Quotulatiousness

December 8, 2009

Can’t disagree with this, either

Filed under: Football — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 14:02

Also from today’s TMQ column:

Minnesota boasts about its defensive line, but against Arizona, the front four were getting little pressure on Kurt Warner, so defensive coordinator Leslie Frazier started calling blitzes. The result: Touchdown passes to Anquan Boldin and Larry Fitzgerald against the blitz, with safeties nowhere to be seen. But good Arizona defense carried the day. Cardinals leading 24-10 in the third quarter, Minnesota went: Adrian Peterson loss of 5, sack, interception, and TMQ wrote the words “game over” in his notebook. Brett Favre stayed on the field till the final snap despite the fact the hosts led 30-10 with a couple of minutes remaining, which indicates coach Brad Childress is concerned with padding Favre’s stats — a bad sign.

This is what qualifies as “toughened” standards?

Filed under: Economics, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 13:58

An aside in this week’s Tuesday Morning Quarterback column by Gregg Easterbrook caught me completely by surprise. I had no idea that the US housing market was quite this dysfunctional:

As Part of Tough New Standards for Subsidized Mortgages, Home Buyers Will Be Required to Rub Their Heads and Pat Their Stomachs at the Same Time: The Federal Housing Administration underwrites mortgages for people having problems. Before 2008, the FHA supported about 2 percent of the nation’s mortgages, now the number is nearly at 30 percent, which shows how deep the subprime mortgage issue runs and how much taxpayers now subsidize home ownership. Last week, the FHA said it will toughen lending rules. Borrowers will now be required to put up 3.5 percent of the mortgage as cash or gifts from relatives, and there will be a cross-check against the down payment’s appearing to come as a gift from a charity but actually coming from the seller or builder through a middleman disguised as a charity. A generation ago — a decade ago! — home buyers were expected to have a 20 percent down payment; that made them unlikely to try to buy something they could not afford, and banks wouldn’t be exposed if something went wrong, since they were lending only 80 percent of the value of the property. Now requiring 3.5 percent down is viewed as “toughening” standards. Isn’t this an invitation for yet another cycle of mortgage problems?

Absolutely mind-boggling.

The downside to “ethical” shopping

Filed under: Science — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 12:57

There are some odd results of changing your shopping habits to be more environmentally conscious, says a recent study:

As the owner of several energy-efficient light bulbs and a recycled umbrella, I’m familiar with the critiques of “ethical consumption.” In some cases, it’s not clear that ostensibly green products are better for the environment. There’s also the risk that these lifestyle choices will make us complacent, sapping the drive to call senators and chain ourselves to coal plants. Tweaking your shopping list, the argument goes, is at best woefully insufficient and maybe even counterproductive.

But new research by Nina Mazar and Chen-Bo Zhong at the University of Toronto levels an even graver charge: that virtuous shopping can actually lead to immoral behavior. In their study (described in a paper now in press at Psychological Science), subjects who made simulated eco-friendly purchases ended up less likely to exhibit altruism in a laboratory game and more likely to cheat and steal.

[. . .]

It would be foolish to draw conclusions about the real world from just one paper and from such an artificial scenario. But the findings add to a growing body of research into a phenomenon known among social psychologists as “moral credentials” or “moral licensing.” Historically, psychologists viewed moral development as a steady progression toward more sophisticated decision-making. But an emerging school of thought stresses the capriciousness of moral responses. Several studies propose that the state of our self-image can directly influence our choices from moment to moment. When people have the chance to demonstrate their goodness, even in the most token of ways, they then feel free to relax their ethical standards.

H/T to Radley Balko for the link.

How to get rid of pesky dinosaurs

Filed under: Science — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 08:37

According to recent theorizing, you don’t incinerate ’em, you broil ’em:

The asteroid impact that ended the age of dinosaurs 65 million years ago didn’t incinerate life on our planet’s surface — it just broiled it, a new study suggests. The work resolves nagging questions about a theory that the impact triggered deadly wildfires around the world, but it also raises new questions about just what led to the mass extinction at the end of the Cretaceous period.

The impact of a 10-kilometre asteroid is blamed for the extinction of the dinosaurs and most other species on the planet. Early computer models showed that more than half of the debris blasted into space by the impact would fall into the atmosphere within eight hours.

The models predicted the rain of shock-heated debris would radiate heat as intensely as an oven set to “broil” (260 °C) for at least 20 minutes, and perhaps a couple of hours. Intense heating for that long would heat wood to its ignition temperature, causing global wildfires.

India grounds their SU-30 fighters (again)

Filed under: India, Military, Russia — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 08:26

The Indian military has grounded their fleet of Russian SU-30 fighters after a crash involving a more advanced version:

For the second time this year, India has grounded its Su-30 fighters because one of the aircraft crashed. This time, the grounding of the 98 Su-30s in service is expected to last only a few days. Earlier this year, in May, its Su-30 fighters were grounded for a month after one of them appeared to develop engine problems and crashed. One of the pilots survived, but the parachute of the other failed to open. Four days before the Indian Su-30 went down, a Russian Su-35 also crashed because of engine problems. The Su-35 is an advanced version of the Su-30, and uses a similar engine. Earlier this year, Russia grounded all its MiG-29 fighters to check for structural problems, after one of them came apart in flight. All this is particularly upsetting to Indians, who had been assured by the Russians that the Su-30 was a modern (built to Western standards of reliability) aircraft. Such assurances were necessary because of earlier Indian experience with the MiG-21, and Russian aircraft in general. So far this year, India has lost twelve military aircraft, most of them of Russian design.

Casting The Hobbit

Filed under: Books, Media — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 08:14

In what I’m sure was meant to stir the fans, The Guardian headlines this story with “Tom Waits to star in The Hobbit?”:

Will Tom Waits battle Bilbo Baggins? A “trusted” source working on Guillermo del Toro’s production of The Hobbit claims that the singer-songwriter is up for a part.

Waits has acted before, in films such as Terry Gilliam’s The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, Robert Altman’s Short Cuts and Jim Jarmusch’s Down By Law. But he has never played the kind of character you would expect to find in a JRR Tolkien’s novel. Though the role under consideration isn’t clear, an anonymous source told Ain’t It Cool News that Waits is near the top of del Toro’s list. “As much as I’d like to say he’s a lock, I’m told he’s simply someone the production is talking about,” claims the source, “but they seem to be talking about him pretty seriously.”

For all his charms, Waits seems an unlikely pick for Bilbo, the titular hobbit played by Ian Holm in The Lord of the Rings films. He is, above all, too grumpy. Besides, a cornucopia of much more avuncular, nerdy actors, including The Office‘s Martin Freeman, Harry Potter’s Daniel Radcliffe and Doctor Who‘s David Tennant are reportedly under consideration for the part. The film-makers are reportedly auditioning unknown actors too.

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