Grab bag: Bailout, continued

PDF exploit toolkits spotted in the wild. Update your browser plugins, kids, it’s going to be a fun ride. Better yet, if you’re on Mac OS X, uninstall Acrobat Reader entirely.

Hysterically funny and very pointed at the same time.

The proper solution to the dilemma is, of course, taking an equity stake in exchange for purchasing the distressed assets.

No way that my tax dollars will go to buy distressed mortgage debt at above market value. I might as well just flush the money directly down the toilet; at least that way it would be entertaining and I’d have a small chance of getting the money back.

I’ve long thought that a good statistical mechanics analysis was going to be necessary to fix the Boston roads; I might be right.

Hard to believe that the administration tried to make the bailout non-reviewable, but here it is: “Decisions by the Secretary pursuant to the authority of Decisions by the Secretary pursuant to the authority of this Act are non-reviewable and committed to agency discretion, and may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency. Act are non-reviewable and committed to agency discretion, and may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency. “

Levine was in New York for the Met premiere to conduct Renee. He’ll be in Boston this week for the BSO season premiere. Nothing like hitting the ground running.

Beta story-sharing feature on the New York Times. Nice UI. Don’t know if they have enough readers online who are into this sort of thing to build a real network.

Alex Ross receives a Genius Grant. Right on.

Wil Shipley has common sense about the Apple Store. I don’t want to read any more stories about Apple pulling apps that compete with its own. Ever.

Inspirational listening: MLK speech about civil disobedience. “Well, you may go on and live until you are ninety, but you are just as dead at 38 as you would be at ninety. And the cessation of breathing in your life is but the belated announcement of an earlier death of the spirit. You died when you refused to stand up for right. You died when you refused to stand up for truth. You died when you refused to stand up for justice.”

I have a couple bags full of VHS tapes that are worth BILLIONS.

Heh. The bailout letter as Nigeriam spam. Brilliant.

Real time commentary on the bailout bill. Go nuts.

The source of that Bernie Sanders quotation (below). Yes, it’s very left-wing stuff, but it’s also thought provoking. How much of the risk taking was enabled by the thought that senior government officials like Paulson would be there to bail them out?

I think–I hope–Krugman nails it here. The Bush administration tried to slip a fast one by us, a last gift for his cronies. There are enough people who were paying attention that it slowed down. Now, with Bernie Sanders, we can ask, “We’ve been told…we can’t afford—that the government providing healthcare to all people is just unimaginable; it can’t be done. We don’t have the money to rebuild our infrastructure. We don’t have the money to wipe out poverty. We can’t do it. But all of a sudden, yeah, we do have $700 billion for a bailout of Wall Street.”