My Gmail is a priceless hoard of us making plans, telling inside jokes, calling each other “snoodle” and “bubbies.” I type his name into the search field and enter a world of the unscripted dialogue that filled our 9-to-5 existence. I become immersed in the coziness of our union. In hundreds of chats automatically saved to my account, we express our love for each other readily and naturally in our own private speech. This is a history of our relationship that we didn’t intend to write, one that runs parallel to the one authored by his uncontainable illness.

Comment, spam, etc to the usual places.

Thus, while much of the Levin report describes past history, the Goldman section describes an ongoing? crime — a powerful, well-connected firm, with the ear of the president and the Treasury, that appears to have conquered the entire regulatory structure and stands now on the precipice of officially getting away with one of the biggest financial crimes in history.

Yikes. Well worth a read – and after this, have a read of The Big Short by Michael Lewis (the guy behind Liar’s Poker, the original expose of the banking industry).

…in Australia, the budget is in a wonderful position – heading back into surplus in a couple of years despite one of the world’s biggest and most successful stimulus programmes during the global recession.

But you wouldn’t know it. Five billion dollars needed in flood recovery spending and … oh dear, we need a levy. Can’t possibly wait a year or two to go back into surplus. What would Tony Abbott say?

Completely straightforward in my mind: the idea of a “flood levy” when Australia has such low levels of government debt is ludicrous and pure politicking about a number that is being held at an artificially precise amount ($3.1bn “predicted” surplus in FY2012-2013).

I am always amused by the strange impact of unintended consequences. Julian Assange simply wanted to release some embarrassing information, have hot sex with a Swedish babe then have hot sex with an acquaintance of that same babe one day later. That’s just one example of why the Swedish language has 400 words that all mean “and your cute friend is next.”

To be fair, I don’t know if Assange’s alleged broken condom is because the product was defective. We have good evidence that Assange has the world’s biggest set of nuts, so assuming some degree of proportionality, he’d put a strain on any brand of condom that didn’t have rebar ribs.

I was going to write something on Wikileaks, and I may yet given the drip-feed of information that is coming out daily, but Adams just puts it so damn well. The man is brilliant and wonderfully insightful.

The one thing I know for sure is that I’m a fan of the hackers who are dispensing vigilante justice. Here’s another unintended consequence: The hackers could end up organizing over this issue and ultimately forming a shadow government of their own, if they haven’t already.  I welcome my hacker overlords.

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At Natanz, for almost 17 months, Stuxnet quietly worked its way into the system and targeted a specific component — the frequency converters made by the German equipment manufacturer Siemens that regulated the speed of the spinning centrifuges used to create nuclear fuel. The worm then took control of the speed at which the centrifuges spun, making them turn so fast in a quick burst that they would be damaged but not destroyed. And at the same time, the worm masked that change in speed from being discovered at the centrifuges’ control panel.

At Bushehr, meanwhile, a second secret set of codes, which Langner called “digital warheads,” targeted the Russian-built power plant’s massive steam turbine.

Here’s how it worked.

Possibly the first instance of computer-based state-sponsored espionage that has been caught and exposed. But seriously, who the hell runs Windows to control a nuclear facility, for civillian use or otherwise?!

The Complaints Choir of Chicago

What a great idea!

That thing can clock 45 miles per hour, or 72km/h! Dude, you frigging kidding me?! (more info here) (via)

Calvin demonstrates modern business acumen

It’s like Bill Watterson saw into the future. Here’s another brilliant one that’s all too prescient :

Verbing

(with apologies for the lack of posting – things have been… interesting.)

The most obvious one is Okuribito, or Departures – this is the Oscar winner for Best Foreign Film this year, and looks gorgeous. It will probably be as slow as any Japanese drama is, but I guess that’s the genre conventions.

The next is Shinjuku Incident, Jackie Chan’s new film about a clash of triads and yakuza in Tokyo. This looks like your more standard action fare, and obviously it’s Jackie. How could that not be awesome?

The third is Blood – The Last Vampire, another one of the current trend to remake anime in Hollywood (Akira, Ghost in the Shell, Dragonball, and Astroboy are all scheduled or coming out this year). Blood is probably the most visceral of the lot so far, and is probably the one I would’ve picked for a movie conversion first.

Finally, we have a tenuous connection of a Japanese actor (Rinko Kikuchi, of Babel fame) in The Brothers Bloom, which looks hilarious and awesome. Directed by the same guy who did Brick, starring Adrian Brody and Rachel Wiesz, this looks like possibly a sleeper hit or unexpected blockbuster, depending on how much it’s pushed by the studio.