Selling Gold To Build Slums...What a Deal!

With the United States poised to slam into its debt limit Monday, conservative economists are eyeballing all that gold in Fort Knox. There’s about 147 million ounces of gold parked in the legendary vault. Gold is selling at nearly $1,500 an ounce. That’s many billions of dollars in bullion.

“Its just sort of sitting there,” said Ron Utt, a senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation. “Given the high price it is now, and the tremendous debt problem we now have, by all means, sell at the peak.”

More at WaPo

The federal government’s largest housing construction program for the poor has squandered hundreds of millions of dollars on stalled or abandoned projects and routinely failed to crack down on derelict developers or the local housing agencies that funded them.

Nationwide, nearly 700 projects awarded $400 million have been idling for years, a Washington Post investigation found. Some have languished for a decade or longer even as much of the country struggles with record-high foreclosures and a dramatic loss of affordable housing.

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, which oversees the nation’s housing fund, has largely looked the other way: It does not track the pace of construction and often fails to spot defunct deals, instead trusting local agencies to police projects.

The result is a trail of failed developments in every corner of the country. Fields where apartment complexes were promised are empty and neglected. Houses that were supposed to be renovated are boarded up and crumbling, eyesores in decaying neighborhoods.

Also at WaPo.

Why stop there? I wonder how much the Chinese would pay to own Area 51? Enough to wipe out our trade balance and then some, wouldn't you say?

The Great Game

Let's say, just for the sake of argument, that Pakistan's ISI (or someone or some cabal within it) knew where OBL was hiding out. And let's say that the CIA, knowing that the ISI was playing a double game, inserted a source within the ISI to keep the CIA advised on what was going on within the pro-OBL faction. And let's say that the CIA learned from this source where OBL was probably hiding. But the ISI couldn't strike, because OBL would be tipped off by his ISI insiders. And the CIA couldn't strike either, because doing so would cause questions to be asked that would expose their source within the ISI.

What to do?

Well, a cover story involving an elaborate job of sleuthing and a CIA safe house in Abbottabad would explain how the CIA knew where OBL was, without threatening their source within the ISI.

OK, conspiracy mode OFF.

Lost Posts

Blogger crashed and lost a couple of my posts.

Probably I'm not the only one.

Obi-Wan Kenobi Is Dead, Vader Says

Outstanding NYT parody with impeccable attention to detail.

You can see the original here:

Maps and GPS

Last week I had a flat tire on my bicycle and had to walk home. This simple task was complicated by the layout of the suburban streets hereabouts. I could get to within 100 yards of my home, but could not reach it without crossing private homes and climbing backyard fences. The shortest alternate route was a two-hour walk, which I did.

It seems the local pols have had a policy of closing streets and erecting fences to limit motor vehicle traffic in residential areas. And it also prevents bicycle traffic and sometimes even foot traffic.

At the time, I asked my GPS to find me a quick route home, but the suggested route directed me to pass through a barricade at a closed intersection. This barricade even had a chain-link fence with a narrow right-left-right pedestrian chicane, to prevent folks from bringing bicycles through!

Here's the view from Tom-Tom:

I was at the intersection of Mathews and Grayson and I wanted to get to the little "home" icon. But no, the road is closed, as shown on this view provided by Google Maps:

Silverwood Lane is a blocked-off alley, with dozens of small trees growing there, and completely impassible.

Tom-Tom does allow users to make "corrections" to their maps and now when I call up the same intersection I see this:

Here's a closer look:

Silverwood Lane is still there, but Tom-Tom will no longer try to route me through this intersection.

Today I bicycled 2 miles to the local Starbucks for breakfast and I crossed over I-95. As I did I noticed that the northbound lanes were jammed but the southbound lanes were moving well:

Facing south, with northbound traffic on the left and southbound traffic on the right. The two center lanes are the reversible HOV commuter lanes that drove Jay G so crazy when he was here a couple of weeks ago: "They go one way in the mawnin', and the other way in the awftahnoon! Those Vahginyuns ah wicked crazy!"

And here's the traffic view from Tom-Tom at the same spot:

The orange arrows on white background indicate a traffic jam to be avoided. And only in the northbound lanes. My Blackberry using Garmin GPS could not differentiate between the lanes and simply reported the whole highway as jammed, even if traffic in one direction was moving normally.

Turning Mushrooms Into Gold

Two Canadian "wilderness hippies", Shawn Ryan and Cathy Wood, were eking out an existence picking mushrooms in the Yukon Territory. A government geologist encouraged them to bring back soil samples from their treks deep into the wilderness in search of mushrooms.

Now they control vast gold mining claims and are worth millions.

Wonderful long magazine story in the NYT.

T-Shirt

On sale near the National Archives in Washington, DC.

Indianapolis Blogmeet, Sunday May 22 at 3 PM

At the Broadripple Brew Pub

It's official.

From 2008: Old Grouch, Turk Turon, Roberta X, Brigid, Tam, Rob D and the Usual Suspects:

At the picnic table at Locally Grown Gardens (2009) with Shootin' Buddy, Shermlock Shomes, Roberta X, Old Grouch, Shermlock, Jr (aka Hagbard Celine), Joanna and Tam:

And from December, 2008 in the aforementioned Brewpub:
Yes, that IS Wolf Blitzer in the upper left corner.
There's lots of room! See? Please come.

And at Brugge in 2010:

Special guests have included Frank W. James, Og The Neanderpundit, Caleb, Red, PA State Cop, Rob D., Wayne, Nathan, Carteach0, Breda, Mike, Thirdpower and many others, too numerous to mention.

You'll be smilin', too!

Fight Club Pro

"The first rule of Fight Club Pro is you..." [BANG!]
"[Wheeze]...the second rule...[wheeze]...of..." [BANG!]

Poor Kitty!

The Cats Of War.

via Say Uncle.

Kill Or Capture?

Of all the people on this planet, OBL was most responsible for creating the security climate in which we now must live; a world of exploding vests, exploding backpacks, exploding belts, exploding shoes and even exploding underwear. So I find it ironic that critics are suggesting that OBL should have been given a chance to surrender.

The Reward

Congress should rescind the $25 million reward for the capture or killing of OBL and instead appropriate a one-time, tax-free $25 million contribution to the Navy SEALS foundation, to benefit the families of those brave men.

Just my opinion.

Pop

I was exploring the local suburbs this afternoon when I noticed that the rear end of the bicycle was sliding from side to side. Yep, a flat tire. I carry a full set of spares but this time I was SOOL because my mini-air pump was hors de combat. I walked about two hours to get to the nearest service station and an air pump. I replaced the tube with the spare from my kit, and dropped some coins into the air compressor. The rated pressure for this tire was 30-60 psi. As the pressure indicator reached 40 psi there was a loud bang and the new tube ruptured. Badly? No, extremely well! See below:

Can't patch that! So I set about seeing if I could find and fix the puncture in the old tube. I put a few pounds of air back into the tube and passed it by my face until I felt a stream of air. It was just a tiny puncture. So I patched it and inflated it...very carefully this time! And biked home.

New tires and tubes will be the order of the day tomorrow. The rear tire was slightly damaged by the explosion, and the bike is going on two years old now. The tires look OK, but they have a lot of miles on them. So I'll be getting two new tires, three new tubes (one as a spare) and a new pump for my tool kit.

The repair took only about twenty minutes, but a pump or a source of compressed air is absolutely essential.

Four In One

I've been struggling with an old desktop computer for years now. I'm too frugal to buy a Mac, although they are very tempting. So last week I plunked down several hundred dollars on an HP desktop with a 64-bit AMD quad-core processor, 4 gigs of RAM and a terabyte drive. I bought a new copy of Windows 7 and an ebay copy of Windows XP. I already had an OEM (bootable) copy of Windows 2000 Pro. I have some old home movies that I want to edit using Adobe Premiere on Win2K, a legacy scanner that works under WinXP, and I wanted to run iTunes on Windows 7.

So I installed Ubuntu Linux 10.10 as the base OS and repartitioned the disk. Ubuntu is free, but I paid $10 for a set of commercial install disks. Then Oracle's VirtualBox (also free) and then the three windows OSes on top of that. Total time spent was about four hours.

On the bottom is Ubuntu, running Firefox. Next is Win2K running Adobe Acrobat Reader. Next is WindowsXP, running Internet Explorer. And on the top is Windows 7, running iTunes. All running on the same computer at the same time. They can share files, network connections, CDs and DVDs and USB ports. And even cut and paste between applications.

I have no idea how this works.

Our Extra Special Guest

On the left, Jay G., and on the right, Alan Gura.

Our First Special Guest

Jay G., from MArooned.

Blogmeet!

We're gathering...

Congress Cancels Cable

Philip Greenspun proposes that the easiest way to understand the recent $38 billion budget-cut deal is to divide by 100,000,000 and analogize it to a family budget:

We have a family that is spending $38,200 per year. The family’s income is $21,700 per year. The family adds $16,500 in credit card debt every year in order to pay its bills. After a long and difficult debate among family members, keeping in mind that it was not going to be possible to borrow $16,500 every year forever, the parents and children agreed that a $380/year premium cable subscription could be terminated. So now the family will have to borrow only $16,120 per year.

Link via Boing-Boing.

When Mattress Marketers Go Rogue

At my age, when I see a sign that says "Speed Hump Ahead", I take a detour.

Lorton To Vienna And Back

Monday was a beautiful day so I set off from the former Lorton Prison

headed for the nearest point on the W&OD Trail (my old stomping grounds). Packed a lunch and set off about 12:30. There was a nice tailwind as I set off, and this was actually of some concern, because I would have to pedal into it on my return trip. But in my experience, winds are very variable and unpredictable, and it was quite possible, even likely, that the wind would reverse by mid-afternoon and I would have a tailwind for the ride home, too. Wouldn't that be nice?


A little more than two hours and eighteen miles later I was closing in on my destination.


I stopped for lunch near this historical marker on the W&OD Trail in Vienna.

The trip back was difficult. The wind had picked up and was now gusting, and it was a headwind. To me, there's nothing harder than pedaling into a headwind; it's like going uphill for mile after mile, with no downhill sections. I must have walked the last five miles.

The Minty-Boost battery charger worked better this time. I loaded it with four new alkaline AAs. At 4:30 the iPhone reached 20% of capacity so I attached the Minty-Boost and rode on. It charged the iPhone from 20% to 47% in about an hour, even while the Cyclemeter GPS app was running - it's a big power-hog. After an hour on charge, the iPhone beeped to indicate that something was wrong - the charger was depleted - and I ignored it, just to see what would happen. What happened was that the iPhone rebooted itself. So I disconnected the charger. Cyclemeter didn't miss a beat, however - it picked up where it had left off. And at the end of the ride I still had 32% of iPhone battery left.