Shock and surprise are often the responses I get when I tell my university peers that I studied maths at A-level. As a History student – and a female – it often doesn’t seem to compute that I chose to study a science alongside my humanities A-levels.

It certainly wasn’t due to any sort of passion for the subject: for me it was purely a tactical decision. Not only would maths be useful to me in boosting logical thinking and helping with everyday activities, it also looked more appealing to future employers.

Indeed, new statistics revealed by YouGov seem to have confirmed my decision, revealing that a third of adults want to improve their numeracy and everyday maths skills.

The survey, commissioned by National Numeracy, revealed a number of reasons why adults in the UK feel the need to improve their numeracy with 37 per cent stating that they wanted to manage their finances better.

Of the parents asked, 46 per cent indicated that their primary motive was a desire to better help their children with tasks such as homework.

Other reasons included improving activities such as cooking and DIY (26 per cent) and being able to better understand statistics in the media (25 per cent).

More...https://www.lewrockwell.com/2015/03/no_author/how-good-are-your-math-skills/

...
This was the world facing those in Central and Eastern Europe in the 1930s.  What a choice…as if anyone living there had much of a choice.

Hitler significantly consolidated power in 1933.  The Reichstag fire, election victories (thanks to the support of the German communists, on orders from Stalin), the first concentration camps, an enabling act allowing Hitler to rule by decree.  All big news throughout the western world, compared to the minor news item of the millions killed by the intentional famines and deportations occurring in the Soviet Union at the same time.

Internationally, Stalin was given a pass: “…with the help of many sympathizers abroad….”  Hitler was confronted with “voices of criticism and outrage.”  This at a time when the deaths attributable to Stalin’s policies were infinitely greater than those attributable to Hitler’s.
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More...[/email]]https://www.lewrockwell.com/2015/03/bionic-mosquito/hitler-vs-stalin/[email][/email]

Twelve years ago last week, the US launched its invasion of Iraq, an act the late General William Odom predicted would turn out to be “the greatest strategic disaster in US history.”

Before the attack I was accused of exaggerating the potential costs of the war when I warned that it could end up costing as much as $100 billion. One trillion dollars later, with not one but two “mission accomplished” moments, we are still not done intervening in Iraq.

President Obama last year ordered the US military back into Iraq for the third time. It seems the Iraq “surge” and the Sunni “Awakening,” for which General David Petraeus had been given much credit, were not as successful as was claimed at the time. From the sectarian violence unleashed by the US invasion of Iraq emerged al-Qaeda and then its more radical spin-off, ISIS. So Obama sent the US military back.

We recently gained even more evidence that the initial war was sold on lies and fabrications. The CIA finally declassified much of its 2002 National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq, which was the chief document used by the Bush Administration to justify the US attack. According to the Estimate, the US Intelligence Community concluded that:

'[W]e are unable to determine whether [biological weapons] agent research has resumed...' And: 'the information we have on Iraqi nuclear personnel does not appear consistent with a coherent effort to reconstitute a nuclear weapons program.'

But even as the US Intelligence Community had reached this conclusion, President Bush told the American people that Iraq, "possesses and produces chemical and biological weapons" and "the evidence indicates that Iraq is reconstituting its nuclear weapons program."

...

More...http://www.ronpaulinstitute.org/archives/featured-articles/2015/march/22/after-a-twelve-year-mistake-in-iraq-we-must-just-march-home/

Kudos to the Big Boss man that is doing everything under the sun to help out the Bitcoin merchant extravaganza, this can't get any better going forward.

Thank you for the commentary from the both of you but now we're going into the shitzone. If race doesn't make a joke for the dominatrix's then we all lose. The liberals have this position on their side as they run this line of thought.

Agreed, Mr. BC. I think we're on the same page and even more going forward. Good grief, the shows I watch on tv are close to what you're purveying. Good times ahead ma friend.

That was the most Boss statement I've seen in recent times. Kookies to you and a pack of cigarettes plus a shot of rum.

My guess is that the people you're talking about are Asians sending money back home if, in fact, that's their motive. I've only been to Toronto once and that was to see the Phantom of the Opera back in '94 when I was a dumpling. Anything else we need to know?

We just need to expose the concept that shysters can end up on homie lane and then the rest of these so-called white collar criminals can make their choices base upon potentially having to live on that block or choosing the right rode ahead and making right among their trusted customers. I think the latter will be the value judgement that will thrive and keep the rest thinking along those lines.

I hope the prosecution has all their ducks in a row as this miscreant doesn't deserve to spend any more time in public until he can make enough license plates or whatever to make his victims' whole. I'm all for restitution but sometimes these deviants need to be around the darker people involved in criminality. And yes, I realize that those that get exposed to the real evils turn out worse. But this butterburger needs to live amongst the scariest and worry day and night about his well being.

These guys wanted tha coinage for a reason but failed in thinking they could get away with is when their peers were catching on. Totally idk what at this point, they couldn't have thought this would turn out alright..

On the morning of March 18, Eric Garris, founder and webmaster of the site, received a form email from Google AdSense informing him that all of Antiwar.com’s Google ads had been disabled. The reason given was that one of the site’s pages with ads on it displayed images that violated AdSense’s policy against “violent or disturbing content, including sites with gory text or images.”

Of course the images in question were not “snuff,” or anything intended for titillation whatsoever. They were the famous images of detainee abuse at the Abu Ghraib US military prison in Iraq. Those images are important public information, especially for Americans. They are the previously secret documentation of horrific state violence inflicted in our name and funded by our tax dollars.

They are also eminently newsworthy because they show the government wantonly generating insecurity for the American public. Such abuse fuels anti-American and anti-western rage that can culminate in acts of terrorism. For example, it did just that in the case of Chérif Kouachi, who took part in one of the Paris terror attacks of early this year after becoming radicalized by learning about the Abu Ghraib abuses.

Indeed many apologists for such abuse fully acknowledge this blowback effect, since they expressly cite it as the main reason for blocking the release of abuse photos. Of course they ignore the fact that this danger they acknowledge is an excellent reason not to commit such abuses in the first place. And they are naïve if they really think word wouldn’t get out about such abuses among Iraqis and Muslims in general even without the photos. The dissemination of such photos chiefly serves to ultimately make terrorist attacks less likely by driving a disgusted American public to demand an end to such terrorism-inducing abuses.

More...https://medium.com/@DanSanchezV/don-t-see-evil-148ae18bc9fe

Feds Charged With Stealing Money During Silk Road Investigation

Two former federal agents who investigated the Silk Road, the infamous online drug marketplace seized by the FBI in 2013, have been charged for their own outrageous digital crimes, including stealing money they acquired on their druggie undercover assignment.

Former DEA officer Carl Mark Force IV (what kind of name is that? sounds like his parents were celebrities) and former Secret Service agent Shaun Bridges, both part of a Baltimore-based task force devoted to taking down the Silk Road, are accused of wire fraud and money laundering. Force is also accused of theft of government property.

Force was actually the lead agent tasked with establishing communication with the Dread Pirate Roberts, but the complaint against him alleges that he did a lot more than that, according to a Justice Department memo stating he "developed additional online personas and engaged in a broad range of illegal activities." The complaint says he stole from the government and third parties.

Possibly the most messed up charge against Force involves the undercover officer secretly screwing with the investigation to make money. The complaint says Force tried to extort Dread Pirate Roberts by saying he'd give the government information unless DPR paid $250,000. The complaint also says that Force created a persona called "French Maid" and convinced DPR to pay "French Maid" $100,000 for information on the government's investigation.

Meanwhile, Bridges used his knowledge of Mt. Gox, the Bitcoin exchange he was also investigating, to divert $820,000 of the money he used undercover into secret personal accounts on the now-defunct exchange. Bridges self-surrendered today.

So during the investigation that led to the arrest and controversial trial of Ross Ulbricht, who was convicted on drug kingpin charges for running the site, federal agents were siphoning off Bitcoin they obtained while sneaking around the drug site undercover. Maybe they didn't realize that Bitcoin isn't really anonymous?

This looks like VERY good news for Ulbricht, since it makes the Silk Road investigation look enormously sketchy. Two officers full-on breaking bad on the job isn't exactly a stellar sign that the case was conducted above-board. And government agency sketchiness is exactly why Ulbricht's defense lawyer Robert Dratchel filed for a retrial: Dratchel said the government didn't provide exculpatory evidence in time, and that it conducted warrantless surveillance.

Dratchel's accusations remain unproven, but now it's clear there was some fraudulent behavior going down on the government's side.

More...http://gizmodo.com/feds-charged-with-stealing-money-during-silk-road-inves-1694535493

The Shortening Leash
Six thousand respondents to the Slate survey and the trend is clear: Kids today have a lot less freedom than their parents did.
What were you allowed to do when you were a kid? In July, South Carolina mother Debra Harrell was arrested for allowing her 9-year-old daughter to play in the park unattended while she was at work. Harrell’s arrest prompted outrage, but also an outpouring of nostalgia, as indignant readers remembered activities they routinely did as children that are considered near criminal today. So we asked Slate readers to answer a survey about what they were allowed to do as kids, and also what they let their own children do today. About 6,000 of you answered, and the results give a fairly clear picture, over several decades, of a shortening leash for American children.

More//...http://www.slate.com/articles/life/family/2014/08/slate_childhood_survey_results_kids_today_have_a_lot_less_freedom_than_their.html?wpsrc=sp_all_article_storypromo

Chemical Weapons in Iraq
Laurence M. Vance

During and immediately after the first Gulf War, more than 200,000 of 700,000 U.S. troops sent to Iraq and Kuwait in January 1991 were exposed to nerve gas and other chemical agents. Though aware of this, the Department of Defense and CIA launched a campaign of lies and concocted a cover-up that continues today.

A quarter of a century later, the troops nearest the explosions are dying of brain cancer at two to three times the rate of those who were farther away. Others have lung cancer or debilitating chronic diseases, and pain.

More complications lie ahead.

According to Dr. Linda Chao, a neurologist at the University of California Medical School in San Francisco, “Because part of their brains, the hippocampus, has shrunk, they’re at greater risk for Alzheimer’s and other degenerative diseases.”

At first, the DOD was adamant: No troops were exposed.

“No information…indicates that chemical or biological weapons were used in the Persian Gulf,” wrote Secretary of Defense William Perry and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs John Shalikashvili in a 1994 memo to 20,000 Desert Storm veterans. Strictly speaking, they were right: No weapons were used. The nerve agent sarin was in the fallout from the U.S. bombing or detonating of Iraq’s weapons sites.

Perry and Shalikashvili knew.

As Alan Friedman wrote in The Spider Web: The Secret History of How the White House Illegally Armed Iraq, the Reagan and Bush administrations, which backed Iraq in its 1980-1988 war with Iran, approved of U.S. companies selling chemical agents and equipment to Iraq, including “a huge petrochemicals complex called PC2. Western intelligence also knew that PC2 was capable of generating chemical compounds to make mustard and nerve gas.”

Donald Riegle, a Democratic U.S. Senator from Michigan, held hearings about the veterans illnesses in 1993 and 1994. He told me the decision by Reagan and Bush “to secretly help Saddam Hussein build his biological and chemical weapons was a monstrous strategic error that eventually led to the tragedy of Gulf War Syndrome, which killed and disabled so many unprotected American troops.”

...

http://www.newsweek.com/how-us-nerve-gassed-its-own-troops-then-covered-it-317250

A Republican lawmaker is raising eyebrows after proposing church attendance should be made mandatory.
Arizona State Sen. Sylvia Allen made the comments during a committee meeting with lawmakers. The meeting was concerning a gun bill and concealed weapons permits, as reported by KPHO.

“I believe what’s happening to our country is that there’s a moral erosion of the soul of America,” Allen said.
Allen said more people may feel the need to carry weapons if a “moral rebirth” doesn’t occur in America.

“It’s the soul that is corrupt. How we get back to a moral rebirth I don’t know. Since we are slowly eroding religion at every opportunity that we have. Probably we should be debating a bill requiring every American to attend a church of their choice on Sunday to see if we can get back to having a moral rebirth,” she told the committee, as reported by KPHO.

More...http://lasvegas.cbslocal.com/2015/03/27/arizona-lawmaker-church-attendance-should-be-mandatory/

Rand Paul: Democrats Taking African-American Vote ‘For Granted’

In a video clip you won’t see anywhere else, Sen. Rand Paul tells a group of pastors that the Democrat Party is taking African-American voters for granted.

“There’s an eagerness for someone to meet with them,” Paul, R-Ky., said. “The Democrats have completely taken this whole body of voters for granted.”

When talking about a recent trip to the scene of riots in Ferguson, Mo., Paul says many African-Americans told him how, “They hadn’t seen their Democrat congressman in six years.”

And Paul has a message for the GOP regarding how to get people off welfare.

“If we’re the party that doesn’t want everyone to be on welfare forever, let’s be the party that lets you expunge your records so you can get a job again,” Paul said. “It’s hard to get a job if you have a criminal record but many of these are youthful offense, that it wasn’t a violent crime committed. We can reintegrate these people back in.”

http://dailysignal.com/2015/03/30/rand-paul-democrats-taking-african-american-vote-for-granted/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=tdsfacebook

Historically, the GOP has been the abolitionist party and the democrats have been the party of the slave owners, tho granted those were different times. But for all intents and purposes, these points are relevant now to flip the script on the dem ignorers/users of the black population by and large. Only Rand is seeking to and making an effort at making the downtrodden's lives easier and more hopeful. If you don't know how much effort he's exerted to helping inner city folks, then do your homework.

Yeah, it's the standard post-announcement bump that all of them will get but this one will pale in comparison to Rand's next week especially if we all do our respective parts, whether donating, online postings in support, checking media bias in comment sections and whatever other respectable things one can think of. If you're from outside the country and think this is something that will affect your life and those around you, consider defending Rand in comment sections in different media outlets but just post positives in support and leave the "next of kin" candidates alone as the viewers and/or supporters of them will eventually flock to Rand as the long haul goes on vs. Bush/Rubio. We want Rand to be the immediate 2nd choice of the Walker, Cruz, any other perceived conservative that republican party base voters would consider. This is why lower unfavorables are so important.

CBS Poll: Rand moving up as a voting possibility among GOP voters


Just wait til Rand gets his announcement bump next week. We all need to "rally round the family" and never let down, folks. Bitcoin=Liberty=Thriving=Rand Paul. Time to get serious my legions! All the details of the poll...http://www.cbsnews.com/news/poll-who-would-americans-consider-voting-for-in-2016/

Franklin Pierce-Herald poll: Bush, Walker, and Paul lead NH

Bush/Walker - 15%
Paul - 13%
Christie - 10%
Cruz - 9%

Favorable/Unfavorable
Bush: 53/37
Walker: 48/16
Paul: 57/24
Christie: 43/46
Cruz: 55/22

The survey is based on a probabilistic sample 429 likely Republican presidential primary voters in New Hampshire. Interviews were conducted by landline and cellular telephone, March 22-25, 2015. The sampling margin of error is +/- 4.7 percent.

http://www.bostonherald.com/sites/default/files/blog_posts/Franklin_Pierce_Herald_GOP_Poll.pdf