Titanic Anyone?

Captain, I think there's an iceberg straight ahead but I can't be sure...

The Game is Rigged But You Already Knew That, Right?

 

The Mafia and Vegas, to me, are far more honest entities then the banking system we are saddled with. At least those guys are up front in extracting money from us while the Fed and the Wall Street Banks work behind the scenes in secret doing the same exact thing while posing as "model" businesses helping to make America great.

"On the third Wednesday of every month, the nine members of an elite Wall Street society gather in Midtown Manhattan.


The men share a common goal: to protect the interests of big banks in the vast market for derivatives, one of the most profitable — and controversial — fields in finance. They also share a common secret: The details of their meetings, even their identities, have been strictly confidential."

End result...

PROTECTING THE CUSTOMER 

Daniel Singer runs a heating oil company in Elmsford, N.Y., 

and is a derivatives customer. 

In order to offer homeowners fixed-rate oil plans, 

he buys derivatives contracts. 

But since the trading system is not transparent, 

he can’t tell whether the prices he gets are fair or not.

At least if I were playing black jack or roulette, I could see what I was betting against. With this, there's no chance. Reminds me of the Deer Hunter if you ask me.

Addendum: Check out this Zero Hedge piece to get more info on the cabal running this deal. At the very least, one will realize how the market is played, Goldman style.

Ode to Books

A bookstore, you know, the real kind containing stacks of books crammed into a tiny space as seen in a pix taken by yours truly is a magical and mysterious place, filled with dreams, conjectures and the ability to teach and amaze. My wife and I were in such environs with the intent of "just" taking a look, 5 minutes at most before going home after visiting friends... An hour + later, we left.

Didn't buy anything but we will be back as there is something most inviting about a store containing product consisting mostly paper and not requiring power to run or boot time to come "alive", ready to display the same content contained here but in a format unable to be touched unless you have a digital key in the form of a smart phone, laptop or any other device capable of turning bits into viewable words on a monitor or flat screen display.

As a techie, I am well aware that all the content contained in this little shop could fit onto a small 4gb thumb drive without a problem but the experience lost of wandering through a space such as this cannot be put into words in spite of the fact bookstores like the one we were in are slowly fading away as we move further into the digital realm of bits and photons.

Scotch Tape et al

About a year ago, Physorg posted a really interesting article about Scotch tape and X-rays.

"Scotch tape produces X-rays that are strong enough to image the bones in a human finger. In a new study, scientists have further investigated what happens when clear tape is peeled, and found that the tape's surface roughness displays a fractal pattern. The findings may lead to a better understanding of the processes involved in peeling, the origin of the X-ray emission, and in the design of better tape that can be reused repeatedly."

When looking at this from a larger perspective, the notion of reality being a fractal space comes to mind, especially when looking at trees in the winter time and the splashing of waves against the shore. 

Never Ceases to Amaze Me

When man wants to be creative, the end result can be amazing, especially when intelligent observation and free association are combined to make tech rock. Consider Tobacco, the Tobacco Mosaic Virus and Ion Lithium batteries, three entities, that, on the surface, would be forever separated well beyond the six degrees of separation linking people to people unintentionally made famous by the trivial game involving the actor Kevin Bacon, a good sport who is trying to do good via his website Sixdegrees.org.

"TMV's nanostructure is the ideal size and shape to use as a template for building battery electrodes. Its self-replicating and self-assembling biological properties produce structures that are both intricate and orderly, which increases the power and storage capacity of the batteries that incorporate them. Because TMV can be programmed to bind directly to metal, the resulting components are lighter, stronger and less expensive than conventional parts."

Now I finally know what Tobacco is good for. :)

Creating Something Out of Nothing

"Under just the right conditions—which involve an ultra-high-intensity laser beam and a two-mile-long particle accelerator—it could be possible to create something out of nothing, according to University of Michigan researchers.


The scientists and engineers have developed new equations that show how a high-energy electron beam combined with an intense laser pulse could rip apart a vacuum into its fundamental matter and antimatter components, and set off a cascade of events that generates additional pairs of particles and antiparticles.


"We can now calculate how, from a single electron, several hundred particles can be produced. We believe this happens in nature near pulsars and neutron stars," said Igor Sokolov, an engineering research scientist who conducted this research along with associate research scientist John Nees, emeritus electrical engineering professor Gerard Mourou and their colleagues in France.


"The basic question of what is a vacuum, and what is nothing, goes beyond science," he said. "It's embedded deeply in the base not only of theoretical physics, but of our philosophical perception of everything—of reality, of life, even the religious question of could the world have come from nothing."

Touching the very fabric of reality is nigh, something to think about as we move further into the 21st century under the threat of global warming and declining energy supplies. If this theoretical research proves out to be valid via experimentation, the implications of same goes beyond comprehension, particularly in the realm of creating enough clean energy able to meet the needs of our ravenous civilization not to mention the potential of developing propulsion systems of almost unimaginable power.

Star Trek anyone?

Addendum: A new theory positing how the ratio of matter/anti-matter in the formation of the multiverse came to be may explain how reality actually works.

In this matter-formation scenario, a new particle X and its antiparticle X-bar (of equal and opposite charge) are produced in the early Universe. X and X-bar are capable of coupling to quarks (the basic components of baryonic matter, e.g., protons and neutrons) in the visible sector as well as particles in a “hidden” sector (so-called because the particles in it interact only feebly with the visible sector). In this scenario X and X-bar would have been produced when the Universe heated up after inflation, in the first moments after at the start of the big bang.


Later, X and X-bar would decay, partly into visible baryons (specifically, a neutron made up of one up quark and two down quarks) and partly into hidden baryons. As the scientists explain, X decays to neutrons more often than X-bar decays to antineutrons. By the same amount, X-bar decays to hidden antiparticles more than X decays to hidden particles. In this scenario, the quarks would be the baryonic matter that makes up almost everything we see, and the hidden antibaryons would be what we know as dark matter. Through this yin-yang decay pattern, the positive baryon number of the visible matter is in balance with the negative baryon number of the dark matter.

WikiLeaks is Coming for You

BRT has stated many times that tech, like nature, has no morality. Depending on who's doing what to whom, the end result is driven by the user of the tech, not the tech itself. At the same time, BRT has stated the tried and true statement that everything has a cost. There is no free puppy, there is no free lunch and, as seen by WikiLeaks, there is no privacy, period.

Tit for Tat has been the recommendation from many sites, including this one, regarding the ability to maintain a free society when there is no privacy, i.e. the same tech used to surveil against us should also be used on the people who are doing the surveillance. a concept WikiLeaks embraced when releasing documents proven to be most embarrassing to the US and significant others.

The post in Baseline is timely and apt as the first real infowar is underway where the consequences of total exposure and the right to freedom of expression comes face to face with corporate, financial and governmental power and their wish to control and conceal.

"WikiLeaks may be coming soon to your place of business, or even to your own personal information files. Are you ready? The WikiLeaks story of radical transparency and harsh official response is not going away, no matter how much governments and internet service providers wish it would. And that has implications for all kinds of companies, and all kinds of users, inside the enterprise and out. WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has promised to spread his publishing campaign beyond the world of diplomacy to banks and other entities. Whether or not Assange, now under arrest in Britain and a hated man the world around, is the one to exploit data insecurity, it seems likely that others will pick up his mantle and continue to do so — and also that government actions to stop them could have serious consequences for free speech and a free press. The quotes in this slideshow represent a range of opinion, news, and analysis, all of which should inform enterprise strategy on data security and openness. Follow the links (they're live in the caption boxes beside each slide) and be prepared."

As the great philosopher Yogi Berra says, "It ain't over until it's over"

"Unlike the quickly suppressed Twitter linked student revolt in Iran in 2009 following the disputed presidential election, the move by supporters to avenge attacks on Assange has gone viral. The rapid duplication of WikiLeaks content over the past weekend from one to more than 208 mirror websites represents a global counter-force that is now worldwide. Around the globe, it has become a call to arms for a far flung team of anonymous hackers."


Now it's over 1300.

Life Finds a Way - Part II

NASA-funded astrobiology research has changed the fundamental knowledge 

about what comprises all known life on Earth. 

From this perspective, it looks like life is a far more flexible enterprise then previously thought.

Scientists have found the first known living organism that incorporates arsenic into the working parts of its cells. What's more, the arsenic replaces phosphorus, an element long thought essential for life...


The discovery of a bacteria that can incorporate arsenic into its DNA adds a new dimension to what has long been accepted as the building blocks of life as we know it.

ET looms.

The Future of the Internet...

"The Internet’s current trajectory is one of lost opportunity. Its salvation, Zittrain argues, lies in the hands of its millions of users. Drawing on generative technologies like Wikipedia that have so far survived their own successes, this book shows how to develop new technologies and social structures that allow users to work creatively and collaboratively, participate in solutions, and become true “netizens.”"

Ah, another book to read as if I have enough time to read the latest one I bought titled What Technology Wants, a  tome written by Kevin Kelly, a writer who's work I respect a great deal as one who gets it, something not able to be said of entities such as Congress, the RIAA and numerous related others who view an untamed web as a reality to be fought against above all else as it's a "dangerous place out there" and "we need protection if we are to survive".

Well it is a dangerous place out there to the incompetent but so are driving and drinking, pastimes that have been tolerated by the powers at be for generations but not the net because information is power and god forbid if we the public get unfettered access to it.

"When you type an address into a browser, the browser doesn’t just know where to take you. For that it counts on the globally distributed DNS system, which takes you to the specific IP address where the site is hosted. The DNS system is built on a basic foundation of trust -- a DNS provider can’t manipulate the results to stop you from going where you want to go on the Web.


COICA would subject DNS operators to government and industry pressure to intercept and block traffic to sites they don't like, and gives the Department of Justice the power to sue DNS operators to effectively disappear a site from one-click access on the Internet. There are some sites out there that are devoted primarily to posting copyrighted material, like torrent-tracking Web sites, but serious concerns have been raised the dragnet could be extended to file-storage utilities like Dropbox or to services like Facebook where large amounts of copyrighted material are easily stored and posted by users. Moreover, DNS blocking inherently targets entire Web sites, not just specific offending content, raising the troubling possibility that legal content and protected political speech on those websites would be censored in the United States."

This is a bill the RIAA supports as it would protect us from rampant theft of music "and loss of profit" to the record companies it serves, corporations increasingly trapped in the twilight zone of the last century.

“We are proud to lend our voice to the chorus of supporters of this important bipartisan legislation. In a world where hackers and copyright thieves are able to take down websites, rip off American consumers and rake in huge profits operating rogue businesses built on the backs of the American creative community, the committee has taken a strong step toward fostering a more safe and secure online experience for consumers."

The problem with this rosy scenario is the fact it won't work.

"U.S. Government Seizes 82 Websites: A Glimpse at the Draconian Future of Copyright Enforcement?"


... the seizures also show why this kind of enforcement doesn’t work; seized sites were available at other domain names within hours. If the United States government increases interference in critical DNS infrastructure to police alleged copyright infringement, it is very likely that a large percentage of the Internet will shift to alternative DNS mechanisms that are located outside the US. This will cause numerous problems — including new network security issues, as a large percentage of the population moves to encrypted offshore DNS to escape the censoring effects of the procedures outlined in COICA. Presumably the DOJ and the DHS should be committed to improving network security — not undermining it.

When viewed through the lens of tech, the RIAA doesn't get it as the web is not a Sony or Columbia Records company pushing out cds, it is a distribution environment separate from the physicality of hard copy and not subject to corporate control unless you get government involved through stupid legislation, a frightening concept to say the least.

Hip recording artists understand this but, as stated before, government and organizations stuck in the 20th century don't. To whit...

"Casey Rae-Hunter, a communications director and policy strategist for the artist advocacy group Future of Music Coalition (FMC), illustrates why an open Internet is, ultimately, much better for musicians in the long run:


“The two things that are most important to today’s musicians and creative entrepreneurs are innovation and access... For a decade, Future of Music Coalition has called for a straightforward Internet framework that lets artists compete in a legitimate digital music marketplace alongside the biggest companies. Open access to the Internet has led to tremendous innovations in the marketplace and inspired countless examples of creative enterprise.”

"For every moment of triumph, for every instance of beauty, many souls must be trampled"
- Hunter S. Thompson

Suddenly Everyone's Talking...

Seems BRT, along with many other sites (Alternet Time, et al), are stirring up interest about the Fed and the role it plays in finance because people are finally beginning to question why we have such a ridiculous and corrupt system regarding the management of our money.

"Beyond Republican politicians, the public is beginning to rethink our monetary order. A YouTube video on quantitative easing has over 3 million views. The video slams the Fed for missing the dotcom bubble, the subprime crisis, for being fundamentally undemocratic and unaccountable, and for being engaged in collusive dealings with Goldman Sachs. Financial blogs and CNBC discuss the Fed, and its associated characters, with deep insight and passion. And Bernanke drew 30 no votes in his confirmation hearing in 2009, the most ever for such a position, just four years after drawing almost none. The market nearly crashed on the possibility that Bernanke’s nomination would fail before the White House stepped up aggressive lobbying efforts. On the left, the last few years saw a remarkable grassroots coalition of economists and activists to bring transparency to the central bank, joining a long-sought libertarian crusade."

It's about time, don't you think?