In the summer of 2008, steel giant Nucor decided to raise some cash. It issued new shares of stock and floated some corporate bonds. As financial markets crumbled, the company ignored pleas from some investors and analysts that it buy back shares, which are now selling for about half their peak.

Royal Raymond Rife Microscope #2

Royal Raymond Rife, “genius scientist”, trained for six years at the Carl Zeiss Optical Company in Germany and became the inventor of powerful microscopes, leading to the discovery of a revolutionary therapy for viral diseases.
 
Pictured above is his second microscope which will be included as lot 113 in the Bonhams sale 10th [...]

The US airlines that created the largest, most redonkulous and abusive fees this year lost the most money last quarter. Airlines with low or no fees lost the least.
Accountants have rigged the system. They create a stream to track the ancillary revenue from fees and they look like heroes when they can report they earned [...]

China’s economy has fewer influencers than the U.S.
Financial commentators are obsessively debating whether the recent rise in the Chinese stock market means there’s a bubble — and if so, when it’s going to burst.
My take? Who cares! What happens to the broader Chinese economy is what we should really be watching. It will have a [...]

GOOD’s executive compensation infographic shows the compensation levels of the business world’s top execs, with the number of minimum wage earners each super-suit’s take-home pay would support. Wow that is a lot of capitalistic greed!

American mega megacorp Cargill, which brought in $116.6 billion in revenue last year, is in the spotlight this week around the story of Stephanie Smith: the 22 year old children’s dance instructor was paralyzed from the waist down after eating E. coli-tainted hamburger traced back to the meat supplier.
She was in a coma for nine [...]

For years the people in congress have ignored the outrageous
practices of banks and credit card companies
A backlash is brewing on Capitol Hill against banks that charge large fees for overdrafts without asking or telling customers, the latest sign that the financial crisis is shifting the balance of power from banks toward borrowers.
Banks struggling to survive [...]

McWhores

Product placement is to be allowed on British TV shows, in a move due to be announced this week.
Independent broadcasters will be allowed to take payments for displaying commercial products during shows.
The change is intended to bring in extra funds for commercial broadcasters.

The New “Sinless” Search Engine

Muslims will be able to surf the internet without the fear of accidentally encountering what their relegion views as sinful material after a Dutch company launched the world’s first Islamic search engine.
The ImHalal service works like any other search facility until potentially illicit words are entered, when it rates the search [...]

When economists fail
It’s hard to believe now, but not long ago economists were congratulating themselves over the success of their field. Those successes — or so they believed — were both theoretical and practical, leading to a golden era for the profession. On the theoretical side, they thought that they had resolved their internal disputes. [...]

That’s the conclusion of a new study, which found that men who are pleasant at work get an average of 1,500-pound a year less than those who are more aggressive.   To reach the conclusion, experts looked at the link between personality and pay, reports The Daily Express. ’

No Money No Workee

Thousands of airline workers have launched a mass hunger strike over a wages row.
Around 20,000 Air India staff at airports across the sub-continent are refusing to eat after the cash-strapped company said it was delaying paying wages and cutting bonuses.

Gourd and squash artifacts were recovered from the sunken pit and platform in the Fox Temple at the Buena Vista site in central Peru
The party was over more than 4,000 years ago, but the remnants still remain in the gourds and squashes that served as dishware. For the first time, University of Missouri researchers have [...]

 
Steve Brill’s Clear Card closes operations
The company which aimed to help registered users pass through airport security more quickly and with less hassle, will fold operations as of 2 a.m. on Tuesday.  The New York-based Verified Identity Pass, Inc. is the company which operates Registered Traveler programs under the brand name Clear.

Tobacco companies made changes without informing consumers 
As President Obama prepares to sign a bill giving the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) oversight of the tobacco industry, a new study from Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) researchers shows that tobacco manufacturers have continually changed the ingredients and the design of their cigarettes over time, even [...]

The overbearing sickness industry gets scrutinized.

An article in the latest issue of The American Journal of Medicine makes chilling reading, and presents compelling evidence that the US health care system is broken. In 2007, before the current economic downturn even began, an American family filed for bankruptcy in the aftermath of illness every 90 seconds; [...]

 You are currently under surveillance. Really.

Bad news for freedom as noted in this snip from WIRED Threat Level piece by David Kravets:
A federal judge on Wednesday dismissed lawsuits targeting the nation’s telecommunication companies for their participation in President George W. Bush’s once-secret electronic eavesdropping program. In his ruling, U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker upheld summer [...]

Refining the Swine Problem

Even if global coverage on the potential swine flu pandemic may be an over-reaction and another sign of media manipulation, it’s clear that the outbreak is still a serious issue (which you can now follow via Google Maps). All things considered, the outbreak seems to be the tip of the proverbial iceberg. [...]

You may not realize it, but here in the US, our internet kinda sucks. We pay more money for less speed than just about everyone else in Europe and Asia. The town of Wilson, in North Carolina, got fed up with this and decided to form their own community ISP, called Greenlight, which was unsurprisingly [...]