Scary, weapons grade uranium for sale

Fox news is reporting the seizure of three pounds of enriched uranium, in powder form, from a sting operation in Eastern Europe. The TV claims it is enriched to weapons grade, better than 90% U-235. Critical mass for a U-235 fission bomb is supposed to be a kilogram (2.2 pounds) so three pounds is enough to make a real Hiroshima size fission bomb, rather than just a dirty bomb, at least if you know what you are doing. The Hiroshima bomb was "only" 20 Kilotons of yield, a mere firecracker compared to the yield of up-to-date nukes.
Even scarier thought. The Russians still have a lot of nukes. These are sitting in ammunition magazines scattered about Russia. Each magazine has a crew of technicians, bomb loaders, guards, and whoever. These guys are under the command of some Russian officer, a colonel at a guess. How many of those colonels are worried about layoffs, retirement savings, college educations for their children? Would one or two of them accept a million Euro's to let a couple a nukes out? A real Red Army nuke that has been tested and is highly likely to go bang? As opposed to a terrorist home made job that might well fizzle? The North Koreans demonstrated a fizzle not too long ago.

Why is Windows so Paneful?

Windows, the nearly universal operating system, has earned itself a host of bitter enemies. Nobody likes it. Windows is buggy, expensive, slow to boot, slow to launch programs, slow to run programs, wide open to malware, and infuriating to program for. Users need to buy, install, and futz with anti virus , anti spyware, and firewalls. Despite the add-on defensive software, viruses (virii?) have taken control of millions of PC's and use them to sent spam, launch distributed denial of service attacks across the web, or perform identity theft on behalf of criminal gangs. Writing Windows drivers for plug-into-the-PC products consumes more engineering effort than creating the product in the first place. Each new release of Windows is slower and consumes more RAM, disk space, and run time than the last. And requires a time consuming rewrite of all those painfully written drivers.
And yet, Windows is the only game in town for those of us in the software business. Nearly every PC runs Windows, so your product has to run under Windows if you expect to sell it. For every Linux or Apple machine, there are a hundred Windows machines. No one will buy a product that doesn't run under Windows. Windows is a fact of life and we are stuck with it until some company offers something better. I'm not holding my breath. IBM tried with OS2 years ago and ancient Windows 3.1 totally destroyed them. The Linux folk have yet to convince ordinary customers to give up Word and Excel for Star Office.
What makes Windows so bad?
It's too damn big. Windows is humungous. It's so big no one understands it any more. The number of bugs is proportional to the number of lines of code, and the number of lines of code in Windows is millions, billions, who knows really. But it's the biggest program in captivity. Which makes it the buggiest. The only way to reduce the bugs and speed it up is to make it smaller.

CAFE or no CAFE?

Congress is getting ready to jack up the Corporate Average Fuel Economy standards. Currently new cars are supposed to get 27 mpg, and "light trucks" (SUV, minivan, pickup truck) are supposed to get 20 mpg. A Senate bill would wipe out the distinction between cars and light trucks and require all of them to meet the same standard.
Question: Since $3 gas happened, does not Detroit have all the incentive anyone needs to produce good gas mileage cars? Certainly sales of the big SUVs and pickups has nosedived, causing GM, Ford, and Chrysler to loose staggering amounts of money, while Toyota and Honda sales and profits are up?
Nother question: How real are CAFE standards actually? The Chrysler PT cruiser, which looks a lot like a car to me, is actually classed as a light truck. Chrysler did this to raise the average gas mileage on their light trucks. Each PT cruiser sold allowed the sale of a couple of Hemi powered Dodge Ram pickup trucks.
Last Question: If US citizens are willing to buy big vehicles for hauling flocks of kids, plywood from the lumber yard, furniture back from the yard sale, and trash to the dump, why not let them. It's a free country. Should we not be able to spend our hard earned dollars the way we like, as opposed to the way someone else thinks we ought to?

Light Duty Trucks or Light Trucks

Just watched a GM ad on Fox. Camera pans across a car showroom full of shiny pickups and SUV's. The voice over describes them as "Light Duty trucks". Not good. "Heavy duty" is good, "Light Duty" says the truck is gonna fall apart upon hitting its first deep chuckhole. The voice over should have called 'em "light trucks" which is good. Heavy trucks have 18 wheels and won't back into your garage which doesn't help sales appeal.
I can understand the ad writers making this goof, but how do it get by all the suits at GM?
Or are the GM suits as clueless as the admen?

Eliminate the sub prime middle man

Make it illegal to sell loans, mortgage or any other sort. The sub prime meltdown happened when the banks (or loan companies) who issue loans started selling the loans for cash. This freed the mortgage issuers from all risk and restocked their supplies of cash, so they could run out and do more mortgages. Which they did. The issuers make their money on the closing costs, so the more closings they do the more money they make.
Mortgages are creations of the law. We could pass a law saying that no one can sell a mortgage. The mortgage is a deal between a specific borrower and a specific lender and the deal is not an article of commerce that can be traded, sold, or given away. The legal rights to enforce the deal (foreclosure on the house) are only enjoyed by the original issuer, second hand mortgages loose their right of foreclosure.
The idea is to kill off the juggling of mortgages from one hand to another. You issue it, you own it forever. Issuer's will be much more careful who they loan to, and on what terms, if they have to live with the deal for 30 years. When the issuers can sell the loan, they don't care how sound it is, it just has to be sound enough to last long enough to sell it off. This accounts for the teaser mortgages, low payments for a couple of years, much higher ones later. The borrower probably won't default until his payments go up, by which time the issuer is home safe and some gullible investors get hurt. And the borrowers, and the entire economy too.
The issuers will cry and wail at this proposal. They will say they need to sell the mortgages to get the money to do more mortgages. Let me say this to them. Raise money the old fashioned way, pay decent interest on deposits. Sell certificates of deposit that pay 1% less than the going mortgage rate. With mortgages around 7% the CD's could pay 6%, and have FDIC protection too.

How slick is this? (From Commentary)

A junket to China by some US reporters.

Chinese Olympic spokesman: "Thanks to a range of measures, two thirds of the days in Beijing now have good air quality"

Outside the glass walled conference room smog was so thick that nearby buildings were visible only in outline.

US reporter, waving toward the windows: "Is this a good air day?"

Chinese spokesman: "It takes an expert to determine that."

Crime, Drugs,Welfare, things ARE getting better

The December issue of Commentary magazine cover article proclaims that crime, drugs and welfare are getting better in the United States. They give real numbers (unusual among modern newsies who are largely innumerate).
Teenage drug use: Down 23% since the 1990's
Ecstasy, speed& LSD: Down 50%
Welfare cases: Down 60% since 1994
Abortion: Down 19% since 1990
SAT scores: Up 8 points since 1989
Teenage births: Down 35% since 1991

There is a good deal more, but the writer is convinced that things are rebounding after a dreadful low in the 80's and 90's. Still not as good as things might have been back in the good old days, but measurably better than ten years ago. This is good news for a change.
Just in time for Christmas too.
Too bad this webby thing doesn't understand tabs or columns...