Link Collection

Deeply disturbing article about how the for-profit education industry has been even more socially destructive and morally bankrupt as the subprime mortgage industry was. Government loans are one of the drivers for the profitability of this industry, so taxpayers are bearing this burden...with industry has slightly less than 10% of all post secondary education students but nearly 25% of the federal student loans, with projections that it will take 40% of all student loans in 10 years. Just *9 cents* on every dollar actually goes towards education at Apollo (the company behind the University of Phoenix and the largest for-profit educator), with the rest going to marketing and executive salaries. Drop-out rates are calculated as over 50% and the quality of the education can be extremely poor. Everest college in California charges students $16k for an 8-month course in medical assisting...then when the students graduate they find out that their degree is not recognized by anyone, so they cannot get a job interview and they cannot transfer their credits to any other college!
http://www.nypost.com/f/print/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/subprime_goes_to_college_FeiheNJfGYtoSwmtl5etJP

Law enforcement officers were amazed when they caught a person trying to smuggle an *impressive* amount of things into jail via his rectum. He had a cigarette lighter, cigarette rolling papers, a golf-ball size baggie of tobacco, a bottle of tattoo ink, 8 tattoo needles, a 1-inch-long smoking pipe, and a small baggie of marijuana!
http://www.wenatcheeworld.com/news/2010/jun/03/cheeky-inmate-overpacked-for-jail-stay-astonished/

Funeral directors are on the lookout for the "Grim Eater", a man who went to up to 4 funerals per week, bringing a backpack with Tupperware containers to take food home from the ceremony:
http://www.upi.com/Odd_News/2010/06/03/Crasher-attended-four-funerals-a-week/UPI-56571275592519/

Nearly 15% of new marriages in the US in 2008 were between spouses of different races--when Pres. Obama was born in 1961 that number was just 2%. The top 9 states for interracial marriages were all west of the Mississippi, with Hawaii by far with the greatest percentage (43%):
http://www.livescience.com/culture/interracial-marriages-survey-100604.html

Interesting feature article on the Conficker worm. The authors of the worm very cleverly exploited a hole in the Microsoft OS, had the worm patch the hole the it came through, and had the worm try to prevent its host computer from updating its antivirus software. It is interesting that one peculiarity in the worm's code is that it cannot attack computers with active Ukrainian keyboards...that seems to indicate where the worm came from:
http://theweek.com/article/index/203969/the-last-word-the-ultimate-computer-worm