Clouds Over Snow Covered Trees
Sun Peaking Out
Cheap cigars, politics and the Volcker Rule – Reuters
The son of a town manager who grew up in Teaneck, New Jersey, Volcker has a no-nonsense style. He was famous during his tenure at the Fed for the shiny suits he wore and inexpensive cigars he relished.
James Wolfensohn, the former World Bank president and a longtime friend who took on Volcker as a business partner after he left the Fed, said Volcker never sought out the trappings of power.
“In today’s world it sounds rare to see on a Friday night the chairman of the Federal Reserve carrying his bag himself in economy class, smoking the most foul cigars because they were cheap and he enjoyed them,” Wolfensohn said.
Dolly Sods in Winter
Dolly Sods in Winter
This picture shows what Dolly Sods looks like in the winter! Amazing.
Oceans running out of oxygen as temperatures rise – BBC News
That's the conclusion of the biggest study of its kind, undertaken by conservation group IUCN. While nutrient run-off has been known for decades, researchers say that climate change is making the lack of oxygen worse. Around 700 ocean sites are now suffering from low oxygen, compared with 45 in the 1960s. Researchers say the depletion is threatening species including tuna, marlin and sharks.
Navigator Card
I got my CDTA Navigator card straightened out … 💳
I re-entered my credit card into their website and I put $30 on the card, after which I decided it’s not worth the risk of possibly not being available for the bus ride home due to web purchases not automatically synced, so I went to the Albany Public Library and had them load an additional $10 on it, which will ensure I have enough fare money on it through the early to mid January ($1.30 per bus ride, $2.60 per day, $13 a week).
I probably should have gone to the library directly, but I had never recharged my card that way before. I don’t mind having $40 tied up on my card, it’s not like I won’t use it eventually, even if with the holidays and vacation it won’t need to be recharged until the first or second week of January. Hopefully going forward I won’t have any more problems with the auto recharge, but I always carry a few dollar bills on me in case I have to pay the $2 cash instead of the $1.30 auto tap.
The dark side of electronic waste recycling
Jim Puckett got the messages from his “little lie detectors.” They were small devices, not much bigger than a deck of cards. Being GPS trackers, they also didn’t look much like actual lie detectors. For years, as the head of the Basel Action Network, Puckett and his team have been throwing them in the trash.
Electronics can be hazardous when disposed of improperly, and the Basel Action Network, or BAN, investigates the underground world of the e-waste trade. The nonprofit group secretly embeds trackers in discarded devices, then hands them to recyclers to see where they end up, exposing bad practices in the process. After dropping bugged LCD monitors in Oregon, they followed along as the trackers traced a circuitous route through the summer of 2015 and into the fall.
Read more on the The Dark Side of Electronic Waste Recycling on the Verge.