Flutterby™!

Steve Warshak, "Enzyte" penis enlargement fraudster, sentenced to 25 years in prison and $93,000 in fines:

Berkeley Premium Nutraceuticals and other defendants in the case were ordered to forfeit more than $500 million.

This is the winner who sold the placebo, and when refunds were requested asked for a note from the purchaser's doctor verifying that, in fact, the purchaser had a small penis. Via

And House in Saginaw sells for $1.75 on eBay:

She will pay additional charges, aside from the dollar and change it cost her to win the auction. Back taxes and a trash/weed clean-up will set the final price tag around $850. The fee is due by Tuesday, March 31, or the city will foreclose on the property.

Half of me, exposed to California, thinks we're overpopulated and houses will continue to go up because of population pressures. The other half of me... Apparently the purchaser isn't going to go see the property, just try to flip it, so we'll never find out how many days it takes to hitch-hike to Saginaw now Via.

High speed video of fungus shooting spores, accelerating them at 180,000G to 55MPH. The Fastest Flights in Nature: High-Speed Spore Discharge Mechanisms among Fungi. Via.

The Last Bubble

That was it. The housing boom. The leveraged buy-outs. The high flying hedge funds. Mega houses. Super cars. Big dreams of endless credit. All gone. All over. Done, once again.

As we face the economic wreckage of the second credit bubble in a century to rebuild, our leaders will promise restoration of the mirage. But our old debt based reality was a fantasy, a dream. We have no more chance to recreate it than we have in the morning after waking from a lovely dream to fall asleep again back into it while the alarm is ringing.

A site I like is itulip.com

The parties over. Now back to work.

Scoble mentioned the Google 2001 index. This evening, Charlene and I have been searching for information on electric skillets, we don't want something huge, we won't allow any more "non-stick" pans in our kitchen (too much hassle), and we want a temperature range that goes down to 180°F.

Searching on all the variations we're coming up with on electric skillets largely comes up with the spammers. Shopping.com, NextTag, all of those sites that make their money by sucking off traffic from places you'd really want to visit. And there are pages and pages of this crap. In fact, searching on places to buy cookware near us buries the actual vendors down under pages and pages of "yellow pages" knock-offs with the same spammerisms.

In fact, many of those spammers are just using Google ads.

There's a lot missing from the Google 2001 index, but searching there actually gives the sorts of results I might be interested in, personal experiences and such. Of course it's woefully out of date, but it does reaffirm my feeling that the net peaked sometime in the mid '90s and has been sliding downhill since.

And, yes, so far as I can tell Google is still the state of the art in searching. At least this evening. Yahoo is bizarrely useless, and Cuil is just hilariously bad.

Some silly articles that caught my eye that definitely don't deserve their own entry:

• The headline reads "Six locals good enough for college". Great, Santa Rosa, good to see that a town of 150k can send six kids to college. (explanation: it's about football players)
• Fake crack deal lead to Tenderloin slaying. A crack addict offing his dealer in San Francisco's Tenderloin isn't normally something I'd point out, except that the alleged murderer's name is "Leroy Brown". The article doesn't say if "... he's got a custom Continental, and an El Dorado too".
• Bank robber advertises for construction workers with own vests, safety goggles and respirators, uses them as decoys, and then escapes in an inner tube (alt, alt).
• I had no idea that the 11-99 Foundation "get out of your ticket" license plate frames cost a $5k donation

And, no, I'm not going to say anything about last night's debate. Well, okay, only this: am I disappointed that politics have sunk this low? You betcha.

So y'all remember the XKCD on Rule 34:

which threatened WetRiffs.com in response to Rule 34, "if you can imagine it, there is porn of it"? Yeah, they've got content there now (involves nudity).

(And, yes, XKCD not only encourages redistribution, they encourage hot-linking.)

I have two packages I want to use for a project, efsl, a filesystem with an (L)GPL-like license that allows for static linking, and some crypto stuff, it looks like cryptopp has a "public domain" license.

In both cases I can set up systems to abide by the license requirements. I can push the appropriate chip level driver code back up into both their distributions, and make it available myself.

What I need to do is to convince nervous people further up the chain that nobody's going to come back and say "wait, that's my code!". With a commercial product, there's someone to sue. With non-commercial products like this, how do I determine who to send some money to so that my clients feel indemnified against future lawsuits over ownership?

I'm not even worried about situations like someone appropriating the open source code, filing patents on it, then going back at the initial author (full listing of court filings and motions here, via /.), I'm more worried about the perception by my clients that someone could open source code they don't own, and we'd then be liable for that.

Heck, this might even just be some sort of insurance that my company has to buy.

Somali pirates tell their side, they just want money so that they can keep protecting the ocean they patrol:

He said that so far, in the eyes of the world, the pirates had been misunderstood. “We don’t consider ourselves sea bandits,” he said. “We consider sea bandits those who illegally fish in our seas and dump waste in our seas and carry weapons in our seas. We are simply patrolling our seas. Think of us like a coast guard.”

Which, of course, reminds me of the allegations that the Mafia flourished in New York because it was protecting the Italians from the Irish cops, when asked to make a decision between competing corrupt police forces, the Italian neighborhoods chose their own. The lines distinguishing a government and its police force, a group of armed vigilantes, and a gang of thugs are suble.

Financial crisis QOTD:

Oh dear. Now California wants a $7 billion bailout. This may be the first time the Treasury has been asked to buy toxic debt by the issuer of the debt, rather than by the holder.

Maybe we should have encouraged them to take the first deal from the used car salesman, 'cause it looks like the new deal is worse.

http://www.sadtrombone.com/ (Via Dwayne Anderson)

Fastest way to get me to throw your junk mail in the recycling bin without opening the envelope, or to delete your email unread? The phrase "Must act now" on the outside or in the subject line.

I don't have it in me to watch the Vice Presidential candidate debate tonight, but if you're into that sort of masochism, Dori has made up a Bingo card generator to make the thing more interesting.

I've always feared getting run over by a txt'ing teen - but I'd never dreamed that the train engineer would be the text-murderer...

I'm leaving town shortly, back on Thursday, so I don't have time to watch this Harvard panel discussion on economics, but Elizabeth Warren's pointer to it says:

At a Harvard panel discussion yesterday, economist professor Ken Rogoff made an interesting point: The liquidity crisis isn't real.  Or, to restate it: Any liquidity crisis is caused by the promise of a government bailout. Ken said that his many friends in investment banking said that there is plenty of money to invest in financial services, but right now it is "sitting on the sidelines."  Why?  Because the financial services industry does not want to pay the terms required to get that money back in circulation (e.g., give up equity).  As he put it, why do business with Warren Buffett who will negotiate a tough deal, if you believe that the government will ride in soon with cheaper cash?

[Edit: The comments to that entry say it was actually Greg Mankiw, and claims that Elizabeth Warren took it out of context, now I really wanna see the video]

To me it seems like... well... a parable:

We live in a neighborhood. Maybe not the best neighborhood in the world, but it ain't bad, and people from other neighborhoods are clamoring to live here, so we're kinda happy here. Some folks starts to build a high rise in our neighborhood. At first we're a little concerned, 'cause we do occasionally have natural disasters here, but the promises of how modern buildings are going to turn our little neighborhood into a very desirable city in a few years keep us from protesting too loudly. Yeah, the engineering looks a little shakey, in fact one of the guys working on this building even refers to the idea that it can be built as high as is planned as "irrational exhuberance", but construction continues.

It seems like this building has hit a reasonable height, but down the street a used car dealer comes in and says "hey, you can use scrap steel from my used car business to build that thing even higher!". Many of our neighbors say "great, I'm gonna get a condo in that building". Soon, some of us who were uneasy with the building in the first place start to notice that a disproportionate number of people seem to be dying in crashes of cars bought from the used car lot, so we start to look closer at the building. And now we notice that if the building falls over, it's gonna wreck a good bit of our neighborhood, crush our houses and shrubberies.

And we start saying something.

Now the guys building this building and the guy with the used car lot catch on to this and say "Woah! This building's on shakey ground! We need everyone in the neighborhood over here, quick, to hold this building up! We need to buy lots of support to keep this building from collapsing all over the neighborhood!"

And those who have had second thoughts about this building are starting to say "well, why don't we take a couple stories off the top, rather than just putting temporary reinforcements around the bottom?" Of course our neighbors who bought condos in this building are hollering at us that if we take stories off the top, they'll lose their condos, so they're siding with the used car guy.

No matter what, you don't take the first deal you're offered by the used car guy. And, indeed, collapse may be imminent, but it seems like double-checking the engineering of the people who brought us the unstable mess is in order before we start slapping 2x4s on the first story of this skyscraper to figure out how to really keep this thing from falling over, or at least to figure out how to take off a few of those unsustainable stories safely.

Oh, and if I hear one more person blaming tranches and bad rating systems on the 30 year old legislation that is the CRA, I'm gonna have to lay about with me with a clue stick. I'm not necessarily a fan of the CRA, but the arguments I've seen blaming all the sub-prime lending by non-CRA conforming organizations on the CRA are beyond absurd.

[Edit: Fixed "tronch" to "tranch" spelling]

"Video showing the destructive re-entry of Jules Verne ATV at the end of a successful mission to the International Space Station." (Via MeFi)

From John McCain's remarks on the financial crisis:

...I will never, ever be a president who sits on the sidelines when this country faces a crisis. Some of you may have noticed, but it's not my style to simply "phone it in."

Washington Post database of Senate members who missed votes from the 110^th Congress.

The problem with live theater is that you buy tickets with your credit card, so they have your personal information, then you go to a show, but for the next mumbledy gazillion years the theater is calling you every month asking if you'd like to buy a subscription to the next umpteen shows.

It's kind of like donating to public radio or public television, the donation isn't what causes hesitation, it's the prospect of dealing with the subsequent deluge of junkmail when they sell their subscriber list.

Faith based prostitution:

But in his latest court argument, the Tucson man says he hired women at Angel's Heaven Relaxation Spa — near University Medical Center — not to sell sex but to comfort the afflicted through the religious act of "laying on of hands."

As taxpayers are being screwed, I'm happy that someone may be getting off.

During the last campaign, the armchair quarterbacking following the Dean implosion convinced me that much of the irregularities that appeared among the advisors and in how the campaign was run was simply that a good portion of the staff were finding ways to take all of that spectacular internet fundraising and funnel it to their own pockets. Similarly, when Cam worked on the Clark campaign, and reported later that it cost him a bunch of money, I cynically wondered how many just slightly further up the chain weren't making a decent salary.

Josh Marshall calls out McCain-Palin campaign advisor Rick Davis's shell companies to suck off a couple million bucks o' campaign contributions there. Yet another reason, as if you needed them, to give to issues advocacy organizations that are at least up front about their expenses and salaries, and let the campaigns adopt those positions as they need to attract those voters.

I'm still not sure where to stand on the whole bailout thing. For history's sake I'll point out that the DOW has been ping-ponging all over today, and closed down 778 points, but a few reasons I'm not sorry to have seen the first pass at the bailout shot down hard in the House of Representatives:

1. Radley Balko catches the recently outspoken Barney Frank (D-MA) talking about Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac back in 2003 (NY Times article):

'These two entities -- Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac -- are not facing any kind of financial crisis,'' said Representative Barney Frank of Massachusetts, the ranking Democrat on the Financial Services Committee. ''The more people exaggerate these problems, the more pressure there is on these companies, the less we will see in terms of affordable housing.''

2. If the bailout plan really has the possibility to pay back the taxpayers in the way that's being sold to us, why isn't private capital diving on these equities?
3. I'm all for leaving the decision making to people who honestly have the time to delve into the issues, but it sure seems like everyone who's had time to delve into these issues is screaming "no" to the bailout, and I think it's quite telling that the vast majority of those voting "no" are up for re-election [edit: in contested races].

Jon Stewart compares George W. Bush in 2003 vs George W. Bush in 2008 [Edit: Diane corrects me, it's Jon not John].

CNN compares and contrasts Tina Fey lampooning Sarah Palin, to Sarah Palin. Damn, that's spooky.

IDEA - The International Dialects of English Archive, a resource for audio files of English spoken by native and non-native speakers of English.

Next up on the non-fiction reading list is Dishonorable Passions: Sodomy Laws in America, by William N. Eskridge, Jr. It's not a light read, and I'm just working my way through the 1881-1935 chapter right now, but what strikes me is how strongly correlated, throughout history, the anti-pornography and anti non-procreative sexual practices forces have been with those who are against any sort of equal rights for women.

These things come in waves, and just because we've made tremendous strides in the past four decades or so doesn't mean it can't all come crashing down.

In this new millenium we have been backsliding quite a bit, Chris over at Sex in the Public Square talks about The Shrinking Public Square, on Audacia Ray's struggles with CitiBank, iTunes, and Google Checkout.

I've decided it's time to upgrade my camera. I've been using point-and-shoots for quite some time. I get pretty good results and don't have to worry about fragility or investment. But I've exhausted the capabilities of these cameras. I 'm constantly adjusting exposure, shutter speed, ISO, etc. While I've always been careful to buy point-and-shoots with lots of manual settings, the menus are not setup for quick adjustment. And, because the glass is so small, the resulting images have limited application. I've pushed this to the limit as well, producing 4x6 foot posters and using images I've taken in Asha's cookbook.

So I want to upgrade. I think DSLR is the way to go but could be persuaded to go pro-sumer. On the pro-sumer side, I'm partial to the Olympus SP-570UZ. I've seen some impressive results with this line of cameras dating back almost a decade now. By sticking with Olympus, I'm also leveraging my prior investment in xD cards and Olympus accessories.

On the DSLR side, I'm considering the Olympus E520, the Canon Rebel XSi and the Nikon D60, the Pentax K200D, and the Leica V-Lux-1 10 or even the Sony 300K.

Any thoughts? Any preferences? I'm not prepared to spend more than $1000 and I know there is probably a lot more camera to be had to more money.

Food for Halloween: Eyeball Caprese.

Got together with Bill and Phil last night to watch the debate of the Presidential debate. Wow, McCain is remarkably inarticulate and puts an amazing about of conditional clauses in his run-on sentences. I doubt the guy said a complete coherent sentence all of last night.

Having said that, I think McCain won because I think his voter base isn't looking for insightful reasoned answers, I think they're looking for a "booyah" football coach sort of experience. Stringing together a bunch of unrelated observations and ignoring that they don't actually lead to the conclusion that one is trying to draw has worked effectively for that voting block before. A great example is McCain's reference of the "Putin is our president" poster, evidence that shows that the political situation in South Ossetia is quite a bit more nuanced than McCain let on.

So McCain is the person you'd vote for if you're looking for a football coach style president.

However, another note... If I understand McCain's health care proposal, McCain is proposing to drop the employer's deduction for health insurance costs, replacing it with a maximum $5000 personal deduction. Anyone else think this is a way to force the individual states into providing health care? It takes a bunch of upper income people with good health care plans who will suddenly realize that they can deduct the full extent of their health insurance if they're paying it as taxes to their state, but not if they're paying it directly to the insurer.

Interesting that McCain is doing his damnedest to push health care completely into a government service.

Finally, what's up with Jim Lehrer's use of the word "ruler"? Truly we've lost our way...

Speaking of lack of moral hazard: Automakers just got $25 billion in loans, and are expected to ask for another $25 billion next year (More, more), even adjusted for inflation this is like 6 times the much debated bailout of Chrysler back in 1980.

I realize that the argument here is that if we let these companies fail we'll have huge swaths of the Midwest out of work, but isn't this the same basic issue as welfare: We want to make sure the kids don't suffer, but in doing so we have to provide a free ride to parents who didn't make wise choices? Except in this case it's that we want to make sure the workers don't suffer, but in doing so we have to provide limos and vacation houses in Vail to the execs.

Oktapodi.

The Naked Clown Calendar, to raise funds to find a cure for Multiple Sclerosis.

Many of you have probably seen this astonishing admission of incompetence:

"It's not based on any particular data point," a Treasury spokeswoman told Forbes.com Tuesday. "We just wanted to choose a really large number."

Nonelvis points out that this is coming from a representative of a government department tasked with:

...managing the U.S. Government's finances effectively, promoting economic growth and stability, and ensuring the safety, soundness, and security of the U.S. and international financial systems.

and yet they're admitting that they're pulling numbers out of their collective asses and are throwing oatmeal against the wall to see if it sticks. Luckily, there are people paying attention, Martin Wolf points out that Paulson's plan is not a solution to the crisis.

Meanwhile, "The best-performing hedge fund manager of the past two years has closed down his funds and is returning money to investors after concluding that the danger of losing money from a bank collapse is too high." If you're a good money manager, this is what you do.