A certain lack of knowledge

by Clifford F. Thies

Elliot Spitzer, the disgraced former Governor of New York State and currently the director of ethics for CNN, was broadcasting some kind of investigation into the background of Donald Trump, a sort of, maybe candidate for President.

The Donald didn't care too much for this investigation as, just to cite one little reason, he has a bunch of current and potentially future ex-wives who have a pecuniary interest in his net worth. Then, there's the banks, limited partners and venture capitalists pursuing foreclosure on various properties of his.

So, the Donald called up Spitzer right on the air to take issue with the idea with that the American people might have a right to know about his finances. Spitzer replied, and I quote,

"The issue here, and I also agree as a private entity and a private company you do not have the obligation to make the disclosures that a public company does.

"And therefore there's a certain lack of knowledge that all of us bring to this conversation ... "

A certain lack of knoweldge???

What about the mystery man himself? You know, the guy whom we don't have a right to know in what country he was born, or what's recorded on his birth certificate, his coursework and grades when he was a student, why it took him so long to graduate, the reason he was given scholarships to Ivy League universities, who wrote his book, how he got a loan for millions of dollars to buy his mansion, his relationship tp Jeremiah Wright, Louis Farrakhan, Bill Ayres, Rod Blagojevich, Tony Rezko, etc., etc.

Oh, wait, we already know everything we need to know about that person.

He's a Democrat.

Harvard Medical School Adviser: Good today, bad tomorrow: Nutrition advice – Detroit Free Press

Harvard Medical School Adviser: Good today, bad tomorrow: Nutrition advice
Detroit Free Press
QUESTION: I find nutrition to be a slippery topic because the advice from experts always seems to be changing. I hear the government recently released new guidelines for healthy eating. Can you help summarize them? ANSWER: You're not alone in your ...

American Empire, American Bankruptcy | Gene Expression


Image credit

Time has a worthwhile piece up, How to Save a Trillion Dollars. One thing the author brings up in relation to our exorbitant military spending is that in certain sectors the lead of the American armed forces technologically is such that we do not to need to significantly upgrade our matériel for a generation to maintain at least a marginal level of superiority. The F-35 is clearly superior to the F-16, but is it worth it to increase the gap between our air superiority and our nearest competitors at $125 million per unit cost? Not only that, but the American military clearly “sets the curve,” so that the more we invest in our own technological superiority, the more our rivals will have to invest so as to “catch up” and keep the gap relatively constant. The reality is that basically developed nations just need to be advanced enough that they can pummel the leaders of select lesser nations, such as Libya or Ivory Coast, and, have a military beefed up enough to be respectable in the eyes of their peers. An “arms ...

University of Maryland’s Medical Education is Elementary to Watson, the Famed … – Patch.com

University of Maryland's Medical Education is Elementary to Watson, the Famed ...
Patch.com
Now the University of Maryland medical school has joined IBM, software developer Nuance and Columbia University Medical Center to apply Watson's technology to medicine. The University of Maryland secured a grant from IBM for initial development about ...

Resolutions in the Indian genetic layer cake | Gene Expression

Two years ago Reconstructing Indian Genetic History reframed how we should view South Asian historical genomics. In short, Indians can be viewed as a hybrid between a West Eurasian group, “Ancestral North Indians” (ANI) and a very different group, “Ancestral South Indians” (ASI), which had distant connections to West and East Eurasians. At least to a first approximation. Last fall I posted on a new paper which surveyed the Austro-Asiatic speaking peoples of India, and concluded that they were exogenous to the subcontinent. This is an interesting point. Prehistoric treatments of South Asia often use linguistic terms to denote putative ancient populations. One model is that first it was the Munda, the most ancient Austro-Asiatics. Then the Dravidians. And finally the Indo-Aryans. These genetic data imply that the Munda arrived after the initial ANI-ASI synthesis. The Munda people of India can be thought of as ANI-ASI, with an overlay of East Eurasian ancestry.

Zack Ajmal’s K = 11 ADMIXTURE run has highlighted some further issues. He has a set of Austro-Asiatic samples, as well as a host of Indo-Aryan and Dravidian speaking populations. I now believe we can now further clarify and refine our model of the peopling ...

This Old Chinese Man Repairs Damaged Photos with Photoshop for Free [Photoshop]

Baojun Yuan, the man pictured above, learned Photoshop at 60 years old. He's now 76 and for the past decade or so has repaired over 2000 damaged photos and done it all for free. Yuan bought a computer and scanner himself and doesn't charge people because he jokingly says, "My teacher just taught me how to repair the photos, but he forgot to tell me how to charge". What a guy. Check out all the work Yuan has done for people here. [The Design Inspiration] More »


Hey, Some People Actually Use the iPad 2 to Take Pictures [Image Cache]

I thought no one would ever use the iPad 2's camera after they realized how shitty it was. But I guess the crappy picture quality doesn't bother Spike Lee, a film director of all people, from using his iPad 2 3G to record a video (I'm guessing cause of his hand placement) of Barack Obama, POTUS. Some moments need to be documented, I guess! But at least put your iPad 2 in landscape mode Spike! [White House Flickr More »


Improper Ductwork Approved?

I saw a good one today, and it took me a while to catch on.

What do you guys think of this?

A 10 Ton Package Unit with a capped, and I do mean capped - with slips, drives and a cap, return air duct about 10 feet away from the unit.

It was in a school so it had to have, of course, smoke/heat detec