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So we are not the only ones making fun of the great thought through U.S. bail-out plan that in its original form would provide almost absolutistic powers to the U.S. treasury secretary.
There is a great image (link below) on Flickr asking for support in the form of a Nigerian email scam letter
Click on the image below for the link
original image by etaub
Some people in the advertising business seemingly have not lost their sense of humor and created a great ad for Nintendo’s Wario Land on YouTube.
Tip: You can drag the items around on screen at the end.
Click on the image below for the link (multimedia)
More information:
There is an ad with an similar approach at the Hema web site
Much has been said this week about the so-called USD 700 Billion bail-out plan for banks by the current U.S. administration and finally the right question was asked in congress yesterday - How did you arrive at that USD 700 billion number?
From Marc Ambinder’s blog:
“…Sec. Paulson told congress yesterday that the plan was to spend roughly 50 billion a month,
Sen. Schumer asked: why not $150 billion then, and let the next administration do a re-evaluation in January? No real answer….”
While Marc Ambinder asks what will prevent Paulson taking over a key position at one of the “bailed-out companies after he leaves office, we say lets just have a look what is happening with Goldman Sachs today. The majority of commentators agrees that Goldman Sachs is already profiting from the announcement of the plan alone.
So many vested interests and so much money still left to steal.
More information:
Marc Ambinder’s blog post at The Atlantic
Note: Henry Merritt “Hank” Paulson Jr. aka United States Treasury Secretary aka “Leader of U.S. government economic bailout” previously served as the Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Goldman Sachs. His stock holdings in Goldman Sachs were valued on 23-Sep-2008 at USD 403,914,501.19 after the GS share price rose back to around 133.00 from its 85.88 low during the last days due to the bail-out announcement. This is roughly a USD 127 Million gain on Paulson’s stock in GS alone within less than 5 days.
The Washington Post today (link below) has a very interesting report on fraud, corruption and waste surrounding the U.S. Iraq reconstruction program.
Salam Adhoob, the former chief investigator of the Iraq’s Commission on Public Integrity (the equivalent to the U.S. FBI) estimated in a hearing of the Senate Democratic Policy Committee yesterday, that out of the about USD 50 Billion U.S. taxpayer money that has so far been disbursed to the Iraq reconstruction program, at least USD 13 Billion have been wasted or stolen through various fraud schemes.
The former chief investigator and head of a 200 strong auditors team was one of three Iraqis testifying before the committee yesterday - all providing evidence of widespread corruption and waste up to the point, as one of them said, that Iraqi government officials are financing al-Qaeda terrorists through some of these schemes.
An additional USD 9 Billion were estimated (with some overlap) by another Iraqi agency bringing the total estimate of corruption, fraud and waste of U.S. taxpayer money within the reconstruction program to about USD 20 Billion or 40%. We estimate - based on normally reliable corruption indexes - that real-world figures would be more likely in the range of 60% or USD 30 Billion. At the same time Iraq’s own programs have recently reported a surplus of more than USD 70 Billion.
The levels of “criminal energy” surrounding this program can be seen by looking into the personal situation of those trying to create accountability or fighting the fraud. All of the three Iraqis testifying yesterday fear for their life or have already received death threats, and of Adhoob’s former team 32 investigators have been murdered.
The approaches and schemes are similar to those seen in widespread corruption surrounding other government driven funding programs in development aid, health or reconstruction around the world. Italian investigators have also mentioned such schemes as being used within the defrauding of European Union taxpayer funds by organized crime in Italy. Some of those methods are:
While some of those methods could and certainly will be explained with mismanagement, in general all of them have direct links to corruption and illegal abuse of funds. The intention of those participating in and collecting the funds together with the overall criminal intent / energy seen further demonstrate these facts.
As with most of these programs, true accountability, transparency and auditable documentation together with systematic management allow to get a grip on these criminal activities. But today - even in cases where fraud and abuse is so obvious - those put in charge see no reason to change their approaches or are willing to follow up and prosecute those criminals.
With reports on taxpayer money abuse and waste heaping up to never seen dimensions - estimates for the U.S. are around USD 1 Trillion and for the UK about GBP 100 Billion per year - one has to ask when finally someone will put an end to this. At the same time the infrastructure - our streets, schools, health systems, networks and electricity grids are slowly assimilating those in developing countries due to decades of neglected investments into the building blocks of our societies and countries.
More information:
The article at the Washington Post
On development / reconstruction in Iraq from another source: “…anybody with skills, knowledge of the situation or experience of the region was suddenly seen as a liability…“
From Glenn Marshall’s (artist) description:
“Metamorphosis is programmed entirely in Processing, it’s the follow up to my Music is Math video. I developed my ‘zeno’ animation system a bit more to allow for nebulous additive blending as well as a few other things. The music is by Boards of Canada again - the track ‘Corsair’ from the Geogaddi album. ”
Click on the image below for the link (multimedia)
More information:
Glenn Marshall’s web log
Great minds discuss ideas; Average minds discuss events; Small minds discuss people.
Anna Eleanor Roosevelt, 1884 - 1962, First Lady of the United States
So far San Francisco based photographer Chad Richard is one of the very few who create time-lapsed HDR movies. He uses the new Nikon D700 that allows to take up to 8fps full frame images and post-processes / blend the frames into HDR images with Photomatix. Out of the about 1000 resulting HDR images he creates a 15-20 second long time-lapsed video with QuickTime.
Chad Richard has a detailed tutorial of the process on his blog (link below).
Click on the images below for the links (multimedia)
More information:
Chad Richard’s HDR movie tutorial
A very interesting approach to street art seen in Lithuania. The artist Morfai is using a farmer statue - an image popular in many former communist countries - more precisely the shadow silhouette of the statue and adds to the wall on which the shadow is projected.
Click on the image below for the link (multimedia)
More information:
Morfai’s web site
“This video was created for the Earth Day. A ode to the work of Jacques Languirand. The video will take part of the Globo Logos event that will take place in different festivals all around the world. ”
Click on the image below for the link (multimedia)
More information:
Julien Vallée’s web site
Globo Logos web site
An outstanding music video playing with a visual technique called the “Droste Effect” which is well known from M.C. Escher’s graphical work.
Click on the image below for the link (multimedia)
“…This music video directed by OneInThree for ‘Wild Beasts’ second single of their debut album ‘Limbo Panto’ is a mesmerising & hypnotic tour de force. It pioneers an amazing mind bending visual technique called the ‘Droste Effect’ which is based on an uncompleted lithograph that Escher made in 1956. The maths behind the lithograph was so complicated that Escher was unable to finish the centre of the picture and so left it blank. OneInThree developed the technique from Josh Sommers code so that it could be applied to moving images…”
