In yesterday’s post, I discussed the origins of the Federal Reserve System. In an interview, Jane D’Arista, who served as a staff economist for the Banking and Commerce Committees of the U.S. House of Representatives and as a principal analyst in the international division of the Congressional Budget Office, explains what is wrong with the current Fed system and how it came to be dominated by private banking interests.
I watched most of the Super Bowl game and of course saw the ads. My problem is that although I remember ads, I almost never remember the product that is being advertised. So when the next day people rave about or pan the ads by product name, I have no idea which ones they are talking about unless they describe it. If you are like me, you can see most of the ads here.
I do remember that some of them were weird, some awful, some incomprehensible, and a few rather nice.
As every child learns in their social studies class, there are three branches of the US government, the executive, legislative, and the judiciary. But there is another quasi-government agency that operates behind a veil of secrecy and yet wields enormous influence over the US economy (and thus indirectly the world economy) and deserves to be considered as a fourth branch. This is the Federal Reserve system of the US, commonly referred to as the Fed.
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I have written before about how the US government uses the secrecy of the no-fly list to put people into involuntary exile as a form of punishment and coercion.
Now a UK security official has used it to solve a personal problem, such as freeing himself of the presence of his troublesome wife for three years by secretly inserting her name on the list while she was visiting her relatives overseas. As is the case, airline and immigration officers refused to tell her why she could not travel back to England.
He got caught when he applied for a promotion that required a new security check that unearthed the fact that his wife was on a terrorist watch list.
Apart from his legal troubles, he now also has to face his wife…
Five-time Oscar-winning composer John Barry died recently. He was the man who orchestrated (though did not compose) the famous James Bond theme and also composed the soundtrack for eleven of the Bond films and numerous other acclaimed films.
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Watch this clip from NBC’s Today show where Katie Couric, Bryant Gumbel, and an unidentified person are puzzled about this new thing called the internet.
Apparently NBC has fired the person who unearthed this old clip and uploaded it to YouTube. Why? If it is because they think it is embarrassing to have their news anchors not know what the internet is, that’s absurd. They have nothing to be ashamed of because this took place in early 1994 and their views were typical for that time, which was the early days of the internet, whose origins were around 1989.
Since I worked in universities and national research labs, we used email a long time before the rest of the community although at that time there was a patchwork of communication methods. I remember using Bitnet for email and Telenet for remote access to computers.
The internet really took off with the arrival in 1993 of the first web browser called Mosaic. I remember how in 1993 I had to teach a group of people what the internet was and how it worked and I barely understood it myself. We were all struggling to understand and use it.
We forget how recently this world came into being, so the cluelessness of the NBC team is perfectly understandable.
Last week I attended a conference in San Francisco and over the weekend visited Monterey and went to the aquarium. It is well worth a visit. There were many interesting things to see but what really caught my imagination were the sea dragons and the jellies (watch the videos), they were so delicate and beautiful.
What impressed me, other than the marine exhibits themselves, was that the museum takes its educational mission seriously, devoting quite a bit of attention to educating its visitors about what sea food is harvested in a manner that is sustainable and what we should look out for. Their website offers practical guides on what to buy.
The museum is also outspoken about its concerns about the negative impact of climate change. There was no wishy-washy equivocation. It may be that because the museum is run by a private foundation, it is relatively immune to the pressures that the global warming and evolution deniers have exerted on government institutions like the Smithsonian museums.
… with assistance from all the telephone and internet companies, such as ISPs, search engines, and social networks. The basic message from Christopher Soghoian is: You have no privacy on the web, especially from the government.
The talk is a bit long and gets a bit technical at times but is fascinating and depressing at the same time.
At the end, he reveals which cell-phone carrier is best for privacy and why. (Spoiler alert: it is T-mobile.)
(Thanks to Jonathan)
Since I was traveling last week, this is a bit dated but I found it funny.
| The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c | |||
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They also took on the rebuttal by the loopy Michele Bachmann.
| The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c | |||
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For some reason, as I was watching Bachmann, I was reminded of that campy TV vampirish character Elvira, Mistress of the Dark. Maybe it was that heavy eye shadow.
