Petite Veritas

Image via Wikipedia Rupert Sheldrake 's Theories In 2003, Sheldrake published The Sense of Being Stared At on the psychic staring effect , including an experiment where blindfolded subjects guessed whether persons were staring at them or at another target. He reported that, in tens of thousands of trials, 60% of subjects reported being stared at when being stared at; 50% of subjects reported being stared at when they were not being stared at. According to Sheldrake, this suggested a weak sense of being stared at but no sense of not being stared at. He also claimed that these experiments were widely repeated, in schools in Connecticut and Toronto and a science museum in Amsterdam , with consistent results Video available here: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6285430996722410689# Here is an old audio recording that is interesting: http://www.sheldrake.org/Trialogues/trialogues_98-1.mp3

Image via Wikipedia Paul Craig Roberts was Asst Secretary of the Treasury under Ronald Reagan and is hailed as the "Father of Reaganomics ". Whether you agree or disagree with Reagan's policies, you should see what Dr. Roberts has to say about the economic climate today. The Rich Have Stolen the Economy by Paul Craig Roberts on Creators.com - A Syndicate Of Talent "Bloomberg reports that Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner's closest aides earned millions of dollars a year working for Goldman Sachs, Citigroup and other Wall Street firms. Bloomberg reports that none of these aides faced Senate confirmation. Yet, they are overseeing the handout of hundreds of billions of dollars of taxpayer funds to their former employers. The gifts of billions of dollars of taxpayers' money provided the banks with an abundance of low-cost capital that has boosted the banks' profits, while the taxpayers who provided the capital are increasingly unemployed and homeless....

Image via Wikipedia Gore Vidal: We'll have a dictatorship soon in the US... - Times Online Excerpt: "In a flash, this memory reminds you of the swathe of history Vidal has experienced with great intimacy: he was friends with JFK, fought in the war, his father Gene, an Olympic decathlete and aeronautics teacher, founded TWA among other airlines and had a relationship with Amelia Earhart. (Vidal first flew and landed a plane when he was 10.) He was a screenwriter for MGM in the dying days of the studio system, toyed with being a politician, he has written 24 novels and is hailed as one of the world’s greatest essayists." and later in the article: "Today religious mania has infected the political bloodstream and America has become corrosively isolationist, he says. “Ask an American what they know about Sweden and they’d say ‘They live well but they’re all alcoholics’. In fact a Scandinavian system could have benefited us many times over.” Instead, America has “no intel...

Image via Wikipedia Stock Traders Find S peed Pays, in Milliseconds Super high speed computers with sophisticated algorithms have the edge over individual investors on Wall Street. Does This explain why Goldman Sachs can make huge profits in today's market conditions? From the New York Times , July 23, 2009

Image via Wikipedia 2009 is 50% over, but has already left a decade’s worth of brand carnage in its wake. In May alone, 376 companies per day sought protection from creditors in bankruptcy court, according to Aacer's court records. Everyone was affected, from small, family-run outfits to major corporations . This list represents a sampling of brands and products that died in 2009. You may be familiar with some of the brands. Others are smaller or regional, but symbolize the story of what happened many other businesses this year. Even a Wal-Mart generic brand got the shaft. It’s worth noting that when a brand dies, it doesn’t necessarily get buried, the way humans do. Some brands, like Circuit City, are resurrected in a different form. Others, like Saab, go dormant, then reemerge in a new form. Still others find themselves gobbled up by bigger fish. The brands and products in this list reflect all possibilities. Sadly, most are gone forever. Story Follows HERE on the Business Pund...

Image via Wikipedia What broadband stimulus funds can mean for your community ... Access to high speed broadband and internet service can have a huge positive impact on a local community. It opens the local work force up to global opportunities that can be accessed via their home computers. (Knight Center of Digital excellence) Partial map of the Internet based on the January 15, 2005 data found on opte.org. Each line is drawn between two nodes, representing two IP addresses.

Full story here at the Daily Mail

Image via Wikipedia Why Are Southerners So Fat? Time magazine discusses the high obesity rates in southern states. One conclusion the author proposes is that it is just too damn hot to exercise in the deep south. I'll go with that. Related articles... Mississippi tops U.S. obesity rankings (cnn.com)

Image by stevegarfield via Flickr Some media outlets do a passable job with social media, but most don't. Here is a list of a few that really do a good job and an example of one that fails. The FAIL example is actually representative of most news outlets today that know they need to have social media exposure, but really don't have a clue as how to go about it. (click the title above or the link below to read the story from Tremendousnews.com...) 5 News Outlets That Do Social Media Well And 1 That Doesn’t. (Tremendous News is a great blog - check out their archives.) Related articles #SMCQ15 Who to trust? Verifying social media information (socialmediaclub.org)

The Big Whorehouse On The Potomac Paul Craig Roberts, a former Reagan official and one of the "father's of Reaganomics" gives his view on sell-outs on Capitol Hill and the Washington Post's sell out to special interest groups.

We had an exceptionally good time with friends and family this 4th. It wrapped up with a fireworks extravaganza on the Tchefuncte river in Mandeville, LA. It was really hot and humid, but a good time was had by all. photo (c) 2009 Michael LaFrance

Image by tvol via Flickr The speeds defined by the government in the BTOP & BIP (stimulus packages) are not very aggressive. This article by Susan Estrada provides a great perspective: Demand Broadband: Broadband Stimulus: You so 2000 and late Other reading: Related articles by Zemanta You: US 20th in broadband penetration, trails S. Korea, Estonia (arstechnica.com)

Image by Getty Images via Daylife NTIA offering $1.6 billion of its $4.7 billion allocation in first round of broadband stimulus. Broadband Stimulus Opens With Rural Emphasis By Kenneth Corbin July 1, 2009 The agencies administering the broadband stimulus programs took a big step toward getting that money flowing today, announcing the application guidelines for the first tranche of funding. The secretaries of Agriculture and Commerce joined Vice President Joe Biden in Erie, Penn., today to kick off what the White House is billing as the National Rural Tour, a whistle-stop junket with future sessions to focus on issues like health care and education. The long-awaited notice of funding availability (NOFA) released today establishes the application process for $4 billion of the $7.2 billion set aside for broadband projects in the stimulus package, a more aggressive deployment schedule than officials indicated when they announced their roadmap for the stimulus programs in March. "Tod...

Image via Wikipedia Here are the rules for both the NTIA and RUS Broadband Stimulus: Broadband Stimulus Rules (NoFA)

Image via CrunchBase Stimulus Players to Convene For Broadband Event : "Sources confirm that FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski will travel to Wattsburg, Pa., Wednesday for a broadband-related event that will unite some major players. Also scheduled to attend the event are Vice President Joe Biden, who hails from Scranton; Commerce Secretary Gary Locke; and Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack. They will reportedly talk about the broadband initiative in the economic stimulus package. The venue will be Seneca High School. There may be only a few billion in the stimulus package for broadband deployment, but the issue is big with the Obama administration since it implicates everything from telemedicine and energy to education, agriculture and even, say some groups, full citizenship in an increasingly wired nation. For example, some local governments grant discounts for online applications, essentially taxing those without ready Internet access. The meeting of those particular minds suggest...

Image via Wikipedia Time for the Grownups: 8 Points for Understanding Today's Broadband Stimulus Regulations Here is the South Carolina Broadband Report: SC Broadband Report Shared via AddThis

Image via Wikipedia Bamboo as a new american cash crop? The Southeastern U.S. may have a new crop to replace cotton. This bamboo has the tensile strength of steel. Click the headline for the complete story in the article from Popular Mechanics...

Image via Wikipedia Now I'm testing Zemanta in Firefox. So, if I was going to write about Mardi Gras in New Orleans, I should get some good suggestions. And, right on cue - I did. OK - I like Zemanta. Now for some real blog posts... Related articles by Zemanta Zemanta - the Coolest Application for Bloggers I Have Seen (change-management-blog.com)

Image by wallyg via Flickr A friend recommended using Zemanta on my blog. So here it goes, I'm giving it a shot. It supposedly reads your post as you write it and recommends links and photos. For example, if I were writing about New Orleans , it should give me some suggestions. And, as I type - it did. It linked "New Orleans" to a Google map and the photos were automatically suggested and then generated by Zemanta. Cool. The free download is available at Zemanta . They have an add-on for firefox (haven't tried, yet). In this example I'm using Zemanta as a bookmarklet utility in Chrome .