The Human Condition

 The Dalai Lama, when asked what surprised him most about humanity, answered, "Man. Because he sacrifices his health in order to make money. Then he sacrifices money to recuperate his health. And then he is so anxious about the future that he does not enjoy the present; the result being that he does not live in the the present or the future; he lives as if he is never going to die, and then dies having never really lived."

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Come As You Are

Kurt Cobain (February 20, 1967 –  April 5, 1994)

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Bank Financed Mexican Drug Trade

[ed.  One more way we've been totally screwed by our banking system.  It really needs massive reform, not just little bites]

On 10 April 2006, a DC-9 jet landed in the port city of Ciudad del Carmen, on the Gulf of Mexico, as the sun was setting. Mexican soldiers, waiting to intercept it, found 128 cases packed with 5.7 tons of cocaine, valued at $100m. But something else – more important and far-reaching – was discovered in the paper trail behind the purchase of the plane by the Sinaloa narco-trafficking cartel.

During a 22-month investigation by agents from the US Drug Enforcement Administration, the Internal Revenue Service and others, it emerged that the cocaine smugglers had bought the plane with money they had laundered through one of the biggest banks in the United States: Wachovia, now part of the giant Wells Fargo.

The authorities uncovered billions of dollars in wire transfers, traveller's cheques and cash shipments through Mexican exchanges into Wachovia accounts. Wachovia was put under immediate investigation for failing to maintain an effective anti-money laundering programme. Of special significance was that the period concerned began in 2004, which coincided with the first escalation of violence along the US-Mexico border that ignited the current drugs war.

Criminal proceedings were brought against Wachovia, though not against any individual, but the case never came to court. In March 2010, Wachovia settled the biggest action brought under the US bank secrecy act, through the US district court in Miami. Now that the year's "deferred prosecution" has expired, the bank is in effect in the clear. It paid federal authorities $110m in forfeiture, for allowing transactions later proved to be connected to drug smuggling, and incurred a $50m fine for failing to monitor cash used to ship 22 tons of cocaine.

More shocking, and more important, the bank was sanctioned for failing to apply the proper anti-laundering strictures to the transfer of $378.4bn – a sum equivalent to one-third of Mexico's gross national product – into dollar accounts from so-called casas de cambio (CDCs) in Mexico, currency exchange houses with which the bank did business.

"Wachovia's blatant disregard for our banking laws gave international cocaine cartels a virtual carte blanche to finance their operations," said Jeffrey Sloman, the federal prosecutor. Yet the total fine was less than 2% of the bank's $12.3bn profit for 2009. On 24 March 2010, Wells Fargo stock traded at $30.86 – up 1% on the week of the court settlement.

The conclusion to the case was only the tip of an iceberg, demonstrating the role of the "legal" banking sector in swilling hundreds of billions of dollars – the blood money from the murderous drug trade in Mexico and other places in the world – around their global operations, now bailed out by the taxpayer.

Shaun Tan

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The Science of Eternity

If humans do not destroy themselves they may spread beyond the earth into a universe that could last almost forever. Life would have tunnelled through its moment of maximum jeopardy.

Over the past few centuries, the earth has aged spectacularly. Its creation has been moved back from 6pm on Saturday, 22nd October, 4004 BC, as calculated by the 17th-century scholar and Archbishop of Armagh, James Ussher, to a time and date some 4.5 billion years earlier. The story of life has been stretched back almost as far, and the story of complex, multicellular life-forms-relative newcomers-has itself been almost a billion years in the making. As a result, the way we see the world has changed profoundly. Not only can we now have some sense of the millions of years it takes to raise and then level mountains, or to open and then close oceans, we also have the clearest evidence of humanity’s absence throughout those ages. To Ussher’s mind, the creation of the world and the creation of humanity were within a week of one another; to our modern minds, the two events are unimaginably far apart. There was a vast absence before us, a physical and biological world untouched by introspection, and its record stares out at us from every rock.

If the earth’s past has been stretched, what of its future? To those of Ussher’s faith, the end of the world was a certainty and to some of his contemporaries history was already nearing its close. Sir Thomas Browne wrote, “the world itself seems in the wane. A greater part of Time is spun than is to come.”

To look forward, we must turn from geology to cosmology. Current cosmology suggests a future that, if not infinite, dwarfs the past as much as the depths of time we now accept dwarf Ussher’s exquisite estimates. What it cannot tell us, though, is whether these vast expanses of time will be filled with life, or as empty as the earth’s first sterile seas. In the aeons that lie ahead, life could spread through the entire galaxy, even beyond it-and outlast it too. But life could also snuff itself out, leaving an eternity as empty as the space between the stars.

Future Goodbye

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New Anti-Stroke Drug

They are describing Pradaxa as the "holy grail" of blood-thinning drugs and the first major pharmacological breakthrough for people at an increased risk of having a stroke in 50 years.

Up to 1.2 million people in Britain live with a condition called atrial fibrillation (AF) - having a quick and irregular heartbeat - which puts them at an increased risk of stroke. The heart condition accounts for 14 per cent of the 150,000 strokes that happen annually, or more than 20,000 a year.

Some 500,000 AF sufferers are currently prescribed the blood-thinning drug warfarin, traditionally used as rat poison.

For 50 years it has been used to lower the risk of a type of stroke caused by blood clots, known as ischaemic stroke, among people with AF.

 
However, patients need regular blood checks to ensure they are receiving the right dosage, as levels that are too high can cause dangerous bleeding. It can also interfere with other drugs like antibiotics, while changes in diet can affect how well it works.

Now updated results of a clinical trial have shown that Pradaxa, also known by its generic name dabigatran etexilate, can reduce the number of strokes by a third compared to using warfarin.

A study of 18,000 people with atrial fibrillation (AF) has found that taking 150mg of Pradaxa daily reduces the risk of stroke by between 30 and 39 per cent, depending on the type of AF.

He said of Pradaxa: "This drug seems to prevent clots better than warfarin but with less bleeding, which is pretty much the holy grail for such drugs."

It works by lessening the effects of thrombin, the protein that controls clotting. 
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Predator: A Smart Camera That Learns

[ed.  A fascinating invention with lots of different applications.  It's delightful to see the Homebrew garage ethic still going strong.]

Get Packing

The New York Times featured the packing strategies of flight-attendant Heather Poole, who frequently lives out of a carry-on for 10 days at a time. With baggage fees higher than ever, knowing how to efficiently pack a carry-on can save you a bunch of money when traveling by air. Here's how to do it.

Like we've suggested before, Heather rolls her clothes to avoid wrinkles and save space. One important note, however, is that she sets those rolls aside rather than packing them as soon as she's created them. She first puts her shoes in the carry-on bag, then starts adding the heavier layers of rolled clothing. She then continues adding clothing in order of heaviest to lightest. For example, pants go in first because they're heavier and larger, then followed by lighter shirts, then topped with undergarments. This order makes it easier for the items to compress when the suitcase closes. Toiletries and other items then go on top as the toiletry bag often contains liquids and needs to be removed quickly for security screenings.

Packing the same items, using other methods, results in an un-closable suitcase. Next time you pack, make sure you roll your clothing and pack from heaviest to lightest in order to easily fit everything you need.

10 Days in a Carry-On | New York Times via Dave Bradford
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The Day the Bear Roared

The larger-than-life bronze sculpture of Jack Nicklaus that stands in the rotunda of the Augusta Museum of History is frozen in a transcendent moment in golf history, one that will reverberate at Augusta National Golf Club this week as Nicklaus’s epic Masters victory from 25 years ago is remembered.

The piece could have been modeled from any of several photographs capturing what happened at the 17th hole late on the Sunday afternoon of April 13, 1986, a split second before Nicklaus — then 46 — first took the lead in what became his 6th and last Masters victory, his record 18th major championship and his 73rd tour win.

It was then that Nicklaus knew his odds of winning had moved from possible to highly probable. The photographs show the change on his face as his last birdie putt of a remarkable final round approached the hole. With soft light from the setting sun streaming onto his face as it broke into a wide grin, Nicklaus bent his knees into a powerful, athletic crouch and raised the putter in his left hand aloft, like a scepter or Excalibur, as he stalked the putt.

Very few of the spine-tingling recollections have faded from that Sunday, the most dramatic final round in the history of Augusta National. There, in front of an ecstatic gallery and what is perennially the largest television audience of the year for a golf tournament, Nicklaus — already written off as washed-up — went ahead and won the Masters.

In addition to the sublime shots that were played — Nicklaus’s soaring 4-iron into the 15th green to 12 feet for eagle, a 5-iron tight to the flagstick at No. 16 — there also were emotional notes that resonated. Curtis Strange, hardly known for his soft side, found himself moved by the sight of Nicklaus, with the second of his four sons, Jackie, on the bag, walking through a dream round.

“I guess the one last impression that I have in my mind is Jackie and Jack walking off the last green together arm in arm,” said Strange, who finished in a tie for 21st that year. “I think as a father, we all can relate to that.”    read more:

All of the Above

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Tree Cocoons

An unexpected side-effect of the flooding in parts of Pakistan last year has been that millions of spiders were driven up into the trees to escape the rising flood waters. Because of the scale of the flooding and the fact that the water has taken so long to recede, spiders have built massive webs on trees turning them into ghostly cocoons. Such a phenomenon has never been seen before.  more photos:

On the flip side, people in Sindh have reported fewer mosquitos than they would have expected given the amount of stagnant water in the area. It is thought the mosquitoes are getting caught in the spiders' webs, reducing their numbers and the associated risk of malaria.

The Red Vineyard

The Red Vineyard (75.0 x 93.0 cm) was painted November 4 1888 by Vincent van Gogh. While painting Van Gogh was not standing in front of the Vineyard, he painted it at the Yellow House completely out of memory and imagination the day after he walked through the nearby wine plantation.

Fifteen months later The Red Vineyard was exhibited in the 1890 The XX Art Expo in Brussels.  Anna Boch bought it for 400 Francs (about $1600 in today's values). 

The purchase made Anna Boch enter the history books as the Red Vinyard painting is believed to be the one and only painting Van Gogh sold during his lifetime.    

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42

[ed. note.  The things you find by accident. Who knew the number 42 had such a long and storied history?  Its other infinite siblings must be quite put out (except perhaps for number 1). The next time I play roulette I know what I'm betting on...maybe two chips on 21?]

The number 42 is in the novel The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams. The Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything is calculated by an enormous supercomputer over a period of 7.5 million years to be 42. Unfortunately no one knows what the question is. Thus, to calculate the Ultimate Question, a special computer was created, the size of a small planet, to use organic components, called "Earth". According to the novel Mostly Harmless, 42 is the street address of Stavromula Beta. In 1994, Adams created the 42 Puzzle, a game based on the number 42. The book 42: Douglas Adams' Amazingly Accurate Answer to Life, the Universe and Everything examines Adams choice of the number 42 and also contains a compendium of some instances of the number in science, popular culture and humour.

Lewis Carroll made repeated use of this number in his writings.   Examples of Carroll's use of 42:

• Alice's Adventures in Wonderland has 42 illustrations.
• Rule Forty-two in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland ("All persons more than a mile high to leave the court".)
• Alice's recital of her "four times table" while falling down the rabbit hole makes sense if the first calculation is made in base 18, the second in base 21, and so on, increasing the base by three each time. Continuing on this pattern 4 × 12 would equal 19 in base 39, but 4 × 13 calculated in base 42, rather than providing the expected 20 would yield 1A. Hence, as Alice cries, "I shall never get to twenty at that rate!"

In William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, Friar Lawrence gives Juliet a potion that allows for her to be in a death-like coma for "two and forty hours." 
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HFT and Cyberattacks

Here is a question for the paranoics out there:  Can we tell any difference between High frequency trading and cyberattacks?

We have previously discussed how the NYSE allowing co-located HFT servers is the equivalent of turning our national security over to Skynet.

We now have a new Robot Uprising: It is becoming increasingly difficult for exchanges to tell the difference between ordinary market disfunctions caused by High frequency trading and purposeful attacks:

“New robotic-trading strategies are attempting to hack futures and equities markets — again. The suspicious activity appears unconnected to the October cyberattack on Nasdaq OMX Group (ticker: NDAQ) now being investigated by the National Security Agency. But there seems to be a new team of trading ‘bots abroad — and yes, they’re distorting prices.”

Eric Hunsader, founder of Nanex, who blamed the Flash Crash on HFT, has a new concern about the latest algorithmic funny business. Some are instantly buying or selling E-mini contracts in huge quantities in about 50 milliseconds. Another algo is rapidly changing order sizes in about 20 – 40 stocks on Nasdaq for a “few milliseconds several times a day. (Each stock is traded anywhere from 2,000 to 4,000 times a second, double to quadruple the norm).

The exchanges, which get paid by HFT traders, seem unconcerned. The activity has so far flooded the quote system, but has caused no harm. Yet.

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Silent Spring

The Nature of Nuclear Risk

Ghost In the Machine

 

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In this series I showcase a number of portraits of musicians made out of recycled cassette tape with original cassette. Also included are portraits made from old film and reels. The idea comes from a phrase (ironically) coined by philosopher Gilbert Ryle, a description of how your spirit lives in your body. I imagine we are all, like cassettes, thoughts wrapped up in awkward packaging.   Erika Iris Simmons

Concierge Medicine

Every year, thousands of people make a deal with their doctor: I'll pay you a fixed annual fee, whether or not I need your services, and in return you'll see me the day I call, remember who I am and what ails me, and give me your undivided attention.

But this arrangement potentially poses a big threat to Medicare and to the new world of medical care envisioned under President Barack Obama's health overhaul.

The spread of "concierge medicine," where doctors limit their practice to patients who pay a fee of about $1,500 a year, could drive a wedge among the insured. Eventually, people unable to afford the retainer might find themselves stuck on a lower tier, facing less time with doctors and longer waits.

Medicare recipients, who account for a big share of patients in doctors' offices, are the most vulnerable. The program's financial troubles are causing doctors to reassess their participation. But the impact could be broader because primary care doctors are in short supply and the health law will bring in more than 30 million newly insured patients.

If concierge medicine goes beyond just a thriving niche, it could lead to a kind of insurance caste system.

"What we are looking at is the prospect of a more explicitly tiered system where people with money have a different kind of insurance relationship than most of the middle class, and where Medicare is no longer as universal as we would like it to be," said John Rother, policy director for AARP.    read more:

Tilt-Shift

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Serena Malyon, an illustrator in her third year at the Alberta College of Art & Design, has taken the classics works of Vincent Van Gogh and added a contemporary twist. Using Photoshop, Serena has added the ’tilt-shift’ effect to Van Gogh’s paintings, providing a fresh perspective on these masterpieces.

Tilt-Shift photography is a technique often used to create that miniature scene feel. You know that feeling [of superiority] when you’re…playing with micro-machines, or holding those tiny bottles of liquor, or reading Gulliver’s Travels? Well tilt-shift photography can achieve that look with life-size locations and/or objects through the use of special lenses and camera movements; or you can fake it using Adobe Photoshop.

How The Golden Years Disappeared

At 50, I made a startling realization: I was burning out, but nowhere near retirement -- and I wasn't alone

Remarkably, the first recipient of Social Security, a bookkeeper named Ida May Fuller, started to collect her checks in 1940. She proceeded to live another thirty-five years, long enough to witness the ascent and disbanding of the Beatles and the landing of the man on the moon. (For her total $24.75 contribution, she received $22,888.92 in benefits, perhaps qualifying her as the nation's first de facto lottery winner, as well as its inaugural Social Security recipient.) Indeed, the time between the end of work and the end of life was already starting to raise uncomfortable questions in the decades following the establishment of Social Security and mass retirement -- most fundamentally, what do you do with yourself during this period? Medical experts were advising a quiet existence, rocking peacefully in Whistler's Mother-like fashion.

It took ingenuity to redesign lives to keep up with changes in longevity and society in mid-twentieth-century America, but we rose to the occasion. We plugged the purpose gap with something called the "golden years," a stunning innovation that almost overnight turned an arid economic institution, retirement, from an anteroom to the great beyond into a core component of the American dream. We did such a good job of making virtue out of seeming necessity that soon retirement at sixty-five wasn't enough. Even as lives were already lengthening, we wanted retirement earlier and earlier. We couldn't wait to stop working and start playing in a period that was fashioned by financial marketers and housing entrepreneurs as a kind of second childhood. Golf became the new symbol of late-life success. A new deal was struck around shorter working lives that turned the push out of the labor market into a powerful pull. The golden years shored up the postmidlife purpose gap for fifty years and then some, filling the unstable space with something aspirational and attainable. This was a dream for average Americans, not just the elite. But as lives lengthened and careers shortened, this fix grew shakier and shakier, especially as the vast wave of boomers began approaching.  read more: