Who Is Millennium Challenge Corp.?

by | Aug 15, 2009 | CIA, Honduras, Uncategorized

I just read this fascinating report on the narcosphere (Millennium Challenge Corp. poured millions into Honduras in months leading up to putsch) that describes the activities of a US aid entity set up by Bush (the MCC) in Honduras leading up to the coup against President Zelaya.

It’s well known that aid agencies are sometimes used as a front by the CIA for spying and funding regime change activities (such as its involvement with USAID, famously documented in the “Family Jewels” documents, which details a joint USAID–OPS operation concerning training foreign police in bomb-making, sabotage, etc).

Narco raises a lot of interesting questions about the timing, motivation, recipients and utilisation of the funding that MCC sent into Honduras just prior to the coup.

The Post-Mortem on SpiralFrog

by | Aug 12, 2009 | Uncategorized

SpiralFrog was the music industry’s attempt to defeat iTunes. It failed miserably. Here’s a fascinating post-mortem. As a start-up guy who had no funding, these stories of start-ups pissing tens of millions of dollars up against the wall always make me sick. Why do these clowns get so much money? I know what I could achieve with just a single million to spend on my business and to see them waste $26 million just makes me furious.

Anyway, there are some interesting facts in here… such as “in order for a tier-1 account to place ads on a site like SpiralFrog, (it) needed a minimum of 5 million monthly unique (visitors).” Even a start-up with the amount of funding SpiralFrog had, struggled to make money from advertising. They bought their traffic through search engine marketing and had to keep spending to maintain it. Lots of lessons in here.

Read the article:

Inside the short, troubled life of a music start-up | Digital Media – CNET News.

Here’s a 2007 interview with SpiralFrog founder Joe Mohen:

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ItF7y3knp5E&hl=en&fs=1&]

Scott Adams on Solving Healthcare

by | Jul 31, 2009 | Uncategorized

Dilbert author Scott Adams has a GREAT idea for reducing health insurance premiums:

First, 80% of healthcare costs go toward chronic diseases such as diabetes, cancer, and heart disease.

Second, a huge study on diet and its correlation to disease, called The China Study, found that chronic diseases, particularly the ones I just mentioned, only get triggered if you eat a plant based diet, for the most part, regardless of your genetic propensity. (CR Note: I think he meant to write "DONT get triggered if you eat a planet based diet".)


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_China_Study

The author’s thesis, backed by a mountain of data, is that the only safe level of animal based food is zero. No milk or cheese either. Moderation simply doesn’t work when it comes to eating meat. That’s the data talking, not me, according to this expert. I haven’t seen any data that contradicts that notion. Provide a link if you have.

As a practical matter, it would be impossible to ban meat from the diets of average Americans. But when you are talking about insurance of any sort, whether it is health or auto or hurricane, we accept the principle that risk factors can be considered in pricing. So all we need to do is charge meat eaters four times as much as vegetarians for health insurance. Over time it will create more vegetarians, for economic reasons alone, and healthcare costs will plummet.

You might say it is unfair for the insurance company to charge a higher premium for earthquake insurance to people who actually live on a fault line. But I say that’s just good business.

What do you think? Should health insurance companies have better plans for vegetarians? And would YOU become a vegetarian if you knew your health insurance would be cut by 75%?