June 7, 2012

THE REFORMATION CAME FROM "OUTSIDE" THE CHURCH

The dispossessed intellectuals of the Church and the oppressed peasantry together said Enough is Enough.

Nuns, priests and laity left to found their own religions, and there were many variations, some better than Holy Mother Church, some even worse (Calvinism), but apparently each one meeting some psychological need, and all still going strong today. I don't know of any religion that has gone out of business, with the possible exception of those founded by people who have been wiped out by genocide. Topic for research...

But nothing happens from the top down. The Top is very happy with the way things are, they got theirs...and in that spirit of Reformation, individuals, peoples and nations must leave the global bankster/multinational unholy alliance and form their own economies. It will be another grassroots revolution, the only kind that lasts.

It is only by repudiating Globalism and Capitalism that we can "reform" them, or at least, hold them in check.

June 7, 2012

Judge Rules Refusing to Decrypt Hard Drive is Covered by Fifth Amendment

I SHOULD THINK SO--IF NOT THE FOURTH AND NINTH AND ALL THE REST

http://www.geekosystem.com/fifth-amendment-decryption/

...This ruling dates back to a 2010 child pornography case with a defendant we’ll refer to as John Doe. Long story short, a few questionable YouTube videos and some IP tracking lead law enforcement to Mr. Doe’s hotel room door where they seized 2 laptops and 5 external hard drives, a total of 5 terabytes of data. All of Doe’s data, however, was encrypted with TrueCrypt, ostensibly in order to protect himself from identity theft (not that his intent really matters anways). When the court asked him to decrypt the hard drives, he plead the Fifth, at which point the court found him in contempt and threw him in jail.

Now, 2 years later, the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled that Doe was not actually in contempt and had every right to refuse. Naturally this is going to complicate the prosecution’s case a bit. And that’s not the only thing it complicates. Fifth amendment law as it applies to cyber-security is already complicated, and this decision only serves to make it moreso.

Traditionally, the Fifth Amendment doesn’t cover physical acts. For instance, if you’re asked unlock a safe or open a door, the Fifth Amendment doesn’t have your back. At least if the there is a key involved, relaying a combination, on the other hand, is technically testimony. This ruling equates decrypting a computer with telling something a the combination to a safe. The court’s decision describes it as follows:

To further complicate the matter, full disk encryption is a tough nut to crack. Whereas a safe can be cracked or a door broken down (I’ll admit I’m not sure about the legal implications of warranted forced entry) encryption can be practically foolproof. Depending on the strength of your encryption, it might be impossible to crack a password in less than several hundred years, so if a defendant isn’t compelled dole out the key, the data is effectively off the table for lifetime of all parties involved.

As if this wasn’t complicated enough already, there is already an example — two, actually — where encrypted data was not covered by the Fifth Amendment. Just last month, a defendant in a mortgage scam case was forced to decrypt his laptop after a ruling by a different federal judge. Likewise, a defendant in a 2009 child pornography case in Vermont was compelled to decrypt his drive although in that case, the evidence was found by customs officials while the device while it was on, and the issue of decryption became an use when later on, during the trial, the computer was off.

The last messy thing about this whole deal is that it’s dealing with child pornography, one of the touchiest subjects relating to cyber-security, and just in general. Pleading the Fifth already carries connotations of guilt, and adding child pornography into the mix makes it really easy to appeal to fear or disgust. Fifth Amendment cases have a history of being messy, though. After all, those “Miranda Rights” you’ve probably memorized while watching Law and Order? They became law when the Supreme Court reversed the conviction of a man who confessed to kidnapping a raping a woman. Yeah. Not pretty either, although it’s worth noting that Miranda still wound up in jail.

All that being said, this issue will probably continue to be hotly debated considering the contradicting precedents and the fact that handing over an encryption password is just ever so slightly different from opening a combination lock if it is even different at all. That’s a distinction that may have to be made by an even higher court a few more years down the line.

June 5, 2012

Why It Took So Long to Invent the Wheel

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=why-it-took-so-long-to-inv

The tricky thing about the wheel is not conceiving of a cylinder rolling on its edge. It's figuring out how to connect a stable, stationary platform to that cylinder...it took until 3500 B.C. for someone to invent them. By that time — it was the Bronze Age — humans were already casting metal alloys, constructing canals and sailboats, and even designing complex musical instruments such as harps.

"The stroke of brilliance was the wheel-and-axle concept," said David Anthony, a professor of anthropology at Hartwick College and author of "The Horse, the Wheel, and Language" (Princeton, 2007). "But then making it was also difficult." To make a fixed axle with revolving wheels, Anthony explained, the ends of the axle had to be nearly perfectly smooth and round, as did the holes in the center of the wheels; otherwise, there would be too much friction for the wheels to turn. Furthermore, the axles had to fit snugly inside the wheels' holes, but not too snugly — they had to be free to rotate.

The success of the whole structure was extremely sensitive to the size of the axle. While a narrow one would reduce the amount of friction, it would also be too weak to support a load. Meanwhile, a thick axle would hugely increase the amount of friction. "They solved this problem by making the earliest wagons quite narrow, so they could have short axles, which made it possible to have an axle that wasn't very thick," Anthony told Life's Little Mysteries. The sensitivity of the wheel-and-axle system to all these factors meant that it could not have been developed in phases, he said. It was an all-or-nothing structure.

Whoever invented it must have had access to wide slabs of wood from thick-trunked trees in order to carve large, round wheels. They also needed metal tools to chisel fine-fitted holes and axles. And they must have had a need for hauling heavy burdens over land. According to Anthony, "It was the carpentry that probably delayed the invention until 3500 B.C. or so, because it was only after about 4000 B.C. that cast copper chisels and gouges became common in the Near East."

The invention of the wheel was so challenging that it probably happened only once, in one place. However, from that place, it seems to have spread so rapidly across Eurasia and the Middle East that experts cannot say for sure where it originated. The earliest images of wheeled carts have been excavated in Poland and elsewhere in the Eurasian steppes, and this region is overtaking Mesopotamia (present-day Iraq) as the wheel's most likely birthplace. According to Asko Parpola, an Indologist at the University of Helsinki in Finland, there are linguistic reasons to believe the wheel originated with the Tripolye people of modern-day Ukraine. That is, the words associated with wheels and wagons derive from the language of that culture. Parpola thinks miniature models of wheeled wagons, which are commonly found in the Eurasian steppes, likely predated human-scale wagons. "It is … striking that so many models were made in the Tripolye culture. Such models are often thought to have been children's toys, but it seems more likely to me that they were miniature counterparts of real things," he said. "The primacy of the miniature models is suggested by the fact that wheeled images of animals even come from native Indian cultures of Central America, where real wheels were never made."

June 5, 2012

Rise of the 'maker movement'

http://stream.aljazeera.com/story/rise-maker-movement-0022086

OR AS I WOULD CALL IT: BREAKING THE BACKS OF THE MULTINATIONAL CORPORATIONS

3D printers, one of the movement’s most noteworthy developments, can now create everything from buildings to human tissue. With the rise of DIY culture, these machines have become cheap enough for consumer use and could have many implications for nations in early stages of development.

In this episode of The Stream, we talk to Emeka Okafor, co-founder of Maker Faire Africa, and Bre Pettis, CEO and co-founder of MakerBot Industries.

MULTIPLE VIDEOS AT LINK

The maker movement has grown through the spread of real life "makerspaces" or "hackerspaces," which pool resources and provide access to more expensive technology. Each year, Maker Faires are held around the United States, drawing between 50,000 to 100,000 visitors. The maker movement also complements the spirit of innovation that has been credited to developing countries, particularly in Africa; "jua kali,” Swahili for hot sun, describes the open-air industry of inventors common in many cities. Maker Faire Africa, which is not associated with the American fairs, has been held across the continent in Ghana, Kenya and Egypt. Although Maker Faire Africa includes the design and craft products found in the US maker movement, it focuses particularly on building hardware to solve local problems. It is described on its website as "a fellowship of creators who believe making is the most authentic form of manufacturing, which forges a vigorous middle class."

The maker movement aims to be democratic, with an emphasis on the equal connection between the user, the creator, and the product. Most blueprints and basic modeling software are available online free of charge. These "bill of rights" manifestos shown below lay out principles both of restoration and the movement itself.

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June 4, 2012

The FDIC Continues to Promote the Fantasy That It Can Resolve Megabanks

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2012/06/the-fdic-continues-to-promote-the-fantasy-that-it-can-resolve-megabanks.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+NakedCapitalism+%28naked+capitalism%29

...a May 10 speech by the acting FDIC chairman, Martin Gruenberg, on the FDIC’s current thinking on how to resolve so called systemically important financial institutions, or SIFIs. I’m turning to this now because I see some people who ought to know better, such as the normally solid John Hussmann, taking the FDIC”s claims at face value.

As an overview, Dodd Frank gave the FDIC new powers for resolving large, complex financial institutions, which are often referred to as “orderly liquidiation authority” or “Title II resolutions”. Nowhere does the Gruenberg speech mention that the FDIC does not have the authority to put a megabank down; it requires Fed and Treasury approval as well. So it seems unlikely, in the wake of Lehman, that any Administration is going to hazard euthanizing a foundering financial institution using an untested processes. BUT YOU NEVER KNOW THESE DAYS WHAT POLITICIANS WILL DARE...

It’s worth noting that the FDIC has retreated from its position in a paper it published a bit more than a year ago, a description of how it would have used its expanded powers in the case of Lehman. Gruenber’s speech is de facto climbdown from that piece, which we shredded in a series of posts (here, here, here and here; it took that many rounds to beat back staunch administration defender Economics of Contempt.

The guts of the latest FDIC scheme is to resolve only the holding company and keep the healthy subsidiaries, including all foreign subsidiaries, going on a business-as-usual basis:



The subsidiaries would be moved over to a new holding company; the equity in NewCo would become an asset of the holding company now in receivership. The old equityholders would likely be wiped out and the bondholders may wind up taking losses.

This all sounds wonderfully tidy and neat, right? Problem is it won’t work.

MUCH MORE EXHAUSTIVE DETAIL AS TO WHY....

June 4, 2012

In praise of equity By Sell on News, a macro equities analyst. ANALYSIS THEORY

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2012/06/in-praise-of-equity.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+NakedCapitalism+%28naked+capitalism%29

The stock market fate of Facebook has focused attention on the state of the public equity markets. Already, the company is being sued for allegedly misleading investors about the state of its business. There is much hand wringing about the problems of being publicly listed — the onerous burden of regulation, the public scrutiny, the short-termism of professional investors. It’s not easy being a billionaire these days. Chief amongst the hand wringers is The Economist, which ran a cover story on the demise of the public company. And there is certainly evidence of a problem:



This has probably had a lot to do with the poor returns in global stock markets in the wake of the GFC, but The Economist is entirely correct to be worried. The reasons given for the concern are that public companies create jobs, they “let in daylight” and they allow the public to invest in companies. I would add two others. First, big stock markets tend to distribute economic power. This is more of a political point, but in countries with large stock markets, the extremely rich are not as powerful. Gina Rinehart may be the world’s richest woman at $29 billion. It sounds a lot. But compare that with the ASX $1.4 trillion of public companies. It is drawfed by BHP’s $160 billion market capitalisation, or Rio’s $100 billion. That works against the concentration of power that extreme wealth can catalyse. In countries in South America, for instance, there is no such counterbalance and rich families have a much greater influence. This is not to argue that it is democratic or shares power; it patently does not. The owners, superannuants, usually don’t even know what they own. But it is a useful limit.

Second, public stock markets, and to a lesser extent bond markets, can be re-priced in a way that bank debt cannot. Big swings in share prices act like a shock absorber when there is a financial crisis. Bonds can also be repriced, although because debt has to repaid the shock absorber effect is less pronounced. Banks, on the other hand, are extremely vulnerable to repricing. They only have to have a small number of defaults on their loan book for it to result in collapse. So when economies largely depend on bank debt, they are far more vulnerable to financial crises than countries that have a balance between bonds and equities. In America Japan, the balance between bonds, equities and bank deposits is about equal. In Europe, there are smaller stock markets and more bonds, but there is a reasonable balance. In Asia (ex-Japan), there is a heavy bias towards bank debt. So much so, McKinsey is anticipating a $12.3 trillion “equity gap” in Asia by the end of the decade...To a large extent, big equity markets are an English language phenomenon. I would love to know why, so if any readers out there have any references please tell me. It is doubly strange given that the bourse was largely a French idea. It seems to be linked to non-conformist groups in the north of England during the rapid period of industrialisation in the nineteenth century: mutual funds such as Manchester Unity which invested in shares. Australia was an early entrant with its innovations in health funds. Of course, many of those non-conformists went to America, perhaps taking the practice with them. But that is a very sketchy guess; its historical origins are worth studying closely

MUCH MORE--YOU REALLY OUGHT TO READ THIS ONE--IT EXPLAINS SO MUCH AND OPENS WINDOWS OF POSSIBILITY

June 1, 2012

Weekend Economists: What Goes Up....June 1-3, 2012

What goes up for no discernible reason, that is....

It's been a quiet week in Lake Wobegon.....and on Wall Street. I think perhaps banksters are too shell-shocked to complain out loud in the press. Visions of torches and pitchforks make for poor sleeping and waking.

But that's stuff for the weekday world. This is the weekend, a time to kick off shoes and explore.

Today we are exploring Blood, Sweat & Tears, a jazz/rock band that I never knew was behind so much of the music I listened to in the past 40 years....Thank you, Po, for forcing me to fill in the gaps in my education! I actually have heard them before and liked them. Now I can put a name to the music.

"Blood, Sweat & Tears (also known as "BS&T&quot is an American music group, originally formed in 1967 in New York City. Since its beginnings in 1967, the band has gone through numerous iterations with varying personnel and has encompassed a multitude of musical styles. What the band is most known for, from its start, is the fusing of rock, blues, pop music, horn arrangements and jazz improvisation into a hybrid that came to be known as "jazz-rock". Unlike "jazz fusion" bands, which tend toward virtuostic displays of instrumental facility and some experimentation with electric instruments, the songs of Blood, Sweat & Tears merged the stylings of rock, pop and R&B/soul music with big band, while also adding elements of 20th Century Classical and small combo jazz traditions...

Blood, Sweat and Tears

Origin New York City, New York, United States
Genres Pop rock, jazz rock, psychedelic rock
Years active 1967–1981, 1984–present
Labels Columbia, ABC, Rhino, Sony, Mobile Fidelity, Wounded Bird

Associated acts Spinning Wheel


Roster of member musicians:

Al Kooper : keyboards, vocals (1967–1968)
Randy Brecker : trumpet, flugelhorn (1967–1968)
Jerry Weiss : trumpet, flugelhorn, backing vocals (1967–1968)
Fred Lipsius : alto sax, keyboards (1967–1972)
Dick Halligan : keyboards, trombone, horns, flute, backing vocals (1967–1972)
Steve Katz : guitar, harmonica, lute, mandolin, vocals (1967–1973, and as a special guest at some shows 2008–2010)
Jim Fielder : bass, guitar, backing vocals (1967–1974)
Bobby Colomby : drums, percussion, backing vocals (1967–1977)
David Clayton-Thomas : vocals, guitar (1968–1972, 1974–1981, 1984–2004)
Lew Soloff : trumpet, flugelhorn (1968–1974)
Chuck Winfield : trumpet, flugelhorn, backing vocals (1968–1973)
Jerry Hyman : trombones, recorder (1968–1970)
Dave Bargeron : trombone, tuba, horns, bass, backing vocals (1970–1978)
Bobby Doyle : vocals, piano (1972)
Joe Henderson : tenor sax (1972)
Lou Marini Jr. : tenor & soprano sax, flute (1972–1974)
Larry Willis : keyboards (1972–1978)
Georg Wadenius : guitar, vocals (1972–1975)
Jerry Fisher : vocals (1972–1974)
Tom Malone : trombone, trumpet, flugelhorn, alto sax, bass (1973)
John Madrid: trumpet, flugelhorn (1973-1974)
Jerry LaCroix : vocals, alto sax, flute, harmonica (1974)
Ron McClure : bass (1974–1975, 1976)
Tony Klatka : trumpet, horns (1974–1978)
Bill Tillman : alto sax, flute, clarinet, backing vocals (1974–1977)
Luther Kent : vocals (1974)
Joe Giorgianni : trumpet, flugelhorn (1974–1975)
Jaco Pastorius : bass (1975–1976)
Steve Khan : guitar (1975)
Mike Stern : guitar (1975–1977)
Keith Jones : bass (1976)
Danny Trifan : bass (1976–1977)
Forrest Buchtell : trumpet (1975–1977)
Don Alias : percussion (1975–1976)
Roy McCurdy : drums (1976–1977)
Jeff Richman : guitar (1976 fill in for Stern)
Randy Bernsen : guitar (1977-1978)
Barry Finnerty : guitar (1977)
Neil Stubenhaus : bass (1977–1978)
Gregory Herbert : saxophone (1977–1978)
Michael Lawrence : trumpet (1977)
Chris Albert : trumpet (1977–1978)
Bobby Economou : drums (1977–1978, 1979–1981, 1994–1995)
Kenny Marco : guitar (1979)
David Piltch : bass (1979–1980)
Joe Sealy : keyboards (1979)
Bruce Cassidy : trumpet, flugelhorn (1979–1980)
Earl Seymour : sax, flute (1979–1981)
Steve Kennedy : sax, flute (1979)
Sally Chappis : drums (1979)
Harvey Kogan : sax, flute (1979)
Jack Scarangella : drums (1979)
Vernon Dorge : sax, flute, vuvuzela (1979–1981)
Robert Piltch : guitar (1979–1980)
Richard Martinez : keyboards (1979–1980)
Wayne Pedzwiatr : bass (1980–1981)
Peter Harris : guitar (1980–1981)
Lou Pomanti : keyboards (1980–1981)
Mic Gillette : trumpet (1980–1981)
James Kidwell : guitar (1984-1985)
Jeff Andrews : bass (1984-1985)
Taras Kovayl : keyboards (1984-1985)
Tim Ouimette : trumpet, horns (1984-1985)
Mario Cruz : sax, flute (1984-1985)
Ricky Sebastian : drums (1984-1985)
Steve Guttman : trumpet (1985–2005)
Dave Gellis : guitar (1985–1990, 1996, fill in - 1998, 2005– )
Ray Peterson : bass (1985–1986)
Scott Kreitzer : sax, flute (1985–1986)
Teddy Mulet : trombone (1985–1986), trumpet (2005– )
Barry Danielian : trumpet (1985–1986)
Richard Sussman : keyboards (1985–1987)
Randy Andos : trombone (1986)
Tom Timko : sax, flute (1986–1987, 1995, 1998–2001, 2005–2008, 2009–2010)
Tom DeFaria : drums (1985–1986)
John Conte : bass (1986–1987)
Steve Conte : guitar (fill in - 1986)
Jeff Gellis : bass (1987–1990)
Dave Panichi : trombone (1987–1988, 1997–1998)
Glenn McClelland : keyboards (1987–1993, 1998, 2005–)
David Riekenberg : sax, flute (1987–1990, 1995–1998)
Jerry Sokolov : trumpet (1987–1994)
Graham Hawthorne : drums (1987–1988, 1989–1991)
Van Romaine : drums (1988–1989)
Neil Capolongo : drums (1991–1993)
Peter Abbott : drums (fill in - early 1990s)
Charley Gordon : trombone (1987–1994, 2001)
Wayne Schuster : sax, flute (1990–1991)
Larry DeBari : guitar, vocals (1990–1997)
Gary Foote : bass (1990–1994, 1996–2004, 2005– )
Jack Bashcow : sax, flute (1992)
Tim Ries : sax, flute (1992–1993, 1993–1995)
Charlie Cole : sax, flute (1993)
Matt King : keyboards (1994–1998)
Mike Mancini : keyboards (fill in - '80s/'90s)
Franck Amsallem : keyboards (fill in - mid '90s)
Henry Hey : keyboards (fill in - mid '90s)
Ted Kooshian : keyboards (fill in - mid '90s)
Cliff Korman: keyboards (fill in - mid '90s)
Mike DuClos : bass (1994–1996)
James "Hambone" Hamlin : bass (fill in - 1995)
Jonathan Peretz : drums (1995–1997)
Craig Johnson : trumpet (1994–1998)
Matt Milmerstadt : drums (1995, 1998)
Tom Guarna : guitar (1997–1998)
Jon Owens : trumpet (1998–2000)
Charles Pillow : sax, flute (fill in - 1998)
Brian Delaney : drums (1997-1998, 2001)
Dave Stahl : trumpet (fill in - 1995–1999)
Winston Byrd : trumpet (fill in - 1998)
Dave Pietro : sax, flute (fill in - 1998)
Dale Kirkland : trombone (1995–1996, 1998, 1999–2001, 2002–2006)
Pat Hallaran : trombone (1998–1999)
James Fox : guitar (1998–2000)
Dan Zank : keyboards (1998–2000)
Zach Danziger : drums (1998–2001)
Joe Mosello : trumpet (2000–2002)
Gil Parris : guitar (2000)
Gregg Sullivan : guitar (2000–2004)
Phil Magallanes : keyboards (2000–2001)
Andrea Valentini : drums (2001– )
Darcy Hepner : sax, flute (1999 fill in, 2001–2004)
John Samorian : keyboards (2001–2003)
Nick Marchione : trumpet (2002–2004)
Eric Cortright : keyboards (2003–2004)
Leo Huppert : bass (2004)
Steve Jankowski : trumpet (2005– )
Rob Paparozzi : vocals, harmonica (2005–2011)
Scottie Wallace: vocals (alternating with Rob P. - 2005-2006)
Thomas Conner : vocals (fill in - 2006 & 2007, 2012- )
Tommy Mitchell : vocals (Asian tour 2007)
Jens Wendelboe : trombone (2006– )
Chris Tedesco : trumpet (fill in for Mulet - 2006–2007)
Brian Steel : trumpet (fill in for Mulet - 2008)
Bill Churchville : sax (fill in for Timko - 2008)
Ken Gioffre : sax (2010- )
Jon Pruitt : keyboards (fill in for McClelland - 2010)
Ralph Bowen : sax (fill in for Gioffre - 2011)
Dave Anderson : bass (fill in for Foote - 2011)
Jason Paige : vocals (2011-2012)
Bernard Purdie : drums (fill-in for Valentini - Summer 2011)

(Roster provided by Jim Mullen)

Current roster

Jason Paige : vocals
Dave Gellis : guitar
Glenn McClelland : keyboards
Gary Foote : bass
Andrea Valentini : drums
Teddy Mulet : trumpet
Steve Jankowski : trumpet
Jens Wendelboe : trombone
Ken Gioffre : saxophone

If you haven't played with BS&T, you haven't played! Rather like SMW or WEE, actually.

For a continuous 53 number play loop:

&feature=list_related&playnext=1&list=AL94UKMTqg-9BuDK0wXiZP3AiPO19upJod

EVIDENTLY SOMEBODY SPIKED THIS PLAYLIST, SO PLEASE POST YOUR FAVORITES IN THE THREAD....