Rain, at long last...

It finally started raining last night, ending a five-month drought in Phoenix. It last rained on October 18, 2005, which was while I was having my house hooked up to the city sewer system (I have an older home that had two cesspools).

Despite this long drought, the area's lakes and water reservoirs have still been filled to greater capacity than they had been for the last several years, which had caused Salt River Project to reduce irrigation deliveries an unprecedented two years in a row, returning to a normal schedule in February 2005.

Phoenix housing bubble deflation update

Not only are there 33,270 homes for sale in Phoenix, 14,601 of them are currently vacant. Many speculators purchased homes and never lived in them so that they could be resold in "new" condition.

The average price of homes listed for sale is $484,594. The number of pending sales is 8,125. The average price of the pending sale homes is $378,573.

(From Ben Jones' Housing Bubble Blog.)

Inexperienced 28-year-old named executive director of Homeland Security Advisory Committees

From TPM Muckraker:

The Bush administration has appointed 28-year-old Douglas Hoelscher to be executive director for the Homeland Security Advisory Committee, an amalgam of 20 panels of outside experts and officials who advise the administration on homeland security matters.

Hoelscher is said to have no management experience. He came to the White House in 2001 as a $30,000-a-year scheduler.

And more at Effect Measure:

Suppose you are a young 28 year old with no management experience but, according to your Friendster.com profile a good listener and someone whose favorite books include William Bennett's The Death of Outrage: Bill Clinton and the Assault on American Ideals. You aren't entirely inexperienced. In 2001 you were a $30,000 a year low level White House staffer who arranged presidential travel. Not enough for you? How about a top level job in the Department of Homeland Security? That can be arranged.

Welcome Douglas Hoelscher, the new executive director of the Homeland Security Advisory Commitees (plural). Hoelscher is now

the "primary representative" of department Secretary Michael Chertoff in dealing with more than 20 advisory boards. Among them is the Homeland Security Advisory Council, which includes such high-powered figures as Gov. Mitt Romney of Massachusetts, former Lockheed Chairman Norman Augustine, and former Defense and Energy Secretary James Schlesinger. (Shane Harris in the National Journal)

(Via Tara Smith at Aetiology.)

ATM PIN security breach--Citibank, Bank of America, etc.

Back on March 4, the story broke from an American traveling in Canada that something had gone wrong at Citibank, causing it to shut off access from the ATM networks of Canada, Russia, and the UK. Bruce Schneier picked it up on March 6, and now it's hit the mainstream media with more details, with some attributing the problem to OfficeMax.

The symptoms from a bank customer's perspective are debit cards being replaced by the banks (which Citibank, Bank of America, and Washington Mutual have been doing since at least last month) and an inability to make withdrawals with current cards from ATMs in Canada, Russia, or the UK. At least some of the banks have now admitted to ATM fraud occurring, with Citibank admitting to "several hundred transactions" in three countries, while some western Massachusetts institutions have seen fraud in Spain, Pakistan, and Romania. The attribution to OfficeMax comes from investigations in Massachusetts.

Tech Web News' report is the most detailed to date:

The unfolding debit card scam that rocked Citibank this week is far from over, an analyst said Thursday as she called this first-time-ever mass theft of PINs "the worst consumer scam to date."

Wednesday, Citibank confirmed that an ongoing fraud had forced it to reissue debit cards and block PIN-based transactions for users in Canada, Russia, and the U.K.

But Citibank is only the tip of the iceberg, said Avivah Litan, a Gartner research vice president. The scam -- and scandal -- has hit national banks like Bank of America, Wells Fargo, and Washington Mutual, as well as smaller banks, including ones in Oregon, Ohio, and Pennsylvania, all of which have re-issued debit cards in recent weeks.

"This is the worst hack ever," Litan maintained. "It's significant because not only is it a really wide-spread breach, but it affects debit cards, which everyone thought were immune to these kinds of things."

[...]

Litan's sources in the financial industry have told her that thieves hacked into a as-yet-unknown system, and made off with data stored on debit cards' magnetic stripes, the associated "PIN blocks," or encrypted PIN data, and the key for that encrypted data.

The San Francisco Bay Hydrological Model

The San Francisco Bay Hydrological Model is a 1.5-acre model of the San Francisco Bay built in 1957 and used until 2000 "to evaluate circulation and flow characteristics of the water within the estuary system" by the Army Corps of Engineers. Nice photos and story at BLDGBLOG.

Atheist sells chance to save soul on eBay

CHICAGO - Hemant Mehta, a 23-year-old Atheist from Chicago, asked eBay bidders last month to send him to church.

The winning bid of $504 came from Off-the-Map, a Christian organization with the mission of "normalizing evangelism for ordinary Christians." Off The Map's slogan is "Helping Christians be normal."

More at the Secular Outpost. (The above two paragraphs are from the Secular Student Association's blog. Mehta is chairman of the Secular Student Alliance.)

Bizarre bicycle safety film from 1963

I had the privilege of viewing this film, "One Got Fat," two or three times in grade school in the early-to-mid seventies. It's the story of Filbert, Nel, Stan, Mossby, Rooty, Floog, Orv and their friends--all creepy monkey-faced humans--who bicycle ride to a park nine blocks away, all but one coming to an unpleasant end. (Hat tip: Radley Balko at The Agitator.)

Dirty Politician: Rick Santorum, again

Sen. Rick Santorum (R-PA), who was previously pointed out exchanging donations to his charity for government contracts, now denies that the charity, Operation Good Neighbor, is his. Sure, he founded it, but he says (in a letter to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette) that he's had nothing to do with it since then:

I do not have a personal charity. The reference was an allusion to Operation Good Neighbor, a charitable organization that I founded in 2000. Since then, I have had no control over its direction. My involvement is limited to being honorary chairman of the board -- a board that includes former Philadelphia mayor W. Wilson Goode, a prominent Democrat -- and lending my name to fund-raising events. That's it.

Attytood shows, with quotes and photos, that Santorum's a liar.

Also in today's news is that Barbara Bonfiglio, former treasurer of political action committees for the indicted Sen. Tom DeLay (R-TX), Santorum, and convicted former Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham (R-CA), has resigned from the D.C. law firm of Williams & Jensen and from her post as treasurer of dirty politician Rep. Rich Pombo (R-CA)'s political action committee. Her lawfirm bio says "She also advises the firm's clients on matters involving House and Senate ethics rules, as well as compliance with the Lobbying Disclosure Act." She was treasurer of Santorum's charity, Operation Good Neighbor.

Meanwhile, the Washington Post reports that Santorum lied when he said he would stop regular meetings with lobbyists:

After saying in January that he would end his regular meetings with lobbyists, Sen. Rick Santorum (Pa.), the third-ranking GOP leader in the Senate, has continued to meet with many of the same lobbyists at the same time and on the same day of the week.

(Via Talking Points Memo and TPM's Daily Muck.)

UPDATE: At least three lobbyists have been working at Santorum's charity--in addition to Barbara Bonfiglio, mentioned above, lobbyist Rob Bickhart, whose offices are also the home of Santorum's PAC and re-election campaign, works for the charity. And the charity is spending as much as 60% of its money on non-charitable things, like $200,000 for travel expenses and meetings. Santorum's response, when asked about this, was to deny that Bickhart is a lobbyist.

Computer issue at The Economist

This morning I received nine emails from The Economist with the subject "Address confirmation." Each message was identical, and stated:

Dear JAMES LIPPARD:

Thank you for amending your address details.

We have updated our records accordingly and will deliver your copies of The Economist to the amended address shortly.

If you encounter any problems with the delivery of The Economist, please call Customer Service on 1-800-456-xxxx.

Sincerely,

Customer Service.

Since I hadn't amended my address details, I called the Customer Service line (after I had only received three copies of the email)--and it was busy. After a few tries, I got through and waited on hold for quite some time, and then reached a human being. She informed me that this was an "error" and that the entire subscriber base had received these emails, which was the cause of the difficulty getting through on the phone.

This will no doubt be an expensive "error"--but my fear is that this may have been caused by an intrusion, resulting in the exposure of my information. Since there are no doubt numerous California subscribers affected, if this is the result of a hacker compromise they'll be required to issue notifications under California's SB 1386.

UPDATE: An email from the publisher says it was a technical error and not a security issue:

From: "Paul Rossi, Publisher of The Economist" [comcast email address omitted]
Subject: Apology from The Economist
Date: 09 Mar 2006 23:31:01 GMT

Dear Reader,

I am writing to apologise for any e-mails you may have received today from The Economist.

I sent an e-mail this morning asking you to confirm your address details. I understand that in error, we may have sent further e-mails confirming a change to your address.

This was caused by a technical error on our part and I am very sorry for the inconvenience and irritation that this may have caused you.

I want to reassure you that your address and all of your personal details have at all times been secure and will remain so.

If you did not change your details, we will continue to deliver your copies of The Economist to the usual address.

We are aware of the problem and are dealing with it. In the meantime, if you wish to contact me regarding this please e-mail [email address at economist.com omitted].

Yours sincerely,

Paul Rossi
Publisher, North America

I never received an email asking me to confirm address details as described in this email.

Commoncause.org: Spamming for "net neutrality"

Mark Cuban reports that he's been deluged with form letter spam from Commoncause.org, which has mistakenly identified him as a telco (depicting him with devil horns), just because he wrote a blog post saying that he thought there could be value to tiered levels of service.

If this is now the nature of the debate, it doesn't appear that "net neutrality" advocates have reason on their side. (My previous remarks on "net neutrality" are here and here.)

The Spam Kings blog points out deficiencies in the email subscription process used by Kintera, the provider for Commoncause.org.