I watched The Avengers last night.
Seeing as how it was written and directed by Joss Weadon, there are a lot of good one-liners, but I think that it (barely) remains on the right side of the action-movie/action-movie parody line.
As to my favorite line, it’s Downey’s, “Better Clench Up, Legolas.”
The RIAA and the large ISPs have an agreement to implement a “six strikes” agreement in to limit “piracy”.
At the core of this agreement is an “independent and impartial” expert to evaluate evidence against people, but now it appears that this “expert” is an RIAA lobbyist:
A month before the controversial “six strikes” anti-piracy plan goes live in the U.S., the responsible Center of Copyright Information (CCI) is dealing with a small crisis. As it turns out the RIAA failed to mention to its partners that the “impartial and independent” technology expert they retained previously lobbied for the music industry group. In a response to the controversy, CCI is now considering whether it should hire another expert to evaluate the anti-piracy monitoring technology.
Starting next month the MPAA, RIAA and five major Internet providers in the United States will start punishing persistent BitTorrent pirates,
The scheme is being coordinated by the Center for Copyright Information (CCI) who agreed to hire an impartial and independent expert to review the evidence that will be used to accuse suspected subscribers.
However, earlier this week the news broke that the touted independent technology expert, Stroz Friedberg, is not so neutral. In fact, the company is a former RIAA lobbying firm.
The lobbying job earned the company more than half a million dollars ($637,000), which makes it hard to view the company as “independent and impartial” as the agreement between the copyright holders and ISPs requires.
This is why you don’t cut deals with the RIAA and the MPAA.
They are not, and have never been, good faith players in this debate.
Case in point, Christine Lagarde sent a list of Swiss bank accounts held by Greek politicians totaling billions of Euros.
Kostas Vaxevanis, editor and publisher of Hot Doc magazine, managed to get a copy of the list, and published it. The Greek authorities promptly arrested him:
The Greek police arrested and then quickly released the owner and editor of a respected investigative magazine on Sunday morning hours after he published a list of more than 2,000 Greeks who were said to have accounts at a bank in Switzerland, throwing new controversy into a scandal over whether the government is actively pursuing suspected tax cheats.
The dramatic moves, which tens of thousands of Greeks were following on the Internet, came days before Greece’s European partners were to meet to decide whether to grant tens of billions of euros in new aid to the financially struggling nation. Greece’s lenders have long said that the government must crack down on tax evasion to be eligible for more aid.
The police said they had been ordered to take the editor, Kostas Vaxevanis, who runs Hot Doc magazine and who is one of the nation’s most famous investigative journalists, into custody on misdemeanor charges. The Greek news media reported that the charges concerned the violation of the privacy of those on the list.
Mr. Vaxevanis posted a message to his Twitter account early Sunday saying that 15 officers had surrounded the home of a friend with whom he had been staying “like Greek storm troopers in German uniforms.”
Mr. Vaxevanis soon followed up with another Twitter message: “They’re entering my house with the prosecutor right now. They are arresting me. Spread the word.”
Hours later, he was released from Athens police headquarters to loud cheers from a crowd outside. He is to face a magistrate at noon on Monday, when his trial date is to be set.
………
George Papaconstantinou, the ex-finance minister who received the list from Ms. Lagarde, told a parliamentary panel last week that he had been advised that he could not use it because a former HSBC employee obtained the names illegally. Mr. Papaconstantinou said that after receiving the names, he had passed them on a memory stick to the chief of Greece’s financial crimes unit, Ioannis Diotis, who later gave it to Mr. Papaconstantinou’s successor, Evangelos Venizelos, the current leader of the Socialists. Mr. Diotis said that Mr. Venizelos had not instructed him to investigate it.
The Greek elites in general, and their ruling classes in particular, are deeply corrupt and dysfunctional.
The EU and the IMF would have been far better served by starting with the exposure of the corrupt elites and the confiscation of their ill gotten gains.
Passing along a list, with the knowledge that it would almost certainly be ignored, is an inadequate response. It ill serves the Greek people, the EU, and world economy.
Matt Stoller has a very well thought argument given the progressive case against Obama:
So why oppose Obama? Simply, it is the shape of the society Obama is crafting that I oppose, and I intend to hold him responsible, such as I can, for his actions in creating it. Many Democrats are disappointed in Obama. Some feel he’s a good president with a bad Congress. Some feel he’s a good man, trying to do the right thing, but not bold enough. Others think it’s just the system, that anyone would do what he did. I will get to each of these sentiments, and pragmatic questions around the election, but I think it’s important to be grounded in policy outcomes. Not, what did Obama try to do, in his heart of hearts? But what kind of America has he actually delivered?
Obama had a number of things that he could do without the Consent of congress, holding torturers accountable, prosecuting corrupt bankers, etc. In every case, his decisions have served to further empower, and to further immunize, powerful wrongdoers in our society.
I recommend that you read the whole article.
A counter argument by Joss Weadon(see vid) involves Zombies
Finland, which is not in crisis, does not appear to have any immediate plans to leave the Euro, but they are seriously considering establishing a local parallel currency so that they will have the option of pulling the plug on the Euro if it becomes necessary:
In the past couple of years, as the eurozone woes have unfolded, international investors have been transfixed by one small country on the edge of the region: Greece.
They would do well to keep watching another tiddler: Finland. For while Finland has not created much drama, precisely because it is one of the strongest eurozone members, some fascinating discussions are under way. Most notably, as the eurozone crisis rumbles on, some Finnish business and government officials are quietly mulling the logistics of leaving the currency union.
Nobody in Finland expects this to happen soon, if ever; indeed, most policy makers are strongly opposed to the idea. Particularly since many also hope the crisis is dying down, but as Heikki Neimelaeinen, chief executive of the Municipal Guarantee Board says: “We have started openly discussing the mechanism of euro exiting, without indicating that we will initiate such a process.” And this, in turn, is sparking some curious economic debates.
Take a look, for example, at a recent research paper from Nordea, the Nordic bank. This paper looks at the question of what might happen if Finland ever decided to run a so-called “parallel currency” system. The idea behind this, as Nordea explains, is that at times of stress it can sometimes seem beneficial for countries to maintain more than one currency unit. Most notably, if a country is trying to leave one currency, keeping that as legal tender alongside a second currency for a period can ensure a country honours its old contracts – and thus avoids a technical default.
Finland is a net creditor in the EU, and it is highly unlikely that they would be forced out, so they have be planning to get out of Dodge if the sh%$ hits the fan.
This is significant, because it’s showing a lack of confidence from one of the net beneficiaries of the Euro zone.
The British just turned down a request of the US to use their bases for a strike on Iran:
Britain has rebuffed US pleas to use military bases in the UK to support the build-up of forces in the Gulf, citing secret legal advice which states that any pre-emptive strike on Iran could be in breach of international law.
The Guardian has been told that US diplomats have also lobbied for the use of British bases in Cyprus, and for permission to fly from US bases on Ascension Island in the Atlantic and Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean, both of which are British territories.
The US approaches are part of contingency planning over the nuclear standoff with Tehran, but British ministers have so far reacted coolly. They have pointed US officials to legal advice drafted by the attorney general’s office which has been circulated to Downing Street, the Foreign Office and the Ministry of Defence.
This makes clear that Iran, which has consistently denied it has plans to develop a nuclear weapon, does not currently represent “a clear and present threat”. Providing assistance to forces that could be involved in a pre-emptive strike would be a clear breach of international law, it states.
If Tony Blur Blair were still PM, the only question that would have been asked would have been if they wanted their parking validated.
Credit where credit is due. The Tories, probably because they were afraid of losing their Lib-Dem coalition partners, have made a remarkably sensible decision.
If there is anything that can add a few decades of the reign of the mullahs in Iran, it’s another war.
As contractors make greater use of composites and high-strength metals in aircraft structures, attention is focusing on ways of improving manufacturing productivity and reducing per-part cost. One technique to emerge for the machining of parts is cryogenic cooling, which can increase machining speed, reduce cutting force, extend cutting tool life, and lower the time and cost required to finish components.
Cryogenic cooling uses liquid nitrogen (LN2), an inert substance that is usually processed at -321F (-196C), in place of conventional liquid coolants, which are generally applied at ambient temperature. The idea is to apply LN2 to the interface of a cutting tool and workpiece, where it reduces heat generated by cutting, thus allowing a tool to run faster and—with less thermal degradation and other heat-related damage—last longer.
The heat can be extreme. The cutting temperature of carbon steel, for example, can easily reach 800F during machining.
Cryogenic cooling has been around for a while, but recent developments in system design make it more of an option for contractors working with advanced materials. One company in particular, MAG IAS of Erlanger, Ky., has engineered a line of 3-, 4- and 5-axis cryogenic machining centers and retrofit packages with patented technology that was developed in partnership with the U.S. Naval Air Systems Command, Lockheed Martin and Bell Helicopter Textron, and others. Among its applications, the technology has been approved for use in roughing titanium components for the Lockheed F-35 . MAG is working with the original equipment manufacturer on finished-machining certification of the process.
I would also note that another benefit of cryogenic machining is shorter chips, which also makes machining easier, so machining stringy alloys, like titanium, and some aluminum alloys and stainless steels (13-8 shown) can be a royal PITA.
And here they are, ordered, and numbered for the year so far.
Just 1 this week.
So, here is the graph pr0n with last years numbers for comparison (FDIC only):
Silvio Berlusconi has been convicted of tax fraud and sentenced to 4 years:
Former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi was sentenced to four years in jail on Friday for tax fraud in connection with the purchase of broadcasting rights by his Mediaset television company.
The 76-year-old billionaire media magnate, who was convicted three times during the 1990s in the first degree before being cleared by higher courts, has the right to appeal the ruling two more times before the sentence becomes definitive.
That process is likely to be lengthy and he will not be jailed unless he loses the final appeal. Even then, because the crime was committed when an amnesty to prevent prison overcrowding was in place, the maximum possible jail time would be one year.
The ruling comes two days after Berlusconi confirmed he would not run in next year’s elections as the leader of his People of Freedom (PDL) party, ending almost 19 years as the dominant politician of the centre-right.
I would suggest that as a part of this, authorities should break up his media empire.
His political power derived directly from his control of almost all the TV in Italy.
Once he packed the staff of Italian state run TV, there were no opposing voices voices
It’s a reference to the Movie After Hours, and this link points to the McGuffin of that film.
Pay no attention, I’m checking out a new Google ad type, affiliate ads.
So have a silly video/movie trailer:
There are a couple of swear words.
A 2% annual rate in the 3rd quarter.
Better than a kick in the teeth, but not reat.
Link
(on edit)
Right in the path.
My bad, it wasn’t Jimmy Olson, it was Republican Ohio Senate candidate Josh Mandel who agreed with Richard Mourdock that rape victims should be forced to carry their children to term:
While national Republicans have done their best to shore up Indiana Senate nominee Richard Mourdock after his statements on rape, conception and God’s will, many Republicans in tight Senate races have backed away from Mourdock’s comments, trying to keep the negative headlines that have followed Mourdock’s statements out of their races.
But the Republican nominee for Senate in Ohio, Josh Mandel, has taken a very different approach. He’s given Mourdock a big ol’ bear hug. Ahead of Thursday’s debate between Mandel and incumbent Democrat Sherrod Brown, Democrats say they plan to make Mourdock a big topic on stage.
“I would bet it will,” Brown spokesperson Sadie Weiner told TPM when asked whether Mandel’s handling of Mourdock will come up in the debate.
Mandel is unafraid to embrace Mourdock, despite the controversy surrounding him.
Seriously, he does look like my image of Jimmy Olson ……… or Ted Bundy.
Initial claims down to 369,000, a slight blip up in the 4 week moving average, and continuing claims fell.
I rate it between “meh” and marginally positive.
The fact that the Texas Attorney General is threatening to arrest international election monitors if they monitor elections would appear to indicate that he knows that his fellow Republicans are :
The Texas attorney general, Greg Abbott, has threatened to arrest international election monitors invited by liberal groups to observe the conduct of next month’s presidential vote in states accused of attempting to disenfranchise minorities.
Abbott has written to the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe warning that its monitors have no right to monitor the vote even though they have observed previous US elections.
“The OSCE’s representatives are not authorized by Texas law to enter a polling place. It may be a criminal offence for OSCE’s representatives to maintain a presence within 100 feet of a polling place’s entrance,” he said. “Failure to comply with these requirements could subject the OSCE’s representatives to criminal prosecution for violating state law.”
They are trying to cover up their voter suppression efforts, though I’m sure that they there is a bit of anti-UN whack job paranoia in the mix.
Yesterday, I said that the Log Cabin Republicans were idiots for believing that Mitt Rmoney would sign ENDA, which would outlaw workplace discrimination against gays.
Well if you are a gay Republican and think that Romney is going to protect your job from bigots, the news that he actively prevented sane sex parents from being listed on their children’s birth certificates:
It seemed like a minor adjustment. To comply with the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruling that legalized gay marriage in 2003, the state Registry of Vital Records and Statistics said it needed to revise its birth certificate forms for babies born to same-sex couples. The box for “father” would be relabeled “father or second parent,” reflecting the new law.
But to then-Governor Mitt Romney, who opposed child-rearing by gay couples, the proposal symbolized unacceptable changes in traditional family structures.
He rejected the Registry of Vital Records plan and insisted that his top legal staff individually review the circumstances of every birth to same-sex parents. Only after winning approval from Romney’s lawyers could hospital officials and town clerks across the state be permitted to cross out by hand the word “father” on individual birth certificates, and then write in “second parent,” in ink.
………
Romney expressed similar beliefs during a speech in 2005 to socially conservative voters in South Carolina, as he was beginning to be viewed as a serious candidate for president.
“Some gays are actually having children born to them,” he declared.”It’s not right on paper. It’s not right in fact. Every child has a right to a mother and father.”
Why on earth do gay Republicans think that Rmoney will protect them in the workplace if he wants to deny them basic rights as parents?
Seriously, Mitt Romney just sold you the Brooklyn Bridge.
BTW, as a note, Murray Waas wrote this, and I’ve always been impressed by his journalism, and he got this story despite attempts to cover this up:
In a preliminary response this month, the Department of Public Health withheld most of the documents because they reflected conversations between lawyers working for the state and “are therefore exempt from disclosure by the attorney-client privilege.” The Globe subsequently obtained many of the documents from a source who requested anonymity.
Here’s a piece of advice if Murray comes calling about a story, tell him the truth, because he’ll get it anyway.
Murray Waas is now officially on my list of “People I Do Not Want to Piss Off”.
It looks like Uruguay will legalize marijuana and sell it through state stores:
The president of Uruguay, José Mujica, has announced plans to legalise the production and sale of marijuana under a state monopoly, triggering a lively controversy in Montevideo. The relevant bill will soon be tabled in parliament, where the governing centre-left coalition led by the Broad Front (FA) enjoys a majority but is divided on this issue.
Possessing and consuming marijuana was decriminalised in 2000. “There is no question of Uruguay producing and distributing drugs, but the state will control and regulate the market,” said interior minister Eduardo Bonomi.
“We have a progressive tradition,” said Bonomi who, with Mujica, belonged to the Tupamaros urban guerrillas in the 1970s. “At the beginning of the 20th century our country ended the prohibition of alcohol, prostitution and gambling.” Abortion is currently in the process ofbeing legalised. “Our approach to marijuana is equally pragmatic,” Bonomi said. “The negative effects of consuming marijuana are far less harmful than the outbreak of violence associated with the black market.”
Do they have ice cream sammiches in Uruguay?
