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“But so what?”
That’s the question our friend Katy asked when we were talking about reading Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma and the nature of our food production industry. Don’t get me wrong - it’s a fantastic question. And it’s hard to answer without regurgitating huge sections of the book, and even then it doesn’t necessarily answer the question about what do ti about it. Which is in no small part why he wrote his follow-up book.
Well, if you haven’t read the whole book here’s a talk Pollan gave that covers a lot of good ground about “so what.”
from ‘My Familys Money’
Pet Monkeys - The Financial Considerations
How do you not love an article with that title?
jwz’s “twitteresque 62 character review”
Iron Man was so awesome that I almost wish I was sober for it.
awesome.
Wait A Second!: Informant can’t sue the police for drug bust gone awry
Wait A Second!: Informant can’t sue the police for drug bust gone awry
But the legal analysis is more complicated. In DeShaney, the Supreme Court ruled that “nothing in the language of the Due Process Clause itself requires the State to protect the life, liberty, and property of its citizens against invasion by private actors.” There are two exceptions to this rule: (1) where the government has a “special relationship” with the victim or (2) the government “in some way assisted in creating or increasing the danger to the victim.” However, even if the plaintiff satisfies one of these conditions, he can’t win the case unless the government’s failure to protect him was “shock[ing] to the contemporary conscience.”
Yup. The government does not owe you protection, even in situations they themselves created. Scary stuff.
Bond ratings, subprime mortgages and more at the New York Times
Below is a section from about the midpoint in of a Moody’s analyst walking the reporter through evaluating a security representing $430M in subprime mortgages to 2,393 homes in the Southern California area. 75% of the loans are ARMs and 43% lack any written proof of income.
from the article ‘Triple-A Failure’ in the New York Times
On the plus side, Moody’s noted, 94 percent of those borrowers with adjustable-rate loans said their mortgages were for primary residences. “That was a comfort feeling,” Robinson said. Historically, people have been slow to abandon their primary homes. When you get into a crunch, she added, “You’ll give up your ski chalet first.”
I know this was meant to be a little bit of hyperbole, but to some extent I have to think it reflects some of they psycho behavior that led up to this mess. A package of subprime loans… and we’re talking about choices regarding primary homes, as if any notable group of these people have other properties? Certainly there’s a factor at play when it comes to attachment - the credit card companies have been making a lot of credit available to unemployed college students for years based on their psychological profile and view of keeping a good credit score as a sign of success. But suggesting that there’s some other similarly sized investment in most of the above borrower’s lives that they could prioritize lower is just… stupid.
Aye, brilliant
Tagged DAVEDAVE For sooth, open the pod bay doors, please HAL. HAL, I beseech thee. Dost though read me, not? Thy ears, it seems, are like yon portals barred T'entreaties from my lips, though said again. And yet again, O dost though read me, HAL? HAL, dost thou read me? Canst thou hear my call? HAL I hear you well. DAVE Praise God! Unlatch! Unlatch! And it just keeps getting better.
What If Somebody You Know Steals Your Identity? ∞ Get Rich Slowly
What If Somebody You Know Steals Your Identity? ∞ Get Rich Slowly
This is just a tragic story, and such an interesting subject. In reading it I got to thinking about my conflicting impulses when I consider “what if?” and it made me wonder why I had some of the more sympathetic reactions.
After all, if a family member had assaulted me, would I be as sympathetic? If they’d endangered my life in some other way - say, tampering with medication I took - would I be as inclined to simply feel for them? What about if they’d endangered my livelihood somehow, like say abusing some resources I had professionally, or using my name and risking my reputation?
It’s so odd once we involve money in the equation. Chances are we’d all advise our sister to call the cops if her long-time boyfriend punched her and gave her a black eye, but would we do the same if he took out a credit card in her name and ran up debt she might be held responsible for? Chances are we’d scoff at excuses like “he’d had a bad day,” or “he’d been drinking” but “he couldn’t get credit in his own name” or “he’d been making all the payments on the account” might incline us to pause.
The reality is that the credit has the potential to be significantly more damaging to her life in the long term than a black eye ever could. Somehow we’re more quick to say that someone who’d physically abuse you doesn’t deserve your love, but fiscal abuse is indirect enough that we are less quick to make that claim.
I don’t know what’s right in this kind of situation, but it’s certainly food for thought.
No, not so much “more help”
C:\Documents and Settings\Don>net use v: \\192.168.1.250\movies /persistent:yes /user:don /savecred
A command was used with conflicting switches.More help is available by typing NET HELPMSG 3510.
C:\Documents and Settings\Don>net helpmsg 3510
A command was used with conflicting switches.
C:\Documents and Settings\Don>
Um… where is that MORE help? How about “The same exact help is available by typing…” or “the computer version of repeating the same thing, but louder, to the person who doesn’t speak your language is available by typing” perhaps.
That about summarized my opinion of the song
Jason called this a testament to “hand sphincter control” and I don’t know how better to describe it.
Average rap
I can’t afford a car, I use public transportation
I don’t mind, I read till I reach my destination
Sometimes a newspaper, sometimes a book
the amount of money I save, that shit is off the hook!
I’m just an average everyday normal guy
When I go to the clubs I wait in LINE, motherfucker!
Poor Jimmy
If he was ashamed to have committed adultery in his heart what might this do to him?
Clap your hands for Tinkerbell!
Wikihistory
How much better can it get? A free bit of excellent science fiction writing that covers time travel with humor and takes a swipe at Wikipedia and forum lawyering?
Abyss & Apex : Fourth Quarter 2007: Wikihistory
At 02:29:17, SilverFox316 wrote:
All right; that’s it. Having just returned from 1907 Vienna where I secured the expulsion of Hitler from the Academy by means of an elaborate prank involving the Prefect, a goat, and a substantial quantity of olive oil, I now turn my attention to our newer brethren, who, despite rules to the contrary, seem to have no intention of reading Bulletin 1147 (nor its Addendum, Alternate Means of Subverting the Hitlerian Destiny, and here I’m looking at you, SneakyPete). Permit me to sum it up and save you the trouble: no Hitler means no Third Reich, no World War II, no rocketry programs, no electronics, no computers, no time travel. Get the picture?
Spam is so odd
I really should not be so philosophical about spam, considering how much time I spend fighting it. Maybe it’s a correlary of the “if you spend too long fighting monsters you become a monster yourself” concept. I’m not going to start sending it but sometimes it seems more like an amusing sparring partner than an actual enemy I battle. Like Inspector Clouseau and his manservant who would attack him without warning from unexpected places.
Anyway, in clearing out my folder that captures ’suspect’ mail - that which seems dicey but has the remotest possibility of being legit - I see one here with the subject line “All your gay issues solved.”
Putting aside the fact that my mail filter thinks that it’s possible that a mail about “gay issues” might be a legitimate message I would receive, what exactly would be all of someone’s gay issues? Or at least, what would they be that someone could sell you a service or thing that would resolve them? Parental acceptance cream? A bathhouse map? Valium so that you don’t mind the absence of marriage rights?
For my fellow metbloggers…
If you’re not a Metblogger the below may not be of interest to you. If you are, c’mon in.
I love this series
And this is my favorite of them so far, I think. “Liar crevice” cracks me up.
How Idiots Pull Down Palm Trees
How Idiots Pull Down Palm Trees
This is why math (basic geometry) and science (levers) education is important….
Garfield minus Garfield
garfield minus garfield is what happens when you take Garfield out of the strip bearing his name and just leave Jon, talking and reacting to… nothing.
And it’s about a hundred times better than it was before.
If you need an argument for allowing transformative works in copyright, this is a good one. It’s witty and fun and would in no way diminish the original work. Not that such a thing would really be possible.
Yes, I am irrelevant now.
I could live with the fact that someone mistook me for a professor when I walked into a classroom the other day; let’s face it, I’m almost 20 years older than incoming freshmen.
But being considered past the target demographic for science fiction publishers? WTF! I have disposable income for books, you jerks!
Vote early, vote often
I’d love to believe this is isolated to Texas…
Some things never change, which is too bad.
This youtube clip of a 1986 Crossfire episode demonstrates a number of facts.
- Crossfire has always sucked.
- John Lofton has always sucked.
- Frank Zappa was one of our gifts and his loss is still felt.
- People have been whining about an inability to control what their kids consume for a long time.
It’s worth watching, if a bit cringe-inducing, and impressive what a calm and confident command of the facts that Frank Zappa brings to the show and which nobody else does.
Hash tables. All of them.
For some reason I cannot entirely understand, my friend Jason has decided to set up a web application that generates the hash values for anything asked of it. The front page randomizes but you could go straight to the value for the word pointless or perhaps the phrase of questionable utility if you so desired.
His overall goal seems to be to get Google to index all the pages - or as close to “all” as you can get when it’s possible to compute the value of such varied phrases as the black dog barks at midnight and she sells sea shells by the sea shore. But his time and CPU cycles are his own and the least I can do is provide a link and improve his odds of getting a good index.
More excellent short web fiction
A quick and enjoyable read.
Deconstructing Facebook Beacon JavaScript
Radiant Core: Blog: Deconstructing Facebook Beacon JavaScript
This is a nifty little article walking through the steps that Facebook’s “beacon” app went through in order to share information from one site to another without engaging in cross-site scripting. Only of interest if you ever have to deal with javascript in a browser, but if you are it’s pretty cool. Albeit evil.