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Bernie Madoff is cornering the prison market on Swiss Miss hot chocolate

“One of the most important things about this story is that it is a mistake to view him as an outlier,” Fishman told MarketWatch. “He profited from the way financial systems work, which is a point most people don’t really grasp. He wasn’t a freak. He was sustained by the system, embraced by it, because it profited from him.”

[...] Madoff’s multidecade scheme unraveled in 2008, when the market collapse in the financial crisis caused a number of his investors to pull their holdings, but Fishman said he “was never really caught.”

“The system never really rejected Bernie,” he explained, noting that Madoff’s 150-year prison sentence only came after he admitted the fraud to his sons, who, on the advice of a lawyer, alerted authorities. When questioned, Madoff confessed.

“It’s clear to me that if he hadn’t confessed there would have been years of expensive work to get him convicted,” Fishman said, referring to the cost of an investigation and a trial. “Who knows, maybe if he had pulled down the gates on his fund, gone out and raised money, he might have been able to continue.”

Never-before-heard Bernie Madoff tapes reveal details of ruinous Ponzi scheme

Fishman, who conducted three hours of interviews with Madoff personally, points out that while the fraudster ruined many lives, roughly half of Madoff’s investors still ended up in the black. “Yeah, he was a criminal talent, with God-given gifts in a sense, but Madoff was Patient Zero,” Fishman said. “What really makes him a pandemic is all the feeder funds [who introduced new clients to Madoff] and the banks,” Fishman told the Guardian. “They take him around the world. They recruit investors, in Latin America and through Europe, and they basically pour gasoline on this dumpster fire. Madoff could have been kind of a local swindler until he meets this massive distribution network.”

[...] When an investigator asked to see a report that a legitimate firm would have on hand in the course of its normal businesses, Madoff’s second-in-command, Frank DiPascali, stalled for time while downstairs others printed out a faked report, put it in the refrigerator so it wouldn’t be obviously warm from the printer, and “played football with it”, Schwartz says – tossing it back and forth across the room like a football to make it look weathered.

Set dressing was also important: on the credenza behind his desk, Madoff displayed a sculpture by the renowned artist Claes Oldenburg of a giant black screw, listing a little to one side. The 1976 sculpture, called Soft Screw, drew nearly $50,000 at Sotheby’s when Madoff’s assets were sold off after his disgrace.

When financial regulators visited his firm’s offices, Madoff put the Soft Screw away.

Ponzi Supernova

Secret Service agent may face disciplinary action over her anti-Trump Facebook posts

A senior official with the U.S. Secret Service may face disciplinary action after posting comments to Facebook suggesting that she would not "take a bullet" for President Trump. [...] O'Grady's comments were made in October, during the height of the presidential campaign and shortly after the release of a tape in which Trump made lewd comments about women. But they only came to light this week.

Great career move.

It looks like CBS could be running another fake news segment:

Red Cross Reports Major Blood Shortage, Urges Donations [video] (text version)

Every two seconds, someone in the United States needs a blood transfusion. Now a major blood shortage has the American Red Cross issuing an emergency call for donations. [...] The Red Cross is hoping more people get the message and roll up their sleeves. They say the nation is facing a shortage because of all the snowy, cold weather across much of the country.

Are you sure?

According to an investigative report by WPTV, blood donations stop being donations after the needle comes out of your arm. A blood brokerage firm CEO tells WPTV that your donated blood actually winds up getting sold, and sometimes for a very large profit.

Many in the blood industry characterize the money they receive for your donation as “reimbursement fees” for testing and administration. But the fact is that your blood donations are a very profitable commodity that, depending on demand and the location where you live, can bring in some serious cash to the blood organizations that have collected it.

Another thing most people don’t realize is that local blood drives don’t always keep their donations local. While many organizations try to use donations locally, if need or demand arises elsewhere, your blood can be shipped and sold out of state.

Finally, it may surprise many that lots of blood that is collected gets thrown away. a 2011 government sponsored survey found that around one in 20 units of donated blood was just thrown away. This could be because blood has a very short shelf life of just over 40 days, or the fact that blood “shortages” are not as common as they once were.

The Huffington Post reported in 2013 that because of advances in medicine, not as much blood is actually needed for operations as it once was. While there might not be a huge blood surplus, the supply is certainly stronger than it was just a few years ago. In response, blood drives are now being more targeted to specific blood types and needs.

THE BLOOD BROKERS by Gilbert M. Gaul

Last December [1988], the Community Blood Center in Appleton, Wis., made a public appeal for blood. Residents were asked to "dig farther, wider and deeper" than ever before to keep local blood supplies at desired levels. "We've never had it quite this tough," Alan W. Cable, executive director of the nonprofit blood bank, told the local newspaper. The citizens did dig deep; last year, 15,000 pints of blood were donated by Appleton residents to help save the lives of their friends and neighbors.

What they didn't know, though - don't know to this day - was that the same month the blood bank was appealing for blood, it sold 650 pints - half its monthly blood collection - at a profit to other blood banks around the country. Or that last year the blood center in Appleton contracted to sell 200 pints a month to a blood bank 528 miles away in Lexington, Ky. Or that Lexington sold half the blood it bought from Appleton to yet a third blood bank near Fort Lauderdale, Fla. Which in turn sold thousands of pints it bought from Lexington and other blood banks to four hospitals in New York City. What began as a generous "gift of life" from people in Appleton to their neighbors ended up as part of a chain of blood brokered to hospitals in Manhattan, where patients were charged $120 a pint. Along that 2,777-mile route, human blood became just another commodity.

The buying and selling of blood has become big business in America - a multibillion-dollar industry that is largely unregulated by the government. Each year, unknown to the people who give the blood, blood banks buy and sell more than a million pints from one another, shifting blood all over the country and generating an estimated $50 million in revenues.

It is not uncommon for some blood banks to broker between 20 percent and 40 percent of what they collect. In Appleton, nearly half the blood collected from donors in the last two years was sold outside the area. In Waterloo, Iowa, the American Red Cross sold six of every 10 pints collected last year to other blood banks. They do it, blood bank officials say, to share a limited resource. Although they have a monopoly, blood banks in dozens of cities - Philadelphia among them - are unable to collect as much blood as they need. To cover their shortfalls, they buy blood from centers, such as Appleton, that collect more than they need.

Nobody disputes the value of sharing blood. But in the last 15 years, this trading in blood has become a huge, virtually unregulated market - with no ceiling on prices, with nonprofit blood banks vying with one another for control of the blood supply, with decisions often driven by profits and corporate politics, not medical concerns.

Maybe there is a shortage. But how can we be sure?

See also:

What many donors don't know: Their blood is sold

To be a Mac software consultant without actually owning a Mac has been awkward. I've been able to work recently because my client is lending me their equipment, but not all have been so cool.

I bought the 2.6 GHz Mac Mini for $699. I don't recall all that's in it as I picked it out a while ago. I also bought AppleCare for $99; in my experience, AppleCare is a good deal. Finally I bought a DisplayLink to VGA adapter so I can use it with my ancient crufty monitor.

As we're multiplying, the world's on the brink,
But that's just what the Devil wants you to think,
Don't ever stop shoppin', don't ever give in,
'Cause if we stop shoppin', the terrorists win.

-- The Claypool Lennon Delirium

Domestic Nuclear Shelters

How to Build a Fallout Shelter.

That nice Mr Putin has built many public nuclear shelters in Moscow in recent years.

Patriots who put their own countries first should always be prepared.

The strong are now putting their own countries first. Several countries are now putting themselves first. Obviously, all countries at present are confined to planet Earth. Who will win? What will happen to those who are second and third? Will the patriots be content?

"Racing for power, and all come in last." -- Megadeth.

We all breath the same atmosphere and drink the same water.

Patriots don't need affordable medical care. Only the weak get sick. President Pull-My-Finger is going to see to it that patriots get to keep as much of their own money as possible so that the weak, who drag the country down, are motivated to improve. On this side of the pond, the NHS is getting ready to be sold off cheap to American healthcare corporations when we get our massive trade deal with the USA. TTIP on steroids? The interests of American corporations will trump (see what I did there) our own interests under the law. Michael Gove is a great patriot.

We're also going to be withdrawing from the European Court of Human Rights. Fine, upstanding patriots don't need "Human Rights." Only criminals and deviants need Human Rights. It was a mistake our writing them in the first place.

I'm glad I'm not foreign. Come to think of it, I'm ethnic. I'm Scottish and live in England. Obviously, I can't be a true patriot. This is worrying.

And finally, here's one I made up all by myself:

Hey diddle diddle, Vlad did a piddle,
All over the Whitehouse floor,
The little Trump laughed to see such sport,
And the Brexiters clamored for more.

Christmas is coming, turkeys.

PS. At least patriots have democratically proved that Global Warming is a liberal-fascist Marxist conspiracy to keep the poor down.

PPS. That other great British patriot, Nigel Farage is taking a job with Faux News.

PPPS. UKIP's Eddie Hitler is standing for election to parliament in Stoke Central. Will the great patriots get a second MP?

I'm not one of those soylentils who complains about politics stories not being techie enough for this site, but nonetheless i'm glad we haven't had a story about Trump's inauguration. I haven't read / watched anything about it and yet somehow I was sick of it before it happened. I guess I'm just weary of the divisive, partisan bitching.

Let's all talk about computers, or robots, or space or something.

Pakistan student: 'I was tortured by hardline Islamists'

A Pakistani student has said he was abducted and badly beaten by hardline Islamist students after posting tweets in support of five liberal bloggers who have gone missing. The student said he needed hospital treatment after he was blindfolded for several hours and tortured. No-one at Punjab University responded to his cries for help, he said.

(This was written last year but never posted)

        I spent a hundred bucks on my next book last week.
        Each story had an illustration at the beginning, except one: “Watch Your Language, Young Man!” I could find no suitable old women on Google Images, so I figured I’d have to either find an old woman at a bar who would want to be the illustration of a shrewish old lady, or just get out my pencil and make one.
        Rust never sleeps! And boy, but my fingers seemed to be solid rust. Of course, when I was young I drew every day, or at least almost every day. I was damned good.
        Not any more. I haven’t drawn a single thing since my kids were born three decades ago. So of course when I sat down with pencil and paper, nothing was produced but offal.
        Damn. It was late and I’d had a few beers, so maybe I was drunk? I set it aside for the next morning.
        Several days and a couple sheets of paper later and I finally had a cartoon drawing of an angry old crone. I figured I’d digitize her the same way I digitized my slides—I’d use my phone’s camera. With an eight by ten image to photograph, it should work fine. After all, the cover of The Paxil Diaries is a photo of one of my paintings I painted when I still had talent, and it turned out all right.
        Not Mrs. Ferguson. The white paper was a neutral gray in the digital image. “GIMP’ll fix it,” I thought.
        Nope. Adjusting the brightness and contrast removed some of the details. Actually, a lot of them.
        Several tries later I gave up, and decided to just scan it. I went down to the basement, where the scanner’s been since I moved in here, and realized that first, it probably wouldn’t work any more, and even if it did it used a parallel port to get the image in a computer, and when was the last time you saw a parallel port? So I drove to Staples, where all the scanners were attached to printers!
        I finally found a sales guy, who found a couple without printers that cost more than the ones with printers attached. He said they always put printers on cheap scanners, so I bought one of the expensive ones, an Epson Perfection V39.
        I took it home and scanned Mrs. Ferguson, put her at the top of the story, printed her out, and shrunk down like that, again a lot of the details were gone. So I thickened some lines and rescanned. It’s fine now.
        I wasn’t going to mention it because when I bought the scanner I had the idea of scanning all the photo albums for Patty, but that’s taking a long time, they won’t be done by Christmas, and Leila says she can’t come this year, anyway.
        I have one scanned, and half its photos straightened out and separated from each other, but I’ll be at it for a while. I’m also going to scan the book my uncle co-write, and if I get permission from my aunt to publish it I’ll do so. Of course, it would only be of interest to family since it’s about family history, some of it ancient, fifteenth century ancient.
        I really like that scanner! It’s a lot smaller than the old one in the basement; that one’s four or five inches thick and a foot and a half by two feet, and has a power cord with a big box in the middle and a parallel port. The new one is smaller than my big laptop and needs no power cable, as it gets its power from the USB port. It uses the same kind of USB cable as your phone (unless you have an Apple, which is compatible with nothing).
        At any rate, I haven’t written much lately...

http://en.spaceengine.org/index/faq/0-29

Q: Will there be a version for Mac and Linux?
A: Yes, this is planned for in the near future.

http://en.spaceengine.org/

The interface can be a little finicky, so be patient with it.

"Settings - View" allows you to turn on/off the procedurally generated galaxies, stars, clusters, nebulae, and planets. I prefer to have most of these off, except for planets. It will be fun to watch the datasets get updated over the next few years, allowing us to have actual depictions of real planets.

Click on objects to select them and get stats like diameter, mass, and distance away from your current position. Selecting an object displays crosshairs on it or an arrow pointing in its angular direction that allow you to find it more easily.

WASD for basic movement. Left click and drag to shift your viewing angle.

Use a scrollwheel to control your velocity. If you collide with a star, planet, asteroid, etc. your velocity gets reset to a low number. As you get closer to objects, you tend to zip past them unless you lower your velocity at the same time as you adjust your angle to approach it head on.

Right click and drag allows you to rotate around the object you're following. Right click on an object to get a menu that allows you to go to the object or follow it.

Magnifying glass icon is the Find Object/"Go to" menu. If you have procedural planets on, try going to "Kraz 7.4" (no quotes). Then right click Kraz 7.4 and select the Parent option.

Try going to:

• Saturn
• Pluto
• Ceres
• Dysnomia
• Psyche
• Pleiades
• HIP 13484 3.D3
• Alnitak
• WOH G64
• HIP 28285 5.S47

Wasserman Schultz confronted Comey about Russian hacking

Uh oh. That Wasserman Schultz, huh?

Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.), who was forced to resign last summer as head of the DNC amid the hacking scandal, told Comey that he should have come to her directly once the FBI was aware of the breach, just as he had done with other hacking victims. Comey, described by lawmakers in the room as unflinching and defiant, retorted that the FBI had properly notified DNC officials of the hacking.

"You let us down!" one Democrat yelled to Comey during the tense exchange, according to one attendee. Another Democrat described the scene: "Essentially Debbie asked, how was it that the FBI knew that the DNC was being hacked and they didn’t tell her? He gave some bulls--t explanation, ‘That’s our standard, we called this one, we called that one’ — [she said] ‘Well, why didn’t you call me?’ ”

And don't forget the guest host list:

The briefers at Friday's meeting included Comey; James Clapper, the director of national intelligence; CIA director John Brennan; and Mike Rogers, head of the National Security Agency.

It's hard to imagine such a small space with so many people to hate inside of it.

Rep. Alcee Hastings (D-Fla.) took those criticisms a step further, accusing Comey of a double standard that "without question" makes him unfit to keep the position. "I have a great belief that the agency is a good agency, [but] I have a stronger belief that James Comey has done this nation a terrible disservice," he said. "I hope that Donald Trump fires him," Hastings said. "More important, he ought to resign.

Come on, Trump! Fire!

Justice Department inspector general to investigate pre-election actions by department and FBI

I guess I would keep my answers short too, if I were in his position.

The Hill didn't mention this bit:

The hearing took place a day after the Justice Department’s inspector general said it was investigating Mr. Comey’s decision during the campaign to hold a news conference announcing the end of the case — and then, just before the election, inform Congress there was possible new evidence only to say days later that it did not amount to anything.

Mr. Comey “didn’t really answer,” said Representative Jerold Nadler of New York. He dismissively referred to Mr. Comey as “a policeman,” and added, “I don’t remember anything substantive he said.”

Garbage in, garbage out! He should have recorded the meeting.

I, like a few Soylentils, hated Comey some time before he became a household name with the Apple unlock fiasco and election shenanigans. Much like I hate Clapper, Brennan, Rogers, and will have a new list of people to hate soon. What do you think of Comey today?