Archive for August, 2008
Danish Central Bank Nationalizes Roskilde Bank After Efforts to Find Buyer Failed
August 25th, 2008Via: Bloomberg: The Danish Central Bank will lead a buyout of Roskilde Bank A/S after a slumping property market drove the lender into insolvency and a private purchaser couldn’t be found. Roskilde will receive 4.5 billion kroner ($890 million) in cash from the central bank and Danish lenders. The purchasers will also assume 37.3 billion […]
Russian Parliament Votes to Recognize South Ossetia and Abkhazia
August 25th, 2008Via: Bloomberg: Both houses of the Russian parliament called on President Dmitry Medvedev to recognize the independence of two breakaway Georgian regions that sparked Russia’s first foreign military incursion since the Soviet era. “Today we are faced with, I’m not afraid to say, a historic decision, to call upon the president of the Russian Federation […]
Uncle Sam Wants Your Brain
August 25th, 2008Via: Wired: Drugs that make soldiers want to fight. Robots linked directly to their controllers’ brains. Lie-detecting scans administered to terrorist suspects as they cross U.S. borders. These are just a few of the military uses imagined for cognitive science — and if it’s not yet certain whether the technologies will work, the military is […]
Wealthy Mexicans, Worried About Kidnapping, Are Buying Personal Satellite Tracking Systems
August 25th, 2008From what I’ve been able to tell from this, the implanted chip has nothing to do with tracking the person. It’s probably for postmortem identification purposes. There’s an external box that the person must carry with them (a GPS receiver that’s probably tied into the mobile phone network). As soon as the kidnap victim is […]
Satire: 6-Year-Old Stares Down Bottomless Abyss of Formal Schooling
August 24th, 2008It might be The Onion, but it’s not funny. Via: The Onion: Local first-grader Connor Bolduc, 6, experienced the first inkling of a coming lifetime of existential dread Monday upon recognizing his cruel destiny to participate in compulsory education for the better part of the next two decades, sources reported. “I don’t want to go […]
U.S. Military Wants Solar Powered UAV that Can Orbit an Area for Five Years
August 24th, 2008Via: BBC: A UK-built solar-powered plane has set an unofficial world endurance record for a flight by an unmanned aircraft. The Zephyr-6, as it is known, stayed aloft for more than three days, running through the night on batteries it had recharged in sunlight. The flight was a demonstration for the US military, which is […]
1992 Biden Speech: “On the Threshold of the New World Order: A Rebirth for the United Nations”
August 24th, 2008Via: University of Delaware: In his speech in Clayton Hall, “On the Threshold of the New World Order: A Rebirth for the United Nations,” Biden said the world’s leaders must adopt a new understanding of security. “Collective security today must encompass not only the security of nations,” he said, “but also mankind’s security in a […]
Perks for Drug Pushers
August 23rd, 2008Via: Guardian: Drug companies are spending millions of pounds every year on all-expenses-paid trips to conferences around the world for doctors and other hospital staff, in what critics say is a massive marketing exercise dressed up as medical education. The Guardian can reveal the scale of pharmaceutical company sponsorship following an examination of the registers […]
“Big 3” Automakers Beg for $25 Billion Government Bailout
August 23rd, 2008UPDATE: Make that $50 Billion HAHA. The free market! The American Soviet Ministry of Automobiles is “free” to double its request for public handouts from $25 billion to $50 billion. Via: Reuters: The Big 3 Detroit-based automakers are seeking about $25 billion in federal loans as they struggle to ride out a steep downturn in […]
U.S.-Led Coalition Air Strikes Left 76 Civilians Dead
August 23rd, 2008Freedom. Via: CBC News: U.S.-led coalition forces killed 76 Afghan civilians, mostly women and children, in a Friday attack in western Afghanistan, said the country’s Interior Ministry. “Seventy-six civilians, most of them women and children, were martyred today in a coalition forces operation in Herat province,” the Interior Ministry said in a statement. Nineteen women, […]
