Links for 10-08-2007
Mortgage psychology, antimatter, lo-fi space launches, cyborg moths …
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1 – The Psychology of Subprime Mortgages
“I think a big part of the reason sub-prime loans remain so seductive, even when the financial terms are so atrocious, is that they take advantage of a dangerous flaw built into our brain.”
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2 – Nudging Antimatter Toward Practicality
“… part of improving our understanding of antimatter is figuring out whether it truly is the exact opposite of normal matter.”
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3 – How to hack your way into space
“Here are a few ingredients needed to get to space on the cheap: Balloons, but big ones. Ping-pong balls. Off-the-shelf kayak paddles. And naturally, all the foam core construction material you can get your hands on.”
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4 – UK biosecurity lapse is “tip of iceberg”
“… the escape of a biological agent from a supposedly secure facility is nothing new, say experts. Worse, similar incidents are more likely in the future.” Sheesh. Great.
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5 – Cyborg Moths Will Help Fighter Pilots, Troops
“… DARPA’s Hybrid Insect Micro Electro-Mechanical Systems subprogram, a project aiming to integrate surface sensors, optical systems, chemical sensing, storage and radio-frequency communications to create insect cyborgs.”
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6 – CSS Layouts: The Fixed. The Fluid. The Elastic. – Beast-Blog.com
Web-dev malarkey. Cheers, Jeremy.
August 10th, 2007 at 6:39 am
The article on sub-prime mortages argues as if these mortgages exist in a vaccum. Most of the takers are people who are regularly discrimimated against–the evidence is that of two lower m/c couples, a non-white couple is more likely to be offered the sub-prime mortgage. They may have no other choice. This may be reinforced by the absence of suitable rental accomodation, or ludicrously expensive rental accomodation.
As it happens, we have a UK “sub-prime” mortgage. This came about because we coudn’t sell our old house, one of us is 60 and also happens to work in Dublin. We were offered a mortgage on the younger partner’s income *only* and only one lender was willing to consider us. As mortgage costs and rental costs would have been about the same, we accepted the “sub-prime” mortgage. It makes us vulnerable, but all the other options were worse.
I dislike articles which attempt to lable individuals as irrational. Said individuals rarely are, it is usually the researchers who assume that all the factors that would affect *their* decisions are repeated across the participatory group: a lovely example of this is debates over the food of the poor, which rarely considers things like the cost of fuel or access to decent cooking facilities (or even a good quality pan!).
August 10th, 2007 at 9:49 am
Point taken, Farah – though I felt the tone of the article was actual decrying the people who push the mortgages rather than castigating those who take them on. I tend to link pieces like that because I’m fascinated (in a kind of horrified manner) by industries that exploit human psychology, and I’m well aware that their ability to do so is influenced by situations that reach far wider than the products they offer.
In other words, I just want to assure you that I wasn’t linking just to say “haha, dumb people getting into to debt.” For one thing, I’d be a massive hypocrite if I did so!