Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson has given out almost all of the first $350 billion of the $700 billion bailout fund, and the economy continued to slide down - so where did all those money go? Mike Madden of Salon.com finds out:
The infusion of money may have kept credit from tightening up further, but it certainly didn't jump-start the economy -- banks didn't resume lending to businesses and consumers. Stock prices never really recovered from their early autumn plunges, and more than half a million jobs vanished just last month. With the benefit of hindsight, lawmakers now express regret about the way the bailout was handled -- with few provisions for oversight of the banks or the Bush administration -- and the public hates it more than ever. The feeling that money and political capital were squandered even helped endanger the far cheaper and more popular bailout of the auto industry. So what went wrong -- and where did all that money go?
A lot of it is, apparently, just sitting in the bank. A Government Accounting Office audit released earlier this month showed the Treasury Department doling out buckets of cash: $15 billion for Bank of America, $45 billion for Citigroup, $3.5 billion to Capital One, nearly $6.6 billion to U.S. Bancorp. The feds were essentially taking out the trash -- buying shares in various banks that had gotten themselves into trouble by issuing crappy mortgages using complicated formulas, assuming the cost of many of the mortgage-backed securities that were weighing down the balance sheets of every financial institution in the country. The feds were pumping money into these banks so they would feel free to make more loans -- better, simpler, sounder loans. The epidemic of exploding mortgages and failing institutions would ease. But the banks did not start making new loans. They seemed to sit on their federal windfalls.
Frank Gilberti thought that his traffic ticket was "non-cents." He noticed that the Bloomfield, New Jersey, municipal court accepts cash to pay the fine, so he decided to pay with real cents: $56 in pennies!
That's when he got into more trouble:
"I went to the bank and got $56 worth of rolled pennies and went down to the court house and they refused to take it. They had told me to bring cash. I was under the assumption this was cash."
Non-cents? Not really. Pennies are legal tender. In fact, at the courthouse WCBS-TV found a sign saying cash is accepted. That's why the Nutley resident said he fought back, calling the court and convincing workers there to take his pennies.
But the 22-year-old said there was a condition -- that he write his driver's license number on each roll. "I simply asked them if I would have to do just this if I were handing in $56 bill. Would I have to write my driver's license number on each bill? They had no response," Gilberti said.
And even more shocking he said: "Then I found out there was a warrant out for my arrest."
Photo: Geoff Pingree / National Geographic Traveler Photo Contest
W00t! It's time for Neatorama and Hobotopia's Caption Monkey game - but first, here's the story behind the photo, titled "Behold". It's the Grand Prize winner of National Geographic's Traveler's "World in Focus" photo contest, and taken by Geoff Pingree of Oberlin, Ohio (he won a 15-day trip for two to Antarctica aboard the National Geographic Endeavor, which makes our prizes here on Neatorama look downright puny in comparison!):
Pingree, a professor of Cinema Studies and English at Oberlin College, took this photograph at Madrid's Prado Museum, which was staging theatrical performances inspired by masterworks by Spanish artists. "The photo shows performers playing Spanish King Philip IV and his second wife, Mariana of Austria," he said.
Now, on to the contest. The funniest caption will win an original Laugh-Out-Loud cat comic by Adam Koford. Place your caption in the comment section. One caption per comment, please, but you can enter as many as you'd like.
Don't forget to check out Adam's blog for inspiration! Good luck!
Update 12/17/08 - Adam has picked the winner! Congratulations to Adam D. Jones who won with this caption: "You said everyone would be wearing a costume!"
Our pals at Tokyoflash is famous for their wonderfully geeky watches, usually made out of metal and plastic.
Now, for the first time ever, they've released a new line of watches, the Tokyoflash Waku, that incorporate natural brown leather, raised black croc-effect leather and - get this - fur for that chic geek effect!
Twingly, the spam-free Swedish blog search engine, has released its list of the Top 100 blogs in the world and Neatorama made it! (We're no. 35)
Twingly groups the blogs it follows by language - so if you don't write in English, you can still find out how you rank against other blogs in the same language. Another interesting thing that Twingly has is BlogRank, which is sort of like Google PageRank, but for blogs.
Why do we yawn? Andrew Gallup, a researcher at Bingham University, explained that we yawn to prevent our brains from overheating:
If your head is overheated, there's a good chance you'll yawn soon, according to a new study that found the primary purpose of yawning is to control brain temperature.
The finding solves several mysteries about yawning, such as why it's most commonly done just before and after sleeping, why certain diseases lead to excessive yawning, and why breathing through the nose and cooling off the forehead often stop yawning.
The key yawn instigator appears to be brain temperature.
"Brains are like computers," Andrew Gallup, a researcher in the Department of Biology at Binghamton University who led the study, told Discovery News. "They operate most efficiently when cool, and physical adaptations have evolved to allow maximum cooling of the brain."
Alan Taylor of Boston Globe's The Big Picture Blog, one of the neatest blogs around on the Web, has a truly neat post about the most amazing images captured by the Hubble Space Telescope: Link - Thanks Tiny Dancer!
This one above is the "light echo" of the explosion of V838 Monocerotis, about 20,000 light years from the sun. From Wikipedia:
V838 Monocerotis (V838 Mon) is a variable star in the constellation Monoceros about 20,000 light years (6 kpc)[1] from the Sun. The star experienced a major outburst in early 2002. Originally believed to be a typical nova eruption, it was then realized to be something completely different. The reason for the outburst is still uncertain, but several theories have been put forward, including an eruption related to stellar death processes and a merger of a binary star or planets.
V838 Monocerotis was also dubbed the "Firefox" star, because of its similarity to the popular browser's logo (previously on Neatorama)
Carl of theWAREHOUSE blog sent us his latest creation: he gutted a ho-hum "inspirational gift" snowglobe and made it awesome by placing a little Tony Montana (Al Pacino) of Scarface sitting on his desk piled high with cocaine (cocaine = snow, get it?): Link - Thanks Carl!
I'm always surprised at the inventiveness of LEGO builders. Just when I thought I'd seen 'em all, comes a new amazing creation.
Take this working LEGO safe, for instance. It's built with LEGO Mindstorms NXT. It has a five number combination lock (that translates to over 305 billion different combos) and even a motion sensor so it can't be moved without the alarm going off.
Check out the video and more info at Slippery Brick: Link - Thanks Jayne Howley!
Hooray! I'm excited to tell you that we have a new feature on Neatorama, a Forum that we hope will be a neat place to hang out and interact with fellow Neatorama readers.
Unlike the blog, which as a top-down approach (authors write a post, which you then can read and add comments), the forum is open to all registered users of Neatorama. Found something interesting on the net? Got a burning question? Want to showcase your art? You can start a topic! (But please, no spam and keep the discussion civil.)
Jennifer Zelazny of Sandbox Development was a big help in the design and integration of the forum into the blog's Wordpress platform. She knows her stuff and is a pleasure to deal with. If you ever wanted a customized forum or need help with your blog or website, I highly recommend her.
Let's give this a try: originator of a particularly neat forum post (or one that develops into a lively discussion), will win a Free Neatorama T-Shirt. The best 3 forum posters of the month will also get something (a mystery prize, but it'll be good, I promise).
Without further ado, here it is: please check out our new Neatorama Forum.
To kick start the new Neatorama forum, I've written a little how-to guide on blogging for those of you who want to know the secret of Neatorama's success:
So you want to blog. Perhaps you're worried about your job security, or perhaps you just want an extra source of income in these bad economic times. Blogging is fun - and it can be profitable, if you know what you're doing.
In the first of what I hope is a series of forum posts about blogging, I'd like to give back to the readers of Neatorama. If you want to blog, you don't have to buy an eBook that promises to tell you the secret of making money online. I'll tell you what I've learned from three years of blogging - what I think I did right and wrong. In a nutshell, I'll tell you the secrets of Neatorama's growth and success.
In this article, I'm going to assume two things: you've never blogged before (but you want to try) and you want to blog for fun and profit.
I hope you like it - if it's popular, I'll post more: http://www.neatorama.com/forum/topic/the-secrets-of-neatoramas-success-the-what-when-where-and-how-to-blog-1
In the 500+ entries that we got, one really stood out: GrouchieGrumbles (entry #128) told us that if he/she should win, then we should just donate the prize to Toys for Tots charity. A Neatorama reader who prefers only to be called "a retired US Navy radioman" pointed this out to me.
Both of us are touched at the gesture, so we've decided to both donate $100 each to Toys for Tots, in honor of GrouchieGrumbles (whoever he is). This Christmas, times are tough - so Toys for Tots and other charities need our help more than ever. I'd like to invite you go open your heart (and wallet) and donate a little something.
Thank you to GrouchieGrumbles for his kind offer, to the anonymous Neatorama reader who contacted me about it, and lastly, to all of you who have done your parts in helping the less fortunate this holiday season.
If there were no cops, prosecutors or defense attorneys, the television
airwaves would probably be far less crowded. Over the past 60 years, these
professions have dominated prime-time schedules. Why? They offer formulas
ready-made for drama: A brand-new conflict is presented to the protagonist
each week, promising to be full of mystery, intrigue, and ... predictability.
Viewers can rely on the fact that near the end of the viewing hour, one
crucial piece of evidence will appear and lead to the capture of the elusive
killer, or to the acquittal of the wrongly accused defendant. Then comes
the philosophical musing that wraps everything up neatly, providing a
clean slate for next week's episode.
Real life is rarely so cut-and-dried. And while some may argue that cop
and lawyer shows are merely entertainment, actual cops and lawyers claim
these shows can make their already-difficult jobs even harder.
JURORS' PRUDENCE
The
"CSI effect" occurs primarily inside the courtroom. Its first
incarnation was referred to as the Perry Mason effect, based
on the popular fictional defense attorney's trademark ability to clear
his client by coercing the guilty party into confessing on the witness
stand. During Mason's TV heyday, from the 1950s to the '80s, many prosecutors
complained that juries were hesitant to convict defendants without that
"Perry Mason moment" of a confession on the stand - which in
real life is very, very rare. (Photo: The Academy of Motion Picture Arts
& Science, via The
Perry Mason TV Show Book)
After Perry Mason went off the air, a new kind of law enforcement
program appeared: the scientific police procedural (which started with
Quincy, M.E., a drama about a crime-solving medical examiner
that aired from 1976 to '83). But few cop shows have matched the success
of CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, which debuted in 2000 and
has spawned two successful spin-offs. A 2006 TV ratings study in 20 countries
named CSI "the most watched show in the world."
MYTH-CONCEPTIONS
Along with similar shows such as NCIS, Diagnosis: Murder,
and Bones, CSI focuses on forensic evidence and lab
work as the primary means of catching killers. These drama may be "ripped
from the headlines," but when it comes to telling an entertaining
story, certain liberties must be taken by the writers:
On television shows, detectives work one case at a time; in real world,
they juggle a deep backlog of cases.
Experts who perform scientific analyses are rarely the same people
who do the detective work and make arrests, unlike TV where one team
tackles every aspect of the investigation. (And few real forensic scientists
ever drive a Hummer to a crime scene.)
The almost instant turnaround of DNA tests is what TV writers refer
to as a "time cheat," a trick necessary to get the story wrapped
up. In reality, due to the screening, extraction, and replication process
(not to mention the backlog), DNA test can take months. And the results
are rarely, if ever, 100% conclusive.
Just about every murder investigation on TV leads to an arrest and
conviction. In the real world, less than half of these cases are solved.
"If you really portrayed what crime scene investigators do,"
said Jay Siegel, a professor of forensic science at Michigan State University,
"the show would die after three episodes because it would be so boring."
SHOW ME THE SCIENCE
The main problem caused by the CSI effect: Juries now expect
conclusive forensic evidence. According to Staff Sergeant Peter Abi-Rashed,
a homicide detective from Hamilton, Ontario, "Juries are asking,
'Can we convict without DNA evidence?' Of course they can. It's called
good, old-fashioned police work and overwhelming circumstantial evidence."
In the worst-case scenarios, guilty people may be set free because a jury
wasn't impressed with evidence that - as recently as the 1990s - would
have led to a conviction.
In fact, many forensic experts find themselves on the stand explaining
to a jury why they don't have scientific evidence. Some lawyers
have even started asking potential jurors if they watch CSI.
If so, they may have to be reeducated.
Shellie Samuels, the lead prosecutor in the 2005 Robert Blake murder
trial, probably wishes that her jury had been asked beforehand if they
were CSI fans. Samuels tried to convince them that Blake, a former
TV cop himself (on Baretta), shot and killed his wife in 2001.
Samuels illustrated Blake's motive: she presented 70 witnesses who testified
against him, including two who stated - under oath - that Blake had asked
them to kill his wife. Seems like a lock for a conviction, right? Wrong.
"They couldn't put the gun in his hand," said jury foreman Thomas
Nicholson, who along with his peers acquitted Blake. "There was no
blood splatter. They had nothing." The verdict sent a clear message
throughout the legal community: Juries will convict only on solid forensic
evidence.
This new trend affects cops, too. CSI-watching detectives tend
to put unrealistic pressure on crime scene investigators not only to find
solid evidence, but also to give them immediate results. Henry Lee, chief
emeritus of Connecticut's state crime lab (and perhaps the world's most
famous forensics scientist), says that, much to the dismay of the police,
his investigators can't provide "miracle proof" just by scattering
some "magic dust" on a crime scene. And there is no machine
- not even at the best-equipped lab in the country - in which you can
place a hair in at one end and pull a picture of a suspect out of the
other. "And our type of work always has a backlog," laments
Lee, who's witnessed the amount of evidence turned in to his lab rise
from about five pieces per crime scene in the 1980s to anywhere from 50
to 400 today.
MIRANDA WRONGS
The CSI effect doesn't stop at science - the entire judicial
process is being presented in a misleading fashion. Mary Flood, editor
of a website called The Legal Pad, asked a dozen prominent criminal lawyers
to rate the most popular shows. Her findings: "Generally, they hate
it when Law & Order's Jack McCoy extracts confessions in
front of a speechless defense lawyers. Not real, they say. They go nuts
over the CSI premise of the exceedingly well-funded, glamorous
lab techs who do a homicide detective's job. Even less real, they say.
And they get annoyed when The Closer's heroine ignores a suspect's
request for a lawyer. Unconstitutional, they say."
DUMB CROOKS
In the real world, it's usually neither the crusading prosecutor nor
the headstrong cop who solved the case. Most criminals, cops admit, are
their own worst enemies. Either they don't cover their tracks or they
brag to friends about what they did, or both. People tend not to think
clearly when they commit crimes. But in the past few years there has appeared
a new kind of criminal: the kind that watches CSI ... and learns.
In
December 2005, Jermaine "Maniac" McKinney, a 25-year-old man
from Ohio, broke into a house and killed two people. He used bleach to
clean his hands as well as the crime scene, then carefully removed all
of the evidence and placed blankets in his car before transferring the
bodies to an isolated lakeshore at night, where he burned them along with
his clothes and cigarette butts - making sure that none of his DNA could
be connected to the victims. One thing remained: the murder weapon, a
crowbar. McKinney threw it into the lake ... which was frozen. He didn't
want to risk walking out on the ice to get it, so he left it behind. Big
mistake: The weapon was later found - still on the ice - and linked to
McKinney, which led to his arrest. When asked why he used bleach to clean
his hands, McKinney said that he'd learned that bleach destroys DNA. Where'd
he learn that? "On CSI." (Photo: Steve Schenk/AP, article
at The
San Diego Union-Tribune)
Using bleach to clean a crime scene was almost unheard of until CSI
used it as a plot point. Now the practice is occurring more and more
often. "Sometimes I believe it may even encourage criminals when
they see how simple it is to get away with murder on television,"
said Captain Ray Peavy, head of the homicide division at the Los Angeles
Sheriff's Department. It's difficult enough to investigate a crime scene
with the "normal" amount of evidence left behind.
MAYBE DON'T SHOW THEM THE SCIENCE?
So should these shows be censored? Should they tone down the science
or, some have argued, use fake science to throw criminals a red
herring? "The National District Attorneys Association is deeply concerned
about the effect of CSI," CBS News consultant and former
prosecutor Wendy Murphy reported. "When CSI trumps common
sense, then you have a systemic problem."
But not everyone agrees. "To argue that CSI and similar
shows are actually raising the number of acquittals is a staggering claim,"
argues Simon Cole, professor of criminology at the University of California,
Irvine. "And the remarkable thing is that, speaking forensically,
there is not a shred of evidence to back it up."
And furthering the debate about whether criminals learn from CSI,
Paul Wilson, the chair of criminology at Bond University in Australia,
stated, "There is no doubt that criminals copy what they see on television.
However, I don't believe these shows pose a major problem." Prison,
Wilson maintains, is where most of these people learn the tricks of their
trade. So while law enforcement officials may agree that cop and lawyer
shows do have an effect on modern investigations and trials, the jury
is still out on exactly what that effect is.
THE SILVER LINING
The
shows do have their positive aspects. For one thing, they teach basic
science, saving the courts time and money by not having to call in experts
to explain such concepts as what DNA evidence actually is. Anthony E.
Zuiker, creator of the CSI franchise, is quick to point this
out. "Jurors can walk in with some preconceived notion of at least
what CSI means. And even if they are false expectations, at least jurors
aren't walking in blind."
Perhaps most significantly, though, ever since CSI became a
hit in 2000, student admissions into forensic field have skyrocketed.
So even if Zuiker's show is confusing jurors, misinforming police, and
helping to train criminals, at least it's proven to be an effective recruiting
tool. "The CSI effect is, in my opinion, the most amazing
thing that has ever come out of the series," he said, "For the
first time in American history, you're not allowed to fool the jury anymore."
(Photo: Mathieu
Ramage [Flickr])
And finally, a message from Zuiker to anyone who walks up and points
out his shows' inherent flaws: "Folks, it's television."
The Bathroom Readers' Institute has sailed the seas of science, history,
pop culture, humor, and more to bring you Uncle John's Unsinkable Bathroom
Reader. Our all-new 21st edition is overflowing with over 500 pages of
material that is sure to keep you fully absorbed.
Since 1988, the Bathroom Reader Institute has published a series of popular
books containing irresistible bits of trivia and obscure
yet fascinating facts. Check out their website here: Bathroom
Reader Institute.
I love this Feedbot cartoon by Matt Forsythe (who also draws the online comic ojingogo) of Coming Up for Air. Best of all, Matt has tagged this cute bot with Creative Commons attributions, so you can use it in your blog.
If it's an inspiring speech, you betcha it has been said in the movies somewhere. Here's a truly inspiring video clip, edited by Matthew Belinkie of OverthinkingIt: 40 Inspirational Speeches in 2 Minutes.
Transcript:
Shame on you. This could be the greatest night of our lives, but you're going to let it be the worst. And I guarantee a week won't go by in your life you won't regret walking out, letting them get the best of you. Well, I'm not going home. We've come too far! And I'm going to stay right here and fight for this lost cause. A day may come when the courage of men fails... but it is not THIS day. The line must be drawn HERE. This far, no further! I'm not saying it's going to be easy. You're going to work harder than you ever worked before. But that's fine, we'll just get tougher with it! If a person grits his teeth and shows real determination, failure is not an option. That's how winning is done! Believe me when I say we can break this army here, and win just one for the Gipper. But I say to you what every warrior has known since the beginning of time: you've got to get mad. I mean plum mad dog mean. If you would be free men, then you must fight to fulfill that promise! Let us cut out their living guts one inch at a time, and they will know what we can do! Let no man forget how menacing we are. We are lions! You're like a big bear, man! This is YOUR time! Seize the day, never surrender, victory or death... that's the Chicago Way! Who's with me? Clap! Clap! Don't let Tink die! Clap! Alright! Let's fly! And gentlemen in England now abed shall know my name is the Lord when I tell our enemies that they may take our lives, but they'll never take our Independence Day!
