Hackerspaces

Hackerspaces are the digital-age equivalent of English Enlightenment coffee houses. They are places open to all, indifferent to social status, and where ideas and knowledge hold primary value. In 17th-century England, the social equality and merit-ocracy of coffee houses was so deeply troubling to those in power that King Charles II tried to suppress them for being "places where the disaffected met, and spread scandalous reports concerning the conduct of His Majesty and his Ministers". It was in the coffee houses that information previously held in secret and by elites was shared with an emerging middle class. They were held responsible for many of the social reforms of the 18th century, when English public life was transformed.

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http://hackerspaces.org/wiki/Hackerspaces

Why Amazon Can't Make A Kindle In the USA

An enconomist is someone who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.
  - Oscar Wilde

Decades of outsourced manufacturing have left U.S. industry unable to produce high-tech products.  Kill a manufacturing base, kill a country.

Forbes


Hat tip to Global Guerillas

So you think the government works for you?

WASHINGTON — The Securities and Exchange Commission may have destroyed documents and compromised enforcement cases involving activity at large banks and hedge funds during the height of the financial crisis in 2008, according to allegations made by a lawmaker on Wednesday. 

“From what I’ve seen, it looks as if the SEC might have sanctioned some level of case-related document destruction,” said Sen. Chuck Grassley, Republican of Iowa, in a letter to the agency’s chairman, Mary Schapiro.

“It doesn’t make sense that an agency responsible for investigations would want to get rid of potential evidence. If these charges are true, the agency needs to explain why it destroyed documents, how many documents it destroyed over what timeframe, and to what extent its actions were consistent with the law.” 

The Agency staff “destroyed over 9,000 files” related to preliminary agency investigations, according to a letter sent in July to Grassley, the top Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, and obtained by MarketWatch.

SEC may have destroyed documents, senator says
Market Watch article

Matt Taibbi on SEC’s Records Destruction Reveals How Deeply Entrenched Official Corrpution Is
Rolling Stone article