Links and Minifeatures 04 06 Thursday

Carnival of the Vanities has been scammed so badly that Harshly Mellow (no links for people who are acting like weenies) has decided to kill it. There will be two more, then the oldest of all Carnivals is going to die unless someone convinces him otherwise.



I disagree with this, and yet since I have not the time to take it over, there's not much I can do. If you do have the capability to take over the carnival, type the site name (Harshly Mellow) into a search engine and contact him.



Lawrence Simon has done an Avignon edition (People who fix problems caused by other folks without compensation deserve recognition. Thank you Lawrence) Recommended: The Essayist.



I do have a plea, and that is for folks who submit to Carnivals to please remember it's supposed to be a showcase for your best work. Remember, you're trying to get me (among others) to check out the rest of your site. I actually do check out every post (almost - see next sentence) at every Carnival I submit to, and have found several sites I check out regularly because of it. But if you keep submitting garbage that a five year old could have done, you eventually get onto my mental list of sites not to waste my time with. If the post you submit is a link and a one liner, that's not likely to catch my return interest. Ditto thoughtless drivel. If you want my attention, particularly if you want my reader's attention, prove you are worthy of it by putting some effort into it and telling me something other folks aren't. Information, analysis, implications, context, what happens next, something so that folks won't say "that was a waste of my time to read.". I don't always succeed, but I try to make every post say something worth reading. Sad to say that many carnival submitters do not understand this. It isn't a crime, but it is a waste if you submit it to a carnival as your best work.



It's all about signal to noise ratio. If you keep showing me white noise, it's not going to take very long to figure that out.



(And if you have suggestions to improve the s/n ratio here, I am eager to hear them!)

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Here's some good news via Pacesetter Mortgage. FHA is looking to standardize and fix some of what's been wrong with their programs basically forever. I am still not happy with the FHA's requirement for Mortgage insurance on every property, as FHA might have slightly lower rates, but with Mortgage Insurance they usually end up higher, although with tiers it might go lower. This is what loan pricing s all about - risk level. FHA says you're at one risk level, then boosts the quote with mortgage insurance. The subprime loans they say they are competing with don't have mortgage insurance, because the lender priced the loan for the situation. Finally, bonding is a pain and an expense and nobody else requires it, but better bonding than an annual FHA audit, which is a much bigger pain and a much bigger expense. Still, you'd think if they really wanted to serve the public, they'd adopt the same standards that the lenders have adopted in order to better serve the public, rather than simply diminishing the problems (How well do you think "We're not as bad as we used to be!" would go over as a marketing slogan?)



The one thing that reforming the FHA thusly might accomplish is further commoditize the loan market. I regard this as a good thing, as I deliver my loans on the terms I put on the MLDS. Ethical folks win and unethical folks lose, consumers gain and scamsters lose, but it's a small shift for the better, not anything like a magic bullet. Not nearly.



Lest anyone think I'm denigrating it, this is how real improvements are made - many small shifts for the better. Magic bullets are both rare and dangerous, often running afowl of the Law of Unintended Consequences.



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Holy Tear The Cover Off The Anti-War Left's Pravda, Batman! Captain's Quarters covers the translation of an Iraqi document that, if it holds up, should once and for all put to rest the absurd claim that Iraq was not co-operating with Al-Qaeda, as well as the even more absurd one that "Iraq was not our enemy." They were soliciting for a suicide mission against American Interests within their military.



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Would anyone like to tell me why anything less than the death penalty is even under consideration? NYPD detectives convicted of mob murders. They took an official position, and abused it for murder. But no, the maximum penalty they face is life in prison.



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Judas a scapegoat? Ancient 'Gospel of Judas' Translation Sheds New Light on Disciple Actually reading the article though, started me thinking it was a third century equivalent of the JFK assassination conspiracy theorists. Looking in from outside, "secret prayers" does not appear to be consistent with the sort of things that the Christian messiah said and did otherwise.



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Ancient Pyramid Discovered in Mexico Cool, if perhaps not of the same order of importance as the previous article. Also, does it seem as if the AP writer obsessed just a little too much about the Christian thing that's been happening on the site more recently?



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Proving she's got a sense of political self-preservation, McKinney apologizes . Prediction: the whole incident is dropped. Does anybody think that if Joe Average slapped a cop, the case would be dropped after he apologized?



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Students lack basic financial knowledge. There was no real need to study this fact, but the study reveals the depth of the average high school senior's ignorance. A one semester overview of the economic facts should be a requirement to graduate. At least that way young folks will have something to separate out fact from fancy. Reading the financial press without the tools to evaluate whether what they tell you has any basis in reality is an excellent way to get in trouble.



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So Bush ordered Libby to leak the information?



Some folks are going to make a big deal about whether he had the authority to do so. I direct them to this document. If Clinton could delegate that authority, it certainly stands to reason that the President has it in his own right.



Here's another document about declassifying classified information. All along it is a series of Executive Orders setting the policy. Executive Orders come from the President. The President cannot set policy on anything unless he has the authority to do it himself.



Furthermore, if you'll recall, Carter revealed the existence of the Stealth program, and Johnson of the SR-71 (prior to his getting it backwards, it was the RS-71). So does the president have the authority? Yes.



With that said, however, it wasn't the swiftest of moves, politically or ethically. If he was attempting to strike a blow at his critics, it was a cure worse than the disease. Rebutting your critics is not a crime, but there are those who will say it was an abuse of position.



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Cancer Vaccine Works Long Term. Well, not quite. It's really against a cancer causing virus, HPV. But it's still excellent news.



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(singing) Give me two more last chances before you say goodbye! (/singing) U.S.: Iran may face sanctions after two UN warnings And ooh, sanctions! Nuke a few million people, they might up it to a strongly worded communique.



Is there anybody left that thinks the UN actually helps make the world a safer or a better place?



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Politburo Diktat corrects some misapprehensions about Iraq - civilan body count was way up for March. Considering they're in the midst of trying to form their first elected government ever among factions with no history of compromise between them, I may be disappointed but not surprised. Still makes a slow month by the standards of Saddam Hussien's reign.



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Worth Reading: a thousand words or so over at Dan Simmons website



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Armies of Liberation covers the Saleh government trying to hide the budget breakdown from parliament. Excuse me, but aren't they supposed to be the ones appropriating the money?



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Michael Barone has a dose of sanity about the K Street Project.



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The other day, I wrote a piece on the state of our educational system. Captain's Quarters has a piece on the easy, obvious solution of ending the monopoly, which the Democrats can never tolerate, as they get too much of their support from those with stakes in the current educational monopoly.



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"All the News That's Fit to Stage": Michelle Malkin has a round up.



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In case you haven't heard it yet, I like the gag about a hundred or so ordinary citizens showing up in the capitol as "undocumented senators". By the Senate's own logic, they'd have to put them on a "guaranteed path to membership"!