George Orwell’s 1984 was published in 1949.
In his fictional world every citizen is under constant surveillance by the authorities, where everybody knows that “Big Brother is watching you”. And Big Brother is not worried. He says “The people will not revolt. They will not look up from their screens long enough to notice what’s happening.”
In many ways, Big Brother was an amateur compared to Google.
But, not to worry.
Google’s heart is pure.
It’s only arithmetic!
The NSA has much room for improvement and probably needs to increase its budget by a factor of 10.
Number of records available to be spied on = 6 billion x 22 /2 = 66 billion.
Five billion records may seem like a big number but it is not as comprehensive as one would expect to see from anybody aspiring to be “Big Brother”. The NSA records only 7.58% of the world’s mobile communications.
If the NSA (and Obama) truly aspire to being the “Big Brother” of this Brave New World, they are going to have to step up their game. They need to increase their surveillance of mobile communications by at least a factor of 10. Moreover they need to start recording more of the content and not just the location of these devices.
Clearly the NSA needs a budget of about $500 billion per year just to come close to this goal!
One would hope that idiots in Brussels would have better things to do.
Sorry — My mistake. They are only idiots after all…….
“Shoppers are to be banned from buying eggs by the dozen under new regulations approved by the European Parliament. For the first time, eggs and other products such as oranges and bread rolls will be sold by weight instead of by the number contained in a packet. The new rules will mean that instead of packaging telling shoppers a box contains six eggs, it will show the weight in grams of the eggs inside, for example 372g. Or that a bag of white rolls has 322g inside instead of half a dozen. The rules will not allow both the weight and the quantity to be displayed”.
Breakfast in future will have to be a 106g omelette with a 52g bread roll!!!! But perhaps if we can get all hens to be the EU standard they can all begin producing eggs of a constant weight.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1289882/EU-ban-selling-eggs-dozen-Shopkeepers-fury-told-food-weighed-sold-kilo.html#ixzz0s26berUz
William John Henry Boetcker (1873 – 1962) was an American religious leader and influential public speaker.
From Wikipedia:
Born in Hamburg, Germany, he was ordained a Presbyterian minister soon after his arrival in the United States. As a young adult. Rev. Boetcker was raised in Erie, Pennsylvania and ordained in Brooklyn, New York. He quickly gained attention as an eloquent motivational speaker. Rev. Boetcker is perhaps best remembered for his authorship of a pamphlet entitled The Ten Cannots. Originally published in 1916, it is often misattributed to Abraham Lincoln.
As criticism mounts over the alarmist behaviour based largely on bureaucratic processes, in turn based on computer modelling, it turns out that UK airspace was never legally closed following the Icelandic dust cloud !!!
Criticism is also growing in Sweden and Norway for blindly following UK Met Office projections without confirming them by measurement.
The Financial Times reports:
The National Air Traffic Services body has appeared to be the one legally responsible for closing Britain’s airspace. This is because NATS, which provides airlines with air traffic control services, made the first announcements on April 14 about airspace restrictions after the cloud of ash began drifting over the UK. On Sunday night, it announced that restrictions would be in place until at least 7pm, Monday . NATS is not a regulator, however, and cannot legally close airspace. That power lies with the Civil Aviation Authority, which regulates aviation on behalf of the Department of Transport. So far, the CAA has not used this power. “At no point has UK airspace been shut. It’s legally open,” a CAA spokesman said.
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/39cbf638-4b45-11df-a7ff-00144feab49a.html
Finally as reported by the BBC the nonsensical bans on flights in Europe are being questioned.
“Europe’s air industry has called for an urgent review of flight bans imposed because of volcanic ash from Iceland………Airlines that have carried out test flights say planes showed no obvious damage after flying through the ash.”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8628323.stm
Photo: NEODAAS/University of Dundee/AP
Wherever the Precautionary Principle is used to justify restrictions on human activity it is because a political agenda is being served but common sense dictates otherwise. It is usually resorted to by polticians and bureaucrats who defend a process in the name of avoiding the “common bad” even if the results of the process are against the common good.
Big Brother in Europe is alive and well but it is time to put this pseudo-science to bed.
The k2p blog 