dieseltaylor

I was aware that large US trading houses do some naughtiness with front-running other peoples purchases - and by generating and cancelling thousands of rders to sense, rather like ASDIC/Sonar what is going on. Here is a little piece on the potential damaging effects it may have : http://www.nanex.net/20100506/FlashCrashAnalysis_Part4-1.html Who needs enemies when profit mad corporations engage in their own electronic warfare. Benefit to the general public nil, dangerous yes.

great idea. BGC is brilliant for board games.

Thinking about the Delahaye a bit more I realise it makes me think of who framed Roger Rabbit. Was something like it in the film? On reflectin and checking here no http://www.imcdb.org/movie_96438-Who-Framed-Roger-Rabbit.html Another oddity for Mike http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/farid/research/digitaltampering/ And my second honeymoon was on the SS Monterey - definitely lots of salty air : )

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pluot Coo, never heard of them See also Aprium Peacotum Plumcot Nectaplum

Political!? Just a matter of good taste. Its interesting point from dumrox regarding financing. Made me think that for commercial paid channels I will have to avoid the advertisers that use Fox .... but then I would need to watch Fox ..... but I could just do the adverts! Actually I much prefer print as a medium for ideas and thought. TV just goes for emotion. And of course the content is dumbed down to the point of crapt. Anyway congratulations to Fox News on the Sherrod scoop. Nice one.

: ) Very funny

Anybody who likes cars might want to save the $120 dollar catalogue and browse the net. The funniest and no doubt cheapest will be lot 384 a Subaru Police car : ) The most flambouyant http://www.rmauctions.com/FeatureCars.cfm?SaleCode=MO10&CarID=r124 which should be 1949 Delahaye with an interesting history I like the 1938 Talbot-Lago lots, and was very impressed with how good a 1955 Astra Coupe looked. GM - as in Opel/Vauxhall seem to have gone backwards.

I doubt me signing would be much use - apart from showing off-shore support for the better organisation http://act.credoaction.com/campaign/npr_beat_fox/index2.html I read last week that black listeners to Fox topped out at roughly 1.5% of the total viewers. Seems astonishingly low - or is indeed Fox unbearable unless you are already of the persuasion?

Some might leap to that conclusion but a moments consideration one would think they would be aware of the possible bias and engineer it out. And also the likelihood of atttacks from those who do not like the conclusion. : )

In case the thought had crossed your mind about why it was a new problem The body is a delicate food processing factory and I wa surprised to find even the humble button mushroom has a role: http://www.physorg.com/news199621039.html and for those aging or indoors a lot this paen to Vitamin D is worth bearing in mind. http://www.physorg.com/news199615206.html and for those of you who are pregnant - guess what - intakes of artificial sweetened drinks/sweetners tend to induce earlier births.

Looking at the figures, and excluding " enemy " casualties, the casualty rate is about 1 wounded and 0.33 dead per IED. Enemy losses appear to be one per 12 IED. A very large number appeared to be failures, though it is not clear if the greens includes controlled explosions on discovered IED's. This does banjax the figures slightly. I say "enemy" as I think the IRA used to hold families hostage whilst some poor bugger had to deliver the bomb - civilised not. Great graphic though the music detracted.

The real interest in the documents surely must be that the existence of Wikileaks , I suspect, makes people less likely to do actions which they know are a bit iffy. Would My Lai have happened if the average grunt was aware of a bean spilling organisation beyond the US armys control? "Bold" was ironic a bit. : ) But the hypocrisy of the West is breathtaking in its treatment of growers/non-natives and what one is prepared to kill/imprison within ones own population. Killing oversease to weaken the drugs trade seems infinitely preferable to taking on ones own legal system and the sanctity of western civilian life. My preferred solution is lots of bad batches of cocaine and opium in the market ....tragic but effective.

The sooner drug users in the West are executed for using drugs deriving from Afghanistan/Middle East I am sure financing the bloodshed will become more difficult. It seems to me insane that the cause and effect of a $11000 purchase price to a $1.2M street price in the West is not enough evidence that If the West really wanted to end the war they should be killing those who choose to finance it. Send soldiers to Afghanistan to fight and die [ not to mention Afghanistanis] or execute here those who help to corrrupt the countries. If the West prefers not to be bold then simply legalise its growth in Europe and Russia and use the money to finance the Forces, or Afghanistan regime of choice.

Yes you were quite right dumrox - an income millionnaire would make it into the the top 1%. Excluding children that uis roughly 2.5m people. This from unnergoz;s link is fun It seems even barmier that even corporations seem to be very favourably treated compared to the normal joe.. I wonder how a family spends $345M a year. I suppose the answer is they cannot so simply increase being richer.

And of course being a photo rather than video you don't hear her voice. Its rarish that a womens voice can be such a turn off!

Actually there is a bit of a divide between history and the game and it helps in someways not to have too much knowledge of WW2 if your aim is to be a demon player. In bald terms you can learn to play the game engine or you use CM as a fun way to approximate WW2. For instance, in WW2 the German tankers would give priority to killing Fireflies ahead of 75mm armed Shermans . In game the Tiger AI will target the highest probability Sherman regardless of the fact that only the Firefly is a potent danger. This is quite a significant change from RL. Also Fireflies actually fire roughly 100% quicker than RL. So learning history is actually of no benefit, or in fact is actually misleading , as to what will happen in game. But CM in general produces some pretty realistic results "despite" the game engine. I play it as a history/fun game. There are a very small minority who actually calculate all the effects of certain weapons in use. I regard this as unwise as it is not the way I think the game was designed to be played. Not to say I have not myself observed how fast buildings or bridges blow-up when fired on by a tank gun - but this is sort of incidental to playing a game for 10 years. Breaking the game down to fp points and units breaking is rather like looking at a beautiful women and analysing all her attributes and using this a basis of discussion. It can be done but whether is satisfactory/fun is another matter. However CM is based on WW2 so a there is a lot that is true. You can learn that angled armour is better than vertical, some tanks had very skinny, armour, long barrelled guns are generally more lethal to armour than short etc etc. Combined arms is always better than solo forces. Recon is always a good ides : ) Its fun.

AH paydirt of the very best kind: http://sociology.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/wealth.html and as for inheritance taxes: And just so you know of roughly 300 billionaires in the world one third inherited their wealth.

As this thread has turned into one about wealth/people influencing democracy I found this at one site whilst looking at the asset richness of some Americans.

Asl Veteran - You talk of them - Carnegie and Rockefeller as though nothing would have happened without them existing. Your viewpoint made me think of this piece from Wikipedia Does it occur to you that building monopolies and driving opposition from the marketplace was actually largely responsible for the wealth of those men? That they gave away vast amounts towards the end of their lives might be a reflection on their mortality and wishing to look good. I expect we will have benevolence from thos nice Hedge men also -- in 30 years time As for the assertion that Rockefeller saved the whale! You really know how to insult peoples intelligence. The use of oil/gas as a lighting source pre-dates Jesus in Persia and China at least so its not like that was his doing. Once the resource was found many companies got involved and competition drove down the price not splendid benevolence. You refer to the wealthy and point to two sportsmen done on their luck - neither have anything to do with the super wealthy. One per cent of the US population say 3 million people had 23% of the income. So a mere millionnaire just does not cut it.

Anytime any one reaches for percentages I know there is something else to look at. : ) I don't get excited by a few thousand dollars but someones income rising $3m is interesting. Looky here: http://www.visualizingeconomics.com/2007/02/15/2005-us-income-distribution-part-3/ Blimey those hard working hedge fund managers do well. And given they have worked hard I am sure we will all agree with ASLVeteran they well deserve their pay

ASLVeteran What do you consider a reasonable distribution of income wealth in the US system? I say nearly a quarter to 1% is wrong. Do you consider it is right, or should be lower or higher? I assume you would agree that 100% to 1 would be wrong so you must have some idea. Most democracies have taxation systems instituted or overseen by the duly elected politicians. I am not sure that I have said anything to suggest that commissars, or any other body is required. One might argue that taxation , as a subject, is important to everyone but not a taught subject for most people. If you recall I talked of inheritance taxes as I am a great believer in people being rewarded in their lifetime for the efforts they put in. However I am not to keen on inherited wealth where it is considerable sums given to people who have done nothing. BUT it is nice for people to leave a couple of million or so so their children can live reasonably comfortably for life. Warren Buffet agrees with the idea I think. He is leaving 1% to his children, which is quite a lot currently, but he is giving away very large chunks to worthwhile charities. Conrad Hilton gave away most of his wealth, or tried to. So n case it is not clear: I am all in favour of effort and reward. The older Hiltons worked for their money. And just to set the picture, what people do for their friends :

Yes California does lead the way. The DEA does seem a bit out of order in general http://www.alternet.org/story/147506/feds_raid_legal_marijuana_farm%2C_destroy_crops

Well SO. if you are saying that you were only making a simple point of semantics ..... I would like to state publicly that I do not believe money has any conscious thoughts and even piling all the money in the world in one spot would not be anti-democratic in any way shape or form. People kill democracy not money [catchy huh!] With possible exclusions I think very rich people tend to have a vested interest in remainingh rich and to this end tend to support those who would help them remain rich or get richer. In electoral systems, particularly where there are only two parties, the chances of candidates to be influenced by wealthy donors is high. In the broadest of terms any system that is seen to favour one group to the detriment of others is liable to breed discontent and that when this group manipulate the system this may be anti-democratic. So what is democracy? So it seems that definition 4. is what fits most precisely the ethos where as definition 5. touches upon the nub of the percieved problem. In any event 1% of the population recieving 23% of the wealth does argue a big problem and mkaes one wonder how that comes about in a democracy. Either there is a fault in the system, the system is being abused, or I am wrong in my view of what should be a more reasonable distribution of wealth in a modern society - and that the mass of people actually understand these things and vote to keep rich people rich. However I suspect that throwing in issues like abortion, race , religion, warfare, and how poor the economy is for most people, tends to cloud the picture. Still they vote either Democrat or Republican to improve things - and judging by the graphs of distribution haven't they just.!

Are you being deliberately naive? If money is rquired to run a successful election TO BE a candidate for your Party then you will be beholden to your sponsors. Then when you have become the Party nominee running for Representative or Senator you will need money again. However in both instances, that is in both Partys, the candiadtes that the electorate will finally vote for have been pre-selected by the power-brokers and money men. It does not matter too much who gets elected - the veneer of democracy is observed - but the candidates are the chosen ones already.

I liked your post 84 - I wish I had said it. Sorry the I references were to get me into the right mood. I am not a powerbroker and the Banks worry about me paying them : )