On May 15, the Senate voted to vote to reverse the FCC’s 2007 decision to cross own a broadcast station and a newspaper in the same market.
On to the house.
Year: 2008
Economics Update
On the good news side, Leading indicator increased 0.1% to 102, the first back to back gain in about 6 months. I’m calling a dead cat bounce.
One of the reasons is because of good news like, southern California house sales “surging” 22% from March to April, where the reporter ignores the fact that while this is a month-to-month gain, year over year, it’s still a 19% drop, and one of the weakest Aprils on record.
So Cal has a Mediterranean climate, which means that March is wet. People don’t house sit when it’s wet.
It also ignores the small fact that 34% of those sales were REOs, real-estate owned properties. So these were basically foreclosed properties.
It’s why California Luxury home prices fell for the 2nd straight quarter.
Not only are real estate prices still falling, but Commercial property prices are falling, the most since 2000. (A critique of the financial press on this in a later post)
In contrast to Bernanke and Paulson, Jean-Claude Trichet, head of the European Central Bank is saying that the credit crunch is ongoing. I think that this is true, and portends a major shift in the financial markets. (Again, I’ll go into more detail in a later post)
As to why, perhaps the fact that banks are doing accounting backflips to keep $35 billion in losses off of their balance sheets justifies a lack of faith in the financial markets and financial industry.
Of course, boneheaded moves like UBS blowing $24 billion by deciding to expand into asset based securities further erodes people’s confidence in financial “professionals”.
My cats could do better on the cat-turd futures market than these guys.
As a result, we are seeing another big LBO foundering, this time the the $51.8 billion Bell Canada takeover, what is (was?) to be the largest LBO ever.
Ted Kennedy Suffers Seizure
He’s in hospital undergoing tests.
No word yet, but it appears not to be a stroke.
Michael Medved Endorses Nazi Style Eugenics
He basically declared that he was no longer a film critic when he outed the ending of “Million Dollar Baby” because there was a right wing jihad against it, and now is declaring that he is no longer a member of the civilized world by declaring that the US is simply genetically superior in speaking glowingly the articles put forward by Peter C. Whybrow and John D. Gartner.
This is the cultural Darwinism that had as its crowning achievement the slaughter of over a million in the Congo at the turn of the last century, and the pseudo science sold as eugenics that achieved popularity between the wars that led to the Holocaust.
America is simply genetically superior, according to Medved, which doubtless sells well to the readership of Townhall.com, though those same readers would consider Medved untermenschen, of course.
RIAA v. Thomas Sent Back for New Arguments
It appears that courts are becoming increasingly restrictive on the scope of RIAA claims, and new arguments, and possibly a new jury trial, have been ordered as a result.
In this case, the RIAA got a judgment of $220,000.00 from Ms. Davis, but:
That was the case in the trial last fall of Jammie Thomas of Brainerd. A U.S. district court judge, Michael Davis, instructed jurors that making sound recordings available without permission violates record company copyrights “regardless of whether actual distribution has been shown.”
On Thursday, Davis said that may have been a mistake.
He wrote that he found a 1993 ruling from the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals, which covers Minnesota, that said infringement requires “an actual dissemination of either copies or phonorecords.”
One wonders why he is asking for a re-ruling without either side having brought up this original ruling.
My guess is that his grand kid with the iPod told him.
If I Were a Terrorist (YouTube)
Precocious, Huh?
13 Year Old Steals Dad’s Credit Card to Buy Hookers
Ralph’s ambition is to one day become a politician.
Doubtless a Republican politician.
When Do We Get this in the USA?
Bush calls on Middle East nations to, “Empower women, release political prisoners, foster free trade, repudiate terrorism and defend freedoms of speech and religion.”
Seeing as how Bush is doing his best go the other way in the US, except possibly for the rich pig banker free trade stuff, it seems just a big hypocritical.
Von Spakovsky Out
Bush’s voter suppression guru withdraws his nomination to FEC.
This means that the FEC board nominations will likely proceed, and that there will be a quorum for actions to be taken once again.
My guess is that they are increasingly worried that the (completely accurate) accusation that John McCain is in felony violation of the law that defines his “Maverick” status will hit the main stream, so they finally decided to cut him loose, so they can sign off on McCain’s “bungee move” that he used early in the primaries to get a loan for his campaign.
Additionally, it would mean that McCain could not sign up for public financing in the general, and the board would need to sign off that too.
FWIW, the story is starting to bubble up, and he’s not doing well in fund raising anyway, so I think that the Dems should “stand on politics principal” and insist on separate votes for the FEC board members anyway…or at least drag their feet a little bit.
What I Did This Weekend, Visiting an Alien Culture
I went to visit my Mother-in-Law. Her synagogue was honoring her for the volunteer work that she has done, so we went up, along with two of my nephews.
It was a fairly nice affair, but once again, I am reminded just how alien I find Frum* culture.
From sundown on Friday to sundown on Saturday, you have the entire, no operation of things electrical, so whatever lights are on or off stay on or off (except for a couple on a timer), the stove is left on low with a plate on top of it to serve as a warmer, and light bulbs in the fridge are unscrewed.
I think that Sharon† finds it all rather comforting, as this is what she grew up with, at least in her later teen years‡, but at synagogue, and at social events I feel as if I am from another world.
The award dinner was actually a bit better that most such events. At most orthodox weddings that I’ve been to lately, the seating at the dinner has been sex segregated, but this time, as it was not a religious event per se, we had mixed seating.
We also had the good sense this time to leave our kids with a sitter for the dinner, which had both of our stress levels a lot lower,
The interaction between Charlie’s Asperger’s and significantly sized crowds, there were 70+ people there, is frequently not good. It gets him overstimulated, much in the same way that blood in the water overstimulated.
We went to a couple of museums while were there, most notably Sunnyside, Washington Irving’s house. It’s interesting from an architectural and technological perspective, though I think I enjoyed my visits to Monticello when I was living in Charlottesville, VA more, as it was far more ambitious.
Then again, unlike Jefferson, Irving did not bankrupt himself building out his rather more modest house.
*Very orthodox culture.
†Love of my life, light of the cosmos, she who must be obeyed, my wife.
‡As she got older, her parents became rather more observant.
When You Are Owned By Chris Matthews…
Completely owned….
Wingnut radio talk show host talks about appeasement, but he does not know what Neville Chamberlain actually did.
In fact, I don’t think he knows who Neville Chamberlain was.
When Chris Matthews owns you, you have to be completely ownable…..I’ve never been that owned so completely by my cats, and as any cat owner knows, cats pwn their human. completely and routinely.
Norway Protests: We Are Having a Real Fighter Competition
The Norwegian air force chief of staff Major General Stein Erik Nodeland is now aggressively combating the idea that Norwas has already decided to buy the F-35 JSF.
This perception is why Eurofighter pulled out of the bid about a year ago, leaving the improved Gripen as the only other competitor.
I think that if one looks at the bid process objectively, there certainly are segements of the Norwegian air defense establishment who have settled on the JSF, to the extent that they are using Lockheed-Martin F-35 powerpoint slides in their presentations, though there are indications that the some members of Parliament are not amused.
Vulture Mortgage Investing
The homeowner was $365,000 under water after buying the house with no money down in June 2005, according to a spreadsheet listing about 30 loans for sale by a national mortgage servicer that Gutierrez referred to in his truck. If Gutierrez bought the note for 20 cents on the dollar, or $73,000, he could probably get the owner to leave by giving her $5,000 for moving expenses, then sell the home for about $150,000, well below even the neighborhood’s declining market value, he said. That would leave him a profit of about $70,000.
I’m not sure how I feel about the ethics of all this.
It seems that lenders, who should have known better, are the ones who are getting the worst haircut.
Neat Concept: Snuffing Fires Electrically
The basic concept is that combustion is an electron exchange of matter in a cold plazma state, and if you can interfere with the plasma, you can shut down combustion.
Cool stuff.
Was BAE’s Purchase of United Defense the Beginning of a Trend?
When I was working at United Defense*, the Carlyle Group sold it to the UK firm BAE, and used the proceeds to buy Dunkin Donuts.
BAE paid a significant premium in order to buy UD, because they saw it as an entry point into the US defense market.
Well, Finmeccanica has now purchased the defense electronics firm DRS Technologiesat a 32% premium for what appears to be much the same reason.
I believe that we will see more of this, particularly with the dollar weak, as the US now spends more on its military than the rest of the world combined.
Additionally, we will see many more of the joint ventures of the type that EADS and Northrop Grumman have entered into for the tanker competition.
*Yes, I have worked everywhere. Maybe I can’t hold down a job, but more likely this has been my role as “technical hit man”, where you are parachuted in to take care of a specific need.
Revolutionary Aero Engine Concepts
Kind of a follow up to yesterday’s post, also sourced from Aviation Week (Paid Subscription Required)
Basically, these technologies involve unsteady combustion, specifically pulse detonation and wave rotors, which can, in whole or in part, use meticulously controlled combustion to replace a conventional compressor:
As with PDEs and pulse combustors, the wave rotor concept hinges on the idea of increasing the thermodynamic efficiency of the engine by producing a pressure rise during the combustion process. In conventional gas turbines, the pressure reduces as the gas is burned in the combustor, resulting in an entropy gain or a reduction in efficiency. In a wave rotor, combustion takes place via pressure waves in a confined volume within a series of tubes or channels. This means the pressure of the gas rises because combustion occurs inside a limited or constant volume, thereby increasing the overall efficiency of the engine.
Although wave rotors and PDEs both rely on detonation shock waves traveling down the length of the tube to transfer energy, the two devices use this energy in slightly different ways. The PDE allows the blast wave to exit from the device as part of the propulsive effect, while the wave rotor merges successive waves to raise the pressure of the gas before it exits to the turbine stage.
The wave rotor consists of a series of tubes or passages arranged around the axis of a cylindrical drum which rotates between two fixed end plates. The plates contain the ports, or manifolds, which control the flow of the gas through the tubes. As the drum rotates, the ends of the channels are intermittently exposed to the ports which are at different pressures. This phase shift sets up the compression and expansion waves within the tubes as the mixture is ignited. The result is an expansion wave that travels into the gas and flows out of the wave rotor combustor into the turbine inlet at a total pressure more than 20% higher than that of the air delivered by the compressor.
As a result of the pressure gain from the wave rotor, more work can theoretically be extracted from the downstream turbine, increasing overall engine thermal efficiency. A key factor is that, as the combustion is contained within the tubes of the wave rotor, the pressure rise of the gas is not accompanied by a major increase in temperature, thereby keeping levels within the limits of the standard turbine materials.
Furthermore, experiments at NASA, as part of its ultra-efficient engine technology (UEET) study, indicate that because of the rapid expansion of the pressure wave, the gas temperature spends only a short time at or near stoichiometric conditions. As these represent ideal burning conditions for the fuel-air mix, they also coincide with the greatest production of nitrogen oxides (NOx), a major pollutant and focus for aviation emissions reduction efforts.
The wave rotor has the advantage that it smooths out the pulses before feeding it into a turbine.
Additionally, NASA is looking at pulsed propulsion for launch systems.
They are looking at a variable cycle engine where at slow speeds the afterburner would be fed by core air, and and at high mach numbers, would be fed off the fan, which is vaguely similar to how the J-58 used on the SR-71 operated.
It has been suggested that a conventional afterburner be replaced with a PDE.
787 Customers Told of 2 Year Delivery Delay
This delay is now just about as bad as that of the A380, and the airlines are now apparently in discussions with Boeing regarding compensation from the manufacturer.
I’m thinking that it may get worse, as we have still not seen a first flight.
Lawsuits Over Military Secrets????
What ever happened to the good old days of assassination and microfilm?
The Russians are threatening a lawsuit over China’s Type 39A diesel electric boat, claiming that it is a copy of their advanced Kilo class.
National Reconnaissance Office Gets Slapped Down
The NRO has, for the 2nd time in a year, “been stripped of Milestone Decision Authority on a program, which means that it no longer has the authority to sign off on a project as complying with the contract requirements.
It appears that it has been decided that the NRO, which is responsible for procurement and operation of the US spy satellite fleet, has been determined to need adult supervision.
Me Want!!!!!
It’s the world’s smallest helicopter, and it’s going to fly at Leonardo da Vinci’s birthplace, Florence, Italy.
With a top speed of 90 km/hr and an endurance of about 1 hour, it’s much more practical than a jet pack, which I still want…just a little bit.
It’s only ¥6 million, about $57K us.
Coaxial rotors.
Have to worry if it can get my fat ass off the ground though.