[psiga]

Heh. Nice.

So a bill was introduced in Arizona a few months ago, which would have forced banks to actually prove that they held the title of any property that they sell. It passed through Senate at a vote ratio of 28:2. So far so good.

Some time passes, and the bill resurfaces, now with none of the stuff regarding banks and property ownership. It transforms from "RELATING TO DEEDS OF TRUST" to "RELATING TO FIRE DISTRICTS."

Interesting game.

http://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?singlepost=2522474
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[psiga]

Some Gitmo files being released: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2481147 If you're into that sort of thing. I'm not, really, but I do enjoy hn's commentary on it.
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[psiga]

Hm. I hear that Greece is maybe going to go kablooie soon. http://www.smartmoney.eu/2011/04/27/greece-is-about-to-blow-up-yields-cds-soaring/


And Mech, maybe this will be for you: http://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?singlepost=2526353

Some followers of Clif's bot reports decided to make an internet radio station, and they've invited my fav econ guy to talk about the relevant topics regarding the potential [Death of the Dollar]. It's two hours long, though, and maybe not super high priority or anything. Just passing it along if you're interested.
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[psiga]

Another thing for you, Mech: http://georgewashington2.blogspot.com/2011/04/open-sourced-blueprints-for.html
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[psiga]

Here's a different presentation the guy gave back in '09. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GpGyDjvTqaQ

There are three links in the description; two of them did not work for me, and one of them is loading INCREDIBLY SLOWLY. http://openfarmtech.org/wiki/Main_Page

I don't know much more about him than that. Also I think it's a bit odd that they're making earth bricks in such a shape. There should be better shapes. And they don't seem to be very interested in straw bale houses, even though those are fuckin' awesome. Oh well.
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[psiga]

On another note, here's good news (with good video presentations, including a TED speech) about thorium reactors: http://nextbigfuture.com/2011/04/china-academy-of-science-annual-budget.html

China is moving forward with plans to produce these reactors. Which is a Fucking Fabulous Idea considering the number of benefits entailed. Why ain't America working on them? Well, we'd rather spend the money on continued allowance of Medicare fraud, keeping megabanks afloat, helping grow opium in Afghanistan, and so on.

We didn't work on them decades ago because they couldn't be used to make bombs; we're not working on them today because, as one guy says: "LFTRs or 'molten salt reactors' have been in prototype in many countries for years. Many 'molten salt' patents expired decades ago.. The concepts are now "Share Ware". No one can monopolize it. (which is why no zillionaires will invest in it.)"

Woe, America. Salut, China.
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[psiga]

[psiga]

I am so one-third tempted to join in here, but what good would come of it. Short version: Eschewing imaginary friends would not fix the parts of the human brain that allow murderous dictators to happen; please contemplate the sum of the Milgram experiment + antisocial personality disorder.

Now, why I really stopped in: A small compilation of recent Fukushima news, from a guy who's good at compiling but is somewhat cynical in outlook: http://georgewashington2.blogspot.com/2011/05/operator-of-japans-stricken-nuclear.html I think it's a great sign that so many of the organizations that we trust to measure the Super Invisible Fire That Is Nearly Impossible To Put Out have already packed up their measurement gear and called it a day.

This, as they say, is why we can't have nice things.
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[psiga]

Living up to our forum tags, high five.
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[psiga]

Good news! Because some parts of America still resemble developing nations, we may soon be able to leverage these peasants to make our manufacturing costs more competitive with China!

And good news! China itself is continuing to be the world leader in eugenics!

S'gonna be a bright~
bright~
bright~
bright and sunshiny day~
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[psiga]

[psiga]

I'm not aware of any systematic measurements of the surrounding water. ^_^

I know some measurements were taken around the drainage outlets of a couple reactors some weeks back, back when pipes had corroded and they really did spill some radioactive stuff into the ocean. The numbers were "bad" but bad in the sense that reporters reporting on scientific events tend to have no fucking idea what they're actually talking about, and can't tell us what the actual impact of any given reading is.

This story indicates that the meltdown is not reaching the ocean or groundwater at this time, though radioactive water may be pooling in the basement, and who knows what we'll do with it.

For the good and the bad, the radiation and temperature readings that we have been taking over the past couple months are what they are, and whether they are the readings of a damaged reactor or a melted down reactor is just a technicality. If it was 'bad but not apocalyptic' last month when we thought it hadn't melted down yet, then we can now say that it is 'bad but not apocalyptic' even thought it's confirmed to have melted down some time ago.

Entombing it in boron doped cement, or anything more advanced, is something they're still trying to avoid. Seems obnoxious to me, and I can't tell how much of it is sound strategy and how much is Japanese stubbornness.


Only tangentially related: I found out that a number of reactors at Chernobyl never did melt down, and they remained in service for decades next to the failed one. The last one was taken out of service in 2000!
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[psiga]

Oh hey, let us all* in varying degrees of irony look forward to the eventual Freedom of Information Act release of "Bin Laden's" porn collection.
(* Except maybe Simon Belmont.)


Meanwhile the IP regime is continuing to push for probably unconstitutional* largess.
(* Yeah, for whatever 'unconstitutional' is worth.)


And of course the Patriot Act is on track to renew for another five or six years, with no amendments that might empower citizens at all.


On top of existing and ongoingly unresolved issues such as banks laundering hundreds of billions of dollars to drug cartels, the largest mortgage fraud situation in history, and silly amounts of regulatory capture going on in just about every big industry in America. Good times.
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[psiga]

Freeman, this one's for you! Clif on a nearly-full-tilt textbook-classic schizoid conspiracy rant: http://www.halfpasthuman.com/power.html

He is making a plea to the time travel industry to save us from the engineered nuclear meltdown apocalypse.

I guess this means the latest report looks awesome.
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[psiga]

[psiga]

Depends on how many coronal ejections there are. This moldy wet rock we call home does have a habit of rotating over a period of time.
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[psiga]

Quite conceivable. Also conceivable: damn near every spot on the planet might get hit, like pointing a spraypaint can at a spinning globe.

It might be super little, and only interfere with some old nav satellites; it might be huge and blow every exposed transformer in the developed world.

~Nobody knows for sure!~
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[psiga]

As well you should. (I've found puns to be more bearable when they are pan-lingual -- if it's all one language it usually hurts more.)
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[psiga]

Hm. Interesting. A high level member of the International Monetary Fund is being accused of sexual assault, and nobody knows what will come of it because members of the IMF have diplomatic immunity.

Edit: I'm reading the comment section of that story, and apparently he has been arrested in an airport while attempting to flee to France. http://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?singlepost=2549495
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[psiga]

I really need to stop reading certain RSS feeds from 'newest to oldest'. From five days ago, a jointly compiled map of fallout from Fukushima has been released, before they admitted that yeah, oops, there was a well and proper meltdown. http://www.japanprobe.com/2011/05/10/fukushima-radiation-map/
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[psiga]

LOOK YOU ASSHOLES WE WOULD RATHER GIVE OLD LADIES TITANIUM HIPS A FEW YEARS BEFORE THEY DIE THAN GIVE A PROFESSOR SIX FIGURES TO DO SOME "HUMANITIES"

WHAT IS AMERICA IF NOT THE LAND OF TITANIUM HIPS BURIED IN THE GROUND

YOU PEOPLE ARE UNAMERICAN AND HATE JUSTICE
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[psiga]

What I really mean to say is, I am sorry to hear this. We're headed for a double dip recession, so it doesn't surprise me that this is happening, but it is sincerely sad. I hope that it is resolved within a few years, when we're forced, forced, forced to be more sane about where we put our taxpayers' money.

Also good job CoSo for having a huge-ass avatar that is so awesome that I don't adblock it.

Edit: Also god damn congratulations on that forum title it is so very good and good for you. I sometimes wonder and fear what Gorgeous LSD Girl Whom I Have A Retro Crush On looks like today.
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[psiga]

Yeah, if they're smart they probably remove them; and obviously they remove them if cremation is involved. I won't bother to look up the details. What's the point of having nothing but TRUE FACTS when yelling in caps?
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[psiga]

Hahaha, our friendly French sex offender from the IMF has now been caught trying to bribe the case away. http://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?singlepost=2560704
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[psiga]

[psiga]

"The World Health Organization just issued a report stating that cellphones are "possibly carcinogenic to humans"."

YOU KNOW WHAT ELSE IS CARCINOGENIC TO HUMANS?

YOUR FACe.

ONE OF THE Many REASONS s THW+ WHEY WHY IT IS TOTALLY KILLLin ME
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[psiga]

Also, QE2 has ended, so brace for another "dip". I could go into more detail, but it would probably just depress some of you.
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[psiga]

Ooh, some folks are actually trying to get Glass-Steagall back online. http://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?singlepost=2569213

I want that to happen so badly. Too bad the list of names in favor is so small.
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[psiga]

I'm just poking in because I wanted to put this somewhere: Couple'a days ago I heard someone on the teevee saying that many on "the left" appear to have begun interpreting the first amendment as 'the freedom to worship only Christianity in any way that you'd like', and I found that to be a funny-because-it's-true kind of joke. It tied with my impression that the conservatively-brained population seems to be fueling American jingoism with some high octane religiosity of the Christian persuasion lately. I guessed that it had something to do with the rise of neoconservativism, and just left it at that.

Today I started watching a presentation about culturomics, which got into the topic of Ngrams, and that inspired me to lightly, casually test the hypothesis:

Right out of the gate, the rise of the term "neoconservative" coincides amusingly with the time that it took for the "god bless america" mentality to foment into political activism -- until the late 90s, where "god bless america" drops sharply, most probably due to computer aided spell checking. So, obviously this thing is case sensitive, and I toss in some capitalization variations:

"God Bless America" is indeed much more prevalent, being used heavily during WW2's propaganda recognition, and then that aforementioned ramp and spike of neoconservativism.

"God bless America" is also interesting, showing that this buzz term correlates to WW1 as well.

As a bonus, I threw in "neocon", which became popular around the time that the ideologues of red team went from 'conservatives' to 'pop cultural lunatic conservatives'. Just kinda funny.


Tangentially related, and of course unsurprising: being threatened with terrorism hinders rational thought.
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[psiga]

For a peek at the machinations behind the bluster, this might help a little: http://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?singlepost=2634033

In short, we won't default as long as interest on our debts gets paid, which we can absolutely do; however, our obligations such as socialized medicine/retirement/education/unemployment/warmongering are still more than we can afford, so we either need to raise the debt ceiling (to put more on the credit card), or cut services (which is what we need Super Congress for).

[psiga]

Oh boy. Copyright infringer facing possible extradition to the U.S. of A.: http://yro.slashdot.org/story/11/07/22/1417214/Share-Links-Become-Extradited-To-the-US

For what it's worth, he was running a site that capitalized on copyright infringement, rather than it just being a "sharing" situation. Still, it's a sad bucking and flailing from the industry, and at worst may open the door to some disappointing new precedents in case-law. Hopefully won't go that far.

Meanwhile, a guy does $36,000,000+ in damage and only has to serve ten years: http://it.slashdot.org/story/11/07/24/2136240/675k-Stolen-Credit-Cards--Ten-Years-In-Jail
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[psiga]

http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2011/08/south_korean_deluge.html

Rud and I were talking a couple'a days ago about the weird weather patterns. Apparently Japan is having some heavy floods, and America has been having heavy floods, so we started wondering if other nations are in trouble as well. Apparently South Korea is, too.

Anyone else in the community have some things to add about that? I have no idea what sorts of rain and heat are hitting in, say, South America, or Australia, or Europe, etc.
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[psiga]

[psiga]

I can't remember where I saw the Brer Rabbit cartoon, but the live action parts of Song of the South aren't ringing a bell for me.

Though that reminds me of something that I should post in the religion thread...
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[psiga]

http://georgewashington2.blogspot.com/2011/08/fukushima-radiation-highest-ever.html

What's left to say about all this, I wonder.
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[psiga]

[psiga]

CHOICE #ONE: http://nextbigfuture.com/2011/08/new-drug-could-cure-nearly-any-viral.html

CHOICE #TWO: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S6hJyYOxNQs

CHOOSE WISELY.
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[psiga]

http://science.slashdot.org/story/11/08/11/1458205/Cancer-Cured-By-HIV

Got some bizarro-world medicine news goin' on this week.
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[psiga]

Maybe you're supposed to use colors to highlight which parts of the text are jingoistic, which are lies, which are racist, etc.!
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[psiga]

~Hooray for allowing psychopaths to climb the ranks of organizations that should otherwise call for empathy and ethical behavior.~

If we don't let the minority of people with the genetically imposed disability of red-green color confusion become fighter pilots, then why on earth do we let etc etc I'm going to sleep
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[psiga]

Very interesting indeed. While I'm sure that the Other Side would be able to formulate a compelling counter-perspective, I still sympathize with the roots of this article, and detest that large corporate powers withhold data that would otherwise tell us what's wrong with an ailing system.

“Washing one’s hands of the conflict between the powerful and the powerless means to side with the powerful, not to be neutral.”
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