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So once rates go up, that $400k home will drop to $350k and they will get it then, it all evens out.
Does the sales price of your home matter if the mortgage rate is low enough?
If you ever thought about buying a home, the recent all-time low mortgage rates must be enticing. And this is exactly how the government wants everybody to feel, by the way. In an effort to keep homes affordable (as they claim), the federal reserve is driving down interest rates to record lows. But is what they are doing helping? Let's take a look.
Just a short couple of years ago, interest rates were at 6 percent. For a $300,000 mortgage, the payment would have been $1798.65 a month. With the interest rate at 4.5 percent, the monthly payment drops to $1520.06. So far so good, because it costs us less to own our home.
But wait a minute.
Most people don't just refinance and lower their payment. These days, with rates at 4.5 percent, roughly the same monthly payment ($1798.73, to be exact) could get you a $355,000 mortgage. So what do people do? Instead of buying a $350,000 home with their down payment and loan approval letter, they shop for a $400,000 home. And who can blame them? An extra $50,000 almost always gets them a nicer place. Sometimes, it would actually allow them to pay more for a house than they otherwise would.
For example, they might have been able to get the house for $350,000 if they tell the seller that the offer is all they are approved for, but if a buyer can muster up $400,000, he might end up offering $360,000. Same house, higher transaction price. Having a lower interest rate also allows more people to qualify for a home. This is a good thing for someone who couldn't afford the payment before, but it drives prices higher because of more demand, ultimately lowering affordability for everybody.
In other words, lowering interest rates gets more people thinking about buying a home and drives up demand. Most of the time, that's a noble and worthwhile goal, since home ownership is still a dream of many. But as you've witnessed in the last decade, allowing more people to own homes mindlessly is just reckless. What we really need to do is make homes affordable so financially responsible people can actually afford the payments, which is only achievable through lower home prices.
I'm a homeowner too, so the selfish side of me is thinking that high-priced homes are good. But for the economy to grow and our country to be a place people want to be in the future, nice homes need to be affordable without government intervention. Unaffordable home prices will never get us there. Please allow homes to be affordable again for the hard-working American.
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So once rates go up, that $400k home will drop to $350k and they will get it then, it all evens out.
Odd... I started writing and then the page reloaded. I hope this doesn't post twice..
I wrote a post that included a bit about how a higher credit score could save hundreds of dollars per month because of lower interest rates. The math is the same (but the reason is different). You have a number of options with that money, but my favorite is not to buy more house, but to invest the difference on a regular basis. Even conservatively invested, a difference of a few hundred dollars per month could net you six figures in an account 30-years later after taxes. This can make up a lot of the interest you're paying over the years and, depending on the actual numbers, replace the interest paid! I understand the urge to buy "more house" but would be hesitant to buy more house "than I needed" just because the monthly payment is the same. I've heard somewhere recently (don't remember where but it's not an original...) that rich people as "how much" and poor people ask "how much is the monthly payment." I think that applies here (i.e. don't get married to a monthly payment - buy an appropriate house. If you can save money per month because of good credit and low rates generally, great - put that money to work for you somewhere else). That's my take at least.
I am confused by this article.
The author argues that home affordability is bad because it leads to increase in demand which, in turn, leads to increase in price, which is bad because homes need to be more affordable for the hard working Americans because home affordability is good... Wait, so which is it? Is home affordability good or is it bad?
And, how can the author be against both free market AND government intervention? What else is out there? Last decade's "reckless" home buying, yeah that was free market at work. A lot of people blamed the government for NOT intervening. If I'm remembering my econ lessons correctly, interest rates are controlled by the Federal Reserve, which, despite being called "the Fed" is not a government agency. But, for the sake of argument, let's say the government is responsible for the lower interest rate... So, the author is against Free Market, aka reckless home buying of the last decade. He claims that in order for the economy to improve, homes needs to be more affordable. The Feds step in to make that happen and he's against that as well.
Basically, it seems to me that the author is arguing against the very nature of supply and demand, and that's like arguing against gravity. It's natural it just happens there's no real way to control it. There's a reason why recessions happen in 7-10 year cycles. The only way to even try to control supply and demand is with government intervention.
That is one of the problems these days is that instead of buying the cheaper house everyone tries to stretch into something a little bigger. Housing can be real affordable, but we keep pushing it to the limit instead of backing off and taking the cheaper mortgage. Well that is what I just did, we downsized and it was the best move we could have made.
This post argues the opposite of the headline. Lower interest rates do make homes more affordable according to the article. They may not make home buyers more responsible, but the current tighter lending standards do that.
A lack of understanding of basic financial principles and an infusion of emotion is at hand in the real estate market. The facts don't outweigh the economies of scale so house prices will remain inflated as long as inexperienced home shoppers exist plain and simple!
The last decade was not the result of free market reckless home buying. Government intervention and meddling into the housing and credit markets is exactly what is responsible for the "crisis". Gov't intervention has slowly eroded the ability of the banks/lenders to determine credit risk by the following:
Namely the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) signed into law by Jimmy Carter in 1979 and given more teeth by President Clinton which essentially forces banks to lend to less creditworthy borrowers. What this law does is force banks who take FDIC insurance to be subject to the CRA, pretty much stepping on their right to make decisions about lending and borrowing and forcing them to lend to lower income people who they, the lender, deemed not creditworthy.
Two other factors are major players in this category: government sponsored enterprises (GSE's) called Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Fannie and Freddie were both lenders and buyers of higher-risk loans from banks who were forced by the CRA to lend. Banks initially forced to lend, no longer minded lending to poor credit candidates because they knew they could unload the assets, in part, onto these tax-payer supported institutions thus reducing the risk the lender or bank was taking in making the loan.
You mention the Fed, who you are correct is not a gov't agency, but rather the legal and monopolistic (by Government mandate see: Federal Reserve Act 1913) currency issuer in the U.S. They set interest rates. Interest rates set by the Fed go a long way in determining how credit and currency use. This determines how people, the public be they lenders or borrowers of credit, act in relation to utilizing and lending credit.
In summary, you're laying blame at the feet of the free market for the housing crisis is wrong. The housing crisis of late was caused by meddling government regulation and a free market on housing, money, credit, etc have not existed for quite a long time.
I perceive the author to be saying this: The government is trying to prop up the failing housing market by enticing people to buy. And worst they enticing people to buy houses they can't afford in order to continue the bubble. However, the author points out as a home owner he wants prices to stabilize and stay up because it affects the value of his own home. As a prospective buyer one would want prices to go down because they'll get more bang for their credit buck. And yet as prices dip and credit is still loose the psychology of it is that people will shop for bigger, more expensive homes because the credit is cheap.
The author still seems to miss the point when he says home ownership needs to be one of responsibility and affordability. Unfortunately, the situation as it is now, the gov't trying to reinflate a bubble, neither the former or the latter will occur. The housing market needs a serious correction. That correction is going to screw a lot of current homeowners who bought in the last 10 yrs especially ones who overbought, overpaid. Despite the interest rates set so low, housing prices still aren't low enough to warrant snatching up real estate.
Great point, it is often wise to buy a house well within your means, and not max out to what the bank tells you what you can afford. Remember, they are a business, and will try and make as much money as they can off of you. A higher down payment and a smaller loan means less interest out of your pocket.
I agree with you, however, I disagree with your idea that low rates don't make homes affordable. Homes are incredibly affordable now so long as you are financially responsible and don't over spend. Plus, if you're planning on being in your house for a while - which you should be if you're buying - purchasing the home make sense.
Don't get me wrong, I've never thought of home ownership as a worthwhile investment, but that still doesn't mean homes aren't affordable.
Good points. I don't own a home, but I'll be ready to buy in a year or two. Now, should we think about buying a home like buying a car? For example, I wouldn't buy a new $30,000 car just because the dealership gave me a 0% interest rate. I'd buy that car if I could afford it. Does it therefore make sense to buy a house that's not within my price range just because the interest rate is low and I could afford the monthly payments? I don't know the answer to that. The conventional thinking about this seems to be that cars depreciate and homes appreciate, so we are supposed to buy the most house we can afford because it will pay off in the end. Does it pay off in the end or are people just deluding themselves into thinking that it pays off in the end because they are rationalizing their home purchase?

subset: commoncrawl


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Last month, we filled you in on a few things you may not have known about the science of love and sex, and right at the top of the list was an item outlining the horrors of penile fracture.
We learned a lot about penises that day. For example, we found out that they can, in fact, be broken; that penile fractures are (perhaps not surprisingly) quite painful; and that they often occur during sexual acrobatics — while trying to penetrate somebody "with a flying leap," for example. But it turns out there are some other interesting details that we neglected to include.
For example, according to a paper written by urologist and surgeon Andrew Kramer, published in a recent issue of the Journal of Sexual Medicine, penile fractures "seem more likely during sex under stressful situations." What qualifies as a stressful situation? According to Kramer, half of the penile fractures he saw between 2007 and 2011 were sustained during an extramarital affair. The majority of the others, he said, were suffered while getting it on in "out-of-the-ordinary" locations, including cars, elevators, and public restrooms.
But what really stuck out was Kramer's description of the fracturing process itself. He writes:
The unusual event of penile fracture occurs when there is a disruption of the tunica albuginea surrounding engorged erectile tissue during aggressive sexual behavior. There is often an audible crack and rapid detumescence with subcutaneous hemorrhage that follows [emphasis added].
If reading that didn't make you tense up, you're either heartless or penis-less. Maybe both. "Tumescent," for those of you wondering, is the usually excellent word used to describe swelling in response to sexual arousal, and in this case, we're talking about a man's member. So detumescence, in this scenario, would be the process of deflation/de-engorgement/withering-away-and-dying that a penis undergoes after the audible crack, but before the intense sub-skin bleeding and bruising, associated with penile fracture.
So the next time you or someone you know might be considering a high-stress sexual encounter involving one or more penises, go ahead and read them that little description. You might be sparing them the sickening crack of their own genitalia — not to mention the harrowing experience of detumescent-ing all over the place.
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Woody Allen's "You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger" premiered in Cannes Saturday, and the premiere brought out Allen's leading lady Naomi Watts, Allen's wife Soon-Yi Previn, Josh Brolin and Diane Lane, and even Indian billionaire Lakshmi Mittal and his wife.
For a full AP article and interview with Woody Allen, scroll below the photos.
Actress Lucy Punch, Actor Josh Brolin, director Woody Allen, actress Naomi Watts and actress Gemma Jones:
Evangeline Lilly, Michelle Yeoh and Watts
Lakshmi and Usha Mittal and Diane Lane
An interview with Allen:
CANNES, France -- Love, death, the terrible pitfalls of aging, romance between older men and younger women - they're all part of the Woody Allen canon, whether in his films or when he's just shooting the breeze.
Allen's latest mix of comedy and drama, "You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger," premiered Saturday at the Cannes Film Festival, presenting an ensemble of characters dealing with familiar issues at the heart of the filmmaker's 40-some movies.
The film features Naomi Watts, Anthony Hopkins, Antonio Banderas, Josh Brolin, Gemma Jones and Freida Pinto as an ensemble of Londoners coping with failing marriage, stymied ambition, the yearning for new relationships and the fear of mortality.
In a news conference, Allen addressed many of these issues, along with such matters as why he shoots films in London rather than near his home in Manhattan and why he has not costarred in his recent pictures.
_ On aging: "I find it a lousy deal. There's no advantage in getting older. I'm 74 now. You don't get smarter, you don't get wiser, you don't get more mellow, you don't get more kindly. Nothing good happens. Your back hurts more. You get more indigestion. Your eyesight isn't as good. You need a hearing aid. It's a bad business getting older, and I would advise you not to do it."
_ On May-December romances: "It's a good laugh-getter, and a good provocative kind of thing, so that's really why I use it. ... It gives me something that you can get good situations from and good jokes from."
_ On London: "The films that I make in London I could make in New York. They would just be more expensive to make in New York. It's a pleasure to work in London, because the summers are cool, the skies are gray, good for photography. There are wonderful crews and wonderful actors."
_ On not appearing in his films: "For years, I played the romantic lead, and then I couldn't play it any longer, because I got too old to play it, and it's no fun just not playing the guy who gets the girl. So unless I can think of some way to do it, no. ... You can imagine how frustrating it is when I do these movies with Scarlett Johansson and Naomi Watts, and the other guys get them. And I'm the director. I'm the, you know, that old guy over there is the director. I don't like that. I like being the one that sits across from them in the restaurant and looks in their eyes and lies to them."
_ On death: "My relationship with death remains the same. I am very strongly against it."
"You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger," Allen's 10th film at Cannes, spins a convoluted tale of troubled lives as Alfie (Hopkins) becomes obsessed with aging and leaves his wife, Helena (Jones), eventually marrying a young, gold-digging actress-prostitute (Lucy Punch).
Alfie and Helena's daughter, Sally (Watts), supports husband Roy (Brolin) while he struggles to finish a novel that might fulfill the promise of his first published book. Meantime, Roy falls for a beautiful neighbor (Pinto), while Sally develops feelings for her boss (Banderas) at an art gallery.
Helena finds comfort from a quarter in which Allen himself places no faith - the prognostications of a fortuneteller. Everyone needs their own little fictions to cope with the harshness of life, he said.
"I do feel that it's a grim, pitiful, nightmarish, meaningless experience," Allen said. "The only way that you can be happy is if you tell yourself some lies and deceive yourself, and I'm not the first person to say this or the most articulate person on it. It was said by Nietzsche, it was said by Freud, it was said by Eugene O'Neill. One must have one's delusions to live. You look at life too honestly and clearly, life does become unbearable, because it's a pretty grim enterprise, you must admit."


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Backers of a plan to build a community swimming pool are suffering from sticker shock, having learned last month that the 38,500-square-foot complex would cost $8.85 million to construct, nearly twice the amount projected in a study done six years ago.
Faced with this huge figure, board members of the Martha's Vineyard Aquatic Center have already asked their planning consultant to go back to the drawing board and return with a phased approach that could ease the cost burden and still give Islanders a shot at swimming laps in the off-season.
"We were shocked at the number," admitted Ken Bailey, acting director of the aquatic center board, who remains hopeful that the project can still move forward in smaller, less costly steps. "The first phase would be a lap competition pool," he said.
Mr. Bailey said there's also the possibility that the YMCA would be interested in helping to shepherd the project and to take over management of the facility, planned for five acres across from the regional high school. Talks are just beginning, but Mr. Bailey said he expects to have more information from both the consultants and the YMCA in about a month.
"We're excited about the possibility of the Y because of the credibility they would bring to the program," said Mr. Bailey. But YMCA involvement alone would not solve the money issue, and Mr. Bailey was blunt about needing taxpayer dollars to get this project under way.
"It's a community facility. The idea is to meet needs of the entire community," he said. "The community should be prepared to pay for it."
According to the $30,000 feasibility study completed last month by Water Technology Inc. of Beaver Dam, Wisc., the aquatic center would be used by 1,225 people a week. A telephone survey of 404 Islanders found that more than 65 per cent leaned toward supporting a tax hike to cover construction costs. About that same percentage said they would pay an additional $50 to $100 in property taxes.
Of those surveyed, more than 55 per cent said they would use the aquatic center at least once a week. But what the survey did not appear to ask is whether residents would help shoulder operational costs through taxes or fund-raising.
It turns out, according to the study, that operating a lap pool, a recreational pool and fitness center would not be a break-even enterprise. In fact, the projected annual cost to run the complex is $884,028. The forecast for revenues fall short by at least $150,000. Planners presented two options for revenue, one with a lower-cost membership and user fees and another with higher rates.
Under the first option, residents could buy an annual family membership for $450 or a single adult membership for $250. Under the second option, the rates for a family would be $700 and $400 for a single adult. Revenues, therefore, could fall short by as much as $200,000 a year.
The study proposes setting up a tax source to cover both the capital cost of building the center and the operational deficit. Another option would be an endowment fund of between $1.5 and $2 million, which could generate enough interest to offset the annual shortfall.
Making matters even more difficult is the current squabble between the aquatic center and high school leaders who want free swimming time for high school students in exchange for leasing high school land to the center.
Factored into the annual revenue stream is roughly $30,000 a year from the high school to cover use of the pool for swim classes and swim teams. But at this week's meeting of the regional high school committee, board members definitely favored the carrot-and-stick approach.
Committee chairman Ralph Friedman said that if the aquatic center wants to use a valuable piece of property, some concession needs to be made for high school students.
But Mr. Bailey said the aquatic center could not afford to give free time to the high school. He said the recommendation from planners was that there should be no obligation to provide free usage. "Our position is that we are building this in large part for the students and the youth of the Island," he added.
In 1995, planners said it would cost about $4.5 million to build an aquatic center. That came out of a $25,000 study paid for by Island towns. Now, six years later, the cost has almost doubled, and Mr. Bailey admits to being frustrated. He is hoping that new board members can help to expedite the project.
If realized, the aquatic center would house two pools, one for laps and another for recreational swimming. In addition there would be a smaller whirlpool and a therapy pool. A 2,800-square-foot fitness center is also part of the plan.


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Federal Reserve Chairman, Ben Bernanke appeared before the Senate Banking Committee this week to testify about the Fed's monetary policy. Scot Kersgaard of The American Independent focused our attention on a five-minute exchange between Colorado Senator Michael Bennett and The Ben Bernank, with an embedded video clip. Senator Bennett asked Bernanke to share his opinions concerning the recommendations made by President Obama's bipartisan deficit commission. Bernanke initially attempted to dodge the question with the disclaimer that the Fed's authority extends to only monetary policy rather than fiscal policy – such as the work conducted by the deficit commission. If Congressman Ron Paul had been watching the hearing take place, I'm sure he had a good, hard laugh at that statement. Nevertheless, Bernanke couldn't restrain himself from concurring with the effort to place the cost of Wall Street's larceny on the backs of middle-class taxpayers.
The chant for "entitlement reform" continues to reverberate throughout the mainstream media as it has for the past year. Last May, economist Dean Baker exposed this latest effort toward upward wealth redistribution:
Emboldened by the fact that none of them have gone to jail for their role in the financial crisis, the Wall Street gang is now gunning for Social Security and Medicare, the country's most important safety net programs. Led by investment banker Pete Peterson, this crew is spending more than a billion dollars to convince the public that slashing these programs is the only way to protect our children and grandchildren from poverty.
A key propaganda tactic used by the "entitlement reform" crusaders is to characterize Social Security as an "entitlement" even though it is not (as I discussed here). Phil Davis, avowed capitalist and self-described "serial entrepreneur", wrote a great essay, which refuted the claim that Social Security is "broken" while explaining why it is not an "entitlement". Unfortunately, there are very few politicians who are willing to step forward to provide the simple explanation that Social Security is not an entitlement. Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) recently made a statement to that effect before a senior citizens' group in East Haven, Connecticut – without really providing an explanation why it is not an entitlement. Susan Feiner wrote a great commentary on the subject last fall for womensenews.org. Here is some of what she said:
Moreover, Social Security is not an entitlement program as it's paid for entirely by payroll taxes. It is an insurance program, not an entitlement. Not one penny of anyone's Social Security comes out of the federal government's general fund.
Social Security is, by law, wholly self-financing. It has no legal authority to borrow, so it never has.
If this incredibly successful and direly needed program hasn't ever borrowed a dime, why is the president and his hand-picked commissioners putting Social Security cuts (and/or increases in the retirement age) in the same sentence as deficit reduction?
The attempt to mischaracterize Social Security as an "entitlement" is not a "Right vs. Left" dispute — It's a class warfare issue. There have been commentaries from across the political spectrum emphasizing the same fact: Social Security is not an "entitlement". The assertion has appeared on the conservative patriotsteaparty.net website, the DailyKos on the Left and in a piece by independent commentator, Marti Oakley.
The battle for "entitlement reform" is just one front in the larger war being waged by Wall Street against the middle class. Kevin Drum discussed this conflict in a recent posting at his Plutocracy Now blog for Mother Jones:
It's about the loss of a countervailing power robust enough to stand up to the influence of business interests and the rich on equal terms. With that gone, the response to every new crisis and every new change in the economic landscape has inevitably pointed in the same direction. And after three decades, the cumulative effect of all those individual responses is an economy focused almost exclusively on the demands of business and finance. In theory, that's supposed to produce rapid economic growth that serves us all, and 30 years of free-market evangelism have convinced nearly everyone — even middle-class voters who keep getting the short end of the economic stick — that the policy preferences of the business community are good for everyone. But in practice, the benefits have gone almost entirely to the very wealthy.
One of my favorite commentators, Paul Farrell of MarketWatch made this observation on March 1:
Wall Street's corrupt banks have lost their moral compass … their insatiable greed has become a deadly virus destroying its host nation … their campaign billions buy senate votes, stop regulators' actions, manipulate presidential decisions. Wall Street money controls voters, runs America, both parties. Yes, Wall Street is bankrupting America.
Wake up America, listen:
- "Our country is bankrupt. It's not bankrupt in 30 years or five years," warns economist Larry Kotlikoff, "it's bankrupt today."
- Economist Peter Morici: "Capitalism is broken, America's government is two bankrupt political parties bankrupting the country."
- David Stockman, Reagan's budget director: "If there were such a thing as Chapter 11 for politicians" the "tax cuts would amount to a bankruptcy filing."
- BusinessWeek recently asked analyst Mary Meeker to run the numbers. How bad is it? America really is bankrupt, with a "net worth of a negative $44 trillion." Bankrupt.
And it will get worse. Unfortunately, nothing can stop America's self-destructive Wall Street bankers. They simply do not care that their "doomsday capitalism" is destroying themselves from within, and is bankrupting America too.
On February 21, I quoted a statement made by bond guru Bill Gross of PIMCO, which included this thought:
America requires more than a makeover or a facelift. It needs a heart transplant absent the contagious antibodies of money and finance filtering through the system. It needs a Congress that cannot be bought and sold by lobbyists on K Street, whose pockets in turn are stuffed with corporate and special interest group payola.
That essay by Bill Gross became the subject of an article by Terrence Keeley of Bloomberg News. Mr. Keeley's reaction to the suggestions made by Bill Gross was this:
To redeem Wall Street's soul, radical solutions are clearly needed, but advocating the eradication of profit-based markets that have served humanity well on balance without a viable replacement is fanciful. Gross deserves an "A" for intent — but something more practical than a "heart transplant" is required to restore trust and efficacy to our banking system.
* * *
But an economy based on something other than profit risks misery and injustice of another sort. The antibodies now needed aren't those that negate profitability. Rather, they are the ones that bind financial engineering to value creation and advancement of society.
Perhaps the most constructive solution to the problem is my suggestion from February 10: Recruit and employ an army of lobbyists to represent and advance the interests of the middle class on Capitol Hill. Some type of non-partisan, "citizens' lobby" could be created as an online community. Once its lobbying goals are developed and articulated, an online funding drive would begin. The basic mission would be to defend middle-class taxpayers from the tyranny of the plutocracy that is destroying not just the middle class – but the entire nation. Fight lobbyists with lobbyists!


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In this electronic age, where data zips to and from at a dizzying speed, I am still amazed at why our company was making our people practice the art of writing and then making them learn the science of deciphering each other's handwriting. On top of that the manual data collection is inherently prone to more than 10 % error rate. TRAKAID CyTRACK software end-to-end solution has helped us protect our assets as we deployed auto capture data technologies to eliminate the manual data entry errors.
Ravindra Odugoudar, Managing Director,
Industrial Gas Company
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Y Choudhry, Manager,
Kay Nitroxygen


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The West's newest bird species has a beak like a crowbar
A recently discovered species of crossbill already faces extinction.
At 6:30 one morning in early July, Craig Benkman, a University of Wyoming ecologist, began to stalk red crossbills in the South Hills of Idaho. We were between Twin Falls and the Nevada border, outside a cabin tucked into a forest near a minor ski hill, Magic Mountain. He and several of his graduate students had quietly strung ornithology's signature ploy, a diaphanous mist-net, between two metal poles. It hung nearly invisible, low to the ground, below two lodgepole pines. Several of these sanguine birds — a large finch with a beak that looks curiously off-kilter, one mandible overlapping the other — were resting in the grass by a salt lick. Crossbills feed exclusively on the seeds of conifer cones, and must supplement their diet with sodium. "It's like how, in the Sierra, marmots chew on your sweaty boots," Benkman explained. Typically the birds might swallow a little clay from the roots of a fallen tree for salt, but here cabin owners had arranged mineral blocks in the grass to lure moose and deer nearer to their windows. Benkman peered through his binoculars at a male sitting with several others beside the net, all of them looking up warily with glossy black eyes. The male's domed head, breast and rump were the crimson of an heirloom tomato, flecked with orange, with yellow ochre. "Oh," Benkman said, in a rising whisper. "An unbanded one."
Six feet four, thin and bespectacled, Benkman has a hushed voice and a sense of humor as dry and pleasant as the sagebrush- and wildflower-spotted South Hills. He is an old-school naturalist and an intuitive, holistic thinker, something increasingly rare in this era of computational biology and specialization. Walking the South Hills, he refers to minute flowers by their Linnaean names and muses about the West's big ecological picture as his jeans swish through the fragrant scrub. For more than 30 years, he has studied crossbills across North America, as well as in aviaries, and for the past 20 summers, he has visited this remote mountain range on the edge of the Great Basin, where he and his students aim to capture as many crossbills as possible and mark them with colored leg bands. When he received the prestigious E.O. Wilson Award from the American Society of Naturalists in 2014, the judges remarked that his crossbill work "rivals long-term field studies of the Galapagos finches."
The mist-net swayed, reminding the nervous birds in the grass of its shadowy presence. "I wish the wind would just stop," Benkman said, as if to the wind itself. "This is where I think you need to be aggressive and try to spook them. You take off your shirt and throw it — make it look like a goshawk." He started to peel the plaid shirt from his long pale torso, but I offered up the green fleece I'd shed already. Benkman tied it into an aerodynamic knot, a mock raptor. "For an unbanded bird?" he said. "You can't just stand idly." He began to slink circuitously toward the salt lick.
Various species of crossbill live throughout the Northern Hemisphere, from Morocco to the Himalayas, Japan to Hispaniola, Vietnam to Scotland. European folklore has it that, while Jesus hung on the cross, a roaming finch came to his aid, pulling at the nails in vain, bathing its plumage in blood, wounding itself and mangling its bill forever — transfiguring into the crossbill. The evolutionary explanation is simpler, but perhaps no less miraculous: Crossbills are extraordinarily well adapted for opening cones. Put your index finger over the knuckle of your thumb, as Benkman taught me, and you shape the bird's cleft, which it jams between two scaly bracts. As it bites down, the curved tips press in opposite directions, prying the scales apart. Next it flexes its lower mandible (your thumb) sideways, using a muscle that is hyper-developed on one side of its face. Then the bird's pink tongue — so long that it wraps behind its skull when retracted, as in hummingbirds and woodpeckers — slips in for the tiny seed in its papery wing. Finally, the crossbill husks the seed using a special groove on its upper palate. To sustain itself, a South Hills crossbill performs this sequence about 1,500 times a day.
When crossbills are feeding happily, all you hear is the soft rain of translucent husks slipping through needled branches. Then one might let forth a kip. For the red crossbill, Loxia curvirostra ("curved nose"), this call note is the key to another peculiarity: Unlike most birds, it comes in a range of body and beak sizes, a smooth, vermilion continuum from relatively delicate to bulky. This diversity confounded birders for more than a century because our very notion of a species is predicated on interbreeding, which tends to generate uniformity. But as it turns out, each relative size has its own inflected kip. There are 10 red crossbill "call types" in North America, and the birds within each type seem to mate and flock among themselves. Yet an individual bird can't be "typed" reliably by measurement or ear. Only a spectrograph of the call — a visualization that recalls the brushstrokes of Japanese calligraphy — can diagnose a red crossbill definitively. The kip variants help the birds identify and stick with other red crossbills that have similar-sized bills, since when everyone has the same "tool," and thus the same standards, a flock can better judge the caliber of cones. They watch each other and broadcast information about seed abundance by voice. "It's as if they're calling, 'I'm doing poorly — how are you doing?' " Benkman told me. "If nobody else calls, 'Well, I got a bad branch, a bad cone,' then they keep foraging and quiet up. But if they all call, 'I'm doing poorly, you're doing poorly,' then it's a bad tree, and they move on." But these cues are only reliable if everyone is similarly equipped.
As a young Loxia-phile, Benkman made his name, in part, when he hypothesized that red crossbill types might be specialized to feed on conifers that hold their seeds year round, making them stable resources. To test this suspicion, he performed a now-classic Darwinian experiment: In aviaries, he measured crossbills' feeding rates on the Northwest's "key conifers," and he found that each call type in the region just about matched the perfect bill depth for exploiting one species of cone. Large bills are ideal for ample, bony cones like ponderosa pine; lesser bills for tiny, soft cones like hemlock. As Benkman later put it in a paper, "Their bills are as finely adapted to a cone as a key is to a lock." Coupled with the call type phenomenon, this revelation has encouraged ornithologists to speculate that some or all of the call types might be "cryptic" species hidden in our midst, each filling a different coniferous niche. Parsing the red crossbill, and potentially paring it into species, has long been considered one of ornithology's most tantalizing problems.
Like a cat that had slipped its bell, Benkman crept hunched in a wide arc through the tall grass of the South Hills' lodgepole pine forest. Slowly, he raised the catapult of his arm — and then the polyester goshawk took flight, flushing three birds like flares into the net's diaphanous pockets. Benkman and his students rushed forward and began to untangle them, pinching the birds' legs between their fingers, using their thumbs to tease the thread-thin cord over the birds' shoulders. Cupped in your hand, a crossbill pulses like a winged heart. They would stash the birds in a wooden box with eight compartments that Benkman custom-built 30 years ago. Each would be measured with a ruler and digital calipers, weighed, and finally recorded as it flew off with a revealing kip. But now, as the birds hung in the net, so incendiary in their plumage and sometimes their cries, they were in limbo in more ways than one: Benkman and his colleagues believed that they should be named a new species, the first bird truly discovered in the Western United States since the Gunnison sage grouse in 2000, and only the second in the continental U.S. since 1939. They had also discovered that this bird is likely to disappear.
Crossbills are notoriously hard to study, as Benkman knows better than anyone, because of a life history defined by their diet. Their only loyalty is to hearty cone crops. Thus they don't migrate north to south like the typical songbird, but suddenly traverse the continent in any direction, "irrupting" great distances in search of better cones, swinging like a pendulum. Similarly, they nest any month of the year — even in snowiest January — just so long as the canopy is filled with seed. When Benkman began to study crossbills in the early 1980s for his Ph.D., he traveled widely, and sometimes fruitlessly, across the boreal forests of the U.S. and Canada in search of white-winged crossbills, the other North American species. Whenever Benkman found them, he timed them as they fed and afterward nailed boards into the trunks, like a kid building a ladder to a tree house, to scrutinize the cones and count their seeds. But often the birds would vanish without notice and he'd be left scratching his head and reaching for his car keys. Thus bringing crossbills inside to study them, where they are docile, hardy, and acrobatic, became essential to Benkman's research and our understanding of them.
But there was one spot in North America where a sedentary, or resident, population of crossbills was said to live: Newfoundland. Benkman visited there in 1988 hoping to find this large-beaked bird, call type 8, known locally as the "spruce mope" for its treetop nonchalance. When he arrived, though, he discovered that the mope had grown as scarce as rumored, possibly to the point of near extinction, which was odd because the island's spruce forest looked healthy and just like the kind that crossbills relished on the mainland. Finally, Benkman told me, he had an epiphany: Maybe red squirrels were to blame. They didn't exist in Newfoundland until 1963, when humans released them as prey for the native pine marten, an animal in the weasel family that had been over-trapped for its lustrous coat. This plan was a serious dud: Red squirrels — also known, onomatopoetically, as chickaree — are arboreal, and martens mostly hunt along the forest floor. Because Newfoundland's spruce had evolved no defenses against the rodents, they feasted unchecked across the island to the mope's detriment, chewing apart cones from base to tip and dropping scales to the ground like shingles from an old torn-up roof.
As Benkman's peregrinations in search of crossbills continued, he resolved to keep an eye out for other places without squirrels, including isolated mountain ranges, "islands in the sky." In 1993, he visited the Cypress Hills in Saskatchewan, said to have no squirrels and another large, sedentary crossbill, but chickaree had been introduced there, as well, and the crossbill had vanished. Yet the lodgepole cones were strangely massive, a glaring outlier in North America. Where squirrels are found, they dictate the shape of cones by harvesting those that are easiest to open, with lots of seeds. Gradually, the forest's cones will shift in size, on average, becoming smaller or larger — for lodgepole pine, cones become smaller and denser, but relatively wider at the base, making them harder to gnaw. They will also contain fewer seeds: less bang for a squirrel's buck. Benkman thought that, in the absence of squirrels, the Cypress Hills trees had relaxed these defenses and devoted more energy to seeds, bearing along a heftier endemic crossbill as a byproduct, though the bird had now been outcompeted and lost forever.
Benkman returned to the Cypress Hills to study those invasive squirrels in 1995. "We were wandering around," he recalls, "and went to a fire lookout and, from the top, I saw the Sweetgrass Hills." He and a student contemplated these isolated buttes on the prairie horizon, about 60 miles away. If the cones in the Cypress Hills had enlarged sans squirrels, what about those nearby, in northern Montana? When Benkman drove to the range, it was void of squirrels, but the lodgepole cones were a normal size. "It was a revelation," says Benkman. "It wasn't just relaxation of squirrel selection in the Cypress Hills. Crossbills had played a role." They must have coevolved with the pines — something Benkman had never quite fathomed. As crossbills pried open and so "selected against" smaller, easier cones, the forest's average cone had gradually, unwittingly, ballooned in self-defense. The bird's bill kept pace in an "arms race." Maybe coevolution explained the existence of Newfoundland's large resident bird, too.
Benkman scrutinized maps and explored other ranges in the Interior West, until in 1996, finally he came to the South Hills, a volcanic plateau with a patchwork of lodgepole pine on its heights. When Benkman drove into this rolling range marooned in the sagebrush and circular, irrigated fields of the Snake River Plain near Twin Falls — a region known as Magic Valley ever since twin dams colored it a magnificent, unlikely green a century ago — he discovered that, indeed, there were no squirrels. But that wasn't all: Crossbills were everywhere. "And they sounded a little different," Benkman remembers, softer around the edges, more "burry." Benkman had chanced upon a rare sedentary population, like the mope in Newfoundland. It was a new red crossbill call type, the ninth in North America, and it had the third-largest bill among them.
The South Hills are known as "Magic Valley's Playground," and, throughout the summer, ATVs roar up and down its dirt roads, raising a ruckus and the dust, transforming its otherwise tranquil atmosphere. But each morning you awake early in your tent to a liquid fortissimo that implies one thing: no bushy tails. Squirrels also prey on eggs. Without them, two times as many birds are found in the South Hills than in nearly identical, but squirrely habitat in the Northern Rockies: western tanagers, flycatchers, house wrens, warblers, warblers, warblers. In turn, the range has one of the highest known densities of breeding northern goshawks — the scourge of smaller birds — in the world. It's an ornithological oasis, and a crossbill-topia. There are commonly dozens nearby, kip-ing, hanging upside down from cones — classic crossbill behavior — and descending to springs and salty ground, where Benkman first netted them out of his pickup. Finding a sedentary call type in the South Hills was a godsend; Benkman could give up his peripatetic ways, at least partially, and settle down.
Another major ecological force helps explain this unique population: fire. Nearly all of the lodgepole pine in the South Hills is serotinous. Their cones' scales are held tightly shut by a resinous bond that releases only in extreme heat. This strategy has its advantages in the blaze-prone Interior West. But where squirrels rule, it's a slight handicap, because it merely gives the zealous rodents a longer opportunity to harvest cones. In the Eastern Rockies, only a third of the lodgepole is serotinous. The forest hedges its bets.
After the last ice age, however, a bridge of trees never reached the South Hills for squirrels to cross. As a result, serotiny became prevalent and the pines' branches are laden with unopened cones, green, tan, and gray, from as far back as 20 years ago: A vast "seed bank" that steadily pays out to crossbills as the cones inevitably weather and open, flame or no flame. So crossbills are twentyfold more abundant in the South Hills than elsewhere in the Northern Rockies. The South Hills' pine seed production is also astoundingly consistent; typically, trees have erratic crops that force squirrels to move.
Little wonder that crossbills settled in the South Hills. But when Benkman first arrived, he noticed that the lodgepole pine cones were again enormous, elephantine compared to other places, and right away he suspected that only coevolution with crossbills could explain it. Since the birds pry open the tip of a cone, rather than bite scales off from the base, the cones' upper scales had become thicker and larger, like ramparts on a turret. Over time, the birds' bill had followed suit, though it is less a battering ram than an exquisite, sickled crowbar.
Strolling on a South Hills ridge, Benkman and I came to a pine dripping with cones. He pinched one, tan and shining, in his long fingers. "That is a whopper," he said. Whenever Benkman examines a monstrous pine cone, it's as if he's witnessing a miracle. "You could not find one this size in the Rockies. If you looked for a year, I bet you couldn't find one." In the lab, Benkman has shown that a crossbill's feeding efficiency — its prying and husking time — increases on South Hills cones to a bill depth of about 10.0 millimeters, which explains type-9's large beak. In other places, the ideal for lodgepole is 9.3 millimeters — a titanic disparity in the world of a finch. Now, wandering crossbills have trouble competing. Because of the range's unwavering crop, the South Hills bird also breeds reliably each spring, out of sync with itinerants. They have forsaken their irruptive and irregular ways for a homesteader's portion. No type 9 has been confirmed anywhere but the South Hills and the neighboring Albion Mountains, just 27 square miles of lodgepole forest in total.
Thus an invisible cloak of isolation has descended over the South Hills crossbill, which is a rarely observed phenomenon in birds. The classic model for speciation depends on geographic isolation. In the Galapagos, for example, the subtle Geospiza finches that inspired Darwin likely diversified when a few individuals radiated to lonely islands, founding new populations that evolved with little or no contact with their ancestors. Eventually, they diverged enough so that when these lineages came back together again, they were unlikely to produce offspring because of biological incompatibility or strong behavioral differences. But there is no geographic isolation from other crossbills in the South Hills. Only from squirrels.
As soon as Benkman arrived in the South Hills, he and his students began to survey crossbills by recording birds in the pines, including mated pairs, and diagnosing their spectrographs. From this behavioral data, Benkman and his students know that nomadic call types fly through in pulses; one year, they accounted for 20 percent of all the crossbills in the range. Yet the South Hills crossbill mates with different types — which would result in gene flow — just .7 percent of the time. That's less than the hybridization rate among Galapagos finches, the wellspring of evolutionary theory. It's well below the 5 percent commonly accepted as the threshold for a species. As John Thompson, an evolutionary biologist at UC Santa Cruz and a longtime colleague of Benkman's, told me, the South Hills crossbill is a precious illustration of how coevolution could "not just generate adaptation, but also potentially cause reproductive isolation" without a geographic barrier.
Based on this evidence, in 2009 Benkman argued that the South Hills bird should be named Loxia sinesciurus, or the crossbill "without squirrels," and, unprompted, the American Ornithologists Union (AOU) species committee considered the question: Does the type 9 crossbill merit a page in our field guides? A majority voted in favor of sinesciurus, six to five, but the bird fell one "yes" short of the seven required. One objection was a dearth of specimens, which may have spoken to Benkman's devotion to these birds: He didn't want to kill them. But the skins are now laid out, peach-red, in the Museum of Vertebrates at the University of Wyoming, not far from Benkman's office. Others voted "no" because they preferred to rethink the red crossbill call types as a whole rather than piecemeal.
But in a new study in Molecular Ecology, Benkman, his former student Thomas Parchman, and several others, have at last shown that the South Hills crossbill deserves to be christened Loxia sinesciurus. They sequenced the DNA of 219 red crossbills from all of the North American call types except the rare Newfoundland mope, and ultimately compared 18,385 single-nucleotide polymorphisms, the proverbial teeth on the alphabetical zipper of a gene. When you map the overlap in these positions, you shed light on the relatedness between individuals and grow a phylogenetic tree. The red crossbill's tree shows the bird that Benkman finally stumbled upon in the South Hills after years of exploration is a clear monophyletic group, a discrete evolutionary branch. It should end the speculation about whether the call types are cryptic species. The nomadic types may be in the early or intermediate stages of divergence, but only the South Hills bird, the AOU committee agreed, is distinct and ready for its own name: the Cassia crossbill (pronounced "Cash-uh"), after the county where it's found.
But the origin of this species is not only the tale of lodgepole, squirrels and crown fire: It is also the story of climate, the lord of the system. And what climate created, climate can take away. Conifers appeared over 100 million years ago, but crossbills came into being much later. Why did it take so long for that ingenious bill to twist? Benkman explained that "it was pretty warm until 5 to 6 million years ago." Cones open faster in balmy temperatures and dump their nutritious charge. "I think what was critical in their evolution," said Benkman, "was that you had these cool conditions to hold the seeds in there." Otherwise an overlapping bill is just funny-looking, not useful, a malocclusion instead of a machine. More recently, climate also gave us the Cassia crossbill: Models suggest hardly any lodgepole existed in southern Idaho six thousand years ago. Loxia sinesciurus must have evolved since then, making it one of the swiftest speciations known in birds.
But as Benkman and his students surveyed in the South Hills, the population crashed by 80 percent in 2011 to perhaps 1,700 birds, though it has since rebounded to about 6,000. The strongest correlation to the Cassia crossbill's annual fortunes is clusters of days in the previous three to five years that are warmer than 90 degrees Fahrenheit — the effect on cones may mimic that of fire's prodding tongue. To access seeds, the birds need a crevice to appear between a cone's scales as the serotiny breaks down, a miniscule gap that allows them to pry; but across the forest, they need it to happen gradually, parsimoniously, so that seeds are available year-round. Call it interest on a savings account. Benkman performed a simple binary experiment to illustrate precisely how heat waves could disrupt this economy: He gathered 900 South Hills cones and put them, in batches, in a drying oven, setting it to 104 degrees Fahrenheit and slowly raising the temperature. His patient teenage daughter monitored them through the oven's glass window until they popped open. Then, on sunny days, he measured the surface temperatures on one tree's cones using a thermal-imaging camera. On a 90 degree day, a cone's plated surface might reach 138 degrees in places. At this temperature in his glorified, digital Easy-Bake, nearly all the cones relinquished. Sunlight is also a pry bar.
Crossbills in general are at risk. Since 1980, their numbers have declined about 2.5 percent a year in North America, and now they visit feeders in droves in late winter and spring, a measure of desperation. In the coldest months, the birds are scrounging — searching for a solution to the holes our industry has chewed in theirs. In the South Hills, a series of 90-degree days might result in one-fifth fewer seeds for crossbills over the next four years. Some birds might irrupt like other crossbills, but having coevolved with the South Hills pine, they aren't suited for lodgepole as usual. "As forests go, they have nowhere to go," Benkman told me. "Now I'm watching these birds go away. It's just one more of the same story" — like in Newfoundland and the Cypress Hills — "only it's not squirrels here." But when I suggested that, in the South Hills, climate change is like an ethereal, insatiable, un-trappable squirrel, Benkman nodded and replied, "It's a squirrel everywhere."
Now that the bird is officially the Cassia crossbill, it is eligible for protection under the Endangered Species Act. Overnight the bird has become one of the rarest, most endangered in America. It already was. "I don't think it will go extinct in my lifetime," Benkman said, speculating that a band of three or four hundred birds could persist. "But who knows, if there's a catastrophic fire, or a combination of things." One conservation measure Benkman has imagined is to harvest unopened cones from the South Hills' hottest, south-facing groves. You could plant those seeds in polar-opposite areas — shady north-facing slopes, cool pockets — to create islands of hardy lodgepole for future crossbill generations. More and more, species will rely on islands within islands. But the harsh fact is that lodgepole is forecast to disappear from southern Idaho by 2080. Ultimately, the name Loxia sinesciurus will be a memorial signature.
Benkman is sad, but philosophical about this prognosis. It's morally outrageous that we'll be responsible for the demise of this species — and there are so many others like it that remain cryptic and unrecognized, especially in the lower orders: 30 percent of the world's species could still be hidden in our midst. But by their very nature, species are ephemeral. "They wink in, and wink out," Benkman told me. "If an ice age were to occur, as was supposed to happen before climate change, the South Hills bird would also go extinct." In truth, a creature like the red crossbill is not one entity, but myriad populations always breaking apart and coming back together — particularly over the course of interglacial periods — even if something tips the scale, as it has, for now, in the South Hills, and a new name is warranted. This is how evolution unfolds: It's a vast "kaleidoscope," as Benkman and John Thompson have both called it, of intricate interactions — of crossbills, pines, squirrels, fire, climate, and more — across time and landscape, and it's always shifting. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't honor the Cassia crossbill and try to prolong its existence.
The best place to use your cellphone in the South Hills is from the bald summit of Pike's Mountain, and I drove up one evening with Benkman. In all directions, stands of spiry pine and luminous aspen cling to the South Hills amid the sheep-grazed sage. We had this imbricated, somehow pastoral view to ourselves until there came a familiar whine and a trailing plume. "OK, good," Benkman said. "There's finally an ATV. It just wasn't right." They revved onto the ridge below us as a mountain bluebird plucked a caterpillar from a yellow arrowleaf balsamroot. You could imagine the Cassia crossbills flitting through these velvet swaths of lodgepole, their kingdom, and hanging from cones with bands around their legs: specks of flame-colored dust, swept up for a moment.
Nick Neely is the author of a new book of natural history essays, Coast Range: A Collection from the Pacific Edge, and a former HCN intern.


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Twitter tickers have been around for a little while now, but this creative use of an old dot matrix printer by a modder named Kenneth is really a fun way to utilize old technology.
Kenneth picked up an old dot matrix printer from a swap meet for only $5–what a steal! He then used a BeagleBone–basically Texas Instruments's version of an Arduino board, to connect it to the Internet and monitor his Twitter feed.
The BeagleBone board uses the Twitter API to grab any tweets that mention his username (@KWF) and then prints them out–noisily. Kenneth has posted all of the code you'll need if you want to re-create his awesome retro Twitter ticker, provided you've got the necessary equipment. If you know what you're doing, it shouldn't be too difficult to modify the code to watch for search terms or other things you might be interested in.
I've wanted to make my own Twitter ticker for a little while now, so I'm definitely going to be asking my parents for their old dot matrix printer and the box of paper they have stashed somewhere. Now I just got to figure out how to make it work with an Arduino, any ideas?
[The Life of Kenneth via Hack A Day]
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Friday, February 15, 2013
Early Departures and Missing Documents
7 comments:
I feel your pain. I've always been convinced that all my questions could be answered if I had that darned 1890 census. If only we could get OTHER people on the stick to digitize all the documents we need. I'd be glad to provide a list.ReplyDeleteReplies
Yeah! What about those OTHER people?! ;)Delete
I'd be most willing to give up my grudges about the loss of that 1890 census, Wendy, if I could just get my fingers on some of those missing digitized newspapers!
Have a good trip..I am sure you will turn up something. Childbirth was a cause of death sometimes..Diphtheria.. Typhoid..and the various plagues and flu..some place there must be a list of the years when all those diseases were prevalent. I will poke around a bit:)ReplyDelete
1900 to 1904 Bubonic Plague in California..another outbreak in 1908.ReplyDelete
Influenza 1850 to 1851
Worldwide Flu 1889 to 1890.
1918 to 1920 Flu Pandemic
1878 Yellow Fever
1837 and again in 1906 Typhus
Cholera 1834 to 1839
1920's and 1940's Diphtheria
1916 Polio epidemic then again in 1952.Replies
Hmmm...nothing appearing for 1897 though. Although the flu is an ever present threat, even if not in an epidemic year...Delete
Thanks so much for finding that information, Far Side. Something to tuck away for future reference!
That's quite a metaphor, a "Cone of Silence." With both obituaries and divorce records unavailable. Is it certain that the real resources will be somewhere? I've also been shocked by the short life spans of my family, especially in the rice plantations and in Barbados, in both the 1600s and 1700s. Supposedly, it was an "unhealthy climate."ReplyDelete
In South Carolina, no BD dates are recorded before 1915, and no M dates before 1910. There are no records, even if you drive to the city. I can really relate to the idea of a "Cone of Silence." It makes you grateful for every single record you find!Replies
Mariann, that's what makes me even more grateful for those churches that were dedicated to keeping such careful records. Sometimes, that is the only recourse for some researchers before the advent of civil records, by the time of the early 1900s, of births and deaths.Delete
Of course, in many cases--like this family I'm researching here--there was no church affiliation, so once again I'm left out in the cold, with no recourse for reconstructing that information...unless it was listed as an announcement in some small town newspaper.
I imagine the climate in Barbados would be rather unhealthy, especially for workers under the harsh conditions in the fields, out in the sun. However, lifespans in the 1600s would be limited in most cases, field work or not, wouldn't they be?


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Ministry Hands Out Pro-Life '180' DVDs to 200,000 College Students
Some Colleges Turn Away '180'
The makers of the viral online video "180" handed its pro-life documentary to college students on Tuesday by distributing about 200,000 DVDs at more than 100 universities throughout the U.S., Canada and New Zealand.
Produced by Living Waters ministry and its founder Ray Comfort, the dramatic 33-minute film released one month ago has been viewed more than 1.2 million times at 180Movie.com and YouTube. The effort on Tuesday was meant to physically put the DVD into the hands of tens of thousands of college students.
In the video, Comfort captures the responses of young adults to a series of questions from him, who begins by asking whether they know who Adolf Hitler is and the fact that he sanctioned the killing of 11 million people.
While talking to several people who have a pro-abortion stance, Comfort then transitions from talk about lives lost in the Holocaust to lives lost as the result of abortions in the United States. In the video, it is quite apparent those interviewed change their opinion on abortion.
"It's not only being watched online, people are buying it to give away," Comfort said in press release about the college DVD distribution. "We have sold more than 150,000 copies in a matter of weeks. One small church purchased 16,800. But this week's university giveaway was very special because it put the physical DVD into the hands of the youth of America, and engaged many in healthy dialogue."
Living Waters' director of Project: 180, Tony Miano, told The Christian Post Wednesday that the distribution by the teams – composed of a total of 1,000 participants – went well. However, he said there were setbacks on some college campuses. He did not name the colleges because the ministry's report was not complete, he said.
"There were a number of teams that were forced off the campuses either due to policy or just the discomfort of the team being there, but all things considered, the opposition was relatively minimal," Miano said. "Even those teams that were forced off the campus were able to distribute the documentary on adjacent public sidewalks close to the campus so the DVDs still went out to the students."
Jared Duba, 21, who is a member of the NorCal Seedsowers ministry, participated in the distribution of 1,000 DVDs at San Jose State University. Duba, also a freelance videographer captured the SJSU giveaway on video.
"We chose to begin right as most students got out of class, so it was pretty crowded. I've heard that teams had a really hard time passing out the DVDs on other campuses, but it was really easy for us," Duba said. "We passed out all of ours within the first 20 minutes or so."
"I feel very encouraged to return to pass out tracts and witness there more often," he said.
Miano, who was at University of California Los Angeles with Comfort, said that in addition to distributing 2,000 DVDs at the college, there was some open-air preaching. Comfort and others spoke at Bruin Walk, a major campus walkway and gathering spot.
The successful distribution at UCLA and all the other campuses means there will be more similar events, Miano said.
"We are receiving all kinds of reports and emails from students who received the documentary. The types of responses run the gamut of everything from high praise to the worst kind of vitriol you can imagine," he said. "The majority of the responses, probably 10 to 1, has been positive towards the documentary."
Miano, who also leads the Ambassadors program at Living Waters, said that he has been a leader in Christian ministry for more than 20 years and that the production and distribution of "180" has impacted his life greatly.
"I could say unequivocally that this documentary and distributing this documentary worldwide is by far the most important thing I have ever done as a Christian," Miano said. "As a follower of Jesus Christ I have always been pro-life, but like so many Christians, I have kind of sat on the sidelines regarding the fight."
"As this documentary came together and as we were interviewing people and seeing the utter ignorance of people, particularly on college campuses regarding not only the abortion issue, but the Holocaust of World War II itself … how many people had no idea who Hitler was or what he did … it's that kind of ignorance that allows history to repeat itself," he highlighted.
"We're seeing that kind of history repeated not only in the United States with the systematic killing of more than 53 million of our citizens since Roe v. Wade, but more than 42 million children every year around the world are murdered by way of abortion," he said.
Comfort also produced a "180 Course" video and book series to teach others how to share the film's message.
"I will not rest as long as the horror of killing babies is a legal reality in our nation. But political change will only come if those who care about the unborn speak up," Comfort said.


text: okay everys seems to be working, now the problem is not to make things work but to keep everything working no matter what. what do you guys do to prepare for the unavoidable "meltdown". you know, hard disk failure, cpu meltdown, bad caps. do you have some sort of backup system ? maybe another computer which info is automaticly passed from primary machine to secondary machine maybe tape backup?? could people tell me about how they go about this in the real world ??


text:
I finally got RVM working and now I would like RVM to install the latest stable ruby version.
In the tutorial I am using they installed ruby 1.9.3 with command :
rvm install 1.9.3
Now I want to know if there is a command to download the latest stable version, or do I have to check latest stable version and download it like that, or else, can I download any old version and run an upgrade?
Normally I would try out everything, but I am working on a new server and I am trying to set it up as clean as I can :)


text:
The beauty of this bug class is that it provides 100% reliability and is multiplatform. Hence this will shortly become the penetration test Swiss knife for the next couple of years (as did its older brother CVE-2008-5353).
As a final note, the bug was introduced in Java 7.0 released in July 28, 2011. While you are feeling the rush of blood going through your veins while by getting all those shell being pop, think that somewhere not far way (Probably a 10hs flight from some of the major airports in Norte Americana) was enjoying it non-stop for quite some time now.
IntroductionAs the "Secure Coding Guidelines" document [1] states, it is important to understand how the permissions are checked in the Java security model. (Please readguideline 9-1).
Many operations in the JDK perform permission checks before executing. Whenever a call to java.security.AccessController.checkPermission method is performed, the complete call stack that exists at that moment is analyzed.
If any of the callers in the stack do not have the required privileged an exception is raised.
When we are running code in an Applet in our browser, there is a context that has very restricted permissions.
This means that if there is any caller in the stack that is part of our applet, the permission checks will fail (unless there is a doPrivileged code block, but let's leave that out for now).
Section "9 – Access Control" in the "Secure Coding Guidelines" document [1] together with the "Java Security Architecture" document [2] will give you a complete insight on how all this works.
The Gondvv exploitA PoC for this 0 day exploit quickly began to spread when Joshua J. Drake posted it on Twitter https://twitter.com/jduck1337/status/239875285913317376.
By analyzing this implementation we can clearly see how the exploitation is done and where the vulnerabilities are really located.
The first thing we notice, is that most of the online analysis talks about one vulnerability where we saw two 2 vulnerabilities being exploited to achieve full execution on a target.
Basically the exploit is creating an java.security.AccessControlContext instance with a java.security.ProtectionDomain that has full permissions and then replace the actual AccessControlContext of a java.beans.Statement instance to be able to execute code with full privileges.
So let's take a better look at each part to understand what is happening under the hood.
In the java.beans.Statement implementation we can see that the AccessControlContext instance is a private final field and it gets its value by calling AccessController.getContext().
public class Statement {
private static Object[] emptyArray = new Object[]{};
static ExceptionListener defaultExceptionListener = new ExceptionListener() {
public void exceptionThrown(Exception e) {
System.err.println("Continuing ...");
private final AccessControlContext acc = AccessController.getContext();
private final Object target;
private final String methodName;
private final Object[] arguments;
ClassLoader loader;
That call to the getContext method will set the AccessControlContext to an applet context that has restrictions with a limited ProtectionDomain which of course is not privileged at all.
Back in 2010 Sami Koivu published information about a Java vulnerability (CVE-2010-0840) that built a "trusted method chain" [4].
You can see in the article that the exploitation of that vulnerability also made use of the java.beans.Statement class.
The article also explains that the fix was to add an AccessControlContext field to the Statement class setting its value to the applet context when creating an instance thus avoiding the full trusted chain.
This AccessControllContext field added in that fix is exactly what this new 0 day exploit is replacing in order to be able to execute code with full permissions.
But how can a private field be changed?
The trick here is to use the sun.awt.SunToolkit class which contains a very interesting public static method:
public static Field getField(final Class klass, final String fieldName) {
return AccessController.doPrivileged(new PrivilegedAction<Field>() {
public Field run() {
try {
Field field = klass.getDeclaredField(fieldName);
assert (field != null);
return field;
} catch (SecurityException e) {
assert false;
} catch (NoSuchFieldException e) {
assert false;
return null;
We can see that it is using reflection to get fields and the complete implementation is inside a doPrivileged block. This getField method can be used to get any field on a class and the good thing is that it can even retrieve private ones.
Well this is of course very useful, it's important to notice that the classes that are part of certain packages are restricted for applets and cannot be accessed or used. Such packages are:
- com.sun.deploy.*
- com.sun.imageio.*
- com.sun.javaws.*
- com.sun.jnlp.*
- com.sun.xml.internal.bind.*
- com.sun.xml.internal.ws.*
- sun.*
This means that we are not able to get a reference to the sun.awt.SunToolkit class from our applet.
But the basic thing we need to know is that calls to certain methods can potentially bypass the SecurityManager checks depending on the immediate caller's class loader.
This is explained in detail in the "Secure Coding Guidelines" document by Sun [1] in guidelines 9-8 and 9-9.
This exploit is abusing this situation taking advantage of the immediate caller to bypass security checks.
VulnerabilitiesThere are 2 different zero-day vulnerabilities used in this exploit: one is used to obtain a reference to the sun.awt.SunToolkit class and the other is used to invoke the public getField method on that class.
private Object invokeInternal() throws Exception {
Object target = getTarget();
String methodName = getMethodName();
if (target == null || methodName == null) {
throw new NullPointerException((target == null ? "target" :
"methodName") + " should not be null");
Object[] arguments = getArguments();
if (arguments == null) {
arguments = emptyArray;
// Class.forName() won't load classes outside
// of core from a class inside core. Special
// case this method.
if (target == Class.class && methodName.equals("forName")) {
return ClassFinder.resolveClass((String)arguments[0], this.loader);
Class[] argClasses = new Class[arguments.length];
for(int i = 0; i < arguments.length; i++) {
argClasses[i] = (arguments[i] == null) ? null : arguments[i].getClass();
AccessibleObject m = null;
if (target instanceof Class) {
For class methods, simluate the effect of a meta class
by taking the union of the static methods of the
actual class, with the instance methods of "Class.class"
and the overloaded "newInstance" methods defined by the
This way "System.class", for example, will perform both
the static method getProperties() and the instance method
getSuperclass() defined in "Class.class".
if (methodName.equals("new")) {
methodName = "newInstance";
// Provide a short form for array instantiation by faking an nary-constructor.
if (methodName.equals("newInstance") && ((Class)target).isArray()) {
Object result = Array.newInstance(((Class)target).getComponentType(), arguments.length);
for(int i = 0; i < arguments.length; i++) {
Array.set(result, i, arguments[i]);
return result;
if (methodName.equals("newInstance") && arguments.length != 0) {
// The Character class, as of 1.4, does not have a constructor
// which takes a String. All of the other "wrapper" classes
// for Java's primitive types have a String constructor so we
// fake such a constructor here so that this special case can be
// ignored elsewhere.
if (target == Character.class && arguments.length == 1 &&
argClasses[0] == String.class) {
return new Character(((String)arguments[0]).charAt(0));
try {
m = ConstructorFinder.findConstructor((Class)target, argClasses);
catch (NoSuchMethodException exception) {
m = null;
if (m == null && target != Class.class) {
m = getMethod((Class)target, methodName, argClasses);
if (m == null) {
m = getMethod(Class.class, methodName, argClasses);
else {
This special casing of arrays is not necessary, but makes files
involving arrays much shorter and simplifies the archiving infrastrcure.
The Array.set() method introduces an unusual idea - that of a static method
changing the state of an instance. Normally statements with side
effects on objects are instance methods of the objects themselves
and we reinstate this rule (perhaps temporarily) by special-casing arrays.
if (target.getClass().isArray() &&
(methodName.equals("set") || methodName.equals("get"))) {
int index = ((Integer)arguments[0]).intValue();
if (methodName.equals("get")) {
return Array.get(target, index);
else {
Array.set(target, index, arguments[1]);
return null;
m = getMethod(target.getClass(), methodName, argClasses);
if (m != null) {
try {
if (m instanceof Method) {
return MethodUtil.invoke((Method)m, target, arguments);
else {
return ((Constructor)m).newInstance(arguments);
catch (IllegalAccessException iae) {
throw new Exception("Statement cannot invoke: " +
methodName + " on " + target.getClass(),
catch (InvocationTargetException ite) {
Throwable te = ite.getTargetException();
if (te instanceof Exception) {
throw (Exception)te;
else {
throw ite;
throw new NoSuchMethodException(toString());
And the Statement.getMethod implementation is:
static Method getMethod(Class<?> type, String name, Class<?>... args) {
try {
return MethodFinder.findMethod(type, name, args);
catch (NoSuchMethodException exception) {
return null;
Highlighted in the code you'll see the calls to com.sun.beans.finder.ClassFinder.resolveClass and com.sun.beans.finder.MethodFinder.findMethod methods.
com.sun.beans.finder.ClassFinder.findClass vulnerabilityThe Statement.invokeInternal method is calling com.sun.beans.finder.ClassFinder.resolveClass and if we take a look a its implementation we'll see that it ends up calling the com.sun.beans.finder.ClassFinder.findClass method:
public static Class<?> resolveClass(String name, ClassLoader loader) throws ClassNotFoundException {
Class<?> type = PrimitiveTypeMap.getType(name);
return (type == null) ? findClass(name, loader): type;
public static Class<?> findClass(String name) throws ClassNotFoundException {
try {
ClassLoader loader = Thread.currentThread().getContextClassLoader();
if (loader == null) {
loader = ClassLoader.getSystemClassLoader();
if (loader != null) {
return Class.forName(name, false, loader);
} catch (ClassNotFoundException exception) {
// use current class loader instead
} catch (SecurityException exception) {
// use current class loader instead
return Class.forName(name);
This code shows that if an exception is captured, then the default is to simply call Class.forName and this is exaclty what happens here.
As it is explained in the Guideline 9-9: "Safely invoke standard APIs that perform tasks using the immediate caller's class loader instance" on the "Secure Code Guidelines" documentation [1], a call to Class.forName will use the immediate caller ClassLoader and in this case the caller is part of the JDK which is trusted thus allowing us to get any class on any package.
The caller's stack can be seen by simply debugging the applet:
MethodFinder.findMethod vulnerabilityAccording to the "Secure Code Guidelines" document in guideline 9.8 the java.lang.Class.getMethod and java.lang.Class.getMethods only take the immediate caller into account when performing security checks.
These methods can be used to get a Method reference via reflection but only "public" ones.
Even though we have a reference to the sun.awt.SunToolkit class we cannot call any of its methods directly because is part of a restricted package and a security exception will be raised.
What is needed here is a way of getting a method reference via reflection but having a "trusted" immediate caller in the stack in order to bypass security checks.
The implementation of com.sun.beans.finder.MethodFinder.findMethod is this:
public static Method findMethod(Class<?> type, String name, Class<?>...args) throws NoSuchMethodException {
if (name == null) {
throw new IllegalArgumentException("Method name is not set
Signature signature = new Signature(type, name, args);
Method method = CACHE.get(signature);
if (method != null) {
return method;
method = findAccessibleMethod(new MethodFinder(name, args).find(type.getMethods()));
CACHE.put(signature, method);
return method;}
The call to findAccessibleMethod ends up calling java.lang.Class.getMethods and the immediate caller in the stack is com.sun.beans.finder.MethodFinder which is trusted since is part of the JDK thus bypassing the security checks.
Once again we can see the callers stack by debugging the applet:
Affected VersionsThe com.sun.beans.finder.MethodFinder and com.sun.beans.finder.ClassFinder classes are available only since JDK 7.
Putting all togetherSo this exploit is performing the following steps:
- Creates a Statement instance that will call
System.setSecurityManager(null) method using reflection.
- Creates a custom AccessControlContext with full permissions.
- With one bug it gets a reference to the sun.awt.SunToolkit
class that is restricted to
- With the other bug it
invokes the getField
public static method on sun.awt.SunToolkit
using reflection with a trusted immediate caller that bypasses the
security checks.
- With the getField
method it is getting a reference to Statement.acc
private field and setting its value to the custom
AccessControlContext instance previously created.
- Finally it executes the Statement that will disable the Security Manager bypassing all security checks because it has full permissions set in its AccessControlContext.
References[1] - Secure Coding Guidelines for the Java Programming Language, Version 4.0 - http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/seccodeguide-139067.html
[2] - Java SE 7 Security Architecture - http://docs.oracle.com/javase/7/docs/technotes/guides/security/spec/security-specTOC.fm.html
[3] - Java SE 7 Security Documents - http://docs.oracle.com/javase/7/docs/technotes/guides/security/
[4] - Sami Koivu Blog - Java Trusted Method Chaining (CVE-2010-0840/ZDI-10-056) - http://slightlyrandombrokenthoughts.blogspot.com.ar/2010/04/java-trusted-method-chaining-cve-2010.html


text:
Long product name IBM Netfinity server :
FAStT EXP700 Expansion Unit
The short editorial description of IBM Netfinity server
FAStT EXP700 Expansion Unit
Short summary description IBM Netfinity server:
This short summary of the IBM Netfinity server data-sheet is auto-generated and uses the product title and the first six key specs.
IBM Netfinity, 444.5 mm, 609.6 mm, 174.5 mm, 38.6 kg
Long summary description IBM Netfinity server:
This is an auto-generated long summary of IBM Netfinity server based on the first three specs of the first five spec groups.
IBM Netfinity. Width: 444.5 mm, Depth: 609.6 mm, Height: 174.5 mm


text: Artist: Mobb Deep Album: Infamy Song: Bounce Typed by: firstname.lastname@example.com [Havoc] Yeah Another banger You can feel me if you don't, you don't I'll feed you to the dogs like a bitch I boned My only concern is for the cash I gross A nigga more deadly up against the ropes Problem dead on tacking tours to throats Eyes, ears open you can try to get close Approach me then Get on the floor soldier like you owe me ten Spread it, never say it Actions speak louder than words Get bodied because you doubted the word Never fucked your bird, stop askin her It's not that serious, keep backin up She'll get curious, and delirious Send that bitch home on her period To stop Havoc got to kill me bro These niggaz listening but don't hear me bro [Chorus: Havoc] Yo, what's the deal, deal Play that shit I can feel, feel Right now it's about to get real, real Never leave home without that steel, steel (2X) [Prodigy] Yeah, just bounce Bounce, Bounce Let's go, let's do it, let's get it correct Let's ball, let's burn, let's all get bent Let's party and celebrate success Let's not ruin my fun, my gun will spit Nigga find you a woman you can definitely rip Ladies find you a man, go ahead get you some dick What you thought? you a big girl, I'm a big boy So let's not play these games, let's get to the point Bitch get off me, I switch plans on you There's plenty more bunnies for me These niggaz got problems? I'll straighten that promptly I'll be all over them niggaz so fast, they're so pussy Go ahead push me to tear you up Try me, blind me, force my guns You ain't built for war, you built to bounce So we gonna ride on you niggaz until the sun burn out Chorus (2X) Bounce, bounce, bounce, bounce Chorus (2X)


text:
Note: As per Union Health Ministry of India, max price set for COVID-19 Covishield Vaccine per dose through private Hospital is Rs. 780 inclusive of GST.
To register for Vaccination you can visit
Important Note: As we are working with the live COVID19 data and frequently updating the website, there can be discrepancies sometimes which will be resolved in the validation process later. Please use this information only for awareness purpose and not for taking any decisions.


text:
To enable export in the DataGrid, reference or import the ExcelJS and FileSaver libraries. Set export.enabled to true.
Once the conditions above are met, use the exportDataGrid(options) method to export the DataGrid to an Excel workbook.
Review the onExporting handler to see the data export code. DataGrid is exported as is to a single worksheet. You can also set allowExportSelectedData to true to export only selected rows.
You can export DataGrid to CSV. Call the exportDataGrid(options) method as shown in the following ticket: Export PivotGrid into CSV file.


text:
Bowles-Simpson 2.0 Won't Be Enough
Recent Congressional Budget Office projections show that the deficit will be roughly $1 trillion and the debt will reach 77 percent by 2023. And these calculations rely on rosy assumptions that won't materialize, even though the worst is still to come. It means that even if Simpson and Bowles get their way, much bolder reforms would be needed to fix our long-term debt problem.
Erskine Bowles and former senator Alan Simpson, the two co-chairmen of the President's bipartisan National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform, put out a new plan to address our long-term debt problems. They welcome the deficit reductions implemented through the Budget Control Act of 2011 and the American Taxpayer's Relief Act or so-called fiscal cliff deal of 2013, but they believe that much more is needed to stabilize our debt problem.
There is some good and bad in the new plan. The best thing about it is that in a town where the Senate hasn't bothered producing a budget -- its most fundamental job -- in four years, and where most lawmakers are more interested in political posturing than addressing the country's long-term financial problems, Simpson and Bowles at least offer a plan. Granted, this plan is best described as the plan for a plan, but in that outline form it is still more than we have gotten from the Senate in years.
The authors also acknowledge that reforming the tax code is imperative to rid the system of its inefficiencies and maybe even grow the economy. Better yet, Simpson and Bowles have consistently stressed the need for entitlement reform for programs like Medicare and Social Security. In fact during a recent interview, Simpson said that if the president failed to shift the nation's fiscal course by reforming entitlement programs "he will have a failed presidency."
On the negative side, the incredible lack of detail and numbers in the plan make it mostly useless. Unlike with their first, official commission plan, it is impossible to say exactly how much spending it will cut, what programs it will target, or what share of the economy it will collect in new revenue. Their previous plan, for instance, relied on the ability of the government to consistently raise 21 percent of GDP in taxes--a level never reached before under the current tax system and hence unlikely. The lack of detail makes it impossible to say what faulty assumptions are built in to the plan.
More importantly, their "balanced" approach to deficit reduction (a mix of revenue increases and spending cuts) has a major flaw. It ignores the extensive academic literature that shows that the best way to successfully reduce debt-to-GDP ratios is to adopt fiscal adjustment packages heavily weighted towards spending cuts.
Take, for instance, the work of American Enterprise Institute's economists Kevin Hassett, Andrew Biggs, and with Matt Jensen from 2010. After looking at the many attempts by OECD countries to reduce their debt ratios, they found that on average, successful fiscal consolidations were made up of 85 percent spending cuts and 15 percent tax increases.
As Hassett noted in a recent blog post over at The Corner, the new Simpson Bowles framework would be "about 25 percent tax increases and 75 percent spending cuts. That is closer to the right answer than before, but still not mindful of the lessons of history."
Finally, while they rightfully put all spending on the table for review and potential cuts (including defense spending), the reforms they outline to curb the trend of exploding federal healthcare spending (the only government spending truly unsustainable) are unlikely be enough to solve the problem.
Recent Congressional Budget Office projections show that the deficit will be roughly $1 trillion and the debt will reach 77 percent by 2023. And these calculations rely on rosy assumptions that won't materialize, even though the worst is still to come. It means that even if Simpson and Bowles get their way, much bolder reforms would be needed to fix our long-term debt problem.