The Freedom Watch

Fraternity investigated over Facebook pics of drugs and underage girls

"One of the largest university fraternities in the US was under a new police investigation on Tuesday after the suspension of a Florida chapter whose students set up a Facebook page allegedly advertising drugs and featuring photographs of topless or semi-nude underage girls. The Facebook page has since been taken down, but screen grabs leaked to the Miami Herald and Miami New Times last week show posts from students seeking cocaine or selling Adderall, a popular stimulant 'study drug' that enables users to stay awake. In addition, a caption below one photograph of a topless girl claims she was 17 when the picture was taken." Continue reading →

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Alabama candidate wins by 72 votes after sorority offers voters free drinks

"An candidate for the Tuscaloosa City School Board in Alabama has appeared to defeat his opponent by just 72 votes after a sorority got behind him by offering free drinks and limo rides to the polls to encourage people to vote. In all, more than 60 percent of the people who signed up to vote during the final week were college-aged women. In an email obtained by Al.com, University of Alabama sorority members were promised 'incentives' to vote for Cason Kirby and Lee Garrison. On Tuesday, stretch SUV limousines, vans and a passenger bus were seen taking students from Sorority Row to the polling place." Continue reading →

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Why bitcoin has a firm foothold in the online gambling world

"What’s interesting in bitcoin-based gambling sites is how many of them are possibly more transparent than traditional casinos or other online sites. That’s because with the block chain being a public ledger, all that an inquisitive gambler would need to do is follow the transactions from a site’s bitcoin address. It’s no wonder, then, that sites like SatoshiDice show the latest plays being transacted on the site and claim to be 'provably trustworthy'. In addition, some sites even publish how they implement their random number generator. BitSaloon, for example, defines itself as a 'provably fair casino' meaning that the site operators cannot modify the outcome of any particular game." Continue reading →

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Do bitcoins belong in your retirement portfolio?

"For years, investment firms and professionals have advocated the need to include a small percentage of high risk and potentially high reward assets into your retirement portfolio. The thinking is that including a small percentage of your overall asset allocation (from 5% - 10%) into these assets can provide high potential returns with only a small impact on your portfolio if the risk becomes too great. Robert Powell wrote on this site recently of how defined benefit plan managers often go beyond stocks and bonds to achieve high returns by pursuing more 'nontraditional strategies'." Continue reading →

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Bill Bonner: Can paper money survive a full credit cycle?

"A super bank run by super economists? How long would it take for them to blow up the whole world's financial system? But don't worry about it. The system will blow up anyway. No paper money system has ever survived a full credit cycle. That - and not a lack of international monetary reform - is why there are so many bubbles now. When interest rates are falling - often pushed to artificially low levels...and held there for an extremely long time - credit expands and the burden of debt. That has been happening for the last 3 decades. And now, the whole economy depends on something that can't possibly continue. Debt can't grow forever." Continue reading →

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The Dead-Head Fed And “The Only Road to Riches”

"The only thing we can do is manage our risks. We can stick to undervalued stocks. We can focus on strong balance sheets, which, for businesses are a lot like foundations for buildings. They can be the difference between surviving a crisis and succumbing to it. We also aim to align ourselves with owner-operators — people who have a vested interest in survival. Now, portfolios are like pirate ships. They are made to sail the open seas in search of treasure. You don’t raise a pirate ship and crew and have them waste away in a harbor somewhere. You send them out and realize that you’ll take some damage from time to time, but that you’ll make it up with the treasures you haul in. The key is not to lose the ship." Continue reading →

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Anarchy: The Basis for a Civilized Society

"Sartwell says even if anarchism were not practical, it doesn’t follow that it has no value. This is not to put aside the question of practical application. He pointed to the works of anthropologists James Scott and David Graeber, whose work independently has shown how anarchism has worked in a variety of settings. Bowling leagues, to use an example from Sartwell’s book, are anarchist organizations. They are completely voluntary. No one is forced to join. So when you think about it, our lives are full of anarchist organizations built on voluntary foundations. Suddenly, anarchism doesn’t seem like such a radical idea. You come to appreciate that the basis of civilized society is anarchic to its core." Continue reading →

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Freedom and Servitude: Could You Have Answered This Question?

"For this man, following rules that others set made sense – it’s a safe position. But once there, he’ll never really grow again, and he will be cut off from a lifetime of discovery and satisfaction. What’s bad about servitude is that it prevents us from living. To one extent or another, we’ve all let our love of life dim and have taken ‘safe’ positions. We live in a tough world after all. The good news, however, is that we can regain what we’ve lost merely by changing our minds. To repair ourselves requires that we think about these things – to notice when we begin playing a role, to act on curiosity when we feel it, to stop defending our previous choices, to expect surprises and opportunities." Continue reading →

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Julian Assange on Google and the NSA: Who’s holding the ‘sh*t-bag’ now?

"Google started out as part of Californian graduate student culture around San Francisco’s Bay Area. But as Google grew it encountered the big bad world. It encountered barriers to its expansion in the form of complex political networks and foreign regulations, it started leaning heavily on the State Department for support, and by doing so it entered into the Washington DC system. A recently released statistic shows that Google now spends even more money than Lockheed Martin on paid lobbyists in Washington. That Google was taking NSA money in exchange for handing over people’s data comes as no surprise. When Google encountered the big bad world, Google itself got big and bad." Continue reading →

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Calvin & Hobbes Creator’s Life Lessons Become Beautiful New Comic

"As much as I'd have loved it if comic-creator Bill Watterson had kept working forever, there's something bittersweet about the fact that Calvin & Hobbes is no more. While Calvin and his pet tiger may never go on a new adventure, we can continue to learn lessons from Watterson and his creations, as evidenced by this new comic by Zen Pencils artist Gavin Aung Than. The comic below is Than's rendition of an excerpt from Bill Watterson's 1990 speech at Kenyon College (site of David Foster Wallace's famous 'This Is Water' speech, as it happens). It is just lovely. Read it, and prepare to feel emotions." Continue reading →

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