Amusing and insightful stuff from a guy with a shaved head named Clay. It's about the idea of a cognitive surplus that's been spent on watching the teevee as people adapted to an increase in leisure time. The time Clay and I spent in our youth watching Gilligan's Island and Green Acres can now be used to make wikis and lolcat bible translations.
Or commenting.
via Jay Rosen, pointed out by commenter J.J. at TIME's Swampland.
This article touches on it a little bit, but something generally missing from our discourse is how rural gentrification can be a community killer. We talk about urban gentrification all of the time, but my guess is that rural gentrification is often much more destructive to longtime residents of developing rural areas, especially if their livelihood is tied to the land.
This farming community on the eastern edge of the Bay Area absorbed an outsize portion of the region's growth during the prolonged housing and development boom, adding 40,000 residents in the past 16 years as subdivisions and strip malls overtook agricultural land. It regularly ranked among the state's fastest-growing cities. Now, Brentwood is suffering disproportionately from the bust.
Hundreds of families have lost their homes to foreclosure since the beginning of last year, and in a sign of more to come, at least 1 out of every 16 households has received default notices.
For the neighbors left behind, the dreams of the pretty, tight-knit community that lured many there in the first place have dissolved.
A couple of months ago it seemed like this would be the appropriate time to take a little break. You know, with the primary over and all that. Oh well.
Anyway, through the magic of FUTURE posting it'll be a bit easier to keep this thing humming while I'm on the road. If any of the regulars have been waiting for the right time to put up a magnum opus on biofuels or whatever on the front page here this week would be a good time. Might be one or two additional faces chipping in a bit. Could just be chaos. Exciting!!
What's interesting about this article is that nowhere does it say if he ever even rented any of these properties out.
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - A California man who has defaulted on nine homes and expects banks to foreclose on all of them, forcing him into bankruptcy, says he now considers it a mistake to have invested in the real estate market.
Shawn Forgaard, a 37-year-old software company project manager, bought one home for his family to live in and nine more as investments. He stands to lose all the investment houses in the mortgage meltdown but says he has come away wiser from the experience.
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Forgaard bought a house in Santa Cruz, about 60 miles (100 km) south of San Francisco, in 2000. Four years later, using $800,000 in stock options, he began snapping up investment properties, putting 10 percent to 40 percent down on negative amortization loans -- in which payments do not cover the interest so that a borrower's balance grows over time.
My guess is they were investment properties simply in the "prices go up forever" model and not the "I'll make some money renting them out" model.
A big issue with how people perceive their costs of operating their cars is that most of the costs are fixed, and they therefore see the marginal cost of driving as much lower than the average cost. Nobody really thinks they spend 54.1 cents every time they drive a mile, because car payments, insurance, and even maintenance are perceived as fixed costs.
LIVINGSTON -- Zack Guettinger's alarm sounds at 3:45 a.m., bringing with it a cruel reminder that he must drag himself out of bed for another three-hour drive to his job in San Ramon.
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On a typical day, he drives 200 miles there and back. It's not a short drive, but as he explained, it's what must be done.
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There's a phrase, "Drive until you qualify," meaning that a Bay Area worker can afford a house only if he moves farther from his job.
Guettinger lives on Arena Way in rural Livingston, where he moved a few years ago with his wife and kids because he couldn't bear the thought of his sons growing up in an unsafe Bay Area neighborhood.
ABC's "This Week" — Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev.; Carly Fiorina, adviser to John McCain's campaign.
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CBS' "Face the Nation" — Former Sen. John Edwards, D-N.C.; Terry McAuliffe, campaign chairman for Hillary Rodham Clinton.
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NBC's "Meet the Press" — Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn.; McAuliffe.
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CNN's "Late Edition" — Reps. Roy Blunt, R-Mo., and Chris Van Hollen, D-Md.; Retired Army Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, former commander of U.S. forces in Iraq; Samir Sumaidaie, Iraqi ambassador to U.S.
The schisms in The Liberal Blogosphere that have been lately discernible are to be lamented. I regret myself that it has come to this, but I must hereby hurl my despite in the teeth of The Editors.
Here is a YouTube video of "Mike and the Mad Dog" discussing Lenny Dykstra.
And you thought that shit with the Rev. Wright was bad... I am sorry but the real issues at stake in this election demand our most sincere attention. Nobody could have predicted it would come to this.
ELK GROVE VILLAGE, Ill. — The foreclosure crisis is hitting yet another American locale: the self-storage center.
As they lose their homes, people are turning to these humble cinderblock and sheet-metal boxes to store their stuff. But some people cannot keep up with their storage bills any better than they could handle their mortgage payments, and storage companies are auctioning off their property for a pittance.
A cottage industry has developed to profit from these lost and abandoned items. The other day in this Chicago suburb, Stephanie Donahou and her son Marcus had only a moment to decide whether to bid on a unit in default. They could see a couch, a sewing machine, a fish tank, a washer and dryer, lots of Christmas wrapping paper, a television and other trappings of daily life.
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