Schadenfreude
Shaw-den-froy-deh

Apparently a lot of rehab centers cater to the rich/famous and therefore have strict confidentiality policies. So the rich/famous use these facilities to treat themselves for depression as well as drug and alcohol abuse.

Heather Locklear just did a stint a month ago.

I think the fact that we can even discuss Heather Locklear’s private medical situation (due to the fact that it’s in the press) is disgusting.

But, since it was a new fact that I learned, I was obligated to post it.

Source: The Wife^®, whom I have not yet broken of her people.com habit.

And like 995,934 grams of fat. Maybe a slight exaggeration, but I can’t bear to look at the real numbers.

It comes with Buttermilk Ranch Sauce, Mayo, and 2 slices of Cheddar Cheese. And the container was the largest fast food container I’ve ever seen. I think you could fit 12 pieces of KFC in that burger container.

As for taste, probably a 4.5 out of 10.

If you’ll excuse me, I have to go burn off a few million calories at the pool.

But it was reported that he did. Pierce, the mediocre president that came between Millard Fillmore and James Buchanan was on a train that crashed. Since it was 1853, communication wasn’t that great, and word got out that Pierce had died.

He was the President-Elect at the time, having been elected in November but not yet sworn in. The word reached Washington, and Congress adjourned out of respect for the dead would-be President. They also started planning for how to untangle the constitutional question of who would be President.

But, it turned out he wasn’t dead after all, and Pierce could go on to be one in a string of one term presidents that most people can’t name.

William R. King, Pierce’s VP that no one but the most diehard students of American history can name, died of tuberculosis after 45 days in office, and was never replaced.

I do have to note that Pierce’s 12 year old son was on the train and was killed. Pierce actually had 3 children, all of which died as children, and all before he was sworn in as President. Bummer.

Source: A History Channel show about train wrecks.

WaMu has been in the news lately, and several reports have mentioned that they were the largest Savings & Loan before they collapsed. So, besides the name of a financial crisis in the 80′s, what the #$%@$ is a Savings & Loan? This will be long, but since the majority of our posters and readers work in banking, I thought there was a chance y’all would find this interesting.

So again, what the #$%@$ is a Savings & Loan? Well, to answer, we have to go way back. Ready? Good.

Simply put, a Savings & Loan is a type of bank. It takes deposits from people and pays them interest to hold onto it, then uses the money to loan to others at an interest rate higher than they pay on the savings accounts.

The first Savings & Loan type institution was created in Philadelphia in 1816. They were pretty common by the 1830′s. I’m not sure when the term “Savings & Loan” became widespread. In those days, the people who had savings at the bank got a say in how the bank was run. Kind of like a Credit Union today, except at a Credit Union, each member gets one vote, and at the S&L, your influence was based on how much $ you had in the bank. Some S&Ls still operate that way, but larger institutions like WaMu obviously don’t.

Before the Great Depression, most mortgages were not written the way that they are today. They were made mostly by insurance companies, for one, and they used tactics like the interest only loan (to keep people in dept perpetually) or the balloon payment (one huge payment of principal due at the end of the loan that most people couldn’t pay.) These were not good for homeowners. As an aside, could you imagine writing your mortgage check to the evil insurance company each month? The only thing worse would be writing that check to Comcast.

Anyway, in 1932, the government created some government run entities that made money available for amortized mortgages. As a result many more of these S&Ls popped up. At the time, S&Ls were allowed to pay more in interest than a commercial bank, as a way to encourage people to put their money there, which would make more money available for mortgages, which was a good thing.

But the modern era came upon us, and that brought widespread adoption of checking accounts. S&Ls, unlike commercial banks, were not allowed to issue checking accounts until around 1980. This caused some banks to abandon the S&L charter and opt for the National Bank charter instead.

Throughout the 80′s regulations changed, and the types of banks and what they were allowed to do all kind of mixed together. In the 90′s the walls came down further, and there was no longer a restriction on “regular” banks getting involved in investment type activity. This lead to the mega banks we see today like JPMorgan Chase. At this point in time, most types of banks can make loans to businesses or individuals, issue credit cards, get involved in investments like mutual funds and IRAs, and offer savings and checking accounts.

But today, distinctions remain. For instance, S&Ls are regulated by The Office of Thrift Supervision, and a National Bank (like TCF or US Bank) is regulated by The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC). Both types of institutions are now insured by the FDIC, but S&Ls are technically insured through the Savings Association Insurance Fund (SAIF) , a remnant of the Federal Savings and Loan Insurance Corporation (FSLIC), an FDIC like entity that was just for S&Ls. The SAIF has been administered by the FDIC since 1989.

The FDIC lists several types of bank charters, which helps explain things a little.

So, that’s what I know. And now you know it too if you read this far.

Source: Wiki page on S&Ls and Credit Unions, and various government websites.

A few weeks ago The Wife^® posted about how she had learned that Canada gets tornadoes. Turns out they get hurricanes too.

Hurricane Kyle is set to hit the US/Canada border along the Atlantic soon.

Source: Breitbart

I know, I know, you’re thinking: Duh.

But I saw a guy crush up some iron fortified cereal, put a magnet in it, and pull out iron shards. I guess I never thought about it that way.

Your body needs iron because it is used to carry oxygen through the blood to muscles. But normally when you mix iron and oxygen you get rust. Rust running through your veins would be a bad thing, so that’s why you have hemoglobin.

Hemoglobin is a combination of two separate substances: heme, and globin. Through some combination of these two substances, the iron and oxygen can travel without turning into rust.

It’s all waaaaaaaaaayyyyyy to complicated for a guy who successfully navigated life without ever taking a biology class.

Source: Modern Marvels – Iron

If you have a background in say, chemical engineering, the pages here may make more sense to you.

They start with glass, then spray with liquid aluminum, then silver, and then some other layers (think clear coat) to treat the surface.

They used to use Mercury, but I guess it was toxic.

Source: How Do They Do it? on The Science Channel

http://muppet.wikia.com/wiki/Muppet_Wiki

All Muppets, all the time.

HBO? That doesn’t sound right. But it was. I guess it was either rerun on another channel, or it was on during one of those ubiquitous cable promos where you got HBO for 99 cents for 3 months then just $99.99 a month after that.

Because I know I saw the show, and we did not grow up with HBO.

Source: The Muppet article I linked to below, and wikipedia, which goes so far as to list all of the Fraggles, grouped into Primary and Secondary lists based on importance.