Mass Graduation Blocked - Best of the Web

Tornadoes in Massachusetts
The tornadoes that hit southern Massachusetts were actually very terrible! The damage to Springfield and surrounding towns is scary to see. We are not used to seeing something like this up here at all. Power of nature is no joke.

Mass Graduation Blocked
I do this every year but I forget the MIT and Harvard graduations are this week! The traffic is a nightmare and today it was just get out stupid. 90 minutes to go 9 miles to get out of Cambridge!!!!! Another 60 minutes to get home. I am not amused or happy. I usually have a post in mind for the blog, but I lost my train of thought in aggravation. Sorry. The best and brightest, ultra exclusive 10,000 or so graduates makes me laugh. Those schools are money machines. I will just rip off the best stuff I saw today so you have some good stuff to read.

Friday night is on tomorrow! I have the day off to start prep work on the deck and get supplies. After this weekend, it is fishing time!

Best of the Web
The best stuff I saw today across finance and other things.

China
I don't follow China anywhere near as much as I should. It is such an important part of the global story in so many way I am embarrassed to admit that. Luckily, Trader Mark has been watching for a long time, so grab a recent look:
China Now Beginning to Feel Hangover from Lending Boom - Government May Assume Some Local Debt
Snippet:

Just as in the U.S., China has been applauded (as Greenspan once was, and Bernanke has been the past few years) for somehow bending the shape of the economic cycle. Of course the actions of all these folk, just create mis-allocations of capital as too much money chases too few assets. This has happened in the U.S. as well as the 'real economy' does not need all the liquidity the Fed has pushed into the system - already the price is being paid by the lower and middle class via commodity inflation, but there will be many other bad outcomes down the road (i.e. "stupid deals" are once more being made in credit markets - as if we are right back to 2006/2007)

Now go read the rest.

Railroad Theft?
From Business Insider:
Gigantic Chunk Of Railroad Track Stolen In Massachusetts -- Workers Have Never Seen Anything Like It
Short take:

Two 8-foot sections of solid steel track weighing 900 lbs each were stolen sometime before Wednesday afternoon. And according to the Gazette, evidence suggests that the thieves were cutting away another portion when they decided to flee. Police are now investigating the crime.

After years working on the railroad with my Father, I can tell you no matter what steel prices are, scrap steel is a waste of effort due to the sheer size needed. Now if you had a side job lined up to fix rails at another site, and could steal the needed length and then charge big bucks for the "materials", now you got something! I would investigate side job operators in the region cops! Not that me and my dad EVER did anything like that!

Computer Savvy
My man and fellow 12631 member gappingandyapping has started his very own site, Parabolic Market. After reading a couple of weeks I am so paranoid about security on the computer I just want to shut it off! Just kidding, gapping covers so many easy to do things to protect yourself, how to get free stuff, and yes, how a trader can set up 8 screens to watch! Wowza!:
Because one monitor is never enough for traders!
Small part:

In order to have multiple monitors you need multiple video cards. I like to use dual head video cards combined with USB video adapters. I do this for a number of reasons but mainly because of the heat generated by internal cards and the lack of PCI-E and X slots in my trading rig. Right now I am running the HP dc7900 system for my trading box at work. Inside I have two (2) nVidia Quadro FX380 dual head video cards. These cards work fine for me and are decently cheap. I don’t use this rig for gaming so I could give a shit if they are not Killer FPS cards. They do what I need them to do.

I think that was english....
Gapping is helping me with my never ending connection issues as well, so stop on by and take a look.

Twitter Stream and Trading
Ok, I am getting a Droid smartphone this month (don't everyone gasp!) so that I can more readily trade my epic winning stock picks. I was thinking about starting a EconomicDisconnect Twitter stream as well! I know, it's scary. Anyways, Young Guns Trading writer TA_TRADER has a few questions about traders and the Twitter streams they have that are worth a look:
Trust and Twitter
Let's see them:

Think about your twitter stream:
…the guy that posts chart after chart relentlessly
…the guys that will admit he took a loss, but claims it was a “small loss”
…the guy that retweets every compliment he is given
…the guy who tweets all the textbook rules for trading (they MUST work, right?!)
…the brownnoser
What is everyone’s motive? Why do you give give give so much to the community? Maybe you want more followers. Maybe you want more subscribers. Maybe it’s pride. How come some people are on twitter all hours of the day, while others tweet occasionally? What do you want your virtual “friends” to think of you?

Good questions I would have to answer before I join Twitter.

Quantum Computing - Hoax or Breakthrough?
Fascinating stuff on D-Wave Systems and whether they are full of shit, or paving the way:
The World’s First Quantum Computer Finds A Buyer, But Questions About Its Abilities Remain
Short take:

What’s the News: Quantum computing is so complex an idea that even experts have a hard time telling whether a computer is actually “quantum.” But D-Wave Systems, a startup that’s made news and drawn skepticism over the last four years for claiming to have developed a quantum computer, has just made their first sale, to the defense contractor Lockheed Martin. And recent research shows that despite the suspicions D-Wave has endured, there may be at least something to their claim.

Plenty more at the link. I still like the gold-viral fragment computer idea so much better!

Added:
If you do not read this post by my friend chessNwine, you are not cool and not my friend:
The Legend of Dickledoo
Plenty to learn there.

Have a good night.

Friday Nor'easter of Fun

I had a relaxing and slow day off. The heat has still been harsh, but the incoming Nor'easter/Hurricane Earl should bring in some cooler weather. I am pretty far inland and north of Boston so the local forecast is for rain and sustained winds but nothing too crazy.

Let's Keep it Light
The end of the week brought a balls out awesome jobs report where only 50k or so jobs were lost. With employment growth like this we should arrive safely at full employment in 65 years or so as long as nobody has a baby. Not too shabby!

Two best items for this Friday:
-The Automatic Earth pens today's missive and notes:

Here's thinking we won't understand this one, as a society, until we're sitting among its smouldering ruins. Sure, it's the fault of the leaders, the politicians, the economists. But who put them where they are? It's you, it's us, we are as addicted as they are to the perpetual growth paradigm. They talk nonsense, and we hear what we like to hear and swallow it hook line and tinkerbell. It's in our amoeba brains, and we can't fight it, since we are the amoeba brain. "I don't care if you make sense, as long as you make me feel good." Don't blame yourself, blame the amoeba inside of you. You know better.

My sentiments exactly.

-Mish delivers the knockout blow to the notion that the world is on fire with success with the following:

One year ago the official unemployment rate was 9.7%. Today it is 9.6%.

One year ago U-6 unemployment was 16.8%. Today U-6 is 16.7%

For all the trillions of dollars in stimulus and additional trillions of dollars in bank bailouts and trillions of dollars of expansion of the Fed's balance sheet, this is all we have to show for it.

Lowers the BOOM! How's that Keynesian spending working for ya?

Friday Nor'easter of Fun
It is Friday night and in the immortal words of Danny Zuko:
You know how it is, rockin' and rollin' and what not.

First a "Legally Blonde" clip and now "Grease"? Has Economic Disconnect lost his mind!?

Microbial Diversity
I had written a little last night about microbial diversity. Seems a few people are actually interested in this stuff! For some color I can recommend:
High Bacterial Diversity in Permanently Cold Marine Sediments
Discusses some techniques for estimating bacterial diversity in a sample. The good thing about microbiology is that the papers are not hard to follow. Skip to discussion section for the summary.

I had mentioned how hard it is to actually grow these kinds of bugs in the lab. At my last job we worked around that by first isolating the DNA from soil by a process of harvesting. This is a basic methodology but I had worked out a better one with better yields and much larger DNA recovery size (greater than 300 kilobases):
Methods for microbial DNA extraction from soil for PCR amplification

Now how you get around not being able to grow the bugs is you clone their DNA into special vectors that are able to highly express DNA based on powerful promoters like T7, or some neat viral promoters. If you are lucky what happens is the basic bacteria you use in the lab will be able to express the genes and make products that have a testable activity. Say you are looking for anti-bacterial activity, you can plate out a bunch of these bacteria that with unknown DNA in them and test if they have any ability to kill other bacteria. Another way is to grow cultures of the bacteria, isolate the things they made by chemical means, and test them using a disc diffusion assay. If you are lucky you get a "hit" that looks like this:

The sample shows antibacterial activity by killing of a zone of the plated bacteria. Cool huh?

But Economic Disconnect, how does the bacteria make anti-bacterial products and not kill itself first? Great question! Usually a product that has this kind of function will be found on a large pathway of genes (Maybe up to 25 genes) that are needed to form the molecule. On that pathway will be a resistance gene that confers to the bacteria the ability to stay alive in it's own product. Otherwise they would just kill themselves too. Nature is amazing yes? Sorry, this ran a little long but I thought it may be interesting. Or not.

Random Items
As if I have not already lost you, here are some things I saw today out on the web:
-The Bubble Nebula is wild looking!:


-The Witches of Dathomir and especially The Nightsisters

-At the US Open? Really?

-It was not bad enough this guy probably broke 3 ribs with this stunt, but he also ruined any chance he may have had of scoring one of the chicks drinking on the dock. Epic FAIL!

Clippage
A few things worth a look.

Reader Watchtower pointed the way to maybe the creepiest clip for a game I have ever seen. If you want to be disturbed by dark imagery, I can recommend "Fallout: Las Vegas":

That was chilling.

My friend Tom of the North pointed me to Sunsha Jung playing the U2 classic "With or Without You" and now I am really a loser that my Dad quit teaching me guitar because I just could not get it:

DANG! BFD Sunsha! Just show off why don't you, already then, nice.

One of my favorite boxing memories was when George Foreman knocked out Michael Moorer in the 10th round (skip to 1:00 minute mark) to become the oldest heavyweight champion ever!:

I remember announcer Jim Lampley screaming "It Happened! It Happened!" and it was a great time.

Rock Blogging
Tunes to give a listen to. To all of you, from all of me.

Reader C-T, who has a crush on the lead singer of Everclear I imagine, requested "Santa Monica":

I know that one!

It the best when I hear a song I have never heard before and it rocks! All the way by request from Michigan, try out a bad ass Lucinda Williams and "Joy":

Live music is the way to go.

I just saw the movie this song was featured in today for the 100th time! Try out "Win" by Mark Safan:

I love YouTube! Great tune.

Cowboys fan Gawains must be a little nervous with the regular season at hand and the Dallas crew looking shaky. Fear not, I think they are going to do very well after a slow start. It is how you end after all! As a lift up I offer Fleetwood Mac and "The Chain":

Nice pick!

BTW, I will have a full NFL Week 1 preview post next weekend! Almost time!

Ok, you may have guessed that I love 1980's metal and hair band rock. My second favorite era? 1950's classic rock! I know, I make no sense. Do not try and figure me out, it cannot be done!

I want you to turn this one WAY UP and try and tell me after you were not moving and getting happy:

Not much better than Dion and The Belmonts and "Run Away Sue"!

Two left on deck. Which way will it go?

For a blend of 80's and 50's try out a newer version of Buddy Holly's "Crying, Waiting, Hoping" by Marshall Crenshaw:

And I beat the 1 year rule! Looking at the comments on that post I see Watchtower has been with me a LONG time! Also this was before friend LT G even joined the armed forces! It is fun to look at old posts! Thanks Watchtower for staying with me!

Last Call! You have to call it. I can't call it for you. It wouldn't be right. It wouldn't be fair!

Ok, I cannot find by search the last time I played this so I have to hope is was more than a year ago. I wanted to close the show with this one anyway!

Go nuts and get loose with Faith No More and "Epic":

The 2:00 minute mark to the 2:40 mark is very special and piano at the end is fine indeed!

Have a good night.