Wednesday, 11 February 2015

The Only Proof You Need Of A Massive Bubble: This Grilled Cheese Truck Is Worth $25 MILLION

If you listen to mainstream financial pundits on any sort of regular basis then you’d likely believe that current stock market valuations are just the beginning of the next big boom. Despite hazy unemployment figures, low consumer sentiment, rising national debts, collapsing trade and continued degradation of the middle class, stock markets are at all time highs.
But – and you can call us crazy here because it goes against everything we’ve been told about the growth of the economy and stability of financial markets – is it possible that maybe, just maybe we may have reached irrational levels of market exuberance?
The following report from highlights a company that was recently valued at over $ 100 million and it just might provide all of the proof you need that we are witnessing a massive stock bubble. Either that, or new 21st century accounting methods have somehow determined that a company with four food trucks is now worth 1,000 times more than their actual profit.
But in a world where the Federal Reserve can print endless supplies of money and large financial institutions can borrow without collateral or interest, we guess it makes complete sense that the following food truck holds an estimated mark-to-market value of about $ 25 million.
No, seriously. They apparently make one hell of a grilled cheese sandwich.
grilledcheese
Via Zero Hedge:
Markets are allowed their petty indiscretions, of course. But these petty indiscretions seem to be piling up.
Bloomberg last week drew attention to the fact that shares of The Grilled Cheese Truck Inc. had commenced trading on the OTCQX marketplace under the ticker GRLD:
“Let’s look at the fundamentals of the Ft. Lauderdale, Florida-based company. Based on the 18 million shares outstanding and a recent stock price of $ 6 the company has a market value of about $ 108 million.
No matter how much you like grilled cheese… I can’t see this as a reasonable valuation.
“If you go to the company’s website, you will learn that ‘The company currently operates and licenses grilled cheese food trucks in the Los Angeles, CA area and Phoenix, AZ and is expanding into additional markets with the goal of becoming the largest operator in the gourmet grilled cheese space.’
“[A]ccording to the company’s financial statements, it has about $ 1 million of assets and almost $ 3 million in liabilities. In the third quarter of 2014, it had sales of almost $ 1 million, on which it had a net loss of more than  $ 900,000.”
“I can’t think of a more interesting sign of the old irrational exuberance in equity markets than a publicly traded grilled cheese truck (four in this case) business trading at a $ 100-million-plus valuation. That sort of thing doesn’t happen unless there is significant excess in the markets.”
Any reference to a company seeking to dominate the “gourmet grilled cheese space” is desperately seeking a twin reference to a slogan from late 1999 (right before the bubble burst):
“Our business strategy is to lose money on every sale but make up for it in volume.”
There are most certainly some deals to be had in the stock market these days, especially as it relates to assets like gold and silver, but we’re not convinced that grilled cheese trucks selling at valuations of roughly $ 25 million a pop are the way to go.
If you play the market that’s all well and good, but as Zero Hedge notes, “enjoy the party, but dance near the door,” because when the party is over there’s going to be a panic-laden rush for the exits.




The Only Proof You Need Of A Massive Bubble: This Grilled Cheese Truck Is Worth $25 MILLION
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Tuesday, 10 February 2015

Ranking the 10 Most Accomplished Heavyweight Champions in Boxing History

Ranking the 10 Most Accomplished Heavyweight Champions in Boxing History
ED KOLENOVSKY/Associated Press
Ali knocked out Foreman in 1974.
Historical rankings are a fool’s errand unless one prescribes a strict set of criteria to base the rankings on. The absence of such is exactly why historical rankings of the 10 greatest heavyweight boxing champions vary so widely from list to list, even among notable writers and recognized historians.
To that end, Bleacher Report offers a ranking of the 10 most accomplished heavyweight champions in boxing history. No thought has been given to who would defeat who in presumed fantasy fights, and special emphasis has been placed on title bout wins, length of championship reign and number of consecutive defenses.
Click through to see the 10 most accomplished heavyweight champions ever.


Ranking the 10 Most Accomplished Heavyweight Champions in Boxing History
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Doctor: Pubic Hair Exists for a Reason -- Our Obsession With Hairless Genitals Must End!


I must have missed the declaration of war on pubic hair.
It must have happened sometime in the last decade because the amount of time, energy, money and emotion both genders spend on abolishing every hair from their genitals is astronomical.  The genital hair removal industry, including medical professionals who advertise their specialty services to those seeking the “clean and bare” look, is exponentially growing.
But why pick on the lowly pubic hair?  A few sociological theories suggest it has to do with cultural trends spawned by bikinis and thongs, certain hairless actors and actresses, a desire to return to childhood,  a misguided attempt at hygiene or being more attractive to a partner.  Surely human beings are not so naïve as to be susceptible to fashion trends and biases.
It is a sadly misconceived war.  Long ago surgeons figured out that shaving a body part prior to surgery actually increased rather than decreased surgical site infections.  No matter what expensive and complex weapons are used—razor blades, electric shavers, tweezers, waxing, depilatories,  electrolysis—hair, like crab grass,  always grows back and eventually wins.   In the mean time, the skin suffers the effects of the scorched battlefield.
Pubic hair removal naturally irritates and inflames the hair follicles left behind, leaving microscopic open wounds.  Rather than suffering a comparison to a bristle brush, frequent hair removal is necessary to stay smooth, causing regular irritation of the shaved or waxed area.  When that irritation is combined with the warm moist environment of the genitals, it becomes a happy culture media for some of the nastiest of bacterial pathogens, namely group A streptococcus, staphylococcus aureus and its recently mutated cousin methicillin resistant staph aureus (MRSA).   There is an increase in staph boils and abscesses, necessitating incisions to drain the infection, resulting in scarring that can be significant.   It is not at all unusual to find pustules and other hair follicle inflammation papules on shaved genitals.
Additionally, I’ve seen cellulitis (soft tissue bacterial infection without abscess) of the scrotum, labia and penis from spread of bacteria from shaving or from sexual contact with strep or staph bacteria from a partner’s skin.
Some clinicians are finding that freshly shaved pubic areas and genitals are also more vulnerable to herpes infections due to the microscopic wounds being exposed to virus carried by mouth or genitals.   It follows that there may be vulnerability to spread of other STIs as well.
Pubic hair does have a purpose,  providing cushion against friction that can cause skin abrasion and injury,  protection from bacteria and other unwanted pathogens, and is the visible result of long awaited adolescent hormones, certainly nothing to be ashamed of or embarrassed about.
It is time to declare a truce in the war on pubic hair, and allow it to stay right where it belongs.  We owe it to our patients to encourage them to let it be.
Emily Gibson is a family physician who blogs at Barnstorming.
This post first appeared on KevinMD.
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Meet the people who have volunteered to die on Mars


Mars One, an interplanetary travel nonprofit, will soon select the next round of wannabe astronauts from the nearly 700 current finalists. While making a short movie about the competition for The Guardian, we at Stateless Media had a chance to speak to a few people vying for one of the coveted seats on a Mars One Spaceship. I learned the following: they are all really smart, incredibly brave, and a little bit crazy.
Actually, they're a lot of bit crazy. And that’s a good thing. Because it takes a certain kind of person to choose to live the rest of their lives stranded on a desert planet with no breathable air, no Netflix, no Snapchat, no Game of Thrones, no General Tso's Chicken, and no long, romantic walks on the beach. Oh yeah, and no sex. Like I said, crazy.
Since the dawn of the Space Age, we have always selected our best and brightest, our most physically fit, and our most Tom-Hanks-like humans to be our ambassadors in outer space. Mostly because leaving earth has been hard. Astronauts needed to know how to fly jets, fix computers, and conduct all sorts of science experiments--all in zero gravity and in space suits that look really tricky to get on and off.
But while the challenges of space travel remain unfathomable to your average selfie-snapping, Starbucks-swilling Downton Abbey fan (raises hand), they are now much more manageable. Enough so that the future colonists of Mars do not need to be pulled from the highest ranks of the Air Force. With current technology we can rocket humans to Mars in about nine months, about the same time an astronaut spends on the International Space Station. Not a walk in the park, but it will not require any year-long naps in a cryo-chamber. And thanks to decades of reconnaissance by Curiosity, Opportunity, and the rest of NASA’s band of Merry Rovers, we know most of what astronauts will need to survive on Mars once they get there: souped-up spacesuits to protect against massive dust storms and sub-freezing temperatures; tons of freeze-dried food; housing pods that can shield against radiation; and a big drill to unlock the frozen water beneath the Mars surface. It's not easy living, but not too unlike, say, Minnesota.

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French Government Declares Independence From Free Speech: Broad Internet Take-Down Powers Now In Place


As its plan to completely shatter the support it received recently by attacking the very same concept of free speech its enemies declared war upon with terrorist attacks on a parody magazine not so many weeks back, the French government's ability to be laughable and simultaneously dangerous never ceases to amaze. What at once looked to be rather punctuated attacks on opinions and social media, and even cable news (which I consider a common enemy but for vastly different reasons) has now since devolved into the kind of massive overreaction against a third-party target that is, dare I say, quite American in nature. Apparently no longer content with the plan to police the ever-dangerous internet themselves, the French government has suddenly and, it must be conceded, shockingly announced that it now has veto power over the internet, requiring ISPs to censor sites at its whim. And, because cynicism is practically the secret sauce in these kinds of things, they've laced their claims of "combating terrorism" via censorship powers with a dash of "preventing child pornography" to boot.
A new decree that went into effect today allows the French government to block websites accused of promoting terrorism and publishing child pornography, without seeking a court order. Under the new rules, published last week by France's Ministry of the Interior, internet service providers (ISPs) must take down offending websites within 24 hours of receiving a government order. French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve says the decree is critical to combating terrorism, but civil rights groups say it gives the government dangerously broad powers to suppress free speech. 

The decree implements two provisions from two laws — an anti-child pornography law passed in 2011 and an anti-terror law passed late last year. A department of the French national police will be responsible for identifying the sites to be blocked, with the suspected terror-related sites subject to review by an anti-terrorism branch. An administrator from the CNIL, France's independent data protection organization, will be charged with overseeing the process. Once a site is blocked, its page will be replaced with an explanation of why the government took it down. In the case of child pornography pages, the text will also include a recommendation to seek medical help.
Now, anyone reading this site already knows why anointing a government with these kinds of powers, whether by the excuse of child pornography or via the far more mangled conflation of speech and terrorism, is inherently problematic. We should simply be able to trot out examples of governments declaring non-offending sites as falling under these kinds of headings and rest our case. When we see France spiral into this kind of out of control fear-based tailspin, however (particularly after having gone through it ourselves to such a degree that we're still trying to dig ourselves out of it), we should find it conscripting us to fight against a stupid history that is attempting to repeat itself. 

What this move relies upon, as do most attempts to censor speech on the internet, is a misguided fear of the seduction of internet-based communications. You can see this especially in the perhaps well-intentioned proponents of censorship when they speak.
Supporters of the measure say it's critical to preventing future attacks, pointing to the growing number of young French nationals who have joined jihadist movements in Iraq and Syria, as well as aggressive online propaganda campaigns from terrorist groups like ISIS. 

"Today, 90 percent of those who swing toward terrorist activities within the European Union do so after visiting the internet," Cazneuves told reporters last week, after presenting the decree to French ministers. "We do not combat terrorism if we do not take measures to regulate the internet."
Just try to implement that mode of logic in any arena that doesn't involve the internet and see how far it gets you. You'll be laughed out of the conversation if you were to say, for instance, "A large percent of those committing terrorist acts within Europe attended a mosque before doing so. We do not combat terrorism if we do not regulate mosques." It misses the point entirely, of course, because it punishes what is largely the innocent while doing very little toactually combat terrorism. We might also find that terrorists largely wear silk, or listen to a certain type of music, or are part of any number of subsets of culture that we wouldn't dream of censoring, regulating, or placing under the watchful eye of a French government that has appeared all too happy to blame everyone for the failures of both their own security apparatus and civilization as a whole. But with the internet? That we'll censor, because the ruling class is still of an age that might find it scary enough to allow it to happen. 

Add to this that the blocking attempt will be largely ineffective for those with the will to circumvent it and this essentially amounts to one part grandstanding and two parts setting up a precedent for government interference in speech in the future.
"In light of the recent arrests that have followed the Charlie Hebdo attacks — many of which are clearly overboard — I would say that France's government needs to seriously think about whether this law will stop terrorists, or merely chill speech," Jillian York, of the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), said in an email to The Verge. 

Others question the effectiveness of the measure. Felix Tréguer, of the French online rights group La Quadrature du Net, says the decree risks "over-blocking perfectly legal content," adding that the domain name system (DNS) blocking that it calls for can be easily circumvented. "The measure only gives the illusion that the State is acting for our safety," Tréguer said in a statement published today, "while going one step further in undermining fundamental rights online."
A small ruling class exerting control over the rights of the many in favor of its own power? Wherehave I heard this story before?

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SOURCE: TECH DIRT

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Sunday, 8 February 2015

Why the US Government Doesn’t Want You to Own a Drone


As with every newfangled technology, drones possess the potential to both improve our lives, and to hinder them. However, the dangers posed by these machines mainly come in the form of privacy risks, both in the private sector, and from the government.

But for the US government, security and privacy is only one side of the coin. They can also be used to damage property and hurt personnel, or at least they will in the near future. I’m of course talking about hobbyist drones that the average person can buy right now.

Obviously, the government’s fleet of flying murder machines already have the ability to gather intelligence and kill people. But apparently what’s keeping government officials up at night these days is the potential for civilians of average income to purchase tricked-out murder machines of their own.

Over a week before the news caught wind of the drone that crashed on the White House lawn, there was a meeting in Arlington, Virginia with officials from the DHS, FAA, and the US military. There they discussed the numerous ways these hobby aircraft may be used for countering military formations, assassination, and terrorism.
The conference was open to civilians, but explicitly closed to the press. One attendee described it as an eye-opener. The officials played videos of low-cost drones firing semi-automatic weapons, revealed that Syrian rebels are importing consumer-grade drones to launch attacks, and flashed photos from an exercise that pitted $5,000 worth of drones against a convoy of armored vehicles. (The drones won.) But the most striking visual aid was on an exhibit table outside the auditorium, where a buffet of low-cost drones had been converted into simulated flying bombs. One quadcopter, strapped to 3 pounds of inert explosive, was a DJI Phantom 2, a newer version of the very drone that would land at the White House the next week.
Attendee Daniel Herbert snapped a photo and posted it to his website along with detailed notes from the conference. The day after the White House incident, he says, DHS phoned him and politely asked him to remove the entire post. He complied. “I’m not going to be the one to challenge Homeland Security and cause more contention,” says Herbert, who runs a small drone shop in Delaware called Skygear Solutions.
Of course, this is the Internet we’re talking about, so the image is still floating around. You can see it in the link I posted above. It shows how easy it would be to strap some explosives onto an ordinary hobby drone.

As for mounting a firearm, that’s still a little ways off. The potential is already there, but it’s going to take a few years before that sort of technology is in the hands of everyday drone enthusiasts. A cursory look through YouTube will net you a few videos of people who’ve mounted handguns and .22s onto their drones, but they’re all pretty rudimentary.

Nonetheless, we’re rapidly approaching the day when the average person with a few thousand dollars can buy a long-distance drone with a fully capable weapons system. To mitigate these risks, some drone manufacturers are voluntarily limiting the range of these machines.
The Phantom line of consumer drones made by China-based DJI figures prominently in the government’s attack scenarios. That’s not because there’s anything sinister about DJI or the Phantom—in fact, just the opposite. The Phantom is the iPod of drones, cheap, easy to use, and as popular with casual and first-time fliers as with experienced radio control enthusiasts.
With all the attention surrounding the White House landing, DJI felt it had to take action. So last Thursday it pushed a “mandatory firmware update” for its Phantom 2 that would prevent the drone from flying in a 15.5 mile radius of the White House. So far it’s the only drone-maker installing what’s known as GPS geofencing.
The technique is not new to DJI. The company first added no-fly zones to its firmware in April of last year to deter newbie pilots from zipping into the restricted airspace over airports, where they might interfere with departing and arriving aircraft. If a Phantom 2 pilot flies within five miles of a major airport’s no fly zone, the drone’s maximum altitude begins to taper. At 1.5 miles away, it lands and refuses to take off again.
Municipal airports are protected by smaller zones, also programmed into the drones’ firmware.
Of course, firmware isn’t always so firm, as anyone who’s done a jailbreak on their smartphone can tell you. In reality there’s no stopping this. In the same way that criminals can still buy guns on the black market, anyone who is determined to turn their drone into a suicide bomb or a mobile gun turret, is not going to be deterred. The future has arrived, and it’s going to present some interesting challenges for every government on Earth.  

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Millions of GMO Insects Could be Set Loose in Florida Keys



Millions of genetically modified mosquitoes could be released in the Florida Keys if British researchers win approval to use the bugs against two extremely painful viral diseases.
Never before have insects with modified DNA come so close to being set loose in a residential U.S. neighborhood.
“This is essentially using a mosquito as a drug to cure disease,” said Michael Doyle, executive director of the Florida Keys Mosquito Control District, which is waiting to hear if the Food and Drug Administration will allow the experiment.
Dengue and chikungunya are growing threats in the U.S., but some people are more frightened at the thought of being bitten by a genetically modified organism. More than 130,000 signed a Change.org petition against the experiment.

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Saturday, 7 February 2015

Obama: “America Is Poised For Another Good Year”

anothergoodyear2015
In a speech at Ivy Tech Community Collage in Indiana President Obama couldn’t have been more proud of the work he’s accomplished over the last several years. Citing official statistics like lower deficits and higher employment he says that 2015 is going to be a another good year.
If there were ever a contra-indicator for how the state of the union will be now that the “shadow of crisis has passed,” this is it:
We’ve come a long way these past six years, since we suffered the worst financial crisis since the great depression.
This morning we found out that America’s businesses added another 267,000 jobs. In 2014 our economy created more than 3.1 million jobs and that’s the best year of job growth since the 1990′s. So all told, over the past 59 months the private sector has added about 11.8 million jobs. That’s the longest streak of private sector job growth in our history.
Meanwhile, our deficits are shrinking… they’ve gone down by about two-thirds. Our dropout rates are down… Our graduation rates are up. We’re as free of foreign oil as we’ve been in 30 years… We’ve doubled the amount of clean energy that we’re producing… A lot of families are saving a lot of money at the gas pump, which is putting some smiles on folks’ faces.
And in the single most hopeful sign for middle class families, wages are starting to go up again.
So, America is poised for another good year.




READ FULL STORY HERE >> Obama: “America Is Poised For Another Good Year”
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