Today was the 12th annual no pants subway ride held in NY. Apparently there is a group of people who meet up on trains, take their pants off, and act like nothing is wrong. Read More
Here is the 2012 video:
#NPSR is the hashtag they are using on twitter
Comments »Comments »SAN DIEGO (AP) — Police shot and critically wounded a gunman Saturday in a San Diego movie theater as more than a dozen moviegoers ducked for cover on the floor.
No moviegoers or officers were hurt in the shooting inside Reading Cinemas Carmel Mountain innorthern San Diego, officer David Stafford said.
The suspect, whose name was not immediately released, was taken to a hospital with several gunshot wounds and was expected to survive, Capt. Terry McManus told U-T San Diego. He became the target of an intense police search after witnesses reported seeing him confront his 19-year-old girlfriend at a parking lot across the street from a shopping plaza where the Cineplex is located.
Witnesses tried to intervene, but he threatened them with a gun and ran to the shopping plaza.
The owner of a business next to the Cineplex said police shut down the shopping center’s parking lot and stopped every car to look for the man. Officers with dogs checked each store, while a police helicopter hovered above.
“There were 20 police cars blocking the entrance, then the fire truck and the ambulance rushed in,”Steve Krongard, the owner of the Nickel City arcade, said. “Then we saw seven cops with what looked like rifles, then paramedics went into the theater.”
McManus said police turned their attention to the Cineplex when two women told officers the suspect they were looking for matched the description of someone they saw inside the Cineplex. Police searched theater by theater and evacuated moviegoers until two officers spotted him in a theater with about 15 others.
McManus told the paper that the man initially complied with officers’ order to put his hands up, but then he put them back in his lap and brandished a handgun. He said one of the officers opened fire.
The officers thought their lives were threatened, he said, “and more importantly, they thought the lives of others were in jeopardy.”
The theater’s manager told Krongard the shooting occurred during a screening of “Les Miserables.”
Comments »The Obama administration ended speculation Saturday that it would mint a trillion-dollar platinum coin as a way to avoid the debt ceiling.
Treasury Department spokesman Anthony Coley said the agency wouldn’t mint one and the Federal Reserve would not accept the coin.
“Neither the Treasury Department nor the Federal Reserve believes that the law can or should be used to facilitate the production of platinum coins for the purpose of avoiding an increase in the debt limit,” he Coley said.
His statement was followed by one from White House Press Secretary Jay Carney.
“There are only two options to deal with the debt limit: Congress can pay its bills or it can fail to act and put the nation into default,” Carney said.
Though the idea seemed far fetched when it recently resurfaced, the Obama administration appeared to add speculation by not dismissing the idea outright.
[youtube://http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KNzu2JuyIzE 450 300]
Comments »Notice how both have the same initials. Something to be superstitious about when naming your kid and you last name starts with an S….
Late BBC TV and radio star Jimmy Savile is accused of physically abusing hundreds of children–the youngest of whom was just 8–as well as many young adults whom he met through his high profile charity work at various children’s hospitals throughout England.
Savile’s crimes began in Manchester in 1955, peaked in the late 70’s and early 80’s, and continued at a lower pace all the way until at least 2009, two years before his death at 85.
The police report concludes that Savile committed 214 criminal offenses including 34 rapes or other serious sexual assaults across England. 450 people have come forward with information about Savile’s crimes…”
Comments »This is hilarious. My question is how many showers will be allowable per day ?
Comments »The problem with large government agencies is “feature creep.” If given a broad enough area to cover, years of territorial expansion and absorption of “related” entities will render the agency nearly unrecognizable from its original form. Not only that, but any stated directive or focus will have been lost, abandoned or hopelessly mutated as well.
If the government agency was crafted in “response” to a tragic event, the problem is both magnified and accelerated. As Wired reports, slightly more than a decade on from its formation,the Department of Homeland Security is having trouble defining the very thing it’s in charge of.
What is “homeland security?” The federal bureaucracy doesn’t know, and that’s problematic for a government that has been fighting the ill-defined “war on terror” following 9/11, according to a new report from the Congressional Research Service.
In short, “homeland security” is whatever the government says it is.
Thirty federal entities — among them agriculture, education, labor, treasury and social security — are receiving “homeland security” funding. The actual Department of Homeland Security, created in the aftermath of 9/11, receives 52 percent of the “homeland security” money pie, according to the Tuesday report.
“Ten years after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the U.S. government does not have a single definition for homeland security,” the report said. “Currently, different strategic documents and mission statements offer varying missions that are derived from different homeland security definitions.”
The varied definitions given by the DHS and the White House still put the main focus on “terrorism,” but others list “Homeland Security” responsibilities as including border/maritime security, immigration, natural disasters and “other hazards.”
According to the Congressional Research Report, posted at Secrecy News, this lack of definition undermines the very “security” the agency is supposed to be providing….”
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Dr. Peter Linnerooth spent nearly five years wearing an Army uniform, including the bloodiest 12 months in Iraq at the height of the surge. As a mental-health professional, his top mission was to keep troops from killing themselves. After he returned home, he spent another two years trying to save the vets he loved, working for the VA in California and Nevada.
Few who wore the uniform in the nation’s post-9/11 wars better understood the perverse alchemy that can change the rush and glory of combat into a darkening cloud of anxiety, depression and posttraumatic stress. But strikingly, all that understanding — and the knowledge, education and firsthand experience that nurtured it — didn’t save Linnerooth.
Full Article Here
Comments »BURLINGTON, N.C. — Police in North Carolina say a deaf man was stabbed several times after his sign language was mistaken for gang signs by another man.
Burlington Police Sgt. Mark Yancey said 45-year-old Terrance Ervin Daniels was using sign language with another deaf man. He said a third person saw them, thought they were flashing gang signs and stabbed Daniels with a kitchen knife. A neighbor saw the victim and called emergency personnel.
Full Article Here
Comments »[youtube://http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tcRYdVlGXNQ 450 300]
“Sheep”
What do you get for pretending the danger’s not real
Meek and obedient you follow the leader
Down well trodden corridors into the valley of steel
What a surprise!
A look of terminal shock in your eyes
Now things are really what they seem
No, this is no bad dream.
The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want
He makes me down to lie
Through pastures green he leadeth me the silent waters by
With bright knives he releaseth my soul
He maketh me to hang on hooks in high places
He converteth me to lamb cutlets
For lo,m he hath great power and great hunger
When cometh the day we lowly ones
Through quiet reflection and great dedication
Master the art of karate
Lo, we shall rise up
And then we’ll make the bugger’s eyes water.
Bleating and babbling we fell on his neck with a scream
Wave upon wave of demented avengers
March cheerfully out of obscurity into the dream.
Have you heard the news?
The dogs are dead!
You better stay home
And do as you’re told
Get out of the road if you want to grow old.
Cheers on your weekend!
Click on the link below for your lesson.
Pyramids of Waste AKA The Light Bulb Conspiracy from Andreas Wagner on Vimeo.
Planned Obsolescence is the deliberate shortening of product life spans to guarantee consumer demand.
As a magazine for advertisers succinctly puts it: The article that refuses to wear out is a tragedy of business – and a tragedy for the modern growth society which relies on an ever-accelerating cycle of production, consumption and throwing away.
The Light Bulb Conspiracy combines investigative research and rare archive footage to trace the untold story of Planned Obsolescence, from its beginnings in the 1920s with a secret cartel, set up expressly to limit the life span of light bulbs, to present-day stories involving cutting edge electronics (such as the iPod) and the growing spirit of resistance amongst ordinary consumers.
This film travels to France, Germany, Spain and the US to find witnesses of a business practice which has become the basis of the modern economy, and brings back disquieting pictures from Africa where discarded electronics are piling up in huge cemeteries for electronic waste.
[youtube://http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gAb1Lm2iqZo 450 300] Comments »“We recently saw U.S. initial jobless claims tick up a bit.
While it’s far too early too call it a trend, we can certainly think in terms of hypotheticals.
Enter Citi chart guru Tom Fitzpatrick, who presented some eerie charts of initial jobless claims and the Dow to King World News.
“Initial Claims, one of our favorite leading indicators of the overall economic picture, appear to be bottoming, pointing to a deteriorating employment situation in the US,” said Fitzpatrick. “Fitting with idea that a low could be forming just as it did in late 1978.”
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Again, it’s too early to call a turn in jobless claims.
Here’s Fitzpatrick’s chart overlaying the Dow today with the Dow during the 1970’s
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Fitzpatrick concludes….”
Comments »“For the past few months, Goldman Sachs has had a problematic trade on its hands.
On October 22, 2012, the bank’s currency strategists recommended clients go long the euro against the Canadian dollar. The trade was initiated at a level of 1.296 with a target of 1.37. (At the time, Goldman saw more upside to the euro in Canadian than in U.S. dollar terms, owing to a projected shift in Bank of Canada monetary policy).
The trade has gone nowhere. It reached its highest point on December 28 – but by then had only risen to around 1.3170. After that, it tanked into the new year and has languished in recent days.
That is to say, the trade languished up until yesterday, when ECB President Mario Draghi revealed that the central bank’s latest decision not to cut interest rates was unanimous on the Governing Council.
Bloomberg, Business Insider
Since then, the euro has staged a sizable rally.
Today, Goldman Sachs FX strategist Robin Brooks says in a note to clients that it should go much higher. However, Brooks’ reasoning still has more to do with what Draghi said in July – that the ECB would “do whatever it takes to save the euro” – than what he said yesterday.
Since the introduction of the ECB’s OMT bond market intervention later this summer, government borrowing costs have dropped precipitously in the periphery. Nowhere is this more apparent than in Italy, where the spread between Italian 10-year sovereign bonds and German bunds fell below 250 basis points today for the first time since before the euro crisis exploded.
However, recently the euro crisis conversation has turned to fundamental economic growth and eurozone member states’ inability to meet economic targets. Today, the rate of contraction in Spanish industrial production unexpectedly accelerated to a staggering 7.2 percent, well below the 3.1 percent decline in the previous month and economists’ expectations of a 1.5 percent contraction.
Hence, a new debate: what’s really driving the euro? ..”
Comments »“Haven’t blogged in a while. So I decided to look back and pull out one of my first blog posts, from 2004. An oldie, but goodie !
The Number I recommend that anyone with an interest in the market jump at the chance to buy it.
In 1990, I sold my company, MicroSolutions which specialized in what at the time was the relatively new business of helping companies network their computer equipment to CompuServe. After taxes, I walked away with about $2 million. That was going to be my nest egg, and my goal was to protect it at all costs, and grow it wisely.
I set about interviewing stockbrokers and settled upon a broker from Goldman Sachs, Raleigh Ralls. Raleigh was in his late 20s, and relatively new to Goldman. But we hit it off very well and I trusted him. As we planned my financial future, I made it clear that I wanted my nest egg to be invested not like I was 30 years old, but as if I were 60 years old. I was a widows and orphans investor.
Over the next year I stuck to my plan. I trusted Raleigh, and he put me in bonds, dividend-paying utilities and blue chips, just as I asked.
During that year, Raleigh began asking me a lot of questions about technology. Because of my experience at MicroSolutions, I knew the products and companies that were hot. Synoptics, Wellfleet, NetWorth, Lotus, Novell and others. I knew which had products that worked, didn’t work, were selling or not. How these companies were marketed, and whether or not they were or would be successful.
I couldn’t believe that I would have an advantage in the market. After all, I had read A Random Walk Down Wall Street in college. I truly thought that the markets were efficient, that any available knowledge about a company was already reflected in its stock price. Yet I saw Raleigh using the information I gave him to make money for
his clients. He finally broke me down to start using this information to my advantage to make some money in the market. Finally after more than a year, I relented. I was ready to trade.
Notice I didn’t use the word invest. I wasn’t an investor. I just wanted to make money. The reason I was ready to try was that it was patently obvious that the market wasn’t efficient. Someone like me with industry knowledge had an advantage. My knowledge could be used profitably. As we got ready to start, I asked Raleigh if he had any words of wisdom that I should remember. His response was simple. “Get Long, Get Loud”.
Get Long, Get Loud. As we started buying and selling technology stocks, most of which were in the local area networking field that I had specialized in at MicroSolutions, Raleigh put me on the phone with analysts, money managers, individual investors, reporters, anyone with money or influence who wanted to talk technology and stocks.
We talked about token ring topologies that didn’t work on 10BaseT. We talked about what companies were stuffing channels – selling more equipment to their distributors than the distributors really needed to meet the retail demand. We talked about who was winning, and who was losing. We talked about things that really amounted to the things you would hear if you attended any industry trade show panel. Yet after hanging up the phone with these people, I would watch stocks move up and down. Of course as the stocks moved, the number of people wanting to talk to me grew.
I remember buying stock in a Canadian company called Gandalf Technologies in the early 90s. Gandalf made Ethernet bridges that allowed businesses and homes to connect to the Internet and each other via high-speed digital phone lines called ISDN.
I had bought one for my house and liked the product, and I’d talked to other people who’d used it. They had decent results, nothing spectacular, but good enough. I had no idea Gandalf was even a public company until a friend of Raleigh’s asked me about it. What did I think about Gandalf Technologies? It was trading at the time at about a buck a share. It was a decent company, I said. It had competition, but the market was new and they had as much chance as anyone to succeed. Sure, I’ll buy some, and I would be happy to answer any questions about the technology. The market size, the competition, the growth rates. Whatever I knew, I would tell.
I bought the stock, I answered the questions, and I watched Gandalf climb from a dollar to about $20 a share over the next months.
At a dollar, I could make an argument that Gandalf could be attractive. Its market was growing, and compared to the competition, it was reasonably valued on a price-sales or price-earnings basis. But at $20, the company’s market value was close to $1 billion – which in those days was real money. The situation was crazy. People were buying the stock because other people were buying the stock.
To add to the volume, a mid-sized investment bank that specialized in technology companies came out with a buy rating on Gandalf. They reiterated all the marketing mishmash that was fun to talk about when the stock was a dollar. The ISDN market was exploding. The product was good. Gandalf was adding distributors. If they only maintained X percentage of the market, they would grow to some big number. Their competitors were trading at huge market caps, so this company looks cheap. Et cetera, et cetera……”
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“The U.S. December budget deficit was just $260 million. This is according to the latest Monthly Treasury Statement from the Financial Management Service.
Economists were forecasting a deficit of closer to $1 billion.
The December deficit was also the lowest December number since 2007, reports Bloomberg.
It’s worth noting that monthly numbers are noisy, and that seasonal factors tend to be considerable in December.
Regardless, this is an encouraging sign.
Receipts were $269.5 billion while the spending was $269.7 billion. This is important to remember, because budget deficits and surpluses aren’t just about spending levels. Indeed, growth plays just as important a role.
As GDP grows, the deficit shrinks. To better understand this, read this and this.
Here’s a look at some historical numbers….”
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