May 2010 archive

May 10 2010

The Ouzo Effect Redux – the cost of doing nothing

  When the stock market plunged 1,000 point in half of an hour on Thursday, the immediate rumors were of a “fat finger” trader who punched in $16 billion instead of $16 million. It’s a disturbing idea, that a single trader could cause such financial destruction, but its better than the alternative – that the stock market plunge happened while the markets were functioning the way they were supposed to.

 Since the original rumor, the facts have been revealed – there was no “fat finger”. The stock market crashed on Thursday because that is the way the system is set up to function. Thus was should expect this event to happen again in the not so distant future.

May 10 2010

Caption the Meaning of This!

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May 10 2010

BP Needs And Deserves Your Attention

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Here’s an idea for the upcoming week.

Why doesn’t every single BP gas station in the US have somebody picketing it with a sign saying, “BP Is Killing the Gulf; Don’t Patronize BP”?  Or some other sign you compose.  All you need is markers and poster board.

Enough really is enough. I know that the BP Station in Pittsfield, MA, right down the road to Lenox from Guido’s needs some attention. Ditto Rhinebeck, NY.

Let’s just do it. Forget organization. Let’s be spontaneous!  Let’s go for it.

—————

simulposted at The Dream Antilles

May 10 2010

Mother’s Day Sunset

Cross-posted at firefly-dreaming.

There was no sunset tonight in New York. Well the sun set but it could not be seen around here. The photo below is 7:59 PM, sundown this time of year. At least the green of the Palisades can be seen for a change.

There was still some views worth recording. I don’t know if others will enjoy tonight’s view but I really like seeing the cloud formations change at the end of the day.  

Change is good, so my usual start to finish is below the fold.  

May 10 2010

Fuck 911 They are raiding Giza

Real life raiders of the lost ark.  Taking stuff out of the Giza pyramid region of Egypt even if it may be the only salvation for the human race.

Another testimony as to the origins of advanced civilizations 12,500 years ago, strange things found in strange places on the earth and other ancient stuff we could not possibly do today with the technology we do have.

http://www.richardgabriel.info/

May 10 2010

$53 trillion gorilla.

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Hellasious.

May 10 2010

Pique the Geek 20100509: 1.5 Million Gallons Later

Last week we discussed the Deepwater Horizon blowout and the resultant huge oil spill, and will continue the discussion tonight.  By the way, the title of this piece represents the official NOAA estimate of the release.  Some estimates are as much as five to ten times this amount, but the NOAA estimate one is the official one, so we will use it.

It really makes little difference, because even the official estimate is huge.  Since this happened on 20100420, with the rig sinking and presumably destroying the riser on 20100422, at the official rate for the 18 days now 3.7 million gallons have been released.

May 10 2010

The Commanded in Chief

Have you wondered why the antiwar movement seems to be so co-opted since the 2008 election? Have you wondered why Obama seems unable to move forward with any substantive changes in US Foreign Policy, or make any headway in winding down the middle east wars?

Via Michael Moore:

Seymour Hersh on Obama Being “Dominated”
by the U.S. Military

Seymour Hersh spoke at the 6th Global Investigative Journalism Conference in Geneva on April 24, 2010

REPORTER: You didn’t include Obama in your list of liar presidents. I’m wondering if you would include him also?

HERSH: To use a basketball or a football analogy, American football, fourth quarter – he may have a game plan. At this point he’s in real trouble. Because the military are dominating him on the important issues of the world: Iraq, Iran, Afghan and Pakistan. And he’s following the policies of Bush and Cheney almost to a fare-thee-well. He talks differently. And he’s much brighter, he’s much more of the world. So one only hopes he has a game plan that will include doing something, but he’s in real trouble, in terms of – he’s in real trouble.

In Iraq I don’t have to tell anybody the prospects – in the American press they never mention Moqtada Sadr, but look out. He’s going to be the kingmaker of that country. He’s now studying in Iran. And he’s going to be the next ayatollah-to-be. I don’t know how he’ll work it out with Sistani. But he’s going to be the force, the Shia.

And so this is going to be very complicated for us because the two men we talk about, Allawi and Maliki, have about as much to do with the average Iraqi – they’re both ex-pats. Allawi, let’s see, he was certainly an American agent and a British agent, the MI-6, the CIA, the Jordanians ran him probably for Mossad. I’m not telling you anything that is not a fact. So who knows?

So Iraq is very problematical. There’s going to be much more violence. Whether it’s civil war or not it’s going to be much more violence.

He’s never going to win, whatever that means, in Afghanistan. The only solution in Afghanistan is a settlement with the Taliban. And the only person to settle with is Mullah Omar, and he’s become another Hitler to the American public. So how we’re going to do that and survive politically?

And the same in Pakistan. He’s got the wrong policy there. So it is – and again for Obama, Iran’s not resolved, in terms of, the Iranians have come out of this crisis stronger than ever. We don’t want to believe that.

May 10 2010

Weekend News Digest

Weekend News Digest is an Open Thread

From Yahoo News Top Stories

1 New scale of disaster looms in Gulf of Mexico

by Guillaume Decamme, AFP

1 hr 34 mins ago

NEW ORLEANS, Louisiana (AFP) – Concern grew Sunday that the US Gulf coast is facing a whole new level of environmental disaster after the best short-term fix for a massive oil spill ran into serious trouble.

BP’s giant containment box lay idle on the seabed as engineers furiously tried to figure out how to stop it clogging with ice crystals, preparing for attempts to resuscitate their vital mission in the next day or so.

The British energy giant, which owns the lion’s share of the leaking oil and has accepted responsibility for the clean-up, has tried to banish the notion that the so-called “dome” is a “silver bullet” to end the crisis.

May 10 2010

May ’70: 10. The Peace Crawl & The Handwriting On The Wall

Forty years ago today, 100,000 angry people descended on Washington for a mass march to end the war.

Preceding years had seen larger marches, to be sure, pushing toward a million strong on occasion, like April 1967 in NYC. But this one had been called only a week before, in response to the Cambodia invasion. Normally these exercises took months and months to pull together-getting the permits, choosing the slogans, printing the literature, spreading the word, renting the buses, mobilizing local groups to take part. And let’s not forget fighting over who should speak on the program.

I didn’t go to DC that Saturday. The NYU Uptown SDS chapter didn’t go, Nobody I was in touch with from the Washington Square Campus did either, if I recall correctly. Relatively few of the revolutionaries and other activists at the core of the campus upsurge on the East Coast did.

Partly, we had simply tired of Peace Crawls, as we had uncharitably taken to calling them. Starting in 1965, there had been two Big Marches a year, one in the spring and one in the fall, usually in either DC or NYC (and simultaneously in the Bay Area or L.A. or both). Sometimes, as with the March on the Pentagon, they marked a big step forward for the movement, usually because they took some unexpected action. More often they demonstrated that an awful lot of people wanted the war over with, most ricky-tick, and served as a reminder that it didn’t seem to be happening.

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May 09 2010

SOC Arks and change……the view from the sand box pt. 3

Please read Pt.1 and Pt.2

If you are on a sinking ship what do you do ?!?

You build an Ark !?!

What is an Ark ?!?

An Ark is an ensemble.

An ensemble is a collection of knowledge, instrumentality, skills, and resources which together generate a synergy, it makes something larger possible.

This is the key, and I will repeat it many times.

An Ark is an ensemble with the goal of trying to make sure humanity has a future.

The oldest ensemble of humanity is neolithic civilization.

The wisdom of this ensemble is contained in The sacred law of survival of aboriginal peoples of earth: shelter, water, fire, food, and others.

Without shelter you can die in hours from exposure.

Without water you can die in days of dehydration.

Without fire most food is marginally assimilable to unassimilable, and you can die from malnutrition.

Without food you can die in weeks from starvation.

Without others you will die in years from loneliness and insanity.

Without others you can not be fully human and humanity does not exist, humanity is a collection of others.

Humans are social animals and civilization as we know it requires others to form ensembles.

An ensemble is a collection of knowledge, instrumentality, skills, and resources which together generate a synergy, it makes something larger possible.

All of the game of humanities future exists in ensembles.  The ensembles we are interested in are generated out of the humans present in any given location.  These ensembles will confer adaptive vigor on those groups as the civilization they are embedded in degenerates around them.

What follows will be the beginning of a five part conversation concerning the future of humanity within global environmental catastrophea.

May 09 2010

From Your Mother

Simulposted at Daily Kos

Brunch? Brunch?

Who needs brunch? No, you kids go on without me. I’ll be fine. I’ll just sit here in this cold dark universe huddled around my little sun while you go have a good time. Don’t worry about your poor old mother. Why start now?

And while your out make sure you spill a billion gallons of oil, make it ten billion! Blow the tops off of some mountains and clear cut a few hundred forests, I know how much you love that, and your poor old mother just wants you to be happy. No matter how much it hurts me.

So go ahead, I don’t even like eggs benedict, all that cholesterol! And mimosas give me the wind. If you want to finish fishing all the fish out of the sea and bring me some nice mercury laced, carbon smoked salmon that would be nice, as I sit here alone, in the dark. Maybe you could find some of them off of all those coral reefs you are destroying?

Go, go on without me if you don’t think you need your poor old mother. Drive your Hummers to brunch, what do I care? Destroy what’s left of my atmosphere…and make sure you laugh while you do it, you kids need to have fun. Even if it kills your poor old mother. Eat, laugh, destroy, think only of your selves! I’ll be fine!

(100,000 years after you are all in your graves, you ungrateful brats!)

What do you care how many billions of years I was in labor with you? Have YOU ever had your tectonic plates slip? I didn’t think so! Have YOU ever watched billions of your dinosaurs destroyed by an asteroid, only to have your kids drill them up and use them to destroy your atmosphere? Of course not!

Can you even imagine how much work it is to evolve a marsupial? Let alone a platypus? Do you know? Do you care???

So go, have your brunch, I will be fine. Don’t worry about me. I will just sit here in the dark and watch you destroy me.Piece. By. Piece.

Just know.

I love you anyway.

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