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While Assassin’s Creed II did deliver on the promise of improving playability, some still felt that gaps along the storyline needed some filling. For that, Ubisoft is releasing downloadable content that’ll set the record straight.
 
 
 
 

If you’ve been wanting to use your Zune HD to get your Twitter on, today is your day. Twitter for Zune HD is a free app, now available in the Zune Marketplace, that lets you interact with your Twitter peoples. You can read Tweets, update your status, and all that good stuff. If you don’t see it, give it a little bit, it was just deployed, which means it may take a few before it shows up.

Now, can we get some Zune HD Facebook love?

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Playing its most consistent game of the season, Harper’s women’s basketball team recorded a 51-41 victory over Oakton Community College.

“Today we played two solid halves of basketball,” said Harper Head Coach Mark Smith. “We’ve been getting tired and playing inconsistently as a result, but we played better overall for 40 minutes in this game.”

Leading the way for Harper was Peggie Parhas with 24 points, 7 rebounds and 7 steals, Noreen Davis with 12 rebounds, 5 points and 4 steals, and Anna Kirchoff adding 16 points.

“Oakton likes to slow things down and try to run as much time off the clock as they can,” says Smith, “and that allowed us to rely on basically 5 players, with 3 standout performances coming from Noreen, Peggie and Anna.”

“We lost to [Oakton] earlier in the year by two points at their place,” said Smith, “and we all kind of felt like we should have won that game. So we used that as motivation for today’s game. This was on our court and we were going to use that to our advantage – it really came down to who wanted it more.”

“This was our second win a row and, overall, this was a very good win for us,” concluded Smith.

The Lady Hawks now stand at 8-5 overall and 8-4 in Region IV action. Next up is a trip to Waubonsee for a game on Thursday, December 17th with tip-off set for 5:00 PM

With all these nice new builds floating around with lots of UI tweaks from Microsoft, it’s interesting that the volume controls haven’t had an overhaul yet.

There are a few alternatives, including the most recent: Volume Keys 0.3, which can be download from XDA-Developers.

Known issues / TODO:

    * Speaker icon does not change
    * No landscape support
    * Does not save volume if you slide up/down outside the bar
    * Does not work with in call volume
    * Seems to block some keys (send/end)

Via Technology Paradise.

Meat is murder.

Meat will clog your arteries.

Meat is an unnatural food.

Man is really an herbivore.

Meat will give you cancer.

Meat is bad for the environment.

It’s easy to forget that these are the common arguments leveled against meat-eaters. It’s easy to forget that most of the developed world assumes meat is inherently unhealthy – for our health, for the environment, and for animals. It’s easy to forget these things because, as Primal Blueprinters, we’re immersed in the literature and are actively involved in what we eat. To that end we understand that man evolved eating meat, that meat is an important part of a healthy human diet, and that meat production doesn’t have to be the unsustainable, industrialized monster it’s mostly become (and which rightly garners the most negative press). Still, what is the average meat eater to say in opposition to these charges?

First, when people condemn meat-eating, they aren’t actually railing against Primal eaters. They’re fighting a bogeyman, a perverted corruption of what a real meat-eater constitutes. They see the slaughterhouse-porn videos and assume that’s how it always goes down. You mention you eat a high-fat, high-animal food diet, and all they see is E. coli-contaminated blood on your hands. You mention something about local farms and pastured animals, but all they hear is the imagined cries of slaughtered calves, fattened on corn and soy that could have fed starving children. You smell the seared gristle and delicious beefy scent of a grilling steak, while they can smell only the excessive methane flatulence of a cow on a junk food diet. Now I don’t mean to paint an unfair or inaccurate portrait of your average anti-meat activist. But the fact remains that many simply have a viscerally negative reaction to the very idea of meat eating. They see the horrible conditions on factory farms and can think of nothing else. It makes sense, actually; I cringe (and wrinkle my nose) whenever I drive by that CAFO in Coalinga on I-5 heading to northern California, for example. If that’s all they see, I can’t say I blame them for being intolerant of meat-eating.

Still, it’s largely an emotional argument against meat eating, and that can be easily countered with real facts and awareness. By definition, an emotive argument shuns reason (when it conflicts) and clings to straws that bolster the emotion. The passionate anti-meat activist even carries a static arsenal of factoids and soundbites that sound true and gel with Conventional Wisdom. They might sound sensible, but they crumble under close scrutiny. My personal favorites are the anti-meat arguments that invoke human evolution as justification, simply because they’re so specious and so easy to counter. Let’s take a look…

Man is really an herbivore.

They love pulling this one. Fruitarians point to the fruit-loving chimps as proof – they’re our closest living relatives (though not as close as the purely carnivorous Neanderthals were, not that they’d acknowledge that little fact) and they eat a diet of roughly 70% fruit, with some insects and other plant matter thrown in. If they’re our closest living relatives, doesn’t it follow that our diet should be pretty similar to theirs? I dunno about you, but I consider six million years of evolutionary change to be a pretty significant amount of time. Oh, and don’t tell them about those chimps that actively hunt monkeys and other apes for fresh, raw meat. Just show them this video instead.

A lot can happen in six million years. Why, it might even be enough time – theoretically, of course – for a hominid to develop a big brain, hands with a precision grip that facilitated tool development, a fully bipedal gait with proper weight transmission at the ankles, mastery over fire, and a fully-fledged linguistic system. But no, six million years isn’t enough time for hominids to adapt to eating meat.

In reality, of course, meat fueled our evolution, as you’ll see in a bit. We are obligate omnivores, if not closet carnivores (if we have to).

But wait – what about our eight times body length small intestine? Carnivores’ small intestines are around three times their body length, while herbivores have much longer ones, right?

Actually, when measured from ass to mouth (the real distance that matters), our 8 to 1 ratio lies roughly in the middle of the pack between obligate carnivores like dogs (3.5 to 1) and cats (3 to 1), and herbivores like cows (20 to 1) and horses (12 to 1). How perfect is that? The obligate omnivore is nestled right in between the carnivore and the herbivore.

Besides, intestinal length isn’t even the best way to determine dietary need. An animal’s particular arsenal of digestive organs is. Actual herbivores have special organs designated for breaking down cellulose – multi-compartmental stomachs, for example. We have but one, and it absolutely cannot break down cellulose to any significant degree. If we were herbivores, we might even have rabbit-like cecums, highly developed digestive sacs that do the brunt of the digestive work for hindgut digesters. I almost wish we had that capability, if only for the advantage of cecotropes – fecal pellets high in vitamins, nutrients, and proteins that rabbits expel for later consumption. Delicious.

Our measly little stomachs can’t handle all that fiber. If a person really wanted to be a true herbivore, he or she’d have to chew cud for hours (that’s why cows are known for chewing cud – it’s a way to predigest all that tough stuff), vomit it up after a little digestive work in the stomach, and repeat the process. Thanks, but I’ll just take some steak with my salad.

And, like clockwork, they interrupt with:

Okay, maybe we did eat some meat, but we were scavengers fighting over scraps. Meat wasn’t a big part of our diet!

Not if you believe the fossil evidence that shows hominids actually manipulated bones “on which flesh was abundant… rather than defleshed from field kills.” We weren’t just starving opportunists. We actively hunted animals, large and small, to obtain large amounts of meat and fat. The only way to get your hands on an intact carcass loaded with delicious flesh – as the evidence clearly shows our ancestors did so on a regular basis – is to kill it yourself. Waiting around for the lions to have their share is hyena territory, scavenger stuff. You don’t become the ultimate predator and propagate your species across the entire globe by solely scavenging for bone scraps – although we did plenty of that, too, as fossil records show evidence of bone marrow extraction from two million years ago using complex stone tools.

If we were meant to eat meat, we’d have claws and big fangs.

Tool-making and large brains are as much an inseparable part of humanity as claws and fangs are of lions. You might argue that claws and fangs “make” the lion, because without them they would die out. Tools and big brains make the man. You can’t take tools away simply because they aren’t a physiological member attached to our bodies; tool making is an integral aspect of human evolution. Our hands and brains make tool usage possible. Think of our tools, our weapons, our hands, and our big brains as our “claws and big fangs.”And as I mentioned earlier, we’ve been using those technological “claws and big fangs” to obtain meat and marrow for at least two million years, plenty of time for tools to become an essential aspect of our human-ness.

Besides, we aren’t arguing that man is purely carnivorous. He certainly can be, but the point of contention is whether meat is a natural part of the human diet. It clearly is. Throwing in shoddy comparisons to actual carnivores like lions and tigers is dishonest and only serves to muddy the waters.

And so, it’s not that we were “meant” to eat meat. It’s simply that we evolved eating meat. Meat represented a reliable source of dense caloric energy packed with nutrients and vitamins essential to our prosperity. Big brains (the existence of which, I’m hoping, even the most ardent vegetarians don’t argue against) were made possible by the consumption of meat, organs, and other nutrient-rich animal products. Instead of spending all their metabolic energy processing cellulose and plant matter, our ancestors turned to a high-meat diet, which utilized fat-soluble vitamins (already converted into the forms we can best take advantage of) and meant energy could be diverted away from a big fermenting pot of a stomach and toward fueling their massive brains. Our brains eat up about 25% of our basal metabolic rate, compared to 8-10% for the apes who eat far less animal matter. Our brains are large and our guts (well, sometimes) are small and bereft of cellulose-consuming bacteria, while a gorilla’s brain is relatively small and its gut enormous and well-equipped with the proper bacteria. How else are they supposed to process all that plant matter?

Easy to digest meat and fat made our big brains possible. I’m not saying vegetarianism makes people stupid, because it doesn’t. I’m just saying they should give credit where credit’s due. You’re able to ruminate on the horrors of meat eating and “articulate” your arguments for a very simple reason: your ancestors ate a ton of fresh, bloody meat and animal fat. Just be glad they didn’t share your dietary proclivities, or else you’d be ruminating on actual grass, twigs, and sticks instead of enjoying culture, language, music, and the other accomplishments of mankind’s big ass brain.

And that about sums up the evolutionary anti-meat angle. It sounds compelling, if all you’ve got under your belt is a semester of high school biology, but it crumbles under real scrutiny.

Tomorrow, we’ll explore a couple other arguments, but for now, let’s discuss any other examples of pseudo-scientific anti-meat talking points grounded in faulty evolutionary science. I’m sure I missed a few…

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1. In Defense of Meat, Part 2: Animal and Human Well-Being
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Another credit rater lowers the boom.

S&P just got around to lowering Greece to a BBB+.

Join the conversation about this story »

See Also:

• It’s Spreading: The Greek Flu Comes To Austria
• Greek Finance Minister Comes Out Swinging, Hints At Similarities With US Debt Situation
• 15 Things You Must Know About The Ongoing Greek Debacle

Activision has let loose a few more bits of detail regarding Transformers: War for Cybertron, the new multiplatform game from High Moon Studios. Two campaign storylines, mutliplayer, and more after the jump.

Filed under: Classics, Etc., Videos

It took just one minute and 13 seconds into this video for us to scream “Epic!” In fact, we’re not sure there’s enough epic epicness in that single word to properly describe the epic proportions contained therein.

This 1970’s JDM homage has got it all: A yellow Pontiac Trans-Am of the Screaming Chicken era, a race-prepped red Nissan GT-R police car, a yellow Datsun Fairlady 280ZX and lots of meddling trucks. As if that weren’t enough, there are little green army men and a special effects regime that could have been overseen by Michael Bay. And it has a really odd name. Luxe37, we have no idea who you are, but we salute you. Follow the jump to watch the stop-motion mayhem.

[Source: YouTube]

Continue reading VIDEO: The Fastest Yellow and Red – Best (and most ambitious) stop-motion diecast car film ever?

VIDEO: The Fastest Yellow and Red – Best (and most ambitious) stop-motion diecast car film ever? originally appeared on Autoblog on Wed, 16 Dec 2009 12:29:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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A fresh-tasting blend of cold milk, cream and eggs seasoned with sugar, vanilla and nutmeg and spiked with dark, rich liquor, homemade eggnog is a far cry from the cloying, chemical-laden stuff that comes from cartons. And the biggest surprise? It’s quick and easy to prepare.

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I find winter solstice to be an extremely uplifting day, so we celebrate it. To me, it feels like the weight of the long nights and short days and cold weather gets lifted off of me because we turn the corner towards spring. I like it a lot.

This mood gets me into the giving mood. So a couple of years ago I started listing secular charities and compiled a list. Sadly, for me, this year I was unable to refresh it. I kept putting it off and now I am pretty swamped with work (I have not been home for any decent amount of time for 3 weeks), and a skeptical project I am working on. So while I have intended to redesign the list to make it easier to read and navigate, I fear I must simply refer you to the old post, much like I did last year.

PLEASE add your favorite secular charities in the comments section! If any links are dead, please report them. I will get around to doing a real refresh before next year! I promise.

Here is the list of secular charities.

Want to get really rich? Go back in time and trade stocks with full knowledge of the future.

Well, you can’t do that, but if you could, here’s a guide.

Eddy Elfenbein over at Crossing Wall Street compiled the following list of top performing stocks since January 1st, 2000.

The criteria for the list was dead simple:

“Any stock traded on a US exchange that had a price of at least 50 cents on 12/31/99.“

To have bet on these stocks ten years ago would have made you incredibly rich. So rich, in fact, that if you invested $10,000 in Green Mountain Coffee Roasters ten years ago, you’d have earned $789,540 – a 7,895.4% return on your investment.

So, whether you missed out or made the right calls…

Check out the best performing stocks of the decade ->

Join the conversation about this story »

See Also:

• Where Wall Street Gets Drunk
• CHARTS OF THE WEEK: Why Is Apple’s Stock Diving?
• Sorry, AOL’s Stock Is A Dog

With the Obama White House appearing thoroughly convinced of the entertainment industry’s views on “piracy,” it’s a bit surprising to hear that it has come out in favor of a proposed treaty to create copyright exceptions for the visually impaired. This is the WIPO treaty that we recently wrote about, noting that all those organizations pushing for ACTA were very much against this particular treaty. The Commerce Department even responded to the entertainment industry by saying that nothing about the treaty appears to “weaken” international copyright law, as they fear.

Unfortunately, the details suggest a bit of horse trading may be going on. The report suggests that the Commerce Department is saying that it will support this particular treaty, but it will seek to strengthen copyright law pretty much everywhere else (by which it means full support for ACTA). There’s been a near universal alignment on these two treaties: those in favor of the WIPO one are against ACTA, and those in favor of ACTA are against this treaty. Reading a bit between the lines, it looks like the Obama White House is saying it will support both treaties. While the WIPO treaty is important, it’s a much smaller deal than the ACTA treaty. So, even if the White House is supporting it, it looks like it may just be doing so to remove some complaints on ACTA, which is the big problem.

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MAGIC NUMBERS: For years, in the brooding manor house overlooking a little Scotch village, John Napier worked in mysterious seclusion. Some of his 16th century neighbors even suggested that he was dabbling in witchcraft. But there was no black magic about the ivory calculating “Bones” he invented to help merchants figure their accounts. And it was pure genius that enabled Napier to invent logarithms. With these magical numbers, the most complicated multiplication and division could be quickly transformed into easy addition and subtraction. Logarithms halved the labors of star-charting astronomers; made calculation so easy that unschooled mariners could quickly plot their position anywhere on the seven seas. Today our cities, highways, dams are built on the logarithms that speed engineers through the thousands of computations each design requires.

IBM.

INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS MACHINES CORPORATION

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I just thought this was so ridiculous I had to post it.

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THE HOMOSEXUAL WHO WRECKED AN EMPIRE

His queer pleasures drove him to treason—and started a world war!

By STEFAN v. S. RUBELCU

THE APARTMENT was a decorator’s dream, luxuriously tricked out with all kinds of feminine frills and heavy with the sickening sweet odors of perfume and incense. Almost daintily, the figure in the lush room touched a manicured finger to a baroque wooden floral decoration on the pearl-inlaid wall panelling. Noiselessly, a door slid open, disclosing a capacious closet crammed with obviously expensive female apparel.

Racks of jasmine-scented silken kimonos fought for space with mounds of frilly lingerie. Other shelves held the sheerest of silk stockings, and there was a large rack of hand-crafted high heeled shoes occupying the left side of the secret compartment from floor to ceiling.

Many a woman would have swooned with delight at just a fraction of this voluptuous display of dainties. Yet, ironically, this was not the wardrobe of some courtesan or wealthy beauty.

It was the boudoir of a man who delighted in dazzling young Army officers and orderlies—a man whose mission in life was to corrupt them in order to satisfy his homosexual passions.

This was the home of Alfred Victor Redl, a man who lived two lives.

Outwardly he was a virile, much-decorated Colonel on the General Staff of the proudest army in Europe, chief of his country’s Counter-intelligence Corps, respected confidant of an Emperor and his heir.

Behind the scenes he was a purple pansy who delighted in posing for photos in the nude while engaged in shocking perversions—and one of the most infamous traitors in history. His betrayal of Austria’s top secret war plans helped to spark World War I, and brought about the ruin of his country and the downfall of a dynasty that had ruled for more than 600 years.

Here, from official records, is one of the most fantastic cloak-and-dagger operations in history—the story of the homosexual who betrayed an Empire.

Redl was the son of a poverty-stricken railroad freight clerk at Lemberg (Lwow), then part of the vast Austro-Hungarian Empire. At the age of 15 he enrolled in a cadet school and eight years later was commissioned a lieutenant in the Imperial Army.

A torried love affair with a circus cutie left him with two unsolicited decorations: gonorrhea and syphilis. The treatment for VD in those days was rough and exceedingly painful. For gonorrhea there were burning injections of silver nitrate and copper sulphate for several weeks, as well as excrutiating probing with a metal catheter to keep the urinary tract open. For syphilis there were daily massages with mercury ointment and several years of mercury pills.

Long after the physical discomforts abated, the psychic scars remained. For the rest of his life Redl shunned women, found satisfaction only in perverse sex practices with men.

Ruthlessly ambitious, he rose rapidly in the army. At 28 he won a coveted appointment to the War College. Promoted to Captain, he was sent to Russia to serve his apprenticeship as a spy in the nation regarded as Austria’s most potent foe. On his return he was assigned to the Intelligence Bureau of the General Staff at Vienna, where he soon achieved a reputation as a brilliant officer.

Thus at the age of 36 Captain Redl was a soldier with a bright future—and a dark, secret present.

There was a private villa on the outskirts of Vienna where gentlemen of means and exotic tastes gathered to engage in indescribable orgies with male prostitutes. Redl often attended these orgies, posed for lewd photographs which he treasured under lock and key in his desk to refresh his memory between sessions.

Sybaritic living, expensive gifts to his favorites and occasional blackmail forced him to live far beyond his means. He was over his head in debt.

He managed to hide his secret vice from his colleagues and superiors in Vienna—but it soon became known to a black-bearded, beady-eyed little man in Warsaw, on the other side of the border. As chief of the Czar’s espionage center, Colonel Nikolai Stepanowitsch Batjuschin made it his business to keep completely informed on the private life and personal eccentricities of all members of the Austro-Hungarian General Staff.

A Russian agent brought Captain Redl a proposition —and an ultimatum.

Colonel Batjuschin wanted certain top secret documents from the classified files of the General Staff. He was willing to pay handsomely for them. If Redl refused to provide them, convincing proof of his homosexuality would be immediately sent to the Chief of Staff of the Austro-Hungarian army.

Forced to choose between treason and certain ruin, Redl chose treason. During the next ten years he delivered war mobilization plans, reports on the deployment of armies, blueprints of fortresses and details of new weapons to the Russians. It was a simple task for an officer in his position to extract classified documents from the files, photograph them and return them to the files. The photos, sealed in innocuous envelopes, were mailed to various spy drops in Paris, Zurich and Norway.

By return mail Redl received regular remittances of money far exceeding his salary. This enabled him to live on an even more lavish scale

than ever before. He took a large new apartment, bought an expensive fire-engine-red Daimler complete with liveried chauffeur, maintained a stable of high-stepping horses. To explain his sudden affluence, he invented a legacy from an imaginary rich uncle.

However, Redl was intelligent enough to realize that he was living on the brink of a precipice. The moment his usefulness was over, Colonel Batjuschin would not hesitate to expose him and turn him over to the tender mercies of a court-martial. Casting around for a means of averting this fate, he came up with an interesting thought: Surely the Russian spymaster had some secret weakness or vice he was hiding from his superiors!

He assigned agents to investigate Batjuschin. They discovered that the Colonel, too, was living far beyond his means. He made up the deficit by falsifying his accounts. Thousands of rubles vouchered as pay for foreign agents actually went into his own pockets.

Incognito, Redl arrived in Warsaw for a showdown. He told Batjuschin what he had discovered, exhibited the proof of wholesale embezzlement his agents had uncovered. The Russian surrendered.

“I suppose this puts an end to our convenient arrangement,” he said.

“Not at all,” Redl quietly replied. “Except that from now on we deal with each other as equals.”

Patriotism, honor and loyalty were empty concepts, he declared. Each of the two scoundrels wanted to enjoy life after his fashion and to advance his career. So a deal would be mutually profitable. From time to time Batjuschin would send him the names of Austrians on the payroll of the Russians. In exchange, Redl would betray to him Russian agents working for the Austrians.

They shook hands on this new twist in cynical treachery. During the next 12 months Redl (by means of information supplied by Batjuschin) tracked down and convicted 12 spies working for the Russians. Among them were a Lieutenant Colonel, a Major and a Captain in the Austro-Hungarian army, and a highly-placed employee in the War Ministry at Vienna. His superiors were astounded; during the previous five years only three Russian spies had been caught and convicted.

Rapidly promoted as the result of such achievements within a few years, Redl was a Lieutenant Colonel, chief of Austrian counter-espionage and deputy chief of Army Intelligence. He was decorated by the Emperor, accompanied His Majesty on maneuvers, was acknowledged to be the outstanding expert on espionage in Europe.

Meanwhile he had acquired a new lover, a 14-year-old boy whom he presented publicly as his “nephew.” He put the boy through cadet school, after graduation had him assigned to the finest cavalry regiment in the Empire, showered him with expensive gifts—two diamond rings, a string of fine horses, a high-powered automobile, a fine apartment and a princely allowance which enabled his protege to live in proper style.

All this took money. In spite of his increased salary and the regular sums he earned by betraying Austrian secrets to Batjuschin, Redl once more found himself caught up in the financial rat-race. He solved that problem by simultaneously selling classified documents from army files to the Italian and French military attaches in Vienna.

Early in 1913, while Redl (recently promoted to Colonel) was on special duty at Prague, disaster struck.

Major Max Ronge of Austrian Army Intelligence received a communication from his ally and counterpart in the German Army, Major Walter Nicolai. It forwarded a letter addressed to “Herr Nikon Nizetas”, care of General Delivery, Vienna. The letter had remained unclaimed in the Vienna post office for several weeks, then been returned to the city shown on the postmark, Berlin.

German censors had opened it It contained 6,000 crowns (about $1,500) in banknotes and the addresses of two known spy centers, one in Paris and the other in Geneva.

Major Ronge set a trap at the Vienna post office, but “Herr Nizetas” did not show up. A month later two more letters addressed to him arrived at General Delivery. They contained a total of 14,000 crowns (about $3,-500). Ronge replaced the letters, assigned two detectives to the post office.

Three weeks later “Herr Nizetas” claimed his mail. The clerk stepped on a buzzer, but the detectives were slow to respond. By the time they got to the window their quarry had signed his receipt, picked up his letters and disappeared in a cab. Luckily they were able to trace the cab to a hotel. And there they learned from the doorman that the gentleman who had gotten out of the cab was Colonel Alfred Redl.

The detectives at once telephoned Major Ronge. He was incredulous. It was ridiculous to suppose that the distinguished head of Imperial counterespionage was himself a spy! However he ordered them to keep an eye on Colonel Redl. Meanwhile he sent an aide to pick up the signed receipts at the post office. Redl’s well-known handwriting was unmistakable.

Later that evening, when Redl emerged from the hotel, two detectives followed at a discreet distance. From constant practice he had eyes in the back of his head and soon spotted the tail. He realized the game was over; somehow he had given himself away. Agents would soon be at his apartment in Prague, and it was full of incriminating evidence. As he walked he removed some papers from his wallet, tore them up and threw them into the gutter. A detective retrieved them and took them to Major Ronge. • One was a receipt for a registered letter addressed to a spy drop in Paris. The other was a money order dispatched to Redl’s “nephew” at a garrison just outside Vienna.

Shortly after midnight four officers knocked on the door of Redl’s hotel room. The Colonel admitted them. “I know why you are here,” he said. “I am guilty. I want only to judge myself.” On interrogation, he confessed that he had sold war secrets to Russia and said he had no accomplices. One of the officers put a pistol on the table and they filed out. Redl picked up the pistol, put the muzzle in his mouth and pulled the trigger. The suicide of Colonel Redl “because of mental exhaustion caused by overwork” created a minor sensation. The General Staff tried to hush the scandal. But when a search of his apartment turned up shocking proof of homosexuality and espionage the newspapers got hold of the true story and the fat was in the fire. Public opinion was outraged; there was an uproar in the Austrian Parliament. Lieutenant Stefan Hromodka, Redl’s “nephew”, was tried by a military court and found guilty of “unnatural prostitution.” He was sentenced to three months hard labor and dishonorable discharge from the army.

A year later, when the first World War broke out, Austria tasted the bitter fruits of Redl’s betrayal.

Thanks to the information he sold, Russia broke the back of the drive into Poland, captured several fortresses and occupied eastern Hungary. To stave off complete collapse, Germany had to take over and reorganize the Austrian Army.

By the time the war ended Austria had suffered the highest casualties (in proportion to men engaged) of all the armies in the field. Some 90 percent of its troops—nine out of every ten men—were either killed, captured or wounded.

By terms of the peace treaty the

great Austro-Hungarian Empire ceased to exist. Out of its prostrate body was carved five new nations: Austria, Hungary, Czecho-Slovakia, Poland and Yugoslavia.

All this was the work of one traitor. Count Sternberg told Parliament: “Redl denounced each Austrian spy. He delivered our secrets to Russia and hindered our learning Russian secrets through spies. So in 1914 Austria and Germany remained ignorant of the existence of 75 Russian divisions, more than the whole Austro-Hungarian Army. Hence our desire for war and our defeat.

“If we had seen clearly, our generals would not have driven the high court officials into war.”

This homosexual not only betrayed the Empire—he dragged all of Europe into one of the bloodiest wars in history. • • •

Tags: sexuality

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To Our Clients, Colleagues and Friends, 

• Two weeks ago the government made a profit of $146 million selling the Capital One warrants they got in return for TARP money, and this week the government sold its JP Morgan Chase warrants for a profit of $936 million!  So far, the taxpayers have earned over $3 billion on these warrants.

• There was a time when the Oakland Raiders had phrases like Commitment to Excellence and Pride and Poise.  Now, they’re just an NFL embarrassment.  Last Sunday, Brandon Marshall of the Denver Broncos had 21 catches in a game. There’s only one Oakland Raider with as many as 21 catches all season!
• Our simple view on Tiger Woods: “Judge not, lest ye be judged.”  Let’s just leave the guy alone and mind our own business.
• Millions of college students learned economics from the Paul Samuelson text, called, simply, Economics.  Prof. Samuelson died this week at 94.  We still have our copy of the book from our freshman year in Hanover , N.H. reading the book and discovering the magic of the demand curve and the supply curve meeting, watching the snow fall, listening to the professor walk us through this text. The book was written in very clear English, and its 886 pages made the dismal science really come alive.
• A client reminded us that gyp ‘ems were originated under FHA Section 245. The securities were called “Dolly Partons” for obvious reasons. They were also known as “Jeeps”.
• Someone else wrote “I remember the GPM’s. I used to say they were the perfect loan program for people who either expected to win the lottery or had some terminal illness. 
• Here’s a graphic view of consolidation among mortgage lenders:

• It will be interesting to see how Avatar does, but we generally think it’s kind of insane to spend $300 million on a movie.  Paranormal Activity cost $15,000 and grossed more than $100 million.  We just don’t like management making huge bets with shareholders money.

• Is there more mortgage fraud committed by mortgage brokers, mortgage bankers, or commercial banks? It’s a known fact that mortgage brokers have committed the most fraud, but what about the other two categories?  We suspect that mortgage fraud was very rare at commercial banks.  Too many controls.  Does anyone have any statistics on this?
• It occurs to us that if you live in Santa Monica , you could send out cards this time of year saying Happy Hanukkah from Santa Monica .  Has a nice ring to it.
• People like to complain the credit card rates are too high.  Let’s look at JP Morgan Chase’s portfolio (ex-Wamu cards).  The portfolio has a yield of 15.7%, which does seem like a high rate.  However, charge-offs are running 8.8%, so the net yield to Chase is 6.9% (that is, 15.7% – 8.8% = 6.9%).  This should put it in perspective.
• A Lake Oswego mortgage banker, one of the very best operators we know, asked us recently which metrics we’d most want to know if we were running a mortgage company.  If we could only track, say, a dozen metrics, these are what we’d choose.  (1) Cost-to-originate, (2) Gain-on-sale margin by product, (3) Commissions in bps, (4) Salaries in bps, (5) Average days on WH lines, (6) Pre-tax earnings in bps each month & YTD, (7) Liquidity (in bps) to monthly fundings (8) Loans in WH over 30 days (9) Loans closed but unshipped over 5 days (10)  Leverage Ratio (Total Liabilities/ATNW) at month end, (12) Loans Shipped but Not Purchased > 15 days.
  If you don’t have all this on one piece of paper, on your desk within 2-3 days of the end of each month, then it’s hard to see how you can be highly profitable.
• The most lucrative part of any bank is its non-interest bearing deposits, so here’s a look at some California banks and what percentage of their deposits are non-interest bearing: 1^st Enterprise Bank (40%), American Business Bank (38.2%), Bridge Bank (44.1%), Chino Commercial Bank (43.7%), CVB Financial (34.9%), NCAL Financial (36.9%), and Silicon Valley Bank (64.1%).  Not surprisingly, the banks with the most non-interest bearing deposits seem to have the lowest Texas Ratios!  Someone with some extra time should look at all banks across the country and do some statistical analysis to see the level of correlation between these two ratios.  We think they’d be highly correlative.
• We went with Evan Stone to a meeting for Oakland A’s ticket holders.  There were maybe 20 of us, plus the team President, the Manager, and General Manager Billy Beane.  As you might know, the A’s developed five terrific rookie pitchers last year, but they didn’t produce runs.  Billy said that the statistics going back a hundred years show that the team that hits the most homers in a game will win 70% of the time, so their big thrust this year is to add power to the lineup.  Interesting that Billy’s statistics mirror what Earl Weaver used to say (and Earl probably knew nothing about regression analysis).  His formula for all those winning Orioles teams was simple:  Great pitching and three run homers. La plus ca change, la plus c’est la meme chose.

We don’t have coffee mugs with our logo on them to give people during the year, and we don’t send Christmas cards to our clients. Instead, we try to pick one charity at Christmas time that we give a small donation to, and this year we’ve chosen the USO, (USO.org) the non-profit organization that provides services and programs to soldiers and their families throughout the world.  When you’re ten years old and watching John Wayne war movies, all soldiers seem like men, but when you get older, you realize that they’re mostly boys.  Boys of 18-19 years, boys that would otherwise be college freshmen, boys risking their lives before they’ve really have a chance to start their lives.  

Whether you support or oppose our efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan, all Americans support these young men and women, and all of us hope to bring some light and cheer to them, especially at this Holiday season when they’re so far from home and their families.

Garrett, Watts & Co.  

today’s bonus:  “Simple vs. Complex Models in Mortgage Lending”

Helping mortgage lenders increase revenues, control costs, and better manage risk.

• Mike McAuley      ([email protected])
• Corky Watts         ([email protected])
• Joe Garrett         ([email protected])

d33p is a group show featuring pieces of art from various artists. this is their third and this time they also host the 3^rd underground figures festival for the first time. d33p exhibition starts from december 13 until the end of 2009 at artgorillas artgallery, 2^nd floor of lido theatre, siam.

Christmas is just a little over a week away and with all those deals popping up, the buying just doesn’t stop. Word of warning, though. You’re not the only one with gadgets on your Christmas wishlist