Belrad Universe, January 28, 2008 - Transcript

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Hello, everybody, and welcome! This is Belrad Universe, and I'm your host, Bryan Belrad.

It's January 28^th, 2008, and we are your source for news, both strange, weird, and unusual, along with the latest breakthroughs in science and technology, and your forum for the ideas that shape our world. We're coming to you live for the first time, so please bear with me as I get used to the new format.

I am astonished. We had almost a hundred answers submitted to last week's riddle: 'What is the difference between a centaur and a human?' Each was wonderful and creative, yet, none were correct.

Remember what I said last week? There is only one right answer, and for a very specific reason. The solution is what it is because it's a pun: a centaur is just like a man, except he has a horse where an ass should be.

Since we didn't have a winner, let's try this again. One winner will be selected at random out of all the correct answers emailed to Show@BelradUniverse.com to receive a free copy of my novel, "Rage of Night", called "THE best debut novel, ever," by Amazon.com.

Here it is: a car heads one mile south, and turns left. It travels one more mile, and turns left again. After traveling one more mile, it is back where it started. Where is it?

Remember, send those answers to Show@BelradUniverse.com

And now, the interesting side of the news of the week.

First up, there is a buzz about the land concerning the new tax rebates. Now, this is all still pending, but here's where it stands at the moment.

Each household will receive up to $600, depending on income, with an additional $300 per child, up to a maximum of $12 hundred per family. The package is still going through congressional approval, but the treasury department hopes to have checks in the mail within a couple of months.

If the plan pans out, many Americans will be getting a tax break at right about the same time as their tax forms are due, so there you go. Hopefully, we'll have a working tax code in place by then too.

A strange arrest took place this past week in Clearwater, Florida. A 75 year old grandmother was taken into police custody at a McDonald's for refusing to pull forward at the drive-thru. She was charged with disorderly conduct, in refusing a police order to move her car.

Guess that's what happens when you come between a cop and his coffee.

Well, there's another scam floating around the internet. This one claims to be from Yahoo, and, like so many others, they want to give you money. The email says that YOU have been selected to receive a huge ton of cash from the world bank... yadda, yadda, yadda.

Just so everyone's aware, despite the letter's assurances and "security measures" to prove that it isn't a scam - it is.

Here's a tip: if the email doesn't come from or go back to the company it claims to represent, it might be a scam. If the email is filled with more spelling errors than President Bush's attempts at speech writing, it might be a scam. If it gives you a telephone number to call that doesn't go to the country where the company is based, it might be a scam. And - especially important - if an email tells you not to reveal this 'top secret' information to the public, it might be a scam.

Just a word of warning.

Our psychopath of the week is one Ms. Ann Marie Linscott. This innovative adulteress sought to hire an assassin - on Craigslist. She offered to pay $5,000 for a hit on the wife of a man she'd been having an affair with.

The ad was for a "silent assassin" to do a "freelance job" to "eradicate a female living in Oroville, California." Linscott then went on to provide a physical description and work address of the target.

At a close runner-up is Ms. China Arnold of Ohio. The 27 year old former mother stands accused of cooking her one month old baby to death in a microwave.

According to a statement China made, she was awakened by the baby's crying in the middle of the night, following a drinking binge. China admits that she was still drunk at the time when she changed the baby's diaper, and - she thought - microwaved a bottle for the baby.

Autopsy reports show that the child died from high-heat internal burns, yet the skin was undamaged in any way. The medical examiner concurs that a microwave is the most likely method such extensive damage can be achieved without any sign of external injury.

Jury selection for her trial is underway this week.

A spokesman for the National Security Council announced that a disabled spy satellite's orbit has fallen into decay, and it is now a threat to Earth.

We are assured, by the government that brought us the infamous Hurricane Katrina relief debacle, and the war in Iraq, that all the appropriate agencies are "looking into it".

The 10-ton spacecraft is estimated to be the size of a bus. An uncontrolled reentry could scatter metal debris, which does not combust well during reentry, across vast stretches of land area, along with hazardous chemicals.

By contrast, Skylab, an abandoned 78 ton space station, also was allowed to fall out of orbit in an uncontrolled reentry. The debris showered across the Indian Ocean and much of Australia's Outback. By pure luck alone, the damage from Skylab's reentry was minimal. Though this satellite is 1/8^th the mass, there is no telling, at this point, where it might land when if finally does return to Earth.

A direct hit in an urban area could be disastrous, to say the least. Yet, with numerous budget cuts and more restrictions than ever on space shuttle missions, NASA's hands are tied. There is no chance for a mission to repair the satellite, or even engineer some kind of controlled reentry.

Foreign governments have been notified of the potential threat.

Also in space news, astronomers have announced the discovery of a 'death star'. 1.4 Billion years ago, in a galaxy far, far away, a dormant Black Hole suddenly awakened. Its parent galaxy was beginning to merge with a neighbor, and the disruption stirred the sleeping giant to life.

Like all active Black Holes, this monster is once again feeding on helpless bits of matter, like stars and planets, and has begun emitting powerful polar beams.

The Death Star is so named because one of its beams of potent X-rays has struck the partner galaxy, and is punching a hole right through.

Another pop-culture reference cropped up in the world of science this week. A four-year-old photo taken by the Mars probes has suddenly re-emerged. In our continued search for new life, new civilizations, one man found the proverbial 'little green man'.

In a photograph making the rounds on the internet and other media, the image from Mars appears to show a small greenish humanoid walking down hill.

NASA assures us that the supposed alien is really just a rock, eroded by wind, that stands a mere 2" high. Predictably, the conspiracy nuts reply: "Of course NASA would say that."

Amazing technological breakthroughs have allowed us to send probes to Mars, and take so many of these wonderful pictures, showing us faces on the ground, walking stone-men, and bunny rabbits in the odd cloud.

Yet, a recent discovery in England may take us in the opposite direction, giving us new insight deeper within ourselves than every before. At least, in the greatest grey area of all, the least understood of all the body's organs - the brain.

Researchers from some of England's top universities are preparing to begin testing on a device that they believe will provide never before dreamed-of relief to sufferers of Alzheimer's Disease. Based on studies of mice brains exposed to a certain wavelength of light, their own creation, the 'cognitive helmet', may be able to stimulate human brain cells to regrow. This breakthrough - if functional - could go beyond the scope of merely slowing the decay of a person's mind, but actually reverse the damage, to some extent.

We'll be sure to keep an eye on this.

Also in England, it seems London has borrowed a page from the Americans, and freed the slaves. London police are cracking down on gangs that are confiscating children for use in Dickens-style urchin organizations.

Early reports indicate that more than 5,000 children may be enslaved in just such a fashion in London alone.

Spokesmen said that ever since England joined the European Union, organized criminal groups have been smuggling children across the channel.

And, finally, our strangest story of the week. On Sunday, an 81 year old man from Chili woke up at his own wake. He'd been discovered cold and not breathing by his family, who assumed he had passed on. Instead of calling a doctor, they called the funeral home. They were in for surprise, though, as, when they gathered to pay their last respects, the old man sat up in his coffin and asked for a drink of water.

Coincidentally enough, this is the very reason we have a tradition of holding wakes to begin with. A few hundred years ago, it was not all that uncommon for a person to be believed dead, yet not be quite gone yet. To keep from burying people alive, somebody way back when came up with the idea of laying bodies out for viewing, just in case they might wake up. Hence the name: 'wake'.

A related tradition, which has fallen into disuse, involved tying a string to the big toe of a corpse about to be interred, and the other end to a bell left on the surface. The idea was that if somebody woke up six feet under, they could ring the bell and summon aid. This is actually where we get the term 'dead ringer'.

The practice fell into disuse following the widespread institution of embalming. There really isn't any waking up once your blood has been replaced with formaldehyde.

We'll be right back. (break)

And - we're back. As many of you who've recently been to the website know - and, by the way, thank you to everyone. BelradUniverse.com had over 10,000 unique visitors last week.

As many of you know, my 'pet' project this year is taking apart String Theory, like I put down the Big Bang last year. I'm making some progress, but I'm also running into problems unlike anything I encountered when researching the flaws in the Big Bang.

Discrediting the theory of gravitons, which String Theory depends on, was easy; the bloody things make no sense. But, just as was the case with the Big Bang, simply showing that a theory is utterly impossible isn't enough. There are devotees in high places that "Believe" with a religious fervor, and little things like facts aren't going to sway them easily.

To take down this mammoth, it has to be irrevocably destroyed, annihilated, run through the shredder, and recycled into those rumpley paper coffee cups.

The problem is that String Theory is riddled with assumptions built upon assumptions, all tied up together interdependently in such a way that disproving one should disprove them all - but you can't actually test anything to prove or disprove any of it!

We see the same kind of assumptive bias in a lot of so-called science these days. Like the study last year that "proved" chocolate cravings were caused by intestinal bacteria. The researchers found that people who eat chocolate regularly had more of a certain kind of bacteria than those who didn't, so concluded that, obviously, the bacteria are controlling the host, compelling him or her to eat chocolate.

It couldn't possibly be that the bacteria are just adapting to the environment in the guts of someone who eats chocolate anyway - no, it makes so much more sense to say they're controlling the host. Perhaps through some kind of neurotoxin-endorphin stimulus?

String Theory had a similar issue about a decade ago. A researcher found that the motion of objects in String's 11 dimensions can be much more easily and accurately described if one views them instead as 'particles' functioning in just three or four dimensions. So, obviously, we need a model of the model to render it remotely useful. It couldn't possibly be that objects existing as particles in a four-dimensional universe actually are particles in a four-dimensional universe - incidentally, a simpler and more correct view!

Because, as we all know, just because we only measure four dimensions in the universe (well, five, counting mass), doesn't mean that there's no reason to believe that there aren't a few more hidden around here somewhere, that don't actually do anything or influence the universe in any way. Except to weaken gravity.

Yeah, ok. Sometime I'll have to remember to get Dr. Soxov's view on that.

But, for now, that leads me into one of my favorite letters from this week.

That's right! I've got hatemail!!!

Recently, I wrote "Credit Where Credit is Due", an article examining the nature of the beast behind the mortgage meltdown. Here's an adaptation for the show.

As the mortgage crisis in the United States continues to worsen (now, one in six homes are in danger of foreclosure), it seems everyone is scrambling for a scapegoat or alibi.

Like all disasters that impact a large portion of the nation's population, or the economy, the issue of 'who is to blame' has quickly transformed into a political matter. Predictably, the talkers of the Right are stepping up to defend interests of business, while the Left lines up behind whoever seems to be the most vulnerable underdog.

As with most such things, one side can easily accuse the other of 'blaming the victim', and this seems especially true in this case. Is it the fault of a hiker who steps into a bear trap for not looking where he was going, or is the trapper to blame, for laying a hazard so close to a nature trail?

So too is the muddled matter of the mortgage market. Did too many people try to bite off more than they can chew? Or are the banks succumbing to the siren song of greed?

In all honesty, the truth is most probably a bit of both. However, it does seem strange that so many people would all of a sudden up and sign for mortgages that they know they can't afford - all at once.

Call me a liberal, but I believe in giving credit where credit is due. Something had to change to make it possible for all these people who can't afford their homes to suddenly be eligible for mortgages. What gives?

According to federal reports, better than 50% of mortgages in 2006 were enacted with down payments of 5% or less. Incidentally, until two years ago, it was nearly impossible for anyone who didn't have AAA credit AND a hefty income to qualify for a mortgage like that.

What changed? According to Mike Colpitts, editor of Housing Predictor, "Mortgages were made to many subprime borrowers that adjusted upward to unrealistically high payments within a couple of years and thousands of mortgage agents and mortgage brokers working on commission cooked the applications to make more conventional 'Junk Mortgages' that should have never been made in the first place."

In short, loan sharking has become a standard business practice in American Banking.

For example, let us consider a recent lawsuit involving Wells Fargo Home Mortgage. According to court documents, Wells Fargo artificially and fraudulently inflated the escrow portion of the borrower's mortgage payment four times within the first year. What's worse, the first such 'adjustment', which was made within a month of the signing date, more than doubled the total payment.

Personally, I don't know anyone who can long survive a mortgage payment that doubles within the first month, and continues rising regularly. In this case, the sum of the total payment had reached nearly 300% of the original agreed upon amount before the first year was up.

There are many ways a lender can be predatory. A bank can 'strip equity', with exorbitant fees forced on a signer at the closing table. Bank "errors" can keep payments from being properly credited to an account, forcing a borrower to refinance to prevent foreclosure (which gets the bank its money back, with a hefty instant-profit from closing). They can pursue a reverse tactic, and apply all manner of hidden fees to prevent a borrower from refinancing out of the loan.

This particular case illustrates a new kind of bank fraud: escrow extortion. What happens here is the bank "accidentally" overpays the taxes due on the mortgaged home, never credits the refunds, and charges the borrower for the difference by raising the payment.

By contrast, the conventional wisdom says that it is adjustable interest rates that are wiping out all these mortgages. If this is even partly correct, a one or two percent shift upward would translate to $50-300 more per month. Compare the hardship caused by that with the payment outright tripling. In the case mentioned here, the interest rate never even had a chance to adjust.

The wonderful world of sub-prime mortgages has opened up a whole new horizon to predatory banks like Wells Fargo; a lovely place of pure profit, where extortion and fraud rule, and no one has the resources to sue them for the robbery they commit under the guise of financing.

Millions of 30 year loans turned over in 2-3 years, with gigantic 'shock' profits on both ends, have filled banks like Wells Fargo's purses so deeply that a $10 million verdict against them doesn't even cause a flinch in their stock's market value.

Even class-action suits, like the one currently being sponsored by the city of Baltimore, also against Wells Fargo, don't register as a blip on their bottom line.

So let's give credit where credit is due. Is the current financial crisis really due to people borrowing more than they can afford? Considering that banks are supposed to screen candidates for loans via their applications, credit, and income levels, how could that possibly be the case, unless the banks wanted it that way?

The bottom is falling out of the market, not because of rising interest rates or irresponsibility on the part of some borrowers - those factors are just drops in the bucket - but because the mortgage bankers themselves have ripped the bottom out with a crowbar of gold. While tens, if not hundreds, of millions of Americans suffer through the nightmare of wrongful foreclosure, and all of us pay the price in government 'protection' against the bankers' "losses" (to prevent an economic collapse, of course), today's Kings of Greed make out like the Robber Barons of old.

Welcome to the new United States of America, property of Wells Fargo.

In response to that article, John of the internet had this to say:

"First, Wells Fargo had the lowest 2007 first mortgage write down of any major bank. While Countrywide and other less responsible lenders were introducing neg am loans into the market, Wells Fargo said those products are not responsbile and not in keeping with consumers best interest. Second, where the hell do you get your information on escrow accounts? To suggest that banks short the escrow account at closing so they can raise the payment and force the borrower into foreclosure- well that's just stupid. I'm definately not going out on a limb to say 'that is the dumbest suggestion of 2008'. Banks make money by servicing the loans for investors. Anyone who knows anything about mortgage lending knows the money is in the servicing, not owning the note. When investors buy a bundle of loans from an originator, there's a certain level of default built into each bundle of loans depending on the risk class of the package. If the default rate exceeds the preset limit, the investor calls upon the originating bank to reimburse them or buy back the loan. Yes banks go bankrupt and are required to close their doors if they cannot reimburse the investor. Just like own it mortgage, new century mortgage and the other 100 plus banks that went out of business this year. If they all got reimbursed by the government they wouldn't go bankrupt you idiot. There's a lot of garbage on the web and most of the time I just laugh, but since I'm in the business and your article was so misguided, I am for the first time in my life posting a comment regarding something I read online. Congrats, you are kind of lending stupidity."

Well, John, while I appreciate your ad hominem attacks in calling me an idiot - and, I must admit, they certainly add to your argument - I do state at the beginning of the article that the escrow scheme is according to court documents: it is not MY idea, and it was never denied by Wells Fargo, or thrown out of court.

So, in point of fact, I'm not 'suggesting' anything. I'm simply stating what Wells Fargo has been caught with their hands in the cookie jar.

I can't speak to the now-defunct banks you mention, but challenging what "anyone knows" is exactly the purpose of the article.

Finally, while a case can be made that other banks, like HSB and Countrywide, exercise more predatory practices, my criteria for giving the loan shark crown to Wells Fargo are based on the number of times they've been sued for fraud, the number of times they've lost, and the ratio between them. To just guess based on the number of horror stories floating around is still nothing more than a guess.

So thanks for playing our game. You gave it a good try, and better luck next time.

I honestly do feel sorry for you that you are in this terrible business, which is responsible for ruining so many decent peoples' lives, but more so because whatever brainwashing and corporate bull they feed you guys so you can sleep at night has obviously stuck.

Best of luck, and thanks for writing.

We'll be right back...(break)

Welcome back to Belrad Universe.

People like John are one of the reasons that we, as a nation, are so polarized. We are truly unable to see the other side's point of view on so very many issues. We're so blinded by our own way of thinking, our own biased version of the world, that we can't even conceive of anything else. Anybody who doesn't think the same as us is obviously an idiot.

Should we ignore the vast knowledge and experience of a Doctor on the verge of curing cancer because he happens to believe in gay marriage? If he were a pro-life activist, would it render his potential contribution valueless to half the country?

Even though the elections of old were much more brutal, today, it is not the politicians, but the people, who are filled with blinding hate. Both liberals and conservatives see nothing but the madness in the other side's view.

It is utter insanity. So many people are so deeply entrenched in the rhetoric, in the garbled, hypocritical nonsense spewed forth by the Rushes and Eds of the world, that we've forgotten what it's like to think for ourselves.

We are a nation becoming a land of extremist maniacs. Anyone who doesn't toe the party line is both a moron and a traitor. Either side can state, truthfully, that "those ____s are nothing but hate mongers, completely unable to see reason."

There is, however, hope. I've been getting letters asking me why I support Barack Obama over Hillary, McCain, or any of the others. I've been accused of all manner of things from partisanship to reverse racism. Of course, for the extremist, any justification will do. There is no need to think.

But, for those of us who prefer to have control over our own thoughts and views, tempered with a little bit of intelligence, I have something for your consideration. The pundits ask what Barack means when he talks about change. This is what he had to say in South Carolina, following his landslide victory there this week.

(Sound clip: "We're up against decades of bitter partisanship that cause politicians to demonize their opponents instead of coming together to make college affordable. Or energy cleaner. It's the kind of partisanship where you're not even allowed to say that a Republican had an idea, even if it's one you never agreed with.

That's the kind of politics that's bad for our party, it's bad for our country, and this is our chance to end it once and for all. And where we are met with cynicism and doubt and fear and those who tells us that we can't, we will respond with that timeless creed that sums up the spirit of the American people in three simple words: Yes we can.")

With a record voter turnout - double those who voted in the last presidential race - Obama blew away the illusion of a dead heat in the democratic contest.

It's easy to see why. Where the other candidates on both sides talk about change as a kind of catch-phrase, Barack means it. He said, ``The choice in this election is not about regions or religions or genders. It's not about rich versus poor, young versus old and it is not about black versus white. This election is about the past versus the future.''

He is Martin Luther King and John F. Kennedy rolled into one. He is a living embodiment of the full potential of the American Dream, and just what a person can accomplish when the system works correctly.

He believes in human potential, human spirit, and the drive in all of us to succeed. He, like his predecessors, stands against those aspects of our society that divide us, and catalog us, and categorize us. Those who came before gave their lives to the effort of ending the division between black and white Americans.

Today's struggle is one of a different order. It is one of Red versus Blue, of conservative versus liberal. But it is every bit as hateful, every bit as irrational, and every bit as damaging to the future of our nation.

And just like those great men who came before, who gave up their lives in the quest to spread the full potential of freedom's boon on all our citizens, Barack really can make a difference. Kennedy and King worked to end the separation between black and white. Today, Barack works to end the separation between Red and Blue, so that we can, for the first time in our history, stand as a nation truly united.

How can we advance as a people if we are not permitted to question? How can we grow intellectually when our thoughts themselves have to be labeled as red or blue? How can we learn from each other when we focus so deeply on ignoring everything that does not fit into our preconceived notions of reality?

Political hatred is every bit as much a kind of prejudice as racial bias, and every bit as damaging to our country. It can ruin the lives of others, and it can handicap our own ability to think - that most precious of human gifts.

Without a clear ability to reason, we are nothing more than irrational creatures, doing as those who came before us have done. We need to carve a path through the ignorance, through the hatred, and through those who would control our thoughts. We will not let anyone else dictate to us who we are to be, or what kind of person we are. We are Americans. We can be united, as a cohesive, dynamic society of thinking individuals, who all believe in one thing above all else: freedom.

Because without freedom, what are we to do, or think, or dream, ultimately, but that which is forced on us, told by others?

That's all for this week.

Before we go, a big congratulations goes out to Mike, who just graduated from the Navy bootcamp this past Friday. He goes on to join the hundreds of thousands of brave young souls who are out there kicking terrorist ass on our behalf.

Thanks to all of you who wrote in. Remember, if you have a story you want to share, a question you need answered, or an idea that won't let you sleep at night, email us at Show@BelradUniverse.com, and we'll see if we can't look into next time, on Belrad Universe.

Until then, stay safe, everyone.