Review by Theda Skocpol of Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right by Jane Mayer
Kevin Hall’s followup studies of the “Biggest Loser” dieters at +6 years, PDF
Why the Gold Standard is poor policy
List of Email to SMS Gateways
Technological Improvement Graphs
Economics of Karl Polanyi
Meet the Father of Modern Space Art, Chesley Bonestell
Military equip given to police departments
Sex isn’t chromosomes: the story of a century of misconceptions about X & Y
Congressional Progressive Caucus’ Budget for Fiscal Year 2017
Laser Sonics model 8000, 150 W medical YAG laser system, pulsed or CW, which runs on three-phase 230 VAC
Disease heatmap showing the introduction of vaccines
New National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health (NCCIH) five year plan still encourages nonsense
CDC uninterested in discussing how the Nepal UN mission to Haiti started a cholera epidemic
The Urgent Need to Save Orthodox Economists from their Crippling Myths by William Black
Our autopsies revealed a number of patterns that proved critical to our analysis, predictions, and policy prescriptions. For the sake of brevity I will not define here terms I have explained in hundreds of blogs, articles, and slides. As I noted, the blogger has heard me present and define the terms. First, we came to understand that the S&Ls were “control frauds.” Second, we found that “accounting” was the “weapon of choice” in finance – we were dealing with “accounting control frauds.” Third, we realized that accounting control fraud had become epidemic. Fourth, we realized that the control frauds were so numerous and concentrated (by asset type, commercial real estate loans (CRE) and geography) and growing so quickly that they were hyper-inflating regional real estate bubbles in the Southwest. Fifth, we identified the four “ingredients” of the fraud “recipe” for a lender. Sixth, we recognized that the CEOs running control frauds ran them for their personal benefit, by looting the S&L. Seventh, we recognized that firms following the fraud recipe were mathematically guaranteed to report record (albeit fictional) profits. Eighth, we realized the truth of the industry saying: “a rolling loan gathers no loss.” Ninth, we identified the recurrent scams by which S&L control frauds, individually and collectively, transmuted massive losses into fictional gains. Tenth, we realized that the CEOs running accounting control frauds were routinely able to suborn supposed “controls” by using the ability to hire, fire, and expand the engagement (in the case of outside auditors and counsel) to generate a “Gresham’s” dynamic (Akerlof 1970). Eleventh, we realized that the accounting control frauds had a great “tell” – they had to gut their underwriting and internal controls to follow the first two ingredients of the fraud recipe. Twelfth, we saw that the fraud recipe created an Achilles’ “heel” – the need for extreme growth, so we adopted a rule limiting growth.
Playmate figures graphed!
The Phenomenon of Man reviewed by Sir Peter Medawar
Creating the Innocent Killer: Ender’s Game, Intention, and Morality by John Kessel
Explaining what goes on in the world: in memory of Bob Fitch by Doug Henwood
Bob Fitch and New York history
5 Icelandic words you can’t translate
Vesen (veh-sen)
Skreppa (SCRAP-ah)
Nenna (NEN-ah)
Jæja (YI-yah)
Dugnaður (DOOG-na-thuhr)
JPL Visions of the Future posters
Dissent in Edwards v. Aguillard (1987) (Justice Scalia, joined by Chief Justice Rehnquist)
Scalia’s pro-creationism dissent.
Picked up a GeneTac 1000, a biochip scanner. Here are teardown pictures:
Here is the unit:
Teardown pictures. The unit has a self-contained lamp module that plugs into the main controller unit (EG&G Optoelectronics, Model # 300mXT-04, lamp module LM-300MX). Can’t find much about it–looks to be a 300W lamp. The center of the unit has a CCD camera, a Nikon lens, and a big custom lens, and two sets of filters. The slide carousel is on the other side.
MONITOR=$(pactl list | egrep -A2 ‘^(\*\*\* )?Source #’ | grep ‘Name: .*\.monitor$’ | awk ‘{print $NF}’ | tail -n1)
goes to alsa_output.pci-0000_00_1b.0.analog-stereo.monitor on my system
LAMEOPTIONS=’ -s 44.1 –preset cbr 192′
FILENAME=foo.mp3
Record currently playing audio:
parec -d $MONITOR | lame $LAMEOPTIONS -r $FILENAME
Split into separate 1 hr files with a 3 sec overlap:
ffmpeg -ss 00:00:00 -t 01:00:03 -i foo.mp3 $1.01.mp3 -acodec copy
ffmpeg -ss 01:00:00 -t 01:00:03 -i foo.mp3 $1.02.mp3 -acodec copy
Commands from here
The Former Dentist Uncovering Sugar’s Rotten Secrets by Francie Diep
University of California–San Francisco researcher Cristin Kearns dropped a promising career at the Kaiser Foundation to dig through sugar industry archives for a smoking gun. With help from the man who brought down Big Tobacco, she’s now proving that Big Sugar steered scientists away from looking at the ingredient’s harmful effects.
I’m growing some cacti from seeds. I have seeds for:
opuntia engelmannii
ferocactus gracilis
echinocactus grusonii
opuntia violacea
myrtillocactus geometrizans
hylocereus undatus
The Powder Keg: The seething racial resentment of the Obama era is of an altogether different kind. by Charles P. Pierce
Many tarantulas are one particular shade of vivid blue, and no one knows why. A structural color, not a pigment color.
Doggerland, between England and France was covered by the ocean 7,000 YPB.
Woman can smell Parkinson’s disease
A bogus “Obama economic indicators” graphic is going around Facebook. Here are employment stats for the Obama Presidency:
This chart is incorrect–let’s take a look a the first line.
Full time workers, Jan 2009 are 116M (BLS Jan 2009, A-6), down to 111M a year later at the peak of the recession, and now in Sept 2015 at 122M (+ 6 million jobs in 6.5 years) (BLS Sept 2015). Well done Mr president!.
Under Bush, Jan 2001 – Jan 2009 employment went from 112M to 116M (+4 million in 8 years). (Table A-4
These figures are readily available from the BLS Current Population Survey.
Trap, neuter, release does not work
Article on the HEMA documentary. How People Actually Fought With Swords.
Back to the Source, a documentary about Historical European Martial Arts (HEMA).
Inside the Secretive World of Tax-Avoidance Experts by Brooke Harrington
Turgay Trough Geoglyphs 250+ collections of mounds in square, cross, line, and tri-armed shapes
Man’s larger penis is a consequence of his larger brain. All about the baby head.
Studs Terkel, recordings from The Good War
How Humans Evolved Supersize Brains, by Ferris Jabr Experiments putting human/chimp regualtory regions into mice, database of human accelerated regions (HARs).
Mitochondria are a network of tubular organelles
Chicago cops conduct illegal spying on protesters
Thelonious Monk’s List of Tips for Playing a Gig
Forensic Pseudoscience: The Unheralded Crisis of Criminal Justice
