Biscuit crumbs

[§ê¢rꆧ]

Beware people who refer to themselves in the 3rd person.

The only people I’ve heard of referring to themselves in the 3rd person are politicians. It’s an interesting habit.

1. If you’re not a politician and you do this, you will certainly be labelled pompus.

2. It probably indicates that you are more prone to be… manipulative? We see people with shifty eyes as dangerous and sneaky. We’re basicly programmed inherently to detect shifty eyes as someone who’s dangerous. Why? Because usually a person with shifty eyes doesn’t want you to notice that he’s looking at something, giving the clue to your subconscious that he’s trying to manipulate you, whether he knows it or not, by denying you the information that would otherwise be available that he was looking at something.

3. A person that refers to himself in the third person is thiking of how you perceive him. He’s looking at himself, while you’re looking at him, so that he can modify how he appears to you to get the best result he wants from you. A person that is so self absorbed and focused on himself that he actually sees the “him” he’s created as separate from himself so much to cease using the word “I”, is too busy trying to invent himself to “BE” himself. Hence, people that refer to themselves in the 3rd person (and aren’t mentally ill or challanged), should earn some of the same caution that people with shifty eyes earn. It’s abnormal behavior, and probably a lucky view into the mind of someone who got where they are by being quite manipulative.

To quote Richard Nixon who refer’s to himself here in the 3rd person: “You won’t have Nixon to kick around anymore, because, gentlemen, this is my last press conference.” After he lost his run for govenor, and before he was elected president. Something to think about.

[Allegro]

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The average listener isn’t the least worried that musicologists and scientists cannot explain why we enjoy music. What matters is that its true bounties are recognized, and then explored and analysed. That applies not only to noise-like music, but also to nature. In that spirit, we can celebrate the fact that seismologists have begun to recognize and unpick the value of the ambient hum of the planet (see page 146). And we can enjoy the positive benefits that noise seems to have on living cells (see page 150).

Above all, what matters is that analysis strengthens rather than weakens humankind’s sense of wonder — even as the natural terrain of exploration gets messier and as great composers make understanding music even more challenging.

Refer. Bolding is mine in the above excerpt.

[Luther Blissett]

I see that I'm misremembering this thread, as it's populated more by facts and statistics than by rumor. Regardless, here we go:

Last week, I was having a conversation with friends, and a typically very skeptical one of us told a story about a friend of his who works for a high-stakes company. which send prospective clients to an offshore tropical getaway, where they are seduced with rounds of golf, fine food, casual drugs, and a rotating host (in 10-hour shifts) of teenage prostitutes. During these orgies, there are tables with piles of condoms, male virility drugs, and gum (?) available for the convenience of the participants.
At the close of the trip, the participants are casually informed that the entirety of the parties have been recorded and that they look forward to working together in the future.

As much as I have a cognitive bias to buy into this, I was skeptical in the absence of any real details, especially considering not everyone can be interested in having sex with 17-year olds while on drugs. Someone would have to squeal. However, you can trust that I will probably always keep my ears open from now on for a story that combines elements of Libertarian Floating Islands, Berlusconi, and contemporary military-industrial complex mob-"business" practices. Does anyone know if the whistle's already been blown? Nothing comes to mind, and it should.

[Project Willow]

Perhaps we should start a new thread to consolidate these sorts of unverifiable anecdotes?

Here's something somewhat related that I found in the news today:

Allegations Link U.S. Companies to Brazilian Sex Tourism
By BARRY MEIER
Published: July 8, 2011

The Justice Department has been conducting a criminal investigation of sports fishing expeditions in the Amazon that may have been used as covers for Americans to have sex with underage girls, according to newly filed court papers.

The investigation and two related actions — a parallel criminal inquiry in Brazil and an unusual lawsuit filed in federal court in Georgia — could provide a rare look at the business operations of the multibillion-dollar international sex tour industry, which has increasingly focused on Brazil.

“Brazil is taking over from Thailand as a premier sex tourism vacation” spot, said Kristen Berg, an official of Equality Now, an advocacy organization in New York that helped bring the lawsuit in Georgia.

That lawsuit was filed last month on behalf of four Brazilian women who claim that they were coerced as minors to serve as prostitutes for Americans on Amazon fishing expeditions operated by an Atlanta-area businessman. One of the women said that she was 12 years old at the time.

Ms. Berg said the lawsuit was the first time that a federal law, the Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act of 2000, had been used to seek damages from someone accused of operating sex tours.

On Thursday, the defendant in that case, Richard W. Schair, filed a motion asking that the lawsuit be stayed. The motion cited continuing criminal investigations in the United States and Brazil.

In a brief telephone interview, Mr. Schair, who operates an Atlanta-area real estate business, said that allegations that he was involved in child sex tours were untrue. He declined to discuss specifics of the inquiries.

“The allegations are false,” he said. “The facts will prove that.”

Solomon L. Wisenberg, a lawyer in Washington who represents Mr. Schair in connection with the federal criminal investigation, said he was confident that his client would not face charges. The status of the investigation is unclear, as Justice Department officials declined to comment.

Ms. Berg, of Equality Now, said that the group helped bring the Georgia lawsuit because it was looking for precedent-setting cases involving child sex tourism overseas.

She said that she and lawyers from a major firm, King & Spalding, which is working on the case pro bono, traveled to Brazil to interview prospective witnesses, including young women.

Both the lawsuit and the federal criminal investigation are apparently fallout from a separate lawsuit filed in 2007 by Mr. Schair against another operator of Amazon fishing tours, Philip A. Marsteller.

In that action, Mr. Schair charged that Mr. Marsteller had slandered him by telling people that he supplied clients on his fishing tours with prostitutes and drugs. Mr. Marsteller stood by his comments and, as part of his defense, sought statements from young women in Brazil as well as employees of Mr. Schair’s company, called Wet-A-Line Tours. The company is no longer operating.

In 2008, the two men settled the case, with Mr. Schair paying token compensation to Mr. Marsteller, said Kevin Buchanan, a lawyer in Dallas who represented Mr. Marsteller. Mr. Buchanan said that information that came up during the lawsuit led federal officials to begin an investigation of American business connections to child sex tourism in Brazil.

Several news reports in recent years have indicated that Mr. Schair was the subject of criminal investigations both here and in Brazil. But the filing Thursday in conjunction with the Georgia lawsuit was the first time the investigations were publicly acknowledged.

According to the court papers filed by Mr. Schair, federal prosecutors in Miami sent a grand jury subpoena to his company in 2009 asking for, among other things, customer lists. Another document shows that prosecutors notified his ex-wife in December that investigators had obtained information indicating that she was “involved with a company and/or an individual who may have engaged in child sex tourism in Brazil.”

Asked about the documents, a spokeswoman for the Justice Department in Miami, where the inquiry is based, declined, as a matter of policy, to confirm or deny the existence of an investigation.

Translations of Brazilian documents, attached by Mr. Schair to his filing, show that he is charged in a proceeding there with the sexual exploitation of minors. He has denied the accusation.

Mr. Schair made the filing on Thursday on his own behalf.

According to the lawsuit filed last month, Mr. Schair or his employees or customers recruited young girls at a social club along the Amazon to join them on a fishing boat, where the girls were coerced into sex acts and paid.

The Amazon River in Brazil is a particularly attractive area for fishing enthusiasts because it is a home to a hard-fighting species called the peacock bass.

[stefano]

Luther I'm sure that kind of thing happens. Probably not to first-time clients, or prospects, but to guys who've been scoped out a bit and have to be taken to a new level of connivance. Although I'm sure it can backfire, ha I was in London once with two Moroccan bankers, both quite religious, they didn't even drink. And the Englishman who was trying to close the deal took us all to a horrible seedy Russian-run escort bar where the drinks (even Coca-Cola) cost something stupid. Very bad move, I had to whisper to him that a quiet drink in the hotel bar would be a better idea.

A friend of mine told me how a Chinese company took him out to dinner and then to a massage parlour, where there was a girl waiting for him. He refused, so they sent away the girl and called for a new one. He didn't want to cause a scene so he went into the room with the girl, then told her he wasn't in the mood and spent 45 minutes on the internet on his phone before taking a shower and joining the others in the bar. I guess it's not impossible that there was a camera in the room.

Possibly related:

The Munich Re Prostitute Party Was So Fun, No One Even Remembers What Happened

Munich Re had to fire executives who were responsible for hosting a company-sponsored sex party.

Now, photos and details of the party are public in the German Handelsblatt paper.

A unit of the Dusseldorf, Germany-based insurance company invited 100 of its top performers to enjoy 20 pre-paid prostitutes at a party in Budapest, Hungary in 2007.

And more classic but still current, spies/dips being caught in kompromat:

An American diplomat in Moscow is embroiled in a sex scandal after footage apparently showing him with a prostitute was released on the internet. The married envoy, a second secretary, was named as Kyle Hatcher by two Russian newspapers which reported unconfirmed claims that he was a CIA undercover agent.

A British diplomat in Russia, James Hudson, has quit after being filmed having sex with two blonde prostitutes.

[crikkett]

and gum (?) available for the convenience of the participants.

to cleanse the palate, I guess, like pickled ginger

(eeewwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww~!)

[Allegro]

Herschel has found the first robust evidence of molecular oxygen in the Orion Nebula. The observed abundance is ten times larger than indicated by previous observations of other molecular clouds, but is still well below theoretical expectations. The results suggest that, in special circumstances, the heat from newborn stars can liberate oxygen frozen out on dust grains, thus increasing the amount of molecular oxygen able to form in warm, dense gas clouds. ESA|01AUG11

[dbcooper41]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/07/20/wall-street-prostitution-busted_n_904949.html

anyone think these folks had a few cameras rolling? elliot spitzer might have an opinion, though i still think he was a willing participant in his "downfall".
isn't the "honey trap" a very old, well practiced trick?

Seventeen Charged With Running Prostitution Ring Catering To Wall

NEW YORK (Bernd Debusmann Jr.) - Seventeen people were indicted on Wednesday on charges of running a high-end prostitution ring that catered to Wall Street clients who often spent more than $10,000 in a night, authorities said.
The ring pulled in more than $7 million over three years, Brooklyn District
Attorney Charles Hynes said at a news conference.
"The business of high-end prostitution is enormously profitable," Hynes said.
The prostitution service, named High Class NY, was run 24 hours a day out of an office in Brooklyn and charged from $400 to $3,600 an hour for its services,
according to the 144-count indictment. It also provided customers with cocaine and other narcotics, the indictment said.
Hynes said clients often spent in excess of $10,000 in a single night.
They were "all high-end customers coming from the financial markets. People with nothing but money," he said.
Police said the business was extremely sophisticated, running several escort
websites and using dummy corporations with misleading names and codes during business-related phone calls.
High Class NY even had a law firm draw up employment contracts for its
prostitutes, who described themselves as models and fraudulently agreed to
refrain from sexual contact with clients, police said.
"They were on the high-end of sophistication," said Vice Detective Joe Panico.
Among those indicted were High Class NY owner Mikhail Yampolsky and his wife
Bronislava, who allegedly used the proceeds from their business to finance
expensive trips to Atlantic City and luxury car purchases, Hynes said.
Also indicted were Yampolsky's son Alexander, step-son Jonathan, 11 managers and supervisors and two investors, Efim Gorelik and Yakov Maystrovich, he said.
Each of the investors had put $700,000 into High Class NY and were being paid
back with interest, he said.
Each of those indicted faces the possibility of 25 years in prison if convicted.
Two prostitutes face separate indictments on prostitution and drug charges.
(Editing by Ellen Wulfhorst and Tim Gaynor)
Copyright 2011 Thomson Reuters.

[Allegro]

It’s no surprise that the hard-driving former White House chief of staff has big plans for his home town. And given [Rahm] Emanuel’s dance background — at his mother’s prompting, he trained in ballet and modern dance as a child and at 17 won a scholarship to dance with the Joffrey Ballet — it’s not surprising that he champions the art form. But his announcement that he wants to turn Chicago into an “international destination for dance,” as he told the Chicago Tribune — well, that’s not your standard mayoral initiative. Lifestyle|WashPost

[Luther Blissett]

Another friend recently came to me asking for my opinion (does this happen to everyone else here? anything mildly conspiratorial or mysterious that comes up, my friends reach out to me first to analyze. I feel so honored…) about a friend who is working on a Thai mystery thriller - this person used to work at a hospital in Bangkok, where they would see a disproportionate amount of wealthy Saudis. They discussed black market organ trafficking - my opinion is that it's probably a much more benign form of medical tourism. But hey, you never know.

[brainpanhandler]

On a lighter note:

13 year old researcher finds tree inspired solar collection more efficient

(PhysOrg.com) -- Aidan Dwyer, a 13 year old Junior High School student from New York state, noticed that the phyllotaxy of the leaves on trees he was observing while hiking through the Catskill Mountains, did so in the form of a Fibonacci sequence. Wondering if there was a reason for it, he deduced that it might be because such an arrangement provides the most efficient means of solar power collection for the trees. To find out if this was the case, he built a small solar tree from PVC pipe and small solar panels, then built another in a normal flat panel array, attached voltage readers to both, and lo and behold, discovered the tree model array was indeed more efficient, at least during times of low or indirect sunlight. Dwyer won a Young Naturist Award for his efforts after writing and submitting his essay, The Secret of the Fibonacci Sequence in Trees.

...

After analyzing his data, he found that the tree design appeared to be far more efficient than the traditional flat-panel structure during so-called off peak times, such as when the sun was low, and that the model appeared to be close to 50% more efficient overall during the winter. Not bad for someone who’s still a kid.

http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-08-yea ... cient.html

[Allegro]

NOW, THEREFORE, I, Rick Snyder, Governor of Michigan, do hereby proclaim Sunday, October 9 through Saturday, October 15, 2011 as Michigan Christian Heritage Week. [REFER.]

[Allegro]

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Human population on Earth may reach 7 billion shortly. This world clock shows the population exceeds 6.869 billion, at the moment.

[Allegro]

… Often called “the American BBC”, this non-profit [Public Broadcasting System] is now launching in the UK, bringing its unique brand of television to British viewers for the first time. … The network is being carefully curated by a British team to ensure that UK viewers enjoy a wide range of programmes under its six pillars of broadcasting: News, American Experience and History, Arts and Culture, Nova and Science, Entertainment and Kids and Frontline and Current Affairs. The focus is on “non-fiction” shows. [REFER.]

Satire , anyone?

[stefano]

Dogs have been trained using a food-reward system to identify cancers by smelling patients' breath. They had a 99% sensitivity and 99% specificity with lung cancer, and 88% accuracy and 98% specificity with breast cancer.