There is a hunt on to find more of, and more about, a certain rare mushroom because of some astounding potential medical benefits.

The Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee has filed suit in DC against the Federal Reserve bank to force them to come up with all their records about gold market manipulations, international gold swaps,etc. They have refused to do so, so far, citing "trade secrets" exemptions under the freedom of information act.

http://www.gata.org/node/8192

And now it is time on sprockets..not for zee danse, but to test your amazing Randi beating psychic powah skills!

Predictions for 2010, open, any subject ya want, from politics to geophysical events to "the market" to your best guess as to the hot unreleased yet new gadget, anything at all, as long as "it" hasn't happened yet, but you think it will.

And if anyone remembers, we will drag this back up next year to see who did well.

I'm done predicted out over the past year, so let's see what ya'all can come up with.

Interesting survey/poll that shows government workers (as a majority percentage) think the economy is getting better, while people in the private sector think (know) it is getting worse. I guess you can maintain a different perspective if you have an almost guaranteed job where the money to pay for it is taken from all your neighbors by official diktat.

I am for "term limits" for all governmental workers. No pensions, ten years in service max, then back to the private sector with all the private sector risks. I think that would do more to help the economy and our political makeup than anything. This includes politicians and day in and day out bureaucrats.

I think anyone who has been paying attention would agree that a lot of the government produced economic indicators have been severely cooked over the past..long time now, to make things look better than what they really are. The subject of this interview has a well respected website called shadowstats.com that recreates the released figures and translates them back closer to reality, to what they should be before enron and **AA accounting took over in the Federal government and so on. Here is a short Q and A with him on what to expect with the economy, about what I have been saying for three years* now, here and before on Technocrat.

*more like decades, but I can't throw a link to that to prove it. I knew we were hosed when they started the Wall Street war on domestic manufacturing, to be replaced with credit/inflation and "services" to..credit. You can only get away with calling an IOU produced wealth for some time, and I think we hit that maximum level a few years ago now. What you see today is spin and damage control efforts, along with the fast rise of the "security for a few fatcats" police state "investment", said investment they take FROM you to benefit THEM.

Oh ya, tangibles still rule. You don't have to be religious at all to grok that "just weights and measures" is a better and more fair idea than the thumb on the scale and the grifter's spiel and promises model that we have now as official economic policy. All those conmen are in the business of selling you *vapor*, giving you the magic beans for the cow "trade", no different from the street corner three card monte hucksters, so never expect them to say or do anything contrary to that model.

You know the "no fly" list? This is the list of "suspected terrorists" who are not allowed to fly, or subjected to extra scrutiny etc. Pretty much anyone on the list (I forget the number but it is in the hundreds of thousands by all reports) is presumed guilty by default, and it is near impossible to get off the list if once accused. It is a punishment, without benefit of a trial, or public accusation until you try to fly. You cannot face your accusers in a court of law, nor be judged by your peers, or even be given the information of why and how and by whom you got on this list, so perhaps you could dispute it. In short, it is an "enemies of the state" list, pretty close to being totally tyrannical, just one step away from them being proactive like they are in some nations with "disappearing" people, with the death squads. I mean, that is *exactly* what comes, sooner or later but it always comes, after they start compiling these "lists". Still in force today during this latest regime rule. To *me* one of the more blatantly unconstitutional and just plain wrong and dangerous things out there now as regards this government.

Now they have a senate bill which will place these unaccused convicted in advance "enemies of the state" on the "no guns" list as well. The "star chamber" military junta enemies of the state list.

Now the bill technically doesn't mention the "no fly" list, but that is exactly what the no fly list is, secretly accused/suspected/annoyed the wrong person/mistaken identity list all inclusive, labeled as terrorists or suspected terrorists, so this is presumably the list they would use for this new act, if it passes and gets signed into law. And again, just like the no flying list, the people who find themselves on it can be denied for any reason, etc, at best, perhaps get a total redacted out document which still won't explain what they are accused of, etc. Just a big fat "no" in other words. No trial, no nothing, just the government says no and you are SOL.

One of the few main reasons I totally reject flying anymore on the commercial airliners, I just slap refuse to countenance that illegal charade. I wouldn't hand them people a penny for a round the world first class flight, nor be subjected to that ridiculous security theater and boot licking and groveling you have to do just to travel. I had wished tens of millions of my fellow citizens had done similar, just boycotted air travel, but it seems it is accepted now, along with that star chamber list, and I think that is a dang crying shame, and ..well,,,shameful.

http://www.thomas.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c111:S.1317:

Savvy investors, stay tuned to the risk of social unrest and make a killing!

That's right, taser stocks, tear gas manufacturers, plastic "detainee" cuffs, and don't forget to go long on black shinola jackboot polish! Security! Can't have any of those uppity homeless out of work street people interfering with the "viewscape" as you get in and out of your limo! Some of them actually smell bad, too, they just won't take a bath, and never clean their clothes! Disgusting wretches. To think, they demand food when they refuse to pay for it! And housing! Well, they had their chance when they refused our more than generous work offers, set at the agreed upon global minimum wage of $2.50 per easy 14 hour day. *More* than generous, we are being robbed blind by these incessant outrageous labor demands and we lose tremendous shareholder value. This is simply unacceptable and our crack risk analysis and intelligence people are warning us of this "unrest". So take advantage of the tip!

  Good thing we have our security forces well prepared to deal with these insurgent terrorists, or should we just say, worthless lazy bums.

Or is it? It is being reported that a repeated claim about Himalayan glaciers rapidly melting from global climate..change, warming,whatever... appears to have been the result of some simple number transpositions, and this melting might be occurring at a much slower rate than first widely reported.

Happened to see my first (in meatspace) Arm chip netbook yesterday at kmart. A delstar for 150 bucks, which doesn't seem that bad at all. Running WinCE, though, not some sort of low budget Linux. Not *quite* the hundred buck computer in a blisterpack, but by this time next year, they'll be here.

Really can't tell if it is just me and my hardware and connection, but Firefox 3.5.5 (ubuntu tweaked version) is just the biggest bucket of suck since..a long time ago, browser-wise. Freeking maddening. Even with no script and ad block plus, I keep getting this unable to actually finally load a page. It gets so far, you can *see* most of the page, then poof, that disappears to be replaced with a generic error page that says:

"The connection to the server was reset while the page was loading."

Ya but the blasted page was ALMOST all the way there, I could SEE the dang thing, ya sunnava...*&^%^^&*!11!!!! Just happened right now with a preview, had to "resend"....

Then if I get some tabs actually loaded to where that stupid *&&^% swirly thing in the tab button stops swirling around, and *dare* to have to allow some javascript to, ya know, actually be activated inside that site, whammo, freeze ville.

    If I look at the command "top", with just half a dozen tabs, no flash running, just a few of them with the main domain whitelisted in noscript so they at least are half way functional, I get a widely fluctuating CPU of between 15% and 100%, with FF right up there using it along with Xorg, they swap who's eating the most, and RAM usage with FF at like almost 300 megs *just sitting there*, doing nothing, like right now,(this is a brand new fresh instance of FF running to get the most conservative usage stats) and it shoots up fast with every new tab, with just one window total open. WTF?

    And at best, two-three times a day have to kill the thing when it freezes, if I forget to just quit and restart it, you can let it sit ten minutes and nothing happens, will not take any input, have to force-kill it. OK, I just watched it through one preview page load here, 39% CPU jump exactly, just to submit a web page form and reload this one tab. And I have scripting turned off here as well, using the slashdot older "low res" version in preferences. Dang scary to even contemplate if I tried to run any Flash pages or allow ads to try and load. Any Flash vids I want to see from yourboobtoob, I download/convert in the background, then watch them. My net connection is around 3-4 times better than dialup at the best, that's it. Not broadband, but not dialup either. (half price of having a landline and a dialup account, that's why I have it, save cash)

This has been one step forward and half a kilometer back over the earlier 3.0.x series or even the 2. series near as I can tell, and this has been across a few different distros now with 3.5.x. So it has been a "fresh clean install" a few times now, they are all similar in usage pattern.

Now, I want to be fair about this and conduct this little non scientific "where does this suckage really come from" survey, is it really firefox, are you guys seeing something like this too, or just me and my ancient 1.3 duron with 1.5 gigs of DDR,(I guess I am assuming this is still adequate to do casual web surfing with) or have webpages/websites just gotten so complex and bloated that the entire net is bogging down lately, or what?

This is what I have been saying about cap and trade, that it is a scam and a way for big wall street to usurp and pervert the science and reality around climate change and use it to fund themselves for another boom and bust to follow bubble. And I say "big wall street" as the more extreme carbon foes are wont to label anyone questioning motives and science around this claimed "consensus" as "being in the pockets of big oil and big coal". Their alternative, once you get down to the fine print, is to "be in the pocket of big wall street gamblers" instead.

As an environmentalist, I find that idea to be just as abhorrent and just as likely to be a failure, an expensive one, and to not do anything but further ruin the economy and not do much at all to help towards a cleaner environment, with the additional "benefit" of more (malevolent and totalitarian) nanny statism and a push towards global government.

Skimming trillions out of the global economy to fund those same crooked casino gamblers and political kommisars who have destroyed so many other aspects of the economy is *not* any way to work towards a cleaner environment, and the entire point of all of this is to have a cleaner environment just in case it helps with moderating the extremes of climate change. It's a pure enron styled con packaged up in a pretty box with green ribbons around it and sold as an emergency situation, do it or else, designed to accumulate money and power, that's it. A wolf in sheep's clothing. It is *extortion*, just like the investment so called bank's bailout was, extortion, "do it or else you are doomed".

  Until this cap and scam war on carbon nonsense is airgapped from the science,(I would prefer it outright banned as just a bad idea, along with most other derivatives) I hold all of it to be suspect and to be potentially compromised in advance, i.e. "climategate", to the tune of trillion$ in "conflicts of interest" units and political power shifts. I've thought this all along since I have heard of that idea, just instantly smashed the "waitaminnit, here's the BS showing up now" warning buzzer.

Once you have a big profit motive around any political direction, compromises and corruption occur, just our past human historical record.

As a follow up to my previous entry, here's an interesting story, albeit the writer doesn't "get it" why the new corporate rule. He thinks it is so they won't be seen as partying, he doesn't get it that this is a security move.

OK, now..these are some of the most connected insiders out there on the planet, they have their own intelligence and leech off government intel as well. They have a great idea of what the future geopolitics of the world are. So let's just contemplate a bit on these two back to back stories.....

Seems the economy hijackers and gamblers are a bit concerned over a little negative opinion that they have received lately.

Just a little light hearted fictionalized extrapolation of the economy and society. Of course, I think he is being a scosh optimistic...