Minor Mishaps Blown WAY out of Proportion

Contrary to the LIES and SLANDERS propagated by the McCain campaign, which will say ANYTHING to get elected, I did not run over the family dog yesterday on purpose.

Quote of the Day

Theodore Dalrymple, in a recent book reivew: "My experience in medical practice has taught me that almost any description of human behavior is plausible, given the varieties of human self-destruction."

Secrets in Laundry

I love stories like this. The British used a laudromat to catch terrorists in Northern Ireland.

Creature Comforts

Make of this what you will:

Commodity Fetishism

I am taking part in a minor tech new product stampede right now, and it's fascinating from a sociological perspective. The new T-Mobile G1 Android phone* is now shipping. I found a forum in which hundreds of people were posting the results from their UPS tracking pages. This was odd in and of itself. It became hilarious when I came across one post that began "There are so many emotions flowing right now..."

Yes, the panoply of human emotions that center around getting a new gadget. And the enthusiasts want to share them with you. A search for "iphone unboxing" on youtube returns 2260 matches. Over two thousand people filmed themselves opening the iphone packaging and posted the results to youtube. "Unboxing" by itself gives over 36000 matches. So you can share the excitement of opening the box, the joy of tearing off shrinkwrap, the rapture of examining the marketing collateral.

* It can't match the Millennial atmosphere surrounding an iPhone launch, but there is no real Google cult as yet. Give it time.

MacHeads

As an Apple heretic whose computing soul is damned to wander the Windows and Linux world until my death, I look forward to this documentary on One True Religion.

I Salute Them

Tallest lego tower ever. Our Burton family personal best is 19 feet.

Things I Won't Miss

If the Reagan-Bush-Clinton-Bush expansion has to come to end, I guess we'd better start finding the bright side. Here are some things I won't miss about economy prosperity:

* A multibillion dollar industry based on useless shiny things.
* Animal feces coffee
* Children with cellphones more expensive than mine.
* Companies selling $30 worth of functionality for $400.
* Monstrous motorcycles that idle at human-countable RPM's ruining the ambience of small towns and quiet country lanes

Feel free to contribute your examples in the comments

TAL Does the Mortgage Mess

One of the best treatments of the financial disaster I've seen or heard, done by This American Life. The transcript is here (warning: long pdf).

When my cousin in the mortgage business told me a couple of years ago that if an applicant could fog a mirror with their breath, they got a loan. Turns out, he was describing the older, stricter standard:

Then the next one, came along, and it was no income, verified assets. So you don't have to tell the people what you do for a living. You don’t have to tell the people what you do for work. All you have to do is state you have a certain amount of money in your bank account. And then, the next one, is just no income, no asset. You don't have to state anything. Just have to have a credit score and a pulse. Actually that pulse thing. Also optional. Like the case in Ohio where 23 dead people were approved for mortgages.

Here's where I reveal my inner scrooge. Everyone wants to rant about Wall Street villains and congressional malfeasance. Yeah, they deserve every bit of it. But what about the people who took those loans? They were getting something for nothing. And losing their houses? Let's rewind the tape and play it back by the old rules. Under that scenario, they would never have had a house to lose in the first place. My fingers are going to get tired from all the pointing.