possibly noteworthy wrote:
War Nerd:

There are three basic facts to keep in mind about the smokin’ little war in Ossetia:

1. The Georgians started it.
2. They lost.
3. What a beautiful little war!

For me, the most important is #3, the sheer beauty of the video clips that have already come out of this war. I’m in heaven right now.

Could have done without the gratuitous cynicism towards the end with respect to the relative sexiness of casualties, but I guess that's this guy's schtick. Otherwise a good read. Very good dips into history, didn't know about the assistance the Georgian Christians rendered for the Mongols.

I found this as well:

http://www.antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=13285

Good sources are referenced to show this move was telegraphed months in advance.

I'm still hearing both sides say, "He shot first!" but at this point I think it's moot. Georgia picked a fight they could not win.

RE: South Ossetia, The War of My Dreams

noteworthy wrote:
I've rarely felt compelled to award a Gold Star to a Comment in the New Yorker. But this latest piece by Elizabeth Kolbert earns it.

High energy costs are here to stay. People need to cowboy up and accept reality.

RE: The political slant of this article.

So it's John McCain's fault? I'm not sure why he's wrapped up in this piece other than to take pot shots. Considering Obama's recent change of heart with respect to offshore drilling, I'd say it's a moot point in deciding between the two now. That's politics during a campaign for you. What you may think a politician holds as a solid conviction can change between the time you write your article and once it has gone to press.

RE: The other point.

I've quoted the 25%/5% ratio to people for years now. I always follow it with "do you think the rest of the world will be able to consume like us? Something has to give, there's not enough to go around at that rate."

Blank stares ensue.

RE: Changing Lanes

We are a lost generation, desperately clinging to anything that feels real, but too afraid to become it ourselves. We are a defeated generation, resigned to the hypocrisy of those before us, who once sang songs of rebellion and now sell them back to us. We are the last generation, a culmination of all previous things, destroyed by the vapidity that surrounds us. The hipster represents the end of Western civilization – a culture so detached and disconnected that it has stopped giving birth to anything new.

I was about to comment, but someone already stole my words from the comments on this article:

Submitted by Sidslang on Fri, 08/01/2008 - 08:01.

This article would be funny if it wasn't so astoundingly ridiculously misguided. Never mind the apocalyptic hyperbole; kids in keffiyehs are not about to destroy the world. The irony here is that Adbusters laments the very cultural climate they have worked so hard over their publishing history to create: a subculture of hip dissenters who don't care a whit for real, substantive social action and have been lead to think that going to indie rock shows and riding bikes and buying expensive clothes at somewhere other than the Gap makes them revolutionaries. Of course, all countercultural movements in capitalist economies have been about spending money, but it is only comparatively recently that spending money (ie. contributing to the capitalist system) has been figured as some kind of resistance to it. And who is the main proponent of this ineffectual "culture jamming"? Adbusters. If hipsterdom is a monster, Adbusters created it.

The end of western civilization

Decius wrote:

The researchers found that rising home prices up to 2003 could be explained by economic fundamentals, such as low unemployment rates, expanding household incomes and population growth. These factors fueled housing demand and, in turn, increased U.S. home prices. During this time, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac actively issued and purchased conventional, conforming mortgage-backed securities.

But in 2003, political, regulatory and economic factors – including accounting irregularities that led to their senior officers’ resignations and the capping of their retained loan portfolios – forced the two entities to significantly slow their lending volume. Private funding in the form of asset-backed securities and residential mortgage-backed securities replaced conventional, conforming mortgage-backed securities as the prevalent source of mortgage capital.

The new credit environment allowed looser underwriting standards and increased tolerance for riskier, high-yield loan products. Such products included adjustable-rate mortgages with low initial “teaser” rates, Alt-A loans that did not require income verification and nonowner-occupied investor products. This borrowing climate provided previously marginal borrowers with additional access to credit.

Curious what your take is on this:

Ben Bernanke's Hush Money

RE: Subprime lending not main trigger of real estate bubble

possibly noteworthy wrote:

As teenagers’ scores on standardized reading tests have declined or stagnated, some argue that the hours spent prowling the Internet are the enemy of reading — diminishing literacy, wrecking attention spans and destroying a precious common culture that exists only through the reading of books.

But others say the Internet has created a new kind of reading, one that schools and society should not discount.

Cringely wrote a similar article in March.

"...we've reached the point in our (disparate) cultural adaptation to computing and communication technology that the younger technical generations are so empowered they are impatient and ready to jettison institutions most of the rest of us tend to think of as essential, central, even immortal."

...

"Andy Hertzfeld said Google is the best tool for an aging programmer because it remembers when we cannot. Dave Winer, back in 1996, came to the conclusion that it was better to bookmark information than to cut and paste it. I'm sure today Dave wouldn't bother with the bookmark and would simply search from scratch to get the most relevant result. Both men point to the idea that we're moving from a knowledge economy to a search economy, from a kingdom of static values to those that are dynamic."

...

"Steve Jobs rejects the idea of Apple making or distributing e-books because he says people don't read books. He's right, book readers are older. Young readers graze. They search. Look how they watch TV. Steve didn't say people are stupid or we're all going to Hell in a handbasket. He just said we don't read books."

RE: Online, R U Really Reading?

w1ld wrote:
Don't buy BRK.A, it is too expensive right now. :)

--------

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Berkshire Hathaway Inc , the conglomerate built by billionaire investor Warren Buffett, could be overvalued, Barron's reported on Sunday.

Barron's estimates that Berkshire is worth about $130,000 a share, about 10 percent below the current level.

Berkshire stock closed on Friday at $143,000, up 38 percent from its 12-month low of $103,800 hit on February 27.

Hey man thanks for the tip, that spare $150,000 of mine is just burning a hole in my pocket ;)

RE: Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway overvalued: Barron's: Reuters Business News - MSN Money

freakn wrote:
[ Video Link ]

I am not sure if this is funny or sad.

I heard a quote once: "Slow equals easy after a few Zimas."

Wonder what bar she frequents...

RE: YouTube - Miss Teen USA 2007 - South Carolina answers a question

Rattle wrote:
My mission, should I choose to accept it: Find out what happened to Haden-Guest's
story, and write about Haden-Guest's alleged MI6 connection in Radar. If I don't, Young will write about it on Cryptome. "I don't believe you for a minute that you're any different from Haden-Guest," Young rants. "I'm about to get fucked over again. Radar's behind this. Turns out, you're on my shit list. I'm only talking to you to figure out what happened, and what I'm going to make of it. It doesn't look good. Until you find out what this story was and why it was killed, I only have vengeance in my mind against Radar and anyone associated with it."

Interesting read. Never really knew much about the guy's background. But at the end, I had to wonder, why didn't he also record the interview with Haden-Guest? Seems like someone that paranoid would at least take that basic step. Now it's basically "oh you have the tape and you won't let anyone hear it, you bastard!" That's a mighty convenient out. You can make bold claims all day. And if Haden-Guest did actually produce the tape in the future that did not mention his purported stints with MI6, Young could just say, "you edited the tape!"

Lame.

RE: Radar Online : Inside Cryptome, the website the CIA doesn't want you to see

Dagmar wrote:

w1ld wrote:
He goes way to far, but he is trying to make a point.

I dunno, man. Millions of people losing their homes is serious bad juju.

Greg Saunders, a guest blogger on This Modern World, describes the situation succinctly:

http://thismodernworld.com/3903

So let me get this straight. For a few years now, the financial industry has made billions in risky subprime loans by essentially tricking people into believing they can borrow more than they’ll be able to pay back and now that this brilliant idea is going south, people are floating the idea of a government bailout. Well, screw ‘em. If you’re foolish enough to loan hundreds of thousands of dollars to people who can’t even balance their checkbooks, then you deserve to be as poor as your customers.

Then again, this is all assuming that these creditors were giving out loans in good faith in the first place. The way it looks to me is that these subprime loans were always about locking people into high interest loans for a few years until they went broke after which the banks would take back the house and any more money they can squeeze out of the debtors (thanks, bankruptcy reform!). Once they unload the house, which has almost certainly grown in value, they make a nice profit on top of the cash they gouged out of their now-homeless former customers.

The reason this has all come back to bite lenders in the ass is because they lacked the foresight to realize that when their customers were going broke, everybody else would be going broke as well, which would drive down the value of their repossessed houses and make them harder to unload to the next poor sucker who just wants to move out of an apartment.

In a truly free market economy, we’d be pointing these idiots towards the back of the line at the local soup kitchen, but these guys had a backup plan. They bribed (I mean, “lobbied”) every level of government that’s willing to cash their checks, insisting that if they pay the price for their moronic business practices, the entire economy will suffer. In short, they don’t need government bailouts to help themselves, but to help us.

RE: Jim Cramer Blows a Head Gasket 8/3/07

skullaria wrote:

I don't know if that is true or not, but why can't someone very publically show them a law?

What do people mean when they say this? I'm curious. I've watched Aaron Russo's "Freedom To Fascism" and basically this is what I gathered he believes:

* The 16th amendment wasn't properly ratified!
* Show me the law!

The problem with that logic is that the 16th amendment was properly ratified. That's the law!

Seems like they start with a flawed premise and just run with that straw man arguement after that.

Am I missing something?

RE: Feds Corner Hmoe of Ed and Elaine Brown Over Tax Issue