Speak of the Devil

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Here come old Ana.

A TROPICAL WAVE LOCATED ABOUT 700 MILES WEST-SOUTHWEST OF THE CAPE VERDE ISLANDS IS PRODUCING DISORGANIZED SHOWER ACTIVITY.

ADDITIONAL DEVELOPMENT OF THIS SYSTEM...IF ANY...IS LIKELY TO BE SLOW TO OCCUR AS IT MOVES WESTWARD AT 10 TO 15 MPH. THERE IS A LOW CHANCE...LESS THAN 30 PERCENT...OF THIS SYSTEM BECOMING A TROPICAL
CYCLONE DURING THE NEXT 48 HOURS.

ELSEWHERE...TROPICAL CYCLONE FORMATION IS NOT EXPECTED DURING THE NEXT 48 HOURS.

The Right to Bear Arms and Proactive Imprisonment

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Watching this little excerpt of the Sotomayor confirmation hearings, I had a bit of an epiphany regarding elected Republicans.

So, as an elected Republican, there are a few stances you are expected to take -- abortion is wrong, firearms are a fundamental right, poor people are bad -- but the firearm thing is kind of a nuisance, because people shoot each other with them. Nobody in the DC area was particularly tolerant of John Malvo, but if you think people's right to bear sniper rifles can not be infringed that sort of thing is difficult to stop.

The only way to maintain this unfettered access to all sorts of weapons is to develop predictive models about who might use them to shoot you or your constituents, and lock them up. John Malvo was an illegal alien, caught and released when he immigrated. If we kept all illegal aliens locked up indefinitely, he could not have killed anyone. If the Guantanamo inmates stay in Cuba forever, they're not shooting anyone here. Every moment that one in three black men spend behind bars, they're not exercising their constitutional rights to wander the Halls of Congress with handguns (Hey! Wait a minute! Even when the Republican Party was in power, that right was infringed. They've got metal detectors and humorless guards at the door! Cynthia McKinney was forced to strike one!)

While the GOP looks like histrionic cowards whenever they talk about law and order related issues, it's simply because they're trying to preserve everyone's right to take out a room full of people at a whim. You have to remove all the citizens who might do that for this to be a working philosophy.

Obesity now a risk factor for the swine flu

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I just want to point out the containing virtual folder for this Reuters story is 'latest crisis.' This kind of suggests they feel they should always be alarming us about something. I'm perfectly happy to blog about typography or flower arranging, I don't need manufactured crises.

Anyway, more bad news for the obese. Earlier today, we learned that they made their same sex children obese. Now...

Saying the new H1N1 virus is "unstoppable", the World Health Organization gave drug makers a full go-ahead to manufacture vaccines against the pandemic influenza strain on Monday and said healthcare workers should be the first to get one.
...
"Obesity has been observed to be one of the risk factors for more severe reaction to H1N1" -- something never before seen, [Dr. Marie-Paule] Kieny[, WHO director of the Initiative for Vaccine Research] added. It is not clear if obese people may have undiagnosed health problems that make them susceptible, or if obesity in and of itself is a risk.

So, I guess I'll stop by the gym and weigh myself. If I've fallen out of obesity again, I'll join you in pointing fingers at them and blaming them for their problems.

let the bank walk away

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While I didn't have the stones to do it myself, I've long advocated for buying a house you couldn't afford with easy credit and no money down, stop paying your option ARM when everybody else does, and live rent free while your bank works toward your foreclosure.

It turns out that this story can end more happily than I imagined.

The foreclosure, however, failed to go through after the California-based lender decided it didn't want the gutted house. Lass said he found out for certain that he still owned it from the Journal Sentinel.

Today, the house at 703 E. Lincoln Ave. sits condemned ...

The home represents a growing phenomenon known as walkaways - properties for which lenders sue for foreclosure but never take the title.

It's mid-July -- no tropical cyclones

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So, it's a strange year on our march to Armageddon. We've had cool, rainy temperatures, which I've been attributing to glacial melt, and no names storms. I heard some news guy say that Tropical Storm Carlos was the second named storm of the season -- that's right, the Atlantic has been so unforthcoming that the media is now blending our oceans.

This is after a year in which every identified tropical cyclone in the North Atlantic became, I believe, a hurricane. It's a nice experience, but of course I assume it's a transition to a much worse state of affairs. It doesn't seem like there's anything you can do about that, though, so you may as well enjoy the hurricanelessness while it lasts.

Obesity 'link to same-sex parent'

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[I]t was probably because of some form of "behavioural sympathy" where daughters copied the lifestyles of their mothers and sons their fathers.

Sorry about the extra 'u.' It's British. But, yeah, crap. I guess I've got to lose the obesity if I'm going to have children. I'd hope for girls, but my family's been overwhelmingly boys for generations.