Tag Archives: New York Review of Books

Sunday – 3/15/15

image imageSpent the bulk of the day at the Economy conference at the Scandanavia House 38 Park Ave. Two very good panels, one on values in economics and the second on the Internet at economics. The discussions by Greta Brochman (U. Olso) on the Nordic welfare model was great. Richard Sennett who I remember from his 974 book Hidden Injuries of Class gave a very striking description of the career environment of today’s economy. Must work on this. Presentation by Shoshanna Zuboff (Harvard B School) was flashy but actually also substantive. Advocacy capitalism vs surveillance capitalism, this latter is winning. Google most obvious example.

Picked up Karen on Upper West side and returned to Hudson by 6 pm or so.

6:12 pm

6:12 pm

Saturday – 3/14/15

Heard full story from Ed and Meredith about the altercation with Emma Xu and the resulting arrest. She charged up the stairs at Ed and grabbed him around the legs. In the ensuing struggle he grabbed her by the neck to get her off. She then retreated and called the cops. They took one look at the bruise on her neck and arrested Ed. Thus beginning almost 24 hrs in a Philly jail.

Big discussions of finding a good criminal lawyer in Philly. Next door neighbors came over to help out. They made suggestions of contacts. Karen, Meredith and Ed went to Philly to lock up the apartment and take pictures of the hallway where the fracas took place. Ed had to stay at a distance since he is under a restraining order. While there Meredith found a key to Ed’s apartment on a NIMH bangle in the closet. Ed’ thinks that Emma came in and planted it over night while the apartment was unlocked.

imageThey also met the landlord, a Nigerian fellow who owns a bunch of apartment houses and a copy center. He seems to be on Ed’s side based on his earlier dealings with Xu. She hasn’t paid her rent and has been a pain in the rear. He will move to evict her.

I went into NYC for my economics conference, What’s Wrong with the Economy –  and Economics sponsored by the New york Review of Books and held at Scandinavia House, 38 Park Ave.

What a great conference.

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Secret Sentry by Mathew Aid

Yottabytes and the National Security State

The current New York Review of Books has an article by James Bamford, “Who’s in Big Brother’s Database” that reviews the new book by Mathew M. Aid, The Secret Sentry: The Untold History of the National Security Agency . I have gotten in line at my local library to read this book and will make further comments after that.

Secret Sentry by Mathew AidMeanwhile, the Bamford article mentions the construction boom at NSA (National Security Agency) with a doubling of its headquarters and million sq. feet of data storage in the Utah desert costing some $2 billion. This to store the data from all of NSA’s spying that by 2015 will be spoken of in terms of yottabytes.

Now, before you think that Bamford is mainlining old Star Wars characters, a yotta- is the largest large number prefix officially recognized in the scientific lexicon. At our house we are approaching 1/2 Terabyte (1012) in our total digital stores, mostly photos. Really large corporate databases are measured in Petabytes (1015). A Yotta is 1024.

Are you feeling safer?

Do you really think that any email sent or telephone conversation you have had since 2002 or 2003 is not logged in the vast secret Security State Apparatus??

I guess that a National Security State (Empire) that has had over 800 military bases throughout the world (see an earlier posting on this topic) to assure our influence elsewhere can not resist the opportunity the state of so-called war we have been in since 2001 to penetrate into every American’s life.