Russian Ruble Responds by Rising

As hard to believe as it is, the Russian ruble is actually getting some respect now.

It has gotten a huge boost from the rise in energy prices.


Russians Bet Ruble Will Rise To Status of Dollar, Euro, Yen:

For now, the value of the ruble is managed by Russia's Central Bank. As the dollar has slumped on world markets, the ruble has strengthened, rising to its highest level since early 2000. One dollar now buys about 27 rubles, a 5 percent slide this year.The ruble's standing also has been helped by rising oil prices and Russia's position as the world's second-largest exporter of oil after Saudi Arabia.

A lot of people think Iraq or Iran is the second largest oil exporter after Saudi Arabia. They are not, according to this article. It says that the second largest oil producer in the world is Russia.

The soaring demand for oil, thanks in part to the rising demand from the recent modernization of China and India (half the world's population!), is causing Russia's oil revenue to rise sharply.

There are now Russian gasoline stations in the United States. That is something you never used to see. At least I never saw that in the 70s, 80s, or 90s.

I noticed one in a prime location sandwiched between two shopping malls in a wealthy suburb, just half a mile from an Interstate highway. To get that location must have required a lot of capital. It is probably earning a lot of capital each week too.

Tis a bit strange when Russia becomes the big capitalist on American soil - and in the world trade scene.

Technorati tags: russia, economics, energy

Rush Limbaugh, crusader against drugs and moral destitution is on drugs?

The ironic thing about Rush Limbaugh's latest encounter with the law over illicitly obtained prescription drugs is who the harshest critic of this sort of thing is.  It is Rush himself!

Many people bought the hasty answer that it was "not illegal" in Florida to get a prespcription drug written for someone other than yourself, if that person is your doctor.

According to this series of excerpts from the Florida legal code - it is illegal:

  Did Lumbaugh's doctor break the law?

Does it sort of seem like the word "destitution" comes from a conjoining of the words "destination" and "prostitution"?

Well, that is one thing that the Dominican Republic is.  I am sure they are known for certain foods, a certain language or accent, very special weather, cute little souvineers - but also, there is this other thing.

Within a day or so of Rush's encounter with the baggage-inspectors, two people had pointed out to me that Dominican Republic was a notorious destination for the sex tourism trade. A quick Google search seemed to bear that out.  And, then there was the purpose of Rush's latest pill-based problem in a bottle.

It is kind of amazing that of all the people who have had their privacy, identity, and other such things evaporate this year - that two things that have privacy rights that exceed anything else are Rush Limbaugh and the Hedge Fund industry.  And that is weird, becaues they have both been busted for that recently.  So you would think when they get in trouble again, then privacy would not be a concern.

What is even odder is that Kevin Rose, founder of Digg.com, actually picked in advance the date that Rush would get detained for entering the country with someone else's prescription drugs as the day that Digg 3 was unveiled!

Digg version 3 is the version that introduced the ability to track not just technical stories - but Non-Technical stories as well.  This means world events, detainings of world famous celebrity demagogues at international airports, and so on.

CNET has a Digg 3 Review on its website.

Oh, and before you leave - be sure to check the definition of destitution, all right?

technorati tags:ironic, medical, crime

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Fluffernutter: Treat or Threat?

Elementary school students in Massachusetts are getting the finest Marshmallow and peanut butter sandwiches money can buy: as their entree!

Fluffernutter: Treat or Threat?:

A Fluffernutter is, of course, made with peanut butter and Fluff -- an amalgam of corn syrup, sugar syrup, vanilla flavor and egg whites.

Geez, I hope someone can get to the bottom of this obesity epidemic.

It cannot possibly have to do with replacing milk, dairy, meat, vegetable, and fresh fruits with corn syrup.

Technorati tags: school, nutrition, snafus

Gunman killed after deadly Denver rampage - Yahoo! News

The basic facts of this story are not strange, just tragic.

Gunman killed after deadly Denver rampage - Yahoo! News:

A gunman opened fire inside a sprawling a Safeway Inc. warehouse Sunday, killing one person and wounding five others — two critically — before he was killed by police.

Several fires also were set inside the distribution center a few miles northeast of downtown along busy Interstate 70, authorities said.

But what is strange is that the name of the warehouse where the fires broke out and the lethal shooting took place is Safeway.

The gunman?

He was shot and killed, of course.

He shot a SWAT guy in the hip.

This guy sounds like he was totally dangerous to society.

He was a bit strange, to say the least.

Saddam ends hunger strike after missing one meal - Yahoo! News

Saddam ends hunger strike after missing one meal - Yahoo! News:

Saddam Hussein ended a brief hunger strike after missing just one meal in his U.S.-run prison, a U.S. military spokesman said Friday.

The former Iraqi leader had refused lunch Thursday in protest at the killing of one of his lawyers by gunmen, but the spokesman said he ate his evening meal.

What is ironic about his pico-fast is that one of the things he is accused of doing is usurping the funds from the Oil for Food program to buy weapons and sock away some money for himself, rather than letting his countrymen eat - which was the stated purpose of the program.

Perhaps he has already fasted some to atone for that. Accounts in the news last year said he had lost a lot of weight since he was first went into hiding and later got captured.

Food seems to have become a bit of a motif in his career over the last decade.

Survey: Moscow is world's priciest city - Yahoo! News

A decade and a half ago, Moscow was the capital of the nation that controlled a vast East European empire.

That empire collapsed in the aftermath of repeated failures at reform, and an ad hoc experiment in nuclear power plant operation that saw part of the Ukraine contaminated with radioactive particles.

According to a new survey, Russia is the most expensive city in the world to live in now.
Survey: Moscow is world's priciest city - Yahoo! News:

Overall, foreign exchange rate fluctuations were behind the majority of the changes in ranking, but in Moscow's case, costs were buoyed by the surging price for large living accommodations. Prices for big houses rose some 50 percent over the past year, driven in large part by soaring demand from expats, Powers said.

'It reflects a much bigger demand for palatable housing for someone coming into Russia trying to replicate the housing they had at home,' she said.

Cities in China, China, not only recently - but still - a communist nation, also rose in the rankings from last year.

One thing about the survey is that it triest to help global corporations figure the cost of housing employees in foreign cities throughout the world. A big part of the housing cost for these people in Moscow was extensive renovations to bring Russian housing standards up to what they were used to, and competing for limited housing that alerady was. In other words, bad housing was plentiful, but international executives did not want to live in it.


Ironically, Russia made the news just last week for two things having to do with booze. One problem Russia has is a jaw-dropping alcoholism rate.

The other problem is that lots of people get killed their by poison in fancy bottles with fake brand labels. Unscrupulous organizations are counterfitting high quality booze with stuff that is not ecen really booze, just poison.

About 10 people per day die from being poisoned by this stuff. It soes not sound like many deaths, but when you multiply it by 365 days per year - it it.

Lets hope those executives with those expensives new homes do not run out to a shop down on the corner to buy something with which to celebrate their new digs.

BBC NEWS | World | Europe | Fake Russian alcohol 'kills many'

BBC has a rather stunningly bleak article on alcohol consumption in Russia.

It quotes the interior minister of Russia saying that 42,000 Russians are killed from poisoning by counterfeit alcohol every year

BBC NEWS | World | Europe | Fake Russian alcohol 'kills many':

More than 100 people die every day, having poisoned themselves on counterfeit alcoholic drinks.

It is estimated that every third Russian man and every seventh Russian woman, is an alcoholic.

It seems like disillusion, disbelief, and discontent with the pastime would set in before the numbers got so high.

There is probably an untapped entertainment, education, or labor market in Russia if people can think of nothing better to do.

Because there are definitely better things to do.

Some actually pay money or yield dividends over time.

Technorati tags: russia, health

Nestle buys Jenny Craig diet firm for $600 million - Yahoo! News

Amazing! Nestle, the company well known for its chocolate candies - has just bought diet food and weight-loss company Jenny Craig.

The price they paid is about $600 million dollars. That is about 1.5x the last 12 months of revenue.

Reuters - via Yahoo! News:

Switzerland's Nestle (NESN.VX) bought
U.S. weight-loss company Jenny Craig for around $600 million,
it said on Monday, expanding its high-margin nutrition and
health business.

Jenny Craig, which according to Nestle had sales of over
$400 million in the last 12 months, was founded in 1983 by
weight-loss guru Jenny Craig, offering dieters prepared meals
and exercise programs.

The juxtaposition of the two product lines - candy - and weight loss plans, including pricey diet foods, cannot be lost on everyone.

Technorati tags: food, finance

ABC News: Got Tape? You Can Steal an Identity

With all the identity theft going on in the country by illegal aliens, meth addicts, irresponsible teens and young adults, and others - you would think a would-be thief would have to be a little careful about the condition of those stolen credit card applications they send in.

Not so, it turns out.

Bob Cockerham tried out a little experiment.

Glenn A. Ruppel, ABC News:

He tore up a credit card application into tiny pieces, then reassembled all the scraps. Then he taped the whole thing back together. Next, Cockerham crossed out the address and wrote his parent's address instead.

You'd think no bank would accept this mess. But Cockerham sent it off just to make sure. He began documenting the process on his website, www.cockeyed.com and waited for the mailman.

The financial company the application was sent from was only too happy to approve the credit card application.

He filled in the application with a different address from where he lived - he wrote down the address where his parents live, not where he lived which is where the application was sent.

On top of that, the application had been torn up into little pieces - and then taped back together.

If those two things would not raise red flags, nothing would.

The article closes by repeating the well-worn tag line that you are not usually libel if thieves fraudulently use your credit card.

That would be heartening if that was the whole story.

But last week it was reported that 80 or 90 people had used the SSN of a California woman and run up huge debts under her usurped identity.

In fact, there was another story in the national news that she or another woman was stuck with one million dollars of debt run up by these miscreants. Worse, no public or private institution was giving her any help. Despite those claims/disclaimers, she was being left hung out to dry.

Moreover, last month there was a story of how over 25 million Americans had their SSN, DOB, and name identity information lost on a stolen laptop. The organization responsible for the loss did not offer to pay the pricey fee for credit-monitoring for even one year.

The full account (if you will pardon the pun) of this guy's credit card company experiment is documented on his cockeyed.com website.

Fortunately, for him, the person who sent in the ultra-suspicious credit card application in his name was him.

But what if it was not?

Tis a bit strange.

Technorati tags: crime, identitytheft, fraud

CNN.com - Drug caches found in Home Depot vanities - Jun 14, 2006

A contractor in Massachusetts is saying a vanity he purchased recently at Home Depot, contained two 50-pound bricks of marijuana.

The estimated street value of that quantity of the drug was estimated at $145,000, the CNN story below says.

A plumber in Massachusetts a vanity Monday, and he found 3 kilograms of cocaine and about 40 pounds of marijuana. The police department put the street value of this cache of drugs at $250,000, the CNN article says.

CNN.com:

Large quantities of drugs were found inside merchandise from at least two Home Depot stores in Massachusetts, and authorities are investigating, police said Wednesday.

A contractor late last week discovered two 50-pound "bricks" of marijuana wrapped in plastic bags inside a bathroom vanity he had purchased at a Home Depot store in Tewksbury, said Chief of Detectives Lt. Dennis Peterson.

Maybe the quest for ever higher profits is being taken just too far.

Technorati tags: crime, smuggling, contraband

Palestinians Mount Violent Protest Over Lack of Paychecks - New York Times

This is not a funny story per se for the simple fact that regular folks are hungry, and that is never a laughing matter.

However, it is ironic that Hamas, the organization who has been killing Israelis and others for quite some time - a recognized terrorist organization - not finds itself chased from assemblies by crows of people pelting them with empty water bottles.

While it is not funny either, it does show how hard it is to run things well - than to, well, ruin things.

Palestinians Mount Violent Protest Over Lack of Paychecks - New York Times:

Palestinian civil servants stormed the parliament building in the West Bank on Wednesday demanding back pay and chanting "We are hungry!"

Fistfights broke out as protesters hurled plastic water bottles at legislators from Hamas, the militant group that controls parliament, forcing the speaker to flee the building.

Technorati tags: terrorism, ironic

My inaugural post to this blog

Here is the first post to this blog. The purpose of which will be to recognize stories in the news that make you do not just a double but a triple-take. The ones that are almost too bizarre to believe.

Are their news stories like that?

You betcha.