Anthrax Investigation Delay

The New York Times reported in today's editions that the F.B.I. has asked for a delay in the National Academy of Sciences' report on the 2001 anthrax scare. It appears the Bureau has found another 500 pages of documentation, even though the Academy had asked for all relevant material when it started its review over a year ago.

The anthrax scare was a weird series of incidents that characterized the creepy fall of 2001. I still possess a Postal Service plastic envelope stating that my mail, sent during the height of the scare, had been irradiated for my safety. The most troubling episode occurred at the Postal Service's Morgan Annex in New York. Postal employees died from anthrax exposure. The federal government's response was to place yellow crime scene tape at an arbitrary point inside the annex, and declare one side anthrax-free. It also meant postal employees returned to an obviously unsafe work environment.

The government's bizarre, unfeeling response to the anthrax scare made one wonder about the sanity of those elected or appointed to represent the interest of American citizens. That question was definitively answered some years later, in the indifferent federal response to Hurricane Katrina's survivors in New Orleans. The government's lethal legacy remains, even though the F.B.I. and other agencies who work the dark shadows would prefer the whole business be forgotten.

The photograph shows a cordoned off mailbox in Washington, D.C. during the 2001 anthrax scare.

Aretha Franklin

A number of published reports have indicated Aretha Franklin has pancreatic cancer. Family members have not confirmed those reports, and told the Detroit Free Press the Queen of Soul underwent what was characterized as an emergency procedure. However, according to the Detroit News and the National Enquirer (which broke the story), Franklin has cancer.

Pancreatic cancer, the Detroit News noted, is among the more devastating and deadly forms of the disease to endure.

Should Ms. Franklin pass away within next few months, it would represent the second major Detroit-spawned musician to die in recent years. The other? Michael Jackson.

The sounds created by Detroit-born and/or bred artists such as the Queen of Soul represent milestones in our country's proud musical legacy. At their best, Detroit musicians showcased musical skills largely derived from sacred music, entertainment value linking them to their audience, and the expression of some form of emotional, timeless truth. Aretha Franklin's finest songs embodies all these qualities.

The YouTube link shows Franklin from a Lady Soul 1968 TV production.

Hackers Threaten DOS Retaliation for L'Affaire Assagne

Zero Hedge reported today that hackers using PirateBay.org have issued a statement pledging electronic hostility toward financial institutions that worked against Julian Assagne. Their current focal points include PayPal and the Swiss bank that closed Mr. Assagne's account.

Brooklyn Merchant Games Search Engine's "Secret Formula"

The Holy Grail for just about any enterprise or enterprising individual working the online world is a top search engine ranking. Corporations, non-profits, and the merely ambitious invest profound amounts of time scheming ways to make their way up search's slippery slope. "Search results," typically displaying the ordered gathering of the results of a misguided popularity contest, has largely done a disservice to the prompt identification of useful, accurate information.

Then again, very few search users have any idea at all about the generation and ordering principles of the information they obtain through search engines. Search firms have made the understanding of their information gathering an arcane, oblique exercise, akin to a secret formula only selected initiates may fully know. In some ways, it's easier to figure out hieroglyphics than to muddle through the sanctimonious explanations

of seemingly sacred algorithms.

An example of how the SEO fever has gone awry is provided courtesy of a story in the Los Angeles Times. The article details how a cynical Brooklynite gamed the SEO system in a way that the Russian novelist Dostoyevski (shown in the photograph) would have appreciated. The Times story relates how eyewear merchant Vitaly Borker, by doing everything possible to antagonize and cheat his customers, goaded them into making nasty online posts about the Brooklyn storeowner's behavior. Ironically, the sheer magnitude of posts landed Borker at the top of the SEO heap (presumably, in his category). He bragged about how he had found a glitch in the world's most popular search engine, and played it for all it was worth. He even bragged to a New York Times reporter about his skills.

Well, it didn't take long for Borker's arrest. The search engine firm quickly fixed the "anomaly," according to the Los Angeles newspaper.

Indian Owls in Peril

Today's WaPo includes an article on the difficulties various species of owls face in South Asia. The biggest issue, unsurprisingly, is that the bird's most significant predator is humanity. In India and other South Asian nations, owls are perceived to have supernatural properties. Shamans use owl parts as the essential item in their magical packages. That's bad news for the live birds, as they are relentlessly hunted, sold, and eventually slaughtered for divine purposes.

I hold owls in high esteem as well, but I don't have any urge to kill them. There are other ways to tap into their mojo, while connecting to their ancient aura, as Harry Potter did (see photograph).

A December to Remember?

The blog's title, borrowed from an automobile's company's annual year-end advertising campaign, made us wonder what would be so memorable about December 2010. Well, there's already enough to fill one's holiday stocking with episodes and incidents worth remembering. The following examples offer some ideas:

1. New Jersey's conservative, Republican governor Chris Christie has discovered YouTube is a very effective propaganda tool. This tactic became evident during a recent town hall meeting, in which a questioner was "escorted" to the stage by a state trooper. Then, in a physically bullying manner, the governor responded to the inquiry without allowing any sort of reply. A trooper removed the questioner and that was that: a perfect YouTube moment available for Governor Christie's fans. The Star-Ledger of New Jersey included the episode in its print coverage (no YouTube, sorry) of the town hall meeting.

2. In fairness, it should be noted Christie did confront a sacred cow of prosperous, typically Republican suburban communities at the town hall meeting. One of his questioners asserted his municipality's right to pay its school superintendent above the $175K cap the Christie Administration has decreed suitable for the position. The municipality used a line of reasoning which must have sounded familiar to its many highly compensated, Wall Street inhabitants: the proposed superintendent's salary was "competitive" with the local school system's perceived peers.

Senior management compensation committees and consultants have used the "peer" ploy to boost key personnel pay schemes for some time. The rationale is usually accepted without complaint, and the top dogs make a killing via compliant corporate boards. The superintendents and local boards of education know this game, and have shamelessly played it. Prosperous suburban communities have rarely hesitated to use financial incentives to land the candidates they want. As long as the school system stayed "highly rated," and the connection between a school system's quality and housing prices remained ironclad, the money would be found. While Governor Christie's politics and public personality are repellent, he's on the mark on this issue.

3. China v. Google -- The WikiLeaks material in The New York Times included some profoundly disturbing information regarding the Chinese government's relentless grip on its domestic information dissemination, its mistrust of Google as a tool of the American government (read the Le Monde summary of this episode for some of the juice), and the sinister efforts of elements within China to conduct cyberwarfare against United States interests. Keep in mind China holds trillions of dollars of United States government debt.

4. Google Settles "Street View"/Privacy Lawsuit for One Dollar -- A couple sued Google for its unwelcome photographing of their Pittsburgh area home. According to a story based on original reporting in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Google employees drove 1,000 feet onto private property in order to get the photo of the couple's house. Google fought the lawsuit, only to eventually give in and pay a symbolic one dollar settlement fee. However, the couple had to pay their own legal fees. How many people have pockets deep enough, and time substantial enough, to fight Google? The FCC, meanwhile, is looking into allegations that Google's Street View campaign collected passwords and other personal information from unguarded WiFi locations. That information is quite significant in location-based marketing; the commercial leveraging of it by the aggregate information's possessor has the potential for a staggering financial bonanza.

5. Wild and crazy Mark Cuban made a fascinating post on Vator.tv called "The End of Location-Based Apps?" His thesis involves the increasing use of face-recognition software to identify prospects and customers in a specific location. He also makes a chilling assertion: "few people exclude their basic name and picture information from public search, so FB [Facebook] could be the first to provide a database of names and faces to the commercial world of facial recognition."

6. Zero Hedge posted a CNBC segment in which former Reagan Administration budget director David Stockman tells some very unpleasant truths about the American economy. Stockman notes how offshoring strongly and negatively impacted job creation in this country. (Liberals should take note this happened during the Clinton years as well as the Bush 43 nightmare. The corruption runs deep, my friends.) Stockman pointed out the inconvenient fact that most "new" jobs that have appeared during the Great Recession (Stockman's phrase) are mostly part-time jobs. He noted that government jobs will decline, as municipal and state governments are broke. And implicit in his observations is the time line for "recovery" is very, very long.

A December to remember? More likely, you'll want to take a rain check on this month. As Humphrey Bogart said in Casablanca, "I drink to forget."

Google Decides Buying Better Than Renting in NYC

Google has decided to purchase the building where its New York staff works. The California firm found its Chelsea rental desirable enough to buy for nearly 2 billion dollars. Rumors that Google decided on 111 Eighth Avenue because it came up first in its search engine entry under "New York hipster buildings" is just another Gotham rumor.

Gates v. Ravitch

Lost in the smoke and mirrors of WikiLeaks and the Federal Reserve's admission of massive financial infusions to foreign banks and domestic corporations was a curious dialogue in the Washington Post between Bill Gates and Diane Ravitch (shown at right).

They are an interesting contrast. Gates has embraced the "cause" of "education reform," while Ravitch has sharply questioned the "reformers'" logic and tactics.

Ravitch's position has made her a target for the classist "reformers." Newsweek's Jonathan Alter had this observation regarding the scholar who was once the American right-wing's intellectual darling on education:

(Gates') biggest adversary now is Diane Ravitch, a jaundiced former Education Department official under George H.W. Bush, who changed sides in the debate and now attacks Gates-funded programs in books and articles. Ravitch, the Whittaker Chambers of school reform, gives intellectual heft to the National Education Association’s campaign to discredit even superb charter schools and trash intriguing reform ideas that may threaten its power.

The school debate has shown, among other things, that the classist crowd does not brook dissent. Opposing views are turned into opportunities for vilification, as Alter aptly demonstrated by characterizing Gates' intellectual nemesis as "jaundiced" and a "Whittaker Chambers." Liberals have smugly asserted this style of mudslinging was something only conducted by uncouth right-wingers from backwoods states. Well, take a good look at the left side of the polemical road. It's not very savory.

It's also not very bright. The education scare is just as phony as the 50s Red scare was, an irony lost on Alter. Shameless spectacles, including Mark Zuckerberg's publicity stunt involving Newark schools and NBC's propagandistic "Education Week," were considered contributions to education progress. The big business interests swarming over educational institutions are rarely mentioned. Rupert Murdoch's brazen commercial dance with the New York City school system was noted, and quickly forgotten, in the wake of WikiLeaks.

Diane Ravitch's articulate point of view might help us salvage something from this mess. Her intellectual distinction and her disposition to speak her mind enable her to rally the routed, to slow the rush to judgment, and to enable cooler heads to prevail. We need that voice of reason now.

The photograph on the left (no pun intended) shows Bill Gates sitting between Waiting for Superman director Davis Guggenheim and Michelle Rhee on a recent Oprah Winfrey program.

The World's Piggy Bank

The Federal Reserve knows when to release bad news. The financial institution released more information about the names of Fortune 100 firms that borrowed money at the height of the 2008-2009 panic. In addition, at the same time, a number of foreign banks were essentially subsidized by the Fed. The story is breathtaking and scary.

Yet, who is paying attention? The WikiLeaks brouhaha has stolen all the headlines. What's striking about the WikiLeaks tale is that there isn't anything particularly stunning in the revelations. The talkers who provided the raw information that shaped the cables are naturally a bit uptight. But, honestly, is anyone surprised by the news that Vladimir Putin is a prick?

The Fed story is far more disturbing than just about anything in the WikiLeaks revelations. And that's why the Fed slyly put out the information today. Maybe Ben Bernanke isn't so dumb after all.