Paul Stone

Kimya Dawson segment on NPR: All Songs Considered

I happened to catch the Summer Music Preview episode of the NPR: All Songs Considered podcast, and I was treated to this very amusing segment on Kimya Dawson.

Cheeky Discussion About Mortgage-Backed Securities

Don't miss the punch line at the end.

A Comedy Writer's Work is Never Done

The Emmy nominations for Best Comedy Writing.  Funny video.

What Rudy Giuliani Doesn't Want You to Know

Too many people still are not aware that Giuliani, the erstwhile hero of 9/11, likely cost the lives of many first-responders by foolishly locating the emergency response command center inside the World Trade Center, which was known to be one of the most likely targets for a terrorist attack (and had in fact already been attacked in 1993).  This was gross criminal negligence, and it also explains why Giuliani was walking around the streets of NYC on 9/11.  Because his emergency response command center was a pile of rubble.  Check out the video.

What I Learned From Bush

NY Times Reader

Ran into a nice review of the new New York Times Reader.  I had not realized that a person with a .edu email account could get free access to TimesSelect content.  Interesting!  You can try out the Times Reader here.

Sphere (Escape From the Locked Room)

Sphere is a very cool puzzle which challenges you to escape from a locked room, using only what you find in the room.  Click on a part of the room to inspect closer.  Click on an object to use it or pick it up.  Once an object is in your possession, it appears in the sidebar.  Then, you can click on the magnifier to get a closer look.  While you are inspecting an object, try clicking on it, or clicking on it with other objects.

You can solve this puzzle on your own.  Just be aware that clicking is very precise, and there are a lot more areas to inspect than may be apparent at first.

Don't worry about getting into a state where you can't solve the puzzle.  That doesn't seem to be an issue with this game.  So, you don't need to restart in order to see if that key works in a different drawer as well.  It doesn't.

If you get stuck, step away from the game and come back in a little while.  Time to solve is maybe an hour or two.  Maybe, less, if you are clever.  :)

Massive Galaxies Spin Faster

Interesting.  Somewhat counter-intuitively, the more massive a galaxy is, the faster it spins.

The Coming Mortgage Lender Tsunami

I've followed the housing bubble for quite a while.  Since 2003, I've thought that home prices were unsustainable, and that lenders were just plain batty for extending "no doc" loans with teaser rates to anyone with a pulse.  The rapidly progressing collapse of New Century Financial (only the second largest subprime lender in the country) seems to be the canary in the coal mine, and I was fascinated to read an inside account of the mortgage industry which explains how New Century's struggles will likely start of a wave of defaults in small lenders.  It makes for very interesting reading, and a rare insider's account of the mortgage industry.

Fox on Its Heels?

It appears that Democratic activists will win a key battle, by forcing the Nevada Democratic Party to reconsider allowing Fox News to host a Democratic presidential primary debate.  Matt Stoller has some thoughts on how progressive activists are fighting to retake the media.

Media is now a core part of politics for Democratic activists.  We are now finally recognizing the power of information, and that putting 'the facts out there' represents a core set of values that must be defended. To contextualize this, the Iraq war really created the mass basis for a media reform movement that had been simmering since the 1970s.  When progressives finally realized that the lack of debate in the press had led to the strategic and moral error of Iraq, a mass movement began to organize against powerful interests.  That's where the net neutrality fight, among others, came from.  It's also where the grassroots pressure to not ratify Fox News as a legitimate news source is coming from.