llinois man in joking mood after firing nail into his head Associated Press (hat tip Lambert).
Cowardice at sea is no crime — at least in the U.S. Reuters (hat tip Buzz Potamkin)
Fracking Would Emit Large Quantities of Greenhouse Gases Scientific American (hat tip Mark Thoma)
USDA Ignores Pesticide Ravaging Bee Population, Threatening Global Environment Natural Science (hat tip reader furzy mouse)
Male bowerbirds ‘benefit from optical illusions’ BBC
Aftershocking: Frontline’s Fukushima Doc a Lazy Apologia for the Nuclear Industry Firedoglake
Hollywood regroups after losing battle over anti-piracy bills LA Times (hat tip reader 1 SK)
Chris Ford: Dotcom Mansion raid – very over the top! VOXY (hat tip reader 1 SK)
Roubini: we will see a Greece credit event, regardless of deal Edward Harrison
Iraq: Under Worse Management Bloomberg
Curfew in Nigeria’s Kano after deadly blasts Aljazeera (hat tip Lambert)
Tightening Race Comes as Abrupt Blow to Romney Team New York Times
Insight: Top Justice officials connected to mortgage banks Reuters
Can Politico Sink Any Lower? Corporate Crime Reporter (hat tip reader Aquifer)
Blacks Face Bias in Bankruptcy, Study Suggests New York Times. What was disturbing was not just the extent of the bias, but the efforts of various commentators to avert their eyes and try to come up with defenses. But this section of the study points to much deeper roots:
Results from the second part of the study, which illustrated the lawyer’s influence in determining which bankruptcy chapter to choose, came from a survey sent to lawyers asking them questions based on fictitious couples who were seeking bankruptcy protection. When the couple was named “Reggie and Latisha,” who attended an African Methodist Episcopal Church — as opposed to a white couple, “Todd and Allison,” who were members of a United Methodist Church — the lawyers were more likely to recommend a Chapter 13, even though the two couples’ financial circumstances were identical.
Snippets from the ongoing Occupy Oakland nonviolence vs diversity of tactics discussion Lambert Strether
Is Facebook a Central Bank, Too? Forbes
The Dawn of Lower Pay on Wall St. James Stewart, New York Times
More Elderly Need to Keep Working Wall Street Journal
Schwarzman to the Fed: None of Your Business Wall Street Journal
How’s it going with the Volcker Rule? mathbabe
Antidote du jour. A fox trying to imitate a late model Terminator:
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My aunt has befriended an urban fox. She feeds it a can of dog food every night at 10pm. It never misses an appointment.
;*laughing* Your Aunt must not have any cats. Encourage her to try dry food. Canned food is detrimental to healthy teeth. If the Aunt moved or had to stop feeding for some unforeseen reason the fox would not be able to fend for itself. Lastly, tell her to keep a safe distance and send photos!
Also, about the Italian sea captain who allegedly abandoned his passengers and crew.
What was so very, very infuriating about Peter Weir’s film adaptation of Patrick O’Brian’s Master & Commander was that in the books, Jack Aubrey never, never, NEVER abandons a crew member. In fact, early on in the series (can’t quite remember where), he turns his ship around in the Mediterranean in the face of incoming French opponents to salvage a crew member gone overboard.
The film version, in which a crew member is clearly sacrificed, left to die in the sea for the putative greater good of the ship, made me ill. (I understand Weir’s politics are somewhat survival-of-the-fittest.)
Anon, you need to re-watch Master and Commander. While rounding the Horn in heavy seas, seaman Worley’s cousin falls overboard in the storm as mizzenmast and rigging crack and fall aft. Captain Jack and Worley, understanding that the rigging is acting as a sea anchor, hack away the lines keeping the mast (and the cousin) from floating away. The cousin struggles for a moment and then disappears in a 50+ ft wave.
Meanwhile back in 21st Century America, it is clear that in the US is in competition not with companies, but with nations. Just as with the British East India Company in Regency times, Chinese commerce is heavily and consistently backed by explicit and implicit government action. In the US in contrast, information technology is only one of many industries that have been targeted and conquered by overseas government backed corporations: Oil is largely produced by government-backed entities now; the last US rare earth production facility was bought by the Chinese and then closed (all with US gov. permission); auto and airplane production, going the same way.
Can we claw our way back? Probably not without major, revolutionary changes in the way the US does business, including changes in tax policy (a VAT tax; import tariffs); immigration reform making it vastly simpler and easier to move to the US(including the staple-a green-card program for foreign graduates of US schools);streamlining financial, tax and banking regulation for expats, so that more direct Americans can live and work abroad and learn how to do it right first hand; explicit and generous incentives for companies building and maintaining plants in the US in all industries, not just a chosen few (including elimination of the tax on repatriating foreign earnings, linked to a claw-back provision for companies closing US plants to move overseas); major easing of environmental and zoning regulations; dramatic streamlining and simplification of tax and regulatory codes; consolidation and rationalization of overlapping state and Federal regulatory oversight and agencies, etc.
Over the last 20+ years, Federal and state policy has favored agriculture, financial and health services, real estate construction, and government over all other industries.
Our policies have also favored a high cost structure way of life (Cadillac private heath insurance, home ownership in scattered locations for everyone, mandatory auto ownership for most regions). We have created a (probably permanent) mismatch between the cost of living of our formerly middle class citizens and the available jobs and the cost of manufacturing here.
The changes needed are so politically contentious, so hated by the elites on both side of the aisle that I strongly suspect change will not happen until the Baby Boomers and their clueless offspring fade into chilly death and decay to be replaced in 50 or 75 years by a new generation of immigrants and survivors who learn to use the wealth of our continent in new ways.
PS: Anon, you do realize that a sea anchor would have taken the entire ship down into the briny deep, don’t you? Also O’Brian’s Captain Jack fully understood that in the hard service of the Navy men and boys must be constantly ready to go into mortal danger, whether crawling out on a 100ft ice covered top mast to reef sails in a gale or firing round after round from overheated cannon in the face of direct yard-arm to yard-arm enemy fire. In the Mauritius Command, Jack tells his best friend, intelligence agent Dr. Stephen Maturin, that there will be no hope of rescuing him should his secret shore-side mission fail. Too bad our leaders lack that real kind of courage and toughness, not the romantic fake courage of ‘never, never leave anyone behind’.
Re: Mansion raid.
So the timing of the SOPA Legislation Bill was coordinated with the FBI and New Zealand Police mansion raid eah?
Interesting how that is interconnected.
This is sickening when law enforcement appears to be intertwined with legislation.
Seems like FBI raid timing should not have been known to those introducing the SOPA legislation, and/or FBI raid timing should have be independent of politics.
It was very noticeable to the discerning here in New Zealand that the main (TV One) evening news was very heavy on DotCom’s ‘lavish’ lifestyle, his partying, his ostentatious car collection, the bimbos cuddling his rather bloated torso in the spa &tc none of which were relevant to the matter and all of which were obvious signs of his guilt as they exactly what confirms the justice of extra-judicial executions of villains in James Bond movies.
Had Megaupload been run by bespectacled, virgin teenage geeks in their mum’s garage the public’s buttons would have been much harder to press.
From reading the articles, it looks like the White House came out against SOPA due to public pressure which in turned PO’d Obama’s big Hollywood donors. I suspect the Dotcom raid was Obama’s way of saying to his Hollywood donors ‘Look, we can get these guys without any additional legislation’.
Personally, I find SOPA and PIPA to be ridiculous. Hollywood seems to think that if SOPA/PIPA were enacted that every person who formerly downloaded a pirated copy would now buy instead. I suspect most downloaders are people (high schoolers, college students, poor folks) who wouldn’t buy a full-price copy.
Louis C.K.’s recent experiment is a good argument against SOPA/PIPA. He sold one of his recent performances online for $5 with no technology in place to prevent copying. He made a $1 million in 12 days:
https://buy.louisck.net/news
There are people who are going to buy content and people who are going to download pirated copies and I suspect there isn’t much intersection between those two groups.
Deep Thoughts While Reading News that I Hope Will Make Me Money
what if you’re a bowerbird who finds twig sculpture and preening in front of women bowerbirds to be embarrasing and juvenile, and you can’t bring yourself to participate in such stupidity?
Do you go see a bowerbird psychiatrist? Or do you become a bowerbird philosopher and assemble shockingly rebellious and mockingly ironic twig sculptures?
haha
“what if you’re a bowerbird who finds twig sculpture and preening in front of women bowerbirds to be embarrasing and juvenile, and you can’t bring yourself to participate in such stupidity?”
You wait until somebody else brings you.
You become a Zen bowerbird and explain to all female bowerbirds that the whole thing is maya…life itself is the biggest illusion of them all.
become a bowerbird artist, create the best bowerbird love nests ever, then throw lavish parties and have fun selling your unique bowerbird love nest building services to others not so talented, make zillions of dollars!
those are all good ideas. if I were a bowerbird I’d be ready to bust out and see what happens.
it also occurred to me that bowerbird women don’t give a sh^t about the twigs or the preening — they just suffer through them because they want the house. I wonder if the scientists tested for that hypothesis.
i can’t believe they actually think bowerbirds are experts in artistic perspective. It took Renaissance geniuses well over a century to figure that stuff out. I mean really. This is madness, even for bird scientists.
You become an executive bower bird and hire some contractor bower bird to do your twig building, outsource the preening function, and complain about the quantity and quality of the females thus ensnared.
However, there’s no central authority to provide every female the executive is entitled to, so he’ll have to start importing female starlings.
Disappearing bee info:
“Nicotine Bees” Population Restored With Neonicotinoids Ban (http://www.treehugger.com/clean-technology/nicotine-bees-population-restored-with-neonicotinoids-ban.html) Blog article at treehugger.com.
Nicotine Bees (2010) (http://www.amazon.com/Nicotine-Bees-Kevin-Hansen/dp/B002R8AU4Y) The book at Amazon.
Nicotine Bees (2010) (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1518227/) The movie review at IMDB.com.
Nicotine Bees – Trailer Pierre Terre.flv (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5YqCSX08u7U) The movie trailer at Youtube.com.
“As stated by the creators of the Psywar documentary, the battlefield is your mind and soul. It is there that freedom, truth, peace, and justice will be won. It is there that mankind will take one final stand against political evil and economic fraud. It is there that fear and terror will be conquered.”
http://disquietreservations.blogspot.com/
Re Politico: the publisher is Joe Albritton. What more do you need to know?
Politico is BUSTED: a 100% shill of the M-I Complex. In bed with:
“PROPHETS OF WAR: Lockheed Martin and the Making of the Military-Industrial Complex” by William D. Hartung (New York, Nation Books, 2011);
“TOP SECRET AMERICA: The Rise of The New American Security State” by Dana Priest and William M. Arkin (New York; Little, Brown and Company, 2011).
Aren’t the M-I Complex and the Private For-Profit Prison System joined at the hip? Research Wackenhut. The M-I/Security/Prison Systems Revolving Door.
Finally, is Bell Helicopter connected with “The Brotherhood of the Bell”?
Yves: I don’t recall seeing much about the Wall Street-driven move to privatize schools (for poor kids, anyway). Here’s a nice sum-up with some embedded links. https://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/01/20-4#.TxrLjRWvhDk.facebook
@ – “Fracking Would Emit Large Quantities of Greenhouse Gases”
Compared to what? Haven’t read the article yet but surmise it doesn’t mention that natural gas emits roughly half as much CO2 per BTU produced as coal. I guess I’ve grown cynical.
I haven’t read it, but it doesn’t say burning natural gas will release greenhouse gases (though as you state it of course does), it says fracking does. So if you add the gases released by fracking AND burning natural gas, and combine that with the poisoning of our water table, fracking is clearly a disaster with little actual benefit re global warming.
When you burn it. But if it just leaks out, methane is a much more potent greenhouse gas than CO2. Molecule for molecule, 72 times more potent, plus it leads to a high ozone level, another greenhouse gas.
Just for the record, it’s “only” 20 times more potent.
The problem with fracking as well as the tar sands is it just delays the day of reckoning as we continue to do anything substantial about fossil fuel dependency.
doesn’t matter anyway, thanks to India and China, it’s game over.
We’re going to have to learn to live, and die, in a 500ppm world.
jeez – NOT do anything substantial.
Even worse than I thought it would be. The reference to earthquakes is laughable from a geological point of view, uncertainties about warming itself not even mentioned. Scientific American is a disgrace.
What I find laughable is commenters who don’t support their claims with linky goodness. To each their own!
The typical energy released in tremors triggered by fracking “is the equivalent to a gallon of milk falling off the kitchen counter,” said Stanford University geophysicist Mark Zoback.
In Oklahoma, home to 185,000 drilling wells and hundreds of injection wells, the question of man-made seismic activity comes up quickly. But so far, federal, state and academic experts say readings show that the Oklahoma quakes were natural, following the lines of a long-known fault.
“There’s a fault there,” said U.S. Geological Survey seismologist Paul Earle. “You can have an earthquake that size anywhere east of the Rockies. You don’t need a huge fault to produce an earthquake that big. It’s uncommon, but not unexpected.”
Read more: http://ecocentric.blogs.time.com/2011/11/08/did-fracking-help-cause-oklahoma-earthquakes/#ixzz1k7c6xlLX
It takes an Enormous amount of energy for earthquakes that large, it would take approximately 3800 Tons of TNT to get an earthquake that big.
As I read Time’s report, the “gallon of milk” quote applies to the single large earthquake, not seismic activity in general.
Also, it’s not necessarily the fracking (injection) that causes earthquakes, but disposing of the fluids that result from the operation. Reuters:
Hollywood regroups after losing battle over anti-piracy bills
1. It astonishes me that more than a decade after Napster, the industry hasn’t managed to find an alternative business model (even after Apple showed that it could be done).
2. It absolutely depresses me to contrast the vehement public opposition against SOPA with the casual acceptance of NDAA (which, so far as I know, isn’t even considered worthy enough to be a campaign issue)
Bread and circuses indeed.
Hollywood regroups.
SOPA is like a vampire octopus – it’s not easy to kill.
nobody wants to kill it.
now that the congress critters know opposition is apparent, they will be much, much sneakier about it.
make no mistake, this is the country that passed the patriot act, SOPA is going through …
What we’re seeing is their business model.
I’m only surprised that they haven’t come up with the idea of a mandate to force us to consume their lousy product.
But perhaps school privatization will take care of that.
What we’re seeing is their business model.
I still can’t figure it out. In the end, a computer stores data. A network transfers data. Combine the two, and people will transfer data between themselves.
That this can escape a media executive’s attention is sort of amazing–especially when those executives no doubt have seen their mistresses and (grand)children do this numerous times.
As for privatizing education–I’m not sure how much worse things can get compared to the existing system. I don’t think that the government can legally compel people to enter into an obligation with a private business (in this case, the private school),though . Then again, I’m not a lawyer, so wtfdik?
Sure it can–ObamaRomneyCare. Although I guess that one’s still a little up in the air.
Quite frankly, I don’t see how that one is going to pass muster. Then again, the Supreme Court has been remarkably inept for a long time.
Or you don’t understand law as they do…
There has been progress after all. The ruling classes have learned something since the days of Julius Caesar. He had to pay for both the bread and the entertainment.
Our Caesars don’t subsidize the bread, and make the public pay cable fees to watch the entertainment.
What post-Napster busienss model? Total global music revenues are down about 45% from their 2001 level. Adjusted for inflation, retail sales are down more than 60%.
At the same time, more people listen to more music than ever before.
Some would argue that Apple fixed the business model.
I would argue that Apple took advantage of changes in the music industry.
All that being said, like most of you, I am against SOPA.
@Typing Monkey: “…..NDAA (which, so far as I know, isn’t even considered worthy enough to be a campaign issue).”
Ron Paul mentioned NDAA in his post-primary speech to supporters in SC. The speech was carried by CNN. Presumably millions of voters heard him describe how a provision of that act would allow the President to order the military to detain US citizens. Presumably millions of voters are now better informed.
Of course Paul is not The Answer. He is the questions—the ones that had not been asked till he came along. There are perhaps better people asking these questions, but they have no pulpit. Ron Paul has one. His continued presence in the Rep race is crucial.
Here’s a more balanced report on the subject of fracking by Matt Ridley and Freeman Dyson, two known knuckleheads:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/67679953/Shale-Gas-Materials
Ah yes, Matt Ridley, that well-known expert on banking (see Northern Rock, passim).
Ridley now an expert on shale gas? Lord have mercy.
Balanced? Oh please. It’s from “The Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF) is a registered, educational charity and think tank in the United Kingdom, whose stated aims are to challenge “extremely damaging and harmful policies” envisaged by governments to mitigate anthropogenic global warming.” These people are self described heretics. That’s honest.
Calling that “balanced” is an insult to Fox News.
Heretics are essential to scientific progress. The mainstream needs to have it’s assumptions challenged, and Ridley and Dyson are performing a valuable service. But it’s not their job or intention to be balanced. It’s their job to poke holes in the conventional wisdom. To dismiss the possibility of fracking contributing to global warming initially without even reading the article is to succumb to the same intolerance of dissent that Dyson so rightly criticizes.
truly you are a troll.
when the heretics come out saying the earth is flat, are you going to give them their say ?
no, you’re not.
co2 is a greenhouse gas. we are emitting gigatons of it. it has been demonstrated time and time again that the forcing due to co2 is outweighing all other forcings.
what remains to be seen is what the earth’s feedback loop does about it. right now it looks like it’s just goig to get warmer.
Quick question.
How has fracking impacted the finances of our working and middle-class?
Have they saved 500 dollars a year by availing themselves of natural gas at 4 dollars per BTU (versus the 12 dollars pre-facking).
Or is the amount saved closer to 1,000 dollars per year?
Just curious.
Hi Yves,
I don’t see where your contact info is, but Mail UK has a troublesome article on hunting giraffes for sport in Africa:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2089806/The-giraffe-hunters-pay-10-000-shoot-gentle-giants-guns-bows-sport.html
AARGH.
Some species do seem to think they can do whatever they want.
A righteous man has regard for the life of his animal, but even the compassion of the wicked is cruel. Proverbs 12:10
So, the day finally came:
Sony to move lithium battery assembly abroad: report
Sony also has two lithium ion battery factories in Fukushima Prefecture, located in Eastern Japan.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/01/21/us-sony-lithium-idUSTRE80K0BX20120121
The reason given is fall-out from the strength of the yen, not the fall-out from three nuclear reactors melting down in proximity to seven chock-a-block spent fuel pools.
Unit 2 currently the gift that keeps on giving:
http://ex-skf.blogspot.com/2012/01/reactor-2-containment-vessel-endoscopy_19.html#comment-form
Re SOPA and PIPA, one aspect that hasn’t received much mention is that Christopher Dodd who whored for the financial industry before retiring to whore for the movie industry is the son of Thomas Dodd. What is interesting about Thomas Dodd is that Robert Jackson made him his number two man at the Nuremberg trials. So in a lot of ways Dodd the father was a hero. He later entered politics and ended up as Senator from Connecticut. In 1967, he became one of only a handful of Senators in the 20th century to be censured by the Senate. He had pretty blatantly been using campaign funds for personal use. He didn’t resign but lost in the Democratic primary in 1970.
Christopher Dodd had his one moment of glory back when he was running for President in 2008. He took a stand, albeit a temporary one, blocking passage of the FISA Amendments Act which granted immunity to the telecoms for their participation in illegal surveillance during the Bush years. One of the things that Dodd played up at the time was that he saw his years in the Senate as a way to make up for the disgrace of his father.
Needless to say this was all self-serving hogwash. He had profited from his membership on the Senate Banking Committee getting a cheap Friends of Mozilo mortgage back in 2003. His corruption had been going on a long time.
The comparisons and contrasts between the two Dodds are interesting. The father did accomplish something worthwhile at Nuremberg before his disgrace. This is more than Christopher Dodd ever did. Both father and son were corrupt but the son profited from the laxer standards we have now and so got away with his transgressions.
The idea that anyone believed Dodd when he said, standing on principle, that he would never take a lobbying job after leaving the Senate looks completely ludicrous now. He had been on the take before the housing bubble spiralled completely out of control. He had just served as the banking industry’s cabana boy scotching any real reform in Dodd-Frank, and this after the biggest financial frauds in history. Dodd became the head of the MPAA quite simply because they were the ones who offered the most money. It was the story of his life, and his father’s too for that matter.
Like father, like son…..which leads to my Theory of The Distillation of Sociopathy…..which leads, finally, to my Theory of The End of Civilization.
All very bleak, very unfortunate, but with families like the Dodds as evidence, hard to disprove.
Dodd, yet another democrat who gives democrats a bad name.
Concerning the Article in Bloomberg: ‘Iraq Under Worse Management’
The ‘Realpolitik’ of American Foreign Policy has led to one cruel disaster after another, starting from the the CIA intervention in Iran, to Vietnam, to a whole string of attrocities in Latin America, and now the present disaster in Iraq, all under the pretense of defending freedom and democracy, yet in effect always impoverishing the people of those nations, empowering cruel dictators, and freeing multinationals to exploit local resources. I beleive the longterm interests, safety and mental health of the United States will be undermined by these actions. Perhaps there are numerous factors, that contribute to confusion among our decision makers, but I believe 2 simple principles would lead to much better global outcomes (for the 99%)…
“Do unto others as you would have done unto yourself’ AND “Do not do unto others that which you would find hateful’.
Applied from a multi-party perspective that would at minimum include yourself, the other party, and the third party bystander (who may or might not benefit from the interaction)… a difficult set of principles to uphold, but they would provide much more beneficient solutions.
This from the Guardian “Undercover police had children with activists” http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2012/jan/20/undercover-police-children-activists
This the latest twist in the story of infiltration and attempted sabotage of environmental, animal rights, and other protest groups by the UK police.
Probably naive to ignore the possiblity that it’s happening in the US for example with Occupy.
I am personally aware of three paid FBI informers who established sexual relationships with female activists in the early 1970’s. Fortunately the women were diligent about using birth control.
I became aware of these sociopaths after receiving my 250 page FBI file under a FOIA request. Whoever did the redacting was rather sloppy. One of the informers had made numerous attempts to interest people in committing bombings and other acts of violence. He was never able to line up any suckers.
Is this sort of practice going on today? You can count on it. Remember, it’s not rape when the FBI or Homeland Security does it.
Still Waters Run Deep: The Teaching Moment
In the empire environment, inhabitants understand what they are paid to understand, in positive social feedback, in a competition for the best blinders, cooperating only to prevent further competition once accepted. Lawfully conforming non-conformers cooperate implicitly to increase separation from the empire, balancing the fulcrum, upon empire negative feedback.
The empire system is relatively closed and static; the balance is relatively open and dynamic. The legally non-conforming socially non-conforming act as a drag on the distribution, skewing it back. Meanwhile, the empire falls behind planetary expectations of increasing diversity, resulting in increasing planetary volatility.
Agency middle class pays itself with positive feedback to reflect empire losses as profit, to an empire that only cares about itself, naturally resulting in viral replication, with increasing relative pressure upon decreasing relative volume.
As the relative cost of processing lawful non-conformers grows to consume the empire, agency naturally seeks lawfully conforming social non-conformers with increasingly expensive implicit negative feedback tax nets, accelerating the distillation. The only way to balance the empires books is to borrow further out into the future, calcifying the empire and closing the NPV adaptation window to the end of replacing productive income with agency income, until the currency has no value relative to the planet.
As the empire completely shorts out, quantitative easing accelerates to infinity. At this point, the decisions of a relatively tiny minority of lawfully conforming social non-conformers is all that prevents the bomb from imploding, by orbiting around the suspended animation. Due to the agency algebraic reduction net pursuing them, they are not explicitly connected. Each can see all empire operations, but the empire cannot see them, due to the looking glass of agency encasement.
Democracy, then, is counter-intuitive. Sitting in judgment, blaming individuals for system outcomes, is stupid, willfully ignorant. I am simply explaining outcomes. The empire is being modernized, because it must be modernized, whether anyone likes it or not. Those that wish to participate are welcome to do so, but socialism and tyranny are natural derivatives of agency groupthink. A constitution protects the minority from the tyranny of majority for reason. When it loses elasticity, the bomb goes off. Talking is one thing; doing is another.
So, an empire with a reserve currency may print to infinity so long as it can control its population to that end. The argument that it has no money is ridiculous, right up until it hits the wall of environmental volatility, which this one has clearly hit, when all dressings fall and participant mal-adaptation becomes evident, when the empire can no longer keep its population sedated/satiated.
Everything in the universe, a galaxy, a solar system, a planet, a tree, a critter, and a rock, everything is a fusion/fission reactor at some level of production. At empire change-over, those that best understand physics are in a position to establish an equity position for their family, for generations to come. New family formation is the generator; its future children are the implicit quantum switch.
Investing is like cave exploring. You are better off preparing for low tide. Education is about enabling unknown potential, not equating results to comport with History. Kids are the most disadvantaged at the end of the cycle, and the most advantaged at the beginning. Short-circuiting the process is counter-productive. Effective parents show up when they are least expected and most needed.
The trick to building an empire is giving everyone the free choice to avoid its gravity, with every incentive to enter. An empire can no more change its direction of its own volition than a planet can migrate to another solar system. As Hayden related, some need a good whippin’ before the lesson.
If you don’t understand relevance at this point, you are probably not a kid in a garage programming circuits to blow up, to the end of orbiting and providing propulsion to spacecraft. Diversity moderates the climate by extending the energy relativity circuit, the understanding of which is key. Intelligence is about persistently refusing to accept ignorance, despite every empire penalty to the contrary.
And God said to Abraham…
Did you communicate with INET yet?
Dear Kevin,
There are many ideas in your post—I think.
But I don’t usually get to NC until the evening, and by then my poor old brain is tired. So…could you write just ONE paragraph with ONE idea? Thanks.
what are you interested in?
(sorry, there are many compilers timing in and out at any given time)
Virtual Memory: Compilation, Transcription, and Time
Why would you plant and tend a garden when your neighbors are guaranteed to strip it, long before maturation. That would be stupid. Plant a garden where it is sure to fail, while the empire watches. Tend another.
The universe wastes nothing. If you do not use an entire byte, the universe will employ the remainder for you. If you use entire bytes, the universe will employ the unused portion of bits, by identifying useful patterns, connecting a circuit.
You don’t have time for extensive dc conditionals. You need an AC pattern matcher(of pattern matchers). Ever watch kids play match with a deck of cards? The ones employing memory are slow and relatively ineffective at the game, but quite efficient when looking for particular pairs. How does the kid match every time, after seeing it only once, and turn over a new card? Jeopardy does not measure intelligence.
Don’t go corporate unless you are prepared to appear thoughtless, either as slave labor following rules or master authority making up rules, either loading trucks or expanding WIC. Over empire time it becomes increasingly difficult to remain thoughtless or thoughtful without making a mistake. If repeated, the result is disastrous. Plan rung construction accordingly.
You don’t have to complete a rung in one pass, but it must be implicitly completed by mistake replication, to meet backlash timing on the third. The ladder cascade completes the wave. Lose all the battles to win the war. The fulcrum is a decision tree of decision trees, learning to create a centrifuge to distill the match orbit, across the looking glass.
The implicit vortex is the root of all fusion/fission reactors in the multiplexer. Naturally, the counties seek corporate sponsorship. If one loop contracts, another must expand…but not necessarily in the same dimension. Market accounting and vulture capitalism is the same thing; the Fed is blind by design.
At time T, vortex sympathetic resonance, the universe is in relatively suspended animation, the equations of which only apply to time T. You see what you want to see. The empire simply aggregates majority rule. The smaller the pebble, the longer it takes to change course, but time is relative.
Don’t set down a loaded shotgun by a spoiled 2-yr-old and expect a happy outcome, for the participants. Education begins long before birth and ends long after maturation. Public Corporate Education is like stepping into the middle of an assembly line and increasing its efficiency with control, throwing off timing in both directions, stopping time. Cutting and pasting the conveyor belt is make-work.
Investing is a matter of perspective, on the accounting cost of energy transformation. For the short speculators, this is top-dead-center, the bottom of the education cycle. For value investors, it’s time to long talent. For the intermediaries, employ calculus to isolate the relative integral. After the bang/whimper, all followers will be relative inflation/deflation losers. It’s not how much you play with at the table; that’s the casino’s game. It’s what you take away.
Don’t get in line on Monday. The empire is max-out-of-time. All known event horizons have labels. Now, the roadway slush funds liquidate.
Yes. If you want to compare the US to the USSR, the US is a great country, but it’s a poor door prize. Never park in government/corporate space time, unless you want the empire to think you are stupid. The trick to a real marriage is being in time with each other, as a platform to the future, which is always an unknown event horizon, a quantum work in PROGRESS.
It will be interesting to see how the Facebook Credits story unfolds – I love to see alternative currency experiments. The Facebook story made me curious about the current status of bitcoin. Here’s what I found on that…
Bitcoin online currency gets new job in web security http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21328476.500-bitcoin-online-currency-gets-new-job-in-web-security.html
Bitcoin is a virtual gold standard except it is worse since there is no limit to the amount of gold that can be mined but the number of Bitcoins that can be created is limited. Also, the “mining” of Bitcoins seems to be a rather pointless waste of electricity and computer resources.
Asset-backed money (our current system) is a brilliant invention and it could be implemented ethically if instead of a counterfeiting cartel (our banking system) to borrow from, the corporations were forced to issue and spend their own common stock as money.
Valissa, so can the Bitcoin software be used to track every trade via HFT?
Who knows? This article gave examples of how the software could be used for security or encryption purposes and mentioned nothing about using it for tracking. Let your fingers do the googling :)
Make sure you read the comments in the LA Times article on SOPA and PIPA. Very savvy. Hollywood needs to get a grip and stop throwing money around at old business models just because they have so much of it that they can. One commenter said these bills were like using an atomic bomb on Los Angeles when you discovered a few cockroaches under the sink. Another mentioned how the software companies went ballistic starting in the 1980s about piracy, but eventually understood that a customer is a customer and figured out how to give something free in order for them to sell a better version. TV temporarily bit into the movie business until TV became a distribution tool for movies.
And don’t get me started on copy wrights and who owns what.
I’m just amused that a Murdoch-owned company is so outspoken against hackers illegally recording and disseminating data and is seeking laws to prevent them from illegal recordings.
But hey, I’m a cynic…
You expect something from Murdock other than preposterous hypocrisy when it comes to HIS profits?
Gregg Levine, a well done writeup.
O’Brien is tapped out, PBS engaged in prostitution.
I take it Tohoku’s wind turbines fare well ?
Wouldn’t have hurt to have mentioned the IAEA’s role, NRC’s, INPO’s ..
http://my.firedoglake.com/gregglevine/2012/01/20/aftershocking-frontlines-fukushima-doc-a-lazy-apologia-for-the-nuclear-industry/
YVES, will you, William K. Black, and Michael Hudson form a team to investigate FACEBOOK as Stealth Investment Bank? Facebook needs to get BUSTED! Hasn’t Zuckerberg been working on his Stealth Wealth at the expense of all of the suckers on Facebook who gave him his “basis” for BigBucks with a timely IPO, now SQUARED by offering Credit (with $5.00 fee upfront) to its purchase actual goods and to use the Facebook platform as a de facto bank for the purpose of exchanging currencies? By what “financial” authority?
It’s time for the SEC and the Justice Department to Occupy Facebook to investigate this company-on-the-make from start to finish. Will the TWINS take this opportunity to LEAD the People out of bondage to Facebook via their de facto slavery on the Facebook Plantation?
Recall the Master Class motto: “The Slaves are Happy on the Plantation!”
The Reuters piece makes it clear why Eric Holder must be fired immediately.
They can’t, nor can he quit as his identity has been taken over, almost hijacked, by an Artificial Intelligence known as Fraud AI.
/sarc
Yves, re Schwarzman and the Fed–why is this Fat Cat let off the hook because he dumps 4% of the stock in the Florida bank AFTER THE FACT?
Paging William K. Black!
Occupy Economics?: A Report Back from the Nerdiest Protest I’ve ever been to.
http://phdoctopus.com/2012/01/16/occupy-economics-a-report-back-from-the-nerdiest-protest-ive-ever-been-to/