Tracking, Cheating and Lying

International Business Times - Is Your Cable Box Spying On You? Behavior-Detecting Devices From Verizon, Microsoft And Others Worry Privacy Advocates. I have written about this many times and this is just a continuation of the same. Our technology is all being based around recognizing you personally through your biometrics. Of course it should bother us; but, people continue to buy it.

CNN Money - New $444 million hockey arena is still a go in Detroit. This is just so blatant and in your face. Detroit is in bankruptcy claiming that they cannot pay the bond holders or their employees; but, they can fund a hockey stadium with tax money. Now, they do claim it will create 8,000 "new" construction jobs; but, that is a lie. Construction projects rarely create new jobs and are usually done by companies that already have the people. If you paid attention to all the "stimulus" money, this should be obvious.

So what is it that Detroit is really getting out of this? Well, money for the developer and his friends. Here is an alternative, what if they created real construction jobs for people who lived in the city of Detroit, repairing their roads and infrastructure. Those would be jobs for people who stayed there.

Detroit Free Press - Michigan AG to defend public pensions, state constitution in Detroit bankruptcy filing. The state of Michigan's constitution basically says that municipalities have to meet their obligations including pension promises. Pretty simple, if you promise to pay a person working for the government a pension, you cannot change your mind later. The person who was appointed as the cities "Emergency Manager" doesn't want to; but, he does support $450 million to build a sports arena for a team that is already there, is profitable and isn't seeking to leave. In the end, life is a matter of priorities isn't it.

Click on Detroit - Detroit pension leaders indicted on bribery conspiracy charges. Put the three articles together and you get a clearer picture of what is really going on in Detroit.

Yahoo - Wired - Play This Game, Get That Job. This guy created a video game to measure one's job strengths. You used to get hired for knowing how to do a job and having experience at it.

Politico - Big Marijuana lobby fights legalization efforts. I find this article interesting, not because of the subject matter as much as the approach that is being taken. Here is a quote from the article, "Medical marijuana is a billion-dollar industry — legal in 18 states, including California, Nevada, Oregon and Maine — and like any entrenched business, it’s fighting to keep what it has and shut out competitors."

I have been with a couple of people who died while undergoing chemotherapy. They were given morphine and denied marijuana. One would never have used it anyways and actually refused the morphine too, that was my father. I used to just think marijuana laws were stupid; but, after dealing with my father I am now convinced it should be legalized. Now that we have that out of the way, lets look at how this country works. Marijuana is legal in Maine; but, the people who sell it don't want it fully legalized because they will lose their monopoly on selling it. "Medical Marijuana" is legal in California too and all you have to do is pick up the local alternative newspaper to see how it is advertised and it is pretty clear that it is not about medical needs. You pay $50 or $100 or whatever to some "doctor" and he asks you if you ever have stress or whatever and then you can legally buy marijuana. I read once that in San Francisco, marijuana shops outnumbered restaurants. It seems to be the most popular medicine in the state.

Fox News - Inside Science News Service - Inception? Scientists produce false memories in mice. This article includes both bad science and bad reporting. Here is a quote from the article:

"Last year, Tonegawa and his team published a study in Nature showing how false memories could be implanted in mice. They first put mice in a chamber -- the scientists called it the Red Room -- and let the animals roam around exploring so they could build up a contextual memory of it.

After a while, they gave the mice mild electric shocks to their feet and a blue light flashed in their brains delivered by a fiber-optic cable, implanting the memory that the Red Room was a dangerous place."

Did these scientists never hear of Pavlov? The mice were not reacting to the room, they were reacting to the fact that a light was flashed every time they were electrocuted. The message they want you to get is that you cannot trust people and their beliefs. A great excuse for filming and monitoring everything we do, isn't it.

Yahoo - Reuters - Reading the runes in Washington and Frankfurt. Long story short, "analysts" believe that the Federal Reserve will start tapering on buying bonds in September. I find the timing interesting as Bernanke is about to retire. That makes it the perfect time for things to come apart because you cannot blame his replacement and he will be gone. That is how things are done in DC. Remember Bush passed the TARP bill just as he was leaving too.

The Guardian - Edward Snowden's not the story. The fate of the internet is. For those who don't know, Snowden was an NSA contractor who came out and gave documents showing that the government records everything on the internet. The article says that we would not know this if not for Snowden and that is nonsense. I have been writing about it for over six years and linking to documents that are public and prove it. The solution that the author goes on about is how individual countries will control the internet within their own nations. Hmmmm, what will that look like. I know, it will look like internal censorship and it will not do one thing to prevent us from data mining those countries.

Reuters - Nicosia - Cyprus, lenders set Bank of Cyprus bail-in at 47.5 pct, sources say. This is really just sort of a follow up and information for people that may be new to the site. A "bail out" is when the government gives the banks money because they are insolvent, like happened in the United States. The cost is bore by the tax payers and eventually, hopefully, the banks pay it back by making new risky investments. A "Bail in" is when the depositors of the bank get stock in exchange for the deposits that they lost. Sort of a forced stock sale. The next wave will be "bail ins" and England, the EU and the United States have all passed legislation which conforms to the IMF plan to have "bail ins" when the large systematically important banks fail. As between the two choices, you are supposed to prefer a bail in.

Yahoo - AP - Exclusive: 4 in 5 in US face near-poverty, no work. Perhaps we should follow Detroit's lead and just start building sports arenas from one end of the country to the other, imagine all the jobs we can create.