There is no lack of public intelligence — only a lack of public integrity.
100 Miles Per Gallon – Making It Reality
So the Wikispeed car design is ultralight and runs with a Honda F1 racing engine (internal combustion). The car weighs under 1500 pounds right now but doesn't have all the interior amenities we have all come to know and love.
Therefore, in order to add 1 more feature to the car that will increase the gas mileage even further, I plan to add a vapor fuel system first designed in the 1970's by Tom Ogle. See the documentary GASHOLE to get a complete picture of how the oil companies have been manipulating the auto industry to maximize profits. Don't even get me started on the wars we have fought to protect their profits.
Watch this video to see how people are doing this now.
Swarm Economy: Yesterday, news broke that the Expensify service has enabled bitcoin payments. With the rapidly expanding number of businesses accepting bitcoin as payment method, one could think that this was merely another player in the pool of bitcoin’s expanding economy (which just broke the one-billion-USD barrier, by the way). But Expensify is something much more than that.
Let’s first discuss the concept of expense reports to understand Expensify’s important role in the subsurface payments ecosystem. On all companies I’ve worked for lately, you don’t ask the company to buy something you need for your work – it’s just too much paperwork, too much red tape to make it happen. Instead, you get a small budget for discretionary stuff you need to do your job, and you just buy stuff as you need it with your private credit card, send in the receipts to your employer, and get reimbursed on the next paycheck, which arrives before the credit card bill is due.
This system is pervasive and ubiquitous. Sending in receipts for payment like this is known as submitting an expense report. It’s still bureaucracy and red tape and it still sucks, but it sucks considerably less than asking for approval in advance.
Enter Expensify, a service that markets itself straightforwardly as “Expense reports that don’t suck”. I’ve been using Expensify through its development for the past couple of years and have also contributed my use case (frequent travel outside of internet coverage), which led them to implement important new features – meaning, they’re a responsive bunch, too.
Yet more evidence of environmental degradation. We simply cannot seem to achieve the political will to save the world in which we live, and on which our own wellbeing depends.
Tunisia: The Tunisian government announced yesterday it was setting up crisis cells after the United States warned that al-Qaida in the African Maghreb (AQIM) was seeking to establish a base in the country.
“We have launched the creation of crisis cells to monitor terrorist activities on the border (with Libya and Algeria) and in the interior, faced with the rise of the militant movement and the existence of recruitment networks,” Interior Minister Lotfi Ben Jeddou told Parliament.
He said those cells would be under the control of Tunisia's Supreme Security Council and would also gather information on networks enrolling young Tunisians to fight in Syria.
Comment: This looks like an intelligence operation rather than combat. Reaction by the Tunisian Islamist parties should indicate whether the Tunisians are taking seriously the US warning.
Bottom line: DNI has been neutered from day one — no budget authority, no operational authority, a staff of over a thousand promoted beyond their abilities.
Amid all the particular issues, what stood out was the emphasis both Rice and Hadley placed—with support from others—on integrating intelligence, on a fusion of information available to all.
Claims the reforms have improved management, bridged the fault line between foreign and domestic, improved the integration of major analytic assessments, and made the National Counterterrorism Center an important innovation.
Worth reading. First comment by J. Scott Shippman: The IC should consider themselves in good company, as no one in DC is held accountable, and adults seem to be an endangered species.
