Thursday, March 24, 2011

Radiation babies and bottled water kicked in Tokyo



There is no more bottled water for sale in Tokyo and the tap water has been contaminated by the earthnami triggered nuclearxtravaganza according to Reuters . The keg is kicked Japanese party people but don't worry, only babies are going to suffer from drinking irradiated tap water.

Is everything going to be OK? No. Is the radiation going to stay in Japan? No. Do any of the knuckle dragging, self gratifying zombified Fox news watching American Husks know enough to be concerned? Nahhh.

Tuesday, March 8, 2011

A fools guide to bankers lies and terminology


Interpreting financial lingo typically produces a kind of gorilla like head scratching while I stare blankly at the screen tying not to show any weakness in the face of such puzzling terminology. Sometimes I get lucky.

Toxic Assets.....wheee, and easy one! Toxic=bad, and assets are some kind of resource. It means bad resources, or negative resources.

Leverage.... errrr, head scratch, blank stare.

Thankfully, David Malone, author of Debt Generation, in his blog Golem XIV has offered a road map to much of this financial jargon. A blog of particular use was Liars Lexicon in which David explains many of these terms in a very understandable way. He also comments on banking and government policy.

Friday, February 25, 2011

The Hacktivists Strike Back





Ok, this story is a bit dated but still certainly bears telling.

Earlier this month US security firm HB Gary released the names of top ranking members of the cyber activist group Anonymous, which if you remember went to the aid of whistle blower Wikileaks when online corporations like Amazon and Paypal were threatening to drop their service and thus disrupt Wiki's flow of cash donations and shutting the whole thing down. Anonymous then launched a cyber attack and froze both big corporations until they conceded and the Wikileaks we know and love is still around today.

So, HB Gary releases some names, some possibly false, and allegedly some members of Anonymous are arrested. Here is where things get fun. Anonymous launches a counter attack and hacks the entirety of HB Gary, discovering, and subsequently releasing incriminating inter-company e-mails about HB Gary, AND some snarky tactics the Bank of America had cooked up for discrediting Wikileaks.

Why is there a Bank of America think tank devoted to pulling down Wiki? Not a hard one. To protect its profits from any damaging truths that might find its way out into the cyber universe. Why then is the FBI involved as well, proclaiming jail sentences for offending members of Anonymous?

More in depth at Dagblog, and naked security

Anonymous warns HB Gary on youtube. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ryg29xssnQE

Monday, February 21, 2011

60 students per class? Rural Thailand or Detroit?

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/02/21/detroit-schools-closing_n_826007.html

After teaching a class of 55 grade six students in a Thai "normal program," class, I decided that I never wanted to have one of my own children enrolled in a Thai school. A class that large becomes difficult to manage.

I could have spent time disciplining all the errant students that were not interested, but I would then of had little time to teach, and would have become very unpopular to boot. Ultimately I taught only to those members of the class that were interested in learning English. The others sat, for the most part quietly, and turned off.

It was one of the reasons I left Thailand, or rather, one of the reasons I returned to the west. Adequate education, smallish class sizes, ect. And here we have the same conditions back home in the States. Nice one, Detroit.