Epistemic Ingemination

R.I.P, Eartha Kitt and Harold Pinter.

Do you think that you have winter weather issues?

Check out what “Condition 1″ means in Antarctica…

Here’s a belated Merry Christmas to all of you. 2009 should be a most interesting year; we’ll all get through it together. I think that it’ll be a year of retooling and preparing for a bright future.

We had a very nice day over here; very quiet and relaxed. Ryan’s side of the family was out of town and my side unavailable as well, so we stayed around the house, played games, ate ham sandwiches and watched movies. I was asleep by 11:00 PM and woke up at 5:00 AM, rested and content. Today we’ll do a little shopping for a Saturday Christmas w/ the out-of-towners.

And I’ll nap a lot. Yeah, that’s it.

Have a fine day, week, and New Year.

Mark Jason Dominus’ extraordinary “Higher Order Perl” is now available for free online, bless his heart. It is a twisty, turny maze of wonderfulness, a text (sometimes) about how to write programs that write programs, and will make your brain strong (and possibly drive you nuts, falling down an infinite-recursion hall of mirrors.)

Highly recommended, in a sort of applied Gödel, Escher, Bach sort of way.

Site Here.

PDF here.

You’ll never look at lexical closures and variable suicide problems in the same way again. Heh.

“As long as war is regarded as wicked, it will always have its fascination. When it is looked upon as vulgar, it will cease to be popular.”

– Oscar Wilde

When making Beef Stew, if you add a finely cubed fresh beet, it will add a wonderfully complimentary and earthy flavor to the dish.

It will also color your Beef Stew a truly striking Florescent Magenta, which can prove to be anathematic to the less sophisticated diners at your table.

Just sayin’.

THE CREDIT CARD ACCOUNTABILITY RESPONSIBILITY AND DISCLOSURE ACT

Senator Dodd never got it to the floor this year. He’s reintroducing it on day one of the new session.

The short form:

Strengthens Credit Card Industry Regulation and Supervision

• Requires banking regulators to evaluate the policies and procedures of card issuers to ensure compliance with card requirements and prohibitions;

• Improves data collection related to rates, fees, and profits;

• Provides each federal financial regulator with the authority to prescribe regulations governing unfair or deceptive practices by banks and savings and loan institutions.

Prevents “any-time, any reason” Increases in Interest Rate and Terms

• Prevents credit card issuers from increasing interest rates on cardholders in good standing for reasons unrelated to the cardholder’s behavior with respect to that card (universal default ban);

• Prevents issuers from changing the terms of a credit card contract for the length of the card agreement (ban on unilateral changes to card agreements);

• Allows customers who close their accounts to pay under the terms existing at the time the account is closed;

• Requires interest rate increases to apply only to future credit card debt.

Requires Fairness in Application of Card Payments

• Requires payments to be applied first to the credit card balance with the highest rate of interest, and to minimize finance charges;

• Prohibits issuers from setting early morning deadlines for credit card payments. 

Protects the Rights of Financially Responsible Credit Card Users

• Prohibits interest charges on debt paid on time (double-cycle billing ban);

• Prohibits late fees if the card issuer delayed crediting the payment;

• Requires credit card statements to be mailed 21 days before the bill is due rather than the current 14;

• Requires that payment at local branches be credited same-day.

Prohibits Exorbitant and Unnecessary Rates and Fees

• Prohibits the charging of interest on credit card transaction fees, such as late fees and overlimit fee;

• Prohibits issuers from charging a fee to allow a credit card holder to pay a credit card debt, whether payment is by mail, telephone, electronic transfer, or otherwise;

• Prevents issuers from multiple over-limit fees for exceeding a card limit, and allows such fees only when a cardholder’s action, rather than a fee or finance charge, causes the limit to be exceeded;

• Requires issuers to offer consumers the option of operating under a fixed credit limit;

• Requires issuers to lower penalty rates that have been imposed on a cardholder after 6 months if the cardholder commits no further violations.

Provides Enhanced Disclosures of Card Terms and Conditions

• Requires cardholders to be given 45 days’ notice of any interest rate increase;

• Requires issuers to provide disclosures to consumers upon card renewal when the card terms have changed;

• Requires issuers to provide individual consumer account information and to disclose the period of time and total interest it will take to pay off the card balance if only minimum monthly payments are made;

• Requires full disclosure in billing statements of payment due dates and applicable late payment penalties. 

Ensures Adequate Safeguards for Young People

• Requires issuers soliciting to persons under the age of 21 to obtain an application that contains: the signature of a parent, guardian, or other individual who will take responsibility for the debt; proof that the applicant has an independent means of repaying any credit extended; or proof that the applicant has completed a certified financial literacy course;

• Limits prescreened offers of credit to young consumers by prohibiting consumer reporting agencies from furnishing reports in connection with firm offers of credit that are not initiated by consumers under age 21.  Allows consumers who are at least 18, but not yet 21, to choose to receive such solicitations.          

Yep, had to look again, but it is snowing in Austin Texas as of 11:00 PM.

Neato.

Never take it personally, never lose your sense of humor, because on any given day, on every given day, you’ll need both.

Dee Dee Myers, in an interview, acquiescing to giving advice to Barack Obama’s new press secretary.

That’s excellent advice, period. For all of us.

The Storm is no longer brewing. It’s here.

533,000 jobs gone in November. 422,000 additional people “exited from the workforce” — meaning they’ve given up looking. 1 in 10 homeowners with a mortgage are either over one month behind or in foreclosure.

Freshen up on how to make squirrel stew, gang.

…

[Addendum: Ryan responds: "Nation Of Hobos: Coming To You Live."]

You’re going to hearing a lot of stuff in the future, as the new Attorney General nominee Eric Holder goes through confirmation, about Clinton’s pardon of Mark Rich.

Joe Conason has the full skinny, but the two points to remember are: (A) Clinton gave Rich a conditional pardon — Rich must pay tens of millions in back taxes for the pardon to become valid, which he hasn’t done; and (B) Clinton and Holder both came under enormous pressure from Israel to effect the pardon. Mark Rich was and is an informal and important back-channel envoy for Israel. Including to places like Iran.

So it wasn’t a true “full” pardon, and it was motivated by reasons of state, issued the day before the Taba summit talks began. These are nuances that are not being reported. Hopefully they’ll become clear at the confirmation hearings.

In any case, Eric Holder had no power to affect a pardon other than advisory. That is a Presidential-only prerogative instilled in the constitution.

Just keeping you up to date on the opposition’s strategy and tactics…

I’ll likely be upgrading this Wordpress installation in the next day or two; if I hose things up, I’ll try be back asap.

A) When you build an entire economy based upon convincing people to buy things that people don’t really need, you run into issues when people stop buying things that they don’t really need.

B) What if most of your jobs involve servicing people buying things that they don’t really need? When people stop buying things that they don’t really need, most of those jobs are going to go away.

C) If people have been buying things that they don’t really need on credit, and then they lose their jobs servicing other people buying things that they don’t really need? That money is not going to get paid back any time soon, if at all.

D) Finally, if you’ve moved all of your manufacturing of things that people do need out of your country in the meantime? You’re going to be pretty screwed to the wall, and for a long time. Because when people buy the things that they do need, that profit leaves your country’s economy, and is unavailable to you for reinvestment.

Let’s close today’s post with an observation: One of the largest companies in the world, Google, was founded about 15 years ago. Starting from zero, it became one of the largest companies in the world in less than two decades through what avenue?

Advertising revenue. Think about it.

“Consumerism.” It makes a fine snack, but it’s an awful dinner.

Buckle up.

I’ve just realized the downside of the new security team. The media is already rolling out Christopher Hitchens again, like an old unrehabilitated civil war veteran, so that we can listen to his skriking and howping about Hillary Clinton for the next eight years.

C’mon, MSM. This election is about change. If you must have a Hillary Hater on call, find yourself a fresh one, please? Hitchens has been a screeching broken-record maroon for a decade now. We’ve already heard his viewpoint. Just because his life has meaning again doesn’t obligate you to participate.