XIAM007 - Making Unique Observations in a Very Cluttered World: 05/18/11

Wednesday, 18 May 2011

CDC Warns Public to Prepare for 'Zombie Apocalypse' - and it's no joke, CDC says it's all about emergency preparation -

Are you prepared for the impending zombie invasion?
That's the question posed by the Centers for Diseases Control and Prevention in a Monday blog posting gruesomely titled, "Preparedness 101: Zombie Apocalypse." And while it's no joke, CDC officials say it's all about emergency preparation.
"There are all kinds of emergencies out there that we can prepare for," the posting reads. "Take a zombie apocalypse for example. That's right, I said z-o-m-b-i-e a-p-o-c-a-l-y-p-s-e. You may laugh now, but when it happens you'll be happy you read this, and hey, maybe you'll even learn a thing or two about how to prepare for a real emergency."
The post, written by Assistant Surgeon General Ali Khan, instructs readers how to prepare for "flesh-eating zombies" much like how they appeared in Hollywood hits like "Night of the Living Dead" and video games like Resident Evil. Perhaps surprisingly, the same steps you'd take in preparation for an onslaught of ravenous monsters are similar to those suggested in advance of a hurricane or pandemic.
"First of all, you should have an emergency kit in your house," the posting continues. "This includes things like water, food, and other supplies to get you through the first couple of days before you can locate a zombie-free refugee camp (or in the event of a natural disaster, it will buy you some time until you are able to make your way to an evacuation shelter or utility lines are restored)."

Other items to be stashed in such a kit include medications, duct tape, a battery-powered radio, clothes, copies of important documents and first aid supplies.
"Once you've made your emergency kit, you should sit down with your family and come up with an emergency plan," the posting continues. "This includes where you would go and who you would call if zombies started appearing outside your doorstep. You can also implement this plan is there is a flood, earthquake or other emergency."
The idea behind the campaign stemmed from concerns of radiation fears following the earthquake and tsunami that rocked Japan in March. CDC spokesman Dave Daigle told FoxNews.com that someone had asked CDC officials if zombies would be a concern due to radiation fears in Japan and traffic spiked following that mention.
"It's kind of a tongue-in-cheek campaign," Daigle said Wednesday. "We were talking about hurricane preparedness and someone bemoaned that we kept putting out the same messages."
While metrics for the post are not yet available, Daigle said it has become the most popular CDC blog entry in just two days.
"People are so tuned into zombies," he said. "People are really dialed in on zombies. The idea is we're reaching an audience or a segment we'd never reach with typical messages."

CDC Link - http://blogs.cdc.gov/publichealthmatters/2011/05/preparedness-101-zombie-apocalypse/

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/health/2011/05/18/cdc-warns-public-prepare-zombie-apocalypse/#ixzz1MjSJPIzH

Atmosphere Above Japan Heated Rapidly Before M9 Earthquake - Infrared emissions increased dramatically days before quake -

Geologists have long puzzled over anecdotal reports of strange atmospheric phenomena in the days before big earthquakes. But good data to back up these stories has been hard to come by.

In recent years, however, various teams have set up atmospheric monitoring stations in earthquake zones and a number of satellites are capable of sending back data about the state of the upper atmosphere and the ionosphere during an earthquake.

Last year, we looked at some fascinating data from the DEMETER spacecraft showing a significant increase in ultra-low frequency radio signals before the magnitude 7 Haiti earthquake in January 2010

Today, Dimitar Ouzounov at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Centre in Maryland and a few buddies present the data from the Great Tohoku earthquake which devastated Japan on 11 March. Their results, although preliminary, are eye-opening.

They say that before the M9 earthquake, the total electron content of the ionosphere increased dramatically over the epicentre, reaching a maximum three days before the quake struck.

At the same time, satellite observations showed a big increase in infrared emissions from above the epicentre, which peaked in the hours before the quake. In other words, the atmosphere was heating up.

These kinds of observations are consistent with an idea called the Lithosphere-Atmosphere-Ionosphere Coupling mechanism. The thinking is that in the days before an earthquake, the great stresses in a fault as it is about to give cause the releases large amounts of radon.

The radioactivity from this gas ionises the air on a large scale and this has a number of knock on effects. Since water molecules are attracted to ions in the air, ionisation triggers the large scale condensation of water.

But the process of condensation also releases heat and it is this that causes infrared emissions. "Our first results show that on March 8th a rapid increase of emitted infrared radiation was observed from the satellite data," say Ouzounov and co.

These emissions go on to effect the ionosphere and its total electron content.

It certainly makes sense that the lithosphere, atmosphere and ionosphere are coupled in a way that can be measured when one of them is perturbed. The question is to what extent the new evidence backs up this idea.

The Japan earthquake is the largest to have struck the island in modern times and will certainly turn out to be among the best studied. If good evidence of this relationship doesn't emerge from this data, other opportunities will be few and far between.

Ref: arxiv.org/abs/1105.2841: Atmosphere-Ionosphere Response to the M9 Tohoku Earthquake Revealed by Joined Satellite and Ground Observations. Preliminary Results.

‘Historic’ budget cuts bill actually increased 2011 spending by $3 billion: CBO -

The fiscal 2011 funding bill roundly hailed for its "historic" spending cuts actually raised government spending by more than $3 billion, according to a new report.
The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office concluded Monday evening, "Total discretionary outlays in 2011 will be $3.2 billion higher as a result of the legislation, CBO estimates—an increase of $7.5 billion for defense programs, partially offset by a net reduction of $4.4 billion in other spending."
In other words, the bill's increase in defense spending this year outweighed the cuts to discretionary programs -- something the CBO warned may potentially be the case. Now it's the official projection.
The finding is particularly embarrassing because President Barack Obama and leaders of both parties portrayed the measure as a monumental accomplishment in the realm of spending cuts, which they all agreed were vital to America's future.
"We have agreed to an historic amount of cuts for the remainder of this fiscal year," saidHouse Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) five weeks ago, promising that the measure would cut $39 billion from 2011 spending.
There was some good news in the CBO report for champions of spending cuts: the legislation is projected to lower the deficit by $122 billion between 2012 and 2021, with a reduction of $183 billion in spending authority during that period.
"[O]ne thing is clear: congressional Republicans were able to save American taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars in the long term," said Brendan Buck, a spokesman for Boehner.

Read more - http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/05/17/historic-budget-cuts-bill-actually-increased-2011-spending-by-3-billion-cbo/

Barrick Gold's security kill 7 at Tanzania mine - 800 people armed with machetes, rocks and hammers came to steal gold -

Security forces at African Barrick Gold's North Mara mine in Tanzania killed seven “criminal intruders” and injured a dozen more after 800 people stormed the project armed with machetes, rocks and hammers in a bid to steal gold ore.

Police were called to the area on Monday and “came under sustained attack” by hundreds of people who illegally entered the mine site to try to remove ore from one of the crushers, said a statement released by the London-based company, which is a majority-owned subsidiary of Toronto's Barrick Gold Corp.

“A number of intruders sustained gunshot wounds, resulting in seven intruder fatalities and 12 injuries,” said the release.

The deadly clash is the latest in an ongoing battle between the giant Canadian miner and locals who scavenge for gold-laced rocks on the lucrative property, which Barrick acquired in 2006.

The price of gold has tripled in value since then, reaching a record high of $1,540.25 (U.S.) an ounce earlier this month and making it all the more attractive to villagers involved in illegal small-scale mining.

The violence Monday follows other clashes at the mine that killed at least seven others in the past two years, according to interviews with victims' relatives, witnesses, local officials and human-rights workers, Bloomberg News reported in December. African Barrick doesn't deny that security incidents have previously resulted in deaths.

Gargantuan trucks scale the mounds of grey waste rock surrounding the North Mara mine.

Meanwhile below, young men with hammers and hoes walk in groups along the dirt roads leading to their villages.

It's conflict between these groups of small-time miners and African Barrick that has apparently produced the majority of the alleged injuries and fatalities at the mine.

Neyakema Mwita, 39, said three of his friends have been killed at the mine while scavenging. Still, he said he has no other means of earning a livelihood besides returning there himself.

“I have a wife. If I don't go there, how else will I eat?”

On this recent morning, speaking as he walked toward his one-room mud home, Mwita had just come down from the mine after spending 10 hours overnight there, searching for gold.

He was not alone. A gold-rich cache was recently discovered and at least a couple of hundred locals had sneaked there the previous night to mine. Security came and chased them away at one point, discharging tear gas and firing guns.

But after officials had gone, miners just returned to the area.

Mwita learned to mine from his father when he was just 11 years old. Back in those days, it wasn't a dangerous profession for a father to pass on to his son.

But then commercial mining came to the area. “When the company came, they suppressed what we were doing. Now, when we go there, we go crawling, creeping on our stomachs. It's scary; we go there like commandos, looking out here and there.”

Police say Monday's deadly conflict was the third attack on the mine in a week, though they managed to keep invaders at bay in the previous two attacks.

“Police fired warning shots into the air and used tear gas to try to stop the attackers from advancing, but they would not heed,” Tarime-Rorya regional police commander Constantine Massawe told Reuters on Tuesday. “Police were forced to use live ammunition to protect themselves. Seven police officers were injured in the incident.”

The mine, located in Tarime district about 100 kilometres east of Lake Victoria and 20 kilometres south of the Kenyan border, has four open pits and produced almost 213,000 ounces of gold in 2010.

African Barrick is investigating the latest incident, as are the police, who have deployed additional forces in the area, the company said. There has been no material effect on production at the site, the company added.

Barrick Gold Corp. and African Barrick, which is 74 per cent owned by the Canadian miner, have previously paid the Tanzanian government for federal police protection at the mine and used private armed guards, according to company documents.

“African Barrick Gold sincerely regrets any loss of life or injury on or near its mine sites,” the company said. “The company will continue to support the government and the community in their efforts to improve law and order and security in the North Mara region.”

In 2008, some 200 people attacked the North Mara mine and destroyed property worth $7 million, forcing operations at one pit to be halted.

“This is an extreme situation in a very difficult tribal area, exacerbated by some poor management tactics,” said Fairfax IS analyst John Meyer.

A private member's bill from John McKay, the Liberal MP for Scarborough-Guildwood, aimed at toughening scrutiny of Canadian companies operating overseas was narrowly defeated in the House of Commons last October after the mining industry campaigned against it.

African Barrick was spun off by Barrick Gold in March 2010. The company operates four mines in northwest Tanzania.

8 Reasons Why China Resembles The USA Prior To The Great Depression -

I wanted to pass along some excellent thoughts from Mark Lapolla of Knight Capital. He was in the latest welling@weeden and had some excellent thoughts on the overall economic environment.
He touches on a variety of topics including some MMT, but the most interesting portion was his belief that China now resembles pre-depression USA or 1990′s Japan.
Lapolla is astounded at how the world has come to rely so heavily on a “repressive, communist regime employing command and control economic management while violating trade protections and human rights everywhere”.
Attached are the 8 reasons why Lapolla sees similarities between China and USA prior to the Great Depression:

1) Massive disparity of wealth, income and education
2) Rapid industrialization and displacement of labor
3) Opaque and misleading economic and financial data
4) Massive build-up of leverage across the “rising class”
5) Bubbles in both residential real estate and fixed asset/infrastructure development
6) Accelerating and uncontrolled growth in disintermediated credit
7) Expected transference of economic growth to domestic demand.
8) An accelerating price/wage spiral