Documents leaked from the Heartland Institute reveal its funding sources (including Charles G. Koch and an unnamed single donor providing about 20% of their total revenue) and recipients of funding (including $5,000/mo to Fred Singer and a plan to raise $90,000 for blogger Anthony Watts in 2012).
The Heartland Institute is essentially the Tobacco Institute for climate change denial. See previous posts as this blog with the Heartland Institute tag.
UPDATE (February 18, 2012): It appears that one of the documents, the one with the most embarrassing statements, was a forgery--but the statements I've made above all appear to be confirmed.
UPDATE (February 21, 2012): Climate scientist Peter Gleick has confessed to being the leaker of the documents, but claims the apparently forged document was mailed to him anonymously and he scanned it in before distributing it with the others which he obtained by subterfuge after receiving the anonymous mailing. The oddities and errors in the forged document, however, strongly suggest Gleick himself forged the document after receiving the others.
Tuesday, February 14, 2012
Saturday, February 11, 2012
Work-at-home scams
I was asked earlier today if I could give my opinion on whether the work-from-home opportunity advertised at the domain onlineprofitmasterssystem.com is a scam. A quick bit of research produced some interesting results, my conclusion is that it is almost definitely a scam, by people with a history of promoting scams.
First, the domain registration:
Registrant:
Phillip Gannuscia
1780 W. 9000 South
#315
West Jordan, Utah 84088
United States
Registered through: Go Daddy
Domain Name: ONLINEPROFITMASTERSSYSTEM.COM
Created on: 04-Nov-11
Expires on: 04-Nov-12
Last Updated on: 29-Nov-11
Administrative Contact:
Gannuscia, Phillip nate@essentmedia.com
1780 W. 9000 South
#315
West Jordan, Utah 84088
United States
(801) 803-5769 Fax --
The very domain and URL and web content of the page are already screaming red flags, and there are more to be found in the above data. It's a recently registered domain, and the contact physical address appears to be a private mail drop service. Both the address and telephone number listed are associated with multiple other companies (e.g., BBB F-rated eVenture International, run by Richard Scott Nemrow, who was cited multiple times by the Utah Division of Consumer Protection in 2009) and domain names (e.g., makerichesfromhome.com, educationtrainingsonline.com, executivelearningonline.com, learningresourceontheweb.com, and lightlifemaster.com) which also look like scams,. This particular company, Online Profit Masters, has an F rating from the BBB. The named contact, Phillip Gannuscia, has an email address with someone else's name, nate@essentmedia.com, apparently Essent VP Nathan L. Kozlowski, a former Mormon missionary. Does Gannuscia even exist, or is the name just an alias for Kozlowski? The company whose domain is used here for the contact email address, Essent Media LLC, another Richard Scott Nemrow company, has a corporate registration which expired in 2010.
I'd steer clear of any business with these guys. And if you come across this blog post because you've already been ripped off by them (like this guy reports), I suggest you file a complaint with the Internet Crime Complaint Center as well as contacting your local law enforcement agency.
First, the domain registration:
Registrant:
Phillip Gannuscia
1780 W. 9000 South
#315
West Jordan, Utah 84088
United States
Registered through: Go Daddy
Domain Name: ONLINEPROFITMASTERSSYSTEM.COM
Created on: 04-Nov-11
Expires on: 04-Nov-12
Last Updated on: 29-Nov-11
Administrative Contact:
Gannuscia, Phillip nate@essentmedia.com
1780 W. 9000 South
#315
West Jordan, Utah 84088
United States
(801) 803-5769 Fax --
The very domain and URL and web content of the page are already screaming red flags, and there are more to be found in the above data. It's a recently registered domain, and the contact physical address appears to be a private mail drop service. Both the address and telephone number listed are associated with multiple other companies (e.g., BBB F-rated eVenture International, run by Richard Scott Nemrow, who was cited multiple times by the Utah Division of Consumer Protection in 2009) and domain names (e.g., makerichesfromhome.com, educationtrainingsonline.com, executivelearningonline.com, learningresourceontheweb.com, and lightlifemaster.com) which also look like scams,. This particular company, Online Profit Masters, has an F rating from the BBB. The named contact, Phillip Gannuscia, has an email address with someone else's name, nate@essentmedia.com, apparently Essent VP Nathan L. Kozlowski, a former Mormon missionary. Does Gannuscia even exist, or is the name just an alias for Kozlowski? The company whose domain is used here for the contact email address, Essent Media LLC, another Richard Scott Nemrow company, has a corporate registration which expired in 2010.
I'd steer clear of any business with these guys. And if you come across this blog post because you've already been ripped off by them (like this guy reports), I suggest you file a complaint with the Internet Crime Complaint Center as well as contacting your local law enforcement agency.
Miscellanea
A bunch of interesting articles in The Economist for the past few weeks:
January 28-February 3, 2012:
"Saving Lives: Scattered Saviors" -- harnessing social media and mobile devices to deploy first aid faster than an ambulance can arrive (United Hatzalah in Israel believes it will be able to have first responders on the scene within 90 seconds).
"China's new tribes: Ant tribes and mortgage slaves" -- a new vocabulary in Mandarin describing emerging social groups in China. (Reminds me of Cory Doctorow's Eastern Standard Tribe.)
"Affinity fraud: Fleecing the flock" -- the rise in affinity fraud, especially religious affinity fraud, during the economic downturn, and why it works so effectively. (Also see my blog post from 2008 and another on the same topic from the Secular Outpost in 2006.) Briefly mentioned is the Baptist Foundation of Arizona affinity fraud, which victimized my step-grandfather by stealing most of his retirement savings.
"Visible-light communication: Tripping the light fantastic" -- an update on where we stand with Li-Fi (using LED lighting as a mechanism for data transmission).
February 4-10, 2012:
"Synaesthesia: Smells like Beethoven" -- A new study finds correlations between odors and sounds, even among people who are not synaesthetes.
"Scientific publishing: The price of information" -- On the boycott of Elsevier by scientists tired of excessive charges for journals, and the competition from arXiv and PLoS.
"Biomimetics: Not a scratch" -- lessons from the microstructure of scorpion armor for reducing wear rates on aircraft engines and helicopter rotors.
Podcasts:
Philosophy Bites interview with Alain de Botton on Atheism 2.0: de Botton, author of Religion for Atheists, argues that there are good and useful components of religion which can be secularized, and that it is as legitimate to borrow things we like from religion while discarding what we don't as it is to prefer different kinds of art and music. (Also see the Token Skeptic interview with de Botton and watch his TED talk.) I think his picture of religion, like that of Scott Atran (In Gods We Trust) and Pascal Boyer (Religion Explained) makes more sense than the way some atheists talk about it as though fundamentalist religion is the essence of religion, and should be discarded completely (which doesn't seem likely to happen as long as we live in social communities).
Rationally Speaking interview with Joseph Heath: Heath, author of Economics without Illusions: Debunking the Myths of Modern Capitalism (Canadian title: Filthy Lucre: Economics for People who Hate Capitalism, which the publishers decided wouldn't sell in the U.S.), talks about misunderstandings of economics on both the right and the left. (Also see this BloggingHeads TV interview of Heath by Will Wilkinson, who writes: "The section on right-wing fallacies is largely on the money and a great challenge for rote libertarians and conservatives. The section of left-wing fallacies is terrific, and it would be terrific if more folks on the left were anywhere near as economically literate as Heath.") Heath's "Rationally Speaking pick" also sounds fascinating, Janos Kornai's The Socialist System: The Political Economy of Communism, which explains the creative but ultimately futile ways that human beings tried to replace markets with planning and design.)