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The past 24 hours of MetaFilter

Catholic Church child sex abuse scandal reaches the topToday

The Pope was drawn directly into the Roman Catholic sex abuse scandal last night as news emerged of his part in a decision to send a paedophile priest for therapy. The cleric went on to reoffend and was convicted of child abuse but continues to work as a priest in Upper Bavaria.
Archbishop Ratzinger's former deputy, Gerhard Gruber, has taken responsibility for initially allowing [the unidentified priest] to remain within the Church, saying this had been "a bad mistake".

Speaking to the Associated Press news agency, he added that there had been about 1,000 priests in the diocese at the time and that the archbishop "could not deal with everything".

Netflix Contest Over Due to Privacy ConcernsToday

Netflix has ended the $1 million Next Big Thing contest, which would have rewarded a team to improve their recommendation engine.
It was a sequel to an earlier contest to improve their recommendation engine by 10%. The contest was shut down as a settlement due to privacy concerns in a lawsuit lead by a closeted lesbian mother.

This is Why You're Fat (and why I am too)Today

Obesity: The killer combination of salt, fat and sugar - "Rewarding foods are rewiring our brains. As they do, we become more sensitive to the cues that lead us to anticipate the reward. In that circularity lies a trap: we can no longer control our responses to highly palatable foods because our brains have been changed by the foods we eat."
I know we don't do obesity well at MetaFilter. I think we've made strides on how we handle other topics and hope we can show the same thoughtfulness to this one as well.

The People vs. George LucasToday

"George Lucas made "Star Wars"; but it was the fans who turned it into a seemingly undying worldwide phenomenon. So I thought it appropriate to give them a prominent voice in the documentary." The People vs. George Lucas premiered at this year's SXSW. Official Site. FB page. More.

Repo [Leh]menToday

The September 2008 colapse of Lehman Bros. was the percipaticing event which channged a credit crunch to a panic. The examiner apointed by the bancrupcy court has produced a 2200 page report about what went wrong. The whole report is here. Summaries and links to analysis after the jump.
Explanation from NYT, FT, zero hedge. The most important thing that the examiner found is that at the end of each quarterly reporting period Lehman would pretend some assets were off its books - reducing leverage or the ratio of assets to capital - with a "Repo 105" transaction. Leverage is used by investors and counterparties as a measurement of risk and deliberately misrepresenting it is extremely serious. The Repo 105 transactions were a misrepresentation because the assets (mainly illiquid securities) were treated as if they were sold but were actually sold but only on the condition that Lehman would repurchase the assets in a few days. That is, the assets would be right back on Lehman's books immediately after the reporting period.

Here are some key quotes from the report ("colorable claim" means rough