Eclectic Views

    
I am pissed off today because coyotes are being killed in Golden Gate
Park for no goddamn good reason and no one seems to care.

People, get educated before it's too late.
  

    
There's a lovely coyote in my neighborhood in Novato! I hope he's
keeping fat and happy on turkeys. 
  

    
Today's weather page says that last week Eureka CA endured record high
temperatures of 72 and 73 degrees Fahrenheit.
  

    
Oh, ..., bother.  ;-)
  

    
Record high of 73!  

There are 100 degree days here (SouthEastern Washington) when I wish
our record highs were 73
  

    
Per today's paper, "there are 9.3 million households - about one in every 12
- with a net worth of at least $1 million", net worth being defined as all
assets other than primary residence. Further, about 5 million households
have $1M-10M of "investable assets", and another quarter million are doing
rather better than that. OK, show of hands now, anyone over $10 million?
  

    
If you can live on $40K per year, you can pass that $1M on intact. 
  

    
Here's the cite for the post in #356:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/20/business/20offline.html?_r=1&ref=business&oref=slogin

I wonder how much of that vast wealth is bubble money, stuff that
could go away with even a slight downturn in the insanely overheated
real estate or stock markets.  It's doubtful that that kind of money is
just sitting in coffee cans in back yards.
  

    
No but I'd bet a lot of it is well cared for and sheltered like the people
who own it.
  

    
I see from today's paper that Prince Walid bin Talal of Saudi Arabia has
just purchased a personal jet with about five times the floor space of my
house. On the other hand I bet it doesn't have a back yard with a rose bush
and the neighbor's cat; and I do not require "numerous divans" or "first-
and business-style seats for courtiers", so I suppose we're about even.
  

    
A heartening story of the "what goes around, comes around" variety in the
news today about mortgages. In olden days, the buyer borrowed money from the
local bank and they kept the mortgage. If the buyer ran into trouble it was
often possible to work out an accommodation: delayed or stretched out
payments, say. Currently mortgage receivables are sliced and diced and sold
piecemeal to various investment firms with no interest in workouts, they
just foreclose and take the house for resale. A Federal court judge in
Cleveland has ruled that all the slicing and dicing left the heartless funds
without a clear title to the 14 properties at issue in his case, and "that
they had failed to prove they owned the properties they were trying to
seize", so he denied their request. A recent study by the University of Iowa
of 1733 foreclosures showed that in 40 percent of the cases, the creditors
failed to show proof of ownership as required by law.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/15/business/15lend.html
  

    
Now THAT is going to put a major kink in a lot of foreclosures.  The
article says that "Some $6.5 trillion of securitized mortgage debt was
outstanding at the end of 2006"; I wonder how much of that will have to
be just written off?  And that Iowa study shows that "40 percent of
the creditors foreclosing on borrowers did not show proof of
ownership."  Boy, the rules of the game have now been seriously shaken
up.  I can see a lot of investment firms and REITs imploding as a
result.
  

    
For archaeologists, this is huge:
  http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7104330.stm

"Italian archaeologists say they have found the long-lost underground grotto
where ancient Romans believed a female wolf suckled the city's twin
founders. The cave believed to be the Lupercal was found near the ruins of
Emperor Augustus' palace on the Palatine hill."
  

    

 Quote Of The Day

Tamar Frankel, law professor at Boston University on the round robin of
mortgage lending litigation involving borrowers, lenders, banks, brokers,
and investors:

 "What strikes me is that this is a tainted system from A to Z."
  

    
A headline from today's Los Angeles Times:

  "Schools scramble to find questionable meat"

I don't recall that my high school had any problem finding the stuff;
they served it every day.
  

    
A couple of great quotes from an article in today's paper on the credit
crunch at  http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/05/business/05spend.html

"In homes now saturated with debt, conspicuous consumption and creative
financing have come to seem a sign of excess not unlike that of a suntan in
an age of skin cancer."

   and

"Credit counselors are now swamped by calls not just from people of modest
means but from professionals earning six-figure incomes, their access to
finance warping their distinction between necessity and desire."
  

    
A remarkable college-sports story today at
<http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/30/sports/baseball/30vecsey.html>.

Senior Sara Tucholsky hit a home run out of the park with two players on
base, but on rounding first she twisted her knee and couldn't move. For a
member of her team to help her would disqualify her from proceeding; so two
players from the *opposing* team picked her up and carried her around to
touch all the bases and score against them.
  

    
From <http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/15/business/15econ.html>:

"The figures released by the Labor Department showed that consumer prices
... grew by 0.1 percent when food and energy were excluded - about half what
most economists forecast"

"But most American households do not have the luxury of excluding gasoline
and food from their budgets."

Good point.
  

    
"CALGARY, Alberta (Reuters) - A French parachutist's bid to set a world
freefall record was in doubt on Tuesday after the balloon that was to carry
him 40 km (25 miles) above the prairie of Western Canada left without him."

Oops.
  

    
The harp-like epigonion is not a very popular musical instrument these days;
it has probably not been used much for, oh, 23 centuries. But it is making a
slight comeback according to a story at
<http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/09/03/music-from-the-past-bringing-back-
the-epigonion/>
or <http://tinyurl.com/57nv7l>.  You can even listen to a 2-minute
performance by following a link in the article.
  

    

A great story. After listening to the audio, I'm not totally convinced
it's accurate, but I admire the attempt.