Flurries and papers

First day of December and we have snow flurries and while it is cold outside I know this is nothing compared to what we will have to endure soon.

I skimmed over the NYT, WSJ and Washington Post this morning [yep I am THAT busy] and came across a couple eyebrow raising things.

First the story about Carmela Dela Rosa who threw her grandchild off the parking garage to a 50 foot fall death.

“Police say Dela Rosa, while walking with the family from the mall to a parking garage, suddenly grabbed the toddler and tossed her over the guardrail of a fifth-story walkway. Angelyn’s body crashed into the pavement 50 feet below, and she died hours ater at Inova Fairfax Hospital.”
 

 I read the Washington Post story and the first thing that crossed my mind is that seems like a pharma-induced event. You know, one of those quickly mentioned in a monotone way so as to not really be intelligible. I definitely won’t be surprised to learn as the story unravels that she was a Cymbalta or similar patient. I did notice toward the end of the article the reference – buried in the story – that she has been suffering from depression for over two years.

Another story about the drive by companies to fingerprint our computers and phones.

“Advertisers no longer want to just buy ads. They want to buy access to specific people. So, Mr. Norris is building a “credit bureau for devices” in which every computer or cell phone will have a “reputation” based on its user’s online behavior, shopping habits and demographics. He plans to sell this information to advertisers willing to pay top dollar for granular data about people’s interests and activities. Device fingerprinting is a powerful emerging tool in this trade.”

The WSJ story is a bit unnerving and it’s not because I am using my computer to perform illegal or unethical business/fun – I just expect privacy. Privacy in my opinion is linked to human dignity and respect and is at the core of our declaration of independence and bill of rights.

I read a couple different stories about the global economy and got some scary data about our country. The articles were in the WSJ [Europe’s Crisis Widens — Italy, Spain See Bonds Sink, Portugal Faces Rating Cut as Faith in Rescue Ebbs] and the NYT [Economies Strong Where It Counts]. The gist is this:
USA purchasing is steadily growing which translates into more imports from Europe (example: leads to 22% increase exports in Germany) — which translates into the ever widening trade deficit in our own country. This bit of news – again proves that the whole spiel about USA needs to embrace globalism and sending jobs across the ocean to build our products cheaper and ship back here is at the core of the trade deficit which is also spills out into our unemployment woes. Secondly this put from the NYT article: “A paradox of the debt crisis is that the 16-nation euro zone, as a whole, has a budget deficit of around 6% of its gross domestic product and total public debts of around 84% of GDP. While not exactly low — 6% is twice what’s supposed to be the maximum in euro-zone countries — that is healthier than in the U.S., which is running a budget deficit of over 11% and has total debts of around 92% of GDP.”