>Ron Paul: IRS to monitor EVERY credit card transaction!

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>California, Illinois Sue Countrywide For Mortgage Deception

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California Attorney General Edmund G. Brown Jr. today sued Countrywide Financial, its chief executive Angelo Mozilo, and president David Sambol, for engaging in deceptive advertising and unfair competition by pushing homeowners into mass-produced, risky loans for the sole purpose of reselling the mortgages on the secondary market.

“Countrywide exploited the American dream of homeownership and then sold its mortgages for huge profits on the secondary market,” Brown said. “The company sold ever-increasing numbers of complex and risky home loans, as quickly as possible.

“Countrywide was, in essence, a mass-production loan factory, producing ever-increasing streams of debt without regard for borrowers. Today’s lawsuit seeks relief for Californians who were ripped off by Countrywide’s deceptive scheme,” he said. …

Teaser rates

The company pushed these loans by emphasizing a low “teaser” or initial rate, often as low as 1 percent for pay option ARMs. … Countrywide operated an extensive telemarketing operation in which it touted its expertise and claimed to find the best financial options for customers. Customer Service representatives at Countrywide call centers were required to complete calls within three minutes, often processing sixty-five to eight-five calls per day. Employees who did not meet quotas were terminated. …

During the course of its investigation into Countrywide, state investigators reviewed hundreds of thousands of documents and interviewed scores of witnesses including consumers and former employees.

Consumers who believe they have been victimized by Countrywide Consumers should file a complaint by contact the Attorney General’s Public Inquiry Unit in writing at Attorney General’s Office California Department of Justice Attn: Public Inquiry Unit P.O. Box 944255, Sacramento, California or through an online complaint form. … The lawsuits were filed on the same day that Countrywide stockholders were voting on the BOA sale. – consumeraffairs

I asked for a 30 year fixed loan, but I was told by the loan expert at Countrywide that I’d just end up paying more that way. I was told I could just refinance in a few years, no matter what happened. That was a lie. You can’t “refinance” once your home is worth less than the amount of your original loan. So far I’ve only gotten the run around about how SB 1137 can help me. It gives rules for Notices of Default. Big deal. What are we actually supposed to do to force our lender to refinance us into a 30 year fixed loan at current market value if we are stuck with an adjustable rate? According to one person in the business:

“…most foreclosure victims lack desire or confidence needed to sustain the effort and fight to settle with their lender servicer.”

Will the Foreclosure Prevention Act of 2008 pass and how will that help?

The whole thing, including what you should do to come out of the housing crisis ahead, is completely explained in this easy to understand video:

>Cosmic Rays: They are particles, not rays.

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Cosmic rays are energetic particles originating from space that impinge on Earth’s atmosphere. Almost 90% of all the incoming cosmic ray particles are protons, about 9% are helium nuclei (alpha particles) and about 1% are electrons (beta minus particles). The term “ray” is a misnomer, as cosmic particles arrive individually, not in the form of a ray or beam of particles. – wiki

Cosmic rays are super-charged subatomic particles coming mainly from outside our solar system. Sources include exploding stars, black holes and other characters that dwarf the sun in violence. Unlike solar protons, which are relatively easy to stop with materials such as aluminum or plastic, cosmic rays cannot be completely stopped by any known shielding technology.

Even inside their ships, astronauts are exposed to a slow drizzle of cosmic rays coming right through the hull. The particles penetrate flesh, damaging tissue at the microscopic level. One possible side-effect is broken DNA, which can, over the course of time, cause cancer, cataracts and other maladies.

No one knows all the things cosmic rays might do to humans. “We haven’t been in space long enough,” says Cucinotta.

Except during brief trips to the Moon forty years ago, he explains, astronauts have never been fully exposed to galactic cosmic rays. Close to Earth where the ISS orbits, crews are protected not only by their ship’s hull, but also by Earth’s magnetic field and the gigantic solid body of Earth itself. A 6-month trip to Mars, far from these natural shields, is something new. What are the long-term risks? How much shielding is needed to keep astronauts safe? NASA researchers are grappling with these questions.

One thing is clear. “Reducing exposure is a good thing,” he says.

The sun can help. Every 11 years, solar activity reaches a fever pitch called Solar Max. It last happened in 2000; future episodes are due around 2011 and 2022. During Solar Max, CMEs are produced daily, and the solar wind blows knotty magnetic fields through the inner solar system as a matter of routine. These fields provide a measure of extra protection for trips to the Moon and Mars, dropping cosmic ray fluxes in the biologically dangerous energy range 100 MeV to 1000 MeV by 30% or more. Mission planners of the future might actually schedule long trips through the solar system to coincide, roughly, with Solar Max, thus taking advantage of this decline in cosmic rays.

Maybe solar flares aren’t so bad after all. – nasa

This is interesting. It seem Apollo 16 did get hit by a solar flare.

The Cosmic Ray Detector Experiment was performed on Apollo 16.

It seems no data is available on that, however, because “The experiment shield mechanism failed to retract completely, thus obscuring the field of view of the detector.”

A reduced-scale version of this experiment was also performed on Apollo 17, when it was called the Lunar Surface Cosmic Ray Experiment. These experiments measured particles with energies of 100,000 to 150 million electron volts, much higher than measured by any other experiment during the Apollo program. The particles detected by these experiments originate both in the solar wind and from sources elsewhere in our galaxy. On Apollo 16, particles from a solar flare (an energetic eruption of material away from the surface of the Sun) were also recorded.

These experiments consisted of a set of detector plates made of various glasses and plastics, aluminum and platinum foils, and the minerals mica and feldspar. On Apollo 16, the experiment was mounted outside the lunar module prior to launch and exposed to space a few hours after launch. On Apollo 17, the experiment was carried inside the lunar module and exposed to space after landing on the Moon. On both missions, the experiment was ended during the third moonwalk, for a total detector exposure time of 167 hours on Apollo 16 and 45 hours on Apollo 17. The detector plates were returned to Earth for laboratory analysis. – nasa

How and when were cosmic rays discovered? In 1912 a scientist named Viktor Hess carried an instrument called an ionization chamber in a balloon to high altitudes. An ionization chamber is a device that records the passage of charged particles. As Hess made his ascent in the balloon, the ionization chamber recorded fewer particles, up to an altitude of 2,000 meters. The interpretation is that some of this ionization is due to the natural radioactivity of the earth, and its influence decreases with altitude. Above 2,000 meters, however, he recorded more particles, and the increase in particles became even more rapid as his balloon reached its maximum altitude of 5,350 meters. Hess correctly guessed that this increase was due to radiation entering the atmosphere from space. On one occasion he rode the balloon during a solar eclipse, and found no decrease in ionization. From this he concluded that the radiation was coming from somewhere other than the sun. We now know that much of this cosmic radiation originates far outside the solar system. – auger

>Do less sunspots mean more solar flares? Or less?

>One study found no relationship between the two.

>Presidential Debates Part II

>I’m watching the second Presidential debates. Whoever wins, it sounds like we will be working on many new sources of energy. If McCain wins someone better invent “Nuke-Away” to get rid of nuclear waste because he wants nuclear plants all over the place … probably more than Obama will have.

>“Space rock” reveals life’s origins

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A meteorite, which crashed into Australia 40 years ago, is telling researchers new things about how life may have started on Earth, and how that almost universal protein left-handedness came to be.

For more than 150 years, scientists have known that the most basic building blocks of life – chains of amino acid molecules and the proteins they form – almost always have the unusual characteristic of being overwhelmingly “left-handed.”

The molecules, of course, have no hands, but they are almost all asymmetrical in a way that parallels left-handedness.

This observation, first made in the 1800s by French chemist Louis Pasteur, is taught to introductory organic chemistry students – until recently with the caveat that nobody knew how this came to be.

But research into the question has picked up in recent years, focusing on a 200-pound chunk of rock found 40 years ago in Murchison, Australia. A meteorite that broke off an asteroid long ago, it brought to Earth a rich collection of carbon-based material from far away in the solar system. According to a report in Washington Post, while the Murchison meteorite does not have any once-living material, it is telling researchers new things about how life may have started on Earth, and how that almost universal protein left-handedness came to be.

The answer they believe they have found is that 3 billion to 4 billion years ago, before life on Earth began, similar meteorites crashed regularly into the planet – delivering the amino acids that would later be incorporated into all living things. – phenomica

>’Deepest ever’ living fish filmed

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The “deepest ever” living fish have been discovered, scientists believe.

A UK-Japan team found the 17-strong shoal at depths of 7.7km (4.8 miles) in the Japan Trench in the Pacific – and captured the deep sea animals on film.

The scientists have been using remote-operated landers designed to withstand immense pressures to comb the world’s deepest depths for marine life.

Monty Priede from the University of Aberdeen said the 30cm-long (12in), deep-sea fish were surprisingly “cute”. The fish, known as Pseudoliparis amblystomopsis, can be seen darting about in the darkness of the depths, scooping up shrimps. Alan Jamieson, from the University of Aberdeen, said: “It was an honour to see these fish.
“No-one has ever seen fish alive at these depths before – you just never know what you are going to see when you get down there.”

The deepest record for any fish is Abyssobrotula galatheae, which was dredged from the bottom of the Puerto Rico Trench at a depth of more than 8km (5 miles) in 1970. However, it was dead by the time it reached the surface. – bbc

Check out the video of these cool fish here.

>U.S. Navy Sonar Linked To Whale Strandings, Environmental Scientists Argue

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Earlier this summer, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to review a series of lower court rulings that restrict the Navy’s use of sonar in submarine detection training exercises off the coast of Southern California. The court is due to hear the case after its term begins again this month.

For many years, professor Chris Parsons has been tracking the patterns of mass whale strandings around the world. In his most recent paper, “Navy Sonar and Cetaceans: Just how much does the gun need to smoke before we act?” Parsons and his co-authors bring together all of the major whale and dolphin strandings in the past eight years and discuss the different kinds of species that have been affected worldwide. They also strongly argue for stricter environmental policies related to this issue.

“Generally, if there is a large whale stranding, there is a military exercise in the area,” says Parsons. “Sonar is killing more whales than we know about.”

Parsons is a national delegate for the International Whaling Commission’s scientific and conservation committees, and on the board of directors of the marine section of the Society for Conservation Biology. He has been involved in whale and dolphin research for more than a decade and has conducted projects in South Africa, India, China and the Caribbean as well as the United Kingdom.

Though Parsons believes that there is a good chance the U.S. Supreme Court will rule in favor of the Navy, he thinks there is a chance for a win-win situation on both sides. … read more

>CIA Doument: Radiation Hazards on Soviet Moon Base

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I found some interesting reading tonight on the CIA’s freedom of information web site. I’ve been interested in the Moon landings and the belief by some conspiracy theorists that the Apollo Moon Landings were faked. This document from around 1969 has some interesting information on the real conditions on the surface of the moon:

(EST PUB DATE) STIR: BIOMEDICAL ASPECTS OF ESTABLISHING A SOVIET MANNED LUNAR B

Excerpt:

A spacesuit (shielding of 0.15 gm/cm2) offers little if any protection for the cosmonaut on the lunar surface during solar falre activity. He could receive a dose from a solar flare proton event up to 1,000 rad (a lethal dose) if not warned to take cover. A thin walled vehicle such as the US lunar module (0.1 gm/cm2) would also provide little protection against raditaiton.

There is a nice table in the document showing acute whole-body raditation dose (rads) and the biological effect.

0-25: No observable effects
25-50: Minor blood changes, no discomfort
50-100: Nausea and vomiting for about 1 day in 10% of persons, no deaths.
100-200: Fatigue, nausea and vomiting. Within 3 hrs in 50% of peersons.
200-300: Nausea, vomiting in 90% of persons along with other signs of radiation sickness. Death of 10-50%  of persons within 2-8 weeks.
350 and up: High probability of death in 90-100% of persons.

The estimated dose for a one way trip through the Van Allen belts behind 1.0 gm/cm2 of aluminum shielding: about 10 rads. So, as far as I understand it, you don’t get a leathal dose going through the Van Allen belts as some have suggested. Also, as far as I know, no Apollo missions got hit with solar flares while on the surface of the moon.

>CIA Says, "No UFO Investigation Since The ’50’s!"

>Larry Bryant posted his UFO freedom of information request response from an Information and Privacy Coordinator for the CIA.

… On the general subject of Unidentified Flying Objects (UFOs), there is no organized CIA effort to do research in connection with UFO phenomena, nor has there been an organized effort to collect intelligence on UFOs since the 1950s. At that time, the Air Force, specifically the Air Technical Intelligence Center at Wright Patterson Air Force Base, had the primary responsibility for the investigation of all reports of UFO sightings. The CIA’s role was in connection with a Scientific Advisory Panel, established to investigate and evaluate reports of UFOs. The panel was concerned only with any aspect of UFO phenomena which might prove to present a potential threat to the United States national security. The panel later issued a report of its findings, the Report of the Scientific Panel on Unidentified Flying Objects dated 17 January 1953, also known as the Robertson Report. The report was released by the Air Force Office of Public Information on 9 April 1958. The Air Force investigation, called Project Bluebook [sic], was terminated in 1969. We understand that the Air Force turned its records on this subject over to the National Archives and Records Administration where they are currently available for inspection and purchase. There is currently no CIA program to actively collect information on UFOs, although since the time of the Robertson Report there have been sporadic instances of correspondence dealing with the subject, and we occasionally receive various kinds of reports of sightings of objects in the UFO category.

As of this date, however, the Agency has released to numerous previous requesters 1,022 pages of UFO-related documents under the FOIA. Most of this material was located as a result of a previous search for records conducted on behalf of an earlier requester for information regarding UFOs up through 1979, and as a result of a recent updated search for records conducted on behalf of an earlier requester for information regarding UFOs from 1979 through 15 March 1990…  Also, as a result of former Director Woolsey’s 14 December 1993 radio interview, a recent further release of 1,757 pages has been made bringing the total amount of pages to 2,779.

The current cost for the paperwork to get these documents from the CIA is US$267.90.

… You also have the option of reviewing the initial release of 991 pages on the CIA’s electronic FOIA internet site. The access for this site via homepage URL is: http://www.foia.ucia.gov.