August 2009
39 posts
Does Freddie Mac want to blow a new housing bubble
Quote of the Day: “The state of California is committed to assisting educators achieve the dream of homeownership.” — John Schienle, Director of the California Housing Loan Insurance Fund
Subject: Does Freddie Mac want to blow a new housing bubble?
Freddie Mac is supporting a California program that allows teachers to buy a home with …
* Only $500 down
* Relaxed credit...
Our Government's Own Contradiction. Legal Tender...
Quote of the Day: The government
called three accountants to testify. The defense asked each one, “What
is the proper way to calculate income for purposes of the Internal
Revenue Code if you are paid in a gold coin that has a $50 face value
on it?” All three of them responded, “I do not know; I’ll have to
research that.” — Mike Zigler, reporting on the 2007 case...
Microsoft apologizes for digital head transplant
Microsoft has apologized for digitally removing the head of a black man from a website photo and replacing it with the head of a white man.
Yesterday, countless bloggers and other netizens noticed that Microsoft’s Polish site had reproduced a photo from the company’s main English language site - with one obvious change. The black man in the middle of the pic had been given a white...
Multitaskers: suckers for irrelevancy, easily...
A recent study implies it’s not cool to brag about your skills as a multitasker.
This will comes as bad news to those of us who regularly consume multiple simultaneous media streams - texting while watching television, hopping between websites and IM, or coding while listening to Jay-Z.
You know who you are.
Specifically, the study concluded that media multitaskers have lower attention,...
Do Unto Them As They Do Unto You
Quote of the Day: “What separates a politician from a normal human being is an excessive amount of gall.” — Charley Reese
Subject: Give the politicians a taste of their own medicine
Politicians are a persistent bunch. Tell them
“No,” and they come knocking again. Shout “No,” and they try to sneak
in the back door.
We must do what they do. We must be...
Semenya had elevated testosterone in early tests
World women’s 800m sprint champion Caster Semenya has returned high
levels of testosterone in preliminary medical tests, according to UK
paper The Daily Telegraph.
The paper reports these elevated results were derived from tests
carried out before the start of the IAAF world championships held in
Berlin.
The early data provided impetus to the IAAF’s decision to have Semenya’s...
5 Myths About Health Care Around the World
By T.R. Reid
Sunday, August 23, 2009
As Americans search for the cure to what ails our health-care
system, we’ve overlooked an invaluable source of ideas and solutions:
the rest of the world. All the other industrialized democracies have
faced problems like ours, yet they’ve found ways to cover everybody —
and still spend far less than we do.
I’ve traveled the...
4chan pwns Christians on Facebook
The denizens of notorious imageboard 4chan are up mischief again with an attack on a Christians over the weekend.
Login details and passwords from an unnamed social networking or dating site for Christians* were posted as a file called “christian.txt” on 4chan. The information was spread among hackers, some of whom hit on the idea of hacking into the Facebook accounts of exposed...
GSM connectivity now enjoyed by 4 billion
GSM is well on the way to global domination, with one-time rival CDMA serving a mere 423 million compared to the four billion who’ll soon be able to make a GSM call.
The news comes from industry advocate group 3G Americas, who reckon that by the end of September phones compliant with the GSM family of standards will be in the hands of four billion people around the world, crushing the...
God and the State
“The Bible, which is a very interesting and here and there very profound book when considered as one of the oldest surviving manifestations of human wisdom and fancy, expresses this truth very naively in its myth of original sin. Jehovah, who of all the good gods adored by men was certainly the most jealous, the most vain, the most ferocious, the most unjust, the most bloodthirsty, the most...
Beware the Surrender
Quotes of the Day:
“You could theoretically design a co-op plan that had the same attributes as a public plan.” — Kathleen Sebelius, Secretary of Health and Human Services
“Well, I think in theory you can imagine a co-operative meeting that definition.” — President Barack Obama
Subject: Beware the surrender on the so-called “public option”
The...
Pi calculated to a record 2.5 trillion decimals
Researchers in Japan have calculated pi to over 2.5 trillion decimal places, more than double the previous world record set in 2002.
Led by University of Tsukuba professor Daisuke Takahashi, the
research team performed the calculation using a massive parallel
processing (MPP) supercomputer called the T2K Tsukuba System, which
consists of 640 high-performance computers clustered together...
US telcos reject broadband cash as connections...
US telcos are turning up their noses at broadband build-out stimulus funds just as US broadband growth hits a record low.
Despite the Obama administration’s offer of $4.7bn in broadband grants, and its stated intent to make broadband available to all Americans, AT&T, Verizon and Comcast couldn’t be bothered, and appear to be ready to let the August 20 deadline for applying for...
Another shocking fact
Quote of the Day: “In 2006,
Massachusetts snuck a health care boondoggle past the voters by pushing
20 percent of the cost on to the federal government and 60 percent onto
private individuals and employers, according to data from the
Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation.” — Michael F. Cannon of the Cato Institute, writing in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Subject: Another...
DNA May Help Build Next Generation of Chips
In the race to keep Moore’s Law alive, researchers are turning to an unlikely ally: DNA molecules that can be positioned on wafers to create smaller, faster and more energy-efficient chips.
Researchers at IBM have made a significant breakthrough in their quest to combine DNA strands with conventional lithographic techniques to create tiny circuit boards. The breakthrough, which allows for the...
Good news on the Enumerated Powers Act
Quote of the Day: “The law will never make men free; it is men who have got to make the law free.” — Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862) Source: Slavery in Massachusetts (1854) Subject: Good news on the Enumerated Powers Act The Enumerated Powers Act (HR 450) would require Congress to identify the Constitutional authority for each law it passes. We think this requirement is an...
They Haven't Quit So We Won't Quit
Quote of the Day: “PASS Act is REAL ID 2.0” — Electronic Privacy Information Center
Subject: They haven’t quit, so we won’t quit
The American people don’t want a national ID
card. Nevertheless, the REAL ID Act remains on the books, and the PASS
Act (S. 1261) is still waiting in the wings to replace it. Here’s the
official description of the PASS Act...
Drugs dominate North America talks
The
leaders of the US, Mexico and Canada have gathered in the Mexican city
of Guadalajara for a summit expected to focus on the violence
surrounding the cross-border drug trade, as well as the global economic
crisis and trade. Barack Obama, the US president, Felipe
Calderon, his Mexican counterpart, and Stephen Harper, Canada’s prime
minister, began...
Kitty porn: Florida man blames cat for illegal...
Don’t let your eyes deceive you. This sweet-looking fellow could be capable of downloading pornography.
Dogs have been blamed for eating homework - now a Florida man says his cat downloaded child pornography.
Police are charging Keith Griffin of Jensen Beach, Florida with 10 counts of possession of child pornography after finding more than 1,000 images on his personal computer.
Griffin...
'Dead' baby wakes before funeral
A premature baby declared dead by doctors at a hospital in Paraguay was found to be alive hours later when he was taken home for a funeral wake.
Jose Alvarenga said he had discovered his son was alive after he heard crying from the box in which he was placed.
The baby is now back at the same hospital’s intensive care unit and reported to be in a stable condition.
The head of paediatric...
Will Google regret the mega data center?
By Cade Metz In the wake of Microsoft’s decision to remove its Windows Azure infrastructure from the state of Washington - where a change in local tax law has upped the price of building out the proverbial cloud - the company’s former director of data center services has warned that Microsoft and other cloud-happy giants may soon find that the mega data center isn’t all...
New Allies Fighting for What YOU Want
Quote of the Day: “The high cost and inequitable character of our medical care system are the direct result of our steady movement toward reliance on third-party payment. A cure requires reversing course, re-privatizing medical care by eliminating most third-party payment, and restoring the role of insurance to providing protection against major medical catastrophes.” — Milton...
It's Congress vs. ICANN in the battle for Internet...
The current three-year working arrangement between the US Dept. of Commerce and the institution that maintains the Internet’s top-level domain structure, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), expires at the end of this September. With the Internet being perceived as more of an international platform than an American one, support is growing among overseas...
Why the rush?
Quote of the Day: “Farming looks mighty easy when your plow is a pencil and you’re a thousand miles from the corn field.” — Dwight Eisenhower Subject: Why the rush? Congress first heard it from DC Downsizers. Then the media and other groups joined the call. Congress now knows that citizens want them to read their bills. How has Congress reacted to the growing Read the Bills...
IT grad sues school over failed job hunt
A US college graduate is suing her alma mater because she has been unable to find a job.
Trina Thompson, 27, graduated in April from Monroe College in the Bronx, New York with a bachelor’s degree in IT. That lofty educational achievement hasn’t yet helped her land a job, and so she’s suing the college for reimbursement of her tuition - $70,000 - plus an additional $2,000...
Evolution: 24 myths and misconceptions
If you think you understand it, you don’t know nearly enough about it
It will soon be 200 years since the birth of Charles Darwin and 150 years since the publication of On the Origin of Species, arguably the most important book ever written. In it, Darwin outlined an idea that many still find shocking - that all life on Earth, including human life, evolved through natural selection.
Darwin...
Five Futures for the Audit the Fed Bill
Quote of the Day: “The purpose of a government investigatory commission is to place blame where it does the least harm politically.” — Paul Craig Roberts Subject: Five Futures for the Audit the FED bill Yesterday we learned that we must be brutally realistic about our situation, while remaining confident of ultimate victory, but without setting our hearts on a specific outcome by...
U.S. Marine Corps bans social networks
Claiming that sites such as MySpace, Facebook, and Twitter pose a “haven for malicious actors and content,” the United States Marine Corps has instituted an immediate ban on social networking sites for soldiers and officers using the Marines’ internal network.
According to a notification issued yesterday, the Marine Corps says social networking sites put the military at risk of...
Audit the Fed and the Stockdale Paradox
Quote of the Day: “The moment of greatest vulnerability is the instant after victory” - Napoleon Bonaparte (as quoted by Lt. Col. Dave Grossman) Subject: Passing the Audit the FED bill We love the fact that Ron Paul’s Audit the FED bill is a lever designed to move the government in a downsizing direction. We love levers. And we’re thrilled that … * The bill now has...
New HIV strain discovered in woman from Cameroon
A new strain of the virus that causes AIDS has been discovered in a woman from the African nation of Cameroon. It differs from the three known strains of human immunodeficiency virus and appears to be closely related to a form of simian virus recently discovered in wild gorillas, researchers report in Monday’s edition of the journal Nature Medicine. The finding...
Deal reached in UBS fraud case
How unfortunate. The government always gets you. ———————————————— The US government has reached a deal in principle with Switzerland in its attempt to get the names of thousands of Americans suspected of evading taxes by making deposits in UBS, the major Swiss...
Woman demands refund for vacation spoiled by naked...
A Serbian woman is demanding a full refund of her Greek vacation, not because of bed bugs or a noisy room, but because their room was next to a room occupied by 2 girls enjoying themselves on their balcony (naked). Apparently, these girls were out on their balcony so often, that her husband suddenly had a similar urge to soak up some sun - and just so happened to do so whenever these girls were...
China seals town after plague deaths
Chinese health officials have sealed off a town in a sparsely populated area of north-central China to halt the spread of an aggressively deadly strain of plague.
As of Sunday, two men have died from the outbreak, and another 10 - most of them relatives of the first dead man - are under quarantine.
The disease is pneumonic plague, which the World Health Organization refers to as “the most...
Final numbers for July
Quote of the Day: “Free cheese is only found in mousetraps.” — Russian proverb (HT: Professor Mark Perry of the Carpe Diem blog) Subject: Final numbers for July As usual on the first work day of a new month, we report our final results from the previous month … * The Downsize DC Army ended July with 27,615 members, an increase of 1,510 net new members/subscribers *...
Journalist hunts for acid-spitting Mongolian death...
Armed with explosives, two men are heading to Mongolia’s Gobi Desert to find the fabled acid-spitting and lightning-throwing Mongolian death worm. The worm has never been documented but some Mongolians are convinced it exists. They call it Allghoi Khorkhoi, or “intestine worm” because it resembles a cow’s intestine and is about 1.5m long. The worm apparently jumps out of...
WatchUltra High Speed Robot Reflexes
Israel evicts Palestinian families
Israeli security forces have forcibily evicted two Palestinian families from their homes in East Jerusalem after a court rejected an appeal against their eviction. The al-Ghawi and al-Hanoun families who were evicted on Sunday have been living in the Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood since 1956. Israel has reportedly set aside the land their houses were built on...
Bill Hicks / Time To Evolve Ideas (1992)
After Tenenbaum, who will take back the music...
By Angela Gunn
Because the Joel Tenenbaum trial hasn’t been maddening enough, Engadget yesterday had a little item on how the RIAA is claiming that customers ought to just suck it up and accept that DRMed tracks will go poof even if they’ve been paid for, since no other products or service providers are expected to “provide consumers with perpetual access to creative...