SEC Illegally Destroyed Files and Documents Related to Thousands of Early-Stage Investigations
August 18th, 2011You’ll love this one.
Via: New York Times:
An enforcement lawyer at the Securities and Exchange Commission says that the agency illegally destroyed files and documents related to thousands of early-stage investigations over the last 20 years, according to information released Wednesday by Congressional investigators.
The destroyed files comprise records of at least 9,000 preliminary inquiries into matters involving notorious individuals like Bernard L. Madoff, as well as several major Wall Street firms that later were the subject of scrutiny after the 2008 financial crisis, including Goldman Sachs, Lehman Brothers, Citigroup and Bank of America.
Gold Breaks Higher Out of Previous Range; New Record
August 18th, 2011Spot gold: $1819.99.
BP and Other Companies Asked to Investigate “New Sheen” in Gulf of Mexico
August 18th, 2011I guess sheen is newspeak for oil spill.
Via: CBS / AP:
Oil giant BP says it is investigating a new sheen in the Gulf of Mexico.
A catastrophic explosion at the energy giant’s Macondo well in the Gulf on April 2010 killed 11 men and led to the worst offshore oil spill in U.S. history.
BP did not make clear Thursday what the source of the new sheen was, but told The Associated Press in London it was not found near “any existing BP operations.” A sheen is a shiny coating that floats on the surface of the water, and could come from leaked or spilled oil.
London-based BP spokeswoman Sheila Williams said that “there is a lot of sheen in the Gulf of Mexico area” and that the substance did not necessarily come from a BP site or well.
For First Time, More Corn Used for Ethanol Than Livestock
August 18th, 2011Via: The Gazette:
For the first time ever, more of the corn crop may go into gas tanks than into the stomachs of cattle and poultry destined for kitchen tables.
The prediction drew little response last week when it was released by the USDA in its Crop Production and Supply/Demand Report for the 2011 crop season. The USDA kept its prediction for ethanol production demand for corn at 5.05 billion, but lowered demand projections for livestock feed by 100 million bushels to 5 billion bushels.
That fuel now tops livestock as the primary user of corn struck at least one observer as noteworthy.
“That’s a first-time-ever type of change,” University of Missouri Extension economist Ron Plain said in a statement released by the university.
“For forever,” Plain said, “ feed was the largest single use of corn.”
Research Credit: EB
UK PM’s Internet Censorship Insinuation Receives Praise from China
August 18th, 2011Via: ZeroPaid:
You know your internet censorship plans are too strict when China praises you for it.
I’ll say this right off the bat, if someone told me one month ago that I would end up writing a headline like that, I would have told them they were insane. I am simply stunned that it has come to this.
Last Thursday, British Prime Minister said that he wanted to “stop people from communicating on social media” whenever that person is using it to instigate violence. A growing majority of observers are interpret this as meaning that he wants to block social media websites altogether whenever civil unrest is suspected.
Blocking social media has certainly caused some debate in many places – especially in the UK. The discussions around possibly censoring the internet has received international attention. This includes China. Chinese state media website Global Times weighed in on the debate suggesting that “Western” countries are coming to realize that free speech cannot go unhindered on the internet.
Research Credit: EB
Hugo Chavez Orders $11 Billion of Gold Home From International Vaults
August 18th, 2011Via: Bloomberg:
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez ordered the central bank to repatriate $11 billion of gold reserves held in developed nations’ institutions such as the Bank of England as the metal rises to record levels behind a weakening U.S. dollar.
Venezuela, which holds 211 tons of its 365 tons of gold reserves in U.S., European, Canadian and Swiss institutions, will progressively return the bars to the central bank’s vault, Chavez said yesterday. JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM), Barclays Plc (BARC), Standard Chartered Plc (STAN) and the Bank of Nova Scotia (BNS) also hold Venezuelan gold, the president said.
“We’ve held 99 tons of gold at the Bank of England since 1980. I agree with bringing that home,” Chavez said yesterday on state television. “It’s a healthy decision.”
Related: Hugo Chavez to Nationalize Venezuela’s Gold Industry
Single Seat Electric Vehicle Sets 1,000 Miles-Plus Record on Single Charge
August 17th, 2011Via: PhysOrg:
An experimental electric vehicle called “Schluckspecht” (“boozer,” or “tippler” in German) has set the record for achieving the longest drive in a battery-powered vehicle on a single battery charge. Its record-breaking distance was 1,013.8 miles (1,631.5 km). The trip lasted 36 hours and 12 minutes. The Schluckspecht E, as the winning machine is called, was developed at Germany’s University of Applied Sciences, Offenburg, in collaboration with other academic groups. The test drive took place in Boxberg at the Bosch corporate test track, where a team of four drivers made the trip, as they took turns navigating over the long stretch of hours.
…
The aerodynamic design and weight efficiencies of the vehicle are singled out as reasons for the team’s success.
Long Beach Police Department Claims Authority to Detain People for Taking Pictures “With No Apparent Aesthetic Value”
August 17th, 2011The U.S. horror show is plumbing new depths of fascism now. This one will definitely cause you to skip a beat. Even I had to pause and re-read this one in disbelief.
Via: Long Beach Post:
Police Chief Jim McDonnell has confirmed that detaining photographers for taking pictures “with no apparent esthetic value” is within Long Beach Police Department policy.
McDonnell spoke for a follow-up story on a June 30 incident in which Sander Roscoe Wolff, a Long Beach resident and regular contributor to Long Beach Post, was detained by Officer Asif Kahn for taking pictures of
a North Long Beach refinery.
“If an officer sees someone taking pictures of something like a refinery,” says McDonnell, “it is incumbent upon the officer to make contact with the individual.” McDonnell went on to say that whether said contact becomes detainment depends on the circumstances the officer encounters.
McDonnell says that while there is no police training specific to determining whether a photographer’s subject has “apparent esthetic value,” officers make such judgments “based on their overall training and experience” and will generally approach photographers not engaging in “regular tourist behavior.”
Who—and What—Are Behind the “Official History” of the Bin Laden Raid?
August 17th, 2011I just included a tiny piece of this. Click through, but be ready to for a lengthy and careful meditation on total absurdity of this fabricated spectacle.
Via: Who What Why:
The establishment media just keep getting worse. They’re further and further from good, tough investigative journalism, and more prone to be pawns in complicated games that affect the public interest in untold ways. A significant recent example is The New Yorker‘s vaunted August 8 exclusive on the vanquishing of Osama bin Laden.
A Clock That Can Run for 10,000 Years Is Being Built Inside a Mountain Owned by Jeff Bezos
August 17th, 2011I’ll note a few bullet points about this 10,000 year clock project that stood out for me. This is not an exhaustive list and I’m sure that people who know more about these topics will uncover other interesting features.
First, does anybody know about rituals that involve time and a participant wearing a blue hooded robe?
The photo below appears in Kevin Kelly’s Technium story on the 10,000 year clock. The caption text is quoted from there as well:
Stewart Brand, just back from Morocco, stands before the prototype clock minutes before it rings in the year 2000.
Kevin Kelly notes:
At Long Now Foundation we’ve always resisted the idea of turning the institution into a religion — even though religions may have the best track record for long-term endurance. But the comparison to monks devoting their lives to maintain a remote and long-lived clock is hard to avoid, especially if you show up at a momentous clock event in a hooded robe.
…
Stewart Brand, co-founder of the Long Now Foundation, had just returned from a vacation in Morocco the day before so he was wearing a djellaba.
So, it’s just a bunch of wealthy, fun loving atheists, one of whom happened to have been visiting Morocco and kept his djellaba on for the big gong show at the strike of midnight… The resemblance of this scene to some sort of religious ritual is an unfortunate coincidence…
Ok, then, moving on: This clock is actually a celestial instrument. Here’s the face of the clock (also from Kevin Kelly):
Labeled Face of 10,000 Year Clock
The “capstone” of the device, if you will, is a sapphire glass cupola that transmits energy from the Sun to mechanisms inside the mountain. This is the only part of the device that is above ground.
Jeff Bezos established 10000yearclock.net to serve as the official website for this clock project. Let’s look at the quotes that greet visitors to 10000yearclock.net. Here’s a screenshot from the homepage:
We are as gods...
Yep, that’s old Stewart again, the guy wearing the blue robe in the picture above. I’d guess that, if asked directly, who he means by “we,” he’d say that he means humans, in general. I’d be careful, though, in thinking that people like you and me are part of Brand’s we-are-as-gods statements. I don’t dress up in a hooded robe to ring in the new year, in front of a celestial clock, or hang out with billionaires. Do you? I also wouldn’t be squandering precious time and resources on what amounts to a macro scale art object inside a mountain while the world goes to hell in a handbasket. Would you?
This is from a 1998 interview with Stewart Brand:
JB: What’s happening with the clock?
BRAND: Three years we’ve been working on building a 10,000-year clock and as of ’98, we’re building a prototype eight feet tall, probably about the size of two refrigerators back to back. We’ve got an invitation to debut it at the World Economic Forum in Davos next January, ’99 — the perfect place to get world leaders and corporate leaders and so on thinking in 10,000-year terms.
Definitely be careful with assumptions about who we refers to.
What’s the name of the mountain range in which the Long Now clock is located? It’s the Sierra Diablo Mountain Range. (You knew that the Debbil was going to pop up here somewhere.) I have not looked into it, but my guess is that there’s some ley line and/or geomantic component to the site that was selected.
How much will the project cost? $42 million. A 42 million dollar project in the Devil’s Mountains? Really? You gotta love these guys.
Finally, there’s the spiral staircase that surrounds the clock.
Now, these are just a handful of interesting things that I happened to notice, and I’m not even into this stuff very much. Let me know if you come across a full freak analysis of this thing. I’d like to know more.
Here are some non-woowoo links about the clock:
Kevin Kelly: The Clock in the Mountain
Wired: How to Make a Clock Run for 10,000 Years
