.gov Enters Primetime

A good first step to government transparency regarding the 70 billion spent it spends on IT has arrived in the guise of USAspending.gov.

"Vivek Kundra, the federal chief information officer, on Tuesday announced a new Web site designed to track more than $70 billion in government information technology spending, showing all contracts held by major firms within every agency."

Data Gov, another government site beginning to shed light on datasets ranging from National Science Foundation content to the US Patent Office went live last week. Quite a change from the BA I must say. :)

Now if this tech transparency was applied to Wall Street, the benefits accrued for the US goes beyond description.

Game Changer, Chapter II

We all know what this is. We are now finding out this is shrinking faster than thought possible thanks to the unique properties of ice and the fact the carbon footprint of fossil fuels has pushed the levels of CO2 past the 350 parts per million benchmark long believed to be the point of no return regarding global warming and the impact it will have on our civilization.

Time to either learn to swim or change how we do business on Planet Earth to lessen the enormous change that's coming. The choice is ours to make. The question is, do we have the smarts and guts to do so before it's too late.

"Even if all emissions stopped today, sea level would continue to rise. "The current rate of rise would continue for centuries if temperatures are constant, and that would add about 30 centimetres per century to global sea level," says Stefan Rahmstorf of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany. "If we burn all fossil fuels, we are likely to end up with many metres of sea level rise in the long run, very likely more than 10 metres in my view."

This might sound dramatic, but we know sea level has swung from 120 metres lower than today during ice ages to more than 70 metres higher during hot periods. There is no doubt at all that if the planet warms, the sea will rise. The key questions are, by how much and how soon?"

Under the Wire

"Credit card companies are raising interest rates and fees seven months before new rules go into effect that will limit their ability to do so, much to the irritation of Congress and consumer advocates.

Chase, for instance, will raise the minimum payment required of some of its customers from 2 percent to 5 percent of the statement balance starting in August. Chase and Discover have increased the maximum fee charged for transferring a balance to the card to 5 percent of the amount, up from 3 and 4 percent, respectively. Bank of America last month raised the transaction fee for balance transfers and cash advances from 3 to 4 percent. Card issuers including Bank of America and Citi also continue to cut limits and hike up rates, which they have been doing with more frequency since January.

"This is a common practice and will continue to be common, because issuers can do these things for really no reason until February," said John Ulzheimer, president of consumer education for Credit.com, which tracks the industry. "It's what I call the Credit Card Trifecta -- lower limits, higher rates, higher minimum payments."

It's not just the top card issuers making changes. Atlanta-based InfiBank, for example, will raise the minimum annual percentage rate it charges nearly all of its customers in September "in order to more effectively manage the profitability of our credit card account portfolio in a very challenging economic environment," said spokesman Kevin C. Langin."

Another reason why Kucinich & Paul are right.

Ron Paul & Dennis Kucinich are Right

Ron Paul & Dennis Kucinich are right. Abolish the Fed, NOW!!!

"The documents also reveal the bank's top 25 counterparties -- a closely guarded list of banks providing critical funding to Bank of America. Bank of New York was at the top of the list, with an exposure of $46.1 billion, followed by $45.3 billion to State Street and $41.6 billion to J.P. Morgan Chase. The Fed was worried about what these counterparties might do if the situation worsened for the bank."

Food, Inc.

This looks like an absolute must see. A couple of years ago, the NY Times came out with a devastating magazine article (I wish I could remember the title, dammit) detailing the horrors of US food production with emphasis on cows, chicken and pigs as all three species are systematically turned into frankenfood laced with antibiotics, excrement and steroids. After reading the reviews of Food, Inc, it appears director Robert Kenner has performed the same service using film as the medium of choice.

If you’ve read either “Fast Food Nation” or “The Omnivore’s Dilemma,” you won’t be surprised by what the movie shows and tells about the killing floors and soybean fields. Chances are that you’ll still be appalled, which is to Mr. Kenner’s credit. Much as Mr. Schlosser does in “Fast Food Nation,” the movie takes a look at the animal abuse in industrial food production — including clandestine images of sick and crippled cows being prodded to join the rest of the ill-fated herd — but its main focus is on the human cost. It’s a cost visible in the rounded bodies of a poor family that eats cheap if filling fast-food burgers for breakfast and in the obscured faces of farmers too frightened to go on record about Monsanto, the agricultural biotech giant.

“Fascism should more appropriately be called Corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power” - Benito Mussolini

Words Cannot Describe...

A Wandering Mind

Although he published 300 scientific papers, Einstein couldn't easily describe the way his mind worked. "A new idea comes suddenly and in a rather intuitive way," he once said. His thoughts moved "in a wildly speculative way." As a theorist, he sometimes solved physics problems by imagining himself riding alongside a light beam or falling in an elevator. "I rarely think in words at all. A thought comes and I may try to express it in words afterwards ...I have no doubt that our thinking goes on for the most part without the use of signs and, furthermore, largely unconsciously."

When reading this quote, I was struck by the non verbal creative process of Einstein and how it relates to Duke Ellington's notion of thinking in colors while composing. In Arthur Koestler's seminal work, The Act of Creation, Koestler often talks of ineffable flashes and how they can never be forced but rather come forth only when the mind is receptive to new ideas. "The three panels of the rounded triptych shown on the frontispiece indicate three domains of creativity which shade into each other without sharp boundaries: Humour, Discovery, and Art."

To that end, the WS Journal article titled A Wandering Mind Heads Straight Toward Insight confirms that day dreaming & play linked to postivie thoughts rule.

To be sure, we've all had our "Aha" moments. They materialize without warning, often through an unconscious shift in mental perspective that can abruptly alter how we perceive a problem. "An 'aha' moment is any sudden comprehension that allows you to see something in a different light," says psychologist John Kounios at Drexel University in Philadelphia. "It could be the solution to a problem; it could be getting a joke; or suddenly recognizing a face. It could be realizing that a friend of yours is not really a friend."

These sudden insights, they found, are the culmination of an intense and complex series of brain states that require more neural resources than methodical reasoning. People who solve problems through insight generate different patterns of brain waves than those who solve problems analytically. "Your brain is really working quite hard before this moment of insight," says psychologist Mark Wheeler at the University of Pittsburgh. "There is a lot going on behind the scenes."

A positive mood makes an insight more likely, Northwestern University researchers reported in "A Brain Mechanism for Facilitation of Insight by Positive Affect" in the March edition of Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience."

They're not particular about whether you're playing a flatted fifth or a ruptured 129th as long as they can dance to it. - Dizzy Gillispie

Betelgeuse

"Betelgeuse is nearing the end of its life as a red supergiant. The bright, bloated star is 15 to 20 times more massive than the sun. If it were placed at the centre of the solar system, the star would extend out to the orbit of Jupiter.

Sounds like US debt doesn't it, particularly considering the fact our massive debt has been artificially supported for years because of the reserve status of the dollar and the notion the US was a safe haven for foreign investment due to it's inherent political stability, notions that are becoming increasingly tenuous when Peak Oil and Wall Street Malfeasance are factored into the equation.

We are in very big trouble and it's time for Obama to tell it like it is. Doing business the same old way no longer works and a big time makeover on US governance is in order before it's too late. BRT has talked about this for quite some time regarding banks and how the Fed runs this country, statements proven to be true as seen by bank bailouts and the inability to audit the Fed while the US Treasury continues to send our money into a black hole never to be recovered.

To read a truly original take on the economy, click here to read Dmitry Orlov's amazing piece titled Definancialisation, Deglobalisation, Relocalisation. You will NOT be disappointed.

"Shake off all the fears of servile prejudices, under which weak minds are servilely crouched. Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call on her tribunal for every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason than that of blindfolded fear." - Thomas Jefferson

The Taxpayer's Gift

"The Ouroboros often represents self-reflexivity or cyclicality, especially in the sense of something constantly re-creating itself, the eternal return, and other things perceived as cycles that begin anew as soon as they end (See Phoenix). It can also represent the idea of primordial unity related to something existing in or persisting from the beginning with such force or qualities it cannot be extinguished."

The Ouroborus and zero have always fascinated me as both tie together seemingly opposite concepts in elegant fashion. With Zero, nothing and infinity reside side by side while with the Ourborous, renewal and futility rule.

In science, Fredrich Kekule dreamt about the snake and linked it to atomic structure.

"At Kekule's time, scientists believed that the structure of atoms was 'unknowable' as they believed that anything which acted with atoms created a reaction thereby keeping the atomic structure in constant flux. Kekule, however, doubted this hypothesis and spent years studying chemical structure. The exact nature of the structure eluded him until one evening when he let his conscious mind go and allowed his unconscious to take over.

Kekule claims that he stopped writing and dozed off to sleep. He saw atoms whirling and dancing before his eyes. The atoms then began to reassemble themselves into long rows that seemed to move about in a snake-like motion. As he watched the snake dance, the vision progressed until the snake formed itself into an image he had seen years before at the 1850 murder trial: the snake devouring its own tail.

Kekule states that he awoke as if struck by lightning. He realized in a flash that the problem he had worked on for years had been solved not by studying, but by the serendipitous intervention of a dream."

When looking at how the banks run the US, one sees the Ouruborus as the symbol of futility...

"Goldman Sachs Group Inc is on pace to make record bonus payouts after a robust first half, the Guardian newspaper reported on Sunday."

Why?

"Let's remember that Goldman got roughly $10 billion in AIG-funneled money to "settle" CDS that their CEO said was a fully-hedged position and which would have had no material impact if AIG had gone down, mostly because they had collected nearly all of the hedge before AIG got in serious trouble.

That is, they got paid twice - once with their hedge (good move guys) and again by government fiat, directed by Henry Paulson who coincidentally used to run Goldman.

Also note the size of the first-quarter profit, multiply by four (assuming equally good results) and then compare against the "extra" payout through AIG to figure out whether there would be any bonus pool absent that payment.

Looks to me like the US Taxpayer is funding all of Goldman's bonuses, never mind this ditty:

Last week, the firm predicted that President Barack Obama's government could issue $3.25tn of debt before September, almost four times last year's sum. Goldman, a prime broker of US government bonds, is expected to make hundreds of millions of dollars in profits from selling and dealing in the bonds.

Nice, eh? Do Treasury's bidding, get paid for it, get an extra $10 billion from the taxpayer as a gift to cover a bet you had already hedged against default, and pocket it all.

Change we can believe in - yep, we'll steal even more than we did under The Bush Administration!"

The Fix is in but we already knew that, right?

Quiet Conversations

"Sagebrush is a coarse, hardy silvery-grey bush with yellow flowers and grows in arid sections of the western United States. It is the primary vegetation across vast areas of the Great Basin desert. Along rivers or in other relatively wet areas, sagebrush can grow as tall as 3 m (10 feet), but is more typically 1-2 m tall.

Sagebrush has a strong pungent fragrance, especially when wet, which is not unlike common sage. It is, however, unrelated to common sage and has a bitter taste. It is thought that this odor serves to discourage browsing."

But the real point to the story is the fact Sagebrush communicates and engages in "Self Recognition"

"The sagebrush communicated and cooperated with other branches of themselves to avoid being eaten by grasshoppers, Karban said. Although the research is in its early stages, the scientists suspect that the plants warn their own kind of impending danger by emitting volatile cues. This may involve secreting chemicals that deter herbivores or make the plant less profitable for herbivores to eat, he said.

What this research means is that plants are "capable of more sophisticated behavior than we imagined," said Karban, who researches the interactions between herbivores (plant-eating organisms) and their host plants."

For us, air carries sound to enable vocal communication, for plants, air acts as a contact point for communication.

Star Maker anyone?

"We put thirty spokes together and call it a wheel;
But it is on the space where there is nothing that the usefulness of the wheel depends.
We turn clay to make a vessel;
But it is on the space where there is nothing that the usefulness of the vessel depends.
We pierce doors and windows to make a house;
And it is on these spaces where there is nothing that the usefulness of the house depends.
Therefore just as we take advantage of what is, we should recognize the usefulness of what is not."
- Tao Te Ching