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ROFL. You fuckers are all gonna die, one way or another.

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the power of drugs

Funny shit here. 

“The Office of Congressional Ethics is investigating the chairman of the House Financial Services Committee over possible violations of insider-trading laws, according to sources familiar with the case.

Rep. Spencer Bachus (R-Ala.), who holds one of the most influential positions in the House, has been a frequent trader on Capitol Hill, buying stock options while overseeing the nation’s banking and financial services industries.

The Office of Congressional Ethics, an independent investigative agency, opened its probe late last year after focusing on numerous suspicious trades on Bachus’s annual financial disclosure forms, the sources said. OCE investigators have notified Bachus that he is under investigation and that they have found probable cause to believe that insider-trading violations have occurred.

The case is the first of its kind involving a member of Congress. It comes at a time of intense public scrutiny of congressional ethics, with the House passing legislation Thursday to tighten rules against insider trading by lawmakers. The impetus for the legislation, a version of which passed in the Senate a week earlier, came from a “60 Minutes” report and a book mentioning Bachus’s trades, “Throw Them All Out,” by Peter Schweizer.

“The Office of Congressional Ethics has requested information and I welcome this opportunity to present the facts and set the record straight,” Bachus said in a statement issued Thursday by his spokesman, Tim Johnson.

Omar Ashmawy, OCE staff director and chief counsel, declined to comment. “The office does not confirm or deny whether an investigation is taking place.” Chief counsel for the House Ethics Committee, Dan Schwager, also declined to discuss the case. “The committee doesn’t comment on specific matters or allegations,” he said.

OCE investigators are examining whether Bachus violated Securities and Exchange Commission laws that prohibit individuals from trading stocks and options based on “material, non-public” inside information, said the sources, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter. The office also is investigating whether Bachus violated congressional rules that prohibit members of Congress from using their public positions for private gain.

In recent years, Bachus has made numerous trades, some of them coinciding with major policy announcements by the federal government and industries under his congressional oversight, according to a review of his financial disclosure forms by The Washington Post.

Most of his investments are for less than $10,000, and almost all involve options rather than stock purchases. The options allowed Bachus to buy or sell stocks at certain prices in the future — betting that the value of those stocks will rise or fall.

A Fidelity brokerage statement Bachus submitted for 2008 shows that he made $30,474 in short-term investments, many of them bought and sold in a matter of days, sometimes during the same day….”

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Of all the tall tales in the science-fiction TV series Star Trek, what impressed me most when I was a  little boy was the Vulcan mind meld.

Laying his hands on the head of a human (or, in one of the films, a humpback whale), Mr Spock could, for a moment, dissolve the distance between two living things.

Each experienced everything the other felt, thought, knew and saw.

Now it seems scientists are about to make the Vulcan mind meld a reality – and go far beyond it.

Ten years ago, the US National Science Foundation predicted ‘network-enhanced telepathy’ – sending thoughts over the internet – would be practical by the 2020s.

Man and machine: Computers could soon be hardwired into the human brain and unlock amazing powe

And thanks to neuroscientists at the University of California, we seem to be on schedule.

Last September, they asked volunteers to watch Hollywood film trailers and then reconstructed the clips by scanning their subjects’ brain activity.

‘We’re opening a window into the movies in our minds,’ Professor Jack Gallant announced.

Last week, the scientists boldly went further still. They charted the electrical activity in the brains of volunteers who were listening to human speech and then they fed the results into computers which translated the signals back into language.

The technique remains crude, and has so far made out only five distinct words, but humanity has crossed a threshold.

We can now read people’s minds. On Star Trek, the Vulcan mind meld had medical benefits, curing a nasty imaginary infection called Pa’nar syndrome.

Science fact?: Harnessing the power of the mind was a favourite of science fiction, including Star Trek’s Vulcan mind meld

But the new breakthroughs promise to deliver much greater – and real – benefits.

No longer need strokes and neurodegenerative diseases rob people of speech because we can turn their brainwaves directly into words.

But this is only the beginning. Neuroscientists are going to make the mind meld look like child’s play. Mankind is merging with its machines.

The process began centuries ago with simple devices such as eyeglasses and ear trumpets that could dramatically improve human lives.

Then came better machines, such as hearing aids; and then machines that could save lives, including pacemakers and dialysis machines.

By the second decade of the 21st Century, we have become used to organs grown in laboratories, genetic surgery and designer babies.

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[toytube://http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kxy-afPdM-E 450 300]

Sam Stovall reminds us that past performance is no guarantee for future returns; but you can always try to set yourself up for a potential wave.

via

MORGANTOWN, W.Va. — West Virginia University and the Big East Conference have reached a conditional agreement to settle their legal battles against one another, a source told the Charleston Daily Mail Thursday evening.

A formal announcement could be made as early as Friday. That is also when the Big 12 is set to release its 2012 conference football schedule, media outlets reported Thursday.

The Big East will make about $20 million from the resolution, with WVU paying $11 million.

The source said the Big 12 would handle the remaining amount and the Mountaineers will enjoy full membership in that conference beginning July 1.

The source said WVU’s early exit from the Big East is no longer conditional upon Boise State joining the Big East as a replacement in 2012.

That had been an obstacle standing in the way of a conclusion, but the Big East will now take the money WVU was offering to find a replacement and use it however it chooses.

Boise State’s president said last week it was too late for his school to join.

The Broncos may still join in time for 2012, or it may indeed be too late. Either way, the source said that decision is no longer attached to the Mountaineers.

GSV Capital files form N-2 related to offering of 3 mln shares (19.50 +0.75)
From filing: “Our common stock is listed on the NASDAQ Capital Market under the symbol “GSVC.” On February 8, 2012, the last reported sales price on the NASDAQ Capital Market for our common stock was $18.75 per share, which represents a premium of 41.4% to our net asset value per share as of September 30, 2011, or 46.5% to the low point of our unaudited estimated net asset value per share range as of December 31, 2011. In addition, our investment adviser, GSV Asset Management, LLC, and our administrator, GSV Capital Service Company, LLC, have limited experience managing and administering a business development company, respectively.”

In a private sale, 150,000 shares of Facebook were sold for $44, reported today.

(CNN) — If you use Google, and I know you do, you may have noticed a little banner popping up at the top of the page announcing: “We’re changing our privacy policy and terms.” It gives you the choice to “Learn More” or, another option, the one I’m betting most people followed, to “Dismiss.”

Who wants to read about what Google plans to do with all that information it has about us?

I, too, clicked “Dismiss.” That’s because the very idea of considering what Google knows about me can give me heartburn. And if that happens, I may want to Google “heartburn,” and then I’ll wonder if my insurance company will find out that I was searching “heartburn,” or, worse, that one day I will apply for a new insurance company and the side effects of having considered what Google knows will result in a denial of coverage. But I digress.

When Google announced its new policy, lovingly explaining its reason as “our desire to create one beautifully simple and intuitive experience across Google,” the authorities in Europe immediately told the Internet leviathan to put off its March 1 start date until European Union officials had a chance to review Google’s new quest for beauty and simplicity.

Europeans, it turns out, are much less trusting of invasions of our electronic privacy than Americans are. Americans have an intense aversion to government intrusion. If the FBI wanted to examine Google searches, the left and the right would come together — the ACLU, Tea Party, liberals and libertarians would raise their fists together to fight for freedom of privacy. The Supreme Court would join in, as it did in the case of GPS surveillance, and conclude the people have a right to privacy, a right against any “unreasonable search,” as the Constitution says.

But in the case of Google’s latest move to consolidate user’s data, however, most Americans paid little attention.

Kiev, Ukraine (CNN) — Suffering in the grip of a brutal winter where temperatures have not risen above freezing in nearly a month, Ukraine has seen a wave of deaths related to the cold, and the country’s ambulance service is inundated with calls for help.

On one recent night, emergency services raced through the streets of the capital, Kiev, in response to a call about a homeless man passed out in the freezing weather.

The man got drunk and either fell asleep or dropped unconscious outside, putting him at risk of frostbite.

Vladimir Poddubniy, a passerby, found him, brought him indoors and called for an ambulance.

Shelters overwhelmed in Poland When paramedics arrived, they found the homeless man, who gave his name simply as Kostya, squatting drunk on the floor. His hand was so swollen, he could barely hold his cigarette.

Poddubniy said the man was freezing to death, so he brought him inside.

“I felt sorry for him. But I also didn’t want to find a body in the morning,” Poddubniy said.

So they are naturally furious with us. How dare we continue to kill our enemies that they are harboring?

PESHAWAR, Pakistan – A US drone strike on a house in northern Pakistan killed at least four suspected militants, and is suspected to have killed Al Qaeda’s Pakistani leader Badar Mansoor, Fox News reports.

The attack is the second in 24 hours. A strike Wednesday in the same area killed at least 10 and several others were injured.

The back-to-back strikes could be an indication the drone program is picking up steam again after a slowdown caused by tensions with Pakistan over accidental American airstrikes that killed 24 Pakistani soldiers last year.

The U.S. held off on carrying out drone strikes for over six weeks after the deadly accident on Nov. 26. There have been a handful of attacks since they resumed in January, but the last two are the first consecutive strikes since the border incident.

WASHINGTON – A new report by Republicans on the House Armed Services Committee slams both the Bush and Obama administrations for taking too many risks when releasing prisoners from Guantanamo Bay prison, Fox News has learned.

The 93-page report, which is expected to be approved Thursday, criticizes the evolution of detainee policies over the past decade and claims both the Bush and Obama adminstrations have adhered to “domestic political pressures” to allow the transfer of some detainees. In turn, those transfers have amped up the national security risk to the United States.

The report comes as the Obama administration officials have acknowledged that they are considering whether to release several Afghan Taliban prisoners from Guantanamo and send them to a third country as an incentive to bring the Taliban to peace talks. The step is certain to create an uproar in Congress, especially among Republicans. The 93-page study is likely to be part of the Republican effort to influence the ongoing debate.

Nearly 14 percent of the former detainees re-engaged in terrorist or insurgent activities upon release, and another 12 percent are suspected of doing so, according to the document.

“The Bush and Obama administrations, reacting to domestic political pressures and a desire to earn goodwill abroad, sought to reduce the Guantanamo population by sending detainees elsewhere,” the report said. “Both administrations faced the persistent challenge of ensuring that the potential threat posed by each detainee had been aptly assessed before transfer or release, and that the countries that received the detainees had the capacity and willingness to handle them in a way that sufficiently recognized the dangers involved.”

WASHINGTON – The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has approved the first new nuclear power project in more than three decades.

The panel on Thursday approved plans from Southern Company for two reactors at a Georgia site. The $14 billion reactors could begin operating as soon as 2016 and 2017.

The NRC last approved construction of a nuclear plant in 1978, a year before a partial meltdown of the Three Mile Island nuclear plant in Pennsylvania raised fears of a radiation release and brought new reactor orders nearly to a halt.

The NRC approved a new reactor design for the Georgia plant in December. Utility companies in Florida and the Carolinas also plan new reactors that use the same design by Westinghouse Electric Co.

The planned reactors are remnants of a once-anticipated building boom that the power industry dubbed the “nuclear renaissance.”

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John Edwards’ failed presidential campaign racked up close to $900,000 in expenses in 2011, according to newly filed finance reports, dropping thousands of dollars on airfare and hotels despite a ruling from federal election officials that he still owes taxpayers more than $2.1 million.

The dozens of pages of filings for the year do not go into detail about where the flights were headed or where the hotels were booked. The purpose of the travel expenses was not clear.

But they appeared to criss-cross the country. In January, August and December, the campaign spent $2,268 for tickets on Alaska Airlines, a transcontinental carrier that does not offer flights between East Coast cities such as Raleigh or Washington.

DAMASCUS, Syria – The U.S. and its allies were considering giving military aid to the Syrian opposition battling the regime of President Bashar al Assad in an 11-month uprising that activists say has killed more than 6,000 people.

The Pentagon had drawn contingency plans that could include supplying the Free Syrian Army (FSA) with weapons and establishing a humanitarian corridor to deliver aid to civilians, The (London) Times reported Thursday, citing a U.S. official.

While U.S. officials said they were “scoping out” military options, any plans at the moment were purely “academic.”

Several nations have already been aiding the rebels, with Saudi Arabia providing financial assistance and Qatar supplying them with 3,000 satellite phones. Qatar was also deliberating giving the FSA night-vision equipment and anti-tank missiles.

The FSA’s logistical coordinator Sheikh Zuheir Abassi told The Times the rebels wanted the West to provide no-fly zones and a haven from which they could safely operate.

“If we were given these two, most of the army would desert and join us,” Abassi said. “We are not asking the West to intervene but to give us weapons. We can do the rest.” Some 40,000 soldiers have deserted the regular army to date, the opposition said.