Author: Serkadis

Via Prison Planet.com » Commentary

The Economic Collapse
May 27, 2010

Today there is a great awakening going on across the United States and all around the world.  Tens of millions of people are becoming aware of the growing tyranny of the global financial elite.  Yet millions of those same people willingly enslave themselves to those very same financial powers.  So how is this happening?  It is called debt.  The financial powers of the world use it to enslave individuals, corporations and governments.  For thousands of years humanity has been taught the proverb that ”the borrower is the servant of the lender”, and yet today hundreds of millions of people around the globe willingly have run out and have made themselves servants of the money powers.  You see, when you borrow money from a financial institution, you not only have to pay that money back, but you also have to pay a significant amount of interest.  In fact, often the interest ends up being much more than the principal of the loan.  Thus the borrower ends up devoting a great deal of his or her labor to earning money for the lender.  Certainly there are times when it is necessary to borrow money.  But what Americans have been doing over the last 30 years goes far beyond “necessary” borrowing.  In fact, the massive debt binge of the last three decades has been nothing short of a huge percentage of the American population entering into willing financial enslavement.

Do you think that is an exaggeration?  Just consider the chart below.  The word “insanity” does not even begin to describe the growth of household credit in the United States over the last 30 years….

So why is debt so bad?

Well, there are a lot of reasons.  Debt strips you of your freedom and slowly drains you of your wealth.  It puts the fruits of your labor into the pockets of others.

Getting others enslaved by debt is how the most powerful financial institutions in the world got so dominant.  It is one of the most profitable ways of making money ever invented.

What many people don’t realize is just how much interest they end up paying on some of their debts.

For example, if you go to mortgagecalculator.org, you can calculate the amount of interest that you will pay over the life of your home mortgage.  According to that calculator, someone with a $250,000 mortgage at an interest rate of 6.5% over 30 years will end up paying over $300,000 in interest before it is all paid off.    

So when those 30 years are over, you have bought a house for yourself and you have also bought a house for the bankers.

But there are many forms of credit that are far worse than mortgage debt.

So what are they?

Just look in your wallet.

Do you have a credit card in there?

If so, and if you carry a balance each month, then you are “feeding the monster” and you have financially enslaved yourself.

But you are far from alone.

According to the United States Census Bureau, there are approximately 1.5 billion credit cards in use in the United States.

In fact, 78 percent of American households had at least one credit card at the end of 2008.

So it is a rare person who does not have at least one credit card.

But not only do the vast majority of us have credit cards, we are using them at unprecedented rates.

At the end of 2008, the total credit card debt piled up by American consumers was more than 972 billion dollars.  That is an amount that is greater than the GDP of the world’s 122 poorest nations combined.

So why is credit card debt bad?

Well, because it can drain your wealth faster than almost any other method ever created.

For example, according to the credit card repayment calculator, if you owe $6000 on a credit card with a 20 percent interest rate and only pay the minimum payment each time, it will take you 54 years to pay off that credit card.

During those 54 years you will pay $26,168 in interest rate charges in addition to the $6000 in principal that you are required to pay back.

That is before you include any fees or penalties you might accumulate along the way.

Are you starting to get the picture?

Do you really want to repay over $30,000 for a $6,000 purchase?

Of course not.

So what should you do?

Stop feeding the monster.

They are getting insanely wealthy off of your financial enslavement.

It is time to get out of debt.

One of the most common financial questions that people ask today is what they should do with their money.

Well, the answer to that question is a lot more obvious than people may think.

After purchasing all of the food and supplies that are needed for the hard times that are coming, people need to get out of debt.

There are very, very few investments that will add to your wealth faster than debt is draining it.

So don’t let your money sit there and earn a couple of percentage points if you are carrying any debt that you can easily pay off.

Paying off debt will reduce your living expenses and will give you much more flexibility.  It will also put you in a much better position to weather the very difficult financial times that are coming.

When you get into more debt, you are playing the game that the Federal Reserve, JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley, Citigroup, Bank of America and Goldman Sachs want you to play.  There are always going to be financial predators that are ready to drain your wealth.

But you don’t have to play that game.  Work to get yourself free.  You will be glad that you did.

Via Prison Planet.com » World News

Tania Branigan
London Guardian
May 27, 2010

South Korea fired artillery and dropped bombs in military exercises off the west coast of the divided peninsula today, with tensions running high in the area.

The drills aim to help the military detect incursions by the North’s submarines after a team of international investigators said a North Korean torpedo sank a South Korean warship in March.

The navy said 10 vessels, including a destroyer, fired guns and launched anti-submarine bombs south of the capital, Seoul, in a one-day exercise.

The exercises were conducted far from the disputed sea border with North Korea in the Yellow Sea, Yonhap news agency reported, citing military officials.

Pyongyang, which denies any involvement in the sinking of the Cheonan, had earlier said such military exercises would drive the tense situation to the brink of war, although it has often issued such warnings before such drills.

Full article here

Via Prison Planet.com » Commentary

James Delingpole
London Telegraph
May 27, 2010

“Can’t you find something else to talk about?” someone (a nice, sympathetic person, not one of my house herd of festering libtard trolls) commented below one of my previous blogs.

So let me explain, briefly, why I rarely can – with reference to the ludicrous story which was given the front page of today’s Times (formerly a newspaper of some note).

The story, enthusiastically headlined EU SETS TOUGHEST TARGETS TO FIGHT GLOBAL WARMING goes like this:

Europe will introduce a surprise new plan today to combat global warming, committing Britain and the rest of the EU to the most ambitious targets in the world. The plan proposes a massive increase in the target for cutting greenhouse gas emissions in this decade.

The European Commission is determined to press ahead with the cuts despite the financial turmoil gripping the bloc, even though it would require Britain and other EU member states to impose far tougher financial penalties on their industries than are being considered by other large economies.

The plan, to cut emissions by 30 per cent on 1990 levels by 2020, would cost the EU an extra £33 billion a year by 2020, according to a draft of the Commission’s communication leaked to The Times.

The existing target of a 20 per cent cut is already due to cost £48 billion. The Commission will argue that the lower target has become much easier to meet because of the recession, which resulted in the EU’s emissions falling more than 10 per cent last year as thousands of factories closed or cut production. Emissions last year were already 14 per cent below 1990 levels.

Full article here

Location-based services are very popular right now, and, even as all the focus is on Foursquare and its competitors like Gowalla, Google’s Latitude service is actually a serious contender. With three million users, it’s the most popular location-based service out there and those users are now getting an interesting new feature. With … (read more)

Nicholas Felton should already be well-known for the avid infosthetics reader. He is a graphic designer from New York and probably best known for his unique personal annual reports, but is also co-founder of daytum.com, a dedicated website for tracking and communicating life-logging data, while having produced an impressive body of freelance information design work in his portfolio.

When he was announced as one of the speakers for the See #5 conference in Wiesbaden, I immediately thought of trying to get a hold of him for an interview. Unfortunately, a selfish volcano made a face-to-face meeting impossible, so the following interview was conducted via e-mail. How does Nicholas typically work? What is the role of aesthetics in his work? And is *he* the cause of all those terrible junk charts some people are so passionately mad about?

Your annual reports have many facets. One thing that makes them particularly interesting to me is that they encompass components of research, design and art. Do you think in terms of these categories? How would you classify your reports yourself?

While I don’t frame the report in those exact terms, they are all a part of the process. Research and design are core parts of the equation, while the art world provides inspiration. I’m influenced by artists who elevate every-day objects and events to prominence through their meticulous processes, like Sophie Calle, Candy Jernigan and Mark Dion.

Can you tell us a bit about your design process? Do you do much by hand, or mostly graphic programs, or do you code as well? What is a typical workflow?

Typically, I like to start by determining the simplest way to communicate the data I’ve been given. Things get complicated very quickly, so there’s no use in starting with a complex base visualization layer if it needs to have numerous labels or additional dimensions of data applied.

I was drawing manually in Illustrator at this time last year, but I have started to dabble in Processing (the language developed by Casey Reas and Ben Fry) to help speed my work. Over the past few months I’ve developed a little arsenal of graphing tools to help automate my process. With considerable assistance, I’ve been able to build geocoding, geoplotting and several other graphing applications that quickly allow me see the shape of the data I’m working with. I can then take the PDF output and style it with either Adobe Illustrator or InDesign.

I usually present only one direction to a client, when it’s starting to take shape. The way I work allows the structure of the data to determine the composition of the execution, so sketches are rarely indicative of the final outcome.

Obviously, visual aesthetics plays a big role in your work. Sometimes, aesthetics can help in transporting a story, but in other case it might overshadow the data. Do you find it difficult to deal with this tension? What do you do to resolve it?

I like to think that my aesthetic choices are always made in service of the data and the story. All the reductions in typographic and chromatic palette are intended to place contrasts in the most effective locations. In my personal projects there are times where I like to push an aesthetic idea further than I would for a client, but I believe that the data relationships still shine through.

We have seen a boom of illustrative infographics over the last few months and years. I think – at least from a visual design point of view – your reports were a major influence for graphics like for instance “Unboxing the iPad“. Not all of them are great, which leads some people to critique them quite strongly or even make parodies of this style of infographics. Are you sorry for what you have (co-)caused?

I hope that I’m not entirely to blame for this, but yes, it’s becoming a problem. When I entered the field, I was operating against a tendency towards too much information and not enough insight. Visualizations for complexity’s sake. Now the needle seems to be tipping in the other direction towards visualizations that are unrooted in any data whatsoever. The larger issue for me is that none of these projects endeavor to answer a question or provide insight.

People used to write diaries to keep track of their lives, and reflect. How does your work relate to this practice?

I believe that it’s a piece of that world. My mother has kept a diary for at least the last 50 years, so perhaps there’s a piece of that in me. I’m also transfixed by the passports of my father that contain another 50 years of extensive travels in a more structured form. I’ve experimented with travelogues, and other extrapolations of my activities into books or websites. For me, the difference is that I’ve approached my everyday activities as a source of content for driving design projects, while the bulk of diaries are intended for personal consumption.

Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg says “the age of privacy is over“. Do you support this particular view?

I think it would be more accurate to say that the age of the illusion of privacy is over. Your activities have long been transparent to credit card, mobile phone operators and others… now we have been given the tools to reveal this information socially (intentionally or unintentionally).

I might add, that while I reveal an incredible amount about my habits in my reports, the information is edited, and activities are rarely more date specific than the year in which they occurred. For me this provides an acceptable degree of privacy and remove that is downright reserved in the age of tweeting that you’re at the local bar.

Are there things you would never publish in your reports?

Definitely. I avoid sexual and scatological reporting, and find most monetary reporting offputting.

As far as you can judge – has logging and analysing your life made you change your habits? If so, to the better or to the worse?

In some areas it has. Keeping track of my running helps keep me connected to that activity and gives me goals and a way to measure my progress. In other areas, it hasn’t had as much of an impact. When I’ve tried to keep track of my reading in an effort to increase my consumption of books, I found that it didn’t have an impact. How much I read is determined by how often I find books that engage me. Ultimately, my life tracking is more about recording and preserving my activities than in changing my behavior.

Do you think in 20 years, everybody will keep track of their (mostly auto-generated) personal Feltron report? Will doctors first review your habit and life statistics before they treat you?

Absolutely, I think that most of the things I track today will be ambiently available to anyone who’s interested in 5, 10 or 20 years. With flexible hardware like the iPhone, better battery life, pervasive sensors and id chips, background processes and participatory corporations that realize the value of giving their customers access to the data they create – we’ll be most of the way there.

Thanks, Nicholas!

This post was written by Moritz Stefaner, a researcher and freelance practitioner on the crossroads of design and information visualization. Occasionally, he blogs at well-formed-data.net.

A congressional hearing will take place regarding quality control practices both at McNeil and parent company Johnson & Johnson, the Chicago Tribune indicates.

After the massive recall of Tylenol and other over-the-counter drugs, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) inspected the quality control practices being implemented at a Pennsylvania plant run by McNeil Consumer Health Care, a subsidiary of pharmaceutical Johnson & Johnson. FDA declared there is an inadequate training for its employees. Its latest Tylenol recall of 40 products happened April 30 that could have stripped $400 million from the company.

Other defects include substandard equipment, bacterial contamination of materials, and around 46 neglected complaints even before the recall. Good manufacturing practice is missing, said Prabir Basu, Purdue University.

Professor of Pharmacoecomomics Albert Wertheimer at Temple University believes it contributed to the shrinkage in its workforce.”I would suspect it’s a matter of trying to get by with less, but in this case it didn’t work,” he scrutinized.

Other McNeil plants under investigation are based in Lancaster, Pa., and Las Piedras, Puerto Rico.

Related posts:

1. Tylenol Recall 2010 by McNeil Consumer Healthcare
2. McNeil Promises Quality Repair
3. Congress Investigates Johnson & Johnson

When it comes to RPGs, I don’t even need to explain how far up Square Enix is atop the gaming Olympus. It is, however, a bit surprising to find out that someone from the esteemed publisher said

Stephen Conroy, the Australian politician who has been pushing hard to massively filter and censor Australia’s internet has been fighting Google for a while now. After the company made comments about why such censorship was a bad idea, rather than respond to the issues, Conroy came out swinging by attacking the company for its Buzz privacy mishap, and quoting Eric Schmidt out of context. So, of course, with Google’s WiFi data capture admission, Conroy has some new ammo. He’s claiming that it couldn’t possibly have been an accident and that this represents “the largest privacy breach in history across Western democracies.”

While it’s no surprise that Conroy doesn’t like Google and its opposition to his plan to censor the internet, perhaps he should stay away from laughably ridiculous hyperbole. The only data Google collected was what was passed over open WiFi connections in the split seconds that it drove by those access points with its Street View vehicles. These are networks where anyone on those networks could have just as easily have done the same thing — except if someone was really on one of those networks, they could keep recording that data, rather than moving on when the traffic light changed. Furthermore, there’s no evidence that Google ever did anything whatsoever with whatever data it did collect. Making claims about this being some huge privacy breach when there’s no evidence that anyone ever even saw the data seems pretty questionable.

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In any Resident Evil game, once you whip out the magnum, you’re ready to put serious hurt into your target. Chris Redfield will be keeping one handy in Marvel vs. Capcom 3, as well as other weapons

The annual Doodle 4 Google competition came to a close with a winner being chosen from the more than 33,000 submissions. The winning doodle belongs to Makenzie Melton, a third grader at El Dorado Springs R-2 Schools in El Dorado Springs, Missouri. Her work was entitled “Rainforest Habitat” and will be featured on the Google homepage … (read more)

The Telegraph Media Group and Sanuk Games have already released Telegraph Crosswords for the DS in UK and Ireland, which basically gives players 500 crossword puzzles for the price of 500 DSi Points. Today, the collaboration announced

Hikari no 4 Senshi: Final Fantasy Gaiden has been out in Japan since late last year, but now that Square Enix has trademarked its Western name, Final Fantasy: The 4 Heroes of Light is ready for release

You might remember Imageepoch from games such as Arc Rise Fantasia, Fate/Extra and the Luminous Arc series. The publisher has yet to announce a PS3 game to date, but a job listing indicates that they’re hiring folks

Facebook has unveiled the simplified privacy settings it has been talking about for the past week. The new settings are easier to understand and it’s easier to get an overview of what you share and with whom. The move is likely to settle the increasingly vocal and mostly warranted criticism of Facebook’s practices regarding user pr… (read more)

Seems like people everywhere need some type of gossip. Why, where, whom, what, are always the words people are wondering. Last night at the American Idol 2010 Finale almost all the winners of the previous Idol Shows were present to pay tribute to the departing judge Simon Cowell, except one. And this is where the questions started. People started to wonder as why did the American Idol Season 7 Winner miss the show. David Cook had some other commitments due to which he could not appear.

David Cook’s absence was widely noticed but it was nothing dramatic to which the fans around the world flocked the internet to search the reason. So what was it, why did he miss. The reason explained below:

David Cook, the winner of the Idol Season 7, was attending a charity event in Kansas City related to cancer disease. The Idol champ is well known for his work for the charities, specially to cancer related as the disease took his brother’s life. He devotes most of his time looking to help many charities around and is well known amongst all. Charity Work has also won him great fan votes.

Another Idol who missed the event was the well known Adam Lambert. Lambert’s rep told that he missed the show due to vocal rest. Well these are some valid reason of missing the event but not something to be made an issue about.

Related posts:

1. David Cook: “Absent” on American Idol Finale
2. Lee Dewyze Wins The American Idol
3. American Idol Exposure Is No Guarantee

The amazing show, which has rocked the U.S. as well as the world, American Idol 2010, is on the final stages. Great fun along with some teary eyes were witnessed at the show last night. The show received a surprise performance by the one of the greatest legend, Joe Cocker, who performed along with the two finalists. Cocker joined Crystal Bowersox and Lee DeWyze in a performance singing his hit song, “With A Little Help From My Friends”.

The American Idol Finale received one of the biggest surprise of the evening before one the two finalists were declared as the winner. Some other artists which also performed at the show included, Elliot Yamin and Taylor Hicks, Jordin Sparks, Christina Aguilera,Enrique Iglesias, Carrie Underwood, Kris Allen and Blake Lewis.

The song performance by Cocker had been originally sung by the Beatles but his own unique version has touch new heights. Joe Cocker born in 1944 is an English rock/blues musician, composer and actor, who gained popularity in 1960s. He is famous for voice and arm movements while performing and also recipient of several awards which includes a Grammy in 1983 for his song, ‘Up Where We Belong’. Joe Cocker also made his way up to the Billboards Top 100 list performing on the Rolling Stone song.

Related posts:

1. David Cook: “Absent” on American Idol Finale
2. Siobhan Magnus Is Eliminated In American Idol
3. The Next American Idol Is – Would it be Bowersox or DeWyze – American Idol Prediction

Homebrew coder ant512 is back once again the DS homebrew scene to release a new version of Woopsi, a handy GUI library for creating homebrew user interfaces for the Nintendo DS. The latest update of the homebrew

American Idol season 9 finale could have been complete, in some point of the show a farewell tribute to the departing Simon Cowell was featured.

American Idol winners Kelly Clarkson, Jordin Sparks, Ruben Studdard, Carrie Underwood, Fantasia Barrino, Taylor Hicks and Kris Allen took the stage singing the song “Together We Are One” by Delta Goodrem. Later they were joined by American Idol finalists that included everyone from Kimberly Caldwell to Constatine Maroulis, including Justin Guarini.

As noticed last night, Idol Season 7 winner David Cook was the only ‘idol’ absent in the group performance.

Just after the show, according to Cook’s twitter, Cook was attending a charity event in Kansas City for cancer.

Some of the Cook’s fans were disappointed last night as they were expecting to see him, but as Cook tweeted, he was in the show “in spirit“.

Another Idol had another story behind the show. Adam Lambert was reported by Zap2it that he did not show up for the finale rehearsal, which was a surprise performance form the show.

Related posts:

1. David Cook Not On Idol Finale: Reason Explained!
2. Michael McDonald is in American Idol’s Finale
3. It’s Boy vs Girl in American Idol Season 9 Finale

The Sydney Police Force now has a new member in its vehicle fleet – the Alfa Romeo Mito. This car never fails to attract attention with its white body and blue check stripes. It certainly increases the presence of the Police in the city.

This police vehicle uses the car control technology called DNA, which consists of three traction and stability control programs — Dynamic, Normal and All-weather. The Dynamic mode gives cornering feedback, more engine power, and a relaxed stability control setting. Meanwhile, the Normal mode allows for lighter steering and an engine tune designed to improve fuel economy. The All-Weather mode assists the drivers through all types of weather conditions. This vehicle is intended to help authorities as they fight crime as well as to integrate the road safety concept into local communities.

Source: Car news, Car reviews, Spy shots

ACS:Law, the UK-based copyright threat letter operation that has been called a “scam” by UK politicians and condemned by ISPs alike, is apparently using a new tactic. The operation, which is apparently being investigated for potential disciplinary action (like Davenport Lyons, whose lawyers have been disciplined for initiating the “pre-settlement” mass letter campaign, and which has some sort of connection with ACS:Law), seems to know that the “evidence” it has isn’t enough to actually take anyone to court, so if you reply and deny the infringement, ACS:Law sends you a questionnaire effectively asking you to incriminate yourself.

Of course, there’s no legal obligation to reply, just as there’s no legal obligation to pay, based on such a “pay up or we’ll sue” letter. TorrentFreak notes that, despite all of this, people are still paying, even though not a single case has gone to court. No wonder we have multiple copycat operations showing up in the US. Extortion-like processes are apparently quite profitable. I’m sure that’s exactly what the folks who created copyright law in the first place were thinking of in their creation: a system to send out thousands of threat letters demanding payment to avoid a lawsuit. It’s all about promoting the “progress” of a few copyright lawyers, you see…

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