D.C. home to most cyber-criminals (hat tip reader John D)
Sex: Nerds lose out when women judge on germs PhysOrg (hat tip reader John D)
Google to pull out of China soon, reports say ComputerWorldUK (hat tip reader John D)
Super Supernova: White Dwarf Star System Exceeds Mass Limit Science Daily (hat tip reader John M)
Online Status Anxiety ScienceBlogs (hat tip reader Megan)
One Gene Lost = One Limb Regained? Scientists Demonstrate Mammalian Regeneration Through a Single Gene Deletion Science Daily
Cyber Warriors James Fallows, The Atlantic (hat tip reader JoJo)
Lehman whistleblower lost his job weeks after raising alarm Guardian (hat tip reader Steve L). This story has been out for a day, but this rendition show that the write-ups overseas are more pointed than the ones here.
Banks Get Squeezed by Cities, States Wall Street Journal
Winding down Rolfe Winkler
Reconciling Reconciliation Matt Taibbi
Enron and Merrill, Greece and Goldman Simon Johnson
China asks US groups to back currency stance Financial Times. The China-WalMart lobby…
Antidote du jour (sorry this went up late!):
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America has been subsidized for so long that work here is nothing more than a context in which machiavellian behavior determines who gets to temporarily lord over a race to the bottom, with ever widening disparity, as goods and services of no productive quality must be subsidized at ever greater levels, leading to higher and higher energy costs, backed by a larger and more lethal military, which itself is being systematically replaced by an ever more arbitrary mercenary force. Typical end of empire stuff.
A typical job begins not with a boss who has done the work, but with a graduate of the passive aggressive education system, where advancement through university depends upon a passive adherence to increasingly sophisticated authority, which is largely arbitrary, capricious, and malicious in nature, until such time that the so sifted student is granted similar powers in an apprenticeship for leadership.
As the job proceeds, anyone that disagrees with this form of leadership is summarily discharged, leaving a body of passive labor, and a circle of sycophants to the boss. At this point, the job is already over budget and behind schedule, as the remaining labor force encourages the boss to make poor decisions, to extend the contract, and the sycophants jockey for leadership upon failure.
About ¾ of the way through the job, when task segments should be coming together with momentum toward completion, the errant processes, lorded over by increasingly devious managers and completed by increasingly passive labor, are spiraling out of control away from each other, with associated exponential cost overruns.
An economy cannot function with a passive labor force, and throwing money at it just feeds the fire. The existing education system is a sunk cost. It will be re-tooled, in the current structure or the next, and all the simple, incremental opportunities have been eliminated by procrastination. The maturity wall is a function of education, not financial wizardry.
Finance is inversely proportional to effective education in the home, and the latter follows the former. It is the primary function of every generation to build a bridge, or get left behind. No government can survive passive education in the home.
The trick to getting on the other side is to start from the other side. That was the point of the Internet. There is always a maturity wall, as there is always a group of kids that figures a way around, over, or under it.
Burton is just the latest casualty to hit the wall. It had everything it needed in Vermont to remain successful, but it chose the downhill path of wage arbitrage, brand substitution. Apple is heading in the same direction. The more kids are targeted for short-term profit, the harder the productive ones are to find.
Programming (2 cents):
Layer scaling cannot consist of replication alone. Replication at a variable threshold value (resonance, to and from) should trigger self-elimination and growth of diversity through the code balance function, which should also set aside “error” code in bullpens, along with any successful parameters, for condition comparison.
economics is war. winner sets the rules. like any war, it’s the uninitiated, not the generals, that end up amputated, but they are all fighting over a common interest to control the economic profit function. instead of making pie, they fight over the pie until the last piece falls to the floor, then they argue over who is at fault, usually resulting in a physical war.
enjoy the final four anyway.
(if you’re in 30 yr T’s, watch your convex arse, beginning with MBS withdrawal)
in the original experiment, 65% were willing to apply electric shock. on the new reality tv show it’s 80% …
all they need is an authority.
This comment lifted from Matt Taibbi’s site pretty much sums up how I feel about any kind of reform effort put forth by Congress and the White House:
“Between the President’s behind-the-scenes dealmaking with the pharmaceutical and insurance industries and the Congressional sell-out to these same interests, it’s a wonder there’s anything in the measure that’s good for “the people” at all.
Now comes Chris Dodd with his watered-down financial reform package, additional proof that American Democracy in the 21st Century translates to government of the corporations, by the corporations, for the corporations.
Hell, we can’t even shut down the payday lenders or revoke the insurance companies’ antitrust exemption. (Maybe the latter will happen, but I’m not holding my breath.)
I think we all know, too, that the checks and balances of our system has failed completely now that the U.S. Supreme Court has weighed in on the legal and political standing of bricks and mortar.
What we’re witnessing here is not only a continuation of the insane crony capitalism which brought the world’s economy to its knees, but also the subordination of capitalism to a new U.S. economic model altogether: Feudalism.
When you consider the wholesale theft of wealth by the few, the decay of our schools, the usury that passes for consumer credit, the continuing decline of the labor movement, the erosion of Constitutional principles, and the corporate takeover of the media, you can only wonder if the situation is even any longer reversible.
Our solution to the crisis in education is to fire the teachers. Why don’t we just get right to it and fire the students? It would make their transition into our draconian prison system, America’s foremost growth industry, that much more efficient.
Are we, like the banana republics which came before us, merely the progenitors of future generations of peasants who will owe their lives to “the company store?”
The tiny spark of optimism that resides in the furthermost corner of the basement of my soul hopes you’re that this pathetic excuse for health care reform bill, in some way, lead to genuine reform.
Meanwhile, though, I’m neither celebrating its apparent passage nor mourning its doubtful failure: It is simply the latest artifact in a declining culture which deludes itself into believing it is a thriving democracy, full of vim, vigor, and lively debate.
We have become the patient etherized upon the table while the ragged claws of our elected officials scuttle the floors of silent seas.”
I believe the quote was ‘reformers, reform thyselves!’ in the original Greek version.
Due to mistranslation, which happens more often than we deserve, it became, physician, heal thyself.
‘Those who have already reformed themvelves so that you don’t kowtow to Wall Street anymore, go ahead and cast your reforming stones,’ thus it was proclaimed in that book.
Hey this looks interesting: banks in Italy charged with derivatives fraud:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/8573068.stm
What will come of this? We shall see.
All right, what is it? I’m guessing a koala or one of the monotremes, sleeping. Or an anteater.
“Princess” – nice touch!
An anteater. The site I got it from loves anteaters.