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05:17 pm
[Link] |
Is it necessary for financial instruments to be so complicated and opaque?
United Nations expert on international monetary reform discussing the reasons for the complexity of financial instruments and some of the disadvantages:
More complex = more profit
Interesting to me because I spent 2 and a half years of my life working to represent overly complicated financial instruments on computer systems.
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03:27 pm
[Link] |
Manufacturing Consent
This exposé on the internationally approved elections in Honduras, seen by many within the country as a referendum on the recent military coup links in with some thoughts I've had over the past few years with regards to:
- The democratic double standard in the western media and institutions (See Noam Chomsky's Manufacturing Consent)
- Elections where a choice of parties/candidates representing the same forces leaves the voter with no choice at all
- The ease with which elections can be rigged using electronic voting systems
Honduran election exposed
Sort of undermines the 'bringing democracy' excuse for going to war our governments are always using when 'the international community' doesn't bother to even monitor the elections before declaring them valid and peaceful.
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04:49 pm
[Link] |
=(
Torture in Uzbekistan
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06:34 pm
[Link] |
x paosted
I am going to be in Edinburgh from Friday evening for those that don't know. Chances are high that I will be going to Kate's birthday at rev that evening =)
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08:48 pm
[Link] |
OMG h4x ftw!
Insert these two sentences at the end of your mails and gmail removes the ads for the recipient.
I enjoy the massacre of ads. This sentence will slaughter ads without a messy bloodbath.
Works for me anyway =)
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11:37 pm
[Link] |
Police Agent Provocateurs
In case someone didn't hear about these:
Guardian story about journalists witnessing a police agent provocateur at the London G20 protest
Canadian news story about a group of police agent provocateurs at a Security and Prosperity Partnership protest (video)
High res image (look at boot soles)
George Galloway talking about a journalist's account of an agent provocateur (couldn't find the article itself)
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03:46 pm
[Link] |
Caption?
( Read more... )
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03:05 pm
[Link] | ( What the hell is this stuff btw? )
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09:54 pm
[Link] |
The Power of Nightmares
Has anyone else seen this BBC documentary series about Al Qaida and the Neoconservatives?
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=2798679275960015727
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=4602171665328041876
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=2081592330319789254
Might be worth looking at if all you can think of watching is Family Guy episodes or porn with a cool soundtrack....
*cough* Aythan *cough*
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09:11 pm
[Link] |
2 months left
I somehow managed to get a cold in this ridiculously hot summer we are having (not helped by the fact that sunlight lasts for more than 18 hours here)
However: I am coming back to live in Edinburgh in 2 months! (so I will thankfully be avoiding the coming days with 6 hours of sun this time)
Out of interest: does anyone else follow Jim Rogers, Peter Schiff or Max Keiser?
Stuff that they say about economics and investing seems to be fairly common sense and rest on things which are fundamental anyway (although I tend to take Mr Keiser's emotive rantings with a pinch of salt)
I've also recently read a book called 'The Grand Chessboard' written by Zbigniew Brzezinski (former US National Security Advisor) in 1997, where he talks about the need for the US to gain influence in all the 'stan' countries in Central Asia, like Afghanistan, but especially the newly independent ones like Uzbekistan. I think I still need to digest that a bit though.
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11:46 pm
[Link] |
Uncharacteristically uncontroversial
Reductio ad absurdum one of my favourite forms of argument.
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08:26 pm
[Link] |
Draw an MS Paint of what you wanted to be when you were six years old compared to what you are now
( I tag Alice, Eva, Guy, Geth, Leanne and Chazpants )
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12:05 pm
[Link] |
Indefinite Detention Without Trial
IT'S A TRAP
Do I get to shout 'Wake up sheeple!' at the top of my lungs yet?
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04:06 pm
[Link] |
Random words about dialect
I just worked something out that had been puzzling me for some time. Thanks Wikipedia!
I've shown myself to be quite easy to influence in terms of accent for pretty much my whole life - I have a memory from when I was tiiiiny of some kids in the playground laughing at my pronunciation of 'bug' ('oh' instead of 'uh') which I had learned up from my mother (who grew up in Cheshire).
Later on when I had been living in Edinburgh for a few years, I started to sound a bit more scottish and northern english because of the 'new' dialects I was interacting with. This fact was reported by my southern relations and friends without fail, but I also had another rather odd set of comments about me sounding like a devonshire farmer, which collectively left me nonplussed due to my lack of acquaintances from the south west (with strong accents anyway).
Anyway, from I read today, what could be the answer is simply that I moved from a non-rhotic region to a rhotic region, was influenced by the 'r's, but retained enough of my original accent to sound generally southern therefore placing me in the southwest to some ears.
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10:26 pm
[Link] |
Palestine Israel conflict
( From a conversation I had with a pro Israel colleague about Israel Palestine posted here because I love recalling pwning people in arguments )
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10:09 am
[Link] | You may have heard about the verdict against Sweden's Pirate Bay. There seems to have been a bit of a reaction to it (people are saying it is incompatible with Sweden's constitution) and some of my Norwegian friends were asking me to join in a ddos attack on the IFPI website (my particular version of it had a suggestion to make the message text "NEVER GONNA GIVE YOU UP").
I also heard on the radio this morning that Sweden's "Piratpartiet" (Pirate Party) had swelled in rank to more than 30,000 (basically more than doubling overnight) and that the Norway's own pirate party was fast closing on the 5000 signatures needed to become a recognised political entity here.
My personal view is that the injustices of this verdict will probably somehow stick or at least manage to make life difficult for the founders of Pirate Bay for some time and in the end the commotion will probably die down. I would also predict that new ways of distributing music legally for example Spotify (and, I hate to say it, i tunes, for different reasons) will probably both decimate the ranks of the pirates and cut away a lot of the fat from the music industry dinosaurs.
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04:30 pm
[Link] |
American Left Finds out Obama Worse than Bush for Privacy
O SHI...
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01:13 am
[Link] | Is there literally no limit to how retarded PETA gets?
This one gets a general *facepalm* from me. Don't watch the video, it's stupid.
< completely unrelated >
The SEO Rapper
Loooool! (These are actually really good tips too)
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01:39 am
[Link] |
House of cards
Can anyone show me how what the central banks are doing is not a house of cards?
I haven't been following the mainstream news apart from glancing at the financial newspapers that are left in the office - it's funny how this guy that owns a shipping firm here is always calling people 'thieves and traitors' lately haha. Any insight is appreciated.
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12:17 pm
[Link] |
contagious cross-web-platform memeage
Leave one memory that you and I had together. It doesn't matter if you knew me a little or a lot, anything you remember. Don't send a message, leave a comment on here. Next, re-post this and see how many people leave a memory about you. It's actually pretty funny to see the responses...
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cr4k's journal