Economic news on the street
Avert your eyes from Wall Street to see what is happening to America. These statistics are part of a terrifying article by Elizabeth Warren, who serves as the Chair of the Congressional Oversight Panel created to oversee the banking bailouts:
Today, one in five Americans is unemployed, underemployed or just plain out of work. One in nine families can't make the minimum payment on their credit cards. One in eight mortgages is in default or foreclosure. One in eight Americans is on food stamps. More than 120,000 families are filing for bankruptcy every month. The economic crisis has wiped more than $5 trillion from pensions and savings, has left family balance sheets upside down, and threatens to put ten million homeowners out on the street.There are many other statistics in this article. For instance, fully employed males haven't seen a pay increase since the 1970's. Warren also presents banks as villains in her story:
Boring banking has given way to creative banking, and the industry has generated tens of billions of dollars annually in fees made possible by deceptive and dangerous terms buried in the fine print of opaque, incomprehensible, and largely unregulated contracts.
Christopher Hitchens: Where is Bernard Law?
In this lecture, Christopher Hitchens asks about the whereabouts of Cardinal Bernard Law, who is guilty of crimes "too hideous to describe." The undeniable fact is that Law is currently a powerful member of the Catholic clergy in Rome--he is one of the people held in high enough esteem that he has the power and privilege of voting to choose Popes. Any organization whose leaders have basic moral decency would have put such a man into handcuffs and delivered him to the police. Hitchens has many more questions for the Catholic Church too, and not an unfair attack among them, in my opinion. Examples include forbidding condom usage in Africa, where AIDs is an epidemic. This is not an academic issue--it is killing thousands of people. I also know many thinking Catholics who are driven to distraction by the official church teachings in regard to gays and birth control. Here's what Hitchens has to say about the need for the Catholic Church to apologize: I do not post this video to condemn lay Catholics, many of whom are good-hearted people who do inspiring works of kindness in the name of the church. Instead, I've posted this video because I have become weary of seeing the Church automatically and publicly presented as a font of moral judgment just because it is a church (or, in some circles, The Church). I am wondering if we will ever see a day when the Catholic Church (and every other church) is not judged favorably merely because it is a church. I'm wondering whether we will ever see the day when, in response to a claim that we should follow rule because "It is a rule of a church," people will generally ask: "What kind of church?" or "What is the track record of that church?" In any regard, we should never assume that a church is wise or moral just because it is a church. The current job title of Bernard Law compels this. Bottom line: No more free passes for churches. Or for any entity or any person, for that matter.
Getting ready for winter at Long Island
For the past five days I've been visiting my wife's family on the north shore of Long Island. I haven't written much during the visit, but I've been thinking a lot and jotting down lots of ideas. I've also been taking quite a few photos, which I'd like to share. 
Most of my trip was spent within a stone's throw of Long Island Sound. The temperature ranged from the 40's to the low 60's and the wind was often gusty.
Here is a shot of Long Island Sound in the early evening. This is looking north toward Connecticut from Long Island. During the day, flocks of geese will honk and fly in formation, more or less.
One of my favorite things to do out east is to spot horseshoe crab shells. The crabs themselves are large (about two feet long including the tail), majestic and ancient creatures. 
How ancient? They've been around for more than more than 400 million years in pretty much the same form as we see them today. In other words, if you could be transported back in time to spot each of the various types of dinosaur, you would always be able to see horseshoe crabs that look just like these. Here is a lot more about these creatures from Wikipedia.
Fall is that time of year for many living things to go into dormancy. This is certainly true of many types of trees. It is true of apple trees, for instance. I took this photo at Richter's Apple orchard.
The apples have been harvested, and the Richter family, who has owned this orchard since 1938, is still busy selling mouth-watering apples of many varieties.
It is only in the Fall that one can spot the intricacies of the skeletal structures of trees, including this beautiful specimen. It is hard to know exactly what is going on under those leaves, until it's Autumn.
But it is the Long Island Sound that attracts me the most when I am on Long Island. The Sound has a special attraction in the moonlight, and when various members of my wife's family gathered on the north shore a few nights ago, I worked fairly hard to take long-exposure photos of the silhouetted family members enjoying the waves and water and the smells and sounds of the ocean water of Long Island Sound.
Law professor: Stiff the mortgage company
According to law professor Brent T. White, many of the home owners who currently owe more on their mortgage than the house is worth should stop paying their mortgages and walk away from their houses:
[F]ar more of the estimated 15 million U.S. homeowners who are underwater on their mortgages should stiff their lenders and take a hike. Doing so, he suggests, could save some of them hundreds of thousands of dollars that they "have no reasonable prospect of recouping" in the years ahead. Plus the penalties are nowhere near as painful or long-lasting as they might assume, he says.