Note here, this is largely Paulite critiques, so I generally do not agree, though I do think that the purview of the Fed should be reduced in scope because of regulatory capture issues (much of it is literally owned by the banks), so it amounts to the fox watching the hen house, but we do need an independent central bank.
Click for full size
H/t Calculated Risk.
Specifically, this was received by Dutchie on the Short Skool Buss BBS:
So after landing my new job as a Wal-Mart greeter, a good find for many retirees, I lasted less than a day……
About two hours into my first day on the job a very loud, unattractive, mean-acting woman walked into the store with her two kids, yelling obscenities at them all the way through the entrance. As I had been instructed, I said pleasantly, ‘Good morning and welcome to Wal-Mart. Nice children you have there. Are they twins?’
The ugly woman stopped yelling long enough to say, ‘Hell no, they ain’t twins. The oldest one’s 9, and the other one’s 7. Why the hell would you think they’re twins? Are you blind, or just stupid?’ So I replied, ‘I’m neither blind nor stupid, Ma’am, It’s just hard to believe that you got laid twice. Have a good day and thank you for shopping at Wal-Mart.’
My supervisor said I probably wasn’t cut out for this line of work.
Brilliant.
One of the dirty secret of the newspaper business is that people do not pay for the news.
People pay a portion of the cost of setting ink to paper, but the remainder of the cost of producing a physical copy, as well as the cost of producing the content is covered by advertising.
The problem is that the most lucrative part of advertising is the classified. at about $55 for 3 lines, it generates a lot of revenue.
Unfortunately, Craigslist is better and cheaper, so newspapers find their classified revenue shrinking.
Additionally, after years of playing the Wall Street game of cutting costs, meaning reporters and in depth stories, and quality in general, their product is less attractive.
In the case of the New York Times, this has been further complicated by the fact that they plunked down a huge amount of cash for their brand new narcissistic monument to the New York Times office building, so they find themselves with a cash flow problem.
It appears that they are looking at setting up a pay wall around the newspaper to generate the desired revenue.
They have forgotten the disaster that was Times Select, which shut down after 2 years, when they generated very little revenue, and their opinion pieces largely dropped of the map on the Internet.
People pay for the Wall Street Journal because it provides breaking financial news, which is something that people have traditionally been willing to pay for.
General news, probably not, and so I’ll probably find other sources to link to.
Note: I’m post dating this to keep it on the top of the post for the weekend. Scroll down for new posts.
In February 1985, I went to my first science fiction convention. In October, I ran a fiction convention, NotJustAnother1 Con (NJAC). I did it again in 1986, and then started Arisia, Inc. and ran the first two conventions 1990 and 1991.
About 4 years ago, I realized something important: I don’t like science fiction conventions.
When I go to a con, I don’t go to program items, I either work the con, or I self medicate.*
What’s more, my involvement with running a con completely subsumes my life, and I have a family now, and, quite honestly, it’s a destructive addiction thing to me, and no one wants to work with a self-destructive addict, and I don’t want to be one.
It only took me 20 years to realize that I hated my hobby/obsession, and, honestly, I’ve always found the community rather unremarkable.†
So I cut my losses, and following a remarkably unpleasant exchange with Arisia, Incorporated and the for-profit database vendor to whom they have outsourced their attendance and mailing list management, I had my information, and that of my wife and children, expunged from the Arisia database.‡
Maybe, the next time I think about calling someone “#@&ing stupid”, perhaps this experience will make me a bit kinder.§
In any case, I was driving to pick up my Son, and his drum kit, from school today, and there was an announcement for a Martin Luther King day symposium, and I realised, “MLK’s Birthday? Is it Arisia again?”
So I called up their web page, and yes, it is this weekend …… Though it’s technically in Cambridge, across the Charles River from Boston.
The first few years after I severed ties with the con, and the 501(c)3 corporation, I worried about it sucking me back in, but I hadn’t thought about the con in months, and only made the connection because the MLK birthday announcement triggered a connection.
I find this amazing, because just a year ago, I was contacted regarding a potential dispute with an artist, whose graphic art work is the official artist, and I found that it left me pissed off for a week.
If anyone from Arisia is reading this, I will paraphrase what I said about the time:
Please note that this is NOT intended to prohibit or discourage any individual to contact me personally in a purely social context, I just don’t want to discuss, or be involved with Arisia.
I would sooner give Dick Cheney a sponge bath than get sucked back in.
*Mammoth, some would say legendary, drunken binges.
†Which anyone who has ever discussed SF Fans with me knows.
‡What part of “remove me from the list” is so hard to understand? Needless to say, this Further justified my sense of ambivalence toward science fiction fans.
§NoT!!!. I’ll still judge them harshly. Let’s be honest here. I’m going to be calling people who do stupid things while I still have two brain cells left to rub together.
Pyrofarmer, one of the regulars on the Shortskoolbus BBS had the following exchange:
My nearby farmer was asking me if I watched some Obermann segment the other night about health care?
‘No, but aren’t you going to loose your GOP membership for watching him?’
‘Have you tried to watch Beck or listened to Rush lately? They’re out of their f%$#ing minds!
(%$# mine)
You don’t have to be a Democratn to realize that Fox News resides in Bizarro World.
If we had wanted McCain’s plan, we would have voted for McCain.
Well, it’s nice that that the conservative Liberal Democratic Party is not in power, because now the Japanese government is proposing a carbon levy on marine fuel:
Japan, one of the world’s top shipping operators, will submit details of its proposal for an international levy on marine fuel ahead of a meeting of the U.N.’s shipping agency in March, a government official said on Friday.
Under the proposal, which was first touted last year as an alternative to an idea supported by some European countries to introduce an emissions trading system in the sector, money raised would be used to help cut carbon dioxide emissions relating to shipping in developing countries.
Funds would be spent in areas including improving conditions at ship recycling yards, many of which are located in India and Bangladesh, the official said.
Ships that improve their fuel efficiency and new ships that exceed efficiency requirements would be offered partial refunds on the levy.
(emphasis mine)
Everyone wins, except, of course, the traders on Wall Street, the City, and the Nihombashi in Tokyo, because they don’t get to charge commissions on the fees for carbon trading, charge yet more fees for creating carbon based derivatives, and then get bailed out by the taxpayers when their house of cards collapses.
I can live with that.
David Bahati, author of the Ugandan “Kill the Gays” bill, and Ugandan Ethics and Integrity Minister James Nsaba Buturo are expected to come to the United States to attend the National Prayer Breakfast.
Let’s be clear: These people are proposing genocide against gays in Uganda.
They should not be granted a visa.
If Barack Obama does not want a diplomatic dispute over this, I think that he is wrong, but he then has another option: Be the first President since Dwight Eisenhower not to attend the breakfast, saying that he will not break bread with them.
If he does neither, he is immoral, and he is a coward, and he does not deserve the public trust.
It is possible that Obama will take steps to prevent this, such as pressuring “The Family”, the secretive Christo-Fascist group that has organized the prayer breakfasts, to dis-invite them.
But if he sits down to break bread with people who are this deeply evil, he is giving his personal imprimatur to genocide, and anyone who supports gay rights should not support him.
He explains why we need to pay the banks, but the banks don’t owe us sh$#:
Because the MDA is looking at ground basing, where the interceptor does not face the naval prohibition against hypergolic (liquid propellants that ignite spontaneously in each others presence) propellants, they are looking to integrate liquid propellant into the next generation kill vehicle. (paid subscription required)
Because the motor is completely throttlable, it allows for extended range, since the vehicle can coast and reignite the motor for terminal maneuvers, and it can perform more effectively at shorter ranges, because it can have a higher thrust for a shorter flight.
The downside is cost, complexity, and issues with storing the fueled missiles and propellants.
China recently claimed to have successfully tested a mid-course ballistic missile defense system. (also here)
There are also murmurs of a sea based variant. (scroll down)
This raises a number of questions, most notably how the PLA defines “success”, my guess is that this means the interceptor passed within lethal distance of the target.
The technology could be hit to kill, but given the fact that the Chinese have successfully miniaturized nuclear warheads, my guess would be that it would armed with a nuclear warhead, either a sub kiloton neutron warhead, as was used in the Sprint, or a larger warhead as used on the Spartan (it was a 5 mt W71) that kills thermally, but I’m pulling these guesses out of my head, and they should be considered in no way authoritative.
Nuclear warheads make targeting easier, you do not have to get a as close, or pass off to a terminal seeker as you do in hit to kill, and they eliminate many of the problems with decoys, since they get everything within a fairly large radius, making decoys moot.
Unlike some of the other Russian programs (*cough* PAK-FA *cough*) which seem to have overly aggressive time frames, this program has a realistic time frame, and the technical requirements are rather modest (paid subscription required) :
“At the end of the first stage, we selected four options [for the future bomber] out of an initial 47 for further consideration and analysis,” [head of the Special Aircraft Division, Alexander] Bobryshev said during a Dec. 23 meeting with Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. Bobryshev committed to the design being completed in 2011-12, with development of the aircraft to be finished by 2017. Funding needs were not disclosed.
[Strategic aviation commander Maj. Gen. Anatoly] Zhikharev says the new bomber will be low-observable, using advanced materials and other technologies. However, he notes that it cannot be made “invisible,” signaling Russia will not pursue the all-aspect, multi-signature stealth performance the U.S. is considering for its next-generation bomber project.
Part of this is, I think, the understanding that if they were to go up against a highly integrated ground bases air defense system, it would be based on their technology, where they would have intimate knowledge of the technology and capabilities, as NATO relies more heavily on aircraft for this sort of defense.
Additionally, they are no doubt aware how expensive the full up stealth is, and they know how improvements in processing and the combination of signals from various sensors have the promise of negating stealth to a significant degree in the next few years.
Also, the Russians do not have the need for the extremely long range power projection capabilities that the US does. They are primarily concerned about their “near abroad”, basically former Soviet Republics and Warsaw Pact nations, with a special focus on Georgia and Ukraine, where NATO membership is unlikely in the foreseeable future.
I was going through the job boards, and came across an opening for an engineer for a non-line of sight weapons system to go on the US Navy’s Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) outside of DC.
Since it’s rather similar to work that I have done on the Future Combat Systems (FCS), I clicked through to apply, and it takes me to the jobs page of Ukpeaġvik Iñupiat Corporation.
So, I’m looking at the name, and saying, “Gee, it sounds like Inuit,” so after I fill out the application, I click the “about us” page, and get:
Ukpeaġvik Iñupiat Corporation (UIC) is headquartered out of Barrow, Alaska – the northernmost point of North America. Barrow is home to more than 4500 people, a majority of which are Iñupiat Eskimos.
As an Alaska Native Corporation, UIC provides social and economic resources to its 2,100 shareholders, and their descendents, who primarily reside in Barrow, Alaska. UIC is ranked 8th among Alaska Business Monthly’s 2008 survey of Alaskan-owned companies. UIC employs over 1,400 people worldwide, with over 750 in Alaska.
My first thought was, “How Odd.”
My 2nd thought was, “Was dad involved in some level in the early days of this corporation,” as he was on Governor Bill Egan’s cabinet as director of planning, but he said that the native corporations were created with the money from the oil revenues, which started to flow in after we left the state.
Still it’s kind of strange how these things tie together.
A translation from the Japanese would be appreciated
French ASMP from Wiki
The missile is supposed to have a 200 km range and supersonic speed.
Looks like the French ASMP, which has a similar range, and a Mach 3 speed at altitude, and Mach 2 down low, so my guess would be similar performance, though it appears to have a solid fuel, rather than a liquid fuel ramjet motor.
I have no clue as to what the blue windows are.
Meh….What’s more, the driving guitar line sounds like something that a 60 year old ad man came up with because he thought it sounded like heavy metal.
Banker bonuses:
H/t Calculated Risk.
So, Chris Dodd, after a disastrous run for the Presidency, and 2 banking scandals, one of which was created by Tim Geithner, acknowledged reality, and announced that he was not running for reelection.
The question would then be how would this change his positions on banking reform?
One possibility is that, no longer needing the campaign donations, he would get harder on banks, and the other would be that he would go easier on banks, because he would be looking for post-Senate employment.
Well, we have our answer, and it’s the latter.
The murmurs are that Dodd is looking at dropping an independent consumer financial protection agency entirely from the Senate banking reform bill the excuse is that he is looking for bipartisan support, but the fact is that anything that republicans will support will be completely toothless.
This isn’t just a “rearranging deck chairs” thing. If the agency is not independent, then it will be attached to another agency, most likely Treasury, which is largely an arm of the banks by design, and they will have no control over the budget and personnel requests.
So, Chris Dodd is well on his way to getting a high paying gig with a bank, or a law firm for the banks.
It’s depressing. He was my 1st or 2nd choice in the 2008 primaries, but much like Edwards, it appears that he has feet of clay.
Monsanto’s genetically modified corn has been linked to organ damage:
In a study released by the International Journal of Biological Sciences, analyzing the effects of genetically modified foods on mammalian health, researchers found that agricultural giant Monsanto’s GM corn is linked to organ damage in rats.
When you give enormous guaranteed monopoly profits by allowing the patenting of genes and species, those profits guarantee that safety is a secondary concern.
It’s from the “about” section of a blog called Paul Kedrosky’s Infectious Greed:
Even further back in time, Dr. Kedrosky was one of the first technology equity analysts at a major brokerage firm. Back before there were such things as credit default swaps, collateralized debt obligations, and subprime mortgages, we vandalism-loving greed-heads on Wall Street were forced to take down capitalism the hard way — by selling over-valued technology companies to an unsuspecting public via initial public offerings. While it eventually worked out (c.f., the tech crash of 2000), the next generation of Wall Street-ers learned from our inefficiency and took down the global money grid in half the time it took us to mess up Nasdaq. Lesson learned.
Needless to say, I put him in my feed reader.
H/t The Big Picture for the catch.
