Obama’s Half Brother Busted For Pot Possession In Kenya

The half brother of President Barack Obama, George Obama, was arrested by Kenyan police on charges of marijuana possession, CNN reported Saturday.

He was also accused by Kenyan police of resisting arrest. He is scheduled to appear in court Monday.

A reporter with CNN talked with George Obama in jail, and the president’s brother denied the charges against him.

Barack and George Obama share the same father, who died in a car accident when George was six- years-old.

The brothers met only once, a meeting in which the president described in his book, “Dreams Of My Father,” as a “painful affair.”

Reporters found George Obama last year living in a Kenyan slum with his mother’s extended family.

via Obama’s Half Brother Busted For Pot Possession In Kenya | AHN | January 31, 2009.

“George Obama has not even been aware of his famous brother until very close to the US elections and remained out of the spotlight until August 2008, when the Italian Vanity Fair published an article saying George Obama lived in poverty and his house was a shack.

“I was brought up well. I live well even now. The magazines, they have exaggerated everything,” was George Obama’s outraged response to the publication.” – noinvite

Inspector Augustine Mutembei, the officer in charge, said Obama was arrested on charges of possession of cannabis, known in Kenya as Bhang, and resisting arrest. He is scheduled to appear in court Monday, Mutembei said.

He is being held at Huruma police post in the capital of Nairobi.

CNN Correspondent David McKenzie talked with George Obama at the jail where he is being held. Speaking from behind bars, Obama denied the allegations.

“They took me from my home,” he said, “I don’t know why they are charging me.” – cnn

Bad times are big times for bank heists. How do we fix the economy?

Times are tough – this we already know.

Millions of people are out of work, and millions more are inching dangerously close to the edge of the cliff as they juggle dwindling finances and mounting debt.

So some figure, why not rob a bank?

FBI officials say they’ve noticed an alarming rise in the number of local bank robberies – some committed by thieves who just want to pay their bills.

Since the start of the year, 29 banks have been robbed in eastern Pennsylvania and three counties in New Jersey, a 30 percent increase over last year, the FBI said. Twelve banks have been held up in Philadelphia alone.

Some of the suspects appear to be tried-and-true street thugs and drug addicts who flash a gun or a threatening note to get a quick score.

Others, though, have clean backgrounds and motives that might resonate with average folks.

“For the past couple of years, most of the note-job bandits were pathetic drug addicts. Now, we’re just seeing guys who lost their jobs and need to pay their bills,” said Special Agent Bastian Freund, a bank robbery coordinator for the FBI’s Philadelphia Division.

Freund said three ’09 bank robbery suspects who have been arrested by FBI agents confessed to pulling the heists because they “couldn’t find work and had families to support. That doesn’t make it right, but it’s a different type of person than we’re used to seeing.”

William Glass has been charged by Philadelphia Police with using a threatening note to rob a Philadelphia Federal Credit Union, on 13th Street near Montgomery Avenue, in North Philadelphia, on Jan. 2.

Freund said that Glass told investigators he just wanted to pay his gas bill.

Similar trends are echoing across the country. …

via Bad times are big times for bank heists | Philadelphia Daily News | 01/30/2009.

I don’t really understand the economy or how to generate jobs.

Here is a simple explanation of the housing market problem:

For people who don’t understand what is going on, here is the story in a nutshell. Decades ago, when you wanted to buy a house you went to local bank and applied for a mortgage. If the mortgage was less than three times your annual income and you had a good credit history, the bank would loan you the money and you would pay them interest and some principal every month for 30 years. Then Wall St. got a bright idea: buy up all the mortgages from the banks, collect a few thousand into a pool called a CDO (Collateralized Debt Obligation) and sell shares in it. The owner of each share would get a pro-rata share of the incoming monthly mortgage payments, analogous to what a bond owner gets.

What happened? It sounded like a great idea and soon all mortgages were sold and repackaged into shares. It didn’t take long before the banks realized that they could issue mortgages of five, six, even eight times the buyer’s annual income or sell them to people with terrible credit histories. After all, the shaky mortgages would soon be somebody else’s headache. That’s what happened. Lehman, Merrill, and others bought billions of dollars of mortgages that the homeowners had no hope of ever repaying on schedule and nobody wanted to buy shares in these worthless CDOs, so the brokers got stuck holding the bag with billions in worthless loans. – ask

That’s just a small part of the story, of course. How do we fix things starting from where we are now?

See:

• Ideas to Fix Our Economy Now
• How to fix our Economy
• How to Fix the Economy
• Fix the Economy, But How?
• 5 Ways the Next President Can Fix the Economy
• CEOs at Whitehouse

Freddie Mac to rent foreclosed properties

Mortgage finance company Freddie Mac said it will allow some borrowers to rent out their homes after losing them to foreclosure.

The goal of the new policy, announced Friday, is to prevent properties from becoming vacant so they won’t fall into disrepair.

Freddie Mac also said it will allow renters to remain in their homes even if their landlord enters foreclosure. The McLean, Va.-based company currently has about 8,500 properties in the foreclosure process, but many of those are vacant.

“Keeping foreclosed properties occupied and in better repair will support local property values and promote a faster recovery in the housing market,” said Freddie Mac Chief Executive David Moffett.

Fannie Mae, which announced similar plans earlier this month, said it has stopped about 20,000 foreclosure sales and halted 6,300 evictions of owners or renters this winter.

Under Freddie Mac’s new policy, tenants and former property owners need to demonstrate that they have enough income to pay the rental bill. Freddie Mac also said it would consider reinstating a mortgage for those borrowers who can qualify for a modified loan.

Washington-based Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were taken over by the government in September after mounting mortgage losses put them in distress that was a prelude to the broader financial crisis that hit Wall Street last year. Fannie and Freddie combined own or guarantee about half of the $10.6 trillion in outstanding U.S. home loan debt.

Both Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac also said Friday they would extend a previously announced suspension of evictions through the end of February.

However, Freddie Mac hasn’t explained how tenants will be notified of the policy and hasn’t committed firmly enough to halting evictions, said Amy Marx, a staff attorney at Connecticut-based New Haven Legal Assistance.

“The only thing that Freddie Mac has agreed to do is to not send the sheriff to forcibly remove tenants,” Marx wrote in an e-mail.

via Freddie Mac to rent foreclosed properties: Financial News – Yahoo! Finance.

Sounds like good news. I’m still waiting for a 2nd loan modification offer from Countrywide / Freddie Mac.  The first offer did not include a principle reduction. Not sure what is happening now. Countrywide’s computers were down all day today and they couldn’t tell me anything.

When you watch these ads, the ads check you out

Ten months ago I mentioned the possibility that cameras mounted in TVs were reading faces to obtain reactions to ads. I had no inside knowledge, just a gut feeling when I saw what I believed was a sensor on a gas pump TV. (See my post from March 2008.) Paranoia? Nope. While the gas pump TV people aren’t admitting to anything other than a heat sensor, visit TruMedia Technologies Inc. and read this:

Watch an advertisement on a video screen in a mall, health club or grocery store and there’s a slim — but growing — chance the ad is watching you too.

… While the technology remains in limited use for now, advertising industry analysts say it is finally beginning to live up to its promise. The manufacturers say their systems can accurately determine gender 85 to 90 percent of the time, while accuracy for the other measures continues to be refined.The concept is reminiscent of the science-fiction movie “Minority Report,” in which Tom Cruise’s character enters a mall and finds that retinal scanners identify him and prompt personalized ads that greet him by name.

But this technology doesn’t go nearly that far. It doesn’t identify people individually — it simply categorizes them by outward appearances.

So a video screen might show a motorcycle ad for a group of men, but switch to a minivan ad when women and children join them, said Vicki Rabenou, the chief measurement officer of Tampa, Fla.-based TruMedia Technologies Inc., one of the leaders in developing the technology.

“This is proactive merchandising,” Rabenou said. “You’re targeting people with smart ads.”

Because the tracking industry is still in its infancy, there isn’t yet consensus on how to refer to the technology. Some call it face reading, face counting, gaze tracking or, more generally, face-based audience measurement.

Whatever it’s called, advertisers are finally ready to try it, said advertising consultant Jack Sullivan, a senior vice president of Starcom USA in Chicago. “I think you’re going to see a lot of movement toward it by the end of this year in the top 10 markets,” he said.

Because face tracking might feel reminiscent of Big Brother, manufacturers are racing to offer reassurances. When the systems capture an image of who’s watching the screen, a computer instantly analyzes it. The systems’ manufacturers insist, however, that nothing is ever stored and no identifying information is ever associated with the pictures. That makes the system less intrusive than a surveillance camera that records what it sees, the developers say.

The idea still worries Lee Tien, a senior staff attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a civil-liberties group in San Francisco. Tien said it’s not enough to say some system is “not as bad as some other technology,” and argues that cameras that study people contribute to an erosion of privacy.

In general, the tracking systems work like this: A sensor or camera in or near the screen identifies viewers’ faces by picking up shapes, colors and the relative speed of movement. The concept is similar to the way consumer cameras now can automatically make sure faces are in focus.

When the ad system pinpoints a face, it compares shapes and patterns to faces that are already identified in a database as male or female. That lets the system predict the person’s gender almost immediately.

“The most important features seem to be cheekbones, fullness of lips and the gap between the eyebrows,” said Paolo Prandoni, chief scientific officer of Quividi, a French company that is another player in face-tracking technology. Others include Studio IMC Inc. in New York.

The companies say their systems have become adept at determining a viewer’s gender, but age is trickier: The software can categorize age only in broad ranges — teens, younger to middle-aged folks and seniors. There’s moderate demand for ads based on ethnic information, but the companies acknowledge that determining ethnicity is more challenging than figuring out gender and age range.

Prandoni provided The Associated Press a limited version of Quividi’s software, which uses an ordinary webcam to stream video to a computer. The trial version tracked gender only, using color-coded circles to distinguish male and female faces. … Even the human brain can’t always determine gender, age or ethnicity.

Still, “even if it gets to 70 percent accuracy, that’s still giving you a wealth of information,” said Mitchell, who teaches in the Wisconsin School of Business.

That information is certainly valuable to Bill Ketcham, the chief marketing officer of Adspace Networks Inc. His New York company sells video advertising on 1,400 video screens at 105 malls around the nation.

Adspace is testing six TruMedia systems at malls in Winston-Salem, N.C., Pittsburgh and St. Louis. The kiosks display a daily list of top 10 sales at the mall, as well as paid advertising that comes largely from movie studios and TV networks.

A 15-second video ad that replays across Adspace’s national network can cost as much as $765,000 per month. So advertisers expect rigorous information about who sees the spots — information that face tracking can now provide, Ketcham said. …

While advertisers like the face-tracking technology, another privacy advocate, Harley Geiger, questions whether it should be used on consumers without their knowledge. Geiger, staff counsel for the Center for Democracy & Technology in Washington, D.C., said advertisers should be telling consumers what details about them are being collected and for what purpose.

“With the technology proliferating, now or the short-term is the time to consider privacy protections,” he said. “If you don’t build it in at an early stage it becomes very difficult to build it into an already established system.”  – comcast.net

I never said anything about putting your chewing gum anywhere.

46 Of 50 States Could File Bankruptcy In 2009-2010

Here’s a dramatic post:

There is a high chance a majority of the States within the United States of America could file for Chapter 9 bankruptcy.  … It’s very possible you’ll see the end of the United States as we know it. If the Fed doesn’t bailout the States when their cash dries up and the banks don’t loan them money, then our States will be left in financial ruin. This would be a tragic and unprecedented event never experienced in the United States.

No State has ever filed bankruptcy, but it could be coming to a State near you this year.

We are on the brink of something far worse than the Great Depression. – freedomarizona

Republicans Choose First Black Party Chairman

Oh, I thought he said, “for those who stand indifference to us.”  I don’t think those who favor democratic ideals need to “get ready to get knocked over”.  Divisive threats like that worked out so well for John McCain, if you recall. But congratulations anyway and yes, we would like to see something completely different.

Crazy Idea # 358: Straighten Your Own Teeth with Dental Floss Braces

I’ve never heard of anyone successfully correcting their own crooked teeth. Are there any orthodontists or dentists who can answer this?

I tried Invisalign braces a few years ago but had an allergic reaction to the plastic. I tried to get regular braces and one orthodontist said I do not have enough bone in my jaw so I can’t get my teeth straightened.

I went to another a few years later who insisted I have my teeth cleaned first. I went to do that and had a dentist who I thought messed up the job on one tooth, so I never went back. Therefore, years later, my teeth are still crooked. I saw a picture of myself recently and I was pretty disgusted with my crooked teeth. So, I’m trying something new, “Dental Floss Braces”.

I don’t know what the dangers are of attempting to straighten your own teeth, but the pressure I feel when I rope my teeth together just right with the floss is similar to what I felt with the Invisalign process.

SadAboutTeethGuy

Perhaps Lingual Braces are best if you can afford them? The page I found says, “lingual braces are a good option for those who have sensitivity to plastic.”

One person claims to have used dental floss braces successfully (but there are no before and after pictures).

Guess what: I straightened my own teeth by tying them together with dental floss. Instead of getting braces I straightened my own teeth (my hand to God). Does that mean I think other people could do the same? Are people who have crooked teeth somehow beneath me because they didn’t take the initiative to straighten their own teeth when I have done so myself?

UPDATE: I don’t recommend trying this. You can make your teeth completely fall out this way. I think you could also die of a blood clot if you really mess up.

“It’s important to move the teeth gradually … If you move the teeth too fast, it can result in severe loosening of the teeth or tooth loss.” – enotalone

Yes, you can move your teeth with floss braces. Even a few hours with too much tension and you may feel your upper an lower teeth no longer match up… but consider what you have to learn to be a licensed orthodontist: first, you need 4 years of college, then another 4 years to become a dentist, then about 2 to 3 more years to become an orthodontist.  During that time, you learn how not to make people’s teeth fall out, how not to kill them with infections, how to deal with many different specific problems that can lead to complications, and so on.

Entangled particles face sudden death

Two particles can become entangled so completely that a change in one immediately affects the other, no matter how far away it is. Until now, scientists have assumed such a marriage would endure forever.

But in a paper published today in the journal Science, two physicists show that entangled particles can suddenly and irrevocably lose their connection, a phenomenon called Entanglement Sudden Death, or ESD.

“The degree of information entangled can disappear faster than the information itself,” said Joseph Eberly, a physicist at the University of Rochester, who, along with Ting Yu, co-authored the paper. “It’s completely non-classical physics.”

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Entanglement is one of the stranger products of quantum mechanics, the area of physics that allows objects to fall through tables and postulates that teleportation is possible.

There are a variety of ways to entangle particles, depending on what kind of particles you’re working with.

Particles of light, called photons, for example, can be entangled by shining high-energy beams on beta barium borate crystals. A high-energy photon breaks down into two lower-energy photons that, for example, may spin in opposite directions. If the spin of one photon is known, the spin of the other can be deduced, no matter how far apart the two become.

As those entangled particles move through the environment, other particles and fields degrade the connection — but some ties remain, it has long been thought.

Eberly describes the previous model of entangled particle decay like radioactive half-life — the period of time over which half of a given radioactive material will decay into other elements. No matter how much time passes, there will still be at least a tiny speck of radioactive material there.

What works for radioactive material does not work for entangled particles, say Eberly and Yu. Instead of slow decay, there is a sudden and abrupt death. The two particles remain, but the link between them is destroyed.

“This is a feature that people did not expect,” said Bei Lok Hu, a professor of physcis at the University of Maryland. Even stranger, said Hu, is that suddenly disentangled particles can just as suddenly be reborn.

via Entangled particles face sudden death – Discovery.com- msnbc.com.

Boys With Unpopular Names More Likely to Break Law

Boys in the United States with common names like Michael and David are less likely to commit crimes than those named Ernest or Ivan.

David E. Kalist and Daniel Y. Lee of Shippensburg University in Pennsylvania compared the first names of male juvenile delinquents to the first names of male juveniles in the population. The researchers constructed a popularity-name index (PNI) for each name. For example, the PNI for Michael is 100, the most frequently given name during the period. The PNI for

David is 50, a name given half as frequently as Michael. The PNI is approximately 1 for names such as Alec, Ernest, Ivan, Kareem, and Malcolm.

Results show that, regardless of race, juveniles with unpopular names are more likely to engage in criminal activity. The least popular names were associated with juvenile delinquency among both blacks and whites.

The findings, announced today, are detailed in the journal Social Science Quarterly.

While the names are likely not the cause of crime, the researchers argue that “they are connected to factors that increase the tendency to commit crime, such as a disadvantaged home environment, residence in a county with low socioeconomic status, and households run by one parent.”

“Also, adolescents with unpopular names may be more prone to crime because they are treated differently by their peers, making it more difficult for them to form relationships,” according to a statement released by the journal’s publisher. “Juveniles with unpopular names may also act out because they consciously or unconsciously dislike their names.”

The findings could help officials ” identify individuals at high risk of committing or recommitting crime, leading to more effective and targeted intervention programs,” the authors conclude.

via Boys With Unpopular Names More Likely to Break Law | LiveScience.

UFO over Germany official – says air traffic control

Crack Luftwaffe fighter pilots were scrambled in a UFO drama over German airspace, it emerged today (Thursday).

The mystery object was tracked moving across the entire country at high speed after being spotted by Germany’s air traffic controllers on January 19.

Now an official report into the UFO sighting is being compiled by the country’s air traffic safety office, the DFS.

Investigators have already checked and excluded conventional aircraft, weather balloons and freak atmospheric conditions.

“We have ruled out all the conventional possibilities – it is a mystery,” said DFS spokesman Axel Raab.

German air force jets were put on red alert and there were dozens of reports of the object as it flew across southern Germany including several airports which were put on emergency standby.

It eventually vanished above Grafenwoehr, an area used by American troops on training exercises.

Raab said: “When it vanished from the radar we believed that whatever it was had crashed – but there was no crash site to be seen.

“It is a complete mystery. It confused radar operators because it kept flicking on and off the screen as if some of the time it just wasn’t there. Then it simply vanished completely into thin air.”

via Austrian Times – Home > Around the World > UFO over Germany official – says air traffic control.