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silveradeptWow. This week is only half-over, and it’s still going to be fun before we’re all done. I’m fighting off the panic impulse, just because it’s stupid to panic over something that will take thirty minutes at most to finish. I am not the Barbie over the boiling water because of this. I have all day tomorrow to fix it. So there. Onward to the news.
Power has been restored to the areas affected by a blackout occurring when a nuclear power plant shut down automatically. Officially, there were no safety concerns for the power plant, but the fluctuation of the power grid triggered an automatic shutdown process.
In the matter of Iraq, the Republicans in Congress are permitting a bill to cut Iraq war funding to advance, believing it will be an excellent opportunity to speak about the wonders of Iraq and debate the issue. Of course, they also know that the White House will veto the bill, and no override vote would ever succeed. So rather than doing actual work, the Republicans are planning on some grandstanding. Despite the myth of the surge.
Elsewhere in the world, a report from the U.N. Human Rights Council says that Palestinian attacks are an inevitable consequence of Israeli occupation. The attacks are still bad, but it looks like the UN is ready to advance the idea of a two-state solution and say that Israel is behaving like an occupying force. This has Israel rather hot under the collar.
A small earthquake struck the United Kingdom. Damage was mostly due to things not built for earthquakes showing they were not built for earthquakes. No reported deaths or serious injuries.
Walter E. Williams would like the world to do less in giving African governments more money, and as such, for the world to reduce government-to-government aid to the countries where the governments are corrupted. Aid to the people that will help them out, I would think, is still perfectly good. Which might mean, say, paying more to the UN World Food Programme, maybe? Dr. Williams suggests that lowered trade barriers would help to get money to those Africans that really need it.
Domestically, with regard to the general election, yet more on how Senator Obama hates America. Ben Shapiro thinks that the Seantor's "change" message is a weakness, because it implies he hates America the way it is. For most of the people who would be voting for the Senator, they’re not too fond of the way the country is now themselves, and especially not so after eight years of the Bush administration. The Washington Times is doing its part to try and create no confidence in the Senator’s inexperience by claiming that military commanders are unsure about his experience, with the implication that the Senator would leave the country vulnerable to more attacks if elected. The Tennessee Republican Party climbs on, stating that they believe Israel's future is in danger if Barack Obama is elected. Looks like the line from the Republican Party will be “Elect our guy, he’s served, he’ll continue the fight, and we’ll be safe! Honest!”
Former Attorney General John Ashcroft will be testifying before Congress about a no-bid contract his firm acquired from the Justice Department. Amazing how those contracts seem to find themselves into the hands of those who helped or served this administration.
The White House continues to try and spin things so that we should believe warrantless wiretapping is a good thing for us. The White House spokesperson admits to not being a lawyer, and dodges more questions about why Mr. Bush is unwilling to accept an extension bill if it’s so important to him, while claiming his opponents are playing politics. Instead, more fearmongering and attempts to convince the populace that warrants are unnecessary.
Mike Huckabee continues to be consistent on his antichoice, antifamily positions, this time lending his support to a proposed Colorado state constitution amendment that would define life as beginning at conception and extend all the associated protections to that fertilized egg. No doubt he would like to have Michelle Malkin's commentary on a woman who committed suicide out of regret from her abortion to help him convince the populace that most women who have abortions regret them. Perhaps they can travel in the "No Sex Policy" van, which is festooned with quite a few unnecessary quotation marks.
Cal Thomas pins the blame for the credit crunch squarely on the populace that wants more than they can afford. Yes, people spending too much are partially to blame for the problem. But there’s also the people who gave them the credit, despite probably having a good idea that some of these people were big credit risks. On the other side of the spectrum, Bank of America has apparently instituted caps on how much someone can debit from their accounts per day. This was not necessarily disclosed until someone tried to buy a big-ticket item which would have put them over the limit. For others, banks are instruments for oppression of the lower classes, apparently deserving of bricks and notes with bold proclamations.
A Darwin Award should be sent to Markus Groh, who died when sharks baited with chum savaged him. The shark-diving company he paid did not use steel cages for protection of the divers, and they baited the water with blood. At some point, someone was going to get hurt, and now it happened. I suspect the proprietor of that establishment will not be doing business very soon. Not quite as deadly, but also potentially dangerous, Senator Larry Craig's office is looking for interns. There’s probably a Bill Clinton joke here for those that want to make it, or avoid making one about a “wide stance”.
A federal judge has permitted lawsuits against NBC's "To Catch A Predator" program to proceed, permitting a jury to hear whether the program’s enticement, confrontation, and arrest of would-be child molesters crosses a line from journalism into law enforcement. Besides, it seems like every other day there’s another pedophile clergyman or something of the like. There’s enough in the reporting aspect to keep someone interested solely in sex stories in business. Seriously.
After all of that stuff going wrong, I have to give Michael Medved praise - he understands that declaring Islam to be the enemy of the United States is a stupid, futile, very foolish decision that will lead to an endless war. Considering the progress of the current unending war, I think Medved understands that continuing that process, changing out “terrorism” for “Islam” will only result in failure and doom. Not to mention, in Turkey, a reinterpretation of the Hadith will help to create a more modern, less violent Islam. So by not declaring a war on Islam, we can give the more tolerant branches a chance to take root and become the norm.
Also worth keeping an eye on is the description of The Ultimate Project, a 1000-year project that intends to build a big spaceship and send it out into the cosmos to a habitable world nearby. Or other stars that can have colonies built.
Not that it will necessarily help the product, on the 26th of February, every Starbucks closed for three hours to retrain the staff on how to make coffee. So for those who are addicted to their product, has there been any improvement?
Besides, we’d rather go about drinking Super Mario Brothers-themed alcoholic drinks, really. How many times will you have the opportunity to say that you drank enough of Princess Peach to get hammered?
Svalbard's seed vault is ready, and is also attempting to be a comprehensive collection of the world's seed crops . In the freezing temperature, the seeds are unlikely to grow, which is good from a refrigeration standpoint, but probably pretty bad if we ever need to access it and there’s not sufficient tech to spread the seeds where they need to go.
Last for tonight, to give us food for thought, Wired looks at why free is the new wave of business. It’s good to be a consumer, with so much there for free, but remember that those sandwiches and chicken wings came at the cost of a pint. If that’s not your thing, then maybe some analysis on maze design will lead you to a good and thoughtful end. I will be studying from the insides of my eyelids.
Power has been restored to the areas affected by a blackout occurring when a nuclear power plant shut down automatically. Officially, there were no safety concerns for the power plant, but the fluctuation of the power grid triggered an automatic shutdown process.
In the matter of Iraq, the Republicans in Congress are permitting a bill to cut Iraq war funding to advance, believing it will be an excellent opportunity to speak about the wonders of Iraq and debate the issue. Of course, they also know that the White House will veto the bill, and no override vote would ever succeed. So rather than doing actual work, the Republicans are planning on some grandstanding. Despite the myth of the surge.
Elsewhere in the world, a report from the U.N. Human Rights Council says that Palestinian attacks are an inevitable consequence of Israeli occupation. The attacks are still bad, but it looks like the UN is ready to advance the idea of a two-state solution and say that Israel is behaving like an occupying force. This has Israel rather hot under the collar.
A small earthquake struck the United Kingdom. Damage was mostly due to things not built for earthquakes showing they were not built for earthquakes. No reported deaths or serious injuries.
Walter E. Williams would like the world to do less in giving African governments more money, and as such, for the world to reduce government-to-government aid to the countries where the governments are corrupted. Aid to the people that will help them out, I would think, is still perfectly good. Which might mean, say, paying more to the UN World Food Programme, maybe? Dr. Williams suggests that lowered trade barriers would help to get money to those Africans that really need it.
Domestically, with regard to the general election, yet more on how Senator Obama hates America. Ben Shapiro thinks that the Seantor's "change" message is a weakness, because it implies he hates America the way it is. For most of the people who would be voting for the Senator, they’re not too fond of the way the country is now themselves, and especially not so after eight years of the Bush administration. The Washington Times is doing its part to try and create no confidence in the Senator’s inexperience by claiming that military commanders are unsure about his experience, with the implication that the Senator would leave the country vulnerable to more attacks if elected. The Tennessee Republican Party climbs on, stating that they believe Israel's future is in danger if Barack Obama is elected. Looks like the line from the Republican Party will be “Elect our guy, he’s served, he’ll continue the fight, and we’ll be safe! Honest!”
Former Attorney General John Ashcroft will be testifying before Congress about a no-bid contract his firm acquired from the Justice Department. Amazing how those contracts seem to find themselves into the hands of those who helped or served this administration.
The White House continues to try and spin things so that we should believe warrantless wiretapping is a good thing for us. The White House spokesperson admits to not being a lawyer, and dodges more questions about why Mr. Bush is unwilling to accept an extension bill if it’s so important to him, while claiming his opponents are playing politics. Instead, more fearmongering and attempts to convince the populace that warrants are unnecessary.
Mike Huckabee continues to be consistent on his antichoice, antifamily positions, this time lending his support to a proposed Colorado state constitution amendment that would define life as beginning at conception and extend all the associated protections to that fertilized egg. No doubt he would like to have Michelle Malkin's commentary on a woman who committed suicide out of regret from her abortion to help him convince the populace that most women who have abortions regret them. Perhaps they can travel in the "No Sex Policy" van, which is festooned with quite a few unnecessary quotation marks.
Cal Thomas pins the blame for the credit crunch squarely on the populace that wants more than they can afford. Yes, people spending too much are partially to blame for the problem. But there’s also the people who gave them the credit, despite probably having a good idea that some of these people were big credit risks. On the other side of the spectrum, Bank of America has apparently instituted caps on how much someone can debit from their accounts per day. This was not necessarily disclosed until someone tried to buy a big-ticket item which would have put them over the limit. For others, banks are instruments for oppression of the lower classes, apparently deserving of bricks and notes with bold proclamations.
A Darwin Award should be sent to Markus Groh, who died when sharks baited with chum savaged him. The shark-diving company he paid did not use steel cages for protection of the divers, and they baited the water with blood. At some point, someone was going to get hurt, and now it happened. I suspect the proprietor of that establishment will not be doing business very soon. Not quite as deadly, but also potentially dangerous, Senator Larry Craig's office is looking for interns. There’s probably a Bill Clinton joke here for those that want to make it, or avoid making one about a “wide stance”.
A federal judge has permitted lawsuits against NBC's "To Catch A Predator" program to proceed, permitting a jury to hear whether the program’s enticement, confrontation, and arrest of would-be child molesters crosses a line from journalism into law enforcement. Besides, it seems like every other day there’s another pedophile clergyman or something of the like. There’s enough in the reporting aspect to keep someone interested solely in sex stories in business. Seriously.
After all of that stuff going wrong, I have to give Michael Medved praise - he understands that declaring Islam to be the enemy of the United States is a stupid, futile, very foolish decision that will lead to an endless war. Considering the progress of the current unending war, I think Medved understands that continuing that process, changing out “terrorism” for “Islam” will only result in failure and doom. Not to mention, in Turkey, a reinterpretation of the Hadith will help to create a more modern, less violent Islam. So by not declaring a war on Islam, we can give the more tolerant branches a chance to take root and become the norm.
Also worth keeping an eye on is the description of The Ultimate Project, a 1000-year project that intends to build a big spaceship and send it out into the cosmos to a habitable world nearby. Or other stars that can have colonies built.
Not that it will necessarily help the product, on the 26th of February, every Starbucks closed for three hours to retrain the staff on how to make coffee. So for those who are addicted to their product, has there been any improvement?
Besides, we’d rather go about drinking Super Mario Brothers-themed alcoholic drinks, really. How many times will you have the opportunity to say that you drank enough of Princess Peach to get hammered?
Svalbard's seed vault is ready, and is also attempting to be a comprehensive collection of the world's seed crops . In the freezing temperature, the seeds are unlikely to grow, which is good from a refrigeration standpoint, but probably pretty bad if we ever need to access it and there’s not sufficient tech to spread the seeds where they need to go.
Last for tonight, to give us food for thought, Wired looks at why free is the new wave of business. It’s good to be a consumer, with so much there for free, but remember that those sandwiches and chicken wings came at the cost of a pint. If that’s not your thing, then maybe some analysis on maze design will lead you to a good and thoughtful end. I will be studying from the insides of my eyelids.
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no subject
Date: 2008-02-28 10:51 am (UTC)No, lowering trade barriers would do nothing but make it easier for the west to steamroller the african economy, extract any and all natural resources it wanted, and pay the inhabitants as little as they think they can get away with. Which would be pretty much nothing.
Every study out there that hasn't been commissioned by, or some way connected to, entrenched plutocratic interests in the west, emphasises that developing economies have no hope whatsoever of surviving on equal terms with the developed economy of the west. Strong trade protection barriers are the only means they have to protect their development, however they are systematically attacked by western interests who desire unrestrained and cheap access to the resources the barriers protect, while simultaneously skewing the production and transfer of goods through sheer size and covert or overt subsidies.
no subject
Date: 2008-02-28 02:29 pm (UTC)In my previous position, I worked closely with my firm's cash management fraud group. (We offer money market accounts with checking and Visa attached--it's like having a checking account that pays monthly dividends.)
For us, an event like this wouldn't necessarily mean that the transaction was declined: there's such a thing as a referral limit. Increasing the referral limit required a certain indemnification, in which we would have been held blameless for any fraud that occurred on the card after the limit had been permanently raised. Fancy legal language, blah blah. Some brokerage firms market our money market funds to their clients, and sometimes brokers would request that their client's debit card limit be raised for only a certain period of time. Like if their client was going on vacation or something.
Obviously, we weren't BoA, but we had similar reasons for having these referral limits: the fraud team worked to track the claims of customers who said their cards had been used fraudulently. If someone's debit card number had been stolen, and unauthorized purchases were made, we'd cancel the card, send the client a new one, and reimburse them (provided that we could determine to the best of our ability that it was actually fraud. Some customers would withdraw a fraud case after having a crisis of conscience. Yes, there are people out there who are just trying to get free stuff.)
Financial institutions have their own liability concerns. Visa itself offers a number of fraud reimbursement services. And if your card was stolen, would you want some dude to run up $5000+ in purchases before you could cancel it? It's in everyone's best interests to have referral limits in place. I know it sucked for the Consumerist poster, but it's not the EVIL ZOMG CORPORATE AMERICA IS EETING MY SOULLL!!!11 scenario he made it sound like. This stuff is standard operating procedure for just about every financial institution that offers cash management services.
I'm kind of surprised that the BOA rep didn't simply ask him some security questions to verify his identity, and then allow the one-time purchase. That's how we handled referrals, anyway. It was usually a five-minute phone call, we asked questions that no one but the client could know, it was on a recorded line for a bit of additional CYA, and then everyone went on their merry way. That was the only thing that surprised me--that the BoA rep didn't even offer that option.
no subject
Date: 2008-02-28 05:19 pm (UTC)i don't know if they're doing it any different now, but the last time i went to a starbucks - i was attending a band rehearsal in Sodo, right across the street from the starbucks main headquarters - i ordered a "double tall ristretto mocha with extra chocolate" and it took the sorry excuse for the barista three tries before he gave up and gave me a regular mocha. two of those tries involved "raspberry" because he didn't know what "ristretto" meant.
yeah, i'm a coffee snob, but at the same time, if you don't know what "ristretto" means, you're obviously not good enough to be a barista, and especially not good enough to be a barista at the world headquarters for starbucks... 8/
no subject
Date: 2008-02-28 05:27 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-02-28 05:29 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-02-28 05:32 pm (UTC)I wonder if the BoA grunts didn't know how to temporarily raise the limit for the purchase, or weren't authorized to do so, or if BoA has no policy or no intent on raising limits like that. We'd have to ask.
no subject
Date: 2008-02-28 09:16 pm (UTC)The limits set by banks are there to protect their customers. And it's written into the agreement you sign for your debit card, and is even on the fee schedule, which you should be aware of. Most banks will make exceptions of you inform them ahead of time of your large purchase.
no subject
Date: 2008-02-28 09:21 pm (UTC)