Infinite Unknown

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Tags: Cyprus

For your entertainment.

- Meanwhile, Greeks Are Celebrating… (ZeroHedge, March 17, 2013)

Tags: Cyprus

… because the water quality is already so bad (‘within the normal range’) that 1200, oh wait aminute, NOW 3000 dead pigs do not make any difference.

Update:

- China ‘Hogwash’ Update: Latest Number Of Floating Pigs In Shanghai River: 5,916 And Rising Fast

- 1,200 Dead Pigs Found In Shanghai River (ZeroHedge, March 11, 2013):

Over the past month the west had its “horsemeat” scare, where horse DNA traces have been found in pretty much everything. It is now China’s turn to reciprocate, with 1,200 pigs found in Shanghai’s Huangpu River. Why someone would dump thousands of dead pigs in the river? Who knows – we are confident that it is bullish, however, and it is time fro GETCO or K-Hen to do something about this strange reddish color in the futures. It is not helping with confidence in central planning…

From China.org

The municipal authorities said the retrieved pigs would be collected and handled in a harmless way.

Continue reading »

Tags: animals, China, Environment, Global News, Japan, Pigs, Politics, Shanghai, Water

- How to Discover Your Life Purpose in About 20 Minutes (WakingTimes, March 2, 2013):

How do you discover your real purpose in life? I’m not talking about your job, your daily responsibilities, or even your long-term goals. I mean the real reason why you’re here at all — the very reason you exist.

Perhaps you’re a rather nihilistic person who doesn’t believe you have a purpose and that life has no meaning. Doesn’t matter. Not believing that you have a purpose won’t prevent you from discovering it, just as a lack of belief in gravity won’t prevent you from tripping. All that a lack of belief will do is make it take longer, so if you’re one of those people, just change the number 20 in the title of this blog entry to 40 (or 60 if you’re really stubborn). Most likely though if you don’t believe you have a purpose, then you probably won’t believe what I’m saying anyway, but even so, what’s the risk of investing an hour just in case?

Continue reading »

- FBI agents caught sexting and dating drug dealers (Telegraph, Feb 22, 2013):

Dating drug dealers, harassing ex-boyfriends with naked pictures, and pointing guns at pet dogs: these were just a few of the offences committed recently by serving FBI agents, according to internal documents.

Disciplinary files from the Bureau’s Office of Professional Responsibility record an extraordinary range of transgressions that reveal the chaotic personal lives of some of America’s top law enforcers.

One male agent was sacked after police were called to his mistress’s house following reports of domestic incident. When officers arrived they found the agent “drunk and uncooperative” and eventually had to physically subdue him and wrestle away his loaded gun.

A woman e-mailed a “nude photograph of herself to her ex-boyfriend’s wife” and then continued to harass the couple despite two warnings from senior officials. The Bureau concluded she was suffering from depression related to the break-up and allowed her to return to work after 10 days.

Continue reading »

Tags: Crime, Drugs, FBI, Sexting

- Presenting The College Whose Graduates Have A 62% Student Loan Default Rate (ZeroHedge, Feb 19, 2013):

It is common knowledge by now that the US has a student loan problem. Specifically, a subprime-sized, student loan default problem, which as was reported last year, has now surpassed a 23% default rate at “for profit” institutions. Yet as all statistical measures, this one too deals in means and medians: very boring, impersonal metrics. Where the truly stunning data emerge is when one performs a granular college by college analysis of the US higher learning system, which is precisely what the WSJ has done, breaking down some 3500 colleges and universities by annual cost, graduation rate, median amount borrowed and most importantly, student-loan default rate. In this context we feel quite bad for the students who graduate from ICPR Junior College of Puerto Rico (or rather the 52% of them who graduate), with a modest $2,250 in student loans to cover the otherwise manageable tuition of $7,158, as a mindboggling 62% of them end up defaulting on their loans!

…

Tags: Bubble, Debt, Economy, Global News, Society, Students, U.S.

- Home Prices Are Back… To 1894′s Levels (ZeroHedge, Feb 14, 2013):

Six years after the onset of the traumatic US housing crisis, the optics are there that suggest a stabilization is occurring. Whether real or manufactured by record-low foreclosures, bank supply withdrawals, and fed-subsidized cash REO-to-rent trades, the sad truth is that jobs (and the GDP-enhancing multiplier effect that they create) are just not coming. Even Bob Shiller prefers the potential for 4% gains in stocks over housing risk in the medium-term as he points out that – inflation-adjusted – house prices are back at levels first seen in 1894… now that is a long-term investor.

Source: Goldman Sachs

Tags: Foreclosures, Goldman Sachs, Real Estate

- Households On Foodstamps Rise To New Record (ZeroHedge, Feb 11, 2013):

While hardly presented by the mainstream media with the same panache dedicated to the monthly ARIMA-X-12 seasonally-adjusted, climate-affected, goal-seek devised non-farm payroll data, the three month delayed Foodstamp number is according to many a far greater attestation to the “effectiveness” of the Obama administration to turn the economy around. And far greater it is: since his inauguration, the US has generated just 841,000 jobs through November 2012, a number is more than dwarfed by the 17.3 million new foodstamps and disability recipients added to the rolls in the past 4 years. And since the start of the depression in December 2007, America has seen those on foodstamps and disability increase by 21.8 million, while losing 3.6 million jobs. End result: total number of foodstamp recipients as of November: 47.7 million, an increase of 141,000 from the prior month, and reversing the brief downturn in October, while total US households on foodstamps just hit an all time record of 23,017,768, an increase of 73,952 from the prior month. The cost to the government to keep these 23 million households content and not rising up? $281.21 per month per household.Total Americans on foodstamps:

Total households on foodstamps and average benefit per household: Continue reading »

Tags: Barack Obama, Collapse, Economy, Food stamps, Global News, Government, Obama administration, Politics, Society, U.S.

- Lost Cat Travels Two Months, 200 Miles Home (Mashable, Jan 25, 2013):

A tortoise-shell cat similar to the one pictured above became separated from its family in Daytona Beach, Fla., and then managed to find its way to West Palm Beach after a two-month, nearly 200-mile journey.

The four-year-old indoor cat, named Holly, is owned by Jacob Richter, 70, and Bonnie Richter, 63, who began traveling around in an R.V. with Holly last year. During a vacation this past November to Daytona, the cat dashed out an opened door. The Richters called local animal agencies and posted fliers, but Holly never turned up. They returned home. Two weeks later, an animal rescue worker called the Richters to tell them that a cat resembling Holly had been sited in Daytona.

Continue reading »

Tags: animals, Cats

See also:

- Britain, The Most Violent Country In Europe: Violence Rate Is 4.36 Times Worse Than in The U.S.

- Britain: ‘Gun Ban Caused 40% Jump In Gun Crime’ (Video)

Piers Morgan calls the GOA Executive Director’s claim an “absolute lie.” Is it?

- Larry Pratt: British Gun Crime Stats are a “Sham” (THE END RUN, Jan 10, 2013):

Last night, Larry Pratt of Gun Owners of America appeared on Piers Morgan Tonight for a debate with the host. Morgan is a British “citizen” (“subject“?) who has recently been using his platform on CNN to promote the idea that the U.S. Constitution is “inherently flawed” and to advocate stricter, more British-style gun control policies in the U.S. This was Pratt’s second appearance on the show in the past month, having previously appeared in the wake of the Sandy Hook event.

At one point in the exchange (around 11:18 in this video), Morgan says that he “actually dug out the official figures… the homicide figures from guns in England and Wales by comparison to the United States of America going back to 2003,” and proceeds to read off numbers showing that the U.S. has a much higher gun murder rate. Morgan then claims that the lower numbers in England and Wales are “the result” of the “responsible action” taken in “respon[se]” to the 1996 school shooting in Dunblane, Scotland — namely a “handgun and assault weapon ban.”

To begin with, More Guns, Less Crime author John Lott has recently explained that this is a misleading representation of the statistics: Yes, the gun murder rate is relatively low in England and Wales, but it was already low before the ban, and the stats do not show a decrease in murders committed with guns (nor overall murders) since the ban was instituted, as Morgan implies. “There is a difference between levels and changes,” Lott notes. Meanwhile, The Telegraph reported in 2009 that gun crime had “almost doubled in the last decade”. Continue reading »

Tags: Crime, Global News, Guns, Larry Pratt, Law, Piers Morgan, Society, U.S.