There's an interesting article in the Financial Post, written by Diane Francis. She points out that the Bernie Madoff tale is probably not just a Ponzi scheme, but more likely a money laundering scheme combined with a Ponzi scheme.

It makes a lot of sense. As she points out, he'd have to have a lot of other people involved if he truly had a large amount of funds. On the other hand, if money laundering was the prime goal, which it appears to be, then you wouldn't need that many people involved.

Her mention of a friend that was told by Madoff "You don't want to be a part of this" ties into the laundering angle. It also might explain why Madoff turned himself in. This would let investors get a tax benefit for the fraud, and it would also give Madoff and associates some protection by the government. In addition, the disappearance of some people who fed Madoff money, and the complete silence by Madoff of what actually happened, all tie into laundering and in turn the fear of reprisal by the launderers.

I wonder if the SEC will ever be investigated as to why it ignored the laundering and fraud. They might find out who paid off the SEC, or Congress or others to keep this thing quiet a few more years.

Link to article:
Madoff

Andy Frazer from www.gorillasites.com sent me link to Socyberty website page that profiled Russian photographer Sergey Mikhaylovich Prokudin-Gorsky, who in the early 1900’s was producing color photographs using black and white cameras. Fascinating story.

Andy’s comments:
“This guy was taking beautiful vibrant color photographs in Russia 100 years ago (in 1909)! And this was before the invention of color film. If you want to know how he did it… he took three identical shots of each setup, all on the b/w film, each with a different color filter (probably red, green and blue). Then he combined the images from each of the three b/w negatives onto color printing paper (there’s no explanation in the article about where he got that… but it may have already been invented somewhere else), using the appropriate color filter that was used to expose the original negative.”

The socyberty site had some nice photos and I would suggest visiting that first for photos and narrative. One of the comments there mentioned a Library of Congress exhibit so I checked that out as well. One of the pages in the LOC part was an Architectural page that had some really great photos. I put the links to all three below.

Link to Socyberty.com site:
Socyberty

Link to Library of Congress site:
Library of congress

Link to page with architectural photos:
Architecture

Here's a link to Saturday Night Live skit on the Fall 2008 bailout.
It's a windows media format video I believe, hopefully no one will have a problem seeing it.

SNL Bailout

Well, sort of a Sunday sermon today.

AZRON’s blog “Radical Discipleship”(link is below) had some interesting posts (June 23 and a day or two earlier) about men and women’s roles in and out of the church. I was going to comment on his blog but I wanted to write a bit more so thought I’d do a post here.

One of his themes was about the idea that churches domesticate men, and that men forget that Christians fight for right. While some in the radical right take this to the wrong extreme (i.e. killing George Tiller), he does have a point. In some ways, some places, there is the idea that a “good, Church going man” is one that behaves himself, is polite to others, and doesn’t fight.

From an outsider’s perspective, I would think the behavior of the church attendees would be influenced by the religion itself as well as the leaders (both local and perhaps national). Society as well has an effect. In the 80’s and 90’s, the Republicans made a huge effort to tie their party to the religious right. Social conservatism was pushed, with abortion and gay rights being two prominent rallying points. Part of this may have been resistance to the battles in the 60’s and 70’s to advance women’s rights and gay rights.

It is only recently (and long overdue) that I have seen reports in the media about churches focusing more on social, economic, and environmental justice. These are things which would naturally tie into the church, but were sometimes left at the wayside. Some of the blame may fall on male domination of religion. I notice many of the strongests and most violent protestors against abortion are men. It also seems that some groups and churches focused more on bundling up hate inside religion rather than spreading any messages of love and of helping others. The leaders of these groups seem to use the idea of war to keep their followers in line.

I don’t know if it’s due to influences of the young, or people’s realization that things aren’t working so well, or the increase of power for women, or the rise of churches that focus more on the positive. Whatever it is, it is a welcome sign. Instead of stomping on women and gays, maybe more dialog and understanding will commence. I think the idea of churches now fighting for economic and environmental justice may tie into Ron’s idea of fighting for right. I find it shameful that some of the same CEO’s who are taking home obscene amounts of money while cutting numerous jobs to fund their robbery would have no problem calling themselves “good church going men”. Ditto for the company heads that pollute the poor neighborhoods or take advantage of the workers on the bottom. And definitely ditto for the numerous politicians who cheat on their wives, vote in accordance with their donors wishes, and who step over the bodies of those without money and political power. If organized religion can fight for the good of the downtrodden, more power to them.

Anyway, the link to Ron’s blog is below. Be sure to read the comments tied in to the blogposts as well. Interesting reading.

Radical Discipleship

Interesting article in The Economist about water use and shortages, including how agriculture and diet affect water demand:

Water