Who would Jesus hate?

It amazes me how much time and effort churches spend hating some group, the catholic church refuses to help gays adopt, and feels taxpayers should help subsidize their hatred. It makes me wonder if religious people pay any attention to what they claim to believe.

Canned food drives continued

Looks like the war on canned food drives continues at least some charities have decided that it's too much work to collect food and distribute it and would rather just have money. I think this may be the height of arrogance and explains a lot of what is wrong with attempts to help the poor. Maybe poor people can use the food that is collected even if the charities that claim to help them cannot

Someone is wrong here

Matthew yglesias says good refs are bad for business and assuming he is right that biased refs are part of sports, it seems like he should be more outraged about it. Instead he argues that it helps home teams stay profitable, I would suggest that this bias if it exists, turns all sports into All star wrestling, and in the end takes the sport out of sports. I knew there was some reason I haven't been much of a sports fan in the last few years, if the refs are deciding the games why watch them?

What if?

Looks like some people are starting to figure who really holds the cards in the euro-debt crisis and guess what it's not the banks. All a country like Greece or Portugal has to do is refuse to make any payments on their bonds, the bankers will stamp their feet but that's about it.

If you own bank stock I would sell it.

The lighter side of austerity

Looks like peopleare buying less stuff this Christmas , and while that might be bad for retailers, it might be good for people in general. Less credit card hangover, and less pretending to like useless stuff people get you for Christmas. Whats not to like?

Evil Facebook holdouts

New York Times has an article about people that don't join Facebook . Facebook is getting ready for a public offering and is somewhat concerned that not everyone has an account, hence they can't advertise to everybody.

I have a feeling that Facebook may have reached its peak, once your parents adopt new technology it's not cool anymore, and I am pretty sure not only parents but grandparents are big facebookers. Looks like another stock bubble waiting to burst to me.

We know what's best for YOU

This article from slate is meant to encourage people to donate money to charities rather than things like canned goods, but it may show why charitable giving is not such a good idea in general:

“For a long time we just basically kept politely quiet about the fact that food drives weren’t as helpful as people assumed,” explains Greg Bloom, a development assistant at Bread for the City in Washington, D.C., “but that changed when we became more diligent about stocking our pantry with healthy foods.”
Bloom explains that they tried providing a specific list of items for people to donate, but even so “we find that almost half of what comes to us in any given food drive just doesn’t meet our nutritional standards.” Under the circumstances, telling people that money is more helpful started looking like a more appealing option. Today, a large share of the remaining canned food donations that Bread for the City receives comes from federal government offices where, somewhat perversely, employees aren’t allowed to stage cash drives (though giving through the Combined Federal Campaign is an option).

Talk about making the perfect the enemy of the good, plus it seems a little presumptiuous to decide what people can eat, why not let people choose what kind of foods they want to take from the food bank, rather just wasting things you don't think they should be eating.

What's wrong with Romney

Mitt Romney is an out of touch rich guy, but so are most politiciansbut people sure seem to hammer him for it. Maybe the difference is that he so inauthentic it's almost painful, I get the idea when I watch him that he would much rather be hanging out in his beach house or golfing with his buddies, than running for president, but for some reason he feels duty bound to run for president.

Rats are nice animals

Study shows rats would rather help a friend than eat chocolate I have had numerous pet rats, mostly taken home from labs I have worked at, and they are one of the nicest animals you would ever want to meet.

In an experiment carried out by University of Chicago neuroscientists, pairs of rats that normally shared a cage were placed in a special area, where one was confined to a closed tube with a door that could be opened from the outside while the other remained able to roam around freely. The researchers observed that “the free rat acted more agitated when its cagemate was restrained, compared to its activity when the rat was placed in a cage with an empty restrainer.”

This kind of “emotional contagion” had been observed previously in tats — but what happened next was more unexpected. As described by Science Daily, “After several daily restraint sessions, the free rat learned how to open the restrainer door and free its cagemate. Though slow to act at first, once the rat discovered the ability to free its companion, it would take action almost immediately upon placement in the test arena.”

Kids can never be alone, EVER

I got this via atrios Dear Abby tells a women to never leave a child alone, at some point people need to take care of themselves and maybe it's better for them to Learn a little at time rather than just throwing them out at eighteen or twenty-one

The euro mess

Kevin Drum asks what caused theeuro mess and certainly offers some good reasons for the current problems. Missing is the biggest issue though, governments have decided that banks cannot have any losses, no matter how much pain it causes for the rest of the world, until that changes the euro mess will continue. Not every investment is a winner and the sooner people accept that the sooner this problem gets fixed.

Is it too easy to get money?

It seems like the worse the collateral the easier it is to borrow money for it. I bought a $22,000 condo about a year ago, and the loan process was grueling, and a year later an identical condo next to mine sold for thirty thousand, in other words the bank would make money if I stopped making payments and the foreclosed. A couple days ago I almost bought a car for a little over thirty thousand and the loan was approved in a couple of minutes, I can almost guarantee the car isn't going up in value.

I really don't get why people are happy to loan on cars, a pretty heavily depreciating item, or for that matter why banks are happy give out credit cards, which have no collateral, but are pretty reluctant to loan money for real estate.

Seems like money is getting dumber and dumber.