Analysts: Tweaks May Not Save Congress’ Failed Foreclosure Fix - ProPublica

The Hope for Homeowners program was created by Congress last summer to help an estimated 400,000 homeowners avoid foreclosure. But it could more aptly be called the Hope for A Homeowner program, given that just one has used it successfully since its October launch.

Yup, only one person in America has been helped.


Magnets in ant antennae work as internal GPS - Discovery.com- msnbc.com
They pick up bits of magnetic material from the ground.

Grand juries cite Obama for ineligibility, treason
The WorldNetDaily seems like a somewhat unreliable publication. Still, Obama needs to prove beyond doubt that he is qualified to be President. It's a simple matter that he needs to take care of, or he's going to have this problem with him for a long time. And if he's not qualified to be President, we need to know sooner rather than later.


Are Too Many People Going to College? — The American, A Magazine of Ideas
"America’s university system is creating a class-riven nation. There has to be a better way."
I agree. It used to be everyone recognized that being a college graduate didn't make you smart - lots of smart people did their jobs well without ever going to college. Now, though, if you don't gradaute, you're seen as a second-class citizen - someone who's just not as smart, hardworking, or responsible as those who do make it through. I have news for you if you do believe that: I was not at all hardworking - in fact, I rarely read any of the books I was assigned, and frequently did my work poorly or not at all, yet managed to graduate college without much trouble. Being a college graduate should not equal employability and respect. Not having a college degree excludes too many people from jobs that they are eminently qualified to perform.


Foreign Policy: The Revenge of Geography
Robert Kaplan has written an article about why geography matters. I like it, and think it is probably helpful.


Ray Kurzweil Wants to Be a Robot | Newsweek Technology | Newsweek.com
His ideas are interesting, and he has a lot of followers, but the part that got my attention was at the end, where he voices his hope that he will be able to

bring his father back to life by getting DNA from his father's grave site and using a swarm of nanobots to create a new body that is "indistinguishable from the original person." He'll dig up all of his father's old letters and other materials, and download them along with his own memories into an artificial-intelligence program to create a "virtual person."

That's really sad.


Robot warriors will get ethics guide - Discovery.com- msnbc.com
These guys are trying to teach robots when to shoot, in an ethical way. Good idea, scary implications.

Cloud nine (Tensegrity sphere) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
It's a giant floating city, as envisioned by Buckminster Fuller. Is it doable? I have no idea. I'm no physicist. I'd be a little worried about living in a bubble that depended on differing air temperatures to float, though - poke a hole in it, and it will fall. Or you could screw with them by heating the place with a laser, and watch it ascend uncontrollably. Heheh.


Amazon.com: Three Wolf Moon T-Shirt, Available in Various Sizes: Apparel
The comments on this thread are priceless.

This next video is weird, but interesting. Thanks, Brandon!

The Sahara Forest Project: A proposal for ameliorating the effects and causes of climate change
This sounds crazy, but it's a very workable, practical, and cheap way to do terraforming, by building greenhouses cooled and humidified by seawater. The greenhouses will not only grow crops, but the evaporated seawater will come down somewhere as precipitation, and the higher humidity in the area of any of these greenhouses will enable a lot more plants to survive near them. With enough of these, you could even restore vegetation to parts of the Sahara, or any other dry place in the world. They also plan to put some of these in below-sea-level depressions, so that pumping the water will cost nothing in terms of energy - and they also want to build solar collectors alongside these projects, to power the farms, the villages that will spring up around them, and anyone nearby (or even far away) who wants power. That part will be much more expensive, of course, and I'm not sure putting it right next to all that humidity would be the most efficient thing to do, but hey, it's not my project. Very cool. I'd love to build one of these.

A woman's quest to erase a past that won't die - Sexual health- msnbc.com
This is a nonsense post about a man who had a sex change, and wants to be left alone.  It's actually pretty self-pitying and sad.

Frank Partnoy's The Match King. - By Sam Kean - Slate Magazine
The people had a villian to blame during the Great Depression, but he sounds like he was a pretty good guy. 

The Myth of 90 Percent: Only a Small Fraction of Guns in Mexico Come From U.S.
I posted a link a few weeks ago about this suspect statistic, in which the author claimed that you could buy rocket launchers, grenades, and etc. in American gun shops, which is nonsense. 
It turns out that this statistic is true - in a statistically true way.  There are roughly 30,000 guns confiscated per year in Mexico.  Of this number, 11,000 were sent to the FBI to be traced, and of this number, about 6,000 were traceable.  Only 5,114 were traced, last year, from the U.S., so 5114/6000 is nearly 90 percent.
But of the guns confiscated, this is only 17%, and this would be rifles, semi-automatics, and pistols - dangerous, but hardly the favored weapons of terrorists, militants, and drug-runners.  They prefer machine guns, after all, and grenades.  These come from elsewhere.
This whole "90 percent of Mexico's guns come from the U.S." story sounds like a pretty stupid push to ban more guns here.  If you don't like guns, that's fine, but please be honest in what you say.  When you lie, or misrepresent the truth, it makes crazy, paranoid people look like they're prescient and wise, and that is the last thing anyone should want.  Encouraging people to hate and fear the government doesn't seem healthy.  Nor, if you are a Christian, is that allowable - we are to honor and serve our government, no matter how bad, as best we can while following God.  And we are to love all people - even if you think they are crazy and dangerous. 

U.S. Warns China, Other Countries Not to Ban Pork
More political nonsense.  China has been itching to do this, so now that there's "swine flu", which, oddly, is not being passed by pigs, they are banning pork.  An easy misunderstanding, if it were one. 

Amid swine flu outbreak, racism goes viral - Swine flu- msnbc.com
This never occurred to me, but I guess it should have.  Mexicans are all to blame for swine flu, especially ilegal immigrants and their filthy, wretched ways.  Fortunately, I think there will be no culls of potential carriers which happen to be Mexicans.  Or at least I sure hope that doesn't happen. 

Foreign Policy: The Land of No Smiles
It's a small collection of photos taken secretly in North Korea.  Very interesting.

True blue: Afghan lakes become national park - Afghanistan- msnbc.com
This place is beautiful.  Google it. 


Ex-rebel: Tamil Tigers killing civilians - Sri Lanka- msnbc.com
I respect the fearlessness of the Tamil Tigers, but man are they screwed up.  They're terrorizing their own people now in an attempt to win the war. 


BBC NEWS | South Asia | Is world's wettest place getting drier?
The wettest place on Earth is supposedly in India.  Or was, until it dried up.  Or maybe it didn't.  It was dry in 2005 and 06.  '07 was normal.  Now is normal.
However, this is not to say that this article is entirely worthless.  It does point out that it's been hotter, and there is a very real threat of loss of topsoil and of desertification, as most of the trees have been cut down, and the rains will easily strip the land of its soil without vegetation to hold it back.  I just wish people weren't such irresponsible fear-mongers.  There is a real problem here, but it is not whether or not this is the wettest place on Earth.  It is that the people there are altering their land in a way that will damage it irreversibly.  This is a big problem all over the world, and not just India.


Radical Ways to Cool the Planet | Newsweek International Edition | Newsweek.com
And on the subject of climate change, there's this.  I've heard of pumping gasses into the atmosphere before, to cool or heat it, or whatever - it's pretty common if you've ever read any sci-fi that involves terraforming - but what's worrisome is something I didn't think about.  This is an easy solution.  No problem with that.  Anyone can do it, even relatively middling nations, because it is cheap, and because only one player has to act.  That's great, too - that means we don't need everyone's cooperation. 
The problem is that the nations that feel hardest hit by global warming - say, China, or India, or...who knows? - may feel inclined to go ahead without consulting anyone, and in a haphazard, reckless way.  This could give us the opposite climate problem, or could even be used as a weapon.  If done foolishly, this could potentially starve millions of people.  Not good.


The Rape of Solomon's Song
This is by John MacArthur.  He argues that the way many pastors today teach the Song of Solomon is wrong and does not honor God - that it is only about being shocking and crude, and attempts to ascertain what each image is describing, and saying that not only is that permissible, but is ordained by God.  Obviously that would be wrong, because what God wants He has made pretty clear, and what we are allowed is made pretty clear.  We don't need secret knowledge and decoders to figure it out.  Anyway, read it and see what you think.


Spurgeon and the Down-Grade Controversy
This is something I haven't finished reading, but would like to.  Maybe soon!

End the University as We Know It - The New York Times
It's an interesting article.  You'll have to log in to read it, though.

Did Pentagon lose billions, pennies at a time? - Capitol Hill- msnbc.com
Yes.  And it has known of the problem for 40 years.  And it does not care to change.

There Goes the Neighborhood: A Fight Over Defining 'Blight' - WSJ.com
Remember how the Supreme Court said the government could take your land for any damn reason it felt like?  There was justifiable outrage over that, and most states added laws to their books that would make this illegal - except, unfortunately, in the case of blight, which is undefined, and can mean almost anything.  If you have a decent, livable, affordable house in an area that has been defined as "blighted", or if the government decides "blight" means "an area that doesn't pay much tax", guess what?  You're screwed.

The Case for a Federalism Amendment - WSJ.com
Lastly, there is yet a way to restrain the Federal Government before it ruins us all.  Make an amendment for federalism - in other words, restore to the states the power they were meant to have. It seems pretty doable, and isn't something the President can mess with, nor is it something Congress can just ignore. 



Food Time!

JO GOLDENBERG’S PARISIAN BAGELS
Supposedly the best bagels you'll ever make.  I would love to test that!

Granola Recipe : Alton Brown : Food Network
Supposedly the best granola you'll ever taste.  This sounds good, too.

Yogurt Recipes - The New York Times
Yogurt.  I like yogurt.

5 Expert Grilling Tips - Better Holiday Cookouts - delish.com
I also like grilling.  There are actually a couple useful tips here.  I suspected this things were true, but it's always nice to have confirmation.