Housing roller coaster

Calculated Risk reports on a house in Costa Mesa (Orange County), California, that sold for $177,500 in 1994, $600,000 in 2005, and is offered for $439,000 today.

“Yes, nominal prices in Orange County are off about 22% from the peak, and real prices (inflation adjusted) are off about 26% from the peak - but prices will probably fall significantly from here.”

The above was written the other day when the asking price was $559,000 (less than the existing mortgages). It was reduced $120,000 over the weekend. That would be a 27% drop in three years, fairly consistent with what Calculated Risk is saying — if it sells.

Here is the listing. Note the freeway sign hanging almost in the backyard. $439,000 is still $340 per square foot.

(You might notice also that the annual property tax is $6,965.)

It ought to be a national holiday

Spring is half over at 8:55 tonight MDT.

It’s a cross-quarter day — a pagan holiday in Sweden, Norway, Finland, United Kingdom and Ireland.

Interesting line

“The industry is in denial: racing grinds up horses, and we dress up the sport with large hats, mint juleps and string bands.”

William Rhoden

Wireless security

If you have a wireless network at home, it is imperative that you encrypt it. (While recently in Virginia I was able to see the files on an iMac on the next street over.)

NewMexiKen isn’t knowledgeable enough to tell you how to go about this, but I can explain some of the basics.

• Wireless encryption and a firewall are both essential — they do different things
• The first standard was WEP (Wired Equivalent Privacy)
• WEP is better than no protection at all
• WPA (Wi-Fi Protected Access) was introduced in 2003
• WPA2 was an update to WPA in 2004
• WPA (and WPA2) are far superior to WEP
• If your wireless router, computer wireless card(s) or the associated software is older than 2003, you probably won’t be able to use WPA
• Newer products — and the Wii, PlayStation 3, PSP, XBox 360, iPhone — can use WPA, but not all of them can use WPA2
• WPA and WPA2 have two configurations: Personal and Enterprise
• If you use a good network password, WPA or WPA2 Personal is sufficient for a home network

Bottom line: Use WPA (or WPA2 if you can) and use a good password for the network. Use WEP if that’s all you’ve got.

Death of a Racehorse

“Death of a Racehorse” is a classic piece by the sportswriter W.C. Heinz from 1949.

It seems appropriate today.

They were going to the post for the sixth race at Jamaica, two year olds, some making their first starts, to go five and a half furlongs for a purse of four thousand dollars. They were moving slowly down the backstretch toward the gate, some of them cantering, others walking, and in the press box they had stopped their working or their kidding to watch, most of them interested in one horse.

“Air Lift,” Jim Roach said. “Full brother of Assault.”

Assault, who won the triple crown … making this one too, by Bold Venture, himself a Derby winner, out of Igual, herself by the great Equipoise … Great names in the breeding line … and now the little guy making his first start, perhaps the start of another great career.

They were off well, although Air Lift was fifth. They were moving toward the first turn, and now Air Lift was fourth. They were going into the turn, and now Air Lift was starting to go, third perhaps, when suddenly he slowed, a horse stopping, and below in the stands you could hear a sudden cry, as the rest left him, still trying to run but limping, his jockey — Dave Gorman — half falling, half sliding off.

“He broke a leg!” somebody, holding binoculars to his eyes, shouted in the press box. “He broke a leg!”

Read the rest of this entry.

Haymarket

On the evening of May 4, 1886, a few thousand people assembled in the Haymarket area at the intersection of Randolph and Desplaines Streets, across the South Branch of the Chicago River about eight blocks west of City Hall. The purpose of the rally was to protest the killing of two workers the previous day by the police when they broke up an angry confrontation between locked-out union members and their replacements at the McCormick reaper factory on the city’s Southwest Side. This confrontation was one of many outbreaks of violence at the time due to labor and class tensions. Central among labor’s demands was the eight-hour workday.

As the protest meeting in the Haymarket was nearing a close, about 180 police marched from the nearby Desplaines Street station to the makeshift speakers’ stand. Immediately after a police commander ordered the rally to disperse, someone threw a dynamite bomb into the ranks of the officers. One officer was killed almost instantly, and six more would die in the next few days and weeks of wounds either caused by the bomb or sustained in the riot that followed. Acting with overwhelming public support, the police arrested dozens of political radicals. In the trial that followed, eight anarchists were found guilty of murder. After appeals to the Illinois and United States Supreme Courts failed, four of the defendants were executed on November 11, 1887. One day before the hangings, another defendant committed suicide. Illinois Governor Richard Oglesby commuted the capital sentence of two other defendants to life in prison. The jury had sentenced the eighth defendant to fifteen years at hard labor.

Scholars have long considered the Haymarket trial one of the most notorious miscarriages of law in American history. At this time of cultural crisis, the defendants were convicted by a prejudiced judge and jury because of their political views, rather than on the basis of solid evidence that linked them to the bombing. Although most middle-class Americans and even many working people at the time cheered this action and praised the police as defenders of public order, the executions transformed the anarchists into martyrs of labor in this country and throughout the world. The cultural memory of Haymarket has echoed ever since through many other events.

The above excerpted from the excellent The Dramas of Haymarket, an online project produced by the Chicago Historical Society and Northwestern University.

Kent

Today, May 4, is an excellent day to listen to Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young’s “Ohio.”

It’s been 38 years.

On May 4, 1970 the Ohio National Guard opened fire into a busy college campus during a school day. A total of 67 shots were fired in 13 seconds. Four students: Allison Krause, William Schroeder, Jeffrey Miller, and Sandra Scheuer were killed. Nine students were wounded.

Kent May 4 Center

Here’s the news story from The New York Times.

Catty remark

“Did you know former President James Garfield could write Latin with one hand and Greek with the other at the same time? That was Garfield. When President Bush heard about it, he said, ‘We had a talking cat for president?’”

Jay Leno quoted by AP — and first posted here two years ago today.