Fed bubble bailout

Hillary, check your head.

“Mrs Clinton proposed expansion of the groups among measures to tackle weaknesses in the mortgage market and ­support homeowners. She vowed to clamp down on “unfair lending practices” and create a $1bn federal fund to help homeowners avoid foreclosure. Mrs Clinton said fixing the mortgage crisis would be among the priorities of Democratic lawmakers when Congress returns.“

Uhg. So lets break this down.

1) Fed drops rates and creates a bubble
2) Speculators and anyone that can fog a mirror are given loans
3) Loans go bad and growth dies.

The solution is not to reward these horrible investments with tax payer money and bail this situation out. The solution is to let this shit storm play out, and correct the many years of manipulation and speculation.

Where were these people years ago when the regulations should have been put in or enforced on crazy loans? No where. No one wanted to rock the boat when the money was rolling in. Who in their right mind thought this kind of growth in housing was sustainable? Why are they shocked about it now?

Cove dive

I finally got around to doing a couple dives at La Jolla Cove this morning with a friend. We got in the water a bit after nine, and the visibility had already started to go, but it was still a great dive. We headed out to the yellow buoy, then towards the gray one before heading back. Aside from a few sand spots, most of it is thin kelp forest, and a lot of fun to explore. There was a lot of life out there this morning. We were barely on the bottom a few minutes before a 2 foot male California sheephead decided to adopt us. He seemed to follow us around for about half an hour. There were quite a few large kelp bass, lobsters sharing holes, and the other usual suspects about. But I was also able to see eight 4-5 foot tope/school/soupfin sharks. They were skittish and the visibility was only about 10 feet, so I didn’t get a good look at them. But it was pretty cool to watch them cruse through the kelp.

The second dive we headed out a bit deeper to the other set of kelp beds. Unfortunately the tides had started to change at that point, so the vis had dropped to about six feet, and the surge was picking up. Much less life on this dive. Just some garibaldi and a few schools of the inch long half orange half purple fish. Quite a few large star fish though. It was great to swim through the kelp, but man, those La Jolla Cove stairs are a killer after an hour of swimming and fifty pounds of gear on. I should get in on a boat dive to the Point Loma kelp beds – I’ve heard are quite thick and a very different experience.

The ethanol scam

RollingStone has a great article called Ethanol Scam: Ethanol Hurts the Environment And Is One of America’s Biggest Political Boondoggles. If you aren’t familiar with the subject, this article is a great introduction.

This is not just hype — it’s dangerous, delusional bullshit. Ethanol doesn’t burn cleaner than gasoline, nor is it cheaper. Our current ethanol production represents only 3.5 percent of our gasoline consumption — yet it consumes twenty percent of the entire U.S. corn crop, causing the price of corn to double in the last two years and raising the threat of hunger in the Third World….

…Corn is already the most subsidized crop in America, raking in a total of $51 billion in federal handouts between 1995 and 2005 — twice as much as wheat subsidies and four times as much as soybeans. Ethanol itself is propped up by hefty subsidies, including a fifty-one-cent-per-gallon tax allowance for refiners. And a study by the International Institute for Sustainable Development found that ethanol subsidies amount to as much as $1.38 per gallon — about half of ethanol’s wholesale market price….

…ethanol made from sugar cane has an energy balance of 8-to-1 — that is, when you add up the fossil fuels used to irrigate, fertilize, grow, transport and refine sugar cane into ethanol, the energy output is eight times higher than the energy inputs. That’s a better deal than gasoline, which has an energy balance of 5-to-1. In contrast, the energy balance of corn ethanol is only 1.3-to-1 – making it practically worthless as an energy source.”

Bonus link: CBC On the Map Ethanol: Green Hope?

Summer snorkeling

It has been pretty good snorkeling in La Jolla this summer. A few weeks back I snorkeled goldfish point, and got to see a young sea lion up close in the water. It zoomed around me a few times, checked out my fins, and then avoided the kayaks to find a rock in the sun. Last week I did the shores after work to swim with the leopard sharks. They seemed to be much shallower than usual – 3 feet of water vs. their usual 5-6 feet of water. Could have just been the surf I guess.

Saturday we snorkeled the cove. It was packed with people, but thankfully fish as well. There were lots of critters out. I headed out to the kelp beds and swam among them for a while. Not a whole lot of fish, but when the bottom of the stalks are 25 feet down, you don’t have a lot of air time to slowly explore. Quite a few lobsters out roaming around though and the kelp itself is fun to swim through and around. It feels like a different world when the sun comes out and the visibility is good. Sharp rays burst in star pattern through the water, turning the kelp leaves transparent.

Better looking Windows

For all you folks out there still bound to Windows XP for work and games, there is a number of ways to make look less ugly. You can install some 3rd party themes, or an explorer replacement, but they require messing with DLLs and I’m lazy. I hated the silver theme, so I turned it off and went back to Windows 2000 looking dullness.

Well I finally got around to installing the Royal Noire (aka Zune) theme released last fall for Windows XP. After tweaking the Royal theme for the media center, MS finally released a decent looking theme. It is easy on the eyes, and very usable.

You can download it from MS here

Or preview it here:
Zune Theme