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Category Archives: serious stuff

Now, see, Dominion? Not that big a deal.

Plastic takes thousands of years to decompose — but 16-year-old science fair contestant Daniel Burd made it happen in just three months.

Iceland, not so much like Newfoundland

Wall Street on the Tundra | Vanity Fair Since its fishing policy transformed Iceland, the place has become, in effect, a machine for turning cod into Ph.D.’s. But this, of course, creates a new problem: people with Ph.D.’s don’t want to fish for a living. They need something else to do. […] Enter investment banking.

Blackstrap Hawco

Only occasionally do i feel moved to review something here.  Well, “moved” would be the wrong word, because sometimes i do it out of whimsy more than admiration, and ‘here’ might not refer to the current incarnation of this blog.  Anyways, after finishing Blackstrap Hawco i find myself wanting to say something. i always imagined […]

i know i sure bought more magazines before getting on the interwebs…

Welcome, Wired.  We call this land “Internet” | Boing Boing Gadgets Since then, Wired.com’s grown to 11 million monthly visitors: its blogs are among the best in their fields and its tech news reportage is among the finest, online or off […].  The sheer size of that readership speaks volumes: the Times says the magazine […]

Copper is scary

A ‘Copper Standard’ for the world’s currency system? “China has woken up. The West is a black hole with all this money being printed. The Chinese are buying raw materials because it is a much better way to use their $1.9 trillion of reserves. They get ten times the impact, and can cover their infrastructure […]

J.G. Ballard 1930-2009

But technology in terms of video-tape machines and so on may make it possible to have a continuous alternative to direct experience, and I mean any alternative. You can have this played back in a slow motion, or do you want it in infra-red, or do you want it this or that. Take your pick, […]

Dun-dun-duhhhhh!

America’s economic and political system came within hours of collapsing in September 2008 On Thursday, at about 11 o’clock in the morning, the Federal Reserve noticed a tremendous draw down of money market accounts in the United States to a tune of $550 billion being drawn out in a matter of an hour or two.

This gonna happen again, i wonder?

THE BUSINESS PLOT TO OVERTHROW ROOSEVELT In the summer of 1933, shortly after Roosevelt’s “First 100 Days,” America’s richest businessmen were in a panic. It was clear that Roosevelt intended to conduct a massive redistribution of wealth from the rich to the poor. Roosevelt had to be stopped at all costs. The answer was a […]

This guy is not PM material

“My difficulty in taking Ukraine seriously goes deeper than just my cosmopolitan suspicion of nationalists everywhere. Somewhere inside I’m also what Ukrainians would call a great Russian and there is just a trace of old Russian disdain for these little Russians. ” “From my childhood, I remember expatriate Ukrainians nationalists demonstrating in the snow outside […]

“Pirates”

Johann Hari: You are being lied to about pirates – The Independent Ahmedou Ould-Abdallah, the UN envoy to Somalia, tells me: “Somebody is dumping nuclear material here. There is also lead, and heavy metals such as cadmium and mercury – you name it.” Much of it can be traced back to European hospitals and factories, […]