CAROLINA NATURALLY

Sunday, July 3, 2011

The Daily Drift

The Daily Drift

Today's horoscope says:
An upcoming event or celebration comes in and out of your mind today, but try not to let it distract you from your primary focus.
If you give this invading thought credence, the anticipation could grow to an unbearable level and derail your train of thought, pushing it down the wrong track.
Take a breath and try to distract yourself with the routine of the day.
Time marches on, and things will happen when they're meant to happen.

Some of our readers today have been in:

Ottawa, Ontario, Canada

Toronto, Ontario, Canada

Melbourne, Victoria, Australia

Surrey, British Columbia, Canada

Amsterdam, Noord-Holland, Netherlands
Cork, Cork, Ireland

Kuantan, Pahang, Malaysia

Canberra, Australian Capital Territory, Australia

Bandar Seri Begawanm, Brunei and Muara, Brunei Darussalam

Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand

Hamilton, Ontario, Canada

London, England, United Kingdom

Dusseldorf, Nordrhein-Westfalen, Germany

Manila, Manila, Philippines

Frankfurt, Hessen, Germany

Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada

Kota Bharu, Kelantan, Malaysia

Thessaloniki, Thessaloniki, Greece

Rome, Lazio, Italy

Geneva, Geneve, Switzerland

The Hague, Zuid-Holland, Netherlands

Sao Paulo, Sao, Paulo, Brazil

Alicante, Comunidad Valenciana, Spain

as well as Slovakia, Malta, Bulgaria, Israel, Finland, Austria, Norway, Georgia, Mexico, Peru, Kuwait, Serbia, Bangladesh, Latvia, Greece, Scotland, Hong Kong, Denmark, Wales, Iran, Singapore, Poland, Taiwan, Sweden, Afghanistan, Belgium, Tibet, Croatia, Pakistan, Romania, Paraguay, Sudan, Vietnam, Argentina, Cambodia, Egypt, France, Estonia, Puerto Rico, Maldives, Qatar, Brazil, New Zealand, United Arab Emirates, Slovenia, China, Iraq, Ecuador, Nigeria, Colombia, Chile, Honduras, Paupa New Guinea, Moldova, Venezuela, Germany, Mexico, Saudi Arabia, Ireland, Czech Republic, Vietnam, Norway, Finland

and in cities across the United States such as Detroit, Oakland, Chantilly, Huoston and more.

Today is:

Today is Sunday, July 3, the 184th day of 2011.

There are 181 days left in the year.

Today's unusual holidays or celebrations are:

Compliment Your Mirror Day
and
Stay Out Of The Sun Day.

Don't forget to visit our sister blog!

A state with plentiful jobs

One state where there are too many jobs

Employers have more than 15,000 openings to fill but a small population to draw from.

Housing also a problem

Also:

Non Sequitur

http://l.yimg.com/bt/api/res/1.2/QTm1gRWrtMYlJ5YtgnLfBA--/YXBwaWQ9eW5ld3M7Zmk9aW5zZXQ7aD01NjU7cT04NTt3PTE0Mw--/http://media.zenfs.com/en_us/News/ucomics.com/nq110703.jpg

Fireworks photography tips

How to take great photos of fireworks

Turning off auto-focus is one key to getting truly memorable shots.

Tips for shooting with your phone, too

Also:

Explosive Postion

http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lnpymtKbz31qzn3qto1_500.jpg

This is more than likely from the WW1 era.

Although I should think striking an explosive shell with a hammer to drive in the detonator would not be the best course of action here.

Someone put some graffiti on a wall.

And the 'Dear Leader' - insane little turd that he is - has a cow ... puts students to hard labor.

Apparently foreign students or those working on degrees in (probably) spying, kidnapping Japanese citizens or figuring out why it’s so damn dark in Pyongyang at night are exempt if they graduate in the next few months.

But part of the motivation may come from fears of student revolution. Last week someone put a piece of graffito on the wall of a Pyongyang College which called the Dear Leader “a dictator who starved people to death."

For North Korea, this is more or less the equivalent of setting the White House on fire with a Molotov. Pyongyang was locked down (more than usual) for three days in a vain search for the culprit.

Full Story

Repugican Lies

Michele (Batshit Crazy) Bachman claims she "never received a penny" from federally-subsidized family farm.
Only, she did.

Mitt (in his 'special' underwear) Romney touted his amazing fundraising skills where hr got over a million dollars in one day.
Trouble is - he didn't.

Are you aware ...

... that 19 different polls show Americans support raising taxes to fix the deficit.

The people inside the Belt certainly aren't aware of this.

And of course repugicans everywhere living in their insulated perverted bubble world's are clueless.

Now this is interesting ...

During shrub cabal, Current repugican Leaders Voted 19 Times To Increase Debt Limit By $4 Trillion Without Asking for Anything to Reduce the Deficit

Corporate welfare queen CEO eyes $200 million payout

Only in the financial industry can you see such sickening payouts. That every contract and every payout wasn't scrapped in exchange for a public bailout says a lot about how much Wall Street owns both parties in Washington.

Bloomberg:

Citigroup Inc. (C) Chief Executive Officer Vikram Pandit, who took a $1 salary after his bank received the most taxpayer assistance of any U.S. lender, is poised to collect $80 million from other payments and awards that may eventually total more than $200 million.

Pandit, 54, will get the $80 million from Citigroup’s purchase of his Old Lane Partners LP hedge fund tomorrow, according to regulatory filings. The deal brought him to the lender in July 2007. JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM), which remained profitable through the financial crisis, has disclosed about $90 million in awards for CEO Jamie Dimon since 2007.

“Pandit, his $1 pay notwithstanding, cannot be considered modestly paid,” said Graef Crystal, a compensation expert and Bloomberg News consultant based in Las Vegas. “Taxpayers saved this bank, and he’s getting a bundle while shareholders are getting shortchanged on the stock price.”

The truth be told

http://content.cartoonbox.slate.com/?feature=7be3ee3cd8d81cc44acd1db910e17b54&resize=no

Economic recovery is weakest since Depression

So let's focus on the deficit instead. Sigh. It's just what the repugicans want. They'd like nothing better than to get one of their lifelong dreams - gutting the federal budget - and at the same time sink the economy and send Barack Obama packing in 2012.
AP:

This is one anniversary few feel like celebrating.

Two years after economists say the Great Recession ended, the recovery has been the weakest and most lopsided of any since the 1930s.

Unemployment has never been so high - 9.1 percent - this long after any recession since World War II. At the same point after the previous three recessions, unemployment averaged just 6.8 percent.

- The average worker's hourly wages, after accounting for inflation, were 1.6 percent lower in May than a year earlier. Rising gasoline and food prices have devoured any pay raises for most Americans.

- The jobs that are being created pay less than the ones that vanished in the recession.

Couples spar over retirement

Couples see retirement very differently

Spouses often strongly disagree about what age they will retire and where.

Top money worries

Also:

Bizarre Things You Can Rent

I joke about renting a laundry-folding robot because seriously, who likes to fold laundry? As it turns out, I could probably find one to rent if I looked hard enough. I could also rent a tree, a goat, a wife(?!) or any of the 20 things listed in this handy infographic from The World's Biggest.

Spam is way down, but new malware is really tough

Brian Krebs looks at the remarkable drop in spam that the Internet has experienced this year (25-50 billion spams/day today, down from a peak of 225 billion spams/day last July), and at the vicious new malware that's appearing as spam-crooks get more desperate. One such vector is TDSS (AKA "TLd-4"), a rootkit that infects your computer, kicks out all the other malware running on it, and then helps hackers distribute malware. Krebs says that there's plenty of gains to be realized by attacking the financial instruments used by criminals and he's promised a series on how these work.

The evolution of the TLd-4 bot is part of the cat-and-mouse game played by miscreants and those who seek to thwart their efforts. But law enforcement agencies and security experts also are evolving by sharing more information and working in concert, said Alex Lanstein, a senior security researcher at FireEye, a company that has played a key role in several coordinated botnet takedowns in the past two years. "Takedowns can have an effect of temporarily providing relief from general badness, be it click fraud, spam, or credential theft, but lasting takedowns can only be achieved by putting criminals in silver bracelets," Lanstein said. "The Mega-D takedown, for example, was accomplished through trust relationships with registrars, but the lasting takedown was accomplished by arresting the alleged author, who is awaiting trial. In the interim, security companies are getting better and better about working with law enforcement, which is what happened with Rustock."

Where Have All the Spambots Gone?