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Black holes and white slopes
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This shows the orbits of stars around our galactic center. This isn’t an artist’s conception. This isn’t some abstraction of other data. This is a real movie of stars circling the black hole over the last 15 years. In particular, watch S-02. It loops around the black hole, and closes its orbit; we have watched it over one full S-02 “year”. It is an incredible feat of observational astronomy to make these movies. It requires adaptive optics on the largest telescopes in the world (the Keck telescopes on Mauna Kea). We used to think of the heavens as eternal and unchanging. Now we watch movies of stars orbiting black holes.
Cartoon
FICO is Shocked by Default Data
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FICO, the outfit that computes your vaunted “credit score,” has just noticed that consumers with high scores are more likely to default on their mortgages than their credit cards.
Last year, the firm says, folks with FICO scores of 760 or higher defaulted on real estate loans at three times the pace they defaulted on plastic.
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Earth to FICO: If you’re in an underwater home, why wouldn’t you commit strategic default and use the difference between a mortgage payment and rent on a similar home to pay down those cards? You might not even have to move if your mortgage lender doesn’t want to follow through on foreclosure and book the loss!
Apple uncovers child workers in its plants
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Apple has found children were hired to help build some of its products, with one employer in its Mac, iPod and iPhone supply chain falsifying records.
Three facilities were found to have hired 11 workers aged 15 in countries where the minimum work age is 16, as part of the annual audit of companies adhering its supplier code of conduct.
Apple audited 102 companies in 2009, up from 83 the previous year, in China, the Czech Republic, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand, and the US.
CNN Poll: Majority says government a threat to citizens’ rights
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A majority of Americans think the federal government poses a threat to rights of Americans, according to a new national poll.
Fifty-six percent of people questioned in a CNN/Opinion Research Corporation survey released Friday say they think the federal government’s become so large and powerful that it poses an immediate threat to the rights and freedoms of ordinary citizens.
So after eight years of Bush creating Patriot laws, TSA, warrantless wiretapping, people believe the size of the government is the problem?
Morans.
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Anyone know if there’s any real data compiled regarding the actual bottom line savings to corporations that have outsourced work like this? Seems obvious but has it been quantified? Not that similar abuses wouldn’t occur in the US but how much impact on product costs have really been saved – or has it all gone to profits/bonuses/executive salaries? Seems like a company (like Apple) could really generate a lot of goodwill (and sales) if they’d bring the jobs back home and sell that action.
Then you have this: Sweatshops everywhere
http://www.newsweek.com/id/225629