maxomai | End Of May MISCELLANY

Last weekend's massacre in Syria is fanning the fires for another war. The United States is preparing. Syrian rebels are preparing. And SOS Clinton is not-so-tacitly pressuring the Russians to stay out of it.

North Carolina real estate interests are pushing for a law that would force planners to ignore global warming predictions of sea level rise. Without those data, planners need to rely on historical data that predict a rise of anywhere from four to sixteen inches. Global warming predicts a rise of one meter, or about 40 inches. My advice: don't buy coastal property in North Carolina. Or if you do, be ready to dump it on a sucker in the next few decades.

This woman uncovered massive fraud in Citibank's mortgage lending process, which continued right up to her lawsuit in March 2011. THE GOOD: she won $31 million in that lawsuit. THE BAD: the lawsuit alleged, in part, that the fraud practices that led to the 2008 meltdown are still ongoing in 2011. They're probably still ongoing in 2012 as well. The culture of self-denial runs deep. THE UGLY: The DOJ is promising criminal charges. We're waiting, and none too patiently.

"Calculate the trajectory of a projectile under gravity and subject to air resistance." This problem was posed by Newton, has stumped mathematicians for centuries, and was finally solved by a 16-year-old working on a school project. The student chalks it up to naivity.

Windows 8, reveiwed here. The interesting (as in "oh god") parts of the EULA discussed here. Yes, I'll still use it when it comes out, properly sequestered in a virtual machine as it should be. But now I'm determined to not use it for anything important.