While many people (including me!) would not consider shopping on the infamous Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving, the day often provides a clue for deals to be had throughout the Christmas shopping season.
Take a look at some deals highlighted by CNN Money re
Black Friday.
I am fiddling with widgets to help our readers get a quick update on markets. I’m kind of new at this, so bear with me!
A new smartphone was unveiled recently at an event in London. Blame Else (formerly Emblaze Mobile), an Israeli company, showcased its First Else smartphone with its innovative interface and appealing design. The phone is expected to launch next year but little is known about the intended carriers, price or other specifications. Still, it’s an impressive concept and worth having a look at the YouTube video (link below).
More info can be found at:
engadget Website
How Does Knowledge Accumulate When The Scientists All Lie?
Tony Kane wrote of the recent email hack aimed at Britain’s Climate Research Unit, University of East Anglia. In today’s Huntsville Examiner, his article “ClimateGate emails provide unwanted scrutiny of climate scientists” Mr. Kane describes the professional practices rampant among the Western World’s scientific elite.
On the surface, the emails seem to indicate scientists modified data to fit the anthropogenic global warming theory, tried to silence dissenting opinions and reflect a concerted effort to restrict access to climate data possibly by deleting it.
So other than that, we can all just relax and just trust the gubbermint. This bill of particulars is damning if true. Kane cites specific emails describing or demanding unethical practices. Climate Research Unit Director, Dr. Phil Jones, appears particularly mendacious and culpable. Here, Dr. Jones discusses ways to thwart FOIA requests concerning the center’s academic research data.
“I think I’ll delete the file rather than send to anyone.” Jones apparently considered ways to stymie or limit FOIA requests by “removing station data” and “omit some other countries” because “it would annoy them [those requesting the data].”
This procedure is used when Dr. Jones is forced to acknowledge that the data exists at all. Otherwise; he executes The Fawn Hall option, and makes inconvenient data vanish from existence. Here he describes what correspondence he’d like to see flushed down the Orwellian Memory Hole.
“Can you delete any emails you may have had with Keith re AR4? Keith will do likewise. He’s not in at the moment – minor family crisis. Can you also email Gene and get him to do the same? I don’t have his new email address. We will be getting Caspar to do likewise.”
Inconvenient data, stuff that’s not truthy enough, that just gets left out of Climate Research Unit presentations. Scientist Mick Kelly describes how data sufficiency is currently defined in the Geophysics research community.
One scientist, Mick Kelly, discussed giving a presentation and rather than include the cooling he said, “I’ll maybe cut the last few points off the filtered curve before I give the talk again as that’s trending down as a result of the end effects and the recent cold-ish years.”
When journals printed articles that Dr. Michael Mann didn’t like, the climate cabal then colluded to have them discredited as valid sources of scientific knowledge. Dr. Mann describes his concern about some published material in the American Geophysics Union Research Letters.
Mann seemed particularly concerned about a ‘contrarian’ with the name Saiers, presumably James Saiers of the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies. “Apparently, the contrarians now have an “in” with GRL. This guy Saiers has a prior connection w/ the University of Virginia Dept. of Environmental Sciences [where Saiers completed his PhD] that causes me some unease,” Mann wrote.
Always open-minded and relentless to hear every point of view; Dr. Tom Wigley knew how to adjust Dr Saiers’ attitude. Nothing quite educates the rest of like a good example. Wigley described how he intended to make Dr. Saiers into one below.
“If you think that Saiers is in the greenhouse skeptics camp, then, if we can find documentary evidence of this, we could go through official AGU channels to get him ousted.”
The data got edited, the data got deliberately misreported, and when “necessary,” it even got destroyed. Journals that published dissenters got threatened with interdict. The dissenters, themselves, got black-balled from the scientific community. This would be tantamount to professional ruin in their chosen avocations.
In a similar scientific environment, soon after the Medieval Warm Period, Galileo and Copernicus managed top-notch work. Yet few others even tried to publish their work. Human knowledge lagged behind societal needs and life was quite often what Hobbes would describe as “nasty, brutish and short.” This typically happens to cultures where scientific inquiry is forcibly muted or curtailed.
Behavior synonymous to that of the Climate Research Unit could usher in a new dark age. One where the words still get published, but only after censorious auditors denude them of verity and applicable wisdom. This new age would publish plenty of science, but would strive to educate and improve the lives of nobody.
The Journals would go unread. The authors would truly care less. The awards would go unearned, but always, like the now-laughable Nobel peace Prize, be copiously awarded. Many would work as “scientists.” None would dare to disprove the null hypothesis. We would “understand” everything: or else, but it would avail us nothing of value or use.
Scientific knowledge, like genuine religious faith, is one of the few marked differences between civilized man and the apes that first climbed down from the trees and walked upright. It sets us apart, helps define our existence and drives us ever forward towards better life and a more decent society.
At least it does these things until it is thwarted. When the progression of learning is thwarted by fear, greed or mendaciousness, the societal base of knowledge can only crumble and rot. As the genius is lost and the innovation goes away, less and less differentiates our society from the hidebound oligarchy imagined in the Planet of The Apes movies.
In this we see the cynical corruption and meretricious evil that these jackals have perpetrated at The Climate Research Unit at East Anglia University. A key motor that drives our progress and growth as human beings has been stilled to satisfy the transitory greed of a political elite. Rome eventually fell because of similar self-delusion. If our society is to survive, scientific inquiry must be retaken from the iniquitous emailers, revealed as malefactors by the Great Email hack of 2009.
originally posted at Stix Blog
Do I think we are heading into the Next Great Depression???? Well, if we keep on spending like we are now, I think we may very well may see the next Great Depression. The unemployment statistics are trending the same direction as Great Depression:
Also remember the Stock Market did not crash overnight. It went up and down for at least a year before the collapse. And Obama is making the same is takes that made the Great Depression worse than it needed to be
A deliciously juicy scandal is breaking out in the cult-like world of the Climate Change movement. Email evidence is pointing to a coordinated evidence to suppress facts that the global warming crowd does not like.
What a shock! And a timely reminder of the timeless wisdom of Adam Smith. His landmark writings were a rebellion against the prevailing mercantilist spirit of his age, where state-sanctioned monopolies and oligopolies jacked up prices for consumers and restricted economic growth while concentrating wealth in the hands of the politically connected.
The same phenomenon is startlingly evident when one contemplates the climate change movement. Politically connected advocates of emission control wish to use the government to favor companies and technologies where they have a a vested interest, and react violently against evidence that is contrary to climate change ideology.
“Plus ca change, plus c’est la meme chose” …The more things change, the more they stay the same. Although it is arguable that the mercantilists of the Old Regime never came up with a spokesman as hypocritical and obnoxious as Al Gore.
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“The negative stereotype of older adults — that they’re technophobic, can’t learn anything new, they’re all sick — is slowly but surely changing,” says Sara J. Czaja, PhD, codirector of the departments of Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences and Engineering at University of Miami Miller School of Medicine’s Center on Aging. “We really have to think of older adults as active users of technology.”
It’s true. Many older Americans are intimidated by today’s technology. They may feel left out when family members are talking about Facebook and Twitter. They might be a bit shy about computers but, when given a chance, they are eager to learn. The Go Computer is a simple and inexpensive solution to granny’s problem. The Go Computer is designed for easy use by even the most technologically-challenged person. It even comes with a screen and keyboard designed specifically for seniors.
There is very little set-up involved. Just plug the computer into the wall outlet, turn it on and press the “Go” button. In seconds, you’ll be able to access e-mail, photos, the Web and much more. Note: A broadband Internet connection is required. It won’t work with dial-up.
$879, plus $19.96 per month for service. thegocomputer.com
TweetLevel, a unique service created by Edelman, measures an individual’s importance on Twitter. According to the site, importance is ranked by:
Influence – what you say is interesting and many people listen to it. This is the primary ranking metric.
Popularity – how many people follow you
Engagement – you actively participate within your community
Trust – people believe what you say
After imputing your Twitter name, TweetLevel will calculate a numerical value from 1-100 for each of the 5 categories. After scoring your Twitter activity, TweetLevel provides tips on how to improve your rankings. Those tweeting in order to build up a network or business may find this a useful tool.
Top Tweeters according to TweetLevel:
In Influence – mashable (Pete Cashmore)
In Popularity – aplusk (Ashton Kutcher)
In Engagement – tarot3
In Trust – PerezHilton
Edelman’s Head of Strategic Analysis, Jonny Bentwood, describes the unique methodology this way, ”Unlike most rankings that look merely at the number of followers someone has, TweetLevel gives you a really clear picture of who is important within this increasingly influential forum.”
TweetLevel is a free tool that may just help you spruce up your social media experience.
Well, another day and another exploit on Internet Explorer. IF you have an older version of Internet Explorer, you need to update it now. And only go to reputable websites.
A new exploit targeting Internet Explorer was published to the BugTraq mailing list yesterday. Symantec has conducted further tests and confirmed that it affects Internet Explorer versions 6 and 7 as well. The exploit currently exhibits signs of poor reliability, but we expect that a fully-functional reliable exploit will be available in the near future. When this happens, attackers will have the ability to insert the exploit into Web sites, infecting potential visitors. For an attacker to launch a successful attack, they must lure victims to their malicious Web page or a Web site they have compromised. In both cases, the attack requires JavaScript to exploit Internet Explorer.
The exploit targets a vulnerability in the way Internet Explorer uses cascading style sheet (CSS) information. CSS is used in many Web pages to define the presentation of the sites’ content. Symantec currently detects the exploit with the Bloodhound.Exploit.129 antivirus signature and is working on new signatures now. Symantec IPS protection also currently detects this exploit with signatures HTTP Microsoft IE Generic Heap Spray BO and HTTP Malicious Javascript Heap Spray BO. A new IPS signature, HTTP IE Style Heap Spray BO, has also been created for this specific exploit. To minimize the chances of being affected by this issue, Internet Explorer users should ensure their antivirus definitions are up to date, disable JavaScript and only visit Web sites they trust until fixes are available from Microsoft. (Symantec)
Or change your web browser to FireFox, Opera, Chrome or many others that are safer than IE Explorer.
via Slashdot
Rupert Murdoch is trying to have a “Pay to Play” scheme for his news stories. As much as I like Fox News and other entities he owns, this is going to backfire on him. Google is still the top search engine on the internet and if you pull news stories from Google, your readership will drop. If Murdoch thinks this will change the direction of newspaper’s decline, he is sorely misinterpreting the public and how they search for news. This will only help places such as 73 Wire and other upstart news sites. This will be about as bad as AP charging to copy any of its content online.
Microsoft and News Corp eye web pact
Microsoft has had discussions with News Corp over a plan that would involve the media company’s being paid to “de-index” its news websites from Google, setting the scene for a search engine battle that could offer a ray of light to the newspaper industry…..
With many more places to get news information, trying a stunt like this will not help the failing newspaper industry. People want to be able to find their news fast and easily, and Google is number one in the search engines. Bing,which is Microsoft’s alternative, in not getting the amount of searches that deem this to be financially or a business worthy effort.
via Mashable
73 Wire The Minority Report The Campain Trail The Union Label The Healthcare Horserace