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December 3, 2009
“Uhh,” he stuttered, “wait. Are you delivering… coal? To… uhh, us?”
“Well, yeah! Twenty-eight thousand tons of the good ol’ black gold!” The workman sarcastically furrowed his brow adding, “I mean, we did get the right address, har har. This is Æxecor? And this is Pier 53? And you are Brad, the fella who ordered it, right?”
It was that moment that Brad’s palm almost immediately made contact with his forehead. He realized that something must have really gone awry: instead of virtually trading 28,000 tons of coal, Brad had somehow ended up with 28,000 tons of real coal.
posted by empath at 9:07 PM PST - 59 comments
Secrecy Jurisdictions: Mapping the Faultlines highlights research on 'the jurisdictions and mechanisms used to facilitate illicit financial flows worldwide, including especially flows from developing countries. Those flows, from developing countries alone, are estimated at $850 billion - US$1 trillion per year. At the core of this project is the
biggest survey of tax havens, or secrecy jurisdictions as we prefer to call them, that has probably ever been undertaken.' A project of the
Tax Justice Network.
posted by Abiezer at 3:58 PM PST - 5 comments
Tokyo Blues is a photography book about taking a closer look at the ordinary, in this case an omnipresent blue construction tarp which shows up just about everywhere in Tokyo. This is the first book in an apparently planned series by
Do Projects. The book is available for sale or as a
free PDF under the CC license.
posted by malphigian at 2:16 PM PST - 16 comments
Optimizing Your Brain at Work is a pretty fascinating talk at Google by David Rock about managing your brain's internal states and attention, as well as threat responses with the goal of optimizing information processing. It is a Youtube link, and fairly long (~55min). He also mentions
The Neuroscience of Mindfulness during the talk, so here is a convenient link to that.
posted by Vulpyne at 11:26 AM PST - 28 comments
8 Million Reasons for Real Surveillance Oversight. "Sprint Nextel provided law enforcement agencies with its customers' (GPS) location information over 8 million times between September 2008 and October 2009. This massive disclosure of sensitive customer information was made possible due to the roll-out by Sprint of a new, special web portal for law enforcement officers."
posted by chunking express at 8:17 AM PST - 41 comments
Box 5-1438: Report of a structure fire at 266 Franklin St. 10 years ago this evening in Worcester, MA, the
Worcester Cold Storage and Warehouse Fire started when two people living in the abandoned building,
Julie Barnes and Thomas Levesque, knocked over a candle during an argument and then fled. Upon arrival at the
quickly growing fire, reports were received about two people living in the building, and firefighters
entered the building to rescue them. During the
primary search, Rescue 1 firefighters
Paul Brotherton and
Jeremiah Lucey were the first to report trouble. They were lost on the 4th floor and running out of air. Soon after, a four man rescue crew of
Lt. Thomas Spencer (Ladder 2), firefighter
Timothy Jackson (Ladder 2),
Lt. James Lyons (Engine 3), and firefighter
Joseph McGuirk (Engine 3) reports that they have also become disoriented while searching the 5th floor. All six men died
that night, they are known as the
Worcester Six or
W6.
[more inside]
posted by rollbiz at 6:37 AM PST - 27 comments
"In just a few days, a verdict is expected in the trial of Amanda Knox, the 22-year-old Seattle exchange student on trial in Italy for the throat-slashing murder of her British roommate two years ago. ... The trial in the Umbrian college town of Perugia has dragged on just short of a year. As this week’s closing arguments showed once again, the case has very little to do with actual evidence and much to do with the ancient Italian code of saving face. ... What century is this? Didn’t Joan of Arc, the Inquisition and our own American Salem witch trials teach civilized nations a thing or two about contrived sexual hysteria with a devil twist?" -
Timothy Egan, New York Times. [previously] [more inside]
posted by billysumday at 6:31 AM PST - 118 comments
