Archive for May, 2011
Sakawa Boys: Ghana’s Cyber-Juju Email Scam Gangs
What do you get when you combine identity theft and email fraud with black magic, spells, and shape shifting? The explosively popular West African subculture known as Sakawa. Via Motherboard, who filmed their visit in Ghana with Sakawa boys:
While Nigeria’s 419 scammers may have written the book on West African internet fraud, their shtick looks like Compuserve compared to what’s going on in Ghana. Ghana’s scammers decided to stack the odds in their favor the old-fashioned way: witchcraft.
Traditional West African Juju priests adapted their services to the needs of the information age and started leading down-on-their-luck internet scammers through strange and costly rituals designed to increase their powers of persuasion and make their emails irresistible to greedy Americans. And so “Sakawa” was born.
Not only is Sakawa the country’s most popular youth activity and one of its biggest underground economies, it’s a full-blown national phenomenon. Sakawa has its own tunes, clothing…
Roger Ailes Bombproofed The Fox News Headquarters, Fearing Gay Terror Attacks
Rolling Stone’s long piece on the evil mastermind is filled with all sorts of joyous nuggets, including the above. Additionally, an underground bunker called the “brain room” — with special security clearance needed for entrance — acts as a research center in which the cable network’s most fiendishly clever plans are developed:
Murdoch installed ailes in the corner office on Fox’s second floor at 1211 Avenue of the Americas in Manhattan. The location made Ailes queasy: It was close to the street, and he lived in fear that gay activists would try to attack him in retaliation over his hostility to gay rights. (In 1989, Ailes had broken up a protest of a Rudy Giuliani speech by gay activists, grabbing demonstrator by the throat and shoving him out the door.) Barricading himself behind a massive mahogany desk, Ailes insisted on having “bombproof glass” installed in the windows – even going so…
Two Idiots Name Their Baby Girl ‘Like’ After the Facebook Button
Jesus Diaz writes on Gizmodo:
Lior and Vardit Adler just had a baby girl. She’s probably all cute and wrinkly! But they hate her soo much that they named her Like, in honor of the Like button in Facebook. Of course, they explain it differently:
To me it is important to give my children names that are not used anywhere else, at least not in Israel. If once people gave Biblical names and that was the icon, then today this is one of the most famous icons in the world, he said, joking that the name could be seen as a modern version of the traditional Jewish name Ahuva, which means “beloved.”
I believe there will be people who will lift a eyebrow, but it is my girl and that’s what’s fun about it.
Yes, dear readers, you are totally right: These parents — who live in Hod Hasharon, a town north-east of Tel Aviv, Israel — are idiots. Idiots, idiots, idiots. Idiots. Idiots who named their first two children Dvash — Hebrew for honey — and Pie. Compared to Like, those names seem as normal as John and Jane.
The Hottest Tech Startup Investor? Ashton Kutcher
Photo: TechCrunch (CC)
New York hosted the number one technology startup conference this week, Techcrunch Disrupt. It felt as though Silicon Valley had taken over Manhattan, but one of the highest profile attendees was actually from Southern California — actor Ashton Kutcher (OK, I know he’s from Iowa originally). He was interviewed on stage by Charlie Rose (see video) and today is profiled by Jenna Wortham for the New York Times:
Ashton Kutcher, a former model, rose to fame in Hollywood by playing a handsome ditz in “Dude, Where’s My Car?” and on “That 70s Show.” But in certain circles, people know that he is no dummy when it comes to technology.
In recent years, Mr. Kutcher has become a smart early investor in some of the most talked-about Internet start-ups, including Foursquare, the mobile social network; Path, a photo-sharing application; and Flipboard, a news-reading app for the iPad.
He has also clearly mastered the utopian lingo of Silicon Valley:…
French Press Publishes Dominique Strauss-Kahn Accuser’s Name & ‘Photos’
Vive la France! Wait, what? David Case writes on globalpost:
Here’s a story that illustrates the chasm between how France and America handle men, women and rape.
The French elite are outraged over what they see as American vulgarities surrounding the treatment of Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the former IMF chief and putative 2012 presidential frontrunner, accused of raping a 32-year-old Sofitel chambermaid in Manhattan last weekend.
Among the “barbaric” American practices under critique by Parisians: showing photos of the accused in handcuffs; marching him through a scrum of photographers on the way to court; and pillorying him tabloid style — the NY Post called him “a horny toad,” for example. As GlobalPost has reported, French law restricts some media coverage of alleged perpetrators prior to conviction, including publication of images showing the accused in handcuffs, to preserve the dignity of the innocent.
Sarah Palin’s Feature Length Film To Premiere In June
Photo: David Shankbone
When is enough enough? Real Clear Politics reports:
Shortly after Republicans swept last November to a historic victory in which Sarah Palin was credited with playing a central role, the former Alaska governor pulled aside her close aide, Rebecca Mansour, to discuss a hush-hush assignment: Reach out to conservative filmmaker Stephen K. Bannon with a request. Ask him if he would make a series of videos extolling Palin’s governorship and laying to rest lingering questions about her controversial decision to resign from office with a year-and-a-half left in her first term. It was this abdication, Palin knew, that had made her damaged goods in the eyes of some Republicans who once were eager to get behind her potential 2012 presidential campaign.
The response was more positive than Palin could have hoped for. He’d make a feature-length movie, Bannon told Mansour, and he insisted upon taking complete control and financing it himself — to…
Egyptian Pyramids Found By Infrared Satellite Images
Gizah Pyramids. Photo: Ricardo Liberato (CC)
Not only were pyramids found, but an entire city-scape could be seen, fit with various buildings and roads. Frances Cronin of BBC News reports:
Seventeen lost pyramids are among the buildings identified in a new satellite survey of Egypt.
More than 1,000 tombs and 3,000 ancient settlements were also revealed by looking at infra-red images which show up underground buildings.
Initial excavations have already confirmed some of the findings, including two suspected pyramids.
The work has been pioneered at the University of Alabama at Birmingham by US Egyptologist Dr Sarah Parcak.
She says she was amazed at how much she and her team has found.
“We were very intensely doing this research for over a year. I could see the data as it was emerging, but for me the “Aha!” moment was when I could step back and look at everything that we’d found and I couldn’t believe we could locate so…
New York Entangled In Yarn Graffiti
The New York Times reports on “yarn bombing”, the softest, coziest form of urban vandalism. Leave your bike parked for too long and it could end up like the one at right, which has been chained for months in front of my friend’s store:
“Street art and graffiti are usually so male dominated,” Ms. Hemmons said. “Yarn bombing is more feminine. It’s like graffiti with grandma sweaters.”
Yarn bombing takes that most matronly craft (knitting) and that most maternal of gestures (wrapping something cold in a warm blanket) and transfers it to the concrete and steel wilds of the urban streetscape. Hydrants, lampposts, mailboxes, bicycles, cars — even objects as big as buses and bridges — have all been bombed in recent years, ever so softly and usually at night.
It is a global phenomenon, with yarn bombers taking their brightly colored fuzzy work to Europe, Asia and beyond. In Paris, a yarn culprit…
Bank Of America Pays $410 Million To Settle Accusations Of Charging Illegal Overdraft Fees
Can we charge Bank of America an overdraft fee? The San Francisco Gate writes:
Bank of America has agreed to pay $410 million to settle a lawsuit in which the lender is accused of manipulating debit transactions to maximize overdraft fees. The agreement is believed to be the first financial settlement by a large bank in a case alleging deceptive overdraft practices. It may presage the outcome of related claims against 30 other lending institutions, including Wells Fargo, Citibank, Chase, Union Bank and U.S. Bank.
San Francisco’s Wells Fargo is embroiled in a separate lawsuit in federal court in San Francisco brought by California customers. That case started before the multistate legal action, but has not concluded because Wells has filed an appeal.
In August, U.S. District Judge William Alsup issued a scathing ruling ordering Wells Fargo to pay its California clients $203 million. He said the bank’s goal was to “maximize the number…
“Prodigy of Color” – The Art of Aelita Andre, Age 4
Four year-old Aelita Andre has a solo show opening at New York City’s Agora Gallery on June 4th. It might not come as too much of a surprise that a child should be able to produce beautiful, abstract expressionist art on par with the professionals, who are probably tapping their “inner children,” anyway. Aelita Andre, however, has been given free reign to so do, with as much space and materials to explore her creativity as anyone could want. Moreover, she displays real talent; working in thoughtful, methodical way, and making deliberate creative choices. Discovered via BoingBoing:
First Cloned Cat Turns Ten Years Old
It feels like just yesterday that the first generation of cloned animals captured the headlines — now they are passing comfortably into old age (without any bizarre mutations, eyeballs spontaneously falling out, et cetera). Cloned pets turning ten is our generation’s Bob Dylan turning seventy. Via the Houston Chronicle:
Almost 10 years later CC, aka Copy Cat, is still in the College Station area. She has a mate, Smokey, and they live with their three offspring in a cat mansion built by Dr. Duane C. Kraemer, an A&M researcher who helped bring CC into the world.
CC and her family seem like perfectly normal cats, which disappoints many guests hoping to see something more exotic, said Kraemer’s wife, Shirley, the head cat wrangler.
A&M’s cat-cloning operation was an offshoot of the Missyplicity Project to clone a dog named Missy with funding help from a company that wanted to market pet cloning. When the…
The U.S. Congress Does ‘Abnormally’ Well in the Stock Market
This should be more troubling, but it feels like business as usual in Washington. Dan Foomkin writes on the Huffington Post:
Members of the House of Representatives considerably outperform the stock market in their personal investments, according to a new academic study.
Four university researchers examined 16,000 common stock transactions made by approximately 300 House representatives from 1985 to 2001, and found what they call “significant positive abnormal returns,” with portfolios based on congressional trades beating the market by about 6 percent annually.
What’s their secret? The report speculates, but does not conclude, it could have something to do with the ability members of Congress have to trade on non-public information or to vote their own pocketbooks — or both.
A study of senators by the same team of researchers five years ago found members of the higher chamber even better at beating the market — outperforming it by about 10 percent, an amount the academics…
Fox News & Bill O’Reilly Are America’s Most Trusted News Sources
Paul Bedard reports in U.S. News & World Report:
In a stunning rejection of network news and nightly news anchors, cable news, driven by the Fox News Channel and mouthy Bill O’Reilly, is now the top most trusted source—by a mile.
In a new poll from Boston’s Suffolk University (PDF), more than a quarter of the nation says Fox is tops when it comes to who they trust the most and O’Reilly is the most believable.
“This poll shows two things: first, the network news have completely lost their brand. Second, the only network with any intensity is Fox News,” says Brent Bozell, president of the conservative Media Research Center. “Bottom line: the more they attack Fox, the stronger it is getting,” he adds.
But at the liberal Media Matters, Executive Vice President Ari Rabin-Havt says the public’s trust in Fox is disturbing. A regular Fox critic, he says the poll reveals that “Fox…
Are Banksters Too Big To Jail?
Why are we banking on banks to a promote economic recovery? HBO’s “Too Big To Fail” should have been about banksters “too big to jail.”
This week the financial crisis finally went prime time in the form of a big budget HBO docudrama called “Too Big To Fail.”
It was a well-acted docudrama focused on the BIG Men and some women in the banks and in government who tried to put Humpty Dumpty back together again up on that wall to prevent a total economic collapse when panic dried up credit and financial institutions faced failure.
Based on the work of a New York Times reporter, it offered a skillfully-made but conventional narrative which, like most TV shows, showcase events but miss their deeper context and background.
We heard all the explanations, save one.
There was greed, ambition, ego and money lust. There were personal rivalries and ideological battles, parochial agendas and narrow self-interest. There…
Alien Planets Outnumber Stars
Montage of Jupiter and the Galilean satellites, Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto.
When we look up at the night sky we see millions of twinkling stars. But how many planets are we not seeing? Astronomers’ new study has found that ‘Jupiter-like gas giants’ are more common than previously thought. The National Geographic reports:
If you look to the stars tonight, consider this: No matter how innumerable they may seem, there are far more planets than stars lurking out there in the darkness, a new study suggests.
The study uncovered a whole new class of worlds: Jupiter-like gas giants that have escaped the gravitational bonds of their parent stars and are freely roaming space.
What’s more, “our results indicate that such planets are quite common,” said study team member David Bennett, an astronomer at Notre Dame University in Indiana.
“There’s a good chance that the closest free-floating planet is closer to Earth than the closest star.”
Ohio State University astronomer…
Cisco Systems Sued For Helping China Monitor Internet
The Financial Times reports:
Senior executives at Cisco Systems worked closely with Chinese government security agents to tailor hardware and software they knew would be used to track, detain and torture followers of the banned Falun Gong spiritual movement, according to a US federal lawsuit filed last week.
The suit accuses the networking company’s chief executive John Chambers and leaders of Cisco’s China business of close collaboration with Beijing, citing statements on company websites, at trade shows and in internal documents.
The 52-page complaint was brought by the Washington-based Human Rights Law Foundation, which has handled other legal issues for Falun Gong followers, on behalf of residents in the US and survivors of some said to have been killed in China for their participation in Falun Gong activities.
Cisco has faced criticism in the past for allowing its routers, which have the greatest share of the world market by revenue, to play a crucial role…
BO Turns on the Charm: U.S. President Leaves Ireland Early for An Audience with British Monarch
Guess Crown counts for more than kin with some people. From Anissa Hadaddi at the International Business Times:
A dense cloud of ash from an Icelandic volcano was being blown toward Scotland yesterday. While airlines started to cancel their flights, U.S. President Barack Obama was forced to cut short his visit to Ireland as fears of disruptions similar to those engendered by the Icelandic Eyjafjallajökull eruption in April 2010 mounted.
