News on the March-Identity Theft

‘Know thyself ‘: all human knowledge begins with an awareness of self. As a child you begin vaguely at first and get to know your place in the narrow world that surrounds you. Coming to terms with the world at large is a slow steady process. During which you do not ever miss sight of your awareness of self. Every challenge at the playground or in the class room you learn in a manner that becomes with repetition, a second nature to you.

Going out into the wider world it may be unsettling at first where you are not taken for what you are. The world is fast settling you to a role that you are sure does not speak for you. You are not so-and so’s son or kid brother. You are what you choose to be. It is here your real knowledge begins in right earnest. How best your conception of your worth is accepted by others? All that clean CVs you present for a position in the company may open the doors or slam shut. You have come to the real test where you must know no one has time or inclination to know you as well you have known. It is somewhat unsettling to know you are assessed by circumstances and facts that didn’t reckon as vital to you. Your identity is seen by world from the wrong end of the glass as it were.

You are a number and  your identity has been mashed and drawn into so many pulses in a virtual space that may be hacked and stolen.

For almost 12 years, a Houston elementary school teacher and an illegal immigrant living in Topeka have engaged in a tug of war to claim the identity of Candida L. Gutierrez in a case that has put a face on the growing crime of “total identity theft” in the United States.

Now to quote from the Associated Press (Wichita,Kan.) —On Monday, the real Candida L. Gutierrez saw her identity thief, Benita Cardona-Gonzalez, for the first time. Their encounter came inside a federal courtroom in Wichita, where Cardona-Gonzalez, a Mexican national, was sentenced to 18 months in prison for possessing fraudulent identification documents.

The plea deal Cardona-Gonzalez struck with prosecutors in January gave her less prison time, but guaranteed she would not contest her deportation. She pleaded guilty to an aggravated felony, which typically results in automatic deportation.

 

Gutierrez first learned her identity had been hijacked when she was turned down for a mortgage. Each year she trudges to the Social Security Administration with her birth certificate, driver’s license, passport and even school yearbooks to prove her identity and clear her employment record.

She spends hours on the phone with creditors and credit bureaus, fills out affidavits and has yet to clean up her credit history. Her tax records are a mess. She even once phoned the impostor’s Kansas employer in a futile effort to find some relief.

Both women had claimed they were identity theft victims and sought to get new Social Security numbers. The Social Security Administration turned down Gutierrez’s request and instead issued a new number to the woman impersonating her.

And in another ironic twist, Gutierrez was forced to file her federal income tax forms using a special identification number usually reserved for illegal immigrants.

Their struggle finally came to a head when Gutierrez got married a year ago, and her new husband set out to clear her credit history. He traced the identity thief to Topeka and on the Internet he found a press release from the U.S. attorney’s office in Kansas about the prosecutions of other illegal immigrants working at Reser’s Fine Foods, the same manufacturer where Cardona-Gonzalez worked. He contacted federal authorities in Kansas, and Assistant U.S. Attorney Brent Anderson took up their case.

“I don’t think we would ever have solved this issue without Brent’s help,” Marquardt said.

U.S. District Judge Eric Melgren called the case a “classic example” of the harm done by identity theft, saying people who characterize the cases as victimless crimes are uninformed. He said he had some reservations about the 18-month prison sentence and whether it was enough, but decided it was acceptable to meet sentencing objectives and bring closure to the victim.

Defense attorney Matthew Works told the court that his client didn’t have an understanding of how difficult it is for the victim to get her identity back. He said after the hearing that Cardona-Gonzalez has authorized him to do anything he can to “try to fix it” so Gutierrez could regain her identity.

Still pending before the court is a prosecution request that Melgren order the Kansas Office of Vital Statistics to correct the name of the mother on the birth certificates issued to Cardona-Gonzalez’s two children who were born in Kansas.

 benny

 

 

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News on the March- Prenup Agreements

What if you have signed a prenup agreement and your marriage bed has begun to smoke?

Elizabeth Cioffi-Petrakis, 39 a Long Island mother of three has become a postnuptial hero, after a prenup nearly cost her everything. In a landmark case she won an appeal overturning a bizarre premarital agreement with her millionaire husband. “This is a landmark decision that will likely be litigated a great deal in the future in similar cases for those who feel their prenups are unconscionable,” says Vicky Ziegler, celebrity divorce lawyer “This is unprecedented in the family law world.”

All the more remarkable is the fact she had no legal help worth an onion. “I won it because I pretty much did it myself,” Cioffi-Petrakis told Yahoo! Shine. “I had three prior attorneys who messed up my case big-time. And I was pretty much dead in the water until I got educated.” To win the case, Cioffi-Petrakis had to prove her husband was a louse who even gave those critters hiding within the woodwork a bad name.

In January, a judge ruled in Cioffi-Petrakis’s favor, finding that she had successfully proven what is called “fraud by the inducement” in a contract. To do that, Cioffi-Petrakis explained, she presented the court with “patterns of behavior” to show that Petrakis “was not honest when he made the promises.”

Moral of the story is this. Marriage is fulfilling requirements of love that is part biological and part spiritual. It is also a risk when two strangers decide to cast their lot and their vulnerable selves unprotected within a space of a marriage bed. There is no room for error. Prenup or not you have to face the music if one of the players want out.

A burning bed does none any good 

benny

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News on the March-sinkholes

Five months before the earth opened and swallowed his home, Buddy Wicker welcomed inspectors sent by State Farm Insurance to his house, who surveyed the property and deemed it free of any sinkhole risk.

Last week, a 20-foot-wide sinkhole yawned under Wicker’s Seffner, Fla., home, killing one of its residents, and sucking down a bedroom. The entire home was later demolished.(ack:http://www.lohud.com/usatoday of March8,’13)

Sinkholes are frequent in Florida area in the spring and summer seasons.From the above new clip it would seem we are not often certain over what we base as certainties. Let me quote a passage from my 2006 book The Life of Aesop

‘An anecdote that Maimonides told of his master impressed Aesop greatly. He said how Iadmon had set his eye on a piece of land that promised a great deal. It had a well and consequently a fertile soil. So he moved heaven and earth to acquire it. After he had paid in gold and took over he found to his chagrin the well had overnight gone dry! Unknown to him the City had earlier diverted a canal in another section far from the spot. But just as soon as Iadmon had begun improving his property he was without the water! Well many crowed he had it coming to him. Iadmon naturally made a loss!

What diverted Aesop was the idea of it. He thought of an unseen world that sustained another world in which man planted and harvested, a world where he made claims and fought tooth and nail to make riches. If he thought of profits from a deal it soon spiraled onto many more deals. More profits. Would he not if he could, decimate every competitor in his path? ‘A man so wheels and deals without fully realizing the risks involved.’

Aesop asked the little master if he were not nervous of things going wrong. “Politics is a very fickle master to serve,” he said. The little Master replied, “All that negative thoughts cripple you from venturing forth. You must be bold in order to win Dame Luck!” He was sure his pessimism arose from miserable experiences of his infant days.’

Who would cease to take risks in life? Only the cowards, I dare say. But we ought to understand we can only give our best shot in any enterprise and leave it that. Where your win or loss is going to affect your family and many others you need to have a plan B. Success in life is for the brave at heart, and for the smart.

benny

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Aesop Fables: A country Mouse and the Town Mouse

A country mouse by name Joe Krone went to preach the gospel of good news. Only news that he could tell happily was that the mice in the town could contribute generously to the poor country mice. The town mouse by name Ch.Oral Roberts wondered how a mouse  who cut off the hands of the believers and made their children fight with rockets and assault rifles could clap hands and say’ Praise the Lord Cat’ The country mouse defended himself saying his life was the best because poverty of the country side made him and his brethren look up for fresh manna and land flowing with honey and milk. Pastor Roberts was astounded. Ch.Oral and Krone went hand in hand to find out whether any other mouse could tell the good news better than they. Indeed they came across Pope Weasel who said his Holy See was the best. He showed the pomp and pleasure palaces built for servants of Lord Cat.  Krone asked His Holiness,‘Why these mice are in purple?’

The Pope gave a shudder. ‘It is Friday and they want no fish but arrange a cross dress for their midnight service. That night the two mice were shocked and wondered how the congregation of mice could tolerate the wicked ministers of the Lord Cat.

Next morning they had an audience with the Pope. They cried and said, their spirits were sad because of all the nonsense that went on.’Oh your holiness, Why can’t you throw these wicked ministers in purple?’

The Pope smiled sadly and said, ‘I am a weasel but these mice will not change a thing and they are too many in numbers’.

The Country Mouse suggested, ‘May be you can sell all these gold and silver and donate to us in the country. We have needy brethren.’

‘Oh no,’ the Pope said with a shudder,’I cannot spend a dollar without getting the permission of my Secretary general. He is a nasty cut throat.’ Oral and J. Krone pressed harder to no avail. “Give us all. For a good cause. We shall call it Church of Zion’ The Pope went white with fear,’ At least I get to wear my mitre and white shoes. If I join with you shall not even leave my tail to my body.’ The Pope scurried away.

Joseph Krone, the country mouse said,’There goes a prisoner of conscience.’

Ch.Oral the town mouse said,’It is time to part. I want to found a new Home for retired Popes.’

Krone said, ‘I want to arrange a great Revival meeting in the dust bowl.’ 

benny

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News on the March-immortality

Brain cells can live at least twice as long as the organisms in which they reside, according to new research. The study, published on Feb. 25 in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, found that mouse neurons, or brain cells, implanted into rats can survive with the rats into old age, twice as long as the life span of the original mice.

A co-author of the study Dr. Lorenzo Magrassi, a neurosurgeon at the University of Pavia in Italy said,” So if the human life span could be stretched to 160 years, “then you are not going to lose your neurons, because your neurons do not have a fixed lifetime.”

While most of the cells in the human body are being constantly replaced, humans are born with almost all the neurons they will ever have.

The findings are good news for who seek immortality. Like Dr. Ipso Facto who explored every nook and cranny of the earth to attain immortality. It took him a thousand years to reach the source of spring from where water welled into tiny jets. It would give whoever drank from it immortal life. Only problem was that he did not know what he was there for. His mind was completely gone. I do not know if it were alzheimer or plain dementia. But he stood wondering under the sweltering high noon and died of sunstroke.

Life is simply not extending length in years but getting many advantages of living among life forms right. If you have no awareness of surroundings as in the case of Dr. Ipso Facto you get sunstroke; if there aren’t any living soul living (like Robinson Crusoe) to enthuse you to add zest to life and so on you have put back civilization back for a millennia. Time hangs heavily on you and you may wish you died and put an end to your misery. 

Or worse still you may be competing with your great grandchildren, sons,daughters and your own family for the fast dwindling food reserves.

Tailspin:

Who wants to live forever? It is a disaster to end up with a case:” Here is my ex-wife forgotten but not gone.” Pay up, alimony, man, she says.

benny

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News on the March- Higgs Boson conundrum

 

According to the latest findings the scientists seem to think our universe is inherently unstable and an ‘event shall happen at the speed of light’ and spell doom for it. 

A subatomic particle discovered last year may be the long-sought Higgs boson particle. It is a manifestation of an energy field pervading the universe- the Higgs field, which is thought to explain why particles have mass. 

The mass of the particle, which was uncovered at the world’s largest particle accelerator — the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in Geneva — is a key ingredient in a calculation that portends the future of space and time.

“This calculation tells you that many tens of billions of years from now there’ll be a catastrophe,” Joseph Lykken, a theoretical physicist at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Batavia, Ill., said Monday (Feb. 18) here at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

After searching for decades for proof that this field and particle existed, physicists at the LHC announced in July 2012 that it is a sure bet and it is the Higgs boson.

A little bubble of what one might think as an ‘alternative’ universe is likely to replace the present.(Reuters)

God’s particle as it is called in popular parlance gave us a chance to make this earth as we know it today. President Obama is hinting of’ sequestering by a meat a cleaver’ may not be the ideal to save the nation’s economic health. Well calculations of partisan politics whether in Capitol Hill or in Tunisia will not mean a straw. 

Is it some poetic justice where 1% of the US has cornered all the nation’s wealth and the GOP is still filibustering with an eye for tax cuts for the super rich? Just as Higgs Boson particles gave mass to our universe and these shall be taken away. When or why may not be for us to predict. Perhaps St. Paul may prove to be right about death afterall!

Death as we know the term shall be swallowed up in victory. (1Co15:54)  The Preacher of the old cried,’Vanity oh vanities!’(ack: clara moskovitz/LiveScience.com and Reuters)

benny 

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News on the March- bad science and inversion principle

Remember the scene of starlight streaking past the windows of the Millennium Falcon in “Star Wars” and the Starship Enterprise in “Star Trek.”? There you were shown what it is to experience  hyperdrive when spaceships approach the speed of light. As a result of it stars morph from points of light to long streaks that stretch out past the ship. It is according movie science,- and bad science to be exact.

When spaceships travel faster than light the view out the windows of a vehicle traveling through hyperspace would be more like a centralized bright glow, so concludes  a group of physics Masters students at England’s University of Leicester.

A phenomenon called *the Doppler Effect, affects the wavelength of radiation from moving sources, would cause stars’ light to shift out of the visible spectrum and into the X-ray range, where human eyes wouldn’t be able to see it, the students found.

The increased X-ray radiation from shifted starlight would even push back on a spaceship traveling in hyperdrive, the team found, slowing down the vehicle.We need go no farther than the Earth to understand this paradox. Similar to the force felt at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean.
If life offers us paradox we need to understand the underlying principle of Inversion principle. How we delight to see our baby taking its first step! It is also a sign that we have lost control of the baby that will become obvious sooner or later. We become mature and wiser with life experience. Irony of it is that what  to do with a body that is going to pieces? This inversion principle shall explain what is wrong with progress.

Note:*The Doppler Effect is the reason why an ambulance’s siren sounds higher pitched when it’s coming at you compared to when it’s moving away — the sound’s frequency becomes higher, making its wavelength longer, and changing its pitch.(ack: Space.com of Jan 15,’13-hyperdrive)

benny

 

 

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The Paradigm Shift

The US elections of 2012 was much more than Obama versus Romney. Coming to think of it I dare say that it was the testing ground for the nation to out the ideological gulf between the Republican and Democratic party. Of course the politics of future shall come around to address this.
In this bitterly fought campaign each party put out their case. In Obama’s victory we see how the Tea Party movement outplayed its hand. All that rumble and blustering of the movers of the movement did not in the end, mean anything.
The Tea Party is an antigovernment, grass-roots political movement.  It began in 2009 in protest of the bank bailout and the economic stimulus package. Is not an economic stimulus good for the growth? Oh no in the vocabulary of the GOP it smacks of federal intrusion. Such fiscal conservatism of the Party relying not on pragmatism, though the recession called for it to help small businesses, proved it was out of touch with the times.
The Tea Party became a pivotal player in the Republicans’ successful bid to take control of the House of Representatives in the 2010 midterm elections. In those elections, four in 10 voters expressed support for the movement in exit polls. Its most shining hour was when in August Rep.Paul Ryan from Wisconsin was chosen as the running mate of Romney. The election proved the Tea Party had totally miscalculated. Here we see the blind side of GOP: their failure to take the pulse of the nation or speak for average American. A Party that speaks for the 1 percenters cannot gauge the impulses of Mr.Joe. The Party represented the White and continued their stand against the minorites not realizing the changing demographics had simply cut the ground from under their feet.
As recently as 1980, 80% of the United States was white, but results of the 2010 Census depict a rapidly changing nation, with the country’s non-white population growing to more than 35 percent. As ethnic and racial minorities continue to grow, these communities’ impact on America’s future—particularly as it pertains to politics and leadership—is increasing.
 
This paradigm shift seems to have escaped the calculation of the Party in the manner they tried to cast slur on the President for his middlename and his birth among other things.Even an endorsement from much respected Colin Powell invited criticism that it was racially motivated.This shows how deep rooted is the Party on old values. If only they had shown their relevance in the everyday living that would have been something.
The integration of racial minorities into what has been America’s dominant white culture is what this election indicates.
Hispanic voters comprised 10 per cent of the electorate. Mr Obama won seven out of 10 of their votes. The president also won 93 per cent of the black vote, and more than 70 per cent of Asian voters. He led by 12 points over Mr Romney among women.
Among young voters, Obama secured two thirds of the preferences of those aged between 18 and 29. They are almost a fifth of the electorate.
For the first time last year in America more babies were born to non-white parents that to whites, a trend which explains why the Republican party can no longer afford to ignore Hispanic voters, even though this campaign, with all its hostility towards immigrants, seemed so determined to alienate them.
The shift saw Mr Obama holding old southern states such as Virginia, which he had won in 2008 on the back of a euphoric wave of support which some put down to a fluke.
But as African-Americans and students turned out in droves to take the state again, it was clear that the race had heralded a new, more permanent, drawing of the political map. Mr Obama’s coalition represents the future of America: a younger, browner, more ‘godless’ and liberal America whose taxes must also pay for the retirement funds of the older, white evangelical Christian Americans that they are supplanting.
“It doesn’t matter whether you’re black or white, or Hispanic or Asian, or Native American, or young or old, or rich or poor, able, disabled, gay or straight – you can make it here in America if you’re willing to try,” Obama said. Is anyone listening?
Tailspin:
This election also proved what a fool Karl Rove is. All that political acumen was merely adipose settled where his grey matter ought to have been. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, Rove’s group spent more than $1 million in 10 different Senate races.
At the top of that group, Crossroads spent $11.2 million opposing Senate candidate Tim Kaine in Virginia, $7 million opposing Representative Shelley Berkley in Nevada, and $6 million in both Ohio and Wisconsin, opposing Senator Sherrod Brown and Tammy Baldwin, a member of the House of Representatives who was elected to the U.S. Senate.
Only Berkley lost on Tuesday.
For months, Rove’s commercials told Montanans that their U.S. senator, Jon Tester, was “a top recipient of campaign cash from lobbyists and big banks.”
Missourians were instructed to tell their Democratic senator, Claire McCaskill, “to stop spending and cut the debt.”
In those races, as in Florida and Indiana, Rove’s candidate lost. Only in Nevada, where Senator Dean Heller was challenged by Berkley, did Rove assist with a victory in race where he invested more than $1 million.
According to calculations made by the Sunlight Foundation, a nonpartisan group that seeks more transparency in campaign finance, Rove’s outfits provided dismal returns to investors. With advice from such a ‘failure’ like Karl Rove, President George Bush has had his image forever badly bruised. Karl Rove reminds me of Humpty-Dumpty after a bad fall.

(ack: Pewsocialtrends,NewYork Times of Oct.4,2012,Reuters news of Oct 7,Karl Rove’s bad night)
benny

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News on the March-evolution of galaxies

Disk galaxies like our own Milky Way put the finishing touches on their stunning shapes relatively recently, a new study suggests.
The find will likely surprise many scientists, who had thought such galaxies had been static for more than half of the universe’s 13.7-billion-year existence.
“Astronomers thought disk galaxies in the nearby universe had settled into their present form by about eight billion years ago, with little additional development since,” lead author Susan Kassin, of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., said in a statement. “The trend we’ve observed instead shows the opposite — that galaxies were steadily changing over this time period.”Kassin and her colleagues used NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope and the Keck Observatory in Hawaii to study 544 blue galaxies, whose color indicates that stars are forming within them.
They found that the most far-flung, ancient galaxies tend to be the most disordered, with organization steadily increasing as galaxies are observed closer and closer to the present day. Over time, the galaxies’ rotation speeds increase, and they settle into proper, well-behaved disks.
The trend holds for galaxies of all masses, but the biggest systems are always the most highly organized, researchers said.(ack:space.com of Oct 23, 2012/Galaxy Evolution surprises Scientists)

it is a law of Nature that unless certain force acts on an object say an apple, it will tend to a certain disorder over a period of time. An apple rots away and the luscious fruit has become unpalatable. Law of entropy is a matter for our universe and physical world. How does a galaxy organizes itself unless there is an external agency works with every component that makes it up. If I as a Christian should claim it is God by his very nature of Love who shall disprove me?

benny

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News on the March: brain-spotting

What exactly is the function of a brain? There are creatures that can very well get around without having a brain as we know the term.
“Even without a brain, a slime mold can essentially remember where it’s been, helping it navigate past complex obstacles, much like modern robots, researchers say.
These findings reveal how ancient organisms could solve certain problems well before complex brains evolved, scientists added.
Slime molds were once thought to be a kind of fungus, but later work revealed that these puddles of goo are part of a motley group of microbes known as protists. The yellow slime mold the investigators studied, Physarum polycephalum, is actually a giant single cell up to more than 1 square foot (900 square centimeters) in size with up to several million identical cell nuclei inside.
“For a single-celled organism, it has shown remarkable abilities, such as solving mazes, anticipating periodic events, and even making irrational decisions like we do,” said researcher Chris Reid, a complex systems biologist at the University of Sydney in Australia. “It is truly a remarkable creature that is redefining our notions of intelligence.”
This slime mold leaves a thick mat of translucent slime behind it as it moves, ooze that Physarum later avoids. As such, the researchers thought the slime mold might use this gel trail as a kind of memory.
“The key misunderstanding might be that slime mold has a memory like we do,” Reid told LiveScience. “I can’t stress enough that the slime mold is incapable of creating, storing or recalling memories like ours, because it does not have a brain such as we are used to think, even neurons.”
The scientists detailed their findings online Oct. 8 in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.(LiveScience.com of Oct 9.
Memory of slime mold is the trail it leaves behind. It is like the breadcrumbs by which Hansel and Gretel ensure their safe return from the deep recesses of the forest. It is the memory for future. The bread trail was meant for their return from the forest.
Defining memory from our own abilities that a brain is capable of, is therefore erroneous. Memory need not necessarily remain solely within the brains was shown in the case of slime mold. Memory could be drawn from external circumstances as well. In order to explain some extraordinary ways in which humans have arrived at solutions almost identical without having the means to pick each others brains may seem incredible. Now that the slime mold have shown the possibility do we unconsciously rely on external influences?

Consider the Periodic Table of the elements. From the time Pythagoras suggested certain harmony of seven planets as ‘celestial’ there has been attempts to explain his mystical leap into the unknown in many other areas. Take Chemistry for example. Why the elements when numbered in the order of atomic weights tended to repeat fairly similar properties at every seventh element like notes in a musical scale? Just as the Russian scientist Mendeleyev worked out the Periodic Table one German chemist by name Julius Lothar Meyer also had independently conceived the same periodic Law. Is it just coincidence or memory, collective or better still in the public domain of life forms, supplied the solution?

In human context do we not create memories for future as well? da Vinci on observing the sycamore seeds making through the air got an idea for helicopters. Only that the technology was not developed to make it a reality. Memory in our universe must be relative: complex multicellular organisms exercise their brain on the memory impressed in the environment just as matriarchal elephants can dig up salt and other needful minerals in the years of drought. These show their young so they may in future similarly leave a trail for their young. Memory that is more enduring in short is external and is passed from one age to another to which so many could access. If we have been using wars as settling difference indeed wars shall come uppermost when nations consider a way out.
Coming back to da Vinci what he set down on paper bears a milestone in the development of flight.
(ack: Music of the Spheres by Guy Murchie/Houghton Mifflin Co. Boston/1961-regarding the Periodic Law)
benny

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