that simply amplifies the scale of any misdeed once the truth inevitably emerges in this telecommunications age.
Whatever his reported knowledge on theological matters, Pope Benedict was rarely a successful communicator, often on the defensive after making pronouncements on the most routine issues, and regarded as out-of-touch and uncharismatic.
But for all his flaws, no one has doubted the personal religious devotion of the pontiff (and none of the scandals incriminated him in anything other than passiveness in his dealing with problems).
Perhaps due to his age and inherent traditionalism, he was never the right man for the Papacy, but at least he knew his limitations.
Benedict learned from observing his close friend John Paul II in the last months of his Papacy in 2005, body trembling with symptoms of Parkinson’s disease, and voice barely above a whisper as he attempted to struggle through services in front of crowds of thousands.
For all the unexpectedness of his resignation, Benedict said as far back as in 2010 that he would step down as soon as he was unable to perform this job.
He has done as he promised, with his dignity intact.
Asian nuns hold a portrait of Pope Benedict XVI on St Peter's square after the Angelus prayer led by Pope Benedict XVI from the window of his appartments.(AFP Photo / Gabriel Bouys)
Asian nuns hold a portrait of Pope Benedict XVI on St Peter's square after the Angelus prayer led by Pope Benedict XVI from the window of his appartments.(AFP Photo / Gabriel Bouys)

By being the first Pope to leave his post alive in 600 years, Joseph Ratzinger may have angered the traditionalists (who say that being God’s representative on Earth isn’t a job you can just quit), but he may have also set an example to his successors that will help the Papacy avoid becoming a constant deathwatch as its decrepit heads are driven around the world in wheelchairs.
And for this he should be treated with respect, instead of having his motives queried and twisted by those pursuing their own agendas, however valid.
In the meantime, the world can switch its attention to the new man at the Vatican, who will hopefully be able to address the very problems Benedict XVI failed to overcome.
source:- http://rt.com/op-edge/pope-benedict-allegations-scandal-312/