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Let’s see – economic depression caused by unbridled greed on Wall Street – ecologic disaster caused by unbridled greed for oil – what have we learned from it? Not a damn thing!

Wall Street gave us years of roller-coaster stock returns, devastating home-prices devaluation, 401K funds turned insolvent, obscene pay and bonuses for those who gambled away fortunes of other people’s hard-earned money (but that’s still open for debate as to if it really was hard earned or just more ill-gotten gains), and an unbridled lust and greed to have more money than God.

BP gave us an unprecedented ecological disaster that continues to spread through the Gulf of Mexico, unstoppable, uncontainable, and promising to made worse by the fact that hurricane season will start in two days. As described in a recent news article, “think Katrina with oil’, a push into an area of diminishing returns where the desire for oil costs more, returns less (even though they claim that these are the largest fields of oil ever discovered), and an unbridled lust and greed to have more money that God.

In both cases we are hindered by ineffectual government bodies that failed to do their duty and regulate the industries as they should have. The agencies in charge of Wall Street turned a blind eye so they could download and watch porn all day long. Not to mention the fact that a Republican lead government spear-headed the dismantlement of the Glass-Stegall act because it “hindered” the market and kept financial firms from “getting their game on.” On the other hand, the agencies in charge of regulating the oil companies were actually producing the porn that the other were probably watching and receiving kick-backs, bribes, and other “goodies” to let the oil companies have their way.

Unfortunately the chickens came home to roost under Obama’s watch and he is unjustly shouldering the burden of blame for it all and having to cope with the cleanup and increasingly bad publicity which is only instilling more distrust in an agency that is supposed to look after the well being if it citizens.

What have we learned? Hire more people with scruples and ethics. Provide more oversight of the regulatory agencies that are supposed to be protecting us from this sort of stupidity and risk. Greed is bad, as is Ayn Randian free-market economics. If a company is too big to fail, it’s a dinosaur and needs to fail.

Supposition 1: The universe was created by God’s will. All physical laws and rules exist because of him.
Supposition 2: Multiple universes exist in in the quantum foam that our universe exists in.
Supposition 3: When we die, our souls (spirits, what have you) have the opportunity to fall into or enter a quantum foam multiverse.
Proposition 1: When we die, our souls can pass into an alternative universe existing in the quantum foam that created our universe. Potentially the force of our will can force the primordial universe to take on properties that you, as your soul, want or imagine. In effect, when we pass away, we may experience the opportunity to enter a bubble in quantum foam, between universes, and create a new universe by imposing our will upon the blank template that exists. If our will is strong enough, we can create a universe that reflects our wants and desires, follows our rules, etc. The primary problems are 1) we are lucky enough to fall into or cross over the boundary of the universe into the quantum foam bubble, 2) we are cognizant enough to recognize that this has happened, 3) we are of strong enough personality to be able to force our will upon the bubble and create a new universe, and 4) we are strong enough to maintain the new universe for a long enough period of time for things to be created in our image and to follow our desired rules

A short interview article from Der Spiegel talking about the operators of the remote drones and the stress they undergo. The disconnect they go through is worse than that of combat troops in the field. It’s an interesting read. You always wondered about PTSD among combat troops, this is more insidious as it could be your next door neighbor or friend on the kids’ football league.

Every once in a while you need help keeping track of log files and where to look for information. I’ve found this link for to a cheat sheet that helps start you down the path of knowing where to look for what services and platform. While this might not help the casual user, those who are more hardcore or have more vested in reviewing the logs might find it useful. Link to it here.

Snort is THE premier open source intrusion detection and intrusion prevention application package. Install it locally to monitor your local machine and/or monitor your network. While not easy to master or configure, it is an advanced tool, it is useful from a monitoring perspective to understand everything happening on your system and/or or your network. Use with care as incorrect configuration can impact your system by locking it down too much.