Strangely Perfect

Criminal Cost? A week may be a long time in politics, but it takes several years for anti-crime agencies to crack down on scammers…  This is my observation on all the various scams perpetrated on folk by such smiling scum as Pacific WebWorks and Jesse Willms. Salt Lake Tribune (SLT) The fine publication, SLT, always [...]

The statements this week, by the UK government’s chief energy scientist, are right up my street.  See Britons creating ‘more emissions’ on the BBC. It’s obvious really. Over the last few decades our (meaning the UK and all western nations’) manufacturing industries have collapsed. Yet we can still buy stuff, more and more stuff actually. [...]

You’ve Got to Laugh Following the biggest financial meltdown in history over the last 2 years, the optimists are vociferously making themselves known and talking the economies of the world, up. However, the United Kingdom is not doing as well as Germany (and France), apparently.  The reason for this is that Germany’s profits have mainly [...]

Oleg Deripaska? Oleg is one of the world’s richest men.  Getting his Physics degree as the old USSR collapsed, then buying up shares in Aluminium smelters, getting an Economics degree and then setting up Basic Element, a vast metals empire, he somehow rid the company and industry of the Mafia, but no-one knows how. But [...]

Too Little, Too Late, Gordon Brown This morning, PM Gordon Brown told Andrew Marr that he wants to ‘clean up’ parliament. He wants a ‘code of conduct’ for MPs to follow. The thing is, there’s already a code of conduct – it’s called the law! All we,  ‘the people’ want, is to have reasonable laws [...]

Introduction This is a small investigation into mail lists and scammy companies.  Some companies are fine, but I always go by the adage to judge a man by the company he keeps.  This shows how lists spread far beyond their initial purpose when you sign up for something.  It also shows how the privacy policies [...]

CTC & Guardian [amazon-product align="left" alink="0000FF" bordercolor="FFFFFF" height="240" region="uk"]000728487X[/amazon-product]I’m indebted to this week’s CTC newsletter for pointing out an article by Ben Goldacre in the Guardian last Saturday (a week ago).   I’ve used one of Mr Goldacre’s articles before in some presentations I’ve done at work when pointing out the poor and devious ways [...]

The Tale of Two Conmen Barristers Conman ‘barrister’ who bought robe and wig on eBay jailed for two years Tea-leaf Ian Clegg here, did the amazing thing here of charging people money to represent them in court.  He did this over a 6-month period and apparently made hundreds of pounds! In one case for a [...]

Two days ago I read an astonishingly factual and honest article on the BBC Magazine website, called; The myth of record debt Author Michael Blastland (who wrote The Tiger That Isn’t: Seeing Through a World of Numbers) explains very well how statistics and their presentation can be used to hide or expose anything the presenter [...]

Richard P. Feynman related to US Debt in Today’s News Yet again, I’m reminded about the late, great Feynman.  Not only did he give incredibly accessible and incisive open lectures, he also left the world a legacy of humorous and yet accurate quotes for us to ruminate on… In the latest development from “The Credit [...]

Introduction I’ve nabbed the content of this from Ted Penfold.  My wife, has told me that she heard this lecture of Dick’s and found it and him some of the most inspiring things in her life.  I came across this wonderful piece by chance, looking for some background information on Nikko, the second guy after [...]

I decided to have a small investigation on (some!) of today’s spam…  I noticed a lot of similarities in my Mailwasher Pro output: Forged/spoofed “from” address “Debt free” or “get out of debt” or some permutation thereof in the subject field ALL have a non-obfuscated ~spaces.live.com web address as the link 2 line body: e.g. [...]

Rob a Bank! This is inspired by a recent glut of like-titled spam that I’ve received… Bonnie & Clyde John Dillinger

The latest news from HSBC (Warning as HSBC profits fall 28%), looks pretty dire, (“oh no!  28% down, jump from the windows“), so I’ll be closing my account then, should I? Lets put it in context…. Last year, some chickens came home to roost for people who’d over-leveraged their investments to bolster their lifestyles – [...]