PERSECUTION OF THE ULTRA-RICH?

I really cannot quite believe this article: it is just too bombastically amazing.
While the machinery of megabank automated theft continues, this rich guy is complaining about paying taxes - you know, those things that pay for roads, security, defense, basic welfare (well, maybe). Funnily enough, he seems to be making the case FOR persecution of the ultra-rich by his stupid statements.

I think there are definite problems with American society and western society in general  - but I see most of those problems as the result of too many greedy immoral people getting extrememly rich by what can only be described as criminal activities such as Ponzi schemes or making extermely addicitive food simulants that turn addicts into balloons.

But hey, people are supposed to just stop eating it, right? Just like they can all go out and get jobs tomorrow and stop collecting welfare right?
The trouble is, it really is not that that easy and never was. 
   Even in you are not a human blimp or crazy or a drug addled loony it is still a lot of work and a long term gamble just to get a job, let alone one worth keeping -  because the jobs are disappearing at a stready rate, being replaced by machines and cheap foreign labour. 


Much of this criminal profiteering works because the corporate machinery has made use of the weaknesses and character traits of  the human customers and current human societies. 
So successful are they that now 99 percent of America is being drained by these vampiric monsters - and it does not look like anyone, even the US President himself, can do anythng to stop the vampires.

Read it here and be amazed.

Faraday The Blob

Here is the link to one weird and very funny comic.
This is Faraday:

Try these three, my favourites:
Your New Favourite Bland
Voodoo Economics
 . . and what is probably the ultimate Faraday comic:
A Right Beating for the Wrong Guy

Something to brighten a stinkin' hot day.

Minus One Twelfth? You must be joking!

Have a look at the video on this page: in it mathematicians claim that the sum of 1+2+ 3+4+5+6+7+8+9........  is minus one twelfth.

I don't care who the heck these people are: its crap.

Look at their "proof" : it involves serial sums of numbers that are added in funny ways.  This does not prove anything to me, what's worse, the guy at 3:27 moves one serial sum to offset it from the other with no excuse at all and then proceeds to sum them vertically. This is garbage.
Anyone can fiddle with numbers until you get funny stuff like this but it does not make it so. 

I am not a mathematician and this sort  of crud is the reason why.
Groan complete.

SCAM ALERT !

I just got scammed - well, they tried anyway.  Here is the page that appeared in my browser.

 Yes, it looks very official, but there is one serious problem with it:  The AFP do NOT do this.
Look closely : "criminal's procedure" is not good english.
Of course, there is more phoniness to be seen too: "All your files are encrypted",  "your browser has been blocked" - well clearly it has not or I ould not be able to post this !

Whoever it is should be getting the rewards of their work soon enough. I have sent all the details to Scamwatch already.  I'll enjoy  thinking about their suffering and misery when the real AFP turns up to give them a serve.

Instruments . .

These come from "Futility Closet", an interesting blog I just found via BoingBoing.

This is not unique, of course. I realised a while back that my own nom-de-net had been "borrowed" from another person . . . . . but I have never recieved any communcation from said person, so I assume that it does not matter.

This just might be the source of the "King Kong" story . . . . .
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Music for today: Art Of Noise
I bought some of their music on the iTunes Store but hte record I really wanted "In Visible Silence" does not appear there.  What is really strange though is that some of the songs although named the same are completely different, specifically "Instruments of darkness", which includes a chunk of spoken word from a South African Politician in the version I remember.  eventually I got the orogianl recording n a vid and stripped the soundtrack off it to get the songs  . . . . must be some political footsie going on.

Finally,  Relax.
Some songs just stick in your head, and today I honour what to me is the sexiest song ever: RELAX by Frankie Goes To Hollyood. It still sounds good to me today.

I don't even need to give you a link, you can already hear it in your mind, right?
Happy 2014 Frankie wherever you are.

What is this?

Recently I went to the Mini Maker Faire at The Powerhouse Museum which was good although mini, but afterward as I was leaving I saw this:

No, this is not trickery. What IS this huge overhang being built onto the UTS building?
The mystery is only increases when you se that the "roof" is being built about eight stories up.
I am still amazed by this.

DATA IS STILL DISAPPPEARING

Here is the link to a page where someone has pointed out that scientific data is disappearing . .

Even today when we have an always-on internet, truly huge storage spaces even in our own home PCs never mind "cloud" services, scientific data is disappearing to the point where "for the papers that were written more than 20 years ago, there was a 90 per cent chance that no data was available."

This is SERIOUS crap.
THIS is the kind of thing that will come back to bite us in our collective a**es in future.  This means we are losing scientific information, and not just that : the most important part of all the information of science is the raw data itself.  The bit that's being dropped.