2011 archive
Update from the Foreclosure-Based Economy 0
Foreclosures are just fine, thank you, Country Wide and Ameriquest:
Meanwhile, the median price of homes sold last month dipped to $189,000, down 11.1 percent from May 2010, the Virginia Beach-based multiple listing service reported.
Nearly one of every three homes sold in May – 31 percent – were in foreclosure or sold for less than what the homeowner owed, according to the report. That’s up from 21 percent a year ago.
Facebook Frolics, He Was on to Her All Along Dept. 0
Chapter One:
The scheme proved so successful, in fact, that FBI agents last Friday arrested Angela Voelkert’s former spouse on a felony charge for allegedly installing a listening device in her vehicle, according to court records.
Chapter Two:
When Knowledge Means Jail Time 0
White Southerners considered ignorance a cornerstone of chatttel slavery. At the corner of Granby and City Hall Avenue, downtown Norfolk:
Click for a larger image.
The inscription reads:
Margaret Douglass, a white woman from Charleston, South Carolina, moved to Norfolk with her daughter Rosa in 1845 and lived near hear on the former Barraud Court. She was a vest maker by occupation. In June 1852 she and her daughter opened a school in the second story backroom of her house to teach 25 free black children, both boys and girls, how to read and write. Tuition was three dollars a quarter. After she was seen walking in the funeral procession of one of her deceased students, her school was raided, and she was arrested. She argued her own case in court, pointing out that the wives and daughters of several court officials taught black children weekly in Sunday School classes at Christ Church from the same books she used. After being found guilty, she served a month in jail. Later she mmoved to Philadelphia with her daughter and gained considerable notoriety based on her booklet about her experience in Norfolk that was published in 1854.
QOTD 0
Mignon McLaughlin, from the Quotemaster (subscribe here):
Nobody really listens to anyone else, and if you try it for a while you’ll see why.
Think of the Children . . . . 0
Doug J at Balloon Juice:
He has a point.
I remember sitting on the porch swing at Pine View Farm at about age seven wondering whether the nuclear bombs that would be dropped on The World’s Largest Military Complex(TM) across the bay when World War II started would take us out to (yes, they likely would have).
Some years later, when I was becoming curious about what Doug J. refers to as “consensual sexual relations,” I couldn’t get a straight answer out of anyone. I couldn’t even get any help in figuring out what the hell I was curious about.
Grown-ups are weird.
Swampwater: The Game 0
Now, satisfy your inner mercenary and play at being the nasty in the comfort of your video gaming room:
Coming soon to a TV near you: “Blackwater” the video game.
The Los Angeles-based interactive entertainment company 505 Games said this week it plans to roll out the game this fall under an exclusive licensing agreement with Erik Prince, the former Navy SEAL who founded the controversial security company in 1997.
“Male Hotness Delusion Syndrome” 1
Clarence Page notes that it seems to be spreading:
Wherever they may be, Salt advises men in their 40s to look in the mirror before they get too full of themselves and “discount their hotness by the proportion by which there are more women than men.” Otherwise, fellas, you could be in for the rude revelation that that certain someone is not nearly as into you as you might have thought.
And if you really want to get a woman excited about you, my wife offers this suggestion: Take a picture of yourself cooking dinner. You can leave your clothes on.
Cantor’s Cant 0
Double standards. Nay, triple even.
Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
IOKIYAR.
Via Bob Cesca.
Facebook Frolics, When Do I Start Shaving Dept. 0
There appears to be evidence that the people who run Facebook are mentally a bunch of teenaged boys who can’t deal with puberty.
QOTD 0
John Maynard Keynes, from the Quotemaster (subscribe here):
I do not know which makes a man more conservative–to
know nothing but the present, or nothing but the past.
Nothing To Do, Nowhere To Go 0
No doubt throwing more persons out of work austerity will fix this:
Lower Merion School District, Back in Court 0
Lower Merion School District, outside of Philly, has been sued again.
That’s the school district that was surreptitously taking pictures of schoolkids via webcams, because they could.
The Philadelphia Inquirer reports a former Harriton High School student filed suit against Lower Merion School District on Monday over the monitoring software installed on laptops given to students.
The school district claims he’s suing just for the money.
I have little sympathy with them.
Let them pay. Consider it the price of arrogance.
Full Disclosure:
I used to live in Lower Merion, many years ago.
Great place to live.
Excellent schools. Great teachers. Dumb administrators. (Sort of like many other school districts.)