Category: Uncategorized

Wow, thats a stupid law

‘Happy slap’ crackdown sparks row – CNN.com

The French law says that anyone who “knowingly” films illegal acts of violence and distributes the images can be considered an accomplice — but that professional journalists are exempt.

Okay, so kids are doing something illegal, filming it, and putting it online for people to see. We have a few options here. First, we could crack down on the illegal acts. We could even use the videos they’re sharing of themselves doing it to help find and prosecute them. They’ve done half our job for us!

Or, even better, let’s make it illegal for anyone who isn’t a professional journalist to film and distribute acts of violence. Not only does that not do anything at all to combat the real problem, it opens up numerous other problems, as well. I mean, what’s a journalist? Let’s say I write for a medical journal. Can I post a video of my friend punching a random stranger?  What about bloggers? What if I used to write for a newspaper, but I’ve since gotten a new job, but still keep up a news-related blog?

Never mind that. What’s really stupid is that we’re trying to catch people who are already breaking the law by making the legal part of what they’re doing illegal.  That’ll show ’em.

Transparency, not regulation

Area has high number of subprime mortgages

Never mind that this article is using data from 2004 to talk about the effect a large percentage of subprime loans has on the current market. The larger problem is that they’re ignoring the other details.

First, the DC housing market has a bit of a crutch that other areas don’t have, and that’s the federal government. There will always be federal jobs here, and so there will always be demand for housing. I think if you look at the numbers, you’ll see that the DC area is less susceptible to recessions and things like that because the government never goes away. Second, the housing market generally picks up with the warm weather. January was probably as bad as it’s going to get for a while (NB: I am not in the mortgage industry. I worked at Fannie Mae for a year in 2002-3, but that hardly qualifies me as an expert.).

That doesn’t mean that people with bad credit who have taken on loans that they can’t really afford aren’t going to get hurt. But the real issue there is not the housing market at all. A strong market does help people get out from under their homes if they can no longer afford them. But it doesn’t address the root of the issue, which is that these loans never should have been made. I know there has been a push for more regulation on subprime lending, and I know it’s a fight to balance between allowing people with little credit or bad credit to buy homes and protecting the uninformed from bad decisions.

I hesitate to push for more regulation, to force lenders to teach potential homebuyers about what they’re getting into. But I wouldn’t mind seeing a push for more transparency. I just bought a home, and with a degree in math and a year in the secondary mortgage industry, I still had trouble deciphering all the paperwork they threw at me. Even my wife, a lawyer, had trouble wading through all the paperwork. It doesn’t need to be that complicated. It SHOULDN’T be that complicated. I think that’s where we have to make some changes. If everything is out in the open, in plain and simple English, we will reduce the problem because people will better understand what they’re getting themselves into.

We’ll still have people who take on mortgages they can’t afford. But we can’t protect everyone from their own stupidity all the time.

Will I ever make it home?

A bunch of MD and VA schools are already closed. There’s a dusting of snow on the ground. I’m at work in VA, and I’m pretty sure the snow emergency is going to trap me here for at least six days.

Where’s your global warming now, Al Gore? Snow in March! It must be a new Ice Age.

Seriously, the snow is just annoying at this point. I’m ready for spring. This winter had a nice run, but now it’s time for flowers and birds and walking around in flip flops.

Do not mess with the Do Not Call list

When I was trying to sell my old condo, my home phone number was posted to whatever real estate sites list this sort of thing. That was fine when I was trying to sell because realtors would call me to tell me they were going to show the place.

Now, however, we’ve bought a new place and took the old place off the market so we could rent it. We’ve rented it, so we have no need for a realtor. Even if we did, we have two already.

Starting a few days ago, I’ve been getting calls from realtors (What do you call “ambulance chasing” if it’s a realtor and not a lawyer?) who want to help me sell my home. My number is on the Do Not Call list because I really, really resent telemarketers interrupting me.

After about five calls, I finally remembered the Do Not Call list, and so this evening, when Marjorie from Remax called, I wrote down her number. She asked me the usual questions.

“I see your home is off the market. Are you currently working with a realtor?” I told her we were renting the home. “Oh, have you found a rentor?” I asked her if she knew this number was on the Do Not Call list. “Oh, I forgot to check, I’m sorry.” Click.

So I filed a complaint at donotcall.gov. They told me this:

YOUR COMPLAINT HAS BEEN ACCEPTED Thank you for filing your complaint with the National Do Not Call Registry.Do not call complaints will be entered into a secure online database available to civil and criminal law enforcement agencies. While the FTC does not resolve individual consumer problems, your complaint will help the agency investigate the company, and could lead to law enforcement action.

So, basically, “Hi, we collect complaints, but don’t do anything about them.  Thanks for wasting your time!”

I’m going to contact Consumerist and see what they suggest.  I want Marjorie at Remax to pay the fine.

80 Years of Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Gabriel Garcia Marquez turns 80

“He was born in Colombia, but all of us who speak Spanish have in him a referent of perfection and the creation of beauty,” Colombian Ambassador to Spain Noemi Sanin said in Madrid.

A referent of perfection.  If I ever win the Nobel Prize for Literature, which is on my list of things to do, I hereby promise to to close my acceptance speech by screaming, “I am a referent of perfection!  You will all grovel at my feet!”, and then drop the microphone and walk off stage, where I will pull a flask of very expensive scotch from my pocket and proceed to get very, very drunk.

Seriously, I read 100 Years of Solitude in college, and I really liked it.  My Spanish isn’t strong enough to appreciate the original, but my translation was enjoyable.  I’m sure it loses something, so that means the original must be really, really good.

I mean, the guy is the father of magic realism.  Anyone who’s ever taken a Spanish class has probably heard their Spanish teacher gush about “realismo magico”.  This dude started all that.  That’s pretty cool.

So, go read on of his books.  I’ve only read the one, but I figure the rest are good, too.

We have internet! Sort of.

Well, we have my neighbor’s internet. The couple who live in Unit 4 have had their cable installed, and have graciously given out the password for their wireless network until we can get cable. It’s not perfect, but it’s better than nothing.

Comcast, meanwhile, has been less than helpful. One would think that they would be eager to get four new subscribers all set up. We’re all but begging them to let us use their service. Yesterday, two days after the Comcast install guy cut through my condo (With permission) to get to the back of the house, the Comcast CSR I spoke to was almost rude when I told her that Unit 4 had cable already, despite the fact that we still show up in the system as one unit. “Well, I don’t see how THAT’S possible.” She said.

Still, rudeness from Comcast aside, we are that much closer to having our very own internet connection. I’m, obviously, thrilled.

Another reason to love Nine Inch Nails

NIN Year Zero: Too Much for the RIAA – Gizmodo

Oh my gosh, he’s realeasing free MP3s!  Now all the artists will starve!

Oh, wait, what?  The free tracks are creating tons of buzz for the upcoming album?  That can’t be!  That flies in the face of everything the recording industry has told us.

Could it be that the RIAA is wrong?

It figures

During the big snow last week, we discovered that my wife’s car wouldn’t start.  She doesn’t drive very often, so it wasn’t the end of the world, but she would have liked to have driven that particular day, so it was a little annoying.  Then we moved, and didn’t really have a chance to take care of it.  So, yesterday, I went to take care of it.  I borrowed jumper cables from a coworker, figuring I’d try that because it was free.  If that didn’t work, I’d see if the guys at the repair shop across the street would come look at it, or else I’d get it towed.

I got there, and there were cars on either side of hers.  I would have had to park in her trunk to get close enough to jump it, so I went across the street to the repair place.  They were unhelpful and wouldn’t go off-site, so I called AAA.  They were very quick, and sent someone in about 25 minutes.  23 1/2 minutes after I called, the car next to my wife’s pulled out.  When the tow truck driver arrived, he pulled out a little thing that was probably a battery in a case with cables attached, and he jumped the car.  It started just fine.

It’s nice that it’s the battery and not the starter or something worse, but it’s annoying that I could have done all that myself if only my wife had backed in to the spot, or the lot had been less crowded.

Oh, well.  Didn’t cost me any money, at least.  And now I’ll go get a battery today and put it in, and then we’ll figure out where we’re going to keep her car, or if we’re going to sell it, or whatever.

How do people find me?

I’ve seen this done at other blogs (like Minor Tweaks), and I’ve always been fascinated with it, so here are the last ten search strings that brought people here.
* test scores at odds with rising high school grades
My opinion on this isn’t too well informed, but I don’t think I said anything ridiculous
* coca cola engiva berry green tea
* coca cola engiva peach green tea
* enviga too much caffeine?
* how much egcg should i take?
Looks like a lot of people are coming to read my lukewarm but honest review of Enviga, a bunch of links to the lies Coke tells about it, and my unconfirmed and possibly libelous claim that artificial sweetener causes cancer. By the way, the answer to “how much egcg should I take?” is none. Get up off your fat ass and exercise like a normal person. Just because it’s from China and not some lab in Idaho doesn’t mean you should take it.  And yes, Enviga has too much caffiene.
* bitching and complain about wife
I just want to state for the record that I do not bitch and complain about my wife. References to my wife may appear in complaints of which she is not the subject.
* achilles rupture blogs
This one’s for you, Gayle.
* baroody
You think that was him, Googling his own name?
* “internet explorer is the devil”
* internet explorer is devil
Sweet.