The Court is Not Amused

Knowing my affinity for judicial snark - E sent me a link to the U of Washington's Law School's legal humor page.

They summarize a long list of opinions where judges have departed from staid legal prose in favor of bringing the funny.

I'm primarily interested in the snark, so here's US District Judge Kent laying the smack down in Bradshaw v. Unity Marine Corporation, Inc., 147 F. Supp. 2d 668.

Briefly, the case involved a sailor suing a dockowner for injuries on the job. Two attorneys who have offered legal arguments that were wanting in both substance and format.

Let's join the opinion already in progress:

Before proceeding further, the Court notes that this case involves two extremely likable lawyers, who have together delivered some of the most amateurish pleadings ever to cross the hallowed causeway into Galveston, an effort which leads the Court to surmise but one plausible explanation. Both attorneys have obviously entered into a secret pact--complete with hats, handshakes and cryptic words--to draft their pleadings entirely in crayon on the back sides of gravy-stained paper place mats, in the hope that the Court would be so charmed by their child-like efforts that their utter dearth of legal authorities in their briefing would go unnoticed. Whatever actually occurred, the Court is now faced with the daunting task of deciphering their submissions. With Big Chief tablet readied, thick black pencil in hand, and a devil-may-care laugh in the face of death, life on the razor's edge sense of exhilaration, the Court begins....

Defendant begins the descent into Alice's Wonderland by submitting a Motion that relies upon only one legal authority. The Motion cites a Fifth Circuit case which stands for the whopping proposition that a federal court sitting in Texas applies the Texas statutes of limitations to certain state and federal law claims. See Gonzales v. Wyatt, 157 F.3d 1016, 1021 n. 1 (5th Cir.1998). That is all well and good--the Court is quite fond of the Erie doctrine; indeed there is talk of little else around both the Canal and this Court's water cooler. Defendant, however, does not even cite to Erie, but to a mere successor case, and further fails to even begin to analyze why the Court should approach the shores of Erie. Finally, Defendant does not even provide a cite to its desired Texas limitation statute. [FN2] A more bumbling approach is difficult to conceive--but wait folks, There's More!

Plaintiff responds to this deft, yet minimalist analytical wizardry with an equally gossamer wisp of an argument, although Plaintiff does at least cite the federal limitations provision applicable to maritime tort claims. See 46 U.S.C. § 763a. Naturally, Plaintiff also neglects to provide any analysis whatsoever of why his claim versus Defendant Phillips is a maritime action. Instead, Plaintiff "cites" to a single case from the Fourth Circuit. Plaintiff's citation, however, points to a nonexistent Volume "1886" of the Federal Reporter *671 Third Edition and neglects to provide a pinpoint citation for what, after being located, turned out to be a forty-page decision. Ultimately, to the Court's dismay after reviewing the opinion, it stands simply for the bombshell proposition that torts committed on navigable waters (in this case an alleged defamation committed by the controversial G. Gordon Liddy aboard a cruise ship at sea) require the application of general maritime rather than state tort law. See Wells v. Liddy, 186 F.3d 505, 524 (4th Cir.1999) (What the ...)?! The Court cannot even begin to comprehend why this case was selected for reference. It is almost as if Plaintiff's counsel chose the opinion by throwing long range darts at the Federal Reporter (remarkably enough hitting a nonexistent volume!). And though the Court often gives great heed to dicta from courts as far flung as those of Manitoba, it finds this case unpersuasive. There is nothing in Plaintiff's cited case about ingress or egress between a vessel and a dock, although counsel must have been thinking that Mr. Liddy must have had both ingress and egress from the cruise ship at some docking facility, before uttering his fateful words.

(and so on...)

Ahh, what fun...

Random Sip From the Firehose

1. Who will pay more income tax this year: You - or Bank of America? The answer won't surprise you.
    
2. Rep. Eric Cantor makes a complete fool of himself - (TPM)
    
3. Gmail compared to Fitts Law, found wanting - (Coding Horror)
    
4. I wish all user agreements were written this way - (H/t Good blog)
    
5. More than a dozen Wall Street firms colluded to underpay interest owed to state governments on municipal bonds. Estimated time until we see a defense of this tactic voiced on CNBC...?

Man With The Golden Arm

(via The Daily Mail)

File under 'Awesome'

An Australian man who has been donating his extremely rare kind of blood for 56 years has saved the lives of more than two million babies.

James Harrison, 74, has an antibody in his plasma that stops babies dying from Rhesus disease, a form of severe anemia.

He has enabled countless mothers to give birth to healthy babies, including his own daughter, Tracey, who had a healthy son thanks to her father's blood.

Mr Harrison has been giving blood every few weeks since he was 18 years old and has now racked up a total of 984 donations.

That seriously kicks @ss.

Barry on Health Care

Barry Ritholz posts some off the cuff observations about health care in the US - (which are nice) but the winning 'graphs are his personal experience he posts in the comments section:

I used to be a pitcher, and somewhere between college and last year I tore my rotator cuff. Never knew about it, never bothered me. One night, I wake up in pain, Can’t lie on the shoulder. Gets worse, and worse, and after a month I finally go to the orthopedist. X-rays in his office, “yep, it looks like a problem, you need an MRI.”

Here’s where we go down the rabbit whole.

I say, let’s do it, and the doc tells me he needs permission from the Insurer. So a 24 year old girl with a High School diploma sitting in a cubicle in Syracuse has to give approval to my doc, (Yale undergrad, Columbia Med school). That makes no sense.

Even worse, it takes a week to get permission, and then another week to schedule the MRI. This means I am in pain for 2 unnecessary weeks. Very annoying.

MRI comes back positive, and I say (right from Rocky) Doc, cut me. He warns me its a six month long rehab — grueling physical therapy (PX), very uncomfortable. Better alternative is to try Physical Therapy before hand. 3X week for 4 months — massage (not the good kind — painful and no fun), strengthening, stretching.

Further down the rabbit hole: It seems that every 4th visit, the insurer wants an evaluation done. This is a ridiculous waste of time — it seems as if they are trying to discourage the treatments. I speak to the insurer, get a colossal runaround. I speak to 5 different people, there is no way to waive this.

I have a simple solution — cancel the PX, and get the Doc to schedule the surgery. My insurer SUDDENLY becomes way more responsive. Senior VPs are calling me, trying to get me to try PX first. My terms are simple Evals after every 10 weeks, not 4th visit. I keep getting bumped up to higher VPs.
When we reserve the operating room for the actual surgery, they finally cave. I make them fax the pre-approval of the entire PX in writing. Surgery canceled, PX effective.

That is the sign of a very broken system . . .

Once again: rationing? Check. Bureaucratic delays? Check. Pointless suffering and run around? Check.

And that is our current system.

Here's to Whitey

My great uncle B passed away this morning. He was a man I didn't know enough about - but somebody I greatly admired.

I knew him as man who delighted in life and family. As a combat veteran of WWII, he was practically a legend in our family.

He'd enlisted as a skinny 19 year old, had more than his share of close shaves in the war, then came home to build a life.

In all my memories of him, he is laughing or making others laugh. Surrounded by family hanging on his every word - or gamely laughing along at whatever prank he'd stumbled into.

His family is legion. And wherever they gather to mourn the man - there is sure to be more laughter than tears. Like him, they have an infectious sense of fun. I remember B's boys at my dad's funeral - they insisted on making time for what fun could be had. It helped everyone to have them around.

My great uncle B.

By any measure - a giant of a man.

Forty Cents an Hour

You have to read this to believe it:

In 1979, Des Moines Register reporters Mike McGraw and Margaret Engel discovered sixty mentally disabled men eviscerating turkeys at an Iowa meat plant for less than $70 a month. The workers were Texas natives who had aged out of state care and been sent to the meat plant to work for subminimum wages by a Texas labor broker called Henry’s Turkey Service. They were housed in an old schoolhouse that was owned by the town of Atalissa and operated by Henry’s, which deducted room and board from the men’s meager paychecks.

The low wages were legal under the federal Fair Labor Standards Act, which allows disabled workers to be paid based on their productivity. But it wasn’t clear that anyone had ever assessed the men’s productivity at Atalissa, and there was a clear conflict of interest in Henry’s acting as the men’s employer, landlord, caretaker, and designated recipient of disability benefits. The whole situation raised “thorny questions about how handicapped persons should be paid for their work,” according to the article that McGraw and Engel wrote (PDF). It ran on the front page of the Sunday Register and spurred an investigation by the U.S. Department of Labor.

Shortly after their story was published, McGraw returned to his old paper, The Kansas City Star, where he still works today, and Engel moved to a job at the Register’s Washington, D.C., bureau.... “We had reason to believe something would happen,” McGraw says now.

But nothing did. The investigation stalled and eventually was dropped, and with both McGraw and Engel gone, no one at the paper followed up.

Thirty years later the Atalissa bunkhouse story resurfaced at the Register. In February 2009, reporter Clark Kauffman received a call from the sister of a Henry’s Turkey Service employee who had started working at the Atalissa plant in 1979. She was concerned that her brother was being exploited; after three decades working for Henry’s, he had amassed a life savings of just $80. As Kauffman began digging, he unearthed the Register’s original story from the clip file. It turned out that twenty-one of the original sixty men were still living in the same bunkhouse, still plucking turkey feathers and pulling guts at the same slaughterhouse. Their 40-cents-an-hour wage had not changed.

Thankfully, this time around - the government has actually done something.

But a classic example of how merely bringing bad things to light is not enough - disinterested government officials are perfectly willing to forget about something if we let them.

Read the whole thing.

Financial Access at Birth

(Via Felix Salmon)

Here's a clever, yet depressing idea:

We propose that starting November 11, 2011 (11/11/11), every child born in this world will start life with a Financial Access at Birth (FAB) bank account. The opening of these “FAB” bank accounts would be integrated with the official birth registration process and perhaps with electronic banking. Governments, with the help of institutional/individual donors will make a deposit of US$100 in each FAB account.

The barriers in the way of this idea are legion, the scope of the problem they are trying to solve is depressing -

-but it's still a damn good idea.

File Under "Well, duh..."

(Via The Consumerist)

Science Says High-Fructose Corn Syrup Is Pretty Much The Worst Thing Ever

"Some people have claimed that high-fructose corn syrup is no different than other sweeteners when it comes to weight gain and obesity, but our results make it clear that this just isn't true, at least under the conditions of our tests," said psychology professor Bart Hoebel, who specializes in the neuroscience of appetite, weight and sugar addiction. "When rats are drinking high-fructose corn syrup at levels well below those in soda pop, they're becoming obese -- every single one, across the board. Even when rats are fed a high-fat diet, you don't see this; they don't all gain extra weight."

Stimulus Tracking

ProPublica has been tracking the progress of federal stimulus spending and while the $800 billion dollar figure has stuck in the national psyche, here's what they've been pointing out for months:

Stimulus spending by the Obama administration has reached roughly $321 billion, according to the latest numbers from Recovery.gov. That number includes $202 billion in spending and an estimated $119 billion in tax cuts. Overall, slightly more than 40 percent of the nearly $800 billion stimulus package has entered the economy.

In other words, whatever good has been done, has been done with considerably less than $800 billion - and a third of the actual money spent came in the form of tax cuts.

Taibbi's List of Cons

I'd missed this effort from Rolling Stone's Matt Taibbi, Wall Street's Bailout Hustle - printed back in February.

It's vintage Taibbi - a frothing screed that uses language every bit as profane as the conduct it describes. Here's a nice bit detailing Goldman's tactics right before AIG went under:

...when the housing bubble went crazy, Goldman made money coming and going. They made money selling the crap mortgages, and they made money by collecting on the bogus insurance from AIG when the crap mortgages flopped.

Still, the trick for Goldman was: how to collect the insurance money. As AIG headed into a tailspin that fateful summer of 2008, it looked like the beleaguered firm wasn't going to have the money to pay off the bogus insurance. So Goldman and other banks began demanding that AIG provide them with cash collateral. In the 15 months leading up to the collapse of AIG, Goldman received $5.9 billion in collateral...

It was a brilliant move. When a company like AIG is about to die, it isn't supposed to hand over big hunks of assets to a single creditor like Goldman; it's supposed to equitably distribute whatever assets it has left among all its creditors. Had AIG gone bankrupt, Goldman would have likely lost much of the $5.9 billion that it pocketed as collateral. "Any bankruptcy court that saw those collateral payments would have declined that transaction as a fraudulent conveyance," says Barry Ritholtz, the author of Bailout Nation. Instead, Goldman and the other counterparties got their money out in advance — putting a torch to what was left of AIG....

And why not? After all, according to the terms of the bailout deal struck when AIG was taken over by the state in September 2008, Goldman was paid 100 cents on the dollar on an additional $12.9 billion it was owed by AIG — again, money it almost certainly would not have seen a fraction of had AIG proceeded to a normal bankruptcy. Along with the collateral it pocketed, that's $19 billion in pure cash that Goldman would not have "earned" without massive state intervention. How's that $13.4 billion in 2009 profits looking now? And that doesn't even include the direct bailouts of Goldman Sachs and other big banks, which began in earnest after the collapse of AIG.

I like that last bit. How's that $13.4 billion in 2009 profits looking now?

Goldman receives just under $19 billion from husking AIG and then fleecing the taxpayer - and makes $13.4 billion for the year.

Meaning - the rest of their year's activities (that they tell us about) talled up to negative $5 billion dollars plus. Absent those $19 billion in ill gotten money, Goldman was in a world of hurt.

Taibbi's narrative is colorful - but it's very illuminating to see all the Wall Street giveaways piled up one after another.

Good stuff.

In The Interest of Saving Time

Here are two really short encapsulations of two very big issues.

1. Why bipartisanship is an impossibility in the current US congress (Via James Fallows):

[the following is an exchange between two Congressmen discussing the stimulus bill]:

"GOP member: 'I'd like this in the bill.'

"Dem member response: 'If we put it in, will you vote for the bill?'

"GOP member: 'You know I can't vote for the bill.'

"Dem member: 'Then why should we put it in the bill?'

2. "The clearest description of the financial mess" (as satire) (Via Mark Hurst)

Go to The Daily Show episode for March 16, 2010
Start watching at 7:09 and watch until 11:30.

As Mr. Hurst said, "The best 4 minutes and 21 seconds of video you'll likely watch all month."

Things That Make Me Laugh: Tea Partiers

Bruce Bartlett takes the p!ss out of the average Tea Partier's grasp of taxes in the US. Apparently David Frum and some folks polled about 57 of them about the current state of taxes in America - and let's just say they were found wanting:

The first question that was asked concerned the size of government. Tea Partyers were asked how much the federal government gets in taxes as a percentage of the gross domestic product. According to Congressional Budget Office data, acceptable answers would be 6.4%, which is the percentage for federal income taxes; 12.7%, which would be for both income taxes and Social Security payroll taxes; or 14.8%, which would represent all federal taxes as a share of GDP in 2009.

...

Tuesday's Tea Party crowd, however, thought that federal taxes were almost three times as high as they actually are. The average response was 42% of GDP and the median 40%. The highest figure recorded in all of American history was half those figures: 20.9% at the peak of World War II in 1944.

As useful as it is for some of these folks to vent their anger in public - I have to say the Tea Party is a bit of a joke. I mean, sure - be angry with government - but let's have a point, shall we? The fault lines present on some of their signs shows a group of people whose only uniting factor is they are mad at government.

Well, get in line, folks - and stop acting like you came up with the idea. I'd pay good money to see some of these Ron Paulites stand up and spout in front of a throng of Tea Partiers. I'd lay good odds that the crowd (or any card carrying GOP members) would storm the stage to shut them up.

Sheesh.

Oh, and this made me laugh, too but for different reasons.

I Know It When I See It

The headslapper: An idea so good, so obviously better that any analysis is reserved for how you can put it to use, rather than IF you should put it to use.

Here's one - the infinite USB, by Gonglue Jiang, a Chinese design student:

Don'cha wish your machine's USB's all ended like this?


(H/t Endgadget)

Frum on Health Care's Waterloo

I have no love for David Frum, and while I think much of his Waterloo article is aspirational - it nicely encapsulates what is wrong with current political strategy.

Conservatives and Republicans today suffered their most crushing legislative defeat since the 1960s.

...

A huge part of the blame for today’s disaster attaches to conservatives and Republicans ourselves.

At the beginning of this process we made a strategic decision: unlike, say, Democrats in 2001 when President Bush proposed his first tax cut, we would make no deal with the administration. No negotiations, no compromise, nothing. We were going for all the marbles. This would be Obama’s Waterloo – just as healthcare was Clinton’s in 1994.

...

This time, when we went for all the marbles, we ended with none.

I think Frum's pandering a bit - but here's a bit that I especially appreciate:

Could a deal have been reached? Who knows? But we do know that the gap between this plan and traditional Republican ideas is not very big. The Obama plan has a broad family resemblance to Mitt Romney’s Massachusetts plan. It builds on ideas developed at the Heritage Foundation in the early 1990s that formed the basis for Republican counter-proposals to Clintoncare in 1993-1994.

Exactly the observation that was lacking in the all the commentary and posturing of conservatives.

This legislation was not a left wing showcase of ideas. It was a stumbling attempt to make something that would pass with broad support. The GOP chose to go scorched earth against ideas they used to support. Which made them look craven and stupid. To whip up the faithful, they made demonstrably false statements, invented any number of inane straw men - and finally trotted out the tired old canards of immigration and abortion - (as if this bill was an attempt to wander into either of those minefields).

A lot of people got mad - but in the end, the Democrats finally were forced to use the majority they had been given.

In the health care summit, the visual that keeps springing to mind is the President saying over and over again that there were large sections of the bill that they could agree on - and that a viable course would be to pass those measures and then put the more contentious items into a separate bill. This was resoundingly rejected with calls to "start over" - which is Washington-speak for "do nothing."

It's disappointing on lots of levels, because there are good conservative ideas (no matter how well hidden they are behind the idiocy of GOP party leadership) and because a president wasted a year attempting to pass this with the GOP and ended up without a single conservative vote.

You wonder if the GOP will change tactics, or if they will double down yet again. I don't believe bipartisian legislation is inherently more virtuous or effective, but I think that unavoidable problems require legislation, and scorched earth politics just prolongs our national agony.

If this was a Waterloo - I'm hoping the GOP's old guard gets left on the battlefield. They'd be a better party without them.

(H/t TPM)

Bolsheviks and Baby-Killers, Unite!

Well, I'll be damned - the Dems actually grew a pair and passed a bill.

Golf clap, anyone?

Now how's about passing the reconciliation bill, add a robust public option, and get off my tv for a while, eh?

I'm sick of you people.

The [Investment] Firm

(Via The Awl with a H/t to Felix Salmon)

This was just too creepy not to pass on. Next time your boss asks you how your family is doing - be glad your boss isn't Dick Fuld [of Lehman Brothers infamy]:

This Foucauldian regime of total marital surveillance went into overdrive at the firm’s annual retreats in Sun Valley, Idaho. After being flown in on firm-owned jets, each couple was met by one in a vast armada of black S.U.V.’s. In the morning, the wives would be marshaled for punishing, competitive hikes up nearby Bald Mountain—Karin Jack recalls that Fuld himself would pantomime pushing her forward for the final upward stretch. (She once tried to shun hiking duty by faking a leg injury, replete with a phony cast—only to be one-upped by another go-getting Lehman wife who arrived in an actual leg cast and nevertheless professed her intention to march grimly up the mountain regardless.) When she awoke one morning to find that the hiking-wives’ corps had left without her, she instantly put Brad on alert that his star was in decline. (And she was right—he was demoted a few months later, and left the firm in 2005; the Jacks divorced in 2008, both informing Ward that the intrusive reach of the Fuld regime had irreparably harmed their marriage.)

One wonders if they had a security officer who looked like Wilford Brimley...

Yikes.

A New Twist on the Srebrenica Massacre

Why did 8,000 Bosnian muslim men die at the hands of the Serbs?

It was because the Dutch army contains homosexuals.

At least, that's the reason if you're as stupid as Retired Gen. John Sheehan.

It All Depends On How You Look At It

(Via Felix Salmon)

One man's $50 billion dollar fraud is another man's "like, whatever"

Max Abelson has talked to three former Lehman executives about the Valukas report, [which details how Lehman concealed $50 billion dollars worth of liabilities from their shareholders] and you can see why they requested anonymity. Here are some of the gems from Senior Executive #2:

“It’s just not that big of an event… They just want to be mad and don’t know what they’re talking about and want to be outraged.”

“These firms clearly shop jurisdictions all the time for the most favorable rule set, and there’s nothing wrong with that.”

The only people who would worry about using an old trick to reduce leverage from 13.9 to 12.1, the second executive said, are “yappers who don’t know anything."

Nice perspective, guys. Always wanted to know how things look inside your gilded bubble.

Now shut the hell up.

John Carney: Wow, What an Idiot

Ryan Chittum takes the p!ss out of John Carney's pathetic attempt to rationalize giving Lehman execs a pass on cooking the books.

It needs to be read in its entirety, but here's a teaser (emphasis mine):

(Carney) It’s far from clear that a criminal prosecution would be the best response to alleged fraud at Lehman Brothers. In the first place, the alleged fraud is not what brought down Lehman Brothers and did not cause the broader financial crisis. The questionable Repo 105 transactions may have actually forestalled a collapse for several months because they may have concealed Lehman’s failure to improve its financial condition in 2007 and 2008.

That's John Carney telling you that hiding $50 billion worth of liabilities from your shareholders is good, because it delayed the company's collapse.

*Throws hands in the air*

Beyond stupid. I mean, we've seen corporate shills before (see the Santelli clip here) - but Jeezus...

If You Order Now, We'll Throw In....

After a discussion of the economics of print media and advertising, CJR's Ryan Chittum launches this meme:

Now if, say, The New York Times abandoned its presses and gave everybody a $500 iPad (minus a bulk discount from Apple, of course) with a commitment to a two-year subscription (which averages $604 a year in print), then you might be talking.

Hell, that's not a bad idea.

Not that a print company can turn on a time - but the idea that a content provider would subsidize the distribution of a device they can use to distribute for-pay content is hardly new (Kindle, the Nook etc) is hardly new.

But make that idea your sales pitch and see how many people will take the plunge. I'm lukewarm on the iPad, but if buying it can be bundled with content purchases that I would make anyway (and allow me to access that content from other devices as well) and I'm asking: "where do I sign?"

Think of it:
Buy a year of the NYT and LA times and get an iPad for $200!
Or
Buy an iPad now and get a year's subscription to two newspapers of your choice!

If the content is rich enough - that could get me off the fence. And content providers who are losing money on free content could loss lead their way into paid content with a shiny new user toy.

It'd get me off the fence.

Michael Lewis: A No Interest Loan is a Bailout

I'm sure there are a slew of sites talking about the Michael Lewis book, The Big Short - but I just wanted to highlight this marvelous quote of his.

Did they ever explain how they made all this money? If you look at their businesses right now, they’re heavily government dependent. If you were Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, or JPMorgan, you have access to a 0 percent loan in virtually unlimited quantities from the Federal Reserve. You can take that money and re-invest it in Treasury bonds or in government agency securities and you will get a spread. And you can do it over and over. You’re essentially borrowing from the government, lending to the government, and taking a cut.

(Emphasis added by CJR's Ryan Chittum)

When you hear - over and over that the banks have paid us back - there are any number of items that are not included in that remark - and the one Mr. Lewis is talking about is still going on.

Who can't find a way to make money with free funding?

We have bailed out Wall Street and we are still bailing them out.

Read Chittum's whole post - there are other winners in there.

Breaking: Lehman Execs Full of Crap

Okay, not breaking - but newly minted as established fact.

Here's Ryan Chittum:

The Lehman Scandal Breaks Wide Open

Yesterday’s blockbuster 2,200 page report on Lehman Brothers by a court-appointed examiner shows Lehman Brothers executives moving $50 billion in toxic assets off-balance-sheet to deceive investors about its financial health. Finally it seems it’s taken Anton Valukas and $38 million to put the scandal in the scandal.
...
Essentially what Lehman did was make its balance sheet look much better than it actually was by taking those $50 billion in assets and arranging short-term transactions just before the end of each quarter—all so it wouldn’t have to report that it held these assets.

Viva Valukas. Give this guy some room, Wall Street is a fairly target rich environment.

Some Things You Just Can't Spin

(Via TPM)

The Majority Leader of the Utah House took a nude hot-tub with a 15-year old employee, then paid her $150,000 and had her pledge to keep quiet, he admitted yesterday...

...[Utah State House Majority Leader] Garn yesterday told reporters about the incident. "I can unequivocally tell you there was no physical contact, there was no touching, there was no intercourse, there was none of those things. It simply did not occur. I'm not trying to downplay what did occur but I want to make it very plain."

Owch, it hurts.

Dude, wave off the Damage Control team, this ship's goin' down.

Money Well Spent

Planet Money profiled a Hatian woman named Yvrose - whose modest business was wiped out by the earthquake. The short version is that she bought inventory with credit and then placed the goods up for sale on consignment. The earthquake destroyed her inventory before it could be sold - so she was left owing her creditors almost a thousand dollars.

Which in Haiti - is a staggering sum of money.

The portrait of a hardworking soul being completely undone by random chance clearly struck a nerve.

People wrote in asking how they could help, and NPR set up an account for her at a Haitian microfinance institution, Fokonze. So far, about $3,500 in donations have come in. That's a transformative amount of money for an impoverished Haitian. It could move Yvrose from miserable and insecure poverty to what could become a stable life with a cushion for bad times

Sure, there are still hundreds of thousands dead - and it's not likely that Haiti's lot will improve.

But this lady and her family were saved.

Inadequate to the larger picture - but not insignificant.

The Sun is White - and There are No Green Stars

(Via Bad Astronomy)

Take a blowtorch (figuratively!) and heat up an iron bar. After a moment it will glow red, then orange, then bluish-white. Then it’ll melt. ...

Why does it glow? Any matter above the temperature of absolute zero (about -273 Celsius) will emit light. The amount of light it gives off, and more importantly the wavelength of that light, depends on the temperature. The warmer the object, the shorter the wavelength.

...

An object that is at 4500 Kelvins (about 4200 Celsius or 7600 F) peaks in the orange part of the spectrum. Warm it up to 6000 Kelvin (about the temperature of the Sun, 5700 C or 10,000 F) and it peaks in the blue-green. Heat it up more, and the peaks moves into the blue, or even toward shorter wavelengths. In fact, the hottest stars put out most of their light in the ultraviolet, at shorter wavelengths than we can see with our eyes.

Now wait a sec (again)… if the Sun peaks in the blue-green, why doesn’t it look blue-green?

Yes... why indeed?

Phil tells us why.

Free Marketeers, Afraid of an Auction

(Via CJR and the almighty Bloomberg)

Here's Bloomberg:

A Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. plan to auction more than $1 billion in assets seized from failed banks next month, including a loan to build a W Hotel in Atlanta, may trigger writedowns that weaken lenders nationwide.

And here's the money quote from the attorney of the affected banks:

These banks can’t believe that the regulator they pay to protect them is going to sell these loans to someone who can flip them and cause them serious losses,” said Robert Reynolds...“Our banks just cannot believe they’re being treated in a way that ultimately hurts the FDIC’s insurance fund, because some of them are right on the edge.”

Love how he got the talking point "...in a way that ultimately hurts the FDIC's insurance fund" in there.

Bloomberg's article is saying that this is an symptom of the coming (or ongoing) implosion in commercial real estate loans. They're saying this was largely a regional bank issue (something I didn't know), which casts an entirely new light on all those condos popping up all over town. Wonder how many of my local lenders are on the FDIC's balooning watch list.

Worth a read.

Team Mayhem vs. The Hurt Locker

Awhile ago, Danger Room offered a day in the life of an army EOD team called Team Mayhem.

Totally worth the read.

A sample:

At about 7 pm, 28 hours into Team Mayhem's shift, the guys are on the roof of a well-groomed apartment building in one of Iraq's nicest remaining neighborhoods. They're looking at a fist-sized projectile that landed about an hour ago. Palmer identifies it as a Chinese-made 60-millimeter mortar, but there's no way to tell from here if it's about to explode. Palmer looks at Ferraro.

Ferraro squares his gear on his chest and crouches next to the shell, his face inches from the mortar. He takes a whiff. And just then, white smoke starts to curl from the thing. "Water! Get some water right now!" Palmer shouts. He knows that the smoke is from white phosphorus, an incendiary agent that burns on contact with oxygen, and that it will ignite the mortar's highly explosive core. The rooftop? About 15 feet wide.

The only way to stop the shell from detonating is to smother it. Very, very soon. Ferraro runs downstairs to get water from the apartment's owner - "and some sand, too!" Palmer yells to his back. Things get worse; the air crackles with the popcorn sound of automatic weapons fire. Mayhem's security escorts, two sergeants carrying M4 rifles, duck behind the waist-high wall surrounding the roof and point their guns out into the setting sun, looking for targets.

Sounds an awful lot like a movie that just sucked up all the Oscars, right?

Now, I get that the pushback on Hurt Locker has already started - but conveying the intensity of this thing next to me could blow at any second is something that the Hurt Locker does very well.

I've read criticisms about the films accuracy and they seem to focus on EOD boys don't use sniper rifles, or go off base alone, or chase bad guys - which are perfectly valid points - but they miss the fact that the guts of the film hold up rather nicely. EOD is dangerous work, moreso when you don't dominate the lanscape.

Story wise, I had a similar reaction to Saving Private Ryan - as spectacle, there are few comparisons you can make. Both films show you new things, new scenes. They get you by the throat.

But as storytelling...there's not a lot of new ground - and the more you think about the story, the less satisfying it becomes.

(Minor Spoiler alert)





















In the Hurt Locker, you have the classic action hero guy - a risk taking, mavrick, who is at first resented, then admired. If they'd left it at that, the film would be just another clichéd war movie. They do one better, by showing you the main character's personality has drawbacks - things go wrong because of their inability to switch it off. But, at least to me - those elements were switched off just as they were becoming interesting. Here's the other side of this guy - now, roll credits.

Credit to the film for bringing across something more than "hail, the conquering bad-@ss" - but I wonder if the raves on this film were more due to the fact that it was a well-done movie about an ongoing war that didn't take sides.

Anyway - read the Team Mayhem stuff.

Yet Another Gay Basher Comes Out of the Closet

CA state Senator Roy Ashburn admits the obvious.

Memo to closeted, outwardly conservative types... there is such a thing as protesting too much. If you can't publicly be yourself - at least be mellow. You go all vitriolic against the gay community you're going to get a reputation.

Then when you do get caught DUI coming from a gay bar, you'll be embarrassed - but at least you won't be exposed as a total hypocrite.

Yeesh.

Winning Line

(via Danger Room)

Aviation Week's Bill Sweetman scores palpable hit - discussing the delays in the much delayed, fantastically expensive F-35 wunderplane program:

“For every month’s litany of problems in the program, you’ll find a Lockheed Martin or government program boss assuring the customers, Congress and the taxpayers that everything is going fine,” he wrote. “‘On track,’ as they like to put it.

“Remember this distinction:  The Donner Party was on track. They were not on schedule.”

Owch.

The Market Mindset at Work

(Via Gizmodo)

You just have to love this kind of evil thinking....

Ok, Damn - This Too Shall Pass

Awhile ago - Honda threw down the Rube Goldberg gauntlet with their commercial, The Cog.

The band OK Go has picked it up with a vengeance. Their video, This Too Shall Pass is sure to be (if it isn't already) full on viral.

Rube Goldberg, eat your heart out:



They've helpfully added a four part video diary showing how the video was made, but unfortunately the band members talk too much so you don't get to see all the geekish glory.

Still.

Damn.

Not Makin' 'em Like We Used To

My grandpa always used to wail on people who reflexively waxed nostalgic about the good old days thusly:

Yeah, we sure don't make cars like we used to....and thank God!

Then he'd launch into a tirade about using a salt bag to keep the windshield from fogging up, or packing a full set of tires along for every trip to make sure they reached their destination.

FiveThirtyEight does a similar number on the tired old saw that the US doesn't make things anymore:

Unfortunately, the US still makes plenty of goods. In addition, free trade is not the boogie-man job killer many purport it to be...


There is a common theme across the internet: US manufacturing is dead and it's never coming back. Well, there's a big problem with that analysis: it's not true.

In fact, as the chart above indicates, it's actually false. Note that since 1960, the index of industrial production has risen from a little below 30 to its current level of about 100. And note the increase is continual -- meaning the number didn't just hover around 30 for most of that time only to spike up in one big move. The index has continually risen over that entire period.

...

Instead, what people are commenting on is the drop in manufacturing employment. Consider these two charts.



Durable Goods Employment remained fairly steady at 10 million to 11.5 million employees between the mid-1960s to the early 2000s. Then total employment dropped like a stone, losing three million people over the last 10 years. These are levels last seen in 1950.


Non-durable goods manufacturing is even worse. From the mid-1960s to the early 200s, total employment in this area hovered around a 6.8 million. However, starting in 2000, the number fell off a cliff, losing almost 2 million people. This is the lowest the number has been in over 60 years.

People notice the empty factories, but think their being empty means we're making less than we should. If you believe this guy's argument, we're making more stuff today - we're just doing it using less people than ever before.

Depressing, but interesting.

Antarctica, You Tryin' To Tell Us Something?

(H/t E)
I'm starting to think that the Antarctic would like some attention.

First, there was the glacier that suddenly spouted a five-story, blood-red waterfall:

Then there's this massive iceberg that has cracked off into the ocean, headed for parts unknown:

It's over 40 miles long.

Dude, back away from Antarctica... I think it would like some personal time...

BoA, WTF?

CJR's Ryan Chittum shows us that Bank of America is once again pushing adjustable rate mortgages - in depressed markets like Seattle.

He asks the right question: "Why is BofA doing this and how widespread is it?"

Daylight on Danziger Bridge

"Ace them at the grand jury tomorrow, son. Wear the smart-looking suit and ace them."

(Via Nola.com)

Admitting a cover-up of shocking breadth, a former New Orleans police supervisor pleaded guilty to a federal obstruction charge on Wednesday, confessing that he participated in a conspiracy to justify the shooting of six unarmed people after Hurricane Katrina that was hatched not long after police stopped firing their weapons.

...

It's unclear when Lohman's cooperation with federal authorities began, but he presumably is prepared to testify against the officers he says helped him lie about the circumstances of a shooting he immediately deemed a "bad shoot."

Lohman, who pleaded guilty in federal court to conspiracy to obstruct justice, admits he failed to order the collection of evidence or canvassing of witnesses, helped craft police reports riddled with false information, participated in a plan to plant a gun under the bridge and lied to investigators who questioned police actions.

That'd be police officers committing assault, murder, false arrest, conspiracy, lying to federal investigators and planting evidence.

Consumer Credit Reporting Companies: Asshats

Most days, what arrives in the mailbox never makes it in the house. Weather permitting, I'll pronounce sentence on my mail by the recycle bin outside the garage.

My usual sort is into two piles: Dull and Exciting.

Really important papers don't need the flash - they're boring, because they know you'll open them. You don't throw out your phone bill. The Dull stuff gets put in my pocket.

Then there's the Exciting pile:

Urgent! Open Immediately! Toss.

You Could Be Throwing Money Away!  Heh. Toss.

The more exciting it looks, the faster I bin it.

The one exception to this are letters that look to have a postage paid return envelope. My buddy O pointed out that you can use these as a free way to tell people to buzz off. More importantly, it costs the original sender money.

This...I like.

So, Exciting envelopes get gutted for prepaid return envelopes. These are then stuffed with a pre-printed note (from the stack I keep in the desk) saying "Take us off your mailing list." This has worked well - but I've had to revise note repeatedly to include late relatives, whose mail had been routed to our address for a time.

Databases are not only forever - they are dumb as posts, so my late father-in-law is regularly getting mail telling him of Incredible Investment Opportunities - or thanking him for joining an investing association. Hard on the heels of their passing, mail like this was bothersome -but you could at least think the sender merely hadn't yet gotten the word.

But its been years now - and some out of date database is regularly kicking out the names of E's parents with our address. And the bottomless supply of junk mailers scarfs it up and slaps it on an Exciting bundle of crap. I've met most of these with my "Buzz off" note, those merchants without a prepaid return envelope - I'll chase down their 800 number and tell them to buzz off.

The supply keeps coming and nobody seems to get it... these people aren't buying anything anymore. Stop it.

So, today I get a letter from Chase bank, or more likely one of their proxies for my late mother in law. I do the bit with the return envelope, but I see on the letter that there's a 800 number for opting out. I always think the odds are better that I can turn off the tap if I speak to a person and explain that this person has died. Perhaps they could tell the company they bought the address from.

Enter the asshats. The communication was sent by the Consumer Credit Reporting Companies, who have no doubt been happily selling the addresses of dead people to anyone who doesn't know better.

The number was 1-888-567-8688. You call this number and get (of course) an IVR system.

There is no option to speak to an operator. You tell it you want English, that you want to opt out and then they tell you that opting out will require that this company send you a postcard, that you MUST RETURN to them before they will take you off the list.

As an added bonus, they've tried to automate the process of identifying yourself. They use the phone number your calling from as a lookup (slick), but of course they only have my name. I'm not calling for me, I'm calling for my late mother in law. No way to fix that via IVR...so.....suckage.

Figuring that opting out for my address wouldn't be a bad thing - I press on until they ask me for my social security number.

I'm supposed to give my SSN to these people, so they can stop sending me mail? I get that they want authentication - but this is clearly a buzz off move on their part. Oh, you want us to stop bugging you? Well hop through this hoop - then this other hoop - then we promise to send you something so you can send it back and...

Oh for f#$@#sakes.

They have a website, too. OptOutPrescreen.com. Any bets on how much better the user experience will be online?

Look at these three options:

I especially like how they've selected "Opt-In" for me.

Because under the 80-20 rule, this scenario easily qualifies as a logical default.

Although a close second would be a person who came here to say "I want to be left alone by you parasites - but just for five years"

Thankfully, either opt out option presents you with a form that is about as welcoming as a latex glove:

That'd be DoB and SSN. Not to run credit, or apply for insurance - but to stop junk mail.

Honest to f$#%... These guys need this level of security to keep people from opting out people without their permission?

And what about people like me, trying to opt out a person who is deceased? Good thing their website doesn't have a webform for comments, or an email address, or GOD FORBID a phone number that goes to a human being.

Asshats.

But When They Came For Soccer...

(Via Good Blog)

E found a winner of an article about another high flying industry that has gone underwater in the new era of financial suckage:

Soccer.

It's a natural fit, really - borrowing lots to buy up high priced talent or build palatial stadiums.

Here's a nibble:

Manchester United—the Premier League’s defending champion and one of the world’s most glittering sports properties—is awash in crippling debt thanks to the Glazer family, a troupe of eerily identical American sports tycoons who bought the club in 2005 with hefty loans from banks and hedge funds, then transferred the debt to United’s books. In the last three years, Man U shelled out over 260 million pounds in interest alone, raised ticket prices, and sold superstar midfielder Cristiano Ronaldo to pay the bills. Via financial jujitsu that frankly induces nausea just to read about, the Glazers appear to be doing just fine on the deal. Similar conditions prevail at Liverpool, a club famous for its raucous working-class fan traditions. American bumblers Tom Hicks and George Gillett pulled a leveraged takeover of the club in 2007; with repayment of 100 million pounds looming, some fear Liverpool will have to liquidate its star players

I generally stay out of the financial issues of spots - mostly because they are so depressing - but there's such a confluence of interests going on here. It's just too hard to ignore.

Yeesh.

Snowboarding? Sport

E had quoted a sports commentator as saying that "If you can do it while wearing jeans, it's not a sport."

Which is a good enough soundbite to repeat - but it ran afoul of the visuals sported by the US Olympic Snowboarding team:

We rule, and we look cool. Well, except for the carrying bouquets part.
That aspect of our look is quite lame.

Standing on the podium in jeans? Hmmmm.....

Enter Slate:

What's up with the U.S. snowboard team uniforms? It looks like they're wearing jeans—are they?

No. The U.S. Olympic snowboarding team's uniforms are made from lightweight waterproof Gore Tex fabric. The designer, snowboard equipment company Burton, overlaid images of worn denim onto the pants—and red, white, and blue plaid onto the jackets—using a coloring process called sublimation.

Thanks, Slate!

And something tells me that there's about to be a massive fashion trend in the snowboarding world (and that Burton has so totally scored).

Bank Secrecy, Not

Felix Salmon lays out a really strange financial deal that has JP Morgan smelling very, very bad:

...the gist is that JP Morgan took one of its longest-standing clients in Mexico — Grupo Televisa — and tried to hand all of its secrets over to its biggest rival, Carlos Slim. And the way it tried to do that was by selling Slim a loan larded up with covenants which would essentially force Televisa to reveal any and all information to the holder of the debt.

To clarify that a bit - JP Morgan loans money to one company, then sells the loan to the company's rival - and refuses to allow their former client to make other arrangements to protect their proprietary information.

Nice. You wonder if that story makes the rounds in the corporate circles. "JP Morgan - kiss your privacy goodbye."

DVD Makers, You Suck

I certainly don't condone piracy - and I think the instant message out of the lower graphic is simplistic - but look at the second scenario and tell me you haven't been similarly annoyed:

Yeah, I put in a DVD - I have one goal in mind - to watch my movie. That's it.

In direct opposition I have three factions (and possibly more) pushing their crap in my way.

The Government who helpfully waste a set amount of time in front of every movie to tell me that I ought not to copy this movie, or I could face major punishments. Gosh, thanks.

The DVD designers who arrogantly assume that I want to watch an elaborate (and unskippable) animation (utilizing key visuals from the movie) that gradually morphs into a pulsing screen with nigh-unreadable text. Adjacent to one barely legible line of text is an ivory-on-white circle indicating the current selection.

[Helpfully, the other options are positioned in a circle with a selection sequence that ensures that cycling through them is a total guessing game. "Up goes diagonal right, but down goes left? WTF??"]

The Movie Studios who not only want to use waste my time pushing their other products, but insist that I watch them (or a part of them) each and every time I play my movie.

Honest to Pete, Here's what I want from a DVD.

As soon as its done spooling up - and I mean the very SECOND it spools up - it should go to a screen containing three elements:

1) The title of the move
2) A Menu icon (that is not selected by default)
and
3) This icon, which is selected by default:

Ideally, the DVD would delay five seconds and then play the movie automatically (Parents of small children, you know what I'm talking about).

DVD designers - I'm speaking to you here - The user has put a DVD into their player, you can safely assume that "Play" is the happy path. All other choices are Alt flows (and I mean ALL other choices - you can put the FBI warning behind the play button in the flow).

Anyone who suggests that something needs to be put in front of the play button - They are EVIL. They need to be loudly condemned in front of their peers in terms usually reserved for genocide. Perhaps then they will get the message. We don't want to see your crap. We want the movie we paid for, period. You wanna load up the DVD with crap? put all that stuff under the Menu option and let me ask for it.

(Disney? The crap you put in front of the 'play' path on your DVDs should make you ashamed to walk in public.)

I'd rant more, but I'm getting a migraine...

Gah.

(H/t Lifehacker)

Tiger: Please Believe My Press Conference

I've said it before and I'll say it again - I could give a crap about contrition. The idea that a public figure must be seen to apologize - in person and in public - has become so engrained in our culture that celebrity handlers have fashioned elaborate PR kabuki like Tiger's love fest:

In front of a hand-picked audience of about 40 mostly inner-circle people that included his mother, Kultida, but not his wife, Elin, Woods made his most direct statement about admitted infidelities in his marriage.

Okay, you're admitting something you were caught red-handed doing, so what?

He apologized.

Again, so what?

He did not address a return to the PGA Tour until near the end of his statement, saying: “I do plan to return to golf one day, I just don’t know when that day will be. I don’t rule out that it will be this year.”

Oh, you want to golf this year... you just want to prepare us for that eventuality. Take the scorn and abuse now, so that later you can be hailed as bravely emerging from scandal - a new man. Determined to prove himself.

Oh, how I eagerly await the love fest of the PGA loudly welcoming the Tiger Woods lightning rod into their fall TV line up.

There, there... we still love you... now smile for the cameras....

Not like the PGA could or would punish him for his personal life. And it's certainly not like he should never play golf again.

I just get tired of professional image management.

Please Rob Me

I hate Twitter.

Which is not to say I've put it through all its paces and understand its essence. I suppose it's the latest step on my march to curmudgeon-hood, but I've never understood why a person would use a numeric keypad to send text messages and like it.

I believe there's utility in texting - leaving messages for people without the need to interrupt them or engage in a full discussion - but conversing via a text pad is like drinking a milkshake through a cocktail straw. Once the novelty wears off, it's just more work.

True, smart phones offer full QWERTY - and the UI is getting better - but you still have the hard character limit. I like my messages in words (as opposed to "c u l8r") and converting URLs using Bit.ly or tinyurl is another thing I wouldn't have to do if the format wasn't so limited.

Bleah.

Then there's the larger question: Twitter brings your text content to a wider audience - but why? Is there anything I'm doing that I need to tell the world about? As I'm sure most have you have heard - *I* don't want to know what I'm up to most of the time - why the hell would I offer up my current activities to the world at large? I get that there are myriad uses for twitter: rapid feedback and distribution - but I'd suggest these are very different models for the individual.

Much like any other new internet service - buried in all the rapid delivery of my information are a host of privacy issues. The website PleaseRobMe - aggregates tweets that disclose that the user is no longer at their house (i.e. you can rob their house now) - which yet another example of pushback against this willingness of people to put their data onto the web without thinking about the consequences.

Sure, the odds that someone is going to rob you based on your twitter feed are pretty thin - but by saying "I'm at the coffee house listening a jazz band," you are disclosing information that a potential robber would not otherwise be able to get.

I find privacy paranoids about as tiresome as most people do - but they're only slightly more annoying than the common assumption that whatever new social media site is something you must try (Take Yammer - yet another place to go and read pointless crap, that is summarized and emailed to you). Sure, give it a go - but don't let the novelty lull you into doing something foolish.

(H/t Felix Salmon)

Selective Due Process

Digby offers a white-hot observation about the Americans detained in Haiti for allegedly kidnapping children:

...imagine if these were black Jehovah's Witnesses accused of kidnapping white children under similar circumstances right here in the United States. I don't think you'd see any demands from these newly born international human rights advocates for the ACLU to intervene here either.

She goes on to describe a childhood epiphany where she put herself in the position of a person suffering an injustice - an experience she credits with broadening her worldview.

I assume that most people have some sort of similar empathetic epiphany as children --- maybe it's just recognizing the hurt you've felt in the eyes of another. But it's fundamental to human development. Why, for some people, it stops at their own family or group, I don't know. But it's clear that among a great many people it does. I hear it every day among some of our most powerful leaders who blithely assert that terrorist suspects don't deserve the same rights as Americans. And yet, they know, that a large number of those terrorist suspects turned out to be innocent. They simply can't extend the horror they would feel if they found themselves in similar circumstances, to these other people. They simply can't accord them basic common humanity.

Even as a matter of self-preservation, I guess they just rely on the belief that their fellow tribesmen will recognize them and come to their rescue if they should ever find themselves in such circumstances. (Or they are so lacking in imagination that the idea that it could happen to them is unfathomable.) But as these folks down in Haiti are finding, their tribe isn't all powerful and they can't always fix things for them. It turns out that having a rule of law commonly respected the world over really comes in handy at a time like this. And every time the US government chisels away at our system of justice in the name of "protecting ourselves", or some yahoo prattles on about how someone doesn't deserve the same rights as somebody else, that fundamental protection gets weaker and weaker.

Well said.

I'll Have the Shiny Thing.... What Is It?

Clients from Hell has a case study in web design that is just too perfect:

Client: “[Indian outsourcer] says he can do this site for $200. Why should I go with you?”

Me: “Has he done any work for you in the past?”

Client: Yeah! He did [Other Site] for me.

[I load the other site]

Me: “The entire site’s done in Flash.”

Client: “Huh?”

Me: “It’s a site for iPhone users.”

Client: “I know. Cool, huh?”

Me: “It’s a site for iPhone users… none of whom can see it…”

Client: “Huh?”

Me: “The iPhone doesn’t support Flash.”

Client: “Well it looks fine on my PC!”

Me: “Do you have an iPhone?”

Client: “No.”

Me: “…”

Client: “Tell you what, I’m just gonna go with [Indian outsourcer]. He seems like he knows what he’s doing and I’m not sure you do.”

Me: “Have fun.”

(H/T KJ)

Nice Rant, Now How About Understanding The Problem?

(Via Good Experience Blog)

Here’s a great (and illuminating) exchange about the aspirations and realities of large scale redesign.

UX designer Dustin Curtis: Dear American Airlines
     and a response by
American Airlines designer, Mr. X:  Dear Dustin Curtis

I have to say, my sympathies lie with Mr. X on this one. I’m not sure Mr. Curtis picks up what Mr. X is putting down, and that is a great shame.

It’s good to have the tantrum, but you have to see the larger picture, before you can seriously offer a solution.

You'll Have to Imagine Jim McKay Saying This...

(True Olympic fanatics, be warned... thar be spoilers ahead)

The thrill of Victory....

...and the agony of defeat

(Dun dun duh DAH!!!)

And seriously... Did you SEE the biathlon??!! Holy frickin' crap!! That was awesome...!!

Stranger Than Fiction

Not much to add here other than:

1) Holy crap - an assassination squad! and
2) Assassination squads take note: Dubai is quite the surveillance state

Hamas leader killed


The men followed their target to his room, saw its number - 230 - and the one across the hall - 237. A call was then made and one of the men - using the name Peter Elvinger - booked room 237 from the business suite of another hotel. Five hours later al-Mabhouh was dead


There was no security camera covering the door to al-Mabhouh’s room and no footage of how the team gained entry. The woman in the squad known as Gail Folliard patrolled the corridor outside. She was seen to distract a hotel guest who appeared at the second floor lift for a few vital seconds to give the killers time to gain access to the room

You gotta love how Dubai is laying this all out there. Naming names and showing photos. You wonder if whoever did this was prepared for public disclosure. They obviously knew they were under surveillance - but there's a bit of a gap between that and front page mugshots.

If Dubai's intelligence groups can be believed, it's a team of 17. That alone suggests a major player - read: Mossad - but wow, that's more than a hit squad - that's like a full patrol staffed with assassins.

Underwater, Sans Swim Fins

(Via Felix Salmon)

Rortybomb has an excellent two part illustration of the brutal economics working against underwater homeowners. This is the same guy who pointed out that the startling majority of loan mods for underwater borrowers result in increasing the amount of principle owed.

He offers a cautionary tale (in two parts)to those who believe an interest rate is the way to go:

[The underwater homeowner applies] for a modification.

There’s two ways this can go to get the mortgage payment down to around 31% of your income. The first is to simply reduce the interest rate to 2%. That looks like this:



Not bad. It decreases the time underwater.

But there’s another way to do the modification. Let’s say the servicer simply reduces the interest rate to 3%. They also add 5% to the principal through fees, taxes, etc. Then, in order to make the mortgage payment fit your budget, they add 8 years to the term of the mortgage, putting you from 27 out of 30 years to 35 out of 35 years. (I think that is how it is done with term extensions, from the Treasury documents I’ve seen).

Your mortgage payment is still the same as in the first example. But that looks like this in this model:

In other words, while a simple interest rate drop can giveth- mods to the principle can more than taketh away.

Moral: Banks have never had your interests at heart - and recent events and government actions have not altered their behavior one little bit.

A Little Perspective

(Via NPR)

If you haven't seen t his picture before - see that tiny blue speck in the middle of rightmost beam of light?

That's Earth.

From 3.7 billion miles away.

It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known.

-Carl Sagan

Steak + Gobs of Salt = Good Steak?

This just seems totally weird - but (like putting vodka in pie crust) something I totally need to try.

Steak Recipe: Massively salt your steaks 15 min – 1 hour before grilling.

Notice that I didn’t say, “sprinkle liberally” or even “season generously.” I’m talking about literally coating your meat until you can’t see red. It should resemble a salt lick.

Read the whole thing at Steamy Kitchen. Freaky.

Still, wouldn't hurt to try. I mean, it says start with cheap steak, right?

(H/t Good blog)

Tough Crowd

This was just too weird not to mention:

Sinatra Song Often Strikes Deadly Chord

Mr. Gregorio, 63, a witness to countless fistfights and occasional stabbings erupting from disputes over karaoke singing, did not dare choose one beloved classic: Frank Sinatra’s version of “My Way.”

“I used to like ‘My Way,’ but after all the trouble, I stopped singing it,” he said. “You can get killed.”

The authorities do not know exactly how many people have been killed warbling “My Way” in karaoke bars over the years in the Philippines, or how many fatal fights it has fueled. But the news media have recorded at least half a dozen victims in the past decade and includes them in a subcategory of crime dubbed the “My Way Killings.”

Why does it happen?

...most of the “My Way” killings have reportedly occurred after the singer sang out of tune, causing other patrons to laugh or jeer.

“The trouble with ‘My Way,’ ” said Mr. Gregorio, “is that everyone knows it and everyone has an opinion.”

Shackleton's Whiskey, Aged & Chilled

(Via the BBC)

Five crates of Scotch whisky and brandy belonging to the polar explorer Ernest Shackleton have been recovered after more than 100 years in the ice.

They were buried beneath Shackleton's Antarctic hut, built in 1908 for a failed expedition to the South Pole.

...

The master blender at whisky company Whyte and Mackay said the find was a "gift from the heavens" for whisky lovers.

Richard Paterson, whose firm supplied the Mackinlay's whisky for Shackleton, said: "If the contents can be confirmed, safely extracted and analysed, the original blend may be able to be replicated.

"Given the original recipe no longer exists, this may open a door into history.

Boots on the ground in Pakistan

(Via Danger Room)

Last year, President Obama and his administration ruled out sending U.S. ground forces into Pakistan. Instead, the White House said, America’s clandestine operations there would be waged solely by remote-control — with Predator and Reaper drones. “There is a red line,” said special envoy Richard Holbrooke. “And the red line is unambiguous and stated publicly by the Pakistani government over and over again: No foreign troops on our soil.”

Yet today, three U.S. soldiers were killed and two more were wounded by an improvised bomb in Pakistan. The area was known “as a Taliban stronghold,” the New York Times notes. But the “Pakistani military had declared cleared of the militants.”

It’s another sign that America’s once-small, once-secret war in Pakistan is growing bigger, more conventional, and busting out into the open.

It will be interesting to see how this plays out.

Conservatives Going Green

As in, the Tea Party folks might just turn themselves into the conservative equivalent of the Green party: a fringe movement whose political relevance is measured by how many votes they siphon off the establishment.

"A good candidate for the CT Tea Party isn't someobody who has money, isn't somebody who has political power and isn't somebody that will be corrupted by the major party tradewinds,'' [Tea Party Chairman, Dan] Gaita said. "We're looking for outsiders, for people who are living in the trenches, who are going through everyday struggles.''

It's early days - but they're showing every bit as much political acumen as the party of Nader:

Tanya Bachand, leader of the Connecticut Tea Party Patriots, said she had no idea that Gaita's group was planning to register the name as a political party and learned of it only after the fact. Initially, Bachand was concerned: In Florida and elsewhere around the nation, activists have clashed over the right to use the tea party name.

Oh joy.

That's more than schadenfreude. I mean, sure - I'm happy to see the right's crazies step up and be counted. Conservatism has been ripe for a split for some time now. But in a larger sense - the idea that a group of voters is so disenchanted with their party that they form their own splinter group - I'm all for that.

But if the Dems are smart, they'll go door to door to get the Tea Party registered as a party in all 50 states.

Choose Your Index

Imagine you're a homeowner - and your lender sends you a document telling you needed to choose whether or not your mortgage rate was fixed to the Wachovia Cosi or Codi.

Now, if you're like me - you hear Cosi, you're thinking food. But this clearly isn't that.
And since it's just your mortgage interest rate, it's not like there's any pressure to make the right decision.

Read Dean Starkman's take on this mess. Yeesh.

Let the buyer beware, my butt...

Raven-23 vs. a Nine-year-old Boy

Jeremy Scahill is on a mission to demonize the Blackwater corporation. He's got a book, and never misses an opportunity to portray them as murderous bunch of criminals.

So, you could question his objectivity.

But it's hard to see some of Blackwater's actions as anything less than demonic:

One of the Blackwater shooters was on top of an armored vehicle firing an automatic weapon, he says. "Every time he would finish his clip, he would throw it on the ground and would load another one in and would start shooting again, and finish the new one and replace it with another." One young Iraqi man got out of his car to run, and as he fled, the Blackwater shooter gunned him down and continued firing into his body as it lay on the pavement, Mohammed says. "He was on the ground bleeding, and they're shooting nonstop, and it wasn't single bullets."

The Blackwater shooter, he says, would fire at other Iraqis and cars and then return to pump more bullets into the dead man on the ground. "He sank in his own blood, and every minute the [Blackwater shooter] would shoot left and right and then go back to shoot the dead man, and I could see that his body would shake with every bullet. He was already dead, but his body was still reacting to the bullets. [The shooter] would fire at someone else and then go back to shoot at this dead man." Shaking his head slowly, Mohammed says somberly, "The guy is dead in a pool of blood. Why would you continue shooting him?"

That would be the Nisour square massacre, where a Blackwater unit called Raven-23 went all kinds of crazy on Iraqi commuters. It didn't make sense then - and it still doesn't.

The criminal case against the Blackwater operators has been dismissed, and all the victims families have accepted cash payments in exchange for waiving their legal claims against the mercenaries.

All but one.

A man named Mohammed Kinani, who used to be the father of four. His nine year old son, Ali was the youngest victim at Nisour square. Ali was shot in the head, in front of his entire family.

Nine f#ing years old.

Kinani was offered a deal:

"We want to give you $20,000," Mohammed recalls the Blackwater manager saying.

"I'm not taking a penny from you," Mohammed told him. "I want no money."

Mohammed asked for a blank piece of paper and a pen. "Look I have the paper and I can sign and waive all my [legal] rights. All my rights, I will sign away now, but under one condition: I want the owner of Blackwater to apologize to me publicly in America and say, 'We killed your son, and we're sorry.' That's all I want."

I cannot believe the odds are with this man - or that he will ever get even a breath of what he is asking for.

But I hope to God he gets it.

Read the whole article.

(H/t Steve Hynd)