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- How two newspapers followed Laurie's scoop from yesterday
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By Robert Niles: FWIW, This is how you follow a story.
And this is not.
- It's the gambling, stupid: American families sick of economy that values gambling over work
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By Robert Niles: I think many journalists and analysts are missing the core story underlying the populist revolt over the Bush administration's proposed Wall Street bailout.
People aren't merely upset with the idea of their tax money going to prop up rich Wall Street businesses and investors. They're disgusted with an American economy that increasingly values gambling over work. Not only that, many of these Americans are perfectly willing, even eager, to watch this gamblers' economy fail.
In many neighborhoods across the country, families can no longer afford to buy a home and anticipate a comfortable retirement on the money that they make working. Salaries and wages just don't provide enough cash.
According to National Association of Realtors, the median home price in the United States in July 2008 was $212,400. (That means half the homes sold in the U.S. that month cost more, half cost less.) However, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, the median family income was just $50,233. Using a traditional (pre-housing bubble) standards, a typical American family, earning that median income, could not afford to buy that median-priced home. And that's after housing prices have dropped 10%-40% from their peak prices, depending on the city. That typical family, earning the median income, likely would qualify only to by a home in the $125,000-$175,000 range.
If you wanted to buy your first home anytime during the past six years, you had to gamble. I know that buyi
- Scammers scraping phone numbers, street addresses for spam call and postal mail campaigns
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By Robert Niles: Laurie and I have put our home and cell phone numbers on the U.S. federal Do-Not-Call list, but that hasn't stopped solicitors from calling. Curiously, though, the sales calls we've been getting tend to come in clumps (more pronounced that your typical Poisson distribution) and often ask for the same wrong name.
Clearly, our numbers have gotten on some list, associated with a variety of wrong names. Given that we tend to get a new string of calls every month, we figured this isn't random chance resulting from someone writing down a wrong number on an application someplace. Furthermore, the folks who call us rarely have any idea what the do-not-call list is (tipping us that they don't work for large, established call center firms), and often will keep going with their pitch even after we tell them that there's no one by that name here.
What's up? By talking with some of these callers, combined with some online sleuthing and a little deduction, here's what we've figured out.
In an effort to get around the federal Do-Not-Call list, scammers are scraping telephone numbers from the Internet and selling those lists to marketers, telling would-be buyers that these are "clean" lists of people who have agreed to take business calls. (Presumably, because they've published their numbers online, though the buyers aren't told that's where the numbers came from.)
The "better" lists
- More new sites coming soon from Robert
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By Robert Niles: I've been a bit quiet on the blog in recent weeks, as I have been working on launching several new projects.
I will announce each one here, as it launches. After that flurry, though, I will continue to blog here, from time on time, on topics that do not fit well into any of these other projects. So sub the RSS feed to keep up with the new posts, when they happen.
Thanks for reading, and I hope that you will follow me over to some of these new sites, as I am quite excited about each one of them. Details TK
- Not a great week to be a Republican
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By Robert Niles: So, let's sum it up....
John McCain's pick for Vice President is someone who:
Used of the office of governor to carry out a personal vendetta, fired a high level state official for legally and appropriately standing up to her, then lied about it.Is a social conservative whose 17-year-old, unmarried daughter is pregnant.Wants creationism taught in the public schools.Thinks the Pledge of Allegiance was written in the late 1700s.Is connected to a political party in Alaska that wants that state to secede from the United States. Hey, Republicans, don't forget that, technically, she isn't the VP nominee yet. It's not too late to give Mitt a call.On the subject of the GOP convention, let's not let this fall down the memory hole:IJY0NuBC7voThat's Stuart Shepard of James Dobson's Focus on the Family urging Christians to pray for "torrential" rain during Barack Obama's acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention last week.Now that Hurricane Gustav is leading the Republicans to cancel part of their convention, should we file this under "Irony"? Or, perhaps, Christians who fell for this ought to mark this as a lesson in humility and keep their mouths shut next time an evangelical preacher tells them what to pray. Read Matthew 6:5-15.