Daily Archives: October 23, 2003

Some Modern Dinosaurs may be a bit Closer to Extinction

This entry was posted in Capitalism Culture Economics Information Taxation Technology on by

I expect to see a lot more headphones on folks while they are at their computers (or just a wireless signal away) and not just to listen to the latest music downloads.
Check out this article about Skype, the latest hot peer-to-peer application that will be making a lot of encumbent telephone companies (both land and cellular) nervous and will have government officials at all levels wondering why their utility tax revenue stream is shrinking.
This has the potential to be a classic case of creative destruction and I, for one, think it is a good thing!
Via Assymetrical Information.

Stormy Weather Brewing

This entry was posted in Astronomy Technology on by

Get out your umbrellas,.. well, they might not help for this storm:

A strong dose of space weather is forecast to hit Earth Friday, potentially disrupting satellite communications and posing a threat to power grids on Earth.
The storm of charged particles was unleashed by a dark region on the solar surface called Sunspot 484. The huge spot, about the size of Jupiter’s surface, has been growing for several days and rotating into a position that now points squarely at Earth.
….
The sunspot let lose a storm of energetic particles, known as a coronal mass ejection at 3 a.m. ET Wednesday, according to forecasters at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). The expanding cloud is expected to arrive midday Friday. It could produce a geomagnetic storm rated G3 on a scale that goes up to G5.

it will probably cause a little chaos with your cell phones as well.
Update: The Apostropher has some more links including this sweet up close and personal look at a sunspot.

Wal-Mart Illegals

This entry was posted in Constitution Domestic Terrorism Economics Immigration Law on by

Surely no one is really surprised by this:

Federal officials are sweeping Wal-Mart stores across the United States as part of an effort to arrest some 300 illegal workers by Thursday evening…..
Officials say investigators are concerned about a pattern of Wal-Mart using contractors who employ illegal aliens and that Wal-Mart has, in fact, continued to use contractors who have been convicted of hiring aliens in the past.

Or that Wal-Mart would try to hide behind the ‘contractor’s employees’ argument:

“They arrested a number of members of the floor cleaning crews.” Williams emphasized the workers are employed by contractors, saying, “they’re not Wal-Mart associates.”

If Wal-Mart really did not know then there are some management types who need to be fired for failure to do due diligence in hiring the contractors.