My most astonishing nieces

They dressed themselves. I'm so proud (sob!) I so love clothing myself (shallowness rocks!). You both look gorgeous, with the sort of style that those "blessed" with fortunes pay mid- to large amounts of same to approximate, and yet, never quite pull off. Much love, Aunt Genie

Must cut post short...off to purchase items they may deign to wear.

My thoughts on the Mormon opposition to gays marrying in CA

As I said elsewhere (but why waste a perfectly good comment)

An unpopular minority - Mormons – trying to limit the rights of another unpopular minority – Gays - on an issue - Marriage - which Mormonism has a somewhat vexed (and very very famous) history, reminds all and sundry about said vexed history, are on the wrong side of history (again – see any number of issues, but perhaps blacks and the priesthood is the closest), hurts the reputation of the church in society at large, does nothing to lessen the distrust of the church felt by the Evangelicals who are the main supporters of the amendment, and is the exact opposite of what the church should be doing.

As to the argument that male-female marriage is "traditional," balderdash. These people mistake there ignorance of history for something akin to fact.

For all of you folks proclaiming that traditional marriage has always been between a man and a woman; right here (for me at least) in the good ol’ U.S. of A, before it was such, for a very very long time (certainly long enough to be called “traditional”) a very wide assortment of native american tribes had (and some still do) “two-spirits.” Basically, these are men who chose to live as women. They could marry, and were considered good luck, or even holy by some tribes. The Navajos, for example saw and still see them as especially gifted at teaching children. So here, in the US, it is not “traditional” for marriage to be between a man and a woman exclusively unless you define traditional to mean “my traditions that I got from somewhere else geographically and haven’t quite forgotten.”

We won’t even get into Hawaiian group marriages.

Soundtrack for post; only one possible.


Pic of Joseph F. Smith, the 7th president of the LDS church with his 6 wives and 45 offspring.

Ceiling cat has competition

Ceiling cat reminds Buddha cat:
Exodus 20:3

3 No can has other ceiling cat!! U gotz other Ceiling Cat, I shoot yous wit mah lazer eyes. Srsly.

Wonder if Buddha has any sharks with frickin' lazer beams as followers....

Panic on the streets of the US

I wonder to myself
Could life ever be sane again ?

Is the US headed for Argentinian levels of depression?

I say yes. The middle class is the engine that runs an economy, because if there are large numbers of people with coins jiggling in their pocket, there will be large numbers of people purchasing stuff; large numbers of people making the stuff that the others are purchasing, the spiral revolves up.

Since the 1940's, the US has had a thriving middle class. But since, and I have a date for this, since Reagan was elected, the middle class has been diminishing--all those national tax cuts (and corresponding national debt) actually served the purpose of impoverishing the middle class, by cutting services and infrastructure that we all use and need, while greatly enriching the already rich.

Our cliches are coming home to roost. We have a negative savings rate, and the access to credit for the average bank, let alone the average soul, has disappeared.

Here's the gini index, (I love this graph) showing the increasing income disparity in the US. Among the first world, we're an outlier; the two countries above us (with worse income disparity, Mexico and Brazil are both well known for their poverty, slums, violence. Is this our future?

Oh, and hang the DJ, just 'cause.



Same song, only with noose instead of schoolboy, because just one Moz is never enough.

What? Depressed? Listen to this. It's Judee Sill; "The kiss." One of the most tragically underrated songs of the last 35 years. Really. It's off the album "Heart Food," which was rereleased a couple of year ago, hint hint. She, as far I personally know, is the only entry in the "Bach Pop" category of musical styles, and don't give me any of that Pocol Harum crap.

One more.... Live Smiths Madrid 1985 How soon is now? Sound sucks, Cinematographer should be shot; yet, sublime. Watch. Immediately. Only Been up since April. Random cAps AddS importanCe. duH.

Oh, and seeing as how this the post that never ends, JP Morgan has 79 Billion dollars worth of Derivatives balanced by 1.2 billion dollars in assets. Wow. Thanks to Covey at calculatedrisk.blogspot.com for the link.

Bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb bomb Iran.

CBS news reports that Israel is prodding US to bomb Iran quickly, in case someone sane is elected over here.

Happy Birthday Alan Turing!

Alan Turing was not only the saint of computer science, creating the mathematical framework for the field, and hence, the modern world; but he was also the single human most responsible for winning WWII for the Allies. You see, he deciphered the "Enigma Machine," not to mention diverse other German codes, with the result that for the last five (5) years of WWII we could read the Germans' most secretest transmissions. With this knowledge, we won. For this astonishing feat, the British awarded him with, uh, well, they discovered in 1952 that he was homosexual, and so not only chemically castrated him, but also fired him. He killed himself two years later.

Today he would have turned 92.

Happy Birthday.

Human perception

An interesting illusion

From the link, above.

Here is a novel illusion that is as striking as it is simple. The two images of the Leaning Tower of Pisa are
identical, yet one has the impression that the tower on the right leans more, as if photographed from a
different angle. The reason for this is because the visual system treats the two images as if part of a single
scene. Normally, if two adjacent towers rise at the same angle, their image outlines converge as they recede
from view due to perspective, and this is taken into account by the visual system. So when confronted with
two towers whose corresponding outlines are parallel, the visual system assumes they must be diverging as
they rise from view, and this is what we see. The illusion is not restricted to towers photographed from
below, but works well with other scenes, such as railway tracks receding into the distance. What this illusion
reveals is less to do with perspective, but how the visual system tends to treat two side-by-side images as if
part of the same scene. However hard we try to think of the two photographs of the Leaning Tower as
separate, albeit identical images of the same object, our visual system regards them as the ‘Twin Towers of
Pisa’, whose perspective can only be interpreted in terms of one tower leaning more than the other.

Long hallways, large buildings, the max tracks, certain aisles at the supermarket, seemingly any long, unbroken parallel lines give me serious balance problems. This may be a hint as to why.

Many more fun illusions here.

Mormon Church announces formal opposition to Gay Marriage Ruling in CA

So, in solidarity with my Mormon antecedents, I present Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie (AKA "House") discussing how the perfectly decent word "Gay" has been ruthlessly hijacked from our beloved English language.

Self-portrait, plagiarized.

That's me on the left.


Lots more Banksy Goodness here, and all for the perfectly reasonable price of FREE.

Banksy

For Gritty Pretty, who mentioned that she might be entering a Thomas Kincaid period.

So, what is the unemployment rate, anyway?

About 9.5%, if you count discouraged workers and the under-employed, and if you add in the undercount from urban areas. Handy metric? Add about 5% to whatever you hear on the news.

More here.

What's inflation? Add 7% to whatever they say on the news.

The lower, good news statistics brought to you, first by Clinton, and then refined by Bush. Thanks, guys.


What's that about a recession, hmmmm?

Not sufficiently depressed? "A nasty period is soon to be upon us."

The Royal Bank of Scotland says "WE'RE ALL DOOMED!" Ahem.

The Royal Bank of Scotland has advised clients to brace for a full-fledged crash in global stock and credit markets over the next three months as inflation paralyses the major central banks.

Oil: Its a bubble.

This just in: At least 70% of oil futures contracts held by speculators.

Just how much oil prices are being driven by speculation became clearer yesterday as regulators revealed that Wall Street dealers, hedge funds, pension funds and other speculators hold 70 percent of the leading oil futures contracts traded in New York.

From Futures and Commodities News

Why? My take; The Fed, back in May, allowed Investment Banks (not so regulated, just sayin') to borrow money at the same rate as regulated banks--it's not called the discount rate for nothing.

Speculating on Oil is what they're doing with their new-found wealth. Proof? Morgan Stanley currently owns more oil than Exxon.

And look who predicted that Oil prices would go so high! Morgan Stanley!?

Hmmm. Seems familiar. Oil prices rose mysteriously high in the summer of 2006. Didn't prices go down by labor day?

When will the housing market stabilize? One graph tells all....

2011ish.

There's 500 Billion dollars in Option ARM mortgages out there (peers from Portland, OR to Portland, ME.) These are mortgages that allow the holder, for awhile, to pay less than interest owed on the loan each month (That's the option). The deficit amount is added to the loan total. Of these Option ARM mortgages, apparently 80% of the holders are paying the least amount possible. At some point, they will be expected to actually make a real payment; this is called the reset, and often will double the mortgage payment required. When these loans reset, some huge percent of these mortgage holders will be unable to pay the higher amount; the houses will go on the market, or, most likely, into foreclosure, increasing supply and driving housing prices further down.

The default reset is 5 years after the mortgage was made. Assuming the height of the housing bubble was January 2005, then the resets should start fast and furious in about 2010.

The handy chart, above, shows when Option Arm loans will be resetting; as you can see, this is far from over.

Dr Housing Bubble Explains it All, Much Better Than Me. I borrowed his chart, thanks.

Evolution at warp speed

Richard Lenski has been breeding 12 separate strains of E coli for upwards of twenty years now; over 44,000 generations. In one of his strains, the E coli developed the ability to eat a substance present in the environment, but previously inedible to E coli--citrine--at around generation 33,000. This appears to have required the previous accumulation of a series of otherwise neutral mutations, until, poof! A new function!

Read about it here.