Because They Can: Microsoft, citing its own lawyers as the authority, says it has the right to break into your accounts and read your emails and instant messages. Because the vine print to every MS product says they can. Showing a bit of dry humor, Google - which acknowledges that it reads your mail before it delivers it to you - is going to begin encrypting your emails so the NSA can't do the same thing.
Measure for Measure: Former President Carter no longer uses e-mail because he n longer trusts the government. For the same reason, you might reconsider that cell phone in your pocket. Sure it's handy, the best bait is always sweet.
TB, MDR-TB and XDR-TB: TB is one of the deadliest diseases in the world even though it is curable. Every year 8 million contract TB and 1.3 million of them die from it. Multiple Drug Resistant TB is just that - strains of TB that are resistant to most treatments for it. There are about half a million cases of MDDR-TB every year and the treatment is long, complex and expensive and only half of those treated survive the 2 years of daily injections and 10,000 pills. XDR-TB is eXtremely Drug Resistant is worse, and gaining popularity.
Planning Ahead: Two-thirds of American workers report they have set aside some money for their retirement - down form 75% in 2009. Over one in three of those who have "retirement savings" have less than $1,000. Another 30% of those who have set aside money to live on have less than $25,000. So let's cut Social Security.
Unclear On The Concept: Creationists are demanding their mythology be featured along with actual science on the Neil DeGrasse Tyson 'Cosmos' series. To provide 'balance', or maybe to prove they're unbalanced.
Price Fixing: About those good-paying high-tech jobs in tghe computer industry... They'd be a lot higher if Apple, Google, Intel, Pixar, Luxasfilm, Dell, IBM, eBay, Microsoft, Comcast, Clear Channel, Dreamworks and others had not illegally conspired (since 2006) to hold down the salaries of nearly a million high-tech workers. But being computer firms, they naturally committed their conspiracy to documents. Their bad.
The Wind Keeps Blowing: A district judge has ruled Michigan’s ban on same-sex unions is unconstitutional. Naturally the ruling has been stayed so the state can appeal.
Bricks Without Straw: Ukraine, as it signed an agreement promising closer political and economic ties with the EU, made clear that it expects the EU to provide it with energy if those nasty Russians cut off their natural gas supplies. Quite where Europe, which gets 30% of its natural gas from Russia, will get the energy or how it will reverse the pipeline flows are unanswered questions. Sort of like, if we had some bacon we could have some bacon and eggs if we had some eggs.
I've Got Mine: The global warming deniers have won. Statistically, it's all over. Scientists will continue to warn us about global warming, but to no avail. We are not going discomfort ourselves to save ourselves, no matter how horrible their projections or how sure they are of them.
The Quote: “JPMorgan knew." Bernie Madoff.
The Parting Shot:
2 comments:
Global Warming is small potatoes.
Check out Nassim Taleb on Eocsuicide by GMOs:
"Taleb’s primary concern isn’t that ingesting GMOs is necessarily bad for people; rather, he’s focused on what effects the genetic manipulation of nature will have on the worldwide ecosystem.
While Taleb concurs the risk of any one GMO seed ruining the planet is incredibly small, he argues that people are underestimating the domino effect of risk that’s involved.
For example, if one genetically modified seed produced holds a 0.1 percent chance of causing a catastrophic breakdown of the ecosystem, then the probability of such an event will only increase with each new seed that’s developed.
Taleb writes that given enough time the “total ecocide barrier” is bound to be hit despite incredibly small odds."
http://ecowatch.com/2014/03/06/nyu-gmos-destroy-planet/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=nyu-gmos-destroy-planet
Pretty alarming coming from the author of BLACK SWAN who predicted the 2007 Crash.
I don't know about small potatoes, but there are multiple 'very bad' trends in progress that will make survival of humans on earth a very chancy thing. Climate, Water, Disease, Food, Population, all are going to make life less profuse, probably much sooner than the experts project. And nobody really has any idea if speeding cosmic debris is much of a threat or not. Oh yeah, and the recent electric grid compatibility issues with solar mass ejections.
But as long as we can keep all that at bay, I'm still worried about spiritual fundamentalists attaining the levers of power and the launch codes for the end times.
Post a Comment