China: Cat Holocaust

Olympics clean-up Chinese style: Inside Beijing’s shocking death camp for cats

Thousands of pet cats in Beijing are being abandoned by their owners and sent to die in secretive government pounds as China mounts an aggressive drive to clean up the capital in preparation for the Olympic Games.

Hundreds of cats a day are being rounded and crammed into cages so small they cannot even turn around.

Then they are trucked to what animal welfare groups describe as death camps on the edges of the city.

The cull comes in the wake of a government campaign warning of the diseases cats carry and ordering residents to help clear the streets of them.

Some days the world is just … too much.

Apple’s Safari And WordPress To Wed

I’ve mentioned at the old blog how Apple’s Safari browser didn’t play nice with WordPress.

WordPress and Safari: Will the Fighting Ever End? says it soon will.

Yeah, baby. That also means, in June, being able to blog from an iPhone!

Technovia Calls Reality To Testify

So the iPhone can’t run Flash, eh?

He does the unthinkable. He thinks!

So how come the Nokie N800, which uses a similar processor at a slower clock speed than the iPhone, runs the full desktop Flash player at perfectly-good speeds?

He concludes:

If the tech press is now simply publishing the statements of CEOs without question, then it’s going to be dead a lot quicker than anyone thinks. If you can’t even do the basics of reporting right, then you have no business being in business.

Hey, did you see anyone else publish the truth about the original Finnish tablet abomination?

Since when do people want the truth?

American Steel: FAIL!

Seven years of failed tests from US steel mills

Description (as provided by the original submitter)

1. Released before anywhere else on or off-line?

No

2. Why is it this information significant?

It proves that bad steel is being used to make 100’s of buildings – civilian and military.

3. What is the likely audience?

Anyone who enters a commercial building such as a shopping mall warehouse or stadium.

4. Who should journalists contact for comment and verification?

Patrick Werner, Materials Engineering & Testing
Glenn Myrick, NCI Building Systems

5. Why was it leaked?

Public Safety at risk, No other avenue available

6. Urgency?

Buildings are subject to collapse

Emphasis added by me.

Seeing this really, really makes me wonder how many leaks the alleged “TV newsmagazines” get — and what percentage they act on.

Were they given this before it was put into Wikileaks?

More About Masha Allen

Masha Allen child pornography case: Pennsylvania v Charles Nathaniel Brown transcript

Summary
The PDF document is a scanned transcript copy of the jurisdictional hearing in the case Commonwealth of Pennsylvania vs. Charles Brown. The extensive 172-paged document pertains to the case of Masha Faith Allen, a russian orphan adopted by an American couple, wound up in alleged pedophile child pornography, and holds the questioning of all involved parties. The case concludes with the judge calling off all allegations, as no abusive action could be proven.

And:

Description (as provided by the original submitter)
This has not been released anywhere online or elsewhere. This concerns the adoptive mother of Masha Elizabeth Allen, a Russian orphan girl who was adopted by an American pedophile and then placed by Judge Cheryl Allen into the home of the subject of this transcript Faith Elizabeth Allen. Questions have arisen about Masha’s placement with Faith which was engineered by United States Attorney Mary Beth Buchanan. Potential interest is worldwide but especially in Russia and the United States. Journalists can easily Google Masha’s name and find contact info. It is being leaked to expose the corruption in Masha’s second adoption which was engineered by the State of Pennsylvania, Allegheny County with full knowledge of Faith Allen’s disturbing background which is discussed in this transcript.

Previously here:

Masha

Apple And eBooks: Why The Delay

I don’t know how long it took amazon to wrangle up the dinosaur print publishers it did to participate in its Kindle eBook Store.

Apple would have to go about that too.

And just today I came across this Big DRM WTF that involves public libraries:

With regular books, once a library has purchased the book, it can lend it to other libraries to pass on to patrons with no problem, but thanks to the restrictions placed on ebooks, such things are not allowed. So if a library wants to do an inter-library loan on an ebook, it’s forced to print out the ebook, scan it back into a computer and then send the scanned copy to another library.

Emphasis added by me.

I’m certain that if Apple were to go into ebooks, it would be done in a big, big way. So I have to think that sort of DRM FAIL is something Apple has been considering. And that could account for the strange delay in Apple doing ebooks through The iTunes Store.

Apple has two criteria for doing things:

1) It must change the world

2) It must be done right

So far, all other ebook efforts have not done that (sorry, Sony!).

Update: I left out the source link. It’s in now. Apologies.

What’s Up With That Awful Kindle?

Amazon: What are you hiding?

SANTA BARBARA, CALIF. — Amazon shipped its Kindle e-Book reader way back in November of last year — since then, the company has tried to paint a picture of runaway success by suggesting that the incredible popularity of the device prevents the company from keeping up with orders. Is the Amazon the Kindle really a secret failure?

Emphasis added by me.

According to Teleread, two publishers claim to have had (as Variety would say) “boffo” sales to Kindle owners:

Kindle walloping Sony Reader sales? Another tea leaf to read—from an e-book publisher

And:

Good news for E: ‘Publisher “stunned” by Kindle sales’

Plus, a Teleread reader comments:

In case no one has noticed, no kindles have shipped to anyone ordering after 2/2, and amazon has not given any reason for the delay or estimate for shipment, apart from one unauthorized amazon customer support person who said none would ship for another 2 months.

Emphasis added by me.

So what’s going on here?

A two-month wait makes me suspect Amazon has made changes to the hardware and is going to spring a Kindle II on people.

Will Sony be able to counter that?

Doomwatch, Part Two

Arthur Laffer is the guy who helped ruin America with his simplistic Laffer Curve, a frightening display of his innate and overarching eejitcy that helped lead Reagan into office. See him strut it all in this video:

8/28/2006-Peter Schiff On Kudlow & Company

Is that absolutely frightening or what?

Doomwatch, Part One

How This Economy Is Going To Play Out

There are no easy answers because the US (and the world, in a sense) has dug itself into a hole that is bigger than the pile of dirt on the side. More damage will be done than there is free money hanging around to fix. The miracle of leverage in reverse is going to remind everyone why “over-leverage” is something old style brokers considered the greatest mistake anyone could make.

The old, oil based, suburban sprawl economy based on forever rising house prices, on easy credit, on subdivision after subdivision–on running up credit cards and on leverage piled on leverage piled on arbitrage, is in the middle of cracking up, spectacularly. While there will be a short term reduction in the price of oil, in the long term oil is still going up and the America of the sprawl economy; the economic geography of America, looks entirely different at $4/gallon gasoline than it does at $2/gallon gasoline. Huge swathes of exurbia and suburbia become simply economically unviable. Zombie Burbs.

Which means people will relocate to metro centers? And then drive up the rents there?

All of you people on Long Island — stay there!

Another Selfish Crybaby

Compulsive Gambler Files $20M Suit Against Casinos

Now she’s chasing the longest of long shots: a $20 million racketeering lawsuit in federal court against six Atlantic City casinos and one in Las Vegas, claiming they had a duty to notice her compulsive gambling problem and cut her off.

“They knew I was going for days without eating or sleeping,” Taveras said. “I would pass out at the tables. They had a duty of care to me. Nobody in their right mind would gamble for four or five straight days without sleeping.”

Emphasis added by me.

Let’s see what other Boo-Hoo-Hoo scenarios this can engender:

1) I gained 100 lbs eating fast food! McDonald’s should have banished me!

2) I got lung cancer smoking. The local store should have stopped letting me buy cigarettes!

3) I got diabetes eating Oreos instead of food. The supermarket should have never let me buy all those cookies!

Perhaps the best one would be this:

4) I’m a crybaby failure at life! My parents should have aborted me!

Who does she think she’s kidding? If the casino had stopped her, she would have found grounds to sue over that!

Get this bit:

She lost her law practice, her apartment, her parents’ home, and owes the IRS $58,000. She said she even considered swerving into oncoming traffic to kill herself.

Emphasis added by me.

Hey, didn’t she have “a duty of care” to the people she’d smash into? All she cared about is herself.

I once heard an apt proverb (ascribed to Portugal, but using Google I found people say it’s from Spain):

God says, Take what you want — and pay for it!

She took what she wanted. Now she wants someone else to pay her bill!