48 Comments
As O’Donnell notes, this ain’t just about what happened on Wall Street.
Here is the latest conversation I had with money manager Andrew Horowitz…. new insights for anyone who invests in anything.
Click here for non-Flash version.
click ► to listen:
Right click here and select ‘Save Link As…’ to download the mp3 file.
| Contribute to the future of the show here. |
Anyone who follows my thoughts on the matter know I’m on board with this guy. But listen to what Horowitz says on the DH Unplugged above. Hint: not good.
It sounds like something in a horror film, but some people believe it happens. It’s also what an Irish coroner recently concluded about the death of Michael Faherty, a 76-year-old Irishman who burned to death in his home in December 2010. There were scorch marks above and below the body, but no evidence of any gasoline, kerosene, or other accelerant. The coroner, Ciaran McLoughlin, reported: “This fire was thoroughly investigated and I’m left with the conclusion that this fits into the category of spontaneous human combustion, for which there is no adequate explanation.”
Imagine that President Obama could order the arrest of anyone who broke a promise on the Internet. So you could be jailed for lying about your age or weight on an Internet dating site. Or you could be sent to federal prison if your boss told you to work but you used the company’s computer to check sports scores online. Imagine that Eric Holder’s Justice Department urged Congress to raise penalties for violations, making them felonies allowing three years in jail for each broken promise. Fanciful, right?
Think again. Congress is now poised to grant the Obama administration’s wishes in the name of “cybersecurity.”
The little-known law at issue is called the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. It was enacted in 1986 to punish computer hacking. But Congress has broadened the law every few years, and today it extends far beyond hacking. The law now criminalizes computer use that “exceeds authorized access” to any computer. Today that violation is a misdemeanor, but the Senate Judiciary Committee is set to meet this morning to vote on making it a felony.
The problem is that a lot of routine computer use can exceed “authorized access.”
Some of those issues were headed off, but that’s only some and who knows if the amendments will survive. Here’s the latest.
|
Sign up for No Agenda Mailing List here.
Art By: Peekasso # Listen to show by clicking ► Direct link to show. Sign up for No Agenda Mailing List here. |
Manuel Segovia
The language of Ayapaneco has been spoken in the land now known as Mexico for centuries. It has survived the Spanish conquest, seen off wars, revolutions, famines and floods. But now, like so many other indigenous languages, it’s at risk of extinction.
There are just two people left who can speak it fluently – but they refuse to talk to each other. Manuel Segovia, 75, and Isidro Velazquez, 69, live 500 metres apart in the village of Ayapa in the tropical lowlands of the southern state of Tabasco. It is not clear whether there is a long-buried argument behind their mutual avoidance, but people who know them say they have never really enjoyed each other’s company.
“They don’t have a lot in common,” says Daniel Suslak, a linguistic anthropologist from Indiana University, who is involved with a project to produce a dictionary of Ayapaneco. Segovia, he says, can be “a little prickly” and Velazquez, who is “more stoic,” rarely likes to leave his home.
The dictionary is part of a race against time to revitalise the language before it is definitively too late. “When I was a boy everybody spoke it,” Segovia told the Guardian by phone. “It’s disappeared little by little, and now I suppose it might die with me.”
Segovia, who denied any active animosity with Velazquez, retained the habit of speaking Ayapaneco by conversing with his brother until he died about a decade ago. Segovia still uses it with his son and wife who understand him, but cannot produce more than a few words themselves. Velazquez reputedly does not regularly talk to anybody in his native tongue anymore.
Regardless, the record should be kept. It is a contribution to ethnology, the history of communities that precede whatever we become next.
Thanks, Cinaedh
Police in the UK are planning to use unmanned spy drones, controversially deployed in Afghanistan, for the ”routine” monitoring of antisocial motorists, protesters, agricultural thieves and fly-tippers, in a significant expansion of covert state surveillance.
The arms manufacturer BAE Systems, which produces a range of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) for war zones, is adapting the military-style planes for a consortium of government agencies led by Kent police.Documents from the South Coast Partnership, a Home Office-backed project in which Kent police and others are developing a national drone plan with BAE, have been obtained by the Guardian under the Freedom of Information Act.
Generally speaking most observers believe that if these devices are used in an urban environment that they can be taken out or rendered useless by directional RF jammers. The Brits will put up with a lot more than will Americans, though. This is a genuine test of the UK Police state.
The interesting Occupy Wall Street protests are growing since their inception on the 17th of Sept. The news media has either trivialized it (NY Times) or suppressed coverage (CNN, etc.) on behalf of unstated special interests. One can assume that bankers and the city government of NYC does not want to give anyone any ideas. That said a scan of out-of-state Craigslist postings for ride sharing to NYC for the sole purpose of joining these protests is increasing. Episodes of police brutality on otherwise friendly and non-violent protesters will make matters worse as the NYC city officials grows inpatient with the crowd. The on the ground crowd estimates vary widely but the number of protesters in not insignificant. This could be the final straw that kills big media if they do not step up and cover this story immediately.
There are good home brew videos available that are being taken down for no apparent reason by You Tube.
What we have left are a lot of unedited and random videos that need to be consolidated into a real narrative,
A long-lost, highly valuable Moon rock brought back from the Apollo 17 mission has turned up in the files of Bill Clinton.
The rock was one of 50 presented to each state, and was given to Arkansas while the ex-president was governor. The rock, worth millions of dollars, had been missing since at least 1980 until an archivist found it in old gubernatorial papers. Bobby Roberts, director of the Central Arkansas Library System, told Reuters the archivist opened a box previously archived as “Arkansas flag plaque.” The rock and a state flag were originally affixed to the plaque, but the rock had fallen off and the plaque had been misplaced.
“The moon rock, which is in a plastic container, had fallen off the plaque,” Roberts said, explaining that the rock was at the bottom of the box. “The archivist immediately knew what he had discovered.”
The rock was originally presented to Arkansas Gov. David Pryor in 1976 and hung in the governor’s office during the term of Pryor’s successor, the future president. Roberts figures that when Clinton lost his bid for re-election in 1980, everything got packed up and the plaque and its rock from outer space were misplaced.
Meh, it was probably from Texas anyway.
Thierry Legault’s video of the UARS climate satellite falling. An amateur astronomer has recorded images of the out-of-control US satellite as it tumbles back to Earth. Thierry Legault, from Paris, captured the video as the satellite passed over northern France on 15 September.
The six-tonne, 20-year-old spacecraft has fallen out of orbit and is expected to crash somewhere on Earth on or around 24 September. The US space agency says the risk to life from the Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite (UARS) is 1 in 3,200. Mr Legault, an engineer, used a specially designed camera to record the tumbling satellite through his 14-inch telescope, posting the footage on his Astrophotography website.
UARS could land anywhere between 57 degrees north and 57 degrees south of the equator – most of the populated world. Nasa says that most of the satellite will break or burn up before reaching Earth.
Video here.
Imagine tapping into the mind of a coma patient, or watching one’s own dream on YouTube. With a cutting-edge blend of brain imaging and computer simulation, scientists at the University of California, Berkeley, are bringing these futuristic scenarios within reach.
Using functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) and computational models, UC Berkeley researchers have succeeded in decoding and reconstructing people’s dynamic visual experiences – in this case, watching Hollywood movie trailers.
As yet, the technology can only reconstruct movie clips people have already viewed. However, the breakthrough paves the way for reproducing the movies inside our heads that no one else sees, such as dreams and memories, according to researchers.
“This is a major leap toward reconstructing internal imagery,” said Professor Jack Gallant, a UC Berkeley neuroscientist and coauthor of the study published online today (Sept. 22) in the journal Current Biology. “We are opening a window into the movies in our minds.”
Eventually, practical applications of the technology could include a better understanding of what goes on in the minds of people who cannot communicate verbally, such as stroke victims, coma patients and people with neurodegenerative diseases.
And if you dream of doing ____, the pre-crime police can lock you up? Guess this means the tin foil hat folks are just ahead of their time.
For those of you too young to understand the dream police and Cheap Trick reference, click here.
|
Sign up for No Agenda Mailing List here.
Listen to show by clicking ► Direct link to show. Sign up for No Agenda Mailing List here. |
A Lloyd’s insurance syndicate has begun a landmark legal case against Saudi Arabia, accusing the kingdom of indirectly funding al-Qa’ida and demanding the repayment of £136m it paid out to victims of the 9/11 attacks.
The Brighton-based Lloyd’s 3500 syndicate, which paid $215m compensation to companies and individuals involved, alleges that the oil-rich Middle Eastern superpower bears primary responsibility for the atrocity because al-Qa’ida was supported by banks and charities acting as “agents and alter egos” for the Saudi state.
The detailed case, which names a number of prominent Saudi charities and banks as well as a leading member of the al-Saud royal family, will cause embarrassment to the Saudi government, which has long denied claims that Osama bin Laden’s organisation received official financial and practical support from his native country.
Outlined in a 156-page document filed in western Pennsylvania, where United Airlines flight 93 crashed on 9/11, the claim suggests that the nine defendants “knowingly” provided resources, including funding, to al-Qa’ida in the years before the attack and encouraged anti-Western sentiment which increased support for the terror group.
The legal claim states: “Absent the sponsorship of al-Qa’ida’s material sponsors and supporters, including the defendants named therein, al-Qa’ida would not have possessed the capacity to conceive, plan and execute the 11 September attacks. The success of al-Qa’ida’s agenda, including the 11 September attacks themselves, has been made possible by the lavish sponsorship al-Qa’ida has received from its material sponsors and supporters over more than a decade leading up to 11 September 2001.”
Oops! Sorry Iraq…..our bad.
What would you ask him?
President Obama will participate in a town hall at the California headquarters of social networking site LinkedIn on Sept. 26, according to the White House.
At “Putting America Back to Work,” Obama will answer questions about job creation and the economy from a live audience made up of LinkedIn members and employees, as well as questions that have been submitted from other site members. Users can submit questions in advance and watch the town hall live on LinkedIn and WhiteHouse.gov/live.
In conjunction with the Obama’s visit, LinkedIn has launched a community focused on job creation and the economy. This group will also provide opportunities for LinkedIn members to engage with the White House and administration officials following the event.
Support the Blog — Buy This Book!
For Kindle and with free ePub version. Only $9.49 Great reading.
Here is what Gary Shapiro CEO of the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA) said: Dvorak's writing sings with insight and clarity. Whether or not you agree with John's views, he will get you thinking and is never boring. These essays are worth the read!
Put this ad on your blog!
Syndicate
Subscribe to Main Blog feed here:
Subscribe to Comments too (below):
Junk Email Filter
