Michael Arrington writes: “What you see when you first hit the site depends on how you got there – directly or via an advertising partner. The least scammy version is what you see if you go to videoprofessor.com directly.

“On the home page in very small font is a statement that you are going to be charged $290 if you engage in a transaction with them.

“But that’s the only on-screen disclosure you’ll see.

“Click on a product and go to the next page and you are told you get lots of stuff for free, all you have to do is pay up to a $10 shipping charge. You choose your product and you’re on to the checkout page. Nothing is stated about the $290 charge. After that you are on the final checkout page, showing a total price of $4.56. There’s no fine print, just two links on the page to pages with hugely long agreements with text hidden in the middle of it all that you are actually being sent tons of products and you’ll be charged $290 for them all if you don’t cancel in ten days.

“Needless to say, people who get this stuff either don’t read fine print and are charged, or try to return it. There are hundreds of user complaints about refunds not being paid.”

The Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) is a partnership between the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the National White Collar Crime Center (NW3C), and the Bureau of Justice Assistance (BJA).

IC3′s mission is to serve as a vehicle to receive, develop, and refer criminal complaints regarding the rapidly expanding arena of cyber crime. The IC3 gives the victims of cyber crime a convenient and easy-to-use reporting mechanism that alerts authorities of suspected criminal or civil violations.

File a Complaint >>

A year around the Sun.

Snapped at the same time each day.

Vasilij Rumyantsev says, “I should say it is the most complicated photograph I have ever made.”

“It shows the position of the Sun at the same time of day during one year…. photographed 36 times, every tenth day, exactly at 5:45, on a single frame of film.”

The tilt of the Earth traced by the Sun over the course of a year is called an analemma [wiki].

A new seven story statue as China reconsiders Mao Zedong.

“Long Live Mao Zedong Thought” has been resuscitated after banners bearing this battle cry were held high by college students and nationalistic Beijing residents during parades… a search for an ‘ultimate faith’ that could speed up China’s rise in the wake of the global financial crisis.

In fact, on November 14, less than 48 hours before Obama’s arrival in Beijing, the official news agency Xinhua released a long statement in Chinese only explaining that Xi Jinping, vice president of the state and president of the Central Party School, had held a conference about the necessity to “actively encourage the building of a ruling party study model of Marxism”.

China takes a new look at Marxism, Francesco Sisci

Power struggle behind revival of Maoism, Willy Lam

While Mao was said to have ushered in the new China by pulling down the ‘three big mountains‘ of feudalism, bureaucratic capitalism and imperialism, his latter-day followers are engaged in an equally epic struggle against the ‘three new mountains‘ of runaway prices in the medical, education and housing sectors.

…
“China’s leaders stress they do not want to export their political model, and they even ask others not to imitate them but to look for their own development paths. Still, China’s politicians are becoming unwilling to endure lectures on politics or ethics, given the fact that their system is working today, while others falter.”

…
“We will certainly change our political system, but your parliamentary democracy also must reform; otherwise, it risks being derailed and overwhelmed by demagoguery and populism.”

Of course there’s another side to history…

John Michael Greer
The Grand Archdruid of the Ancient Order of Druids in America

That relocalization needs to happen, and will happen, is clear. Among other things, it’s clear from history; when complex societies overshoot their resource bases and decline, one of the things that consistently happens is that centralized economic arrangements fall apart, long distance trade declines sharply, and the vast majority of what we now call consumer goods get made at home, or very close to home.

We shall operate from our front porch…

An anonymous neuroscientist:

‘The placebo effect’ has become a vague catch-all term for anything that seems to happen to people when you give them a sugar pill.

If a simple pill can convince someone that they are cured, surely the modern world in all its complexity could convince people that they’re ill.

Found at Mind Blog.

Nick Carey:

But the biggest discovery has been one I have been able to dwell upon only since returning home. When you’re on the road talking, writing, driving and planning the next stop, there is little time for genuine reflection.

That discovery was that everywhere we went people were in the process of working out where America goes from here after two illusory booms – the dotcom bubble and the housing bubble – and where will the jobs come from to fuel real, sustainable growth.

This is not a debate I see much of at the national level, but connecting with Americans along the some 6,000 miles of our journey renewed my faith in this country’s greatest capacity: the ability to reinvent itself.

A recent study found that 90 percent of Canadians support universal, single-payer health care. A poll taken last summer shows 82 percent of Canadians believe their health care system to be better.

Sarah Palin tells Canada to get rid of public health care.

“I just wanted to ask you if you have any words of encouragement for Canadian conservatives who have worked so hard to try to diminish the kind of socialized medicine we have up there,” Mary Walsh shouted to Palin as she approached the table.

“Keep the faith,” Sarah Palin replied, “because common sense conservatism can be plugged in there in Canada too. In fact, Canada needs to reform its health care system and let the private sector take over some of what the government has absorbed.”

Brian Holmes:

Writing in 1986, Susan Strange described the extreme volatility of the financial sphere as “casino capitalism.”

While investment bankers made fortunes, risk and instability arose to dominate everyday experience: “The great difference,” Strange writes, “between an ordinary casino which you can go into or stay away from, and the global casino of high finance, is that in the latter we are all involuntarily engaged in the day’s play.”

By the mid-1980s, the continually rolling dice had disrupted the entire international system for the production and exchange of goods and services.

The United States retained the central role in economic governance that it had won with WWII, but its hegemony was now founded on the management of chaos.

Korea Times at Engadget: Weird glasses still required, and 3D content likely limited to “cartoons” at first.

Korea announced its drive to start beaming 3D broadcasts in Full HD quality sometime in 2010 — licensing begins in January with first broadcasts expected mid-year.

A 3D television market of 30 million units by 2012.

The early data shows strong links between childhood stress and the accelerated shortening of telomeres.

Children of

1. emotional abuse,
2. emotional neglect,
3. physical neglect,
4. physical abuse,
5. sexual abuse

also suffer damage to their cells:

1. accelerating aging,
2. increasing cardiovascular disease,
3. and increasing cancers.

The H1N1 influenza virus originated from people.

Because we know this virus spreads easily from a person, people with the H1N1 virus should stay home, stay away from other people, and very definitely stay away from the farm to avoid spreading the virus to animals.

Dr. Cate Dewey, Ontario Veterinary College:

It’s a virus, a brand new virus, that’s made up of component parts from a human influenza, a pig influenza and an avian influenza virus.

It was re-assorted or made a new virus in a person.

We know that this virus grows very well in people, makes many people sick, it’s quite a severe illness in people and it spreads very well from one person to another.

What that indicates is this virus attaches well to a lung cell in a person and multiples well in the lung cell of a person.

On the other hand, when that virus got into pig farms it only affected about ten percent of the pigs in the barn meaning that it really doesn’t grow very well in pigs.

John Hempton:

However if the crisis was a liquidity crisis and not a solvency crisis then, come the time to exit quantitative easing, the Fed will have a sufficient balance sheet to do its part.

I do not believe the US banking system was insolvent in March. I never did believe it. And I thus believe the Fed has an exit strategy.

Daron Acemoglu:

Consider the two cities of Nogales on the Mexico-U.S. border. On the Arizona side, residents enjoy relatively high incomes, good infrastructure, and reliable public services.

“None of those things are a given across the border. There, the roads are bad, the infant-mortality rate high, electricity and phone service expensive and spotty.

The key difference is that those on the north side of the border enjoy law and order and dependable government services — they can go about their daily activities and jobs without fear for their life or safety or property rights.

On the other side, the inhabitants have institutions that perpetuate crime, graft, and insecurity.”

Nogales, Sonora and Nogales, Arizona share similar cultures, geography, and climate. The lower income and quality of life on the Mexico side reflects the ineffective rules there.

It’s just business, Sarah, nothing personal.

Media bias is a very real phenomenon, but it isn’t a political bias.

When people hear the phrase they imagine the media having a political agenda and pushing an ideologically slanted product at unsuspecting viewers. That does not happen. Even at FOX. Media bias is commercial bias. The biggest influence on the product you read and see is the desire to make money – and that’s why ‘product’ is the appropriate term.

You’re not believing me about Fox News, are you? OK. So why does Fox News offer the most conservative product, stocked with plenty of “family values” talk and appeals to social/religious conservatives, while the Fox networks offer the raunchiest programming?

Reid Stowe:

As I take a deep breath in, I visualize the seven colors of the rainbow spectrum, one color in each chakra, red at the bottom to violet at the top. I am sitting in my bed leaning against the wall with my legs locked in the lotus posture like a pretzel. I start the Om deeply and slowly. I visualize myself sitting on top of the motor and as I begin the Om, first I visualize all the rainbow colors flashing up my spinal cord in a DNA helix pattern and with my inner voice I say thank you. Then I see the red in its corresponding chakra and I say thank you. I visualize each color as strongly as I can and say thank you to each one. After I reach violet I swing the colors clockwise through the battery banks on each side of the motor and say thank you. The electricity and the colors go into the motor and the motor starts with a roar and I say thank you with meaning and grateful that it is running. The electricity with my attention rises up to the electric winch above my head and the winch spins and I say thank you. Then my attention goes over to the satellite tracking unit and I go with its signal up to its satellite in space and bounce back down and say thank you.