Experts say it could happen again, but since nobody knows why it happened it is similar to predicting a volcanic eruption of sorts.
Comments »An Ode to Our Boards
Oh mother market, this is an ode to thee,
I can’t express in words what you mean to me,
Your movements are erratic like a true animal,
you can be so vicious, cold, and affable.
Despite your creation of turmoil and volatility,
You fill my pockets with coin so graciously,
It is certainly never smooth sailing with thee,
But you manage to get me home to sleep peacefully.
You have taught me the true meaning of virility,
To stand alone and persevere with my assumptions of probability.
For one can never be sure what your next move is,
One can track you, and certainly build a biz.
No matter how much love I have for thee,
There are days like today where I must ignore you and sip on green tea.
Too much of anything is certainly an addiction,
Oh how I must stay away with my conviction.
To be completely entranced in your light,
Would make any man crazy with a mind full of blight.
In order to keep up with your endless change,
One must reflect in your absence to sort and rearrange,
Only then can we come to the table,
To make sense of what your are able.
So today I raise a glass and give cheer,
that 2011 has been an exceptionally good year.
With the help of 12631 and The PPT,
it should be plain for all to see,
That you have allowed me to kick old men in the groin,
sending them into murder holes as they give me their coin.
[youtube://http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CHio4lLOhKc 450 300] [youtube://http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xb8T4xIa3o4 450 300] [youtube://http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=erRA6Ib5SZs 450 300]
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All the News That’s Fit to SPAM YOUR INBOX
Banks Are Too Big to Ease Up on Grandma
Oh, the GOP Drama! Newt Rips Ron Paul; Romney Rips Newt
Weirdos Pay Up en masse to Recreate Deadly “Titantic” Voyage
(via)
For some, it might sound too much like tempting fate – and for others, it smacks of “disaster voyeurism”. But for more than 2,000 Titanic enthusiasts, the chance to mark the centenary of the maritime disaster by sailing on a large cruise ship to commemorate the sinking on the very spot of the tragedy is proving difficult to resist.
A British company has almost sold out two cruises for people to mark the anniversary on 15 April by following the route of the Titanic to where it struck an iceberg. The booming demand for Titanic-related travel has led to another travel company offering the chance to explore the wreckage of the ill-fated vessel in a Russian-built submarine next summer at a cost of $59,000 (£37,000) per person. Places for that voyage are already “very limited”.
The tourism boon is part of a general revival of the fascination with the Belfast-built steamship which will see special festivals take place on both sides of the Atlantic as well as the screening of a 3D version of James Cameron’s Oscar-winning film and a big-budget ITV drama by the Downton Abbey writer Julian Fellowes.
Such is the interest in places on the MS Balmoral, the vessel retracing the journey of the maiden voyage of the Titanic, that a waiting list for cancellations has closed.
Some of those who have booked berths costing up to £5,995 are having costumes made to recreate the appearance of the original passengers, while there have also been requests from musicians to audition for places on the string quartet that played as the flagship of the White Star Line fleet began to list.
Miles Morgan, managing director of Titanic Memorial Cruises, the Bristol-based company organising the events, said places on the cruise from Southampton had sold out weeks after going on sale, with the second cruise likely to sell out by next month and interest in the commemorative journey remaining intense. He said: “We have been approached by news crews all over the world who want to film our recreation of the fateful voyage. We could probably have filled the entire vessel just with journalists wanting to be there. The interest has come from all over the globe – we’ve had people from 24 different countries booking.
“I think that is testimony to the fact that the name of the Titanic has become one of those words that is recognised in any language around the globe. There are so many stories associated with the ship, from its own tragic history to the stories of those that lost their lives, that people remain deeply fascinated by it.”
The culmination of restaging the Titanic’s voyage – which will see the Balmoral, a chartered vessel belonging to the cruise line Fred Olsen, sail to the point off Newfoundland, Canada, where the ship collided with an iceberg – will be a memorial service at 2.20am on 15 April – the moment when what was then the world’s largest passenger ship sank.
A second vessel chartered by the cruise company to carry 694 people will also meet at the site of the sinking after sailing from New York en route to Southampton. And plans are being made for the wireless radio station at Cape Race in Newfoundland, which received the Titanic’s SOS in morse code, to repeat the message.
Among those on board the Balmoral will be relatives of victims and survivors of the Titanic, including Philip Littlejohn, the grandson of Alexander Littlejohn, who was a steward in the first-class section of the vessel and survived by rowing away one of the 16 lifeboats on board. The small number of lifeboats meant that barely a third of the ship’s complement of passengers and crew could ever have been saved.
The attention to detail for the recreated Titanic voyage means that passengers will dine on the same menus offered to the 1,514 people who died and the 710 who survived when the ship struck an iceberg at 11.40pm. Among the items from the 11-course first-class dinner to be offered will be oysters, roast squab and sautéed chicken Lyonnaise.
Mr Morgan, who pointed out that the engineering and safety rules of modern ships mean that icebergs now pose no danger to the cruise, said it was wrong to criticise the commemoration as “voyeuristic”. He said: “I take my lead from those people who are coming on board who lost relatives in the disaster or whose family members survived. They have all said that they could not think of any better way to mark the memory of those who were lost than being at the site of the sinking to pay their respects.”
The voyages: Then & now
RMS Titanic
Day 1: Departs Southampton.
Day 3: Sails through calm waters.
Day 4: Passengers in first class enjoy 13 courses including oysters, roast duckling, foie gras.
Day 5: Seven iceberg warnings. Hits iceberg at 11.40pm.
Day 6: Sinks at 2.20am.
Memorial cruise
Day 1: Departs Southampton.
Days 3 and 4: Gym, spa, history talks.
Day 5: No collisions scheduled.
Day 6: Memorial service at 2.20am.
Day 7: Arrive at Halifax, Canada, and visit Fairview Lawn Cemetery, where victims are interred.
Day 8: Arrive in New York – the Titanic’s intended destination.
Israeli Firm Allot Communications Accused of Selling Spyware to Iran
{VIDEO} THEY WERE WEARING BURLAP BAGS: Christmas Day 1776 – “Victory or Death” – Newt Gingrich Ad
Brick and Mortar Retailers Try to Block Wireless Apps
Apparently the idea of banging your customer over the head is going to be a thing of the past as shoppers use apps to find the best prices. Brick and mortar retailers are trying to prevent these apps from making their store mere showrooms.
Comments »Countrywide to Pay $335M Over Discrimination Case
Bank of America’s (BAC: 5.23, +0.06, +1.16%) Countrywide Financial unit agreed on Wednesday to pay $335 million to settle allegations it discriminated against minority homebuyers by steering them toward dangerous subprime mortgages.
According to the Department of Justice, it marks the largest residential fair lending settlement in history. Covering actions between 2004 and 2008, the settlement offers financial compensation to more than 200,000 qualified borrowers who were charged higher fees or given subprime loans because of their race, not because of their creditworthiness, the government said.
“The department’s action against Countrywide makes clear that we will not hesitate to hold financial institutions accountable, including one of the nation’s largest, for lending discrimination,” Attorney General Eric Holder said in a statement. “These institutions should make judgments based on applicants’ creditworthiness, not on the color of their skin.”
After tumbling below the $5 threshold earlier this week for the first time since March 2009, BofA’s shares were recently up 0.68% at $5.21.
BofA said it is committed to fair and equal treatment of all customers and it will continue resolving remaining Countrywide issues, Dow Jones Newswires reported.
The DOJ said Countrywide’s business practices permitted its loan officers and mortgage brokers to differ a loan’s interest rates and other fees, opening the door to unfair pricing discretion based on race. The government accuses Countrywide of being aware of this discrimination, but failing to impose meaningful limits or guidelines to stop it.
Subprime loans are considered more dangerous because they often include prepayment penalties and exploding adjustable interest rates. These mortgages are believed to have helped cause the mortgage crisis and ensuing recession.
“Countrywide’s actions contributed to the housing crisis, hurt entire communities, and denied families access to the American dream,” said Thomas Perez, assistant Attorney General for the DOJ’s civil rights division. “We are using every tool in our law enforcement arsenal, including some that were dormant for years, to go after institutions of all sizes that discriminated against families solely because of their race or national origin.”
The DOJ said this is the first time it has alleged and obtained relief for borrowers who were steered into loans based on the color of their skin.
As part of the settlement, Countrywide, which doesn’t currently originate new loans, is being required to implement policies and practices to prevent discrimination if it returns to the lending business during the next four years.
The Countrywide settlement is subject to court approval, something that is not a given considering a recent rejection of a Securities and Exchange Commission settlement with Citigroup (C: 26.10, +0.15, +0.58%).
Underscoring how terrible of an acquisition Countrywide was, BofA has shelled out billions in legal settlements, including $8.5 billion to investors who lost money on mortgage-backed securities, $8.4 billion for loan modifications and at least $13 billion in mortgage-security repurchases.
Read more: http://trade.cc/tlyixzz1hENnLv2w
Comments »Activist Shareholder Rags on AOL for Losing $500 Million on Their Content Sites
Starboard, 4.5% activist shareholder, says stop throwing good money after bad and turn this puppy around.
Comments »Allen Stanford Claimed to be Suicidal and Not Fit for Trial
Stanford was roughed up in the tank and is now “suicidal” claiming he can not stand trial.
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FLASH: People are Even Bigger Passive-Aggressive Scumbags When Texting
Story here
Comments »North Koreans weeping hysterically over the death of Kim Jong-il
I feel like the juxtaposed-drama-mask-avatar is apropos here: The sad face echoes the peoples’ grief, while the laughing one openly mocks it.
Comments »Fun With Celente
[youtube://http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eoDsddCHOAY 450 300]
Comments »Commercial Water Transport Hit With Obesity
Zynga Now Below IPO Price
SHOCK: Nearly 1 in 5 Women Report Being Raped or Attempt
An exhaustive government survey of rape and domestic violence released on Wednesday affirmed that sexual violence against women remains endemic in the United States and in some instances may be far more common than previously thought.
Nearly one in five women surveyed said they had been raped or had experienced an attempted rape at some point, and one in four reported being beaten by an intimate partner. One in six women have been stalked, according to the report.
“That almost one in five women have been raped in their lifetime is very striking and, I think, will be surprising to a lot of people,” said Linda C. Degutis, director of the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which conducted the survey. “I don’t think we’ve really known that it was this prevalent in the population.”
The study, called the National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey, was begun in 2010 by the C.D.C. with the support of the National Institute of Justice and the Department of Defense. The study, a continuing telephone survey of a nationally representative sample of 16,507 adults, defines intimate partner and sexual violence broadly.
The surveyors elicited information on types of aggression not previously studied in national surveys, including sexual violence other than rape, psychological aggression, coercion and control of reproductive and sexual health.
They also gathered information about the physical and mental health of violence survivors.
Sexual violence affects women disproportionately, the researchers found. One-third of women said they had been victims of a rape, beating or stalking, or a combination of assaults.
The researchers defined rape as completed forced penetration, forced penetration facilitated by drugs or alcohol, or attempted forced penetration. By that definition, 1 percent of women surveyed reported being raped in the previous year, a figure that suggests 1.3 million American women annually may be victims of rape or attempted rape.
That figure is significantly higher than previous estimates. The Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network last year estimated that 272,350 Americans were victims of sexual violence. And only 84,767 assaults defined as forcible rapes were reported in 2010, according to national statistics from the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
But men also reported being victimized in surprising numbers.
One in seven men have experienced severe violence at the hands of an intimate partner, the survey found, and one in 71 men — between 1 and 2 percent — have been raped, many when they were younger than 11.
A vast majority of women who said they had been victims of sexual violence, rape or stalking reported symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder, as did about one-third of the men.
Women who had experienced such violence were also more likely than women who had not to report having asthma, diabetes or irritable bowel syndrome. Both men and women who had been assaulted were more likely than those who had not to report frequent headaches, chronic pain, difficulty sleeping, limitations on activity, and poor physical and mental health.
“We’ve seen this association with chronic health conditions in smaller studies before,” said Lisa James, director of health for Futures Without Violence, a national nonprofit group based in San Francisco that advocates for programs to end violence against women and girls. “People who grow up with violence adopt coping strategies that can lead to poor health outcomes. We know that women in abusive relationships are at increased risk for smoking, for example.”
The survey found that youth itself was an important risk factor for sexual violence and assault. Some 28 percent of male victims of rape reported that they were first assaulted when they were no older than 10.
Only 12 percent of female rape victims were assaulted when they were 10 or younger, but almost half of female victims said they were raped before they turned 18. About 80 percent of rape victims reported that they were raped before age 25.
Rape at a young age was associated with another, later rape; about 35 percent of women who had been raped as minors were also raped as adults, the survey found.
More than half of female rape victims had been raped by an intimate partner, according to the study, and 40 percent had been raped by an acquaintance; more than half of men who had been raped said the assailant was an acquaintance.
The public release of the report was postponed twice, most recently on Nov. 28. The findings are based on completed interviews lasting about 25 minutes each; they were conducted in 2010 with 9,086 women and 7,421 men.
Comments »Please Drop the Dime For Shits and Giggles: Syria Threatens to Release Sex Tapes of Gulf Leaders
NTSP WANTS FULL BAN ON CELL PHONE USE WHILE DRIVING
Federal accident investigators Tuesday called for a nationwide ban on the use of cell phones and text messaging devices while driving.
The recommendation is the most far-reaching yet by the National Transportation Safety Board, which in the past 10 years has increasingly sought to limit the use of portable electronic devices. It has recommended such bans for novice drivers, school bus drivers and commercial truckers.
The new recommendation, if adopted by states, would outlaw non-emergency phone calls and texting by operators of every vehicle on the road.
It would not apply to hand-free devices or to passengers.
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