From flippers to floppers

Latest in mortgage fraud: Flopping
http://money.cnn.com/2012/10/23/real_estate/mortgage-fraud-flopping/index.html?source=cnn_bin

I had heard a bit about this before but didn’t realize it had been dignified with a name. The main issue I see here is that the IRS has the capability (that I believe Congress has temporarily disabled) to assign as ‘profit’ the difference between the mortgage owed and the short-sale price and then send a tax bill. Thus, it seems that these ‘floppers’ might be lining themselves up for a rude awakening at some point.

DRM to the rescue!

Amazon wipes customer’s Kindle and deletes account with no explanation
Kindle user had her account deleted because it had ties to ‘previous abuses of company policy’, but the online retailer blanked all follow-up enquiries
http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/2012/oct/22/amazon-wipes-customers-kindle-deletes-account

This really underscores my objection to DRM (Digital rights management). If I am going to ‘lease’ something I expect to pay _a lot_ less than if I purchase it and have permanent irrevocable ownership, yet the price for leasing is pretty much on par with that of owning. I am not even particularly interested in trying to reverse engineer the content, I will simply not purchase the lease and vote with my pocketbook. That so much content is protected by DRM and so many people cheerfully pay nearly full-price for part-time use is beyond me, but then again, I see people accepting all sorts of things that go against their best interests because they were told to.

Not just American InJustice

Thomas Quick: the Swedish serial killer who never was
It reads like a real-life Scandinavian crime novel. In the 1990s, Thomas Quick confessed to more than 30 murders, making him Sweden’s most notorious serial killer. Then, he changed his name and revealed his confessions were all faked
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/oct/20/thomas-quick-bergwall-sweden-murder

This is apropos an earlier post today where investigators lie to themselves and others in order to achieve an end they have predetermined. This is a bit of a long post for some of my reader(s), but I think quite interesting in looking at the 1:1 parallels we see here in the US InJustice system. This quote is very revealing to me:

Judge Göran Lambertz cautions against “rushing to conclusions”. He believes that in the pile of false details Bergwall gave to police, there might still be some elements of truth. This position has made him deeply unpopular in certain parts of Swedish society, especially with those – like Thomas Olsson and Jenny Küttim – who are campaigning for Bergwall’s release.

“A lot of people have made their careers on the Thomas Quick case,” says Küttim. “So today they have a lot to lose.”

Even when faced with essentially insurmountable evidence the judge finds it essentially impossible to even consider that he is wrong. What a whacked up species we are! How the heck did we survive to reach the point where we are destroying the ecosystem of an entire planet?

Longevity treatments soon?

Science News has some interesting articles today, several have a theme (to me, anyway) so I am going to discuss them together. I have long predicted that I was young enough to be able to take advantage of what I perceive as the inevitable longevity treatments I expect to be available soon. Of course, ‘soon’ has been longer than I expected and I was actually quite down on the subject fairly recently and worried that such treatments would happen after I died (my statistical death, anyway; some of my family has lived to quite ripe old ages, but others have died rather young, so I figure on my statistical life span (75-80) leaving me with another 25-30 years yet to go). However, these articles give me hope that scientists will have treatments within that window…

Fasting hormone helps mice live longer
Protein tricks body into starvation mode
http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/345907/title/Fasting_hormone_helps_mice_live_longer

Not quite exercise in a pill (at least not yet, anyway), but very interesting that such a dramatic impact was made with a relatively small change. I would like to know the results when they switch the hormone ‘on’ when the mice are in middle age.

Nouveaux Antennas
A single hairlike appendage may allow a cell to sense the outside world
http://www.sciencenews.org/view/feature/id/345831/title/Nouveaux_Antennas

I was _just_ talking with my cube-mate about my theory that the cure for cancer has already been discovered, but the person who discovered it doesn’t realize what they have and that information is sitting in a database awaiting (re)discovery. This is also a subject where I didn’t know that I didn’t know about it. I have studied science rather extensively for going on 40 years so stumbling across something like this where I know bupkus about it is rare and surprising to me. This is to say that I know what I don’t know (or rather thought that), something that took over 5 years for me in the study of computer science. Of course, life, the universe and everything is larger that simply computer science, so I guess I could be forgiven, but it is still a bit of a shock to learn something that now appears to be so fundamental but was unknown.

Regarding the article specifically, it seems likely to me that as cells age and are no longer replaced that the cell’s ability to communicate (or at least receive state from surrounding tissues) would get increasingly compromised with time. Finding a treatment to rejuvenate the antennas seems like it would go a long way toward lengthening the healthy part of life.

Living longer comes easier
Human longevity largely a modern phenomenon
http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/345778/title/Living_longer_comes_easier

It seems that our species longevity is tied pretty closely to reducing or eliminating disease or poor environment. I guess next up will be dealing with us all being fatties who never move around, but it seems like that might be had in a pill (or at least an injection) soon. I have read several places that the biological effects of aging seem to reach a plateau in the 70-80 year old time frame and now the thinking is that a person who is otherwise healthy (and avoids being run over, slipping on a bar of soap, being killed by a jealous lover, etc.) can live past 100 with relative ease. Which is good news, if I can get rid of some of this gut (was dealing with some positional asphyxia over the weekend what with all my bending over to work on the roof; as if I really needed more reasons to get rid of it), maybe I can add another 20 years onto my window to get longevity treatments.

Killing me softly with your breath

Elevated carbon dioxide may impair reasoning
Insufficient ventilation allows exhaled gas to build up indoors, diminishing decision-making abilities
http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/345791/title/Elevated_carbon_dioxide_may_impair_reasoning

This is really quite amazing to me. It makes me want to get a CO2 monitor and check things out. Even when I have done research at elevating CO2 levels in greenhouses to enhance plant growth I don’t think I expected to see levels of 2,500 ppm, so to think that this is an acceptable level in the work place is rather scary. The results of the experiment seem quite interesting, though they fail to quantify ‘astonishing’ and I am left to imagine the results.

As one commenter added:

Hmmm.. this may go some distance in explaining the remarkable rise, in the smoke-filled back rooms of Congress and Wall Street, of implacable stupidity and breathtaking ignorance in our vaunted leader’s insouciant unencumbrance with all things rational and commonsensical.

Self-justification is the powerful mechanism that blinds us to the awareness that we were wrong

Why can’t law enforcement admit their mistakes?
Their refusal to do so leads to countless wrongful convictions, but psychology says few will cop to misconduct
http://www.salon.com/2012/10/21/why_cant_law_enforcement_admit_their_mistakes/

Another in the line of posts on the American InJustice system…

This one speaks to the psychology of the system in that there is a huge reluctance to being wrong. That reluctance is so strong, likely, and rather ironically, because the consequences of being wrong are so huge. If you are an honest member of the system wouldn’t it be hard to live with yourself if you had been instrumental in destroying an innocent person’s life because you wouldn’t consider another suspect?

I also found this little quote quite interesting:

“…People who suffer from depression have better memory than people who don’t, because part of our ability to survive and not to be depressed is to forget a lot of stuff.”

What I get out of this quote is that people in general are exceptional about lying to themselves by virtue of ‘forgetting’ past intransigence. Perhaps depressed people are depressed _because_ they can’t forget when they have fucked up? Anyway, it is rather telling, to me, that the default condition of the human psych (since we treat depression and not the alternative) is that we can’t remember.

Mentioned at the end of the article is how verbiage choices might make it more difficult to admit error when it comes along. I am sure that there is some element of truth to that, but in my mind the biggest cause for the railroading of innocents is that there is absolutely no consequences for doing so. I becha that if the people involved in the prosecution and conviction of an innocent had some tangible consequences that it would happen a lot less.

A chameleon will stay a chameleon

For a reasonably balanced view on why Romney is a better choice (or perhaps a less bad choice) than Obama, I offer this interesting post from Scott Adams…

Interesting Day
http://dilbert.com/blog/entry/interesting_day/

For me my ‘support’ of Obama (since I live in a ‘blue’ state, my voting for Romney wouldn’t make a particle of difference anyway (and, of course, it won’t make any difference voting for Obama, so I expect to stay at home since I haven’t paid the tiniest bit of attention to any of the other races)) boils down to the single issue (best to read the whole post, including updates, for this to make the most sense): I am most motivated by is how fast we move to the feudal oligarchical police state I see as our inevitable future. I see us moving faster with Romney in charge (chameleon / etch-a-sketch not withstanding), a wee bit slower with Obama in charge. Yes, Obama has done a whole lot of ‘fire-able’ offenses. Were Ron Paul the GOP candidate (as much as I detest him) I almost certainly would vote for him because of his strong advocacy against the Constitutional shredding of the current President and my expectation for shredding done by Romney/Obama the next four to eight years. However, given that our choices really boil down to exactly one (Romney or Obama; third-party candidates have exactly zero chance of gaining office traditionally and certainly in this election) I figure everything else will be equal except the rate at which the middle class is destroyed and I see it destroyed slower under Obama. Indeed, by avoiding the austerity that is so popular amongst the GOP elite, I see a chance that the middle class might have a chance to expand a bit under Obama.

So, as much as I agree with Scott’s post that Obama targeting marijuana dispensaries for political gain is a firing offense, I see the lesser of two evils (only a bit lesser!) as Obama vs my expectations for a Romney administration.

It is a close run thing, though, and if you have sympathy with Scott’s chameleon argument leading to a not terribly bad result then Romney would be your man.

Too bad there is no option for ‘none of the above’!

Etch-a-sketch President

Finally Liberated From Facts, Mitt Romney the Pure Bull Artist Takes Flight
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/finally-liberated-from-facts-mitt-romney-the-pure-bull-artist-takes-flight-20121019

The wonky types are all tied up in knots trying to understand Romney’s latest blather, but it can’t be done. This is a guy who says whatever his audience wants to hear: when he was in the primaries he was ultra-right-wing conservative, now he is the expansive centrist. Romney, as the article points out, has learned a valuable lesson: no one gives a damn if what you say is a bald faced lie, they just want to feel good. Whereas Obama, during his first run, made a series of promises that he totally failed to keep (which I consider as bald faced lies, but then he is a politician so I should have expected no better), at least he was consistent on what he proposed. No one can possibly know what Romney intends to do, probably not even Romney himself, which would make the people he chooses as advisers critical, but, naturally, he isn’t revealing any of that either. If Romney gets the Presidency, something that appears increasingly possible as the sheeple lap up Mr. Etch-a-sketch’s lies, at least thinking people will know not to expect him to honor his promises, that would be impossible. At least we know ahead of time that he is a pathological liar that will say anything, not that it will help our country one bit since I consider it a 100% guarantee that he will only look after the situation for the uber wealthy, accelerating Obama’s efforts to enrich them at the middle classes expense.