Category: Journal ISSN 1078-1935

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Penguin: 4th Media on Fukushima – NIGHTMARE Gets Worse!

03 Economy, 03 Environmental Degradation, 05 Energy, 07 Health, 07 Other Atrocities, 08 Proliferation, 08 Wild Cards, 11 Society, Commerce, Corruption, Government, Ineptitude
Who, Me?
Who, Me?

The News is Bad: The Fukushima Nightmare Gets Worse

Just when it seemed things might be under control at Fukushima, we find they are worse than ever.

Immeasurably worse.

Massive quantities of radioactive liquids are now flowing through the shattered reactor site into the Pacific Ocean. And their make-up is far more lethal than the “mere” tritium that has dominated the headlines to date.

Tepco, the owner/operator–and one of the world’s biggest and most technologically advanced electric utilities–has all but admitted it cannot control the situation. Its shoddy performance has prompted former U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commissioner Dale Klein to charge: “You don’t what you are doing.”

The Japanese government is stepping in. But there is no guarantee–or even likelihood–it will do any better.

In fact, there is no certainty as to what’s causing this out-of-control flow of death and destruction.

Some 16 months after three of the six reactors exploded at the Fukushima Daichi site, nobody can offer a definitive explanation of what is happening there or how to deal with it.

Continue reading “Penguin: 4th Media on Fukushima – NIGHTMARE Gets Worse!”

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Stephen E. Arnold: Wolfram Alpha Superman of Databases

Advanced Cyber/IO
Stephen E. Arnold
Stephen E. Arnold

Wolfram Alpha Is The Superman Of Databases

Posted: 09 Aug 2013 08:04 PM PDT

Before the better Internet we have today, school children used to have rely on poor search and hacked together Web sites to cheat on their homework. The Wolfram Alpha database did not exist and it made school children rely on their own skills. Wolfram Alpha is a powerhouse database with a snarky attitude that can answer veritably any question. Makeuseof.com points out “10 Surprising Things You Didn’t Know Wolfram Alpha Could Do” and how you can harness the tool to do more than cheat on chemistry homework. Originally built as a computational math engine, geeks have added other and often fun features to Wolfram Alpha. You can upload an image to see how it would look as a comic book, through a dog’s eyes, or via color blindness.

Want a Morse code translator or statistics on everything associated with NFL for the past twenty-five years? Look no further. You can also get a head start on your Christmas shopping by using it as product comparison tool:

“Instead of using filters on any shopping website, you can try an English language query in the search box and see if it helps narrow down your shopping choices. Wolfram Alpha handshakes with Best Buy’s API to source the results, so the results are America and Canada centric. You can also use Wolfram Alpha to make a direct comparison between two products in the same product line by typing in their brand names and model numbers. The results page includes enough details to help you bore down to the right choices.”

Calorie burning calculator, anniversary gift recommender, and medical prescription decoder are yet even more ways. The most artful and mathematical way takes Wolfram Alpha back to its original purpose…almost. The database can take any image and render it into a mathematical equation. What does the Mona Lisa look like in numbers? Play around with Wolfram Alpha and do not forget to ask it a Douglas Adams inspired question.

Whitney Grace, August 16, 2013

Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Beyond Search

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Berto Jongman: US Government Prepares for Internal (Domestic) Collapse and Widespread Disorder

05 Civil War, 07 Other Atrocities, 09 Justice, 10 Security, 11 Society, Corruption, Government, Idiocy, Ineptitude, Law Enforcement
Berto Jongman
Berto Jongman

Marine Colonel Speaks Out: “We're building a domestic army”

StormCloudsGathering August 15, 2013

Four videos below the line, the last one sums up a common public concern.

Continue reading “Berto Jongman: US Government Prepares for Internal (Domestic) Collapse and Widespread Disorder”

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Marcus Aurelius: Unlawful Command Influence Compounded by Ignorance

03 Economy, Military
Marcus Aurelius
Marcus Aurelius

Article below and accompanying SECDEF memo are about a non-trivial, very high-stakes issue that threatens to destroy the military chain of command.  Principal immediate causes are the actions of two separate Air Force three-staff commanders, one of them female, who exercised their lawful discretion as courtmartial convening authorities in accordance with Article 60 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice.  What they specifically did was set aside the sexual assault convictions of two Air Force officers, a lieutenant colonel and a captain.  That led to several things, two of which are particularly important:  the female three-star has had her career destroyed — her promotion to a four-star command position has been suspended indefinitely.  Broader and worse, Senator Kristin Gillibrand (D-NY) is leading a Congressional crusade to take commanders out of the military justice loop, at least insofar as sexual assault cases are concerned.  All of the attendant publicity led to POTUS making the statements attributed to him and to military judges taking the actions attributed to them; I have read at least one of the MJs' decisions — very tightly reasoned; senior JAGs I talk to say it's 100% spot on.  This stuff is far from being over and, ultimately, Congressional action could jeopardize lives on some future battlefield.

SecArmy Letter 14 Aug 2013

Wednesday, August 14, 2013

The Wall Street Journal

Hagel's Science of Logic

The secretary compounds Obama's unlawful command influence.

JAMES TARANTO

“I won't be in a policy-making position,” Defense Secretary-designate Chuck Hagel memorably declared during his confirmation hearings in February. Six months later, Secretary Hagel is living up to that promise. He is engaged at the moment in a high-stakes effort at damage control–trying to unmake a mess that the commander in chief (along with Hagel's predecessor) made.

As this column noted, the New York Times reported on the problem last month:

Continue reading “Marcus Aurelius: Unlawful Command Influence Compounded by Ignorance”

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Eagle: NSA Has Violated Privacy Rules Thousands of Times, Audit Finds

Corruption, Ineptitude, IO Impotency, Military
300 Million Talons...
300 Million Talons…

NSA violated privacy rules thousands of times, audit finds

Transgressions ranged from serious legal violations to typos that led to unintended data collection, according to documents supplied to The Washington Post.

The National Security Agency exceeded its legal authority and broke agency rules thousands of times since it was granted broader powers in 2008, according to an internal agency audit obtained by The Washington Post.

Most violations involved unauthorized surveillance of Americans or foreign intelligence targets in the U.S., according to the documents, which were supplied to the newspaper by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden. The documents show infractions ranging from serious legal violations to typographical errors that resulted in unintended data collection, The Post reported.

The agency was not always forthcoming with the details of its transgressions, the Post found. A quality assurance report not shared with an oversight committee found that a “large number” of calls were placed to Egypt 2008 when the U.S. area code 202 was mistakenly entered as 20. In another case, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which reviews NSA warrant requests, was not made aware of a new collection method until it had been in place for several months. The court ultimately ruled it unconstitutional, the Post reported.

The audit, dated May 2012, uncovered 2,776 incidents in the preceding 12 months of unauthorized collection, storage, access to or distribution of legally protected communications, the Post reported. One of those cases involved the unauthorized use of data on 3,000 Americans and green-card holders.

Read full article.

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SchwartzReport: Google to Court – Gmail Users Have No Reasonable Expectation of Privacy

Commerce, Corruption, Idiocy

Google Claims Gmail Users Have no ‘Reasonable Expectation’ Their Emails Are Private

DOMINIC RUSHE, The Raw Story/The Guardian (U.K.) – The If you use Gmail you need to know this.

Gmail users have no ‘reasonable expectation” that their emails are confidential, Google has said in a court filing.

Consumer Watchdog, the advocacy group that uncovered the filing, called the revelation a ‘stunning admission.” It comes as Google and its peers are under pressure to explain their role in the National Security Agency’s (NSA) mass surveillance of US citizens and foreign nationals.

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