A Strange Old Tool . . . . Do you know what it is?

Here is a hint: It is a Washington D.C. favorite!

Wow

Blowing Smoke | The Big Picture

leet

ASCII art from 1934 Boing Boing

MARTINSVILLE, Ohio — With food stamp use at record highs and climbing every month, a program once scorned as a failed welfare scheme now helps feed one in eight Americans and one in four children.

Well, thats one way to fix America's obesity problem...

The Safety Net - Across U.S., Food Stamp Use Soars and Stigma Fades - Series - NYTimes.com

I just know some arrogant asshole looked at the bar graph and said, “pie charts look better on TV.” Reply, “Good idea boss.”

lol

Fox News (Chicago) Makes the Best. Pie Chart. Ever. | The Big Picture

Several weeks ago, the family of information studies professor Phil Agre reported him missing, saying that they had not heard from him in over a year.

I regularly read Agre's Red Rock Eater News Service around the turn of the decade. I've also seen Agre speak a conference. He was very interesting - a real heavyweight. I know I've gone digging around on the Internet in recent years to see what the guy has been up to and come up with nothing. In fact I may have done this in the past year...

The Mysterious Disappearance Of Phil Agre - All Tech Considered - Technology News And Culture Blog : NPR

Social networking sites are among many new tools law enforcement has adopted to find underage drinkers, said La Crosse police officer Al Iverson, who works in alcohol compliance and education...

Iverson pointed out the students still were caught in an illegal act, one they felt comfortable and confident enough about to put photos of on the Internet. Posting those photos, he added, helps glamorize alcohol consumption and binge drinking.

Someone else posted photos on a Facebook site of UW-L sophomores Brianna Niesen and Cassie Stenholt holding beer, but they still ended up in court Wednesday pleading no contest and getting fined.

“I feel like it is a breach of privacy,” Stenholt said. “You feel like you should be able to trust cops.”

The police are reading your blog.

flynn23 wrote:
It was already impossible to retire for most Americans before this all happened. Good luck now, even if you have a decent standard of living.

Thanks for the frontline link - they are always worth the time.

RE: Back to Business - Investment Funds Profit Again, This Time By Paring Mortgages - NYTimes.com

23% of all mortgage borrowers in the US are underwater.

Imagine if they all walked.

CoreLogic: 1 in 4 Borrowers Are Underwater | The Big Picture

The U.S. government on Tuesday imposed its first-ever punishment against airlines for stranding passengers aboard aircraft, fining three carriers $175,000 for a six-hour ordeal in Minnesota.

Good!

U.S. airlines fined for stranding travelers on plane | U.S. | Reuters

Investment funds are buying billions of dollars’ worth of home loans, discounted from the loans’ original value. Then, in what might seem an act of charity, the funds are helping homeowners by reducing the size of the loans.

Thats an extremely responsible thing to do and very good development in my view.

Sometimes, people foreclose because they can't make their payments, but this current crisis evokes the specter of debt slaves who can make the mortgage payments but can never sell the house, because the sale price won't clear the mortgage and they can't save the difference. Its called "jingle mail." When you mail the mortgage lender your keys because 7 years with a foreclosure on your record is a better fate than having to come up with hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Given that home prices are not going back up, banks may be in a position where the losses they would take on principal by adjusting these mortgages are better than the losses they would take from going out of business if too many of these mortgages foreclose. However, so far it sounds like this is only happening in cases where the bank has already gone belly up, the mortgages have been bought up at pennies on the dollar, and investors looking to buy the mortgages are unwilling to do so if they think that future "jingle mail" is in the offing.

Arguably, if not for the massive taxpayer largess that has bailed out a lot of these banks and artificially propped up the housing market, more banks might be forced to make these kinds of principal adjustments. Consumers might be better off in that case, as the public debt would be lower and many of them would owe less on their mortgages.

I see this, in some respects, as a path to sanity, instead of the given situation where everything is going down and the question for homeowners is how badly are you going to get fucked before you get out - with the weakest going earliest but with no end in sight for those with the means to hold on... millions of people paying underwater mortgages for years, praying for inflation... The impact this has on the mobility of our society and people's ability to save for retirement may contribute as much to our economic malaise as the direct costs.

Back to Business - Investment Funds Profit Again, This Time By Paring Mortgages - NYTimes.com