Paul Stone

NY Times Reader

Ran into a nice review of the new New York Times Reader.  I had not realized that a person with a .edu email account could get free access to TimesSelect content.  Interesting!  You can try out the Times Reader here.

Sphere (Escape From the Locked Room)

Sphere is a very cool puzzle which challenges you to escape from a locked room, using only what you find in the room.  Click on a part of the room to inspect closer.  Click on an object to use it or pick it up.  Once an object is in your possession, it appears in the sidebar.  Then, you can click on the magnifier to get a closer look.  While you are inspecting an object, try clicking on it, or clicking on it with other objects.

You can solve this puzzle on your own.  Just be aware that clicking is very precise, and there are a lot more areas to inspect than may be apparent at first.

Don't worry about getting into a state where you can't solve the puzzle.  That doesn't seem to be an issue with this game.  So, you don't need to restart in order to see if that key works in a different drawer as well.  It doesn't.

If you get stuck, step away from the game and come back in a little while.  Time to solve is maybe an hour or two.  Maybe, less, if you are clever.  :)

Massive Galaxies Spin Faster

Interesting.  Somewhat counter-intuitively, the more massive a galaxy is, the faster it spins.

The Coming Mortgage Lender Tsunami

I've followed the housing bubble for quite a while.  Since 2003, I've thought that home prices were unsustainable, and that lenders were just plain batty for extending "no doc" loans with teaser rates to anyone with a pulse.  The rapidly progressing collapse of New Century Financial (only the second largest subprime lender in the country) seems to be the canary in the coal mine, and I was fascinated to read an inside account of the mortgage industry which explains how New Century's struggles will likely start of a wave of defaults in small lenders.  It makes for very interesting reading, and a rare insider's account of the mortgage industry.

Fox on Its Heels?

It appears that Democratic activists will win a key battle, by forcing the Nevada Democratic Party to reconsider allowing Fox News to host a Democratic presidential primary debate.  Matt Stoller has some thoughts on how progressive activists are fighting to retake the media.

Media is now a core part of politics for Democratic activists.  We are now finally recognizing the power of information, and that putting 'the facts out there' represents a core set of values that must be defended. To contextualize this, the Iraq war really created the mass basis for a media reform movement that had been simmering since the 1970s.  When progressives finally realized that the lack of debate in the press had led to the strategic and moral error of Iraq, a mass movement began to organize against powerful interests.  That's where the net neutrality fight, among others, came from.  It's also where the grassroots pressure to not ratify Fox News as a legitimate news source is coming from.

U.S. Attorneys Forced Out by President Bush

I found a nice summary of the U.S. Attorneys who were recently ousted by President Bush's Justice Department.  Leave it to Joe Conason to lay it all out.  Some details from the article:

• Carol Lam, the U.S. Attorney in San Diego, was forced to resign after sending former Representative Randy "Duke" Cunningham (R-CA) to prison.

• Paul Charlton, the U.S. Attorney in Arizona, was pushed out while investigating corruption charges against Representative Rick Renzi (R-AZ).

• H.E. (Bud) Cummins III, the U.S. Attorney in Arkansas, was replaced with a Karl Rove associate.

• David Iglesias, the U.S. Attorney in New Mexico, was forced out under pressure from Senator Pete Dominici (R-NM) and Representative Heather Wilson (R-NM), for failing to bring charges in a Democratic corruption case before the election.

As Joe Conason points out, U.S. Attorneys are supposed to be free from partisan meddling.  This was an ideological purge for the benefit of the Republican Party.  It doesn't do this country any good to choose U.S. Attorneys based on their willingness to cave to political pressure.

Senator Pete Dominici is, himself, now under a Senate ethics investigation for pressuring David Iglesias to bring indictments against Democrats in the run-up to the 2006 election.