I would like to be on holiday.

The British Museum and BBC Radio 4 are putting on an interesting world history by looking at the objects we humans have created. A podcast is available and as of today, the series is on object 6.

So far the objects have been:

1. Mummy of Hornedjitef
2. Olduvai Stone Chopping Tool
3. Olduvai Handaxe
4. Swimming Reindeer
5. Clovis Spear Point
6. Bird-shaped Pestle

I actually had time for a latte and delicious filled roll at my favourite cafe this afternoon. And caught up with email. And am just installing a new back up to a Western Digital 1 TB outboard HD. It's plugged into the router so all the computers in the house can access it. Theoretically I can also use it to download to various mobile devices from wherever I am. My silent business partner keeps all his movies on the 1TB and then can download them to wherever he is. Except I am never that bored ;-) (But then again he's a realtor)

Combined with Dazzboard, things are going to get interesting. Dazzboard was coded by a Finnish friend of mine and released at Las Vegas CES recently. It's a simple way to share files across multiple devices.

You can't be me, I'm taken

Guardian: Banks are pulling out of the carbon-offsetting market after Copenhagen failed

Banks and investors are pulling out of the carbon market after the failure to make progress at Copenhagen on reaching new emissions targets after 2012.

Carbon financiers have already begun leaving banks in London because of the lack of activity and the drop-off in investment demand. The Guardian has been told that backers have this month pulled out of a large planned clean-energy project in the developing world because of the expected fall in emissions credits after 2012.

Anthony Hobley, partner and global head of climate change and carbon finance at law firm Norton Rose, said: "People will gradually start to leave carbon desks, we are beginning to see that already. We are seeing a freeze in banks' recruitment plans for the carbon market. It's not clear at what point this will turn into a cull or a rout."

NYT: 3 Coordinated Bomb Attacks Hit Hotels in Baghdad

The three bombs exploded roughly 10 minutes apart starting about 3:30 p.m. . The three hotels hit were the Ishtar Sheraton, followed by the Babylon and the Hamra. The blasts shook the city and shattered windows for miles around. Iraqis in surrounding areas took to the streets, wailing at the clouds of smoke...

The bomb left a crater roughly 12 feet wide and 6 feet deep about 50 feet from the Hamra. It reduced the house in front of the hotel to rubble, from which rescue workers pulled bodies. A woman who gave her name as Um Riyadh emerged from the ruined hulk of a house across the street, blood on her head and face.

"We lost the house," she said, crying. "We lost everything. Why should I stay in Iraq? I'm going to leave. There's no other solution."

WASHINGTON, USA (Reuters) -- A 5.1 magnitude earthquake struck off the Caribbean island of Guadeloupe on Sunday at a depth of 42.2 miles (67.9 km), the US Geological Survey reported.

"Beware of the man who does not talk, and the dog that does not bark." Cheyenne

On Saturday, January 30, more than 20 of Montserrat's best-known musicians are coming together to raise funds for Haiti. The Montserrat Cultural Centre will be the venue for the family day and evening of entertainment from 3:00 pm until midnight, with the proceeds going to aid the victims this month's devastating earthquake in Haiti. "The cultural centre was actually built from the generosity of musicians and other benefactors and it is great that it can now be used to help others," said Peter Filleul of the organising committee.

My cousin, from neighboring St. John, US Virgin Islands is going to Haiti to help.  I need to phone him for more information about his trip...

"Beware of the man who does not talk, and the dog that does not bark." Cheyenne

Wal-Mart Announces Massive Rollback On Employee Wages

BENTONVILLE, AR--Wal-Mart, the world's largest discount retailer, announced its biggest-ever rollback Monday, with employee pay cuts of up to 35 percent.

"Just in time for the holiday shopping season, we're rolling back the hourly wages of workers in every department--housewares, automotive, health and beauty, and so many more!" Wal-Mart president and CEO H. Lee Scott Jr. announced at a press conference. "From Baton Rouge to Boise, we're continuing our tradition of low, low prices and using our muscle to create unbelievable savings!"

"For us!" Scott added.

Any idiot can face a crisis - it's day to day living that wears you out.

Here's a new angle on third-party, mass movement, grassroots-netroots "self-organization," inchoate Tea Bag/Tea Ball populism, and American ingenuity. Or mid-term astroturf?

GOOOH is NOT just another political party. It is a system that will allow you and your neighbors to choose, among yourselves, the person who can best represent your district.

GOOOH is an evolving system and your input is requested. The questions are changing based on the feedback of members just like you. Participate in the forums, take the survey, and send us your thoughts. This is YOUR system. We will perfect it with your input.

Read more...

Diversity is the key to economic and political evolution.

The Madman upstairs speaks Swedish in this, but I think you'll get the point.

You can't be me, I'm taken

Buying mortgage-linked assets from banks was better "from a financial-stability perspective" than other plans to shield AIG from losses on contracts guaranteeing the bonds, Margaret McConnell, then a Federal Reserve Bank of New York vice president, wrote in an e-mail to Geithner on Oct. 22, 2008. Geithner, now Treasury secretary, led the New York Fed at the time of AIG's rescue and McConnell's e-mail.

The special inspector general of Treasury's Troubled Asset Relief Program wrote in a 2009 report that Geithner said the New York Fed didn't weigh the financial status of banks, including Goldman Sachs Group Inc., when deciding to fully reimburse them for $62.1 billion of devalued assets. U.S. Representative Darrell Issa, the ranking member of the House oversight panel that called Geithner to testify this week, has described the rescue of New York-based AIG as a "backdoor bailout" of banks.

The New York Fed weighed two other options for stanching losses tied to AIG's credit-default swaps in the weeks after the September 2008 rescue, the inspector general, Neil Barofsky, said in the Nov. 17, 2009, report. One included asking counterparties to cancel their swaps and selling the underlying assets for an investment in a vehicle that would assume ownership of the securities. Another was for a Fed-backed vehicle to take over AIG's responsibility of backing the assets.

Read more...

Diversity is the key to economic and political evolution.

Banished, American Ethnic Cleansings

A hundred years ago, in communities across the U.S., white residents forced thousands of black families to flee their homes. Even a century later, these towns remain almost entirely white. BANISHED tells the story of three of these communities and their black descendants, who return to learn their shocking histories.

In Forsyth County, Georgia, where a thousand black residents were expelled, the film explores the question of land fraudulently taken, and follows some descendants in their quest to uncover the real story of their family's land. In Pierce City, Missouri, a man has designed his own creative form of reparation--he wishes to disinter the remains of his great-grandfather, who was buried there before the banishment. And in Harrison, Arkansas, home to the headquarters of the Ku Klux Klan, a white community struggles with their town's legacy of hate.

Any idiot can face a crisis - it's day to day living that wears you out.

it was wind geek central!

In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes

From my father's collection.

"Beware of the man who does not talk, and the dog that does not bark." Cheyenne

Economy is Economic:

Hackney's response to the latest Tory poster campaign on Twitpic

Hackney's response to the latest Tory poster campaign

Any idiot can face a crisis - it's day to day living that wears you out.