Archive for July, 2008
Want to Know If Waterboarding Is Torture? Ask Christopher Hitchens
July 2nd, 2008Via: Guardian: Late last year, the writer, polemicist and fierce proponent of the US-led invasion of Iraq Christopher Hitchens attempted, in a piece for the online magazine Slate, to draw a distinction between what he called techniques of “extreme interrogation” and “outright torture”. From this, his foes inferred that since it was Hitchens’ belief that […]
Rights Groups Win Phone Tap Case Against Britain
July 2nd, 2008Via: Reuters: Europe’s top rights court ruled against the government on Tuesday for intercepting telephone calls between British and Irish rights groups and their clients, violating their right to privacy. Rights group Liberty and its Irish counterparts British Irish Rights Watch and the Irish Council for Civil Liberties said Britain set up an eavesdropping facility […]
Big Trouble for Big Three Automakers
July 2nd, 2008WARNING: This is not a recommendation to buy, sell or hold any financial instrument. The article states, “Shares of General Motors are trading at prices last seen in the 1950s, their value cut in half in just eight weeks.” Actually, it’s much worse than that. GM is trading at $10.65 right now. Let’s take the […]
Mortgage Ruling Could Shock U.S. Banking Industry
July 2nd, 2008Via: Reuters: A lawsuit filed by a Wisconsin couple against their mortgage lender could have major implications for banks should a U.S. appeals court agree that borrowers can cancel their loans en masse when their lenders violate a federal lending disclosure law. The case began like hundreds of others filed since the U.S. housing boom […]
Fed-Up Families Turn To Barbed Wire, Shotguns To Police Neighborhood
July 2nd, 2008Via: Local6: Families in a crime-ridden Central Florida neighborhood are arming themselves with shotguns and talking about adding electric barbed wire to stop thieves targeting their homes. “Somebody is going to end up getting hurt,” resident Andrea Fine said. “The homeowners are tense. We are all on edge. For the first time in my life […]
Wheat Plunges as U.S. Report Shows Spring Acreage Increased
July 2nd, 2008Good news on the food front?! I had to post it. Via: Bloomberg: Wheat plunged the most in 10 weeks after a government report showed U.S. growers seeded more acres with spring crops to take advantage of prices that rallied to a record this year. About 14.197 million acres were sown in April and May, […]
Starbucks to Close 600 U.S. Stores
July 2nd, 2008Via: AP: For a decade it appeared there was no such thing as too many Starbucks for U.S. coffee drinkers, whose willingness to buy its $4 lattes and dark drip brews rationalized a second green-and-white mermaid awning just down the street — and sometimes even a third. But in a sign that those days are […]
High Density Vertical Growth (HDVG) System
July 2nd, 2008Valcent Products claims to have a system that yields 20 times the normal production volume for many field crops while using only 5% of the water that is normally required. It’s a vertical growth system and they deliver all of the nutrients via solution. Look, I’m agnostic on this. I’m not advocating this, but maybe […]
Thoughts on Cryptogon Subreddit
July 2nd, 2008You guys are submitting excellent stories to the Cryptogon Subreddit! Nice work. I hope that you’re finding it as informative as I am. On an unfortunate note, there’s something wrong with Reddit’s system in that it’s autobanning some users and comments! I’ve found comments in a “banned” state and someone wrote to me, asking why […]
Vacant Homes Spread Blight in Suburb and City Alike
July 2nd, 2008Via: Christian Science Monitor: In Mesa, Ariz., officials are trying to decide what to do about boarded-up McMansions that become party pads, trashed in raucous “raves” where invitations come by text message. In Atlanta, thieving from abandoned properties is so bad that police caught one man building a new house entirely of pilfered materials from […]
