US-EU private data sharing agreement at hand: report - Yahoo! News

US-EU private data sharing agreement at hand: report - Yahoo! News: "WASHINGTON (AFP) - The United States and European Union are close to an agreement to share private data of their citizens, including credit card information, travel history and internet browsing information, The New York Times said Saturday.


Negotiations that begun in February 2007 however have to yet address whether Europeans can sue the US government for mishandling information, according to an internal report on the potential agreement obtained by the daily."

Catholic charity helped teen get abortion - Giving- msnbc.com

Catholic charity helped teen get abortion - Giving- msnbc.com: "RICHMOND, Va. - Authorities are investigating whether a Catholic charity violated state and federal law by helping a 16-year-old illegal immigrant who was in the organization's care get an abortion.

Workers with Commonwealth Catholic Charities helped the girl travel to and from the procedure in January and signed a consent form for the abortion, Joanne Nattrass, the charity's executive director, said in a statement Thursday. She declined further comment.

Four of the Richmond-based charity's workers were fired, according to a letter by David Siegel, head of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services' refugee resettlement program."

Om mani padme hum

So Tuesday night I went into Anaphylaxis and could not breathe whilst walking on a trail with neither m cell phone or wallet. I was given epinephrine, rushed to the hospital and treated with steroids. That was two days ago. I was wildly unprepared for the terror that being suddenly unable to breathe would cause. I have been trying really hard to make the world feel normal again. I am back in my place. I am on steroids still so will not have another reaction in the next couple of days.

but still I am sitting here, listening to music, drinking beer, chatting with people online supposedly reconnected and alive....but that terror, the total helpless vulnerability is rocking me to the core. i feel terribly, horribly awfully mortal, frail, breakable. I keep thinking this is where you are, embrace, accept, compassion but I am not sure its working. I kind of feel like i am losing my shit and just totally freaking out. lets hope that this too shall pass.

So not out of the woods yet

Do not believe them when they tell you its getting better, it's not.

Strange, Stranger, Opaque

I recently received an Email from John Hempton at the Bronte Capital Blog. John is writing Barclays - strange, stranger and truly opaque. I have not had time to go through all of his analysis but these snips caught my eye.
In four years our derivative exposure (total face) has gone from 5.9 trillion pounds to 29.2 trillion pounds. Our credit derivative exposures have gone from 43 billion pounds to 2.4 trillion pounds.

It is not just the derivatives that they grew. The on balance sheet exposures grew to astronomical size too.

All beginings are hard

I sometimes wonder how the world would look to me had I never learned to read. There are drawbacks to absorbing so much of your perspective of the world based on reading rather than doing. That said, my reading took me far afield from what I knew far before I had the ability to do so with experience.

As a result, I know that all beginnings are hard. Just because they are beginnings. So as I sit here in this latest beginning and try to be mindful and aware I attempt to embrace that it is difficult by nature of what it is rather than by caprice of events.

Still, while I may get better at being where I am when I am there, the desire to know, to understand, to be peaceful about what is....continues to be the deep throbbing incessant driver of my wanderings.

Amazing and will make you cry

so cool