Category: Shorties

Maybe you’ve noticed I haven’t said much about the UndieBomber?: Here’s how they do “airport security” in Israel. Notice that they don’t strip search people? Notice the lack of scanners that let authorities look under your clothes (how long till scanner porn shows up online?) without having to touch you (except with radiation of course)? Now here’s what the ACLU has to say about the future direction of airport screening. Remarkably reasonable, no?

It was a lousy decade: Prices went up. No jobs were created. Property values were stagnant. The net worth of American families declined when inflation was taken into account. The stock market merely churned. In short, it sucked. Glad it’s over. Let’s do what we can to make this decade better!

On Charity: a good info-graphic.

Banks only follow the laws they want to follow, fair housing edition: Wells Fargo being sued for [allegedly] steering minorities to crappy high interest low quality subprime loans.

A serious question: Should I commit to writing something — even if it’s something short — every day? You know where the comments are. At the moment I am committed to a writing schedule on my other sites. That has led to a perhaps irregular publishing schedule at ShortWoman. I have considered a 3 day a week schedule (and taking ads! did you know I have not made a penny at this site?) at various times in the past. Your opinions and the comments section were made for each other.

Sorry I’ve been underground this week. Anybody want to guess why? Points to anyone who said Modern Warfare 2. It’s good. Anyways, time to tab dump.

Sex, Lies, and Misogyny: Oh, I could keep going on, but I’m so disgusted with Congress I could scream. Mike put it well when he said “Because nothing says freedom like forcing a woman with a dead fetus to get a sepsis infection.” Of course, big business is taking advantage of the fact that women make less than men and firing the employees who make “too much”. Except for the big bosses of course! We couldn’t ask them to take less money or anything like that. I’ve got news for both political parties: women are roughly 50% of voters and no candidate can win without at least some of us voting for his or her worthless  hide.

Fail Fail: High school’s autodialer system accidentally calls “thousands” of parents to tell them their kid is failing at least one class. Oops, that call should only have gone to parents of kids who were actually in fact failing. I sure do hope no kids were punished as a result of this message. I can imagine the conversations: “You liar!  The school says you are failing a class, what is it??” “I swear dad, I don’t know! I thought I was doing good in all my classes!” Insert profanity as the conversation continues.

Pretty darn good as dreams go: A dream “That Congress actually cared about working people.”

Speaking of Congress Screwing the People: Dylan Rattigan goes off on the 10th anniversary of repealing Glass Steagal. Wow, I am liking the new, improved, angry Dylan!

Well Named: The TARP continues to live up to it’s unfortunately accurate acronym, and will cost the taxpayer money that could have gone to healthcare, education, roads, the aqueducts, etc.. We all would have been better off if Congress had given $100,000 towards each primary mortgage.

The Supreme Court may Change Everything: It looks like the entire court is ridiculing the idea that a business practice can be patented. The interesting and potentially game-changing part of this is that software patents are a subgroup of business practice patents.

The WPA Built my High School: (Seriously. But it’s just not the same since they tore out half the front lawn to widen the freeway.) Some interesting thoughts on building public works in the modern economy.

Does she like photographs? Eh? Eh?: Say no more. Releasing risque photographs as a form of sexual assault.

Omnibus: Bruce Schneier distills all his thoughts on security theatre into one brilliant essay.

Japanfilter, Take a Bow: Ok, this is really a pretty simple gaffe. Obama-sama is bowing to Akihito-sama as if he were a Japanese citizen, not as if he is the leader of a sovereign nation of at least equal importance to Japan. Notice the slight bow from Akihito-sama and the even slighter inclination from Michiko-sama? However, the people screaming about this sure didn’t say much when Bush-sama was off kissing Saudi princes!

How Stimulating: Jobs created by the stimulus bill. Not as many as might be hoped, but it’s a start.

Exactly where are the government economists shopping?: No Cost of Living Adjustment for those on Social Security. Just because you’ve seen prices of bread, eggs, and fuel rising must surely be a statistical anomaly! What did they do to get these figures? Make sure that Vegas and Detroit housing prices were put in the basket?

About time somebody asked: A Federal Judge has officially asked how — exactly — gay marriage is any threat to those of us with heterosexual, traditional marriages in any way shape or form. The lawyer on the receiving end of this question had no good answer.

Bankerpalooza: Bank of America loses $2,200 Million in a single quarter, mostly on bad mortgages and credit cards. Banks and investment companies are robbing us blind, and their executives are taking home huge bonuses based on the money they take from us. Meanwhile, in the real economy, there is “no downside limit for the dollar.” Nuts.

How to read a corporate balance sheet:  Start with the footnotes.

What a strange world we live in: Kiko’s House has a more complete rundown, but the week is well summarized by America’s distraction, the balloon boy who wasn’t.

Have a safe and sane weekend, folks.

Flower Power: 10 things you can do to start a community garden.

Obligatory Insurance Items: So you’ve heard that we have 45,000 deaths annually that are essentially from lack of health insurance, right? These are deaths that would have been prevented if people had thought they could afford to see a doctor sooner. We’ve got insurance companies paying huge fines for dropping people who might need care — but only when they get caught and taken to court. We’ve also got insurance companies effective saying that women’s health issues aren’t their problem (covering women who are trying to escape abusive relationships or who once had a C-section might cost money). And our Congressmice want to pander to the insurance companies. Well, most of them anyway.

Bankers hold all the cards: Ok, household and business debt is down. That’s good, right? Well, the reason debt is down is that banks aren’t lending, despite the fact that TARP was supposed to give the banks plenty of liquidity (i.e., money) so they could lend.  Their excuse? Nobody “qualified” wants to borrow. Of course they set the qualifications, which used to be ludicrously loose and are now ludicrously tight. Guess what? No real end to the recession without new startups putting people to work, and that’s not happening until startups have access to capital.

On Economic Inequality: Why it’s a problem.

Nevada is a funny place: Aw gee, maybe it’s a bad idea for Medical Assistants to be giving Botox injections and chemo drugs and a bunch of other stuff. Flu shots? That’s ok. On the other hand, I’m kinda looking forward to Penn and Teller’s new TV show.

Some good economic news, for a change: If you actually still have a job, your wages likely went up! What’s more, you’re less likely to lose your job! Of course since 5 states now have unemployment rates of over 12%, that’s not saying a whole lot. Remember, that’s the super-narrow “U3” rate, not the wider U6 number.

Condoms can save the world: It turns out that preventing unwanted pregnancies is 4 to 5 times more cost effective than most “green” technology. But nobody wants to talk about that because contraceptives are “controversial”. News flash, the people who are against contraceptives also don’t believe in global warming, and many of them think the world is ending in their lifetime anyway. Moving on now!

Um, yeah: So I conclude on a related note, 10 worst cars to have sex in.

Happy Saturday, Happy New Year to my Jewish readers.

see more Lolcats and funny pictures

Adopting a pet is a good thing. Moving on now….

A few words about food: Alli may not be your ally; why it’s so hard to resist food that isn’t very good for us; one of the men who made it that way; why Time’s peice on exercise and weight loss is misleading; and is soy “real” food? As for myself, moderation in all things. I don’t think a little soy sauce and the occasional edamame is going to hurt anybody. I realize that this is anecdotal but it seems like most of the people I have ever heard of having problems with soy consumed lots and lots of it day in and day out.

Mainstream Stupidity: our media is making us stupid by legitimizing the dumbest theories with no corroborating evidence. See also: birthers, death panels, most conspiracy theorists, Glenn Beck.

More on World War II: Last year I played Call of Duty: World At War. It allowed me to see, briefly, the Soviet side of the war. In short, they had it a lot worse than America did. Perhaps their losses colored the entire cold war.

To the Conservatives: because government can’t do anything right? (Except for roads, education, sanitation, the aqueducts….) Thom Hartmann riffs on the same theme. Is this really what they want?

On Health Insurance Reform: The “death panels” already exist, but they are run by insurance company bureaucrats. If our current system is so great, how come thousands showed up for a free clinic? Oh, and an item on why abortion needs to be covered by insurance regardless of whether your Aunt Frannie and Uncle Dobson approve. You don’t suppose our current LOW levels of people being employed by small businesses has something to do with our current health insurance situation, do you?

Speaking of Health: British researchers are in a tizzy over the fact that not every woman has switched to birth control pills with the lowest risk of a particular bad side effect. It is worth noting that this side effect is potentially fatal, but still incredibly rare. I guess it never occurred to researchers that women might be more concerned about the side effects they are more likely to experience when switching pills.

Bank Failure Update: Read it and weep. My bank was taken over yesterday. Supposed to be business as usual with a new owner Monday. No wonder investors are no longer content with “not as bad as expected” news.

Dilemma: how do you find a real nutcase before he does something dangerous to others, without locking up people that are maybe a little off but no real threat to anybody?

You will need to know this at some point in your life: how to choose sheets.

And last: impact craters.

Have a safe weekend, folks!

We will all miss Walter Cronkite: A lot of smart people have written a lot of eloquent words on the occasion of Mr. Cronkite’s death — and the subsequent death of TV journalism as we knew it. But only Joe Gandelman has the guts to figure out why TV journalism will never be the same.

Bank Failure Friday: Add 4 to the running tally to get 57 bank failures this year. Notice that no matter how bad things get, the really big banks that helped cause this mess will never have FDIC crews sweep in on a Friday.

America’s Best Schools: They have high minority populations, a lot of kids who need free school lunches, and the kids do a whole lot of moving around. Yet they outperform most American schools! What are our military base schools doing right, and how much of it can we do in civilian schools?

Obligatory Health Insurance Reform Items: Pete Abel on balancing urgency and patience; Open Left (oh how I hate quoting Ian Welsh) on what happened to Canada’s costs when they went to single payor, and what it should mean to us; Ed Stein puts it all in cartoon form; What doctors make, versus what they ought to make (hint, family practice docs haven’t gotten a real raise in over 1o years); Mr. Obama tells Congress to get moving; at least the AMA likes this House proposal; Maha Barbara explains a Cato Institute idea; John Aravosis on health insurance realities you may not have encountered yet; how can I have a batch of health insurance reform links without including Ezra Klein; Dave J on making subsidies mean something.

Citizen Carrie, WHERE ARE  YOU?: Carrie was one of the most knowledgable lay people I knew when it came to H1-B visas. Please, settle for Charles II at Mercury Rising.

Sanity and Taxes: I know taxes as they stand today are complicated, but still people tend to go nutty overboard when discussing tax hikes for the wealthy. This even applies when people aren’t going to be effected at all. So here’s reality on the latest surtax proposal. Moreover, here is how tax brackets work. Galt was an idiot.

Newtonian Economy: an interesting way of looking at the last decade from Distributorcap.

From Newton to Darwin: somebody caught birds evolving. Stuff that in your intelligent design and smoke it.

Game Over, Man!: Will Wright of all people says we need to stop assuming all gamers are 12 year old boys.

Politician kicked out of anti-abortion group for having common sense: his quote, “I can’t figure out for the life of me how to stop pregnancies without contraception. Don’t be mad at me for wanting to solve the problem.”

DHS also trying to exhibit common sense: The Secretary would like to seriously scale back Real ID requirements.

Compute me to the moon: the computers used to get man to the moon were less powerful than a modern pocket calculator. As the song goes, it’s in the way that you use it.

And Last: Hip Hop Home Remodeling.

The crisis isn’t over yet: 40 bank failures this year, and counting. The year’s not quite half over yet. We will never know how close the very biggest banks came (or will come) to failing because it simply won’t be allowed. Stay tuned for Friday afternoon’s installment of FDIC adventures.

Taking off the rose-colored glasses: official unemployment is bad enough at 9.4%. Real employment is at 16.4%. Remember that unemployed people often don’t have health insurance or the money to pay the bills (or the mortgage, or to put in the bank, etc). And now respectable economists are saying what I have long suspected, that it’s a “lost decade” for job growth. Oh, and Warren Buffett thinks it will get worse.

Poor Babies: the world’s population of millionaires is shrinking. Oh, the horror.

Ain’t nobody but Spies Like Us: (pop culture reference) Hey kid! You with the language skills and no particular job prospects! Want help paying for college and a guaranteed job when you graduate? Please step over here and talk to a representative of the Pat Roberts Intelligence Scholars Program. Now recruiting Junior Spies.

It can’t happen here?: As we watch protesters in Iran (which now include clerics and women), it’s easy to sit back and thank the founding fathers for our freedoms. However, we need to remember people are arrested in this country routinely for protesting in the wrong spot or not getting a permit or some other trumped up reason, we need to remember that Blackwater was sent to New Orleans after Katrina, and we need to remember the existence of Infragard.

Little Sister is Everywhere: and she is us. She is every one of us that has a cameraphone. She is every one of us that films that which is not right. She is the one thing that keeps Big Brother in line.

I’ve just got one question: It’s about the e.coli in the cookie dough. Salmonella I could understand, because that’s common from uncooked eggs. But e.coli comes from fecal contamination. Who’s been pooping in the cookie dough??

The get out of the airport screening line free card is dead: It was always a dumb idea, and now the company that made it seem possible is out of business. Gee, maybe now the TSA will have to get serious about security that works.

On Charter Schools and other forms of School “Choice”: Huh, it seems that charter schools aren’t doing quite as well as public schools. Oh, and look how complicated a school choice program can be. I know that locally, we have 5 magnet elementary schools, 6 magnet middle schools, and a dozen magnet high schools! Even with district provided busing, things can get very confusing if you have multiple kids in multiple programs.

If this is the best the SBA can do, let’s close it and save the tax money: Long time readers know I am a big critic of the Small Business Administration, and it’s “loan” programs that often amount to home equity lines. The latest emergency loan program for small businesses is in the process of falling, being primarily available to people who already have SBA loans, and sometimes being tied to moving the entire business’s banking.

Time to hit the old Appalachian Trail, if you know what I mean, eh?: Wow, what a strange story this Gov. Sanford thing has turned out to be! And what a classy lady his wife turns out to be (here’s the “short version“). If Republicans keep blowing up at this rate, will they have anybody that can credibly run in 2012?

If you haven’t seen this yet: Pete Hoekstra is a Meme. And Trollcats.

Weird collaboration: Buzz Aldrin and Snoop Dogg. Say wha?

Ok, I’ll close with a rather random assortment of Health Insurance Reform items: Say, can we stop calling it health care reform when it’s insurance that’s the problem? Please? Anyways. Nuts and bolts of the proposals (as of Monday). Special interest money. They needed a study to find that ER patients are more satisfied the less they wait? Gee how about a study on whether that applies to phone queues or repairmen! Don’t assume that hearing nothing means your medical test was normal. Dr. Dean on science and the difference between telling your doctor what does and doesn’t work vs telling your doctor what to do (yeah I know it’s HuffPo, somebody else pointed me there). We don’t need biparisanship when there’s 60 votes in the Senate. What Ezra thinks will happen. How to lie with statistics. Insurance companies “warn” the government and the President responds “that defies logic”. Quality Adjusted Life Years. How to talk to your Congressmen about health insurance reform. On the Wyden-Bennett plan. Maybe the reason our Congressmen don’t get it is that they have really good health insurance. Robert Reich dismantles most of the conservative argument against a public option. Rahm announces that he thinks the President is a total wuss who is able to walk away from the option that most Americans want. What should a public option look like, anyway? The bitter truth about the insurance industry. For example, they ripped off customers. JP tells it as he sees it. Seriously, call your Senators and Congressman tomorrow if you think this is important. If they get enough calls, they might get the idea that their jobs — and cushy insurance — are at risk.

see more Engrish

I love the new sign for my office. Let’s evaluate some mayhem, shall we?

Says Who? The conventional conservative wisdom on “green cars” is that it would cost American jobs. I never understood that one, since they can be made on the same assembly line they currently use for other cars. Anyway, Congress figures that if they give people money for their old cars, they’ll have money to buy new ones. On one hand, I’ve seen a lot of lower income families waste a lot of money on their clunkers because they don’t see how they are already paying as much as they would on a newer, more reliable car. On the other hand, this feels a lot like the rebates and stupid-low interest rates that helped the auto industry get into trouble in the first place!

Speaking of the Automotive Industry:  Who’s to blame for GM’s Bankruptcy.

Cars and Insurance Go Together: Both GM and Citi are out of the Dow Jones Industrial Average, replaced by Cisco and Travelers (formerly part of Citi). Oops, as of this writing CNN.Money.com hasn’t updated their list of DJIA components! Surely they’ll get around to that in the morning.

Speaking of Insurance: a few tidbits on health insurance from Ezra (twice) and Dr. Dean (via Suburban Guerrilla). Now, even the White House thinks we can stimulate the economy through “health reform.” Even Baucus is coming off his high horse to pretend to ask the people what they want.

Depressing: The FDA put a warning on antidepressants. Now fewer people are being diagnosed as depressed. Interesting.

Here a bubble, there a bubble: Thanks to Kiko’s House, we wonder if there’s a college education bubble. After all, we’ve been beating the “everybody ought to go to college” drum even longer than the “everybody ought to own a house” drum.

Green Homes Don’t Have to be Expensive: they can be pre-fab models with construction costs as little as $200 per square foot. Of course you can also buy a bank owned home for less than $100 per square in Vegas right now…

Speaking of Bank Owned Houses: The New York Times thinks we are on the cusp of a new wave of foreclosures, propelled by unemployment.

I’ll be glad when this is no longer a problem: facts and myths about child soldiers.

Quick, Junior! To the Gaming Console: The United States Air Force thinks we may have a future shortage of video game programmers. Well, if the **** I see coming out of E3 is any sample, we already have a shortage of decent ones.

Japanfilter: Happy 150th birthday to the port of Yokohama.

My How Banking Has Changed: How did banks get too big to fail? How did we end up with so few banks? A different spin on the same question.

How Much Do You Know: Here’s a little quiz on current events. Only 6% of randomly called American adults could correctly answer all 12 questions. How did you do? (12 out of 12, thanks. I guess that makes me a news junkie.)

On the Forced-Birth Terrorist: While he does turn out to have been a religious zealot with ties to anti-abortion groups, it’s looking like he wasn’t the “loner” that such groups will soon wish he was. He had a history of hanging out with anti-government nuts, having bomb making materials, and hating Dr. Tiller (whom he had never met).

On the Doctor He Murdered and the People He Helped: Here’s a piece on his life. The stories of people who needed his services are very terrible and very personal. While I can’t blame any of these people for not wanting to discuss such things, I think we need to have a better idea of why a mother can come to the conclusion that this is the best option. Here’s the truth about 3rd trimester abortions (it’s not murder to kill the dead)– and why Dr. Tiller was aquitted of all charges mere months ago. As Chuck Butcher so nicely put it, “legal and unfortunately necessary.”

On the Possible Conspiracy to Commit Acts of Terrorism: We need to be on the lookout for other, related domestic terrorism, because these people are dangerous as long as they don’t get exactly what they want (which is for women to be nothing more than baby-boxes). Even the most innocent seeming of these protesters want to prevent people (all women, coincidentally) from getting medical services. This particular terrorist had something in his car that may cause the whole thing to unravel, and a local news crew took a picture as proof: the phone number of Operation Rescue’s Senior Policy Advisor — who happens to have been convicted in a bomb conspiracy back in 1988. If that’s not enough to get a subpoena for phone records and start digging, then I’m unclear on what is. We’ve got a nice, shiny PATRIOT ACT, let’s use it against these terrorists.

On the Media that Made Terrorism Sound Like a Good Idea: They include church elders (I bet they wouldn’t have been happy if the murder had taken place in their church!) and Fox News. That being the case, Olbermann is calling for a boycott not of  Fox News, but of the places that air it publicly. Jesse had it right when he pointed out that it’s pretty messed up when you have to specifically send a press release that says you don’t condone murder. The Loony Fringe has nerve claiming that (even as they gloat) they are all being unfairly blamed for fanning the fires of hate. Maybe it’s the match in one hand and the fan in the other that gives us that idea.

Well, we’ve evaluated enough mayhem for the day. I hope you’ll join me again soon.