May, 2009 archive
Too Much Texting Is Not the Cause of Dumbness 0
Dumbness is the cause of too much texting.
It never fails. When something new comes along and catches the attention of the Younger Generation ™, armchair shrinks appear with papers and telly vision interviews (before that, it was Marconi’s Magic Box; before that, Chatauquas; before that, drums) claiming that “It (whatever it is) is ruining our youth. Gasp. Horrors. (Book contract?)”
The phenomenon is beginning to worry physicians and psychologists, who say it is leading to anxiety, distraction in school, falling grades, repetitive stress injury and sleep deprivation.
Frankly, the kids who suffer from anxiety, distraction in school, falling grades, repetitive stress injury and sleep deprivation would find some way to do so if cell phones and text messages did not exist.
I did.
The Household Financial Fallacy 0
Fundamental to this whole mess is thinking of one’s primary residence, not as a place to live, but as an investment. That’s gambling with the grocery money.
The S&P/Case-Shiller home-price index decreased 18.7 percent from March 2008, matching the drop in the year ended in February. The measure declined 19 percent in January, the most since data began in 2001.
Record foreclosures are depressing the value of other properties, contributing to a slump in household wealth that is hurting consumer spending and the economy. Still, falling prices and mortgage rates have made homes more affordable, helping to stem the slide in sales, which will eventually help prices stabilize.
Douglas A. McIntyre, writing at 24/7, considers the claim that the S&P data is so old (two months) as to be meaningless:
The market is looking for ways to claim that housing is finding a bottom and that it is possible that a recovery in home prices in in the wings. While there may be some pick-up in sales in the most depressed markets including Nevada and Florida, there is no sign that prices are rising. Clever buyers are moving in to buy homes in foreclosure, but the prices of these houses are so low that their sales may actually bring down the average price of the homes being sold in those markets.
Funny Money 0
I’ve tried to read this article three times now and each time I get lost in the mumbo-jumbo. Maybe Duncan understands it–after all, he used to teach this stuff–but I don’t.
One thing I have learned in years of working in large organizations is that, if something doesn’t make sense and can’t be expressed in plain language, the odds are that it just doesn’t make sense and someone is pulling a fast one.
The magician doesn’t really make the rabbit magically turn into a hankerchief and losers don’t magically become winners. It’s all just sleight of hand.
Wells Fargo & Co., Bank of America Corp. and PNC Financial Services Group Inc. are also poised to benefit from taking over home lenders Wachovia Corp., Countrywide Financial Corp. and National City Corp., regulatory filings show. The deals provide a combined $56 billion in so-called accretable yield, the difference between the value of the loans on the banks’ balance sheets and the cash flow they’re expected to produce.
Faced with the highest U.S. unemployment in 25 years and a surging foreclosure rate, the lenders are seizing on a four- year-old rule aimed at standardizing how they book acquired loans that have deteriorated in credit quality. By applying the measure to mortgages and commercial loans that lost value during the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, the banks will wring revenue from the wreckage, said Robert Willens, a former Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. executive who runs a tax and accounting consulting firm in New York.
Not that the Wall Street Wankers would ever try to pull a fast one. Oh! Certainly not!
We need new accounting rules.
Stray Thought 0
If Obama had nominated Jesus Christ himself to the Supreme Court, the wingnuts would have left (their hate-full version of) the Christian faith rather than support the nomination.
Idle Moments 1
Not sure how I feel about this.
On the one-hand, idling vehicles don’t seem to be the eleventh plague.
Light Bloggery 0
Travel day.
Greater Wingnuttery XXIII 0
John Cole on Republican political strategy:
And I’m serious. Looking at the silly commercials the RNC keeps releasing, the idiotic motions to rename the Democratic party, and the rest of the nonsense they are doing, they don’t seem content to sit back and watch the world go by or build the base. They seem intent on doing whatever they can to piss off “liberals,” which includes everyone on the planet who may or may not have had Dijon mustard on a sandwich.
A friend of mine today, whose disdain for contemporary Republican ideology, if anything, exceeds mine, asked me (this is a paraphrase), “What happened to the Republican Party of our youth? Why has the Republican Party become so full of hate?”
The only answer I could hazard was,
Fear. Fear of change. Fear of black folks. Fear of Mexicans. Fear of Guatemalans. Fear of homosexuals. Fear of anything that’s not whitebread Ozzie and Harriet made-for-TV America.
Fear of the Big Wide World.
Drinking Liberally 0
Triumph Brewing Company, 2nd and Chestnut, Philadelphia, Pa, Tuesday, 6 p., just a hop, a scotch, and a soda from Penn’s Landing.
It’s safe this week. I’m on the road.
There Was a Young Landlord from Nantucket 0
Bargain basement Hernando’s Hideaway it ain’t:
Recession price: $45,000.
“Without question, it is the best summer to come to Nantucket,” said Brian Sullivan of Maury People Sotheby’s International Realty, who has been selling and renting estate compounds on the Massachusetts resort island since 1996. “Between the rentals, the restaurants, and the bed and breakfasts, all kinds of great deals are being offered.”
Give Ray a Hand 0
Details here.
Truth. No Reconciliation. 0
McClatchy factchecks Cheney. Cheney loses. Read the whole thing.
In a statement April 21, however, Blair said the information “was valuable in some instances” but that “there is no way of knowing whether the same information could have been obtained through other means. The bottom line is that these techniques hurt our image around the world, the damage they have done to our interests far outweighed whatever benefit they gave us and they are not essential to our national security.”
Via Delaware Liberal.
Move ‘Em Up, Head ‘Em Out 0
And what’s that rustling noise?
Stolen cattle are often loaded onto trailers and taken straight from their farm or ranch to auction at a stockyard, according to detectives involved in tracking thefts.
Identifying those cattle not easy since many are not branded and detectives and owners need to act fast to retrieve the animals before sale — a task made doubly difficult if they have been transported across state lines.
Texas, the nation’s biggest cattle state, reported thefts virtually tripled between 2007 and 2008 to 6,404 head of cattle, according to Carmen Fenton, spokeswoman for the Texas and Southwestern Cattle Raisers Association.
An Armed Society Is a Polite Society 0
In your dreams.
A man and a woman were killed. The 10-year-old and a man were grazed in the head and another man was shot in the wrist.
Wessing says when police arrived, patrol cars were hit by gunfire and one officer was shot in the left arm.
A hot-tempered nutcase with a gun is still a hot-tempered nutcase.
More Apple Fail, Teen-Aged Boy Dept. 0
Apple has banned another program from its iPhone Apps store.
This program, called Eucalyptus, goes directly to Project Gutenberg, a highly respected repository for public domain ebooks, to allow the user to download ebooks. I have, in fact, often used Project Gutenberg, downloading books by Mark Twain, R. Austin Freeman, and others.
Seems the issue is that, among it’s other umpty-ump thousands of titles, the site contains Sir Richard Burton’s (no, not that Richard Burton; the sober one) translation of the Kama Sutra.
The Guardian reports:
For those of you unfamiliar with the Kama Sutra, it is sort of a poetic Indian “how to” of sex and love. Only a teenaged boy could find it at all prurient.
Of course, a teen-aged boy can find the Hanes catalog prurient.
Is Apple hiring teen-aged Mac fanboys to run the Apps Store? Inquiring minds want to know.
Thought Police 0
The straight and narrow . . . minds:
“That club still has the right to exist,“ Falwell said, although it cannot use the university’s name in its activities.
Furrfu.
Dustbiters 0
Holy moly, here I am in Virginia Beach for Memorial Day and, after a long drive punctuated by massive tire FAIL (fortunately I have a Real Spare Tire), I fire up the netbook to find out that banks are dropping like, well, droppings.
Can’t bank on these no more:
Citizens National Bank, Macomb, IL
Strategic Capital Bank, Champaign, IL
Plus there was yesterday’s:
BankUnited, FSB, Coral Gables, FL
Masters of the Universe, oh, yes, indeedy.
Contemporary Republican Strategy 0
There’s a great summary of it here. It sums the whole thing up so neatly I can think of no way to excerpt it.
Charted Waters 0
Bonddad has a great series up about the Federal budget.
As is typical of his posts, there’re lots of facts and almost no editorializing.
One thing his statistics show is that, despite the caterwauling, Social Security spending is not a big issue; it’s held pretty steady as a percentage of expenditure.
Medical spending–Medicare and Medicaid–that’s another thing.
He doesn’t editorialize, but I do. We need single payer.
