27 Year Old Citigroup Banker Allegedly Jumped to Her Death from Trump Palace in New York City
December 22nd, 2010From Donald Trump Counting Sheep:
As a reader wrote to me recently, “It’s the little things…”
Via: The Hoya:
Jessica Fashano (MSB ’05) shocked much of the New York financial world Saturday when she allegedly threw herself off of the Trump Palace in New York City. According to the New York Police Department, there is no evidence of foul play in the death of the 27-year-old alumna who worked as an investment banking associate at Citi Global Market.
Many members of the Georgetown community are mourning Fashano’s death, according to a statement released by McDonough School of Business Dean Norean Sharpe.
“Jessica will be greatly missed by all of the Georgetown faculty and her former business school classmates. Our thoughts and prayers go out to Jessica’s family and many friends during this difficult time,” Sharpe said.
A Whippany, N.J., native who kept in touch with her college friends, Fashano graduated from Georgetown magna cum laude with finance and international business majors and a Spanish minor, according to Business Insider.
From surveillance video of the scene, officials determined that Fashano arrived at Trump Palace, 16 blocks away from her New York apartment, early on Saturday morning. A resident rode with her in the elevator to the top of the Trump Palace, and said that Fashano was alert and aware at the time.
Fashano had asked the resident how to get to the roof, which contains views of the Hudson River and New Jersey.
Close friend and fellow 2005 graduate Michelle Javian was supposed to meet Fashano for brunch that Saturday morning.
“She just had everything someone could want to be successful,” Javian told The New York Times. “She was always the leader, had everything organized,” Javian added.
Fashano was taking depression medication, according to the police, but Javian said she talked to her daily. “It’s like something just changed overnight … .Something just snapped, and we don’t know,” she told the Times.
According to her peers, Fashano shined at her job. Associates described her as always working hard and giving her best effort, and she was featured in a corporate video about the company.
Weak Update; More Later; Telecom Hell Continues
December 21st, 2010Update: After Being Down for Three Days…
It came back up a few hours after I posted this. Thanks, Telecom. Love ya. Really. *wink*
—End Update—
I’ve been driving around the wopwops, documenting another Telecom XT outage in this area. This time, I borrowed another XT user’s sim card to try, in addition to my own. Part of Telecom’s MO in hiding their outages is getting users to believe that it’s their fault and that nobody else is having the problem.
Surprise, surprise, XT (data) is down again, inland from Taipa. No doubt about it. Start up a ping -t in Cable Bay and everything is fine. Go over the Taipa bridge, turn left onto Oruru road and that’s it. The curtain falls: Request timed out, request timed out, request timed out…. and it doesn’t come back heading west. Five bars reception, line of sight to towers, doesn’t matter. Connects fine. No throughput.
Telecom New Zealand's Bullshit Generator
You’re busted Telecom. Post the outage on your site, you crooks. (not holding breath)
Then I dropped in to look at a printer that’s giving my inlaws’ trouble… Anyway, you’ve heard enough Christmas joy out of me already, so I’ll spare you the details.
The roosters are crowing and I’m going to go to sleep now.
Updates later.
The New, NEW! Terrorists
December 21st, 2010Via: ABC News:
“The threat has changed from simply worrying about foreigners coming here, to worrying about people in the United States, American citizens — raised here, born here, and who for whatever reason, have decided that they are going to become radicalized and take up arms against the nation in which they were born,” he said.
Ted Kaczynski and the CIA?
December 21st, 2010This is pretty flimsy so far, but it’s Part 1. Maybe the story will get more interesting.
Via: Times Union:
Was my brother, Ted Kaczynski (AKA “the Unabomber”), a sort of “Manchurian candidate” – programmed to kill by our government in a CIA-funded thought-control experiment gone awry?
…
The Harvard study my brother participated in was called “Multiform Assessments of Personality Development Among Gifted College Men.” It was overseen by the noted psychologist Henry Murray, who during WWII worked for the OSS (which later became the CIA), where he developed methodologies for interrogating prisoners of war. In his professional life, Murray was known for his brilliance and his grandiosity. In his personal life, according to his biographer, he displayed sadistic tendencies. His research on college men bears a certain resemblance to his research on prisoners of war. He was quite a big wheel in his day, perhaps as well known and influential in military and government circles as he was in academia.
Were the so-called “Murray experiments” part of MK Ultra? It may be that no one living knows the answer to this question. We know that the experiments were highly unpleasant for my brother and for some others who participated. We know that the basic premise of the research was to study how bright college students would react to aggressive and highly stressful attacks on their beliefs and values.
Research Credit: ltcolonelnemo
State Budgets: The Day of Reckoning
December 20th, 2010Via: CBS News / 60 Minutes:
By now, just about everyone in the country is aware of the federal deficit problem, but you should know that there is another financial crisis looming involving state and local governments.
It has gotten much less attention because each state has a slightly different story. But in the two years, since the “great recession” wrecked their economies and shriveled their income, the states have collectively spent nearly a half a trillion dollars more than they collected in taxes. There is also a trillion dollar hole iln their public pension funds.
The states have been getting by on billions of dollars in federal stimulus funds, but the day of reckoning is at hand.
Research Credit: JH
U.S. Government Storing Information on Americans in Vast Surveillance Database
December 20th, 2010Via: Washington Post:
Nine years after the terrorist attacks of 2001, the United States is assembling a vast domestic intelligence apparatus to collect information about Americans, using the FBI, local police, state homeland security offices and military criminal investigators.
The system, by far the largest and most technologically sophisticated in the nation’s history, collects, stores and analyzes information about thousands of U.S. citizens and residents, many of whom have not been accused of any wrongdoing.
The government’s goal is to have every state and local law enforcement agency in the country feed information to Washington to buttress the work of the FBI, which is in charge of terrorism investigations in the United States.
Related: The Last Roundup: MAIN CORE
Research Credit: WS
Probable Carcinogen Hexavalent Chromium Found in Drinking Water of 31 U.S. Cities
December 20th, 2010Add it to the list:
Can You Do This With Your Tap Water?
Via: Washington Post:
An environmental group that analyzed the drinking water in 35 cities across the United States, including Bethesda and Washington, found that most contained hexavalent chromium, a probable carcinogen that was made famous by the film “Erin Brockovich.”
The study, which will be released Monday by the Environmental Working Group, is the first nationwide analysis of hexavalent chromium in drinking water to be made public.
It comes as the Environmental Protection Agency is considering whether to set a limit for hexavalent chromium in tap water. The agency is reviewing the chemical after the National Toxicology Program, part of the National Institutes of Health, deemed it a “probable carcinogen” in 2008.
The federal government restricts the amount of “total chromium” in drinking water and requires water utilities to test for it, but that includes both trivalent chromium, a mineral that humans need to metabolize glucose, and hexavalent chromium, the metal that has caused cancer in laboratory animals.
Britain May Require ISPs to Block Internet Pornography by Default
December 20th, 2010I wonder how long it will take for other categories of sites to be added to this blacklist?
Via: IT Pro Portal:
The government has urged UK Internet service providers to block pornographic websites in order to help protect children.
UK communications minister Ed Vaizey is expected to meet representatives from UK ISPs BT, TalkTalk and Virgin Media to discuss the possibility of blocking pornographic websites at homes with children by default.
Under the plans, access to such websites will be blocked unless a person of appropriate age opts-in to regain access to pornographic content on the web.
…
However, the Open Rights group has voiced its concerns over a blacklist being controlled by the government as they fear that it would turn into a front for blocking websites like WikiLeaks.
Cable Search: Full Text Search of Released Wikileaks State Department Documents
December 20th, 2010Cable Search is automatically adding documents as WikiLeaks makes them available.
Via: cablesearch.org:
CABLESEARCH is an attempt for an user friendly search engine of already published documents from Wikileaks.
Research Credit: RB
Slumtube
December 19th, 2010Via: Inhabitat:
Remember the efficient and affordable Pallet House from last spring? Well designers Andreas Claus Schnetzer and Pils Gregor have bested their original design with an even lower-cost shipping pallet home that was completed this year in South Africa. The ‘Slumtube’ utilizes discarded pallets along with other local materials like clay and straw to make an insulated and affordable home that can withstand the extremely hot and cold temperatures of Johannesburg.
