Sheldon Brown, Patron Saint of Bike Mechanics, has died.

It all started with this.

If you haven't been following the Anonymous raids on Scientology, it's worth checking out, if for no other reason than its a window into the weird world of underground internet activist doings.




http://partyvan.info/index.php/Project_Chanology

http://chanology.ytmnd.com/


http://www.711chan.org/

http://www.myspace.com/doitforthelulz

As if anyone actually gives a shit what's going on with my fake stock portfolio, I feel the need to point out that my somewhat bearish, partly peak-oil inspired strategy seems to be doing modestly well on days when the market does poorly (requires a facebook login). Oil topped $91 today, and settled at $90.92, after sliding a bit following a couple of days of profit-taking, and I predict maybe two more such selloff episodes before we see oil close at $100 (Possibly one tomorrow, one at $95, and maybe one if we see a midday $100). Refiners are taking a turn for the positive after a long period of suckitude, which makes me think that gas prices are set to recouple to the price of oil after having been out-of-sync for a while, and margins on liquid fuel are likely to begin their recovery before too long. I've got way too much apple stock, which took an ass-eating today, but I'm still up 7%. I'll be getting out of the Apple position soon, but not today; I think there's still another run left in the stock. Meanwhile the total market is slightly down, which means I'm up somewhat. We'll see if my plan holds together once the shit really hits the fan ...

As all of the ringers know I've been out of the weblogging pocket for quite some time. This mostly has to do with two things: a lack of time, and a lack of conviction that any of my own opinions and observations about the state of the world constitute any kind of actual contribution to anything. But the election cycle is getting underway, and now that I'm out of school and on a new schedule, I have a few more opportunities to undertake some things of a creative or constructive nature. That means, among other things, blogging.

Among my more recent preoccupations in the realm of current events are the related phenomena of the housing bust, the declining value of U.S. currency, the rising cost of energy, food and other commodities, and the way all of these things manifest themselves in the abstract world of securities trading. This has led to my occasional perusal of the research pages of Sharebuilder.com, where I've taken a particular interest in Exchange Traded Funds. I've begun wondering: if I knew there was a recession on the horizon as a result of the above mentioned economic factors, what kind of portfolio of ETF would I do best to build, given the modest nature of my own financial resources?

The Peak Oiler in me says to invest in oil, the value of which is almost certain to exceed $100 a barrel within the next year. But what other kinds of things of value might I do well to buy? If the number of home foreclosures continues to rise, would I do well to invest in rental properties and commercial real-estate, or should I seek to get into housing while things are sucking, banking on the prospect that things have to get better at some point. I'm pretty certain ethanol is over-valued, but should I be buying basic materials and commodities? Will food prices keep rising?

Utilities will probably go up as well, but what about non-liquid fuel renewable energy, like solar and wind? Will shortages in these sectors keep prices high as demand grows, or will said shortages eventually depress demand?

And how about the dollar? Should I be buying up Euros and Yen while I wait for the U.S. currency collapse? Is there anything the fed can do to reverse this trend without creating a deflationary economy? The world's banks sure are skittish about the trustworthiness of American currency. Should I be?

Or is the best recession portfolio none at all?

You know an idea has taken taken root in the popular consciousness when they make a video game out of it. KAOS and THQ have developed a first person shooter, scheduled for release in early 2008, based on a quasi-apocolyptic Peak Oil scenario. Video clips ensue:

This is just too wild: A BYU prof has developed a drug that kills the AIDS virus, as well as a variety of other infectious diseases. It hasn't been tested in people, but apparently it works like a charm in vitro. I'm surprised I've not seen more of this story in the regular news.

So anyway I was checking out Google Video and stumbled across the "How-to-Do Girls" website, home of the renowned and respected "Bikini Calculus": a real-live half-naked calculus tutorial featuring Jaime Lynn, Paige, and a number of other chesty / scholarly types. I just so happen enrolled in a real-live calculus class, so obviously it would be gravely wrong of me to skip any opportunity to acquire some much-needed book learnin'. Check the credentials on these girls:

Jamie is a favorite with many photographers all around the Great Lakes area. She has worked with over 25 photographers in just seven months of becoming a model.

After graduating with an Associate degree in medical billing she decided that it would not make her happy. Fortunately she found her dream without wasting more time in college. She loves modeling and the photographers love her.

There are a few things she learned which still come in handy. Being certified in CPR is helpful for those extra steamy shoots.

Just in case you are interested, she only missed one question on the HTDG application.

That's right people: Jaime has a real-live associates degree in medical billing, as well as perfectly engineered artificial tits. I can think of no skill set more apropos of the serious task of mathematics pedagogy.

Teach it to me Jamie. Teach it to me slow and soft. Plug my f'(x) into your General Power Rule.

As if this weren't already the greatest thing ever to happen, all the "How-to-Do Girls" materials are licensed under a Creative Commons deed. Fuckin' sweet.

... and the egg donors are sterile women. In a development that should confuse and annoy opponents of stem cell research for some time to come, scientists forced egg cells into dividing using only electric shock; none of the DNA in the embryo comes from donor sperm. From the article:

The human embryo in question results not from a fertilized egg but from an egg that has been tricked into dividing, the British Association meeting in Dublin was told by Dr. Paul De Sousa. He now works at Edinburgh University but did the work at the nearby Roslin Institute, where Dolly the sheep was cloned.

It took Dr. De Sousa around 300 human eggs to create half a dozen blastocysts -- human embryos that consist of around 50 cells, which can be used as a source of stem cells that can be grown into all 200 or so types of cells in the body.

Although attempts to grow stem cells from the blastocysts have not yet succeeded, as they have in non-human primates, Dr. De Sousa was confident it was only a matter of time. The embryos were grown by a process called parthenogenesis, which means "virgin birth" in Greek.

...

To create the parthenotes, immature human eggs are taken, with consent, from women who have undergone sterilization, and then grown in the laboratory.

Around half can be successfully matured this way and then persuaded to divide with a shock of electricity. But only five in every hundred will grow to the blastocyst stage, and then with only half the usual number of cells.

There are no plans to implant the embryos to create a pregnancy, Dr. De Sousa stressed.

Predictably, De Sousa encountered objections from anti-science types soon after the announcement was made, in spite of the fact that no stem cells were extracted, and the resulting blastocysts have only half the regular cell-count. I'll be curious to hear what kinds of arguments opponents of the research produce in an effort to cast the discovery into the light of immorality. Typically the gripe against stem cell research revolves around the idea that an embryo is Miracle of God, a baby-to-be that only becomes possible when the Good Lord smiles upon a mommy and a daddy. One would think that an unfertilized, unimplanted egg from a sterile donor would be exempt from criticism by those who hold this view, but alas, such reckoning underestimates some folks' capacity to find E-vil where the rest of us just see something interesting and useful.

A rather impressive/occasionally funny/depressing timeline of the events leading up to Katrina. Particularly disturbing are the numerous accounts, from politicians, newspapers, and government documents of how Louisiana applied repeatedly for flood prevention funding and was denied every single time, even as a New Orleans flood was ranked among the top 3 homeland security risks facing the nation by FEMA. The timeline also documents the behavior of our asshole politicians during a time of crisis:

September 1, 2005, Bodies float through the streets of New Orleans, thousands are predicted dead, one million people are expected homeless, and we find this disaster was completely avoidable.

A business week has passed since hurricane Katrina demolished New Orleans, and STILL there has been no coordinated military action to provide relief to the victims. No water, no food, no airlifts, no medical assistance -- Bush has done nothing.

From Channel 4 News:

Where is the airlift? Where is the water? The food? Why has it taken nearly an entire week for our federal government to respond with help on the ground to the hundreds of thousands of Americans struggling to survive along the Gulf Coast? Tangible help. The kind you can drink and eat. Not words, fly-bys and news conferences. Food and water are needed. Today. Now.

September 1, 2005, Condi Rice does some shopping and plays tennis with Monica Seles.

SECRETARY of State Condoleeza Rice, here on three days' vacation to shop and see the U.S. Open, hitting some balls with retired champ Monica Seles at the Indoor Tennis Club at...

From the LA Times:

September 1, 2005 -- A 2-year-old girl slept in a pool of urine. Crack vials littered a restroom. Blood stained the walls next to vending machines smashed by teenagers.
The Louisiana Superdome, once a mighty testament to architecture and ingenuity, became the biggest storm shelter in New Orleans the day before Katrina's arrival Monday. About 16,000 people eventually settled in.

By Wednesday, it had degenerated into horror. A few hundred people were evacuated from the arena Wednesday, and buses will take away the vast majority of refugees today.

"We pee on the floor. We are like animals," said Taffany Smith, 25, as she cradled her 3-week-old son, Terry. In her right hand she carried a half-full bottle of formula provided by rescuers. Baby supplies are running low; one mother said she was given two diapers and told to scrape them off when they got dirty and use them again.

At least two people, including a child, have been raped. At least three people have died, including one man who jumped 50 feet to his death, saying he had nothing left to live for.

Anyway there's a lot of information on the timeline and it's quite long but entirely worth the read.

This October 2004 article from National Geographic sets out a hypothetical storm situation cooked up by FEMA that is eerily like Katrina. They even got the month right.

The Louisiana bayou, hardest working marsh in America, is in big trouble