Considering the editing of interviews and remarks taken out of context... oh, bah-humbug... enough with political wind-baggery for a bit. Time for some pure puffery. I found the following Presidential Debate edit and was amused by it.
HT: Monkeys for Helping
Friday, October 03, 2008
A SPLURGE OF WORSENING FOR WHICH ONE WILL PAY
The fear was jays just had no way to know
Those codes, embedded in the morning rain,
Trucks bearing gondolas loaded with grapes
Gearing down on the highway, as though months
Of hastening toward fall’s beckonings would play
Out in what coming sundries! —But the eye
Still hungers. We’ll be leaving ample room
There to maneuver, where the starling starves,
Where vines appear—to love hard times as much
As any of us, that the vintage be
Torn from the earth quietly as sunlight
Falls on a hillside vineyard.
Let the rains
Continue, I am happy as scrub jays
Harvest their acorns. Such a bumper crop
Has not been here for years, among a dearth
Of sadness, to judge by the hermit thrush
Down in the darkening garden, where we breathed
For free…
Until distilled intoxicants
Arrive, we’ll be left hanging—out in back,
With the alembic, say, of Plato’s mind
To guide us for a while. But in the thick
Of thinking things through we’re so often lost,
Albeit in a “compact metric space,”
Austere and timeless, a Platonic form
Itself, of sorts.
Out standing in the field,
Electric, with a buzz on, in my shorts,
I’d rather celebrate when static air
Goes lively, new waves battering the shore.
IX.27.2008
Those codes, embedded in the morning rain,
Trucks bearing gondolas loaded with grapes
Gearing down on the highway, as though months
Of hastening toward fall’s beckonings would play
Out in what coming sundries! —But the eye
Still hungers. We’ll be leaving ample room
There to maneuver, where the starling starves,
Where vines appear—to love hard times as much
As any of us, that the vintage be
Torn from the earth quietly as sunlight
Falls on a hillside vineyard.
Let the rains
Continue, I am happy as scrub jays
Harvest their acorns. Such a bumper crop
Has not been here for years, among a dearth
Of sadness, to judge by the hermit thrush
Down in the darkening garden, where we breathed
For free…
Until distilled intoxicants
Arrive, we’ll be left hanging—out in back,
With the alembic, say, of Plato’s mind
To guide us for a while. But in the thick
Of thinking things through we’re so often lost,
Albeit in a “compact metric space,”
Austere and timeless, a Platonic form
Itself, of sorts.
Out standing in the field,
Electric, with a buzz on, in my shorts,
I’d rather celebrate when static air
Goes lively, new waves battering the shore.
IX.27.2008
Friday Links
On moral philosophers and child murderesses.
A complete collapse in the ethics market.
Snow on Mars.
Exiled to Siberia for his rap song.
Martian fossils?
No honor among thieves with machine guns.
Dragonfly robots for Mars.
Africom goes operational.
You think the CIA is a bunch of clowns? Check out these guys.
Making coasts invisible to tsunamis.
80 of the best web illustrator resources.
Bleeding without being cut.
Addicted to debt.
Wednesday, October 01, 2008
Wednesday Links
Democracy won.
Rescuing children from forced marriage—in England.
Carbon nanotubes was the secret of Damascus steel.
China's secret African slave empire.
Rich men are more likely to find mates, sire children.
The newest prime number.
Iran is more important than Wall Street.
Fourth time's a charm.
Mortgage brochures from hell.
Search Flickr by color.
Things you can get for free.
The warrior and the priest.
The social threat of naked long-buyers.
Learning from mistakes only works after age 12.
Study a little history, lest you relive it.
How government went wrong with mortgages.
Sunday, September 28, 2008
Sunday Links
We overbid because we are afraid.
We won the debate.
A detector for anything.
Is the fire back in Intel's belly?
The Caspian Sea Monster.
4 aspects of a well-done critique.
Jetpacking over the English Channel.
It's his policies, stupid.
A 20% fuel efficiency improvement?
Is North Korea changing?
Goal-setting for skeptics.
Faking the space reports.
The first sound bites.
The Somali pirates grab some tanks.
Is this Cassandra's moment?
Russia needs a missile defense shield too.
Saturday, September 27, 2008
I have a bracelet too!!!
"It was given to me by the mother of... um... ah... just a minute... (squint, squint)... uh.... Sgt. Made in China."
What an idiot. I can't believe he actually had to read the name off the bracelet on national TV.
What an idiot. I can't believe he actually had to read the name off the bracelet on national TV.
Friday, September 26, 2008
THE RATIONALS ARE DENSE IN R
TO PROVE THE RATIONALS ARE DENSE IN R
Many of us await the crescent moons
Of August, through October, in between
Those struggles to redeem a sense of shame
At not having lived fully, morally.
It’s like you had an argument with God
And lost. The buzzing of a Piper Cub
Over the olive orchard, and your dreams
Are dust. My struggle with the fruit flies leaves
Me breathless, but not yet devoid of hope
The rains of late October will begin
A new era of solvency and birds
Like birds of Paradise, but subtler still
Borne on cool winds off the Pacific, high
Enough to clear the treetops, but not too.
As I was reading in The Book of Tea,
It came to me, building the time machine—
While not a waste of time, exactly—was
Beyond my powers, although there was still time
To redesign the thing, wandering around
In that time that remained, the cloudy now
Of early autumn. —The mental machine
Of evening seizing up, we’re on the loose—
Fueled by a web-based sadness. Razzmatazz
Sloshing like strong drink around the brainpans
Of solid citizens. Are we the last
But one, among the many, to construe
Our Age as limiting, while sweet things size
The rivals up, the stars glittering sky?
Many of us await the crescent moons
Of August, through October, in between
Those struggles to redeem a sense of shame
At not having lived fully, morally.
It’s like you had an argument with God
And lost. The buzzing of a Piper Cub
Over the olive orchard, and your dreams
Are dust. My struggle with the fruit flies leaves
Me breathless, but not yet devoid of hope
The rains of late October will begin
A new era of solvency and birds
Like birds of Paradise, but subtler still
Borne on cool winds off the Pacific, high
Enough to clear the treetops, but not too.
As I was reading in The Book of Tea,
It came to me, building the time machine—
While not a waste of time, exactly—was
Beyond my powers, although there was still time
To redesign the thing, wandering around
In that time that remained, the cloudy now
Of early autumn. —The mental machine
Of evening seizing up, we’re on the loose—
Fueled by a web-based sadness. Razzmatazz
Sloshing like strong drink around the brainpans
Of solid citizens. Are we the last
But one, among the many, to construe
Our Age as limiting, while sweet things size
The rivals up, the stars glittering sky?
Friday Links
What's causing the flyby anomalies?
Surrogate mothers are big business in India.
The madness of pundits.
Organ harvesting in Albania.
Obama's leftism.
Entire galaxy clusters are being pulled steadily outside the visible universe.
Chavez visits his friends in Russia.
Laid-off workers get revenge.
The 50-year low in the solar wind.
Cows that milk themselves.
Wednesday, September 24, 2008
Wednesday Links
Is Obama shrinking?
Russian warships in the Caribbean.
High-speed molecular shape-shifting captured.
Cramer explains the meltdown.
The geography of personality.
How to get audio transcribed cheaply on Mechanical Turk.
Big Government to the rescue.
270 tools for your online business.
A neolithic hospital?
Life imitates art.
Defending the City.
Speculation and fraud got us here.
Neanderthals feasting on seals and dolphins.
Drive your company into the ground, get rich.
The pre-crime detector.
New world, new rules.
Sunday, September 21, 2008
Good night, sweet prince...
This is my most special place in all the world, Ray. Once a place touches you like this, the wind nevers blows so cold again.
—Field of Dreams, screenplay by Phil Alden Robinson based on the novel Shoeless Joe by W. P. Kinsella
Sunday Links
Reasons for economic optimism.
Iran's asymmetric naval warfare.
The Golden Rules for making money, 1880.
How McCain looks to a real economist.
Al Qaida's defeat in Iraq.
Oktapodi.
Russia successfully fires a new ICBM.
Declining air pollution is causing more rain.
10 reasons to write every day.
The huge terrorist suicide bomb in Pakistan.
Virtual boyfriends.
Nanoscopic meadows to drive your electric car.
Telepathy machines—sooner than you think.
Drug subs in Seattle.
Fighting in the German streets to find who's right and who's wrong.
What's coming and what's going?
Friday, September 19, 2008
Who Dunnit?
There is plenty of blame to go around for the country's latest financial crisis.
When you unwind it,legislation requiring lenders to make loans to people that could not afford them is at the heart of the problem. The legislation is the Community Reinvestment Act. It was passed in 1977 during the Carter Administration and got more teeth through Clinton Adminstration changes to the implementing regulations. As can be seen from the link, Bob Rubin was a major advocate of these changes which allowed securitization of underlying instruments memorializing these high risk loans. Bob Rubin is one of BHO's primary economic advisors.
Everything after 1993 was designed to spread the risk.
Fanny and Freddie were the primary guarantors of that risk, and rather than highlighting that risk, those institutions, under Raines, Johnson and Gorelick, hid it. Their reward was very high compensation running in the tens of millions dollars. All three of those individuals are democratic stalwarts. Raines and Johnson have connections with the Obama campaign. Obama is one of the recipients of the most largesse from Fannie and Freddy.
The financial institutions (e.g. Countrywide -- for whom Johnson worked after FNMA, NationsBank, etc.) who originated the loans ignored the risks as well and as a result the loans were overvalued.
Those who purchased, carved up, repackaged, securitized and sold the repackaged loans to investors (e.g. Bear Stearns -- the first marketer of these instruments -- and Lehman Bros.,with the assistance of Wall Street lawyers and major accounting firms) continued the problem by inflating the purported value of the loans even more.
Then the ultimate purchasers (e.g. AIG and other insurance companies, pension plans and 401k's, wealthy investors worldwide, etc.) of the repackaged loans had overvalued assets on their books (knowingly or unknowingly?) which has or will eventually cost them.
The caricatures necessitated by the exigencies of political advertising will oversimplify the problems to place blame on the "other guy".
Which caricatures, are on balance, more accurate may well determine the election.
When you unwind it,legislation requiring lenders to make loans to people that could not afford them is at the heart of the problem. The legislation is the Community Reinvestment Act. It was passed in 1977 during the Carter Administration and got more teeth through Clinton Adminstration changes to the implementing regulations. As can be seen from the link, Bob Rubin was a major advocate of these changes which allowed securitization of underlying instruments memorializing these high risk loans. Bob Rubin is one of BHO's primary economic advisors.
Everything after 1993 was designed to spread the risk.
Fanny and Freddie were the primary guarantors of that risk, and rather than highlighting that risk, those institutions, under Raines, Johnson and Gorelick, hid it. Their reward was very high compensation running in the tens of millions dollars. All three of those individuals are democratic stalwarts. Raines and Johnson have connections with the Obama campaign. Obama is one of the recipients of the most largesse from Fannie and Freddy.
The financial institutions (e.g. Countrywide -- for whom Johnson worked after FNMA, NationsBank, etc.) who originated the loans ignored the risks as well and as a result the loans were overvalued.
Those who purchased, carved up, repackaged, securitized and sold the repackaged loans to investors (e.g. Bear Stearns -- the first marketer of these instruments -- and Lehman Bros.,with the assistance of Wall Street lawyers and major accounting firms) continued the problem by inflating the purported value of the loans even more.
Then the ultimate purchasers (e.g. AIG and other insurance companies, pension plans and 401k's, wealthy investors worldwide, etc.) of the repackaged loans had overvalued assets on their books (knowingly or unknowingly?) which has or will eventually cost them.
The caricatures necessitated by the exigencies of political advertising will oversimplify the problems to place blame on the "other guy".
Which caricatures, are on balance, more accurate may well determine the election.
Friday Links
In a crisis, you want a crisis manager.
Software that spots the spin in political speeches (check out the graph).
Bring on the business failure tax.
Secret Big Brother in Germany.
Selling arms to Iran and Venezuela.
Are crows smarter than monkeys?
Greed beyond irresponsible.
Big Brother for your car.
Bring back the Resolution Trust Corp.
The fastest life on the planet.
The Rosenbergs were definitely spies.
Russia wants a piece of the Arctic.
Wednesday, September 17, 2008
Wednesday Links
Wall Street is kaput.
Mickey Mouse must die.
Enough with the economic pessimism nonsense.
A breast cancer vaccine that works?
Business based solely on ramping up risk and leverage doesn't work.
Twilight of the GPU.
Diving deep into the Obama tank.
Search outside the law of the land.
Who runs Russia?
An object unlike any ever seen before.
Sharia courts are operating in Britain.
The first new family of ants since 1923.
How Petraeus did it.
Embracing English after all.
Not clear on the facts.
Do the hinterlanders reject "liberalism" or are they deeply racist?
She's not really top, top drawer, is she?
Saturday, September 13, 2008
Sunday Links
Outstanding progress in Iraq.
Cunningly manipulating the press.
The two ancestors of beer.
So good it's scary.
Clinton (I) censors a movie.
Perfect vision in 5 years?
Honor vs. empathy—your choice.
5 great explanations of the Higgs Boson.
Cuil VP bails after only a month.
What drives the Taliban.
The love lives of the ancient Romans.
Burmese child soldiers.
When stem cells go bad.
A girlfriend for a case of beer.
Friday, September 12, 2008
135F in the shade.
Camp Lemonier, in Djibouti.
Maybe 85F just before sunrise. It pays to get up early.
We are under CJTF-HOA (Combined Task Force Horn of Africa).
Lots going on, though these 14 hour days leave me far too busy - and exhausted - to blog. A reasonably decent pizza joint in the Djibouti city square, should you ever visit. And you can't miss the camel drives down the main drag downtown.
Maybe 85F just before sunrise. It pays to get up early.
We are under CJTF-HOA (Combined Task Force Horn of Africa).
Lots going on, though these 14 hour days leave me far too busy - and exhausted - to blog. A reasonably decent pizza joint in the Djibouti city square, should you ever visit. And you can't miss the camel drives down the main drag downtown.
Friday Links
Russian bombers in Venezuela.
Honeybees do the wave.
Feminism's greatest leap forward since Madonna.
What Google can do to your stock price.
The secret pop vs. soda civil war.
The next generation of neural nets.
Dreaming of a better world.
10 underground lakes and rivers.
Has Obama's Minsky moment already come?
How Bush forcefully muzzled the cur.
September 11th on the New York subway.
Wednesday, September 10, 2008
Wednesday Links
The politics of hate.
Let them eat paint.
Who's weirdest wins.
The party of adults, revitalized.
The penniless father of the iPod.
WIMP or CHAMP?
The Euroweenies are getting the roles confused.
Faster shrinking brains, but more synapses?
Is Kim Jong-Il dead?
What makes a startup succeed?
The vanishing barn.
Life in a country where Sarah Palins are not allowed.
Red state feminism.
World: vote for Obama.
Creating artificial life.
Gordon Brown chooses Obama.
Stevie Wonder had it wrong.
The Democrats need to learn some respect.
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