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The Decreasing Reliability of Accounting Data for US Firms

12 Oct

This post is rather technical, but it indicates the corporations routinely cook their books and that the practice is very widespread.

While these time series don’t prove anything decisively, deviations from Benford’s law are compellingly correlated with known financial crises, bubbles, and fraud waves. And overall, the picture looks grim. Accounting data seem to be less and less related to the natural data-generating process that governs everything from rivers to molecules to cities. Since these data form the basis of most of our research in finance, Benford’s law casts serious doubt on the reliability of our results. And it’s just one more reason for investors to beware.

H/t Tyler Cowan, Marginal Revolution.

via Studies in Everyday Life: Benford’s Law and the Decreasing Reliability of Accounting Data for US Firms.

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How a Famous ‘NYT’ Reporter Led the Media Cover-Up of Radiation Dangers | The Nation

8 Sep

But Laurence was keeping a lot to himself. Embedded with the Manhattan Project for months, he was the only reporter who knew about the fallout scare surrounding the Trinity test: scientists in jeeps chasing a radioactive cloud, Geiger counters clicking off the scale, a mule that became paralyzed. Here was the nation’s leading science reporter, severely compromised, not only unable but disinclined to reveal all he knew about the potential hazards of the most important scientific discovery of his time.

This happened half a century ago. But it surely does make you wonder: What’s The New York Times, the so-called paper of record, sitting on now?

via How a Famous ‘NYT’ Reporter Led the Media Cover-Up of Radiation Dangers | The Nation.

After Irene, Jersey City, NJ

29 Aug

Liberty Marina, on the Hudson River:

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Entrance to Liberty State Park (also on the Hudson):

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Inside an abandoned building near Liberty State Park:

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Communipaw, just South of Grand (my neighborhood):

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Communipaw Avenue is on a foot path originally laid down by the Lenni Lenape, who lived here when Henry Hudson landed in 1609. He landed on the shore of what is now Liberty State Park.

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New Exposé Tracks ALEC-Private Prison Industry Effort to Replace Unionized Workers with Prison Labor

10 Aug

Follow the link below  transcript and video.

Many of the toughest sentencing laws responsible for the explosion of the U.S. prison population were drafted by the American Legislative Exchange Council, which helps corporations write model legislation. Now a new exposé reveals ALEC has paved the way for states and corporations to replace unionized workers with prison labor. We speak with Mike Elk, contributing labor reporter at The Nation magazine. He says ALEC and private prison companies “put a mass amount of people in jail, and then they created a situation where they could exploit that.” Elk notes that in 2005 more than 14 million pounds of beef infected with rat feces processed by inmates were not recalled, in order to avoid drawing attention to how many products are made by prison labor.

via New Exposé Tracks ALEC-Private Prison Industry Effort to Replace Unionized Workers with Prison Labor.

Tainted Water Well Challenges Claim of Fracking’s Safety – NYTimes.com

4 Aug

“I still don’t understand why industry should be allowed to hide problems when public safety is at stake,” said Carla Greathouse, the author of the E.P.A. report that documents a case of drinking water contamination from fracking. “If it’s so safe, let the public review all the cases.”

via Tainted Water Well Challenges Claim of Fracking’s Safety – NYTimes.com.

The Great Hiroshima Cover-up | The Nation

4 Aug

The suppression on which the nuclear industrial complex was built?

In the weeks following the atomic attacks on Japan sixty-six years ago this week, and then for decades afterward, the United States engaged in airtight suppression of all film shot in Hiroshima and Nagasaki after the bombings. This included vivid color footage shot by U.S. military crews and black-and-white Japanese newsreel film.

via The Great Hiroshima Cover-up | The Nation.

Fatal Radiation Level Found at Fukushima Daiichi Plant – NYTimes.com

2 Aug

Let’s not forget, the Fukuskima reactors are still leaking radiation into the environment.

TOKYO — The operator of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant said Monday that it measured the highest radiation levels within the plant since it was crippled by a devastating earthquake. …

The operator, Tokyo Electric Power, said that workers on Monday afternoon had found an area near Reactors No. 1 and 2, where radiation levels exceeded their measuring device’s maximum reading of 10 sieverts per hour — a fatal dose for humans.

Next year, maybe, they’ll be able to shut it down:

The plant has continued to spew radiation since the disaster, though levels have been dropping. The operator is working to install a new makeshift cooling system by early next year that will allow it to finally shut down the plant’s three damaged reactors.

That effort includes removing thousands of tons of highly contaminated water from the reactor buildings. On Monday, Tokyo Electric also said it will begin constructing a new wall that will extend some 60 feet underground to prevent radioactive groundwater from seeping into the nearby Pacific Ocean.

via Fatal Radiation Level Found at Fukushima Daiichi Plant – NYTimes.com.

Cruel Isolation of Prisoners – NYTimes.com

2 Aug

Who’s the Tomás de Torquemada of the California prison system? Has the US Prison system passed the Inquisition in cruelty? Has it reached the gulag level?

Once used occasionally as a short-term punishment for violating prison rules, solitary confinement’s prevalent use as a long-term prison management strategy is a fairly recent development, Colin Dayan, a professor at Vanderbilt University, said in a recent Op-Ed article in The Times. Nationally, more than 20,000 inmates are confined in “supermax” facilities in horrid conditions.

via Cruel Isolation of Prisoners – NYTimes.com.

Ambitions as Deep as Their Pockets – NYTimes.com

1 Aug

If anyone thinks of the new explorers as grown-up children playing with expensive toys, ocean veterans reply that there is ample scientific justification for creating new technologies that can regularly plumb the full depth of the ocean, which covers more than 70 percent of the planet yet remains poorly explored.

via Ambitions as Deep as Their Pockets – NYTimes.com.

Radiation Mitigation – Miiu.org

28 Jul

This is about how to deal with radiation if your world gets irradiated.

In a globally connected world, the bad news is that we cannot “opt out” of radiation poisoning that comes to us via nuclear plant meltdowns or other means. So the question is not how to avoid radiation exposure but how to mitigate it. The good news is that there are some ways to mitigate radiation exposure and by learning about them and adopting some of them into our lifestyle we may find ourselves living more healthy lives even when we do have to ward off the damages of radiation. First, let’s consider the problem.

via Radiation Mitigation – Miiu.org.

While you’re there, check out the whole site. Good stuff there on resilience, localizing, and creating a whole new world “under the radar,” so to speak.

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