Atlanta
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Friday link round up
- Intown Coyotes – They’re in Oakhurst, which while wooded, is certainly not a suburban area in the traditional sense. I wonder if they make fun of the country coyotes and get weird tattoos…
- A profile of the last remaining WW I veteran, here is one who passed away last year at the age of 113. To quote from the article
“Census records show that Mr. Hardy’s father was born in the 1830s and that both his parents were slaves, Mr. Young said.”
It’s amazing that the past is that close in the human chain.
- Michael Yon reviews the combat cameras
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Weird things on Craig’s List
While I was uploading some large files I came across these two items on the “Women Seeking Men” section
Hi. I am staying with friends outside Buckhead, BUt I have to move..I am 25 former Bad girl (was in trouble, not now)single. Looking to move in and COOK CLEAN DO LAUNDRY AND TAKE CARE OF YOUR NEEDS in xchange for rent and….I am very good looking..5’6″ 111 lt brown hair green eyes. and for real…Race doesnt matter
I am seeking a professional man that owns his own business and calls all the shots. To describe my self a little, I am multi-ethnic, 5’5, 130lbs, carmel skin, white teeth, nice curly medium length hair, very intelligent, discrete and sweet.
I’m seeking employment, something 40 hours a weeks( I have a resume)
The beneifits are office sex with me, or a side relationship.
If you are serious respond with a place where we can interview(not a hotel or a house)and a job details.I’m not sure which combination of sued/murdered/robbed/conned would result, but at least two of them seem certain. Does people post these things because they work, or is it just a cry of desperation?
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The market has spoken
This editorial from the AJC is an annoying example of the current hysteria about subprime loans
Describing the wreckage of the subprime mortgage collapse as part of the normal business cycle is akin to characterizing the devastation of New Orleans as the aftermath of a seasonal downpour.
In both disasters, human blunders and government inattention played pivotal roles. And the market can no more be counted on to fix the subprime mess than Mother Nature could be trusted to fix up the mess after Hurricane Katrina.
Government must intervene quickly and firmly in the subprime fiasco, in helping desperate borrowers keep their homes if possible and, more important, in ending abusive lending practices that contributed to the national leap in mortgage defaults and foreclosures.
New federal and state laws must couple strong prohibitions against abusive lending with equally strong enforcement and consequences. The pain must be felt by the duplicitous mortgage brokers who talked the homeowners on Elm Street into loans with hidden brokerage fees and unnecessarily high interest rates all the way up to the investors on Wall Street who profited from the bundling and selling of these subprime loans.
The article then goes on to describe several cases of fraud that happened in the Atlanta area, fraud as everyone knows is already illegal. Foreclosure and the denial of credit IS the marketing working, mainly in stopping people from buying homes they can’t afford. Absent fraud, no one is forced into a mortgage, and everyone knows how much they’ll be paying.
I suppose I’m more sensitive to this now (having just bought a house) than most times, but it’s quite maddening.
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Random Atlanta insights
I got sick of working and went for a drive for about 40 minutes tonight. I wound up near Atlanta Federal Penitentiary and I do have to say, that place looks like a prison, it’s like the dark side of Gotham City from the Batman Comics. Most of the places around it (I took an odd route home and got lost) are quite photogenic in a burned out, industrial way.
On an unrelated note, Man charged with vandalism of Tupac Shakur statue. Atlanta is home (oddly, since there’s not much of a connection) to the Tupac Shakur Arts Center for some reason.
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Tuesday night rapid fire
- Robert Kaplan on private military contractors
- John Robb on private military contractors – one thing he doesn’t mention (and I don’t think he has mentioned it before) is that there could be many, many problems with highly trained combat forces under no particular command, they would make quiet a crime crew. It’s unlikely with the current stock of PMCs, but it might be with the next generation.
- Solar Power is becoming a vested interest
- For some reason validator callout extenders won’t work with a custom validator with the standard Visual Studio code, but it works with this code.
- Nazi War Criminal was found in Metro Atlanta. Why must events like these be the only time Atlanta makes national news?
- Building a tree fort as an exercise in project management
- DNI on leaving Iraq
- A client of mine was in the AJC today, I did the Atlanta Arrangements site late last year.
- Secret Geek has a nice post on the Principles of Scale
- Tyler Cowen on income inequality. I wonder if anyone is actually worried about this. No one seems to be, but everyone thinks everyone else is scared stiff. One thing to bear in mind is that the bottom is fixed at zero
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The criminal side of over coming handicaps
From the AJC
Armless Gwinnett man involved in deadly fight jailed
A disabled artist known for painting with his feet was jailed this week on charges related to a deadly brawl with another man earlier this month.William “Rusty” Redfern was booked into the Gwinnett County Detention Center Wednesday on a misdemeanor charge of affray, a legal term for fighting in public, and later released on $1,200 bond.
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Witnesses said the men yelled at each other from across the street. Redfern, who was born with no right arm and only a stump for a left arm, then ran into Teer’s driveway and head-butted him.Teer, 49, died minutes later. Police initially suspected Teer died from the head-butt. However, a subsequent autopsy determined that he died of a heart attack. Teer had been suffering from coronary artery disease, according to the Gwinnett County Medical Examiner’s Office.
If you put your mind to it, I suppose you can accomplish anything.
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An interesting series on the death penalty
The AJC is having a series on the death penalty in Georgia. Two interesting tidbits
White killers are more likely to face capital prosecution and land on death row, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution found. The reason: White killers are more likely to kill white people.
A statistical analysis shows Georgia prosecutors were more than twice as likely to seek the death penalty when the victim was white.
Though most crime involves a victim and a perpetrator of the same race, there is no tradition of outrage on behalf of black victims who are attacked by black assailants. Fulton County District Attorney Paul Howard, who is black, has noticed the difference.
“Everyday my office … handles horrible cases involving the sexual assault and/or death of black children, black women and black senior citizens. It is difficult for me to recall an occasion wherein my office has received a note, card, letter or phone call from any black advocacy group or political leader in support of these victims. We receive many communications in support of black defendants in some of those same cases,” he wrote in an e-mail.
“I am very disturbed about what’s happened to Genarlow Wilson and the ‘Jena Six,’ but I am equally disturbed by the plight of the endless number of black victims who don’t have the benefit of community support or outrage,” he said.
Public Choice theory strikes again I suppose.
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Now I find out…
After complaining for years about how I have nothing in common with my neighbors, today I find out that one of my neighbor’s loves to talk politics and is a fellow Ron Paul supporter. Pesky lopsided timing…
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To hunt the house you have to think like a house
I went out with Jim (the Realtor) for the first time today and found a couple good prospects, one of which I really liked. We also discovered that there is a ton of crap in East Atlanta, including what seemed like an operational crackhouse for sale. The term “No disclosure” is a big one on property listings.
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Scary quote of the day
From the AJC article Clayton may seek records on all renters
“This is not to say Big Brother is watching,” he insisted. “It says Big Brother is helping.”
It’s not the most intrusive thing that could happen, but bear in mind that in the past 10 years we (the Atlanta Metro Area) have had
- 1 Mayor in jailed on corruption charges
- 1 political assassination of a sheriff
- 1 ex-sheriff convicted of said assassination, along with several deputies
- 1 police shooting of an 87 year old woman based on a perjured warrant
- The creation of a “Tupac Shakur Arts Center” funded by the taxpayers
- Cynthia McKinney’s entire political career
And we should give the government more power?