I find this very sad news.

Rattle wrote:

In the Valley's coffee community, Bill McCauley was regarded as a pleasant, popular fellow.

As well as in the Silicon Valley tech community. Several people here at MemeStreams worked for Bill back in 2000-2001.

I think Bill was more lonely then he ever let on..

I agree.

RE: R.I.P. Bill McCauley

There is significant locational disparity in the performance of housing markets across the country. Bernanke showed a very cool set of heat maps on a variety metrics.

Very cool county by county economic breakdown.

Matrix » [Credit Spiral] Declining Home Prices Primary Cause Of Declining Home Prices

The predominant view is currently biased to commodities as an investment hedge against inflation...

Unfortunately, this thinking is a self-fulfilling prophecy which ultimately may feed into a negative economic cycle where legitimate commercials are squeezed out of business thereby reducing supply, protectionism gains traction, trade breaks down, hoarding ensues, riots occur and wars erupt over access.

This may sound alarmist, but industry insiders are not buying into the one-size fits all answer that emerging economies are the primary factor driving up prices from the demand side, reinforced by supply-side shocks and peak production fears. In a slowing global economy hit by a major credit crisis and reeling from a falling dollar, it is likely that money flows seeking safe haven in hard assets is the key driver of recent volatility.....

naked capitalism: There is an Oil Bubble

BEYOND THE BEAT GENERATION archives and publishes the entire, long forgotten 'wild' musical gems out of the great years of the sixties (1965-1969) to a bright audience by using today's technology as we call 'Stream Radio'.

We broadcast 24 hours non-stop through the Internet the music formerly known as: Hippie music, Underground, 60's punk, Flower Power, Mod, Free-Form-Freak-out, Garage music, Psychedelia or Teen Beat, the weirdest, the worst, the most powerful and nastiest ever recorded.

This could be incredibly cool.

Undiscovered 60's Underground Music

Yes, he owns a flat-screen television, but he has modified it with a burlap frame. He uses an iPhone, but it is encased in burnished brass. Even his clothing — an unlikely fusion of current and neo-Edwardian pieces (polo shirt, gentleman’s waistcoat, paisley bow tie), not unlike those he plans to sell this summer at his own Manhattan haberdashery — is an expression of his keenly romantic worldview.

I think this steampunk movement has much more potential than goths did. I apologize in advance for how admittedly poor this article is. The fact that NYT covered it is more significant than the content of the coverage.

Steampunk Moves Between Two Worlds - New York Times

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton on Sunday dismissed the "elite opinion" of economists who criticized her gas tax proposal, using a term that has dogged rival Barack Obama in recent weeks.

This is so idiotic it feels like a Simpson's episode. Apparently the social hierarchy of American junior high schools has come home to roost in our adult society. Republicans have long attacked "elite" segments of society (by which they mean well educated, rather than rich) for being "out of touch." Now Democrats are doing it too. Its a bipartisan consensus! Being smart or informed is bad! We're going forward with our gas tax holiday, and damn those pencil neck nerds who say it won't work! What the hell do economists know about the economy anyway!? USA! USA! USA! Whoohoo!

Clinton dismisses 'elite' economists on gas tax plan | Reuters

New Nine Inch Nails album - and it's 100% free

nine inch nails: the slip

A fantastic graphical breakdown of how people spend their money. I wish I could have this personalized.

All of Inflation’s Little Parts - The New York Times

I've discussed the need for a space webcam before. These people seem to think there is a business in it.

By delivering the first live, continuous, true color image stream of Earth from space, AstroVision will revolutionize the delivery of weather, news, and environmental information.

We will capture and track catastrophic events such as hurricanes, volcanoes, forest fires, and a multitude of other continuous and unforeseen events—live.

AstroVision - Our Business

There is a hell of a lot of smoke being blasted up around this WVWV situation. The PR strategy here is confusion. I offer this as what I consider clarity. The linked news article is from February.

Sarah Johnson, communications director for the organization, said Friday that not including information about the source of the voter registration effort was "absolutely an accidental omission."

She said the group was changing its nationwide phone alerts to make clear who is coordinating the effort.

Its May. If this was a mistake, they would have cleared it up in nearly 3 months. It doesn't take THAT long to change out a recording in a mass calling machine. As far as I can tell at no point in this controversy have they specifically addressed why they did not change their recordings after they said they were going to.

This is not proof that they were deliberately engaged in voter suppression. There are three possibilities:

1. They were lying about this being a mistake. They were engaged in voter suppression.

2. They were lying about this being a mistake. They have found unidentified recordings to be more effective for some legitimate reason other than voter suppression. If they were lying, the problem that the general public has is that we have no reason to accept that their further insistences that they are not engaged in voter suppression are honest.

3. They are so incompetent that they managed to create a voter suppression scare, literally promise the general public that they were going to address the issue, did absolutely nothing, and created the exact same voter suppression scare again.

Door number 3 is the only option where I think we get to be comfortable with this organization, however, I'm not convinced that it's credible that these experienced "professionals" are that incompetent. I can't think of a place where I've ever worked where if I made a mistake that caused the Virginia Police Department to issue a public advisory upper management would not have been directly involved. People just don't get caught up in problems like that and then blow it off and not do anything. Thats the sort of problem that people tend to take very seriously.

Virginia voter registration effort proves legit after fears of scam | HamptonRoads.com | PilotOnline.com