Check out the Facebook chat I just had:

(03:28:00 AM) Andrew Hayes: hello
(03:28:12 AM) Andrew Hayes: how are you doing?
(03:28:57 AM) Chris Brunner: a little tired, you?
(03:29:13 AM) Andrew Hayes: i am not good at the moment
i am in a deep mess and i need your help
(03:30:34 AM) Chris Brunner: What can I do?
(03:31:42 AM) Andrew Hayes: i am stuck in London Got mugged at gunpoint
(03:32:15 AM) Chris Brunner: That’s horrible
(03:33:06 AM) Chris Brunner: I’m sorry to hear that
(03:33:33 AM) Andrew Hayes: all cash on me was stolen including cell phone and credit card
(03:33:50 AM) Andrew Hayes: i was injured…little bruises on my neck
(03:34:10 AM) Chris Brunner: is this a joke?
(03:34:50 AM) Andrew Hayes: i am really serious
(03:35:00 AM) Andrew Hayes: i am just freaked out
(03:35:19 AM) Chris Brunner: how are you using a computer?
(03:35:38 AM) Andrew Hayes: i am presently in a loocal library
(03:35:48 AM) Chris Brunner: which one?
(03:35:53 AM) Andrew Hayes: i have limited time here!!
(03:36:05 AM) Andrew Hayes: here in London
(03:36:18 AM) Andrew Hayes: i need your help urgently
(03:36:22 AM) Chris Brunner: …
(03:36:57 AM) Chris Brunner: what is it that you’re asking me to do?
(03:37:46 AM) Andrew Hayes: my return flight leaves in few hours time
(03:38:28 AM) Andrew Hayes: i am having problems settling the hotel i checked into and getting a cab to the airport
(03:38:54 AM) Chris Brunner: what can I do?
(03:40:17 AM) Andrew Hayes: i need you to loan me some money to sort my hotel bills and get a cab to the airport
(03:41:41 AM) Chris Brunner: sure, no problem. just get any of our mutual friends to vouch for your character and I will happily loan you cash via western union or moneygram
(03:42:26 AM) Andrew Hayes: you are all i got at the moment
(03:42:46 AM) Andrew Hayes: to help me out
(03:43:14 AM) Chris Brunner: of our mutual friends, whose phone number do you need? I will wake them up.
(03:43:28 AM) Chris Brunner: I know most of them personally
(03:43:35 AM) Andrew Hayes: i don’t have access to phone
(03:43:46 AM) Chris Brunner: surely someone in the library has a cell phone
(03:43:58 AM) Andrew Hayes: the muggers stole away my phone like i told u ealier
(03:44:05 AM) Chris Brunner: I will call you on that phone, and conference in a mutual friend who can vouch for you
(03:45:19 AM) Andrew Hayes: there is no phone in the library
(03:45:19 AM) Andrew Hayes: there is no phone in the library
(03:45:35 AM) Andrew Hayes: besides it is a local one!!
(03:45:50 AM) Chris Brunner: so? I will pay the international toll. it’s an emergency, right?
(03:46:42 AM) Andrew Hayes: yeah
(03:47:02 AM) Chris Brunner: okay, then give me the number to any phone in london where I can call you, and conference in a mutual friend.
(03:47:09 AM) Andrew Hayes: yeah
(03:48:06 AM) Andrew Hayes: are you there??
(03:48:13 AM) Chris Brunner: yes, of course
(03:48:53 AM) Andrew Hayes: i really need your help
(03:49:04 AM) Chris Brunner: I understand that. That’s why I’m trying to help you.
(03:49:46 AM) Andrew Hayes: i have limited time here
(03:50:17 AM) Andrew Hayes: as their computer is even faulty
(03:50:56 AM) Andrew Hayes: all i need from you is a loan of 600$
(03:51:04 AM) Andrew Hayes: to get on my flight
(03:51:09 AM) Andrew Hayes: are you there??
(03:51:13 AM) Chris Brunner: okay, how should I send it?
(03:51:37 AM) Andrew Hayes: all you need is my name and address
(03:51:43 AM) Chris Brunner: okay
(03:52:04 AM) Andrew Hayes: do you know any western union outlet near you?
(03:52:08 AM) Chris Brunner: yes
(03:52:31 AM) Andrew Hayes: how long will it take you to get there?
(03:52:39 AM) Chris Brunner: about ten minutes
(03:52:40 AM) Andrew Hayes: as i have limited time here
(03:52:43 AM) Chris Brunner: but I will try to be fast
(03:53:21 AM) Andrew Hayes: should i give you the info
(03:53:34 AM) Andrew Hayes: you will need in sending the money?
(03:53:38 AM) Chris Brunner: yes. I will write it down
(03:53:53 AM) Andrew Hayes: Name:Andrew Hayes
(03:55:13 AM) Chris Brunner: okay
(03:55:23 AM) Chris Brunner: don’t I need the address?
(03:55:48 AM) Andrew Hayes: Location: 30 Leicester Square. City, London. Country, United Kingdom
(03:55:53 AM) Andrew Hayes: got it?
(03:56:01 AM) Chris Brunner: got it.
(03:56:09 AM) Andrew Hayes: ok
(03:56:23 AM) Andrew Hayes: can you please leave now?
(03:56:57 AM) Andrew Hayes: ??
(03:57:03 AM) Andrew Hayes: ??
(03:57:41 AM) Chris Brunner: yes, I’m leaving now
(03:57:51 AM) Andrew Hayes: ok
(03:58:31 AM) Andrew Hayes: are you there?
(03:58:41 AM) Andrew Hayes: i will be online waiting
(03:58:55 AM) Chris Brunner: wait, is it 600 USD or 600 pounds?
(03:59:26 AM) Andrew Hayes: pounds
(03:59:35 AM) Chris Brunner: okay
(04:01:15 AM) Andrew Hayes: are you still there?
(04:06:04 AM) Andrew Hayes: are you there??
(04:10:04 AM) Andrew Hayes: ??
(04:10:40 AM) Andrew Hayes: ??
(04:15:48 AM) Andrew Hayes: ??

Obviously, this is a scam. I’m guessing Andrew’s Facebook account was hacked. So, I called the London police and told them where the scammer will be trying to pick up the money that I didn’t send.

Facebookers beware.

If this happens to one of your friends, here’s the link to report it.

So for those who don’t know, I’ve moved into a new place in Birmingham. I randomly discovered Vtech DS6321-3, which basically uses Bluetooth to make your cell phone act like a land line connection. That’s attractive to me because I work from home, and a cordless phone is more comfortable to use for extended periods of time than a cell phone is. It also imports contacts from your cell phone, over Bluetooth, so people’s names show up when people call.

Anyway, it made me briefly consider getting a land line, and I stumbled across this page on AT&T’s website. Pretty funny.

My favorite reason listed is, “You need a way to call your cell phone when you lose it.” A close second is, “Your security system needs to be hooked up to something.”

Good stuff.

Are you trying to download and install Google Gears in Mozilla Prism using these or these instructions?

If so, you may have run into trouble finding the correct URLs for the Google Gears XPI. Let me help:

Linux: http://dl.google.com/gears/current/gears-linux-opt.xpi
Mac: http://dl.google.com/gears/current/gears-osx-opt.xpi

Enjoy.

It’s been ages since I’ve kept my blog up to date. If you’ve come to ChrisBrunner.com to see what I’m up to, your best bet would be to read my Twitter feed or check my Google Latitude widget to see where I am. The updates are sparse, but it’s more than you’ll find on the rest of my blog.

I look forward to sitting down someday soon to blog about the adventure that RCG and TIDS have been, but my phone keeps ringing, so it’ll have to happen on another day.

I’ve seen dozens of reports from various blogs and online news sites about which 3G network is faster. They all seem to have different results, and they areas that they test in are always extremely limited. So, I figured I would try to find test results from the most popular mobile speed test I know of — DSLreports.com.

Sure enough, they do publish the results. Here they are:

The difference between average speeds is marginal, but the lower latency that Sprint offers probably makes a huge difference.

I know people are going to post comments about how skewed these results are for all kinds of reasons, and they’ll be mostly right, but in the grand scheme of things, I’d be willing to bet that these results are more accurate than any one review that only surveys speeds in two or three states at a time.

Feel free to leave comments with your own experiences.

So here’s the Plain English version of what’s going on, as I understand it.

What You Should Already Know

Everybody knows that the US Government is running a HUGE deficit — like $1.8 trillion so far this year — way more than the average human can fathom. I think it’s also safe to assume that everybody understands that this money is borrowed from other governments, like China, Japan, Brazil, the UK, etc.

So, obviously, the US government has to pay interest on this money that it borrows. It makes these payments by borrowing more money, which results in more interest payments for which even more money must be borrowed, and so on. The cycle continues as the debt increases exponentially.

What You May Already Know

This works fine as long as other countries continue to have an appetite for US debt. However, if they were to decide not to continue buying more and more US debt, the US Treasury would not longer to be able to afford to service its debt and would have to default. Total chaos would ensue, like you can’t imagine. Many banks would be rendered insolvent overnight, mutual funds and ETF’s would be wiped out, corporate and individual savings would be depleted, tons of governments — both foreign and domestic — would instantly go bankrupt, and the $100 trillion T-Bond futures market would be crushed.

But, that will never happen, because this is America, and the rest of the world will always want more and more and more of our debt, no matter how much we create. It’s a risk-free investment, after all!

What Just Happened

So, long story short, it turns out that last week the Treasury started having trouble unloading some of that freshly-created debt. Actually, they couldn’t sell about half of it. But not to worry — Bernanke’s crew quietly stepped in, printed $14 billion out of thin air, and used it to buy up all those bonds nobody else wanted.

That’s an easy quick fix, because most people probably won’t even learn about what happened, but it should send off alarm bells for anyone who has any interaction with the US economy.

See… if nobody wants to buy the US treasury’s debt, they basically have two options: They can default on the debt, which I described above, OR, since the government can print its own money, they can print money like crazy to continue financing their madness.

The latter is what seems to be going on right now. The problem with this is that as they create more new money, the existing money — the cash that’s in your wallet and bank accounts — loses value. Since your money is less valuable, it takes more of it to buy the same stuff. In other words, prices go up. Economists call this “price inflation” for obvious reasons.

All modern governments do this to some degree. This is why prices gradually go up over time. It’s basically a hidden tax.

However, the more the US government inflates the money supply to finance their deficit spending, the faster the US Dollar will lose its value. If this continues, the US economy could enter into a state of hyperinflation, and virtually all of the value of the USD could be wiped out.

This is nothing unprecedented. The US did it back in the 1860’s, Germany did it in the 1920’s, China did it in the 1940’s, Israel did it in the 80’s, and Zimbabwe is doing it today. These are just a few of many, many examples.

I guess the biggest difference is that everyone in the US seems to think it can’t happen here, but apparently it’s starting to slowly unfold.

Stefan Molyneux does a fantastic job of explaining exactly why. It all boils down to the government-enforced monopoly that is the AMA. This is a must watch for anyone who has any interest in the current health care debate.

If you get all of your news from media outlets in the US, you're totally missing out. Podcast clients like Miro make it not only possible, but very easy, and very convenient, to get on-demand news from around the world. You pick and choose your content sources, and episodes just download automatically. I see content every day that I would never, ever see from the US media. One example from just a few minutes ago is this two-part interview between Josh Rushing and Michael Mullen about the US military strategy in Afghanistan. Just ask yourself while you watch: "Would anyone in the American mainstream media ever dare ask questions like this?" I will list the RSS URLs of some of my content picks in case you're interested in checking it out for yourself:

• Al Jazeera English 
• Feed URL
• Nationality: Qatari
• Description: One of the three largest English-language news channels worldwide.  It's a 24-hour English-language news and current affairs TV channel headquartered in Doha, Qatar.
• Russia Today
• Feed URL
• Nationality: Russian
• Description: Also known as RT, is a globally broadcast English-language news channel from Russia, and the first all-digital Russian TV channel.
• Press TV
• Feed URL
• Nationality: Iranian
• Description: An English language international television news channel, based in Tehran.  It has 26 international correspondents and more than 500 staff around the world.

These are just three out of about thirty content sources that I receive video from daily.  If you have one that you feel should be listed here, let me know.  Or, if you want to see my list of Technology or Libertarian content sources, let me know.

If you watched Ron Paul’s opening statement and discussion with Bernanke regarding the definition of inflation, I’d encourage you to check out Alan Grayson’s and Bill Posey’s follow-up questions:

Click here if you can’t see the video.