Zetetical Society Meeting Notes

January 21, 2009

Annoying Google Ad

Filed under: Fraud, Politics — Aram @ 12:48 pm

Merely by having Armenian content in email, Google gives me a banner ad for some racist Genocide-denying poltical group:

Armenian Atrocities – www.turkishcoalitionofamerica.org – But Armenian archives are closed. For history not propaganda go to

Nobody would put up with this if Holocaust deniers were targeting inboxes with Jewish content. It would be on the news, and Google would pull it.

December 15, 2008

Ritholtz on Madoff

Filed under: Fraud — Aram @ 2:09 pm

Barry Ritholtz has a take on the Madoff story with an insight that others just aren’t offering in  the press right now: It’s probably impossible to run a $50 billion Ponzi scheme by yourself with nobody noticing a problem. Further, claiming your confessed to your sons and then having them turn you in looks more like an effort to protect them in which you “confess” to your sons and they “turn you in.” The sort of thing we’d all do if we were engaged in a plot with our beloved, younger family members. It’s the sort of speculation that seems plausible only because it’s more plausible than the Madoff story itself.

Nothing a team of investigators can’t grind through. Maybe he really did just write a number on a napkin and everyone else at the firm worked for the department of check cashing or the department of check writing.

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