Peter Shiff on Gold

Is Goldman Sachs trying to flush out gold sellers?

Robert Reich Doesn't Realize He Was Protected by the Private Sector

From EPJ:

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Robert Reich, who has never seen a government intervention he doesn't like, tells this story on his blog:

As a child I was bullied by bigger boys who threatened to beat me up if I didn't give them what they wanted. But every time I gave in to their demands their subsequent demands grew larger. First they wanted the change in my pocket. Next it was the dessert in my lunchbox. Then my new Davy Crockett cap. Then the softball and bat I got for my birthday.

Finally I stopped giving in. When the bullies began roughing me up on the playground some older boys came to my rescue and threatened my tormenters with black eyes if they ever touched me again. That ended their extortion racket.

Where was the government? Where were the public school administrators? He was protected by the private sector.

Feminist censorship

Reblogged from Feminist fascism starts young:

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It would have been a more salient lesson had the mother gotten the bookstore employees to burn the offending books. And check out what Mommy does:

“We were browsing around in the bookstore, and suddenly I heard my daughter calling out, ‘Mama! You have to look at this!’” recalls Cooper. “So, of course, I thought she'd found something she wanted to buy, but it was completely the opposite. She was looking at two books that had made her so enraged she was actually in tears.”

The books, titled “How To Survive (Almost) Anything,” included a boy version and a girl version. In the boy version, the chapters covered topics such as “How to Survive a Shark Attack,” “How to Survive in a Desert,” and “How to Survive Whitewater Rapids.”

The girl version addressed such issues as “How to Survive a BFF Fight,” “How to Survive a Fashion Disaster,” and “How to Survive a Breakout.”

“The one that got to my daughter the most was ‘How to Survive a Camping Trip’ because she loves camping,” Cooper said. “It was sad to read ‘camping may not always be a girl's top choice of activity, but here's how to make the best of a bad situation and survive in style.’ The picture had a girl dreaming about lounging on a beach. Later it said, ‘Besides, fresh air is excellent for the skin, and a brisk walk is a marvelous workout.’”

KC was so upset at the sexist nature of the books that a bookstore employee took notice and asked her what was wrong.

“After looking through the books, the employee agreed they were offensive and pulled them from the shelves! She said if she had seen them first they wouldn’t have been there to begin with. She was great because she took action and validated my daughter’s feelings.”

Cooper, a science fiction writer, is proud of her daughter for drawing attention to the books and having them removed from the store, and took this experience as a lesson learned for both KC and herself.

She's no shrinking violet, but she bursts into tears at the sight of a book she doesn't like.  Right. This is the punchline from the idiot mother: "Unfortunately it triggered a somewhat nasty flurry of comments about censorship, which I feel really distracted from the point of the post."

No, you mother-from-Hell, censorship is the entire point of the post! And no man in his right mind is ever going to come within 10 feet of that mentally poisoned little girl; she'll be writing wistfully about dinosaur rape, wondering why no boy wants to come within 20 feet of her, and blaming all her problems on sexism by the time she's eighteen. The girl would have been much better off in life if the bookstore employee said: "we don't give a quantum of a damn about your feelings, you little evolutionary dead end; what other people write and what other people read isn't any business of yours."

Equality is the reason you can't have good books.

Fingerprints are Usernames, not Passwords

Fingerprints cannot, and absolutely must not, be used to authenticate an identity. For authentication, you need a password or passphrase. Something that can be independently chosen, changed, and rotated. Once your fingerprint is compromised (and, yes, it almost certainly already is, if you've crossed an international border or registered for a driver's license in most US states), how do you change it? Are you starting to see why this is a really bad idea?

Fingerprints are Usernames, not Passwords
Chaos Computer Club Cracks Apple TouchID

Can the FBI get iPhone 5S fingerprint data via the Patriot Act?

Al Franken, chairman for the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Privacy, Technology and the Law writes to Tim Cook (CEO of Apple Inc.):

I am writing regarding Apple's recent inclusion of a fingerprint reader on the new iPhone 5S. Apple has long been a leading innovator of mobile technology; I myself own an iPhone. At the same time, while Apple's new fingerprint reader, Touch ID, may improve certain aspects of mobile security, it also raises substantial privacy questions for Apple and for anyone who may use your products. In writing you on this subject, I am seeking to establish a public record of how Apple has addressed these issues internally and in its rollout of this technology to millions of my constituents and other Americans.

Too many people don't protect their smartphones with a password or PIN. I anticipate that Apple's fingerprint reader will in fact make iPhone 5S owners more likely to secure their smartphones. But there are reasons to think that an individual's fingerprint is not "one of the best passwords in the world," as an Apple promotional video suggests.

Passwords are secret and dynamic; fingerprints are public and permanent. If you don't tell anyone your password, no one will know what it is. If someone hacks your password, you can change it—as many times as you want. You can't change your fingerprints. You have only ten of them. And you leave them on everything you touch; they are definitely not a secret. What's more, a password doesn't uniquely identify its owner—a fingerprint does. Let me put it this way: if hackers get a hold of your thumbprint, they could use it to identify and impersonate you for the rest of your life.

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