cryptogon.com

The Senate voted 70 to 30 to give Bernanke four more years as the nation’s most powerful economic policymaker, after a sometimes heated debate in which members of both parties — including some who eventually voted in his favor — assailed the Fed’s actions under his leadership.

The common currency fell against most of its major counterparts including the Canadian dollar as the cost to insure Greece’s sovereign debt rose to a record. The yen climbed against the Norwegian krone and Brazilian real as investors sought refuge from European budget turmoil.

“People are nervous that there’s continued deterioration in those countries,” said Christian Bendixen, director of technical research at Bay Crest Partners in New York. “They no longer trust the euro, and they’re moving out of it.”

The euro weakened 0.4 percent to $1.3963 at 4:22 p.m. in New York, from $1.4024 yesterday, after reaching $1.3938, the lowest level since July 14. The euro decreased 0.6 percent to 125.53 yen, from 126.25. It touched 125.11, the lowest since April 28. The dollar dropped 0.1 percent to 89.90 yen, from 90.

Family members said Zinn, who for decades was a fixture in the U.S. civil rights and anti-war movements and lived in Auburndale, Massachusetts, died of a heart attack on Wednesday while traveling in California.

He was a professor emeritus in the political science department at Boston University and taught there from 1964 to 1988.

“He had a deep sense of fairness and justice for the underdog. But he always kept his sense of humor. He was a happy warrior,” said Caryl Rivers, journalism professor at Boston University.

Rivers and Zinn were among a group of faculty members who in 1979 defended the right of the school’s clerical workers to strike and were threatened with dismissal after refusing to cross a picket line.

“A People’s History of the United States” chronicled the nation’s development through voices of women, minorities and the working class, telling the U.S. story as series of episodes where the state and big business colluded to crush socialism.

American leftists celebrated the work at a time when conservatism as embodied by U.S. President Ronald Reagan was ascendant. More than one million copies have been sold.

Zinn was born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1922 into a Jewish immigrant family. During World War Two he enlisted in the U.S. Army and flew in planes that bombed targets in Germany, Czechoslovakia and Hungary.

He wrote in the magazine “The Progressive” in 2006 that his military service had informed his anti-war views.

“Once we decided, at the start, that our side was the good side and the other side was evil … we did not have to think any more. Then we could commit unspeakable acts and it was all right,” Zinn said.

Zinn earned a bachelor’s degree from New York University in 1951 and later a master’s and a doctorate in history from Columbia University in New York.

Weeks before his death Zinn wrote in “The Nation” magazine of his disappointment with President Barack Obama.

“I think people are dazzled by Obama’s rhetoric, and that people ought to begin to understand that Obama is going to be a mediocre president — which means, in our time, a dangerous president — unless there is some national movement to push him in a better direction.”

HA. Steve Jobs came off as a franchisee of a Reverend Wayne’s Pearly Gates establishment. I’m sure his followers ate it up. “It’s wonderful. It’s wonderful. It’s wonderful.” HAHA Did you watch the keynote? You should. It was a religious event.

All I see is a large iPod that serves as a tamperproof vending machine.

Can a platform get any more locked down than the iPad? Apple alone decides what’s allowed to run on that thing.

No Flash. What if someone needs to view a site that requires Flash? Personally, I block Flash content by default, but sometimes, I want it available.

No USB ports. I guess you’ll be able to buy an arrangement of dongles to restore functionality that should have been built in. No thanks.

I’m not even interested enough to find out more reasons why I wouldn’t go near that thing, but I’m sure that there are many, many more.

This isn’t really a fair criticism of the device, but I refuse to use the web without Firefox running an array of filters and blockers. While this isn’t an issue for most people (who don’t even know what operating system they’re using), for me personally, it’s a definite deal breaker.

The $130 premium for the 3G version? Absurd. Being able to watch the already collapsing AT&T network brought to its knees by zombies pulling down multiple gigabytes of sludge to their CrackPads? Priceless.

Tricking battlefield opponents has been a part of war since guys started beating each other with bones and sticks. But these days, such moves are harder to pull off, the DSB notes in a January report (.pdf) first unearthed by InsideDefense.com. “In an era of ubiquitous information access, anonymous leaks and public demands for transparency, deception operations are extraordinarily difficult. Nevertheless, successful strategic deception has in the past provided the United States with significant advantages that translated into operational and tactical success. Successful deception also minimizes U.S. vulnerabilities, while simultaneously setting conditions to surprise adversaries.”

The U.S. can’t wait until it’s at war with a particular country or group before engaging in this strategic trickery, however. “Deception cannot succeed in wartime without developing theory and doctrine in peacetime,” according to the DSB. “In order to mitigate or impart surprise, the United States should [begin] deception planning and action prior to the need for military operations.”

Doing that will not only requires an “understanding the enemy culture, standing beliefs, and intelligence-gathering process and decision cycle, as well as the soundness of its operational and tactical doctrine,” the DSB adds. Deception is also “reliant … on the close control of information, running agents (and double-agents) and creating stories that adversaries will readily believe.”

Schwarzenegger said in a Sacramento Press Club speech that rather than raise taxes, the state could find money by cutting pension costs, allowing offshore oil drilling and lowering prison expenditures.

His budget calls for an $880 million infusion from the federal government to pay for housing illegal immigrant prisoners who have committed crimes in California. The governor also wants to rely more on private prison companies.

But he also gave an off-the-cuff suggestion that California send undocumented inmates to Mexico and pay to build and run new prisons there.

“We can do so much better, in the prison system alone, if we can go and take inmates – for instance, the 20,000 inmates that are illegal immigrants that are here – and get them to Mexico,” Schwarzenegger said.

But city officials said Christine Stevens violated building codes, a health and safety concern because Avondale homes are required to have heating systems and a running refrigerator.

Stevens, 47, was trying to make ends meet by powering her home with solar panels and batteries for several months before Avondale code enforcement officials visited her on Dec. 10.

“We explained to her that the panels weren’t enough to sustain a quality of life there,” said Pam Altounian, code enforcement manager for Avondale.

Stevens said she was not given adequate notice before officials gave her 24 hours to contact Arizona Public Service Co. to reconnect electricity or her home would be condemned.

A 52-gram drop in the weight of full-term singletons – from an average of 3.441 to 3.389 kilograms – has left Emily Oken’s team at Harvard Medical School scratching their heads. It can’t be accounted for by an increase in caesarean sections or induced labours, which shorten gestation. What’s more, women in the US now smoke less and gain more weight during pregnancy, which should make babies heavier. Oken suggests that unmeasured factors, such as diet or exercise, could explain why babies are being born lighter.

“For your average baby, 50 grams probably makes no difference at all,” she stresses. But those born substantially lighter could be at increased risk of heart disease and diabetes later in life.

In a statement S&P says an actual rating downgrade could occur “if economic data remain weak and measures to boost medium-term growth are not forthcoming, given the country’s high government debt burden and its weak demographic profile.” Japan’s problems don’t begin to approach those of Greece and Ireland, where national solvency is an issue. It does, however, point to the extent to which the debt of the world’s largest and most developed economies are under scrutiny.