comedic utterance

ADIA: So much capital,

such a minimal presence.

♠♠♦♠

Exotic default-loss tranch credit product derivatives risk analytics insight enhancement model

Just a wildass guess: This PR department is not exactly aligned with PR as described by Jeneane Sessum, which strangely resembles human activity. But you tell me:

NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--NumeriX, the award-winning, independent leader in pricing and risk analytics for fixed income, credit, foreign exchange, hybrids, cross currency, inflation rate and equity derivatives, today announced the release of the first commercially available pricing model for exotic credit products. The new two-dimensional Markovian model is the first to enable traders to quickly and accurately capture the impact of the dynamics of aggregate credit portfolio default loss. This makes the new model the industry’s most sophisticated tool for the valuation of complex Collateralized Debt Obligations (CDOs) and derivatives, including options on tranches, forward starting CDOs and other credit instruments. As a result, traders gain increased insight into fast moving credit markets with highly volatile spreads, with reduced risk and higher profits. Bizidnez Wire.

Taking Bill Gates apart, one body part at a time, is a delicate task

"It is certainly approached with the utmost sensitivity on our end," said the Google spokeswoman. "We have extensive safeguards in place. . ." WSJ

Annals of WGA IntelProp Commando Exploits

Gates' minions raid Cyber Cafes in Kenya:

During the raid, 50 computers containing unlicensed versions of Microsoft Windows Office 2003 edition were confiscated. Also impounded were Windows 200 and Microsoft 2003 counterfeit installer CD. The computers were valued at Sh1.5 million while the cost of Windows Os and Office are estimated at Sh1.4 million.

eBay on my mind. like a rash

I thought I'd do some early seasonal shopping on eBay. I found the sort of thing I wanted. It stated a flat rate rather than staging an "auction," but allowed me to make an offer. This was new to me, unpracticed in the way of th'eBay, but I did, and two days later, got an excited email informing me that my offer was accepted.

Congratulations! You committed to buy the following item:

I went to pay, and learned that the actual payment would require my going to an external site.

Payment details: Please be sure to use our Marketworks Checkout

hmmm.

Before taking that step, I asked for shipping costs. Got an email back from "Kris" - an associate with the vendor. The shipping seemed a bit high. I clicked the link on Kris' email to the seller's site, and found no sign of a geographical location. Geezerly of me, I guess, to want to actually know where in space the seller to whom I'm sending money in expectation of receiving the very product advertised is located.

But I asked Kris, who replied:

Dear Valued Customer,

We ship out of KY.

Sincerely,

Kris

Oh.

Kris,

This does not answer my question. I will not send money in payment until I have your complete address. I tried calling your customer service number and was unable to reach a live representative.

To which:

Dear Valued Customer,

You have to pay using our checkout method, we do not accept mailed in payments..

We accept either paying with a credit card or using paypal.

Sincerely,

Kris

==

Kris,

I am aware that I will use a credit card for payment. My reason for requiring your business address is that I am unwilling to pay for something to a seller whose physical location is unknown to me. It has to do with having recourse in case anything goes wrong. All I have is email and a telephone number that does not bring me a live person.

If you are unwilling to provide a full address of your headquarters and the name of the president of your firm, then please cancel this transaction.

Thanks

Tom

Dear Valued Customer,

I understand.

Well Michael Rubin is the CEO/president.

Sincerely,

Kris

I should mention, somewhere in the original confirmation I was informed:

• Your purchase is a contract and you have committed to buy this item. Please contact the seller to arrange payment.

In all, there were 13 emails and one useless phone call, giving the Valued Customer, in the end, the alleged name of the ceo, but withholding any physical address.

If you're doing business in the world, selling stuff and receiving money, don't you need to actually BE somewhere?

Well apparently not. Not even virtually, it seems. I went back just now to find their "presence" on eBay:

Sorry, this store does not exist. ##1## ##2##

Giuliani has a real chance of becoming Il Duce (pronounced Douche-ay)

Freedom's Watch Test Markets Language to Sell War With Iran

Mother Jones magazine is reporting a hawkish advocacy group connected to the White House has hired a Virginia company to begin test-marketing language that could be used to sell a war with Iran. The group Freedom's Watch first made headlines this summer when it launched a $15 million ad campaign in support of the surge of American troops in Iraq. The group's leadership includes former White House spokesman Ari Fleischer and Bradley Blakeman, a former deputy assistant to President Bush. Freedom Group recently hired the company Martin Focus Groups in Alexandria, Virginia. One participant who was paid to be part of a focus group told Mother Jones: "The whole basis of the whole thing was, "we're going to go into Iran and what do we have to do to get you guys to along with it." DN

How to beat Hillary

Karl Rove: Plan now to introduce yourself again right after winning the nomination. Don't assume everyone knows you. Many will still not know what you've done in real life. Create a narrative that explains your life and commitments.



Hi, my name is Bob, and I'm the Republican nominee for President. Though some of you may not know me, I will tell you what I've done in real life - not a fucking thing. Now I'll create a narrative that explains my life and my commitments. Let's go to the videotape:

Karl Rove: Say in authentic terms what you believe.

My kind is all but extinct; I believe the only survivors are Reptile and myself. and,

Italian authorities have confirmed what we at the neoLuddite Resistance Army (NRA) have known all along - that the 2004 machine uprising in the Italian village of Canneto di Caronia was probably caused by aliens. and,

I barely escaped with my life.

Karl Rove: The GOP nominee must highlight his core convictions to help people understand who he is and to set up a natural contrast with Clinton, both on style and substance.

That's easy, Karl, because Bill and Hill aren't the real South. Having grown up in the South, I have to say that there's nothing elitist or really even that intellectual about a distaste for evangelism. In the South, /if you are a thinking, rational person/, you think, no, *know* yourself to be surrounded by people that believe in flat earth and relative Gravity (heavier things fall faster) and literal Biblical inerrancy. Pinheads. Many Southerners are nice people, many of them are walking talking /real/ humble Christians. BUT. A greater proportion of them live an unexamined life. I'm the real South -- if Hillary weighs more, she'll fall faster. I'll beat her to death.


Karl Rove: Don't be afraid to say something controversial. The American people want their president to be authentic.




I love NASCAR.

GoogleMe

When Google

enables everything I blog, and knows every blog I regularly read,

and is the substrate of my email, docs, photos, groups, blog searches, videos, appointments, news interests, books, map queries, purchases, finances, scholarly research, web searches, mobile platform, ad sensing, and





soon my wireless provider








and for $999 my Genome reader,

spidering the text of my DNA and relating it to ancestors, physicians, populations, datasets, marketers, political strategists and advertisers across Google Earth




and under Google Sky










I should probably be anticipating a few questions, like, which is trending toward greater ontological heft: me or GoogleMe, and which will command a higher price?

And if not yet I, my kids will need to know:

Should they love Google?

Ought they pray to it?

or



::





Foolishly seek to hide?

Checkwriting meat casings

“A foreclosure doesn’t differentiate between a homeowner and a renter residing in a defaulting property.” #$%$#%#

And herein lies in epitome the law and order of corporate personhood.

Seeing this made me wonder:

Add JSTOR to Your Facebook

November 13th, 2007 by LOCL

Now you can search the JSTOR database of scholarly journal articles from your Facebook.

To add the JSTOR application follow these easy steps:

1. Search for “JSTOR Search” and select that application from the results.
2. Click on the Add JSTOR Search button.
3. In the application settings, set the Proxy to http://flagship.luc.edu/login?url=
4. Search to your heart’s content.

What if Microsoft were to give JSTOR, say, $15 million to cover open searches through Facebook? Would that not be very nice?

Then I wondered: What if Google were to endow JSTOR with $150 million, or $15 billion, or whathaveyou, to cover open searches for the entire world? Would that not be very nice?

Glurgle can't step up?

It is incredibly shabby of Google not to address Jeneane's and others' email vanishings openly and in detail, as is apparently the case according to this story.

Email is where many on the Net -- whatever their various e-lives, e-xploits, e-jive, e-deologies -- live. More and more, for many pursuits, one's email address is one's online name.

One's inbox and archive contain so much substance that if there are security issues or technological problems with it, every user ought to be made aware of them ab initio, instead of being blown off after the fact.

Android indeed.

. . . oh, yeah . . .

the stray thought of 9 hours back, resurfacing at the hour of schlaf:

genres bleed into each other.

why is this the case?

There is no outside JSTOR bondage

JSTOR reflects on University Publishing In A Digital Age.

Everything you wanted to know.

Except, when they are going to think about becoming a conduit to open access.

Rather than a tollgate on the devolutionary path to universal benightedness.

What Zizek could have said

. . . today’s liberal-democratic state and the dream of an ‘infinitely demanding’ anarchic politics exist in a relationship of mutual parasitism: anarchic agents do the ethical thinking, and the state does the work of running and regulating society. Critchley’s anarchic ethico-political agent acts like a superego, comfortably bombarding the state with demands; and the more the state tries to satisfy these demands, the more guilty it is seen to be. In compliance with this logic, the anarchic agents focus their protest not on open dictatorships, but on the hypocrisy of liberal democracies, who are accused of betraying their own professed principles. Zizek

One hoped the Zeester would try to go beyond hand-me-down binaries, but no. What would be appealing -- more so than media-sanctioned alternatives involving either shrill fecklessness or suicidal explosiveness -- would be something more along the lines of:

If you allow the massive, complex, superpowerful organism of large states to be directed by individuals, you risk the chance that those seeking power will either enter office insane, or rapidly become such.

Serious, sober, unshrill, non-violent "opposition" could take the form of people simply saying "look, this isn't working in its current form. Doing away with this pair of ungulate testicles in power will merely present a vacancy to be filled by another, conceivably more nauseous set."


Instead of shouting quondam solutions or demands on the D.C. mall or on blogs or on TV, consider that perhaps the problems lie deeper, that things have shifted from where they were in 1776.

Instead of assuming every political/social/economic ill of 2007 can be addressed through stalemated political process and hilariously irrelevant election rhetoric, we need to understand why it's come to this. A Reconstitutional Convention (ReConCon) --could explore how the political matrix can work better.

I.e., eliminate the possibility of morons (vide supra) from even running for office by requiring something in the way of minimal voter literacy. Give those citizens who think it's about Second Life, Liberty to commit corporate rapine, and Ignorance of all but the most commodified, impulsive Happiness the right to worship a virtual president in the privacy of their home entertainment centers.

Make it impossible for psychotic or power-maddened citizens to swagger and spend until the last Middle-Eastern family is raped or killed. Subject corporate activity to communal vision and public policy. Play with various representational and performative schemes to more adequately convey and exercise the will of the people. Criminalize the legal fiction that endows corporations with personhood. Demythologize the nation-state.

Let these schemes be openly discussed, perhaps even tried out in small polities with Reality TV show crews on hand to help us follow their fortunes. And when we've seen that there are better ways to choose, elect, represent and govern than the one we've got now, use our "business intelligence" to make those ways the new law of the land. No need for bloodshed, no infinite demands on an unchanging golem, merely commonsense improvements based on the vertiginous insights we have not yet forgotten as to how, with everyone alternately shrieking and going about their business, things have managed to go so strangely wrong.

Calling all Concierge VIP Disaster Capitalists

Way back when, in the heyday of the San Diego fire, a friend living out there sent a photo of it:















Some time later, I happened to share it with Christopher Locke, who esemplastically returned it thus:



















I knew he was coming up on another milestone.


And that he'd been consulting many books (small sample):

b

I didn't know disaster was so near.