XIAM007 - Making Unique Observations in a Very Cluttered World

Wednesday, 27 October 2010

Insider Selling Volume at Highest Level Ever Tracked - 3,177 to 1 - last 6 months sold 120M shares, bought 38,000 shares -

The largest companies in three of the most important leading sectors of the market have seen their executives classified as insiders sell more than 120 million shares of stock over the last six months. Top executives at these very same companies bought just 38,000 shares over that same time period, making for an eye-popping sell to buy ratio of 3,177 to one.

The grand total for the three sectors are “as awful as we have ever seen since we began doing this exercise years ago,” said Newman, who was ahead on such trends as the dangers of high-frequency trading and ETFs before the ‘Flash Crash’. “Clearly, insiders are seeing great value only in cash. Their actions speak volumes for the veracity for the current rally.”

Tuesday, 26 October 2010

White House Adviser: US Must Prepare for Asteroid - NASA is being charged to protect U.S. & entire world against an impact -

If an asteroid were on a collision course with Earth, would we be ready to defend against its destructive impact or would we be helpless and defenseless?

NASA, America's space agency, is being charged with leading the way to protect not only the U.S. but the entire world in the event of such a horrifying scenario. And a top White House science adviser says we have to be prepared.

In separate 10-page letters to the House Committee on Science and Technology and the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation, John Holdren, director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, or OSTP, outlines plans for "(A) protecting the United States from a near-Earth object that is expected to collide with Earth; and (B) implementing a deflection campaign, in consultation with international bodies, should one be necessary."

While Holdren indicates that no large asteroid or comet presents an immediate hazard to our planet, the fact that devastating impacts have occurred on Earth in the distant past is enough to warrant safety precautions for the future.

"Indeed, a steady stream of these objects enters the Earth's atmosphere on a daily basis, consisting mostly of dust-sized particles and estimated to total some 50 to 150 tons each day," Holdren wrote.

As remote as it may seem that Earth could be the target of a giant rock from space, nevertheless, Holdren insists that "the possibility of a future collision involving a more hazardous object should not be ignored."

Asteroids are rocky bodies found within the inner solar system, originating in an area known as the asteroid belt, located between the planets Mars and Jupiter.

If a large asteroid were to strike Earth, it could cause a global climate change, which many scientists believe is what caused the extinction of the dinosaurs more than 60 million years ago -- not a good prospect for life on Earth in the present day if a similar event occurred.

NASA's Near Earth Object program, or NEO, looks for and monitors asteroids that are at least a kilometer in diameter.

But, as Holdren points out, one problem in the search is that "the orbits of known objects can be changed by gravitational or solar radiation perturbations, or even collisions with other objects, meaning that periodic monitoring of known NEOs must also be conducted."

Numerous movies have depicted the devastation caused by an asteroid collision with Earth, including "Meteor" (1979), "Deep Impact" (1998) and "Armageddon" (1998).

After 12 years of cosmic hunting, NASA search teams have determined that 149 NEOs larger than a kilometer in size are in orbits that might pose a problem for Earth, but none is considered an impact threat in the next 100 years.

Read more - http://www.aolnews.com/weird-news/article/white-house-adviser-us-must-prepare-for-asteroid/19687765?test=latestnews

Russian bears treat graveyards as 'giant refrigerators' - shortage of bears' food forced the animals to eat human corpses

From a distance it resembled a rather large man in a fur coat, leaning tenderly over the grave of a loved one. But when the two women in the Russian village of Vezhnya Tchova came closer they realised there was a bear in the cemetery eating a body.

Russian bears have grown so desperate after a scorching summer they have started digging up and eating corpses in municipal cemetries, alarmed officials said today. Bears' traditional food – mushrooms, berries and the odd frog – has disappeared, they added.

The Vezhnya Tchova incident took place on Saturday in the northern republic of Komi, near the Arctic Circle. The shocked women cried in panic, frightening the bear back into the woods, before they discovered a ghoulish scene with the clothes of the bear's already-dead victim chucked over adjacent tombstones, the Russian newspaper Moskovsky Komsomelets reported.

Local people said that bears had resorted to scavenging in towns and villages - rummaging through bins, stealing garden carrots and raiding tips. A young man had been mauled in the centre of Syktyvkar, Komi's capital. "They are really hungry this year. It's a big problem. Many of them are not going to survive," said Simion Razmislov, the vice-president of Komi's hunting and fishing society.

World Wildlife Fund Russia said there had been a similar case two years ago in the town of Kandalaksha, in the northern Karelia republic. "You have to remember that bears are natural scavengers. In the US and Canada you can't leave any food in tents in national parks," said Masha Vorontsova of WWF Russia.

"In Karelia one bear learned how to do it [open a coffin]. He then taught the others," she added, suggesting: "They are pretty quick learners."

The only way to get rid of the bears would be to frighten them with something noisy like a firework or shoot them, she said.

According to Vorontsova, the omnivorous bears had "plenty to eat" this autumn, with foods such as fish and ants at normal levels. The bears raided graveyards because they offered a supply of easy food, she said, a bit like a giant refrigerator. "The story is horrible. Nobody wants to think about having a much loved member of their family eaten by a bear."

The bear population in Russia is relatively stable with numbers between 120,000 and 140,000. The biggest threat isn't starvation but hunting - with VIP sportsmen and wealthy gun enthusiasts wiping out most of the large male bears in Kamchatka, in Russia's Far East. Chinese poachers have killed many black bears near the border, selling their claws and other parts in markets.

The Russian government is drafting legislation to ban the killing of bears during the winter breeding season.

Monday, 25 October 2010

'Snuggie Sutra' Brings Blanket With Sleeves Into Bedroom - series of different sexual positions in the Snuggie -

Snuggies -- the famous "blankets with sleeves" from those cheesy TV infomercials -- may look frumpy, but with a little imagination, they can be hotter than lingerie in the bedroom.

Now, you've probably heard of the myriad sexual positions associated with the ancient Kama Sutra,but what about those practiced in "Snuggie Sutra"?

Created by friends Lex Friedman and Megan Morrison, Snuggie Sutra is exactly what it sounds like: A series of different sexual positions that can be performed by couples all while wearing those big, blue oversized blankets.

The duo frequently share their strange Snuggie sex tips onthesnuggiesutra.com. These include "The Tablecloth," a position meant for "beginners" in which the woman lies on her back and puts her legs through a Snuggie's sleeves with the rest of the blanket covering her, and "The Matador," in which the Snuggie is used as a role-playing prop during some bizarre bullfighting fantasy.

But wait, there's more.

Friedman and Morrison just released "The Snuggie Sutra" book, boasting never-before-seen positions for lovers and, as Friedman told AOL News, every single move in there is 100 percent "doable."

"We wanted to create positions that people could actually try at home. Sure, some require better-than-average physical dexterity and a low shame threshold, but they can be done," Friedman said.

And he should know. He's actually tried most of the Snuggie Sutra moves himself in his living room.

Over a bottle of wine and sometimes a Twister mat, Friedman said he and his friends have contorted into every position while fully clothed, just to make sure they're "safe for public consumption."

After much trial and error, Friedman said they nailed each and every one, and you can too.

Read more - http://www.aolnews.com/weird-news/article/snuggie-sutra-incorporates-snuggie-into-sex/19676140?test=latestnews

New service lets parents rent out a drug-sniffing dog - comes to house and detects even the tiniest whiff of narcotics -

Underneath the mattress isn't going to cut it. Neither will tucking it behind the stack of "Twilight" books. Not even pushing it deep into the toe of a smelly gym shoe.

The dog will find it. And he'll know it's not oregano.

A new service in Maryland is promising parents peace of mind by allowing them to essentially rent a drug-sniffing dog, a highly trained canine that will come to their house and within seconds, detect even the tiniest whiff of narcotics.

The program allows ordinary moms and dads access to a search tool typically reserved for law enforcement — and typically aimed at suspected criminals.

Dogs Finding Drugs will, indeed, uncover teens' stashes. Whether those kids talk to their parents again remains to be seen.

Anne Wills, who runs the just-launched, Catonsville-based nonprofit, says parents are clamoring for the service and she expects business to "explode."

"I know that when my kids were growing up, every once in a while I'd have liked to know what they were doing," says Wills, who's having her own Labrador-mix, Heidi, trained to become a drug-detection dog. "The need is there. The desire is there."

Drug-sniffing is a fresh turn for Wills' organization, Dogs Finding Dogs, a nearly 3-year-old group that until now has used the skills of search dogs to find missing pets. Heidi and the other search dogs affiliated with the program have traveled all over the region, helping to reunite nearly 300 wayward dogs and cats with their frantic owners.

Besides targeting parents who suspect their children are dabbling in drugs, Dogs Finding Drugs is offering its services to companies and schools. Its dogs, which are all certified K-9s, can detect marijuana, heroin, cocaine and methamphetamines, as well as prescription drugs with trace amounts of those narcotics. The dogs can also uncover guns and explosives.

The rate is about $200 an hour — more or less depending on the circumstances and scale of the search.

Michael Gimbel, the former "drug czar" for Baltimore County, is helping Wills promote the service, the first of its kind in the area, but one of a handful of similar programs that have popped up across the country in recent years. He considers it a way for parents to, as he puts it, protect their home.

"Bottom line is, parents need to use every resource available to protect their kids from drugs and their home," he says. "This is just another new and creative way to attack the problem."

The success seems to vary for other companies offering drug-sniffing dog services. In Arizona, Amy Halm started Desert Drug Dog earlier this year. She says business has been "hard going" but "growing."

In the Twin Cities of Minnesota, John Roux started Metro Canine Detection Services in 2002. Schools fill out the bulk of his customer base — he's got 25 schools as regular customers and expects that number to double within the year. In New Jersey, a company called Sniff Dogs that got a lot of fanfare when it launched two years ago still has a website, but its phone has been disconnected.

This week, Wills and trainer Janet Dooley took Zuko, a 6-year-old Belgian Malinois, to a home in Churchville to demonstrate the dog's refined skills of detection, testing him with planted drugs. The regal-looking shepherd dog has been training with Dooley since he was 8 weeks old. He was, quite literally, born to find drugs.

Zuko is on the alert as soon as Dooley leads him inside. Ignoring a house cat, he immediately trots up the carpeted stairs and enters a bedroom, ears perked, tail in the air, wet nose twitching. Dooley points him to the bed with its neatly arranged pillows, and then to the nightstand, the dresser and the closet. Zuko passes each by with little interest.

But when the dog approaches an upholstered chaise in the corner, he's immediately more animated — running from one side of the chair to the other and pushing his long nose into the cushions.

Finally he just sits calmly beside the chair. That's the signal. He's found something.

It's a small canister with the tiniest trace of marijuana residue — so little that a person can't smell it even right under his nose.

"Good boy!" Dooley says, throwing Zuko his ball and giving him an appreciative slap on the flank.

Down the hall in a guest bathroom, Zuko uncovers more marijuana even more quickly — standing on his hind legs before the vanity, he stares down a box of tissues. Sure enough, the canister with the light scent of contraband was hiding in the box.

Dogs Finding Drugs won't confiscate anything it finds. Nor will the group notify the police — though Wills says she will recommend folks do that on their own.

The best way for parents to handle a child's potential drug problem begins with a good old-fashioned conversation rather than a drug-sniffing dog, says Elizabeth Robertson, the National Institute on Drug Abuse's chief of prevention research.

"Given everything we know about substance abuse prevention, what you want to do with your kids is build trust and communication," she says. "This seems like a tactic that would disrupt trust."

And she suspects that clever young people who've been burned by the dog — or fear they might be — will devise ways to game the system.

"If you are a kid who was hiding drugs in the house and somebody brought a drug in the house, what would you do? I'd hide it in the yard. Or hide it in someone else's house," she says. "It doesn't seem that practical."

Baltimore parent Genny Dill agrees with Robinson. Upon hearing of the service, she says slowly, and with increasing notes of incredulity, "No. Really? Crazy. Absolutely crazy. That's a whole new level of distrust."

The mother of a 17-year-old girl, Dill says she has no trouble peeking at her daughter's text messages and e-mail. Though she's wondered if her daughter has tried pot, or been offered drugs, Gill is fairly certain that by hiring a drug-sniffing dog, she'd ruin their relationship.

"They're never going to love you again," she says. "Well, maybe they'd love you, but they will seriously not trust you as a parent, and when they're teenagers, that's a terrible time for that to happen."

But Kelli Lewis would want to know if there were drugs in her home — and she'd consider hiring the dogs if she suspected a problem with her son, who's a senior in high school and set on going away to college.

"Drug use is so rampant," says the Baltimore County mother. "I'm not very worried about it with him, but it's definitely on my mind — I know a lot of things can happen in school."

Lewis knows her son would be upset if she had dogs go through his room — but she doesn't much care. She says: "If I felt the need, I would do it."

"We talk about the kids' right to privacy and in my house. They don't have a right to privacy," she says with a little laugh. "If they're doing anything in here they shouldn't, I have a right to know about it."

jill.rosen@baltsun.com

http://www.baltimoresun.com/videobeta/?watchId=7931d842-2286-44a3-8b8e-6d1e640232d8

Saturday, 23 October 2010

Germany Calls Out Geithner's Hypocrisy - said Fed's "push toward easier monetary policy is “wrong way” to stimulate growth

Germany Calls Out Geithner's Hypocrisy - said Fed's "push toward easier monetary policy is “wrong way” to stimulate growth

And just so there is no confusion as to whether Germany's critcisms will gain steam, below is Zero Hedge's projection of what the Fed's balance sheet will soon look like.

After months of US bitching and moaning about China's so called unfair exchange policies, when it is the US Fed which is the biggest currency manipulator in the world by orders of magnitude, one country finally had the guts to stand up and call out Tim Geithner on his endless bullshit. At the G-20 meeting, per Bloomberg, German Economic Minister Rainer Bruederle said that the Fed's "push toward easier monetary policy is the “wrong way” to stimulate growth and may amount to a manipulation of the dollar. Excessive, permanent money creation in my opinion is an indirect manipulation of an exchange rate." The fact that China was smart enough to peg its currency to the most rapidly devaluing currency in the world is a different story altogether, and merely confirms that they are leap and bounds more sophisticated in their monetary policy than anyone gives them credit for. If Geithner wants to prevent a relative depreciation of the Yuan versus all other currencies in the world (especially the EUR, against which it continues to be in freefall), the answer is simple: stop bloody printing!

And with Tim Geithner present, could the G20 meeting possibly not end up being a total farce? Of course not:

U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner dismissed prospects of mounting criticism of the Fed’s approach in his press conference after the G-20 meeting yesterday. When asked whether he expected Germany’s criticisms to gain steam, he replied: “I do not.”

In the future, when asked if he ever had problems with being called an idiot and a moron by virtually everyone, Tim Geithner will have the same reply.

And the stand cup comedy continued.

The Treasury chief declined to comment directly on the Fed’s policy, while also saying that major economies like the U.S. need to make growth a top priority. One of the global imbalances is the disparity between rapidly expanding emerging- market economies and too-slow growth in developed nations, he said.

“We are going to continue to try to strengthen the recovery under way so we can dig out of this as quickly as we can,” Geithner said.

In other words, the Fed will celebrate the recovery "under way" by printing another $1.5 trillion in money.

It has gotten so bad that Germany is now directly siding with Brazil which spat in the face of America and decided to not even show up, demonstrating just what it thinks of Geithner's endless hypocrisy.

Low interest rates and weak recoveries in industrialized economies such as the U.S. have forced investors to flood emerging markets with capital, providing resources for growth yet also threatening to spur inflation, asset bubbles and over- valued exchange rates. Such concerns have prompted economies from South Korea to Brazil to take steps to slow the inflow of speculative cash.

“I’m not a friend of this but I can understand” why Brazil introduced capital controls, Bruederle said.

Facebook 'accidentally outing gay users' to outside firms through targeted ads -

Facebook might be inadvertently outing its gay users to advertisers, according to a new study.

Researchers have discovered that different targeted advertising is being sent to users’ accounts if they have described themselves as gay or straight.

The discovery could mean that people who wish to keep their sexuality private may be sharing it with advertisers without their knowledge.

The loophole is yet another example of a Facebook privacy breach after it emerged that millions of pieces of personal information were being shared without users’ consent after using popular apps.

A team from Microsoft and Germany's Max Planck Institute created six fake profiles: two straight men, two straight women, a gay man and a lesbian. They wanted to see if Facebook targeted ads based on sexuality, and so the profiles were left otherwise completely the same.

The team then monitored what ads each virtual user was sent over a period of a week.

They found that the ads displayed on the gay man's profile differed substantially from those on the straight one. Many of these adverts were not obviously adverts for services that only gay men would require, and half of them did not mention the word ‘gay’ in the text.

The researchers say that this means people who click on the adverts from their Facebook profile will not know that they were targeted for that ad because of the sexual orientation and so by clicking through on the ad are effectively ‘outing’ themselves.

This means that the advertising firms now know if they are gay even if this aspect of their profile has been hidden from public view.

The researchers write in the paper: ‘The danger with such ads, unlike the gay bar ad where the target demographic is blatantly obvious, is that the user reading the ad text would have no idea that by clicking it he would reveal to the advertiser both his sexual-preference and a unique identiﬁer (cookie, IP address, or email address if he signs up on the advertiser's site).’

The loophole means that any advertisers who collect data such as Facebook IDs could match a person’s sexual preference with their unique ID and their name.

A Facebook spokesman said: 'Our advertising guidelines prohibit advertisers from using user data collected from running an ad on Facebook, including information derived from targeting criteria.

'For example, we explicitly prohibit them from associating that targeting detail with the data collected from the user in forms they fill out, applications they make, or other interactions on their site. We also require that targeting of ads based on a user attribute be directly relevant to the offer in the advertisement.

'We take the privacy of our users very seriously and take immediate action when violations of these policies come to our attention. We don’t provide any personally identifiable information to advertisers and we recommend that people always exercise caution when filling out forms about themselves online.

'We have no evidence that the advertisers mentioned in this study sought to collect information about people using Facebook, but we encourage people to report any advertisements that they suspect may be doing so.'

Last week it emerged that vast amounts of data – including the names of individual members and their online ‘friends’ – were passed to internet advertising firms, with tens of millions of people thought to have been affected.

The leaks were possible even when members had deliberately set their privacy options to the maximum secrecy levels.

The practice violates Facebook’s own rules on data protection and will raise questions about the company’s ability to keep information about its members’ activities secure.

Security experts warned that the details could be used – when combined with other publicly available information – to build up a detailed picture of an individual’s interests, friendship circle and lifestyle.

Around 25 different advertising and data firms were receiving the information, an investigation by the Wall Street Journal found.

It was passed to them by firms whose ‘apps’ – games and other features – operate on Facebook and not by the social networking site itself.

Using the data allows advertisers to better target individuals with promotion for specific product.

Friday, 22 October 2010

World’s most advanced nuclear submarine, HMS Astute, runs aground on rocks off Scotland -

The world’s most advanced nuclear submarine, HMS Astute, has run aground on rocks off Scotland causing considerable embarrassment for Navy chiefs.

The grounding of the £1.2 billion Astute hunter-killer comes at the end of a dire week for the Royal Navy which has seen its carrier force halved, Harrier jump jets axed and warship force reduced by almost a quarter.

It is understood that the boat, which is first in its class, ran aground by its stern in a manoeuvre that “went slightly wrong” after it had dropped some sailors ashore in tidal waters off the Isle of Skye.

As the tide rapidly ebbed it is thought the skipper of Astute, Commander Andy Coles, decided not to power it off the obstruction as it would risk damaging the hull that carries some of the most advanced acoustic tiles that make Astute virtually undetectable beneath the seas.

Biggest Leak in US History - 109,032 deaths in Iraq, 66,081 'civilians'; 23,984 'enemy' - 31 civilians dying every day -

At 5pm EST Friday 22nd October 2010 WikiLeaks released the largest classified military leak in history. The 391,832 reports ('The Iraq War Logs'), document the war and occupation in Iraq, from 1st January 2004 to 31st December 2009 (except for the months of May 2004 and March 2009) as told by soldiers in the United States Army. Each is a 'SIGACT' or Significant Action in the war. They detail events as seen and heard by the US military troops on the ground in Iraq and are the first real glimpse into the secret history of the war that the United States government has been privy to throughout.

The reports detail 109,032 deaths in Iraq, comprised of 66,081 'civilians'; 23,984 'enemy' (those labeled as insurgents); 15,196 'host nation' (Iraqi government forces) and 3,771 'friendly' (coalition forces). The majority of the deaths (66,000, over 60%) of these are civilian deaths.That is 31 civilians dying every day during the six year period. For comparison, the 'Afghan War Diaries', previously released by WikiLeaks, covering the same period, detail the deaths of some 20,000 people. Iraq during the same period, was five times as lethal with equivallent population size.

Please donate to WikiLeaks to defend this information.

London School of Economics: US Must Prepare for "Savage Austerity" -

Howard Davies, chairman of the London School of Economics, and Willem Buiter, chief economist at Citigroup Inc., talk about the potential impact of additional quantitative easing by the Federal Reserve on the U.S. economy. Davies and Buiter say "Savage Austerity" coming to America as they talk with Tom Keene on Bloomberg Television's "Surveillance Midday." (Source: Bloomberg)