The Bishop and the Butterfly: Murder, Politics, and the End of the Jazz Age

Blog Posts

Facebook Jailing & Voting Rights Act................. (I'm afraid of Americans)

By PeraclesPlease on Wed, 07/10/2013 - 5:48am |

Unconcern about all the privacy scandals often wraps around "yeah, but it doesn't really affect you, theoretically these things could happen but in real life..."

I made one of those comments out with a friend on 9/10 2001, something about the wisdom of the American people pulling back from too much hysteria.

So here's Texas jailing a teen for violent-sounding (but fairly obvious joking) Facebook comments - now in his 5th month in jail awaiting trial, bail at $500K, charges up to 8 years in jail. Even if he's found innocent, he's served 5 months for a joke.

How I Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love the Matrix

By PeraclesPlease on Fri, 07/05/2013 - 2:07am |

[copied in from a comment for further discussion re: the NSA]

We can skip the word "evil" and just take examples of what citizens might want to know.

While apparently the post office has been scanning envelopes a long time, the use of OCR means they have a huge searchable database of From, To and Date. The recent improvements in data analytics & Big Data means it's trivial to compile that into categories - especially if you link it to Facebook and collected phone metadata - who your friends are, where you work, where you bank, who you call, what organizations you're involved with. Depending on who's sending you mail, they can figure out if you're having credit problems, health issues, seeing a psychiatrist, getting a divorce.

Overstock's Patrick Byrne gets his revenge

By PeraclesPlease on Tue, 06/04/2013 - 9:33am |

There's been considerable schadenfreude over Patrick Byrne's claims about naked short selling crashing his company Overstock, amongst which includes circular arguments that his company did poorly so he must be a hack, and the gleeful contention by Goldman Sachs et al that naked short selling didn't actually exist (despite massive fails to deliver exceeding outstanding shares). Claims that were echoed by some (one) here.

Sadly for them, Goldman's lawyer accidentally released a ton of info showing not only did it exist, but that Goldman Sachs had excelled at it.

Electric car gets good review

By PeraclesPlease on Sat, 03/23/2013 - 10:25am |

Okay, this isn't a big post, but after some electric car company called an NY Times reporter a liar last month for the road test review, it was nice to see a very positive review of a practical shipping car, the Renault Zoe (no, I don't own stock or work for the company).

Epic Epigenetics

By PeraclesPlease on Sat, 01/26/2013 - 5:04am |

[touched off by article on epi-markers & homosexuality]

I'm excited about progress in science on a number of levels, and figure our understanding of matters will be vastly different in 20-30 years based on evolving tools & theories.

Priming the Black Vision Thing

By PeraclesPlease on Fri, 01/18/2013 - 2:49am |

[response to other threads got too long]

 

You obliquely point out a big issue - people don't have any real ideas for creating mass jobs in the black community, aside from back to government.

In the 50's I believe (via Buckminster Fuller), Brazil was intent on modernizing, with some wanting to emulate the US with its railroads, despite the existence then of airplanes more suitable for Brazil's vast distances and thick jungles.

Twofer - insurance & Wall Street theft

By PeraclesPlease on Sun, 01/06/2013 - 6:37pm |

 

Who woulda guessed - holes in Obamacare permitting double digit health care increases?

Say Goodbye to Hillary 2

By PeraclesPlease on Fri, 01/04/2013 - 6:54am |

Sitting here contemplating the future as I was told I can't predict, and that those premonitions of 2016 are ageist and sexist.

Will Hugo Chavez die before his inauguration 6 days away? Well, he's had an amazing journey, and he's only 58, so it would be wrong of me to predict. Just because he had cancer & 4 major operations in the last 2 years and is now clinging on in a respirator after severe lung infection - well, who knows?

Say Goodbye to Hillary

By PeraclesPlease on Tue, 01/01/2013 - 3:13pm |

It's a thought that occurred to me numerous times, and would seem to be obvious, but Hillary would be 69 by election day 2016.

While Reagan was elected at 69, he was an outlier, and had spent much of his life in casual living, including an age when running from President wasn't so grueling. William Henry Harrison was 2nd at 68, and the rest go from 65 on down. Oh, did I mention Reagan's Alzheimers was covered up at the time? The press isn't so obliging these days (especially not to Democrats)

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