HOT5 Daily 8/20/2010

1. "More Government Won't Fix the Mortgage Mess" Understatement of the day.

Representative Sample: Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner announced his support for rainbows, the American flag, and a “carefully designed guarantee in a reformed system, with the objective of providing a measure of stability in access to mortgages.” Okay. He wasn’t explicit about the rainbows or Old Glory, but a speech about either of those two topics would have said just as much about the administration’s real intentions for housing finance

2. "For All the PLA-Watchers Out There" Useful perspective regarding the exaggerated threat of the Chinese military that some are pushing.

Representative Sample: Blasko shatters some myths about the China's amphibious abilities for cross-strait invasion. China's amphibious capabilities are not at the stage where they can credibly threaten a seaborne invasion and appear to be structured for different missions..

3. "I Don't Think That Constitution Means What You Think It Does.." A good post on the latest egregious misinterpretation of the first amendment.

Representative Sample: the 1st Amendment is just for the use of calling Asshats Asshats when they do Asshatty things..

4. "IEEE-USA cites 5 engineering breakthroughs" A couple I hadn't heard of.

Representative Sample: Five engineering breakthroughs, from restoring a degree of eyesight to developing a new treatment for sudden cardiac arrest, were cited today by IEEE-USA, the U.S. career and public policy unit of the IEEE, the world’s largest professional association for the advancement of technology.

5. "The Moon is Shrinking!" Really.

Representative Sample: despite it being perhaps the most well-studied object in the sky, our Moon is still capable of surprising us. Not only that, but some of its secrets are actually rather big, but so well-hidden we need to study the Moon pretty carefully to uncover them.

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