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Google shopping on USPS “forever stamps.”

The shocking truth that even the Washington Post was afraid to state openly — that America’s shadow government is run by homosexuals: I wouldn’t want to be on the WaPo‘s design team right now.

Some financial type (attribution on request — maybe): Ben, there is real food for thought in the article below. The submarine in the picture below looks pretty crude. Given the global cash flows generated by cocaine, traffickers should be able to afford much better equipment. And I think we, Tim Geithner, and congress should seriously [...]

Following up on “Home naming is killing the, oh, nevermind…“ (2009 Dec 09), the Wikipedia entry on Ted Klaudt (“accessed,” as they say, 6 July 2010) reports: “Copyrighting” his name In December 2009, Ted Klaudt sent a “Common Law Copyright Notice” to the Associated Press and various state media outlets warning that use of his [...]

Don’t be accidentally on purpose evil. gOfficialblog: Nine days ago the data protection authority (DPA) in Hamburg, Germany asked to audit the WiFi data that our Street View cars collect for use in location-based products like Google Maps for mobile, which enables people to find local restaurants or get directions. His request prompted us to [...]

(kw)

5th Pillar‘s zero-rupee note (in Tamil, front and back:), intended as a means of protest for those too poor to pay a bribes: they’re supposed to hand this over rather than actual currency. This seems ill-conceived all around: a private protest likely to transform impersonal corruption into personal persecution (where shouting, say, at least can [...]

“Baseline Scenario“: One Goldman Sachs derivatives trader, who asked to remain anonymous because he is not authorized to speak about company strategy, said that the firm is planning to create a market for derivatives that airlines can use to hedge against the risk of having to return planes to the terminal or having to pay [...]

Posner snarks: “If you get old enough, you can commit a white-collar crime.”

…hundreds of billions. A counterinsurgency strategy: Priceless. (tpm)

The Guardian (formerly known as Teh Grauniad but since displaced by the NY Teims) does a number on HM:

Xe: The joint audit by the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction and the United State Department of State Inspector General released yesterday does not, as some press reports have suggested, allege that Blackwater was ever complicit in overbilling the United States government for work it performed in Iraq in 2006 and 2007. The audit [...]

Grimmelmann: Your avatar’s arms are never going to be long enough to box with a game god whose software controls arm length. Or, as we used to put it: he who would snack with the Devil must needs use a long spork… ( jotwell | froomkin )

Ares 1-X:

“Pirates and Plants” @ Flickr, ULed 2009-07-15: Indeed: WiReD.

UPI: “On October 25, 1989 Senator John Glenn, D-Ohio was taping a television interview following a tree-planting ceremony at the Smithsonian Institution. Suddenly, a well-dressed man walked up and punched the Senator square on the jaw. The assailant, Michael John Breen, 31, was promptly arrested after being detained by a stunned Glenn. Breen later told [...]

Bernie Kerik’s Flickr photostream includes gems like Officer Kerik in ’93… …“plainclothes” (modulo the assault rifle) Kerik escorting Susan Rosenberg (ca. ’83?; SR playing ping pong here)… …authentic arrest scenes… …and, indeed, pretty much his entire rise and fall. Except for his mugshot: The kommissar disappears: (Left: Flickr, plemeljr, 8 Feb ’05 [detail]; right: m3t00, [...]

Expanded: Jamie Love at Knowledge Ecology International has forced the Office of the United States Trade Representative to cough up the names of people who know what the US is secretly negotiating in the proposed multilateral Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement. They are: People who’ve signed an NDA in order to see ACTA’s “internet text”: Emery Simon [...]

NYTeims on the (game of chicken | prisoner’s dilemma | etc) faced by the *ffluent with undeclared offshore money: The whole issue has become a minefield for some wealthy families. Many offshore accounts are held in the names of several family members, who do not always agree on what they should do. Bruce Zagaris, a [...]

The Guardian reports on an NYC anarcho arrested for twittering whereabouts of police at Pittsburgh G20: Elliot Madison, 41, from Queens, had his home raided and was put on $30,000 (£19,000) bail after he and Michael Wallschlaeger, 46, were tracked to the Carefree Inn motel in Pittsburgh during the summit on 24 and 25 September. [...]

Cryptome catalogs it.

The particolored interactive lady runs this pic of a bathroom in Madoff’s beach house: A better man than I would write a windy meditation, but I’ll settle for a quiz question: how many artworks were confiscated?

The NYT’s editorialists wave their collective walkers at Cheney: Every week, it seems, new disclosures about this sordid history dribble out. In part because the NYT didn’t apply suction when it should have.

Jordan Zinovich and Hans Plomp: Before warlords toppled Somali dictator Mohamed Siad Barre in 1991, Somalia had a kind of stability recognized by the “community of nations.” As early as 1971, Somalia’s fishery was considered an increasingly promising economic resource. By 1982, Denmark, Germany, Italy, Japan, Sweden, the UK, and the USSR had negotiated fishing [...]

NYPost: From the perspective of the CIA, the mission to Siberia, whatever its quirks, was a success. The soft bigotry of low expectations.