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Showing posts with label markets are ecosystems. Show all posts
Showing posts with label markets are ecosystems. Show all posts

Sunday, July 25, 2010

Memorandum of Understanding for an Ecosystem of Explosives [Today's News Poem, July 25, 2010]

Memorandum of Understanding for an Ecosystem of Explosives [Today's News Poem, July 25, 2010]

Memorandum of Understanding

Re: Ecosystem of explosives

We will knit the string and you will tug it;
and the large idols shall smash the smaller ones.

We will use your eyes to watch us rupture the moon...
and it will be your dismay...
and the sky will be a yellow-white scramble at dusk.

House of Bombs: good night dust.
Nail-File Bowie Knife: always be prepared.
Office of Bullets: six grams of lead at 80 WPM.

Who shall type and who shall delete?
Who shall sleep in yolk; and who in crumbs, on keys?
Who shall take wing below the runny egg sky,
And who shall fall in canisters, to detonate on ground?

“The documents — some 92,000 reports spanning parts of two administrations from January 2004 through December 2009 — illustrate in mosaic detail why, after the United States has spent almost $300 billion on the war in Afghanistan, the Taliban are stronger than at any time since 2001... Over all, the documents do not contradict official accounts of the war. But in some cases the documents show that the American military made misleading public statements — attributing the downing of a helicopter to conventional weapons instead of heat-seeking missiles or giving Afghans credit for missions carried out by Special Operations commandos. ”
– C. J. Chivers, Carlotta Gall, Andrew W. Lehren, Mark Mazzetti, Jane Perlez, and Eric Schmitt, with contributions from Jacob Harris and Alan McLean; The New York Times, July 25, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/26/world/asia/26warlogs.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all


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Wednesday, June 30, 2010

Plankton Bloom [Today's News Poem, June 30, 2010]

Plankton Bloom [Today's News Poem, June 30, 2010]

Earnings are sport; just a game on the screen.
Wealth is the score and the players are meat.
Markets determine the price of a bean,
Residue running from acre to ocean;
Where plankton will bloom
And choke out the fish:
An oily wound plumes
In petri gulf dish.

Drunken suspenders are typing by dark,
Networks of millions are trading their points;
Feeding the creatures that dine on the spark
Arbitrage sends in a wire through computers—
With cables for nerves
And motorized arms,
A camera eye serves
To watch as we farm.

“By 10am it emerged that Mr Perkins had single-handedly moved the global price of oil to an eight-month high during a "drunken blackout". Prices leapt by more than $1.50 a barrel in under half an hour at around 2am – the kind of sharp swing caused by events of geo-political significance. Ten times the usual volume of futures contracts changed hands in just one hour... The FSA will consider re-approving him as a broker after the ban, if he has recovered from his alcohol problem, but noted "Mr Perkins poses an extreme risk to the market when drunk".”
– Rowena Mason, The Telegraph, 5:45AM BST 30 Jun 2010
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/energy/oilandgas/7862246/How-a-broker-spent-520m-in-a-drunken-stupor-and-moved-the-global-oil-price.html



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