Good heavens, it's been 10 days or more since I last posted! I've been having adventures in the land of medical devices - have you ever had to deal with a CPAP machine??
The short story: last May (10 months ago now) I was diagnosed with possible sleep apnea and took a sleep test. Symptoms? I couldn't drive the 25 minute freeway commute to work without at least 4 or 5 little narcolepsy incidents, where I had to fight desperately to stay awake at the wheel. It took them until July to schedule a review of the test, which meant August since (as we all know) I was in England and Wales in July. (Gloat.)
In the meantime I was sufficiently frightened by my symptoms that I went back to riding BART to work, having discovered that I can now walk the half mile or so to the station in under 20 minutes, my minimum requirement for a transit commute that doesn't take an hour and a half.
So: in August they told me I had "moderate sleep apnea", based on my May test. However, as we also know, between May and August - I retired. My stress level went down by several orders of magnitude; I quit getting up at 5:30 AM; and I quit falling asleep during the day, because I was getting enough sleep at night! I could drive again! I also learned that, with a relatively minor change to my current meds and personal habits, I might be able to deal with this problem without getting a Continuous Positive Airway Pressure machine (in case you wondered what is "CPAP"). So I made the changes.
All was wonderful and lovely (as our chorus director puts it) for several months, and then I started occasionally (like, maybe every other week) waking up at night out of a horrific dream, and finding my heart pounding. Hmm, thinks I - can these be apnea episodes? I usually find myself on my back, the "bad" sleeping position. And if so, should I take some action? Maybe I need the CPAP machine after all?
Well, it didn't work out like that. The purpose of a CPAP machine is to blow enough air into your throat to keep your breathing tube open. All night. You wear a mask that looks like something out of World War II, and you hook it to a little motor, using a plastic hose a bit over an inch in diameter, which trails you around like an IV drip. So, first, if you need to sleep in a (relatively) silent room, fugeddaboudit - the thing whirs constantly in your ear. Second, every time you shift position the mask leaks; you're constantly fiddling with the thing. Third, you will find yourself - I found myself - constantly thinking about breathing, which makes it impossible to disengage the mind and fall asleep. Finally, having one of the world's less efficient breathing systems, I found myself hyperventilating, a state I once spent several tedious months of behavioral therapy trying to get out of...
Some people can't sleep without these machines; in fact, some people's possession of a driver's license depends on their being under treatment with CPAP. I found myself facing two options: either sleep normally, and occasionally wake up with my heart pounding - or use the CPAP machine and never sleep again (but get lots of fresh air). This is probably an exaggeration; but I'm told that it takes up to 2 months for some people to adjust, and I just wonder how they survive 2 months without a full night's sleep.
I'm happy to say I've talked to my doctor and he agrees that first, my apnea (if it still exists) seems to be under control with medication, and second, that I'm not adjusting well to the machine. I'm getting another sleep test, and unless it's much worse than I think, or my old symptoms come back, I won't have to have the machine.
Part of my problem was that my introduction to how to use the thing didn't mention anybody ever having any problems with it, so I went into it expecting everything to be fine, and spent an entire night trying to fall asleep and failing. I suppose they're afraid if they tell you the truth, you'll go in expecting it to fail. If I ever do have to use CPAP, I'll need to approach it very differently than I did this time. Which God (or the Great Lobster) forbid.
And that's why I haven't posted - I couldn't write because I couldn't get enough sleep to think. I don't know if you missed me but I missed you!
Sunday, February 10, 2008
Wednesday, January 30, 2008
The Fed Is Crazy
Just in case you wondered. Faced with an economic crises caused largely, IMHO, by the inability of the general populace to pay the debts they have now, the Fed's response has been: to make it even cheaper to borrow money! They've now dropped the fed funds rate by an entire percent, from 4% to 3%, in 2 weeks - four months ago it was 5.25%! That's almost a 50% drop!
As for the bipartisan stimulus package we heard so much about, that was before it got to the Senate. The senate thinks the elderly should get the rebate too - oh, and we can't leave out the rich people... We should leave out the rich people. Actually we shouldn't do this at all, it will have minimal effect and is an extended exercise in CYA. And if the Senate is allowed free rein by the party leaders, we won't do it, because the House won't sign off on the changes. So maybe the Senate's insistence on rewriting the package is a good thing.
The House's idea wasn't bad, actually - apart from the fact that the money won't get to people soon enough to make a difference, and that it won't go to new spending anyhow. I can't recall where I read this, but someone did a survey on the lines of "if you had $X hundred right now what would you do with it?" The general assumption is that poor people spend and rich people save - the response to this survey was that something over 40% of poor people said they would pay down debt with it, and another 20% said they would sock it away. None of which would do a thing for the economy.
But the Fed and its rate cuts - it's the old saying: to a man with a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.
As for the bipartisan stimulus package we heard so much about, that was before it got to the Senate. The senate thinks the elderly should get the rebate too - oh, and we can't leave out the rich people... We should leave out the rich people. Actually we shouldn't do this at all, it will have minimal effect and is an extended exercise in CYA. And if the Senate is allowed free rein by the party leaders, we won't do it, because the House won't sign off on the changes. So maybe the Senate's insistence on rewriting the package is a good thing.
The House's idea wasn't bad, actually - apart from the fact that the money won't get to people soon enough to make a difference, and that it won't go to new spending anyhow. I can't recall where I read this, but someone did a survey on the lines of "if you had $X hundred right now what would you do with it?" The general assumption is that poor people spend and rich people save - the response to this survey was that something over 40% of poor people said they would pay down debt with it, and another 20% said they would sock it away. None of which would do a thing for the economy.
But the Fed and its rate cuts - it's the old saying: to a man with a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.
Thursday, January 24, 2008
Seven Billion Dollars
I read the Economist every week with pleasure for its interesting analyses, but it isn't often that I get breaking news from it. I did today, though, because the Economist web site was where I first saw the financial scandal that is today's big business headline: the rogue trader at Société Générale who managed to blow $7.2 billion dollars gambling in stock market futures. They didn't call it "gambling." (Since the Economist quoted it in euros, where it's €4.2 billion, I didn't realize the full size until I saw it on Yahoo News. The Yahoo article has more detail.)
This is a 31 year old stock market futures trader, working for Société Générale, who essentially built his own "play" firm, inside the larger bank, and set out to make a big hit trading stock futures on his own account. He made a big hit, all right. And until last Saturday, nobody at SocGen realized he was doing it. He built a whole structure of faked transactions to cover what he was really doing, using the experience he got a few years ago when he worked in the section of the bank that monitors the trading floors for rogue operations.
Don't they supervise these people?? Does nobody have to sign off on these trades??
It's not as if it weren't a known risk, either. There've been other rogue traders. These guys are total cowboys, and they're convinced that it can't happen to them, and the next thing you know, a bank has gone out of business (see the 1995 affair when a rogue trader in Singapore bankrupted Barings Bank, a 250 year old British firm).
I wonder how long Société Générale will be around... Second biggest bank in France. Quite a coup to bring it down - if that's the way you want to keep score.
This is a 31 year old stock market futures trader, working for Société Générale, who essentially built his own "play" firm, inside the larger bank, and set out to make a big hit trading stock futures on his own account. He made a big hit, all right. And until last Saturday, nobody at SocGen realized he was doing it. He built a whole structure of faked transactions to cover what he was really doing, using the experience he got a few years ago when he worked in the section of the bank that monitors the trading floors for rogue operations.
Don't they supervise these people?? Does nobody have to sign off on these trades??
It's not as if it weren't a known risk, either. There've been other rogue traders. These guys are total cowboys, and they're convinced that it can't happen to them, and the next thing you know, a bank has gone out of business (see the 1995 affair when a rogue trader in Singapore bankrupted Barings Bank, a 250 year old British firm).
I wonder how long Société Générale will be around... Second biggest bank in France. Quite a coup to bring it down - if that's the way you want to keep score.
Wednesday, January 23, 2008
How Can We Miss You If You Won't Go Away?
Like many of my acquaintance, I'm counting the days until the end of the Bush presidency, although I haven't gone as far as to install the countdown widget on my blog or web site. But I will breathe a huge sigh of relief when the new president is sworn in in January 2009, almost no matter who it is. (Well, maybe not Huckabee. I'd prefer someone who believes that the earth is round.)
I was appalled, therefore, to read today an article in the Entertainment section of the S.F. Chronicle stating that Oliver Stone is trying to get backing for - wait for it - a movie on the Bush presidency!
What an awful idea. I can't stand to look at the man, or listen to him talk, for more than about 30 seconds now; and Stone wants to direct an entire movie about him??
In case you were wondering who he wants to portray Bush in the movie? Josh Brolin. (This means nothing to me, as Josh Brolin has never appeared in any movie I wanted to see; and it sounds as though his record will continue unbroken.)
My only hope is that, if the movie is made, it'll be a total flop. Certainly the presidency is.
I was appalled, therefore, to read today an article in the Entertainment section of the S.F. Chronicle stating that Oliver Stone is trying to get backing for - wait for it - a movie on the Bush presidency!
What an awful idea. I can't stand to look at the man, or listen to him talk, for more than about 30 seconds now; and Stone wants to direct an entire movie about him??
In case you were wondering who he wants to portray Bush in the movie? Josh Brolin. (This means nothing to me, as Josh Brolin has never appeared in any movie I wanted to see; and it sounds as though his record will continue unbroken.)
My only hope is that, if the movie is made, it'll be a total flop. Certainly the presidency is.
Hair Of The Dog That Bit Us
So - the economy is tanking because the American Consumer's debt burden has finally become overwhelming, and the Federal Reserve's solution to this problem? Make credit cheaper! The Federal government's solution to this problem? Give everybody a tax rebate (except for poor people who don't pay taxes; I'll get to that later), so they'll go out and buy more stuff and prop up the economy!
I guarantee, that if your house is in foreclosure because your $3500 mortgage payment is over 80% of your take-home pay, an $800 tax credit is not necessarily going to cause you to go out and buy something.
Of course, I don't carry credit card debt myself, so my reaction to this may be unusual, but if I had a major debt burden, and I suddenly got $800, my impulse would be to pay something down. I don't think people are doing this yet; I'm reading that they're missing payments on their credit card debt as well as on their mortgages.
This whole economic problem has been caused, IMHO, by running the economy on credit for 40 years (which is about how long we've had credit cards). Everybody says, oh, the world economy is driven by the American Consumer. Guys, the American Consumer is broke. Stony. Maxed out. If you can't pay off the debt you have, making new debt cheaper Will Not Help You. I read one comment that the recent rate cut would make some mortgage resets smaller, so they might only go up $150 instead of $500 a month. Yeah, but if you're already behind on the payments, if you already can't afford the mortgage, making the reset smaller is not a significant improvement.
I remind myself again and again that 90% of the news is made by 10% of the people, but still. I read over and over again about people who've owned their houses for many years, and are now about to lose them because they've refinanced them to take out cash, over and over, and now they can't pay the mortgage, can't refinance because the house value is less than they owe, and can't sell because the market is in the tank. They're going to lose the houses they should have been able to die in, because they over-borrowed. In 1976, the supporters of California's Proposition 13 made a big deal that older people were going to lose their homes because of rising property taxes. Some of the people that are going to lose their homes to foreclosure now are those people; and no constitutional amendment will help them. They did this themselves. This is running the world on credit, and the bills have come due.
Are we having a recession?? Damn straight we are. Is the rate cut going to help? Not a chance. Frankly, I think the rate cut was a major mistake. Low interest rates are what got us into this mess. If we're not really careful, low interest rates will dump us back into the 70's, a decade I have no desire to rerun, especially as a retiree. Inflation is ticking up just as oil and food prices spike and job creation essentially vanishes; does all this sound familiar? I'm sorry, the European Central Bank is correct here: they just refused to cut rates on the grounds that their primary focus is to keep inflation under control. Ben Bernanke should try to remember that.
Oh, yes, and the tax rebate issue. It's amazing how consistent Dubya is. He wants to restrict tax rebates to people who actually paid taxes, which basically eliminates anybody with children making less than about $75K. (Don't hold me to these numbers. But it's a LOT of people.) In other words, as usual, Dubya wants to give tax help only to people who don't actually need it.
I guarantee, that if your house is in foreclosure because your $3500 mortgage payment is over 80% of your take-home pay, an $800 tax credit is not necessarily going to cause you to go out and buy something.
Of course, I don't carry credit card debt myself, so my reaction to this may be unusual, but if I had a major debt burden, and I suddenly got $800, my impulse would be to pay something down. I don't think people are doing this yet; I'm reading that they're missing payments on their credit card debt as well as on their mortgages.
This whole economic problem has been caused, IMHO, by running the economy on credit for 40 years (which is about how long we've had credit cards). Everybody says, oh, the world economy is driven by the American Consumer. Guys, the American Consumer is broke. Stony. Maxed out. If you can't pay off the debt you have, making new debt cheaper Will Not Help You. I read one comment that the recent rate cut would make some mortgage resets smaller, so they might only go up $150 instead of $500 a month. Yeah, but if you're already behind on the payments, if you already can't afford the mortgage, making the reset smaller is not a significant improvement.
I remind myself again and again that 90% of the news is made by 10% of the people, but still. I read over and over again about people who've owned their houses for many years, and are now about to lose them because they've refinanced them to take out cash, over and over, and now they can't pay the mortgage, can't refinance because the house value is less than they owe, and can't sell because the market is in the tank. They're going to lose the houses they should have been able to die in, because they over-borrowed. In 1976, the supporters of California's Proposition 13 made a big deal that older people were going to lose their homes because of rising property taxes. Some of the people that are going to lose their homes to foreclosure now are those people; and no constitutional amendment will help them. They did this themselves. This is running the world on credit, and the bills have come due.
Are we having a recession?? Damn straight we are. Is the rate cut going to help? Not a chance. Frankly, I think the rate cut was a major mistake. Low interest rates are what got us into this mess. If we're not really careful, low interest rates will dump us back into the 70's, a decade I have no desire to rerun, especially as a retiree. Inflation is ticking up just as oil and food prices spike and job creation essentially vanishes; does all this sound familiar? I'm sorry, the European Central Bank is correct here: they just refused to cut rates on the grounds that their primary focus is to keep inflation under control. Ben Bernanke should try to remember that.
Oh, yes, and the tax rebate issue. It's amazing how consistent Dubya is. He wants to restrict tax rebates to people who actually paid taxes, which basically eliminates anybody with children making less than about $75K. (Don't hold me to these numbers. But it's a LOT of people.) In other words, as usual, Dubya wants to give tax help only to people who don't actually need it.
Friday, January 11, 2008
Phone Bills
It's not polite to display schadenfreude publicly, but I can't resist this one. Remember all those wiretaps that the FBI insisted were so critical to national security and the GWOT that they couldn't even defend them in court, because the information was so sensitive?? The ones where Dubya wants Congress to give the phone companies immunity from any possible prosecution, in case the whole thing should someday be judged unconstitutional or even illegal?
Well, it turns out there is something that will cause the phone companies to refuse to support the government's wiretap program.
The FBI didn't pay the phone bill. So, the phone companies disconnected the wires, in some cases shutting down wiretaps on ongoing FISA investigations.
And we're not talking pocket change, either: A Justice Dept. audit found that the unpaid bills to one phone company, from one FBI office, ran to $66,000! The article didn't give any overall totals. The information is probably classified.
If I actually thought the FBI was doing something useful to defend us against terrorists, or anything else, I might worry about this.
The audit found that the FBI's controls over the cash used to fund undercover operations are so sloppy that one FBI employee was able to steal $25,000. (Piker. If they're so loose, he should have been able to nick much more than that.)
Who is running this country, anyhow? The Keystone Kops? The Three Stooges?
Well, it turns out there is something that will cause the phone companies to refuse to support the government's wiretap program.
The FBI didn't pay the phone bill. So, the phone companies disconnected the wires, in some cases shutting down wiretaps on ongoing FISA investigations.
And we're not talking pocket change, either: A Justice Dept. audit found that the unpaid bills to one phone company, from one FBI office, ran to $66,000! The article didn't give any overall totals. The information is probably classified.
If I actually thought the FBI was doing something useful to defend us against terrorists, or anything else, I might worry about this.
The audit found that the FBI's controls over the cash used to fund undercover operations are so sloppy that one FBI employee was able to steal $25,000. (Piker. If they're so loose, he should have been able to nick much more than that.)
Who is running this country, anyhow? The Keystone Kops? The Three Stooges?
The Legacy
Here we go again. Dubya is trying to "secure his legacy" again, this time by making peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians. By the end of his term. In one year. An article this morning from the Cox News Service quoted him as saying he will "be a pain if I need to be a pain." Believe me, Mr. President - you are a pain.
First his legacy was going to be Iraq: depose the dictator, create a free democracy in the Middle East. (All planned by a staff with no Arabic speakers and no Middle East experience.) Then, when Iraq turned into a swamp, his legacy was going to be privatizing Social Security. Well, that went over with the voters like a solid gold parachute, despite what I have to admit was real work on his part - he stumped for that disaster all over the country. Now he's tackling a festering feud that's been going on for either 40 or 60 years, depending on whether you count from the founding of Israel in '48 or the Six Days War in '67; and he thinks he can mop it up in just under 12 months.
Have we got a president with ADHD? Or is he merely delusional?
There's an old mis-quote of Rudyard Kipling that I think applies here: "If you can keep your head when those about you / Are losing theirs and blaming it on you - / You haven't really grasped the situation yet."
Hey, if he can pull this off, and produce an agreement between Israel and Palestine that actually works and stops the shooting, his legacy will be written in gold - and I won't even argue. I just don't think much of his chances.
First his legacy was going to be Iraq: depose the dictator, create a free democracy in the Middle East. (All planned by a staff with no Arabic speakers and no Middle East experience.) Then, when Iraq turned into a swamp, his legacy was going to be privatizing Social Security. Well, that went over with the voters like a solid gold parachute, despite what I have to admit was real work on his part - he stumped for that disaster all over the country. Now he's tackling a festering feud that's been going on for either 40 or 60 years, depending on whether you count from the founding of Israel in '48 or the Six Days War in '67; and he thinks he can mop it up in just under 12 months.
Have we got a president with ADHD? Or is he merely delusional?
There's an old mis-quote of Rudyard Kipling that I think applies here: "If you can keep your head when those about you / Are losing theirs and blaming it on you - / You haven't really grasped the situation yet."
Hey, if he can pull this off, and produce an agreement between Israel and Palestine that actually works and stops the shooting, his legacy will be written in gold - and I won't even argue. I just don't think much of his chances.
Friday, January 04, 2008
The Great Storm of '08
At least, I hope this is the biggest one; oops, the lights just flickered. Power's on now, but not for about 300,000 people elsewhere; and it was off when we got up. We're in the second of three storms, here, and the Bay Area is essentially closed due to weather. Some of it - the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge, for instance - is actually closed. Also Golden Gate Transit bus and ferry service - you have to drive to get from Marin to S.F., and watch the roads for flooding. And don't even think of flying into or out of SFO today.
Winds over the bay are gusting to 70 MPH (80 MPH in Los Gatos); they closed the Richmond Bridge, if I heard the traffic report on KQED FM correctly, when a Safeway delivery truck blew over onto a fire truck. The SFGate.com article doesn't mention the fire truck. BART is mostly functional except in western S.F. where a tree blew down over the tracks and a train hit it. The National Weather Service has issued every weather advisory they have except tornado: small craft, high wind, high surf, flash flood watch, flood warning.
It isn't just the Bay Area either - the Sierras are expecting up to 10 feet of snow in one storm, and they've forecast 100 MPH winds. This would NOT be a good weekend to drive up to Tahoe for the skiing.
Honest, I've lived here all my life, and I've only seen maybe 5 storms of this magnitude; this is crazy stuff. I know we need the rain, but yikes!
Winds over the bay are gusting to 70 MPH (80 MPH in Los Gatos); they closed the Richmond Bridge, if I heard the traffic report on KQED FM correctly, when a Safeway delivery truck blew over onto a fire truck. The SFGate.com article doesn't mention the fire truck. BART is mostly functional except in western S.F. where a tree blew down over the tracks and a train hit it. The National Weather Service has issued every weather advisory they have except tornado: small craft, high wind, high surf, flash flood watch, flood warning.
It isn't just the Bay Area either - the Sierras are expecting up to 10 feet of snow in one storm, and they've forecast 100 MPH winds. This would NOT be a good weekend to drive up to Tahoe for the skiing.
Honest, I've lived here all my life, and I've only seen maybe 5 storms of this magnitude; this is crazy stuff. I know we need the rain, but yikes!
U.S. Dollars
Yahoo News has a small article today to the effect that the Taj Mahal, in India, no longer accepts entrance fees in U.S. dollars. You have to pay 290 rupees; you can't just give them a five dollar bill any more. This is presented as a "troubling sign for the U.S. dollar," although in fact the dollar has dropped so far against the rupee that it's cheaper to pay in rupees.
Well, tadda-wadda. Tough bananas, guys. I'm not the world's great foreign traveler; but when I travel overseas, I carry and use the local currency. That, or credit cards. It is the height of arrogance for Americans to travel to another country and expect local merchants and tourist sites to accept American currency, in practice forcing the merchant to bear the expense of currency conversion. Grow up and learn to be world citizens, folks; it isn't that hard.
Well, tadda-wadda. Tough bananas, guys. I'm not the world's great foreign traveler; but when I travel overseas, I carry and use the local currency. That, or credit cards. It is the height of arrogance for Americans to travel to another country and expect local merchants and tourist sites to accept American currency, in practice forcing the merchant to bear the expense of currency conversion. Grow up and learn to be world citizens, folks; it isn't that hard.
Monday, December 31, 2007
Affordable Health Care
I've been going through the Divided We Fail site's list of candidate statements on where they stand on the various issues of affordable health care. This is an interesting site: nobody called the candidates and asked them questions. It's excerpts from their web site articles and speeches that relate to the Divided We Fail issues. You have to give AARP credit for a lot of research to dig all that out and post it, with links.
I notice a certain lack of detail on the "how" in all these fine statements. Everybody says that health care will be "affordable", and no one will be able to refuse you for a pre-existing condition. (They're not dumb, they know what the issues are.) What I don't see is how the candidates expect to compel the existing health insurance industry to sell health care insurance policies if they don't think they can make a profit on them. You can make laws and rules that say, if you're going to sell health insurance policies, they have to meet these criteria; but what happens when all the major vendors say, we can't make any money at that, we withdraw from that market. They've done it before: there are areas in the hurricane belt where certain insurance companies won't sell homeowners' insurance any more. They're not really interested in "insurance" as it was originally developed; they only want to play the game if the dice are loaded so they can always win. The only way to do this is to take profit out of the medical game altogether and run it as a subsidized public service.
The only one who comes right out and says, we're going to have universal publicly financed health care, is Dennis Kucinich; and he may be a fine man but he has about as much chance of winning this election as he has of being elected Pope. John Edwards at least admits that "the health system could evolve into a single-payer plan." Single-payer is ultimately the way we have to go; otherwise we can't get away from the insurance companies trying to squeeze out every last premium without ever paying out on a claim.
I notice a certain lack of detail on the "how" in all these fine statements. Everybody says that health care will be "affordable", and no one will be able to refuse you for a pre-existing condition. (They're not dumb, they know what the issues are.) What I don't see is how the candidates expect to compel the existing health insurance industry to sell health care insurance policies if they don't think they can make a profit on them. You can make laws and rules that say, if you're going to sell health insurance policies, they have to meet these criteria; but what happens when all the major vendors say, we can't make any money at that, we withdraw from that market. They've done it before: there are areas in the hurricane belt where certain insurance companies won't sell homeowners' insurance any more. They're not really interested in "insurance" as it was originally developed; they only want to play the game if the dice are loaded so they can always win. The only way to do this is to take profit out of the medical game altogether and run it as a subsidized public service.
The only one who comes right out and says, we're going to have universal publicly financed health care, is Dennis Kucinich; and he may be a fine man but he has about as much chance of winning this election as he has of being elected Pope. John Edwards at least admits that "the health system could evolve into a single-payer plan." Single-payer is ultimately the way we have to go; otherwise we can't get away from the insurance companies trying to squeeze out every last premium without ever paying out on a claim.
Divided We Fail
I've decided that I agree with the AARP - we have to do something about health care, long term care, and financial security. That's why I've added the "Divided We Fail" logo to the blog. If you agree, step up too. The link's right there - it's up to you. (By the way, their site sucks in FireFox - use IE7 to get it to load properly. Sigh.)
Hangovers
My husband just sent me a link to a NY Times op-ed piece that was making the rounds of his recovery group, and it's interesting enough that I want to share it here.
The Hangover That Lasts
Go read it - you have to have a login to NYTimes.com but they're free and they've never hassled me with spam. It isn't very long.
I'm fascinated by the conclusions (from studies on rats) about rats which engaged in the laboratory equivalent of binge drinking during adolescence, and then stopped drinking. They're capable of learning - but they're not capable of relearning. They can't admit they were wrong. They show "a tendency to stay the course, a diminished capacity for relearning and maladaptive decision-making." They "fail to recognize the ultimate consequences of [their] actions." And all this is present even after a long period of sobriety.
The one good thing the study mentions is that, in "former alcohol-drinking mice", exercise clearly stimulates "the regrowth and development of normal neural tissue". So - exercise is good for the formerly drunken brain.
And neither I nor the article's author have ever mentioned the name you're thinking!
Now how do we explain Dick Cheney?
The Hangover That Lasts
Go read it - you have to have a login to NYTimes.com but they're free and they've never hassled me with spam. It isn't very long.
I'm fascinated by the conclusions (from studies on rats) about rats which engaged in the laboratory equivalent of binge drinking during adolescence, and then stopped drinking. They're capable of learning - but they're not capable of relearning. They can't admit they were wrong. They show "a tendency to stay the course, a diminished capacity for relearning and maladaptive decision-making." They "fail to recognize the ultimate consequences of [their] actions." And all this is present even after a long period of sobriety.
The one good thing the study mentions is that, in "former alcohol-drinking mice", exercise clearly stimulates "the regrowth and development of normal neural tissue". So - exercise is good for the formerly drunken brain.
And neither I nor the article's author have ever mentioned the name you're thinking!
Now how do we explain Dick Cheney?
Health Insurance
I can't believe there hasn't been more publicity about this - I've seen one article, essentially a press release.
The EEOC has just ruled that employers don't have to offer full retiree health benefits to retirees who have reached the age of 65 and qualify for Medicare. They claim this just "formally authorizes the long-standing practice of employers" of paying less for retiree health care after the retiree qualifies for Medicare; they made the decision because the U.S. Court of Appeals (3rd circuit) ruled in 2000 that employers who spend less for health coverage on retirees eligible for Medicare, than they do on retirees who don't yet qualify, are in violation of the Age Discrimination in Employment Act.
EEOC claims this is "in the public interest", because without the ruling employers would quit offering retiree health coverage to all retirees because of the extra expense for retirees also covered by Medicare. I thought that's what they were doing anyhow. They claim this will preserve retiree health benefits for younger workers while not reducing benefits for older workers. They claim they have broad bipartisan support for this (although while they list the AFL-CIO and the American Federation of Teachers, I don't see the AARP listed).
Full disclosure here: I'm retired, and my health insurance comes from my husband's job; and when he retires, theoretically he will continue to get full, lifetime health insurance as a retiree. (Yeah, there are about 8 of those left.) I see this ruling affecting my ability to continue to have health coverage, and it scares the liver out of me. I'm about to turn into one of the "older workers" who will get reduced health benefits; and while I'm generally in good shape, I have a number of chronic conditions that require regular medications and checks with the doctor, and my health would deteriorate pretty fast if I couldn't get those.
Maybe I'm over-reacting. But let's get cracking on universal health care coverage, huh??
The EEOC has just ruled that employers don't have to offer full retiree health benefits to retirees who have reached the age of 65 and qualify for Medicare. They claim this just "formally authorizes the long-standing practice of employers" of paying less for retiree health care after the retiree qualifies for Medicare; they made the decision because the U.S. Court of Appeals (3rd circuit) ruled in 2000 that employers who spend less for health coverage on retirees eligible for Medicare, than they do on retirees who don't yet qualify, are in violation of the Age Discrimination in Employment Act.
EEOC claims this is "in the public interest", because without the ruling employers would quit offering retiree health coverage to all retirees because of the extra expense for retirees also covered by Medicare. I thought that's what they were doing anyhow. They claim this will preserve retiree health benefits for younger workers while not reducing benefits for older workers. They claim they have broad bipartisan support for this (although while they list the AFL-CIO and the American Federation of Teachers, I don't see the AARP listed).
Full disclosure here: I'm retired, and my health insurance comes from my husband's job; and when he retires, theoretically he will continue to get full, lifetime health insurance as a retiree. (Yeah, there are about 8 of those left.) I see this ruling affecting my ability to continue to have health coverage, and it scares the liver out of me. I'm about to turn into one of the "older workers" who will get reduced health benefits; and while I'm generally in good shape, I have a number of chronic conditions that require regular medications and checks with the doctor, and my health would deteriorate pretty fast if I couldn't get those.
Maybe I'm over-reacting. But let's get cracking on universal health care coverage, huh??
Still No Turkeys
I'm embarrassed to admit this, but I've never gotten a photo of the turkeys living up the canyon; and I have a feeling I never will. The problem is the schedule; according to the guy I spoke with (who works at the racquet club up the road), they're around all the time, "pretty early." Oof. This probably means (they being birds) that they get up with the sun, or maybe a little before.
I have to be honest here: I am not a "morning" person. One of the most delightful things about being retired is the ability to roll over and pull the covers up around my ears when my husband's alarm clock goes off. I've always felt that, if God intended us to see the sunrise, She would have scheduled it later in the day. I tried to get up early a couple of days but never made it early enough.
I could still potentially find them around sunset; but afternoon is when I'm working on my volunteer projects, and I tend to wake up from my web configuration screens and realize, wait - it's dark already. Too late to go look for turkeys now. I went a couple of times, but not at the right times. Oh, well. I enjoyed seeing them - and the photo I really wanted was the one of them ambling calmly down the middle of my street. That photo would require a time machine, I'm afraid. So - no turkey photos, but delightful memories of two accidental sightings. That'll have to be enough.
I have to be honest here: I am not a "morning" person. One of the most delightful things about being retired is the ability to roll over and pull the covers up around my ears when my husband's alarm clock goes off. I've always felt that, if God intended us to see the sunrise, She would have scheduled it later in the day. I tried to get up early a couple of days but never made it early enough.
I could still potentially find them around sunset; but afternoon is when I'm working on my volunteer projects, and I tend to wake up from my web configuration screens and realize, wait - it's dark already. Too late to go look for turkeys now. I went a couple of times, but not at the right times. Oh, well. I enjoyed seeing them - and the photo I really wanted was the one of them ambling calmly down the middle of my street. That photo would require a time machine, I'm afraid. So - no turkey photos, but delightful memories of two accidental sightings. That'll have to be enough.
Thursday, December 27, 2007
Benazir Bhutto, 1953 - 2007
In pace requiescat, Benazir Bhutto. Whatever you were or weren't guilty of, you never deserved this. I suspect you were guilty of nothing more threatening than wishing and working for a fully democratic Pakistan.
Every so often I start to hope. I think, well, we've stopped doing this awful thing and we've pretty much eliminated that dreadful practice - then an incident like this one comes along and I realize, nope, the old demons are still strong. Will the human race ever reach a point where it can collectively agree to disagree?? Why is it always necessary to kill the people you disagree with? Why is it ever necessary to kill the people you disagree with? I know all the arguments; I just don't buy them.
Actually, 250-300 years ago, Christians were killing each other over what now look like minor theological points. After the Thirty Years' War devastated Europe, pretty much all the countries there decided simultaneously that they wouldn't go to war over that any more. There were still local spats over religion, but by the end of the 18th century, the various sects of Christianity had more or less agreed to disagree, and later wars were over "rational" things like land and politics. If you look at the history of Islam, it has never really had its equivalent of the Thirty Years' War; the trouble is, it may be having it now, between the Sunnis and the Shias. One of the leading suspects in the Bhutto assassination is the local Islamic fanatic movement, incorporating the Taliban and al Qaeda.
What really fries my potatoes over this, though, is my deep suspicion that Benazir Bhutto was killed because she was a woman who wielded power. That her actual political positions, her actual intents, were of less important to her killers than the fact that she was a woman, wielding great political power, in a world where (they believe) women should stay home and keep their faces covered and their mouths shut. She had ruled the country before; she could have done so again; and for that alone, in the minds of these fanatics, she had to die. Of all the things I find intolerable about the Islamic extremists, their attitude toward women annoys me most - if only because it was not the Prophet's attitude! They are taking their patriarchal, tribal customs and pasting them on Mohammed and claiming he told them to do these things, and they lie. I'm not even an Islamic scholar and I know this, just from listening to real Islamic scholars discuss the issue.
Of course, she could also have been assassinated by one of Musharraf's boys, simply because she was probably going to win the election. You never know. But I hope we find out. She cared about her country and worked hard for it, and she ultimately died for it - she deserves to have the truth about her death known.
Last fall, among other U.C. scholarship candidates, I interviewed a charming young woman from Pakistan; I can't help but think of her, and grieve with her over the damage to her country from these squabbling ideologues. When will they ever learn? Oh, when will they ever learn?
Every so often I start to hope. I think, well, we've stopped doing this awful thing and we've pretty much eliminated that dreadful practice - then an incident like this one comes along and I realize, nope, the old demons are still strong. Will the human race ever reach a point where it can collectively agree to disagree?? Why is it always necessary to kill the people you disagree with? Why is it ever necessary to kill the people you disagree with? I know all the arguments; I just don't buy them.
Actually, 250-300 years ago, Christians were killing each other over what now look like minor theological points. After the Thirty Years' War devastated Europe, pretty much all the countries there decided simultaneously that they wouldn't go to war over that any more. There were still local spats over religion, but by the end of the 18th century, the various sects of Christianity had more or less agreed to disagree, and later wars were over "rational" things like land and politics. If you look at the history of Islam, it has never really had its equivalent of the Thirty Years' War; the trouble is, it may be having it now, between the Sunnis and the Shias. One of the leading suspects in the Bhutto assassination is the local Islamic fanatic movement, incorporating the Taliban and al Qaeda.
What really fries my potatoes over this, though, is my deep suspicion that Benazir Bhutto was killed because she was a woman who wielded power. That her actual political positions, her actual intents, were of less important to her killers than the fact that she was a woman, wielding great political power, in a world where (they believe) women should stay home and keep their faces covered and their mouths shut. She had ruled the country before; she could have done so again; and for that alone, in the minds of these fanatics, she had to die. Of all the things I find intolerable about the Islamic extremists, their attitude toward women annoys me most - if only because it was not the Prophet's attitude! They are taking their patriarchal, tribal customs and pasting them on Mohammed and claiming he told them to do these things, and they lie. I'm not even an Islamic scholar and I know this, just from listening to real Islamic scholars discuss the issue.
Of course, she could also have been assassinated by one of Musharraf's boys, simply because she was probably going to win the election. You never know. But I hope we find out. She cared about her country and worked hard for it, and she ultimately died for it - she deserves to have the truth about her death known.
Last fall, among other U.C. scholarship candidates, I interviewed a charming young woman from Pakistan; I can't help but think of her, and grieve with her over the damage to her country from these squabbling ideologues. When will they ever learn? Oh, when will they ever learn?
Monday, December 24, 2007
Christmas in California
Winter in the Bay Area: I walked down to the small commercial district near my house, about half a mile away; it's a beautiful sunny day, mid-50s, intermittent breeze. On my way back, I noticed a house belonging to some acquaintances, who have hung an evergreen wreath under the front picture window, decorated with a dark red bow and a couple of red ornaments. Next to the evergreen wreath, and matching the colors exactly, is their massive display of blooming bougainvillea - dark red with dark green leaves - all over the porch.
I love you, California. I guess the recent frost wasn't so bad after all.
I love you, California. I guess the recent frost wasn't so bad after all.
Sunday, December 23, 2007
Merry Christmas To All
This is an unpopular thing to say these days; one should say, "Happy holidays," so as not to offend anyone. I certainly don't mean to offend anyone; and when talking to my Jewish friends I wish them happy Chanukah; my chorus sings Ma'oz T'zur along with In Dulci Jubilo when we go caroling. In the rush not to offend, though, I think we forget that the original purpose of this greeting was to wish people well. To hope that they enjoy the season, however they celebrate it, as best they can.
The common "we must not offend anyone" mode always makes me think back to Aesop's fable about the man, the boy, and the donkey; you can find one version here. The moral of this fable is: try to please all, and you please none. If I wish someone a Merry Christmas, and they say, "But I celebrate Kwanzaa, we don't do Christmas", the only thing I can do is wish them a Happy Kwanzaa; if they choose to be offended because I didn't do that first, I can't stop them. I can see how people who follow other traditions feel overwhelmed by the tsunami of "Christmasness" that rolls over us every winter; but it still bothers me that I'm not supposed to wish them well without knowing in advance which particular form of well-wishing they prefer.
I'm not especially religious; and I hate to shop (although I don't belong to the Church of Stop Shopping either!). My view of Christmas is more Dickensian than anything else: I've read A Christmas Carol so often I know it almost by heart. Dickens' view of Christmas was only marginally associated with the worship of Christ; what he really valued it for was to encourage charity among men, especially charity from the rich to the poor ("to think of people below them as if they really were fellow-passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys."), but also from the poor to the poor; and sometimes charity was nothing more than to wish someone well.
So, with that in mind, I wish all of you well in the way that is most natural to me: that is, I wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. If you prefer to translate that into some other form, feel free; as long as you remember the well-wishing.
The common "we must not offend anyone" mode always makes me think back to Aesop's fable about the man, the boy, and the donkey; you can find one version here. The moral of this fable is: try to please all, and you please none. If I wish someone a Merry Christmas, and they say, "But I celebrate Kwanzaa, we don't do Christmas", the only thing I can do is wish them a Happy Kwanzaa; if they choose to be offended because I didn't do that first, I can't stop them. I can see how people who follow other traditions feel overwhelmed by the tsunami of "Christmasness" that rolls over us every winter; but it still bothers me that I'm not supposed to wish them well without knowing in advance which particular form of well-wishing they prefer.
I'm not especially religious; and I hate to shop (although I don't belong to the Church of Stop Shopping either!). My view of Christmas is more Dickensian than anything else: I've read A Christmas Carol so often I know it almost by heart. Dickens' view of Christmas was only marginally associated with the worship of Christ; what he really valued it for was to encourage charity among men, especially charity from the rich to the poor ("to think of people below them as if they really were fellow-passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys."), but also from the poor to the poor; and sometimes charity was nothing more than to wish someone well.
So, with that in mind, I wish all of you well in the way that is most natural to me: that is, I wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. If you prefer to translate that into some other form, feel free; as long as you remember the well-wishing.
Saturday, December 15, 2007
The Noodly Universe
I was reading Scientific American tonight (November '07 issue) and they had an article on multiple universes, string theory, and "branes" ("The Great Cosmic Roller-Coaster Ride"). The article is available online, but it unfortunately lacks the illustrations that inspired me; you'll have to go to the library and look at the paper copy to see the artist's rendition of a "Calabi-Yau space." There's a picture of one here, and also in Wikipedia, along with many mathematical formulae; but the picture in SciAm had long stringy appendages sticking out of the central mass. It looked familiar; it looked strangely familiar, and then I realized:
It's the Flying Spaghetti Monster in disguise! These scientists are covert Pastafarians! "String theory" indeed - what better to make strings than spaghetti? The Universe is a physical manifestation of the FSM and the cosmic strings are His Noodly Appendages. All is now clear.
Actually, I've been reading the cosmology articles in SciAm for 30-odd years now, and as time has gone on they've gotten farther and farther out, to the point that I ask myself: do these people have any work to do?? I realize this is a serious branch of science, but the basis of science is that you establish a theory, and then you make a prediction, and then you create an experiment to test the prediction, after which you either declare victory and start writing up the article for Science, or you go back and tinker with the theory some more. (The scientific method in a nutshell.)
The trouble with cosmologists, and especially string theorists, is that they've been trying for 20 years to devise experiments that would validate their theories, and they can't do it. They'd have to create the conditions that existed within nanoseconds after the Big Bang, and then be able to stand back outside the inferno and analyze the process. I don't know why they think the experiment wouldn't incinerate the experimenter. They plan to work on very small scales, of course: just a minuscule inferno.
As I read about strings, and branes, and scalar fields, and dark matter, I get a whiff - just a whiff - of the "ether" which filled interplanetary space only about 125 years ago. The scientists of that day could no more sample the atmosphere (or lack of it) in interplanetary space, than today's cosmologists can collect a piece of dark matter in a test tube and weigh it. But they were just as convinced that it was there. Today's scientists have much better equipment and much better experimental data. But until they can verify a prediction, they're no better off than the people who believed in ether. They'll tell you the mathematics makes it work; maybe it does. Mathematics is a language I never mastered, and this is a pretty esoteric dialect. I'd still like to see a verified prediction.
It's the Flying Spaghetti Monster in disguise! These scientists are covert Pastafarians! "String theory" indeed - what better to make strings than spaghetti? The Universe is a physical manifestation of the FSM and the cosmic strings are His Noodly Appendages. All is now clear.
Actually, I've been reading the cosmology articles in SciAm for 30-odd years now, and as time has gone on they've gotten farther and farther out, to the point that I ask myself: do these people have any work to do?? I realize this is a serious branch of science, but the basis of science is that you establish a theory, and then you make a prediction, and then you create an experiment to test the prediction, after which you either declare victory and start writing up the article for Science, or you go back and tinker with the theory some more. (The scientific method in a nutshell.)
The trouble with cosmologists, and especially string theorists, is that they've been trying for 20 years to devise experiments that would validate their theories, and they can't do it. They'd have to create the conditions that existed within nanoseconds after the Big Bang, and then be able to stand back outside the inferno and analyze the process. I don't know why they think the experiment wouldn't incinerate the experimenter. They plan to work on very small scales, of course: just a minuscule inferno.
As I read about strings, and branes, and scalar fields, and dark matter, I get a whiff - just a whiff - of the "ether" which filled interplanetary space only about 125 years ago. The scientists of that day could no more sample the atmosphere (or lack of it) in interplanetary space, than today's cosmologists can collect a piece of dark matter in a test tube and weigh it. But they were just as convinced that it was there. Today's scientists have much better equipment and much better experimental data. But until they can verify a prediction, they're no better off than the people who believed in ether. They'll tell you the mathematics makes it work; maybe it does. Mathematics is a language I never mastered, and this is a pretty esoteric dialect. I'd still like to see a verified prediction.
Wednesday, December 12, 2007
Steam Trek, the Silent Movie
To quote the friend who sent me this YouTube link:
"This is what Star Trek would have looked if it had been shot back in 1899 by Georges Méliès. Worth watching just for the Star Trek theme, rendered on a piano. Stunning."
The animation is hilarious. You'll see a link, "Steam Trek, the blog" if you're interested in how they did it...
"This is what Star Trek would have looked if it had been shot back in 1899 by Georges Méliès. Worth watching just for the Star Trek theme, rendered on a piano. Stunning."
The animation is hilarious. You'll see a link, "Steam Trek, the blog" if you're interested in how they did it...
You Have To Watch This
Boggart sent this to me a couple of weeks ago, and the stupid thing has been running through my head ever since. So, out of the kindness of my heart, I will share this short animation with you, my loyal readers - it's hilarious. All of you over the age of 50 will grok it instantly. Any younger readers - well, it'll make sense to you eventually...
The Baby Boomers
The Baby Boomers
Saturday, December 08, 2007
Evil Genius or Compliant Front Man?
I have a disagreement going with one of my commenters, Curtis Faville, on the nature and involvement of Pres. Bush in the doings of his administration, and after our last exchange (in the comments under Don't Relax Yet) I think I'll pull the issue out of the comments and start a discussion on it.
My position has always been that Dubya is a front man, happy to have a position of apparent power ("I'm the decider") while not actually driving the major decisions, like the invasion of Iraq or the privatization of Social Security. His position in his administration is a rough parallel to the role Leland Stanford Sr. played in California's "Big Four" - he was the affable public spokesman, while Collis Huntington, Charles Crocker and Mark Hopkins actually ran the Central Pacific Railroad combine. Stanford wasn't even always aware of all the details of the inner workings.
Curtis' position is that Dubya is an intelligent, evil man who is fully engaged in what his administration has done.
It's certainly true that Dubya's business career, fully documented at
http://www.realchange.org/bushjr.htm
has been a success only in the sense that he personally profited immensely from every phase of it; any business enterprise he ever participated in was a disaster for the other shareholders. So this argument cuts in Curtis' direction.
I'll confess I've also read commentary that indicates that when Dubya has something he really wants, he can and does push back, even against Cheney (whom I personally regard as this administration's éminance grise). Another point for Curtis.
Here's the reason why I don't think he has been a central player, and wasn't originally intended to be a player at all. Look at the web site of the Project for the New American Century, especially at the Statement of Principles. Look at the list of people who signed that statement - in 1997, I might add, 3 years before the 2000 election. It was signed by every significant member of the first Bush administration, plus a number of the major neoconservative intelligentsia, except for - Dubya himself. It was, however, signed by Jeb Bush. I believe the PNAC planners originally intended to run Jeb for president, but switched to George when the skeletons in Jeb's closet became too obvious to survive the blinding light of a presidential campaign. Dubya's major personal skeleton was his former lifestyle, and since he had reformed that, it could be - and was - turned into a selling point.
I believe the neoconservative team that designed and built the 2000 election campaign, headed by Dick Cheney and Karl Rove, chose Dubya as an electable figurehead who would go along with their major policy objectives as long as they allowed him to appear to be in charge. Remember that Dick Cheney was the man in charge of the team who decided on the vice presidential candidate, and came up with - himself. I believe the administration's continued insistence on executive privilege and secrecy is a deliberate attempt to conceal who actually is in charge - if possible, permanently. And I believe Dubya went along with this plan, first because he does enjoy power (even if not absolute), and second because he saw the possibility of making a lot of money out of it.
And to quote a T-shirt I saw advertised on the Internet a couple of years ago, the thing I hate most about this administration is the way it makes me sound like a nutcase conspiracy theorist!
My position has always been that Dubya is a front man, happy to have a position of apparent power ("I'm the decider") while not actually driving the major decisions, like the invasion of Iraq or the privatization of Social Security. His position in his administration is a rough parallel to the role Leland Stanford Sr. played in California's "Big Four" - he was the affable public spokesman, while Collis Huntington, Charles Crocker and Mark Hopkins actually ran the Central Pacific Railroad combine. Stanford wasn't even always aware of all the details of the inner workings.
Curtis' position is that Dubya is an intelligent, evil man who is fully engaged in what his administration has done.
It's certainly true that Dubya's business career, fully documented at
http://www.realchange.org/bushjr.htm
has been a success only in the sense that he personally profited immensely from every phase of it; any business enterprise he ever participated in was a disaster for the other shareholders. So this argument cuts in Curtis' direction.
I'll confess I've also read commentary that indicates that when Dubya has something he really wants, he can and does push back, even against Cheney (whom I personally regard as this administration's éminance grise). Another point for Curtis.
Here's the reason why I don't think he has been a central player, and wasn't originally intended to be a player at all. Look at the web site of the Project for the New American Century, especially at the Statement of Principles. Look at the list of people who signed that statement - in 1997, I might add, 3 years before the 2000 election. It was signed by every significant member of the first Bush administration, plus a number of the major neoconservative intelligentsia, except for - Dubya himself. It was, however, signed by Jeb Bush. I believe the PNAC planners originally intended to run Jeb for president, but switched to George when the skeletons in Jeb's closet became too obvious to survive the blinding light of a presidential campaign. Dubya's major personal skeleton was his former lifestyle, and since he had reformed that, it could be - and was - turned into a selling point.
I believe the neoconservative team that designed and built the 2000 election campaign, headed by Dick Cheney and Karl Rove, chose Dubya as an electable figurehead who would go along with their major policy objectives as long as they allowed him to appear to be in charge. Remember that Dick Cheney was the man in charge of the team who decided on the vice presidential candidate, and came up with - himself. I believe the administration's continued insistence on executive privilege and secrecy is a deliberate attempt to conceal who actually is in charge - if possible, permanently. And I believe Dubya went along with this plan, first because he does enjoy power (even if not absolute), and second because he saw the possibility of making a lot of money out of it.
And to quote a T-shirt I saw advertised on the Internet a couple of years ago, the thing I hate most about this administration is the way it makes me sound like a nutcase conspiracy theorist!
Friday, December 07, 2007
Saving the Day
Mr. Bush's heart is touched. (Also, he doesn't want to go down in history as the president under whom millions of people were foreclosed out of their houses, crashing the economy.) He's going to save the day. He's going to freeze interest rates on those awful adjustable loans for five years:
So this isn't a real attempt to help anybody; this is a stupendous exercise in government CYA. Now let's talk about some of the real issues.
First of all, nobody beat these people over the head with a club and forced them to sign off on these loans. This was a voluntary business transaction, and they didn't read all the paperwork, and now they discover that the broker lied to them about the rate increase and they can't afford the loan payments. Under normal business practices in this country, they are SOL. If a business borrows money to expand its operations, and instead the business goes bust and can't repay the loan, it declares bankruptcy. Yes, these are human beings not businesses, and yes, my heart bleeds for them, and yes, many of them were deliberately deceived by brokers hustling for high commissions on loans they personally had no stake in, but dammit. There's such a thing as personal responsibility. Are we responsible for our actions all the time, or only when they work out right?? Can we spell Moral Hazard? I don't have to worry about it, the Guvmint will bail me out. If it can get the hotline phone number right.
Second (and this one absolutely floors me) this suggestion is coming from a REPUBLICAN president! A Republican president is suggesting that, in order to bail out the Little Guy, we must mess with the free market and rewrite contracts that have already been signed and performed under for up to 2 years. I don't think even FDR ever tried to rewrite contract law. Whatever happened to the Republicans as the party of small government and less regulation? (Of course, if you're going there, whatever happened to Republicans as the party of fiscal responsibility, but that's another whole post.)
Full disclosure: I am a Democrat (God help me), not a Republican.
Third, this whole thing assumes that the loan servicers are the ones who will determine the last 2 items on the list above (can't make higher payments and don't qualify for refi). The problem with this goes back to the problem with this entire Donnybrook: the loan servicers aren't empowered to make changes to the loan contracts because They. Do. Not. Own. The. Loans. They are bookkeepers and administrators; they track loans, collect payments, and pass the dollars on to the people who do own the loans.
And who does own the loans?? If I say "hedge fund investors" you'll throw something at me, but it's true. Your neighbor's house loan was "securitized" (see my post from September): bundled together with a bunch of other loans, the bundle divided up into pieces, and the pieces ("tranches") sold at prices, and interest rates, based on their credit rating. Which has nothing to do with the individual credit rating of the owner of any one of those loans. In fact, I'm not sure you could identify the substantive "owner" of a home mortgage that was securitized; and if you could, it would be more than one person (or entity); and every one of those multiple entities would have to sign off on a change to the contract. Unless the government rewrites the contracts by fiat, which is what Dubya is proposing.
And if that happens, the people who bought those securitized mortgages will lose money. Figure how likely it is they'll cooperate with this. Of course, they're going to lose money anyway, because they backed a dead horse; but with this plan, they'll have somebody to sue - and it'll be our government. Isn't that a great idea??
- If you're living in the home and it's your primary residence.
- If you're current on your payments.
- If you got the mortgage between January 1, 2005 and June 30, 2007.
- If your interest rate will reset for the first time between Jan. 1, 2008 and June 30, 2010 by more than 10% on the first reset.
- If you can't make the higher payments.
- If you can't qualify for refinancing.
So this isn't a real attempt to help anybody; this is a stupendous exercise in government CYA. Now let's talk about some of the real issues.
First of all, nobody beat these people over the head with a club and forced them to sign off on these loans. This was a voluntary business transaction, and they didn't read all the paperwork, and now they discover that the broker lied to them about the rate increase and they can't afford the loan payments. Under normal business practices in this country, they are SOL. If a business borrows money to expand its operations, and instead the business goes bust and can't repay the loan, it declares bankruptcy. Yes, these are human beings not businesses, and yes, my heart bleeds for them, and yes, many of them were deliberately deceived by brokers hustling for high commissions on loans they personally had no stake in, but dammit. There's such a thing as personal responsibility. Are we responsible for our actions all the time, or only when they work out right?? Can we spell Moral Hazard? I don't have to worry about it, the Guvmint will bail me out. If it can get the hotline phone number right.
Second (and this one absolutely floors me) this suggestion is coming from a REPUBLICAN president! A Republican president is suggesting that, in order to bail out the Little Guy, we must mess with the free market and rewrite contracts that have already been signed and performed under for up to 2 years. I don't think even FDR ever tried to rewrite contract law. Whatever happened to the Republicans as the party of small government and less regulation? (Of course, if you're going there, whatever happened to Republicans as the party of fiscal responsibility, but that's another whole post.)
Full disclosure: I am a Democrat (God help me), not a Republican.
Third, this whole thing assumes that the loan servicers are the ones who will determine the last 2 items on the list above (can't make higher payments and don't qualify for refi). The problem with this goes back to the problem with this entire Donnybrook: the loan servicers aren't empowered to make changes to the loan contracts because They. Do. Not. Own. The. Loans. They are bookkeepers and administrators; they track loans, collect payments, and pass the dollars on to the people who do own the loans.
And who does own the loans?? If I say "hedge fund investors" you'll throw something at me, but it's true. Your neighbor's house loan was "securitized" (see my post from September): bundled together with a bunch of other loans, the bundle divided up into pieces, and the pieces ("tranches") sold at prices, and interest rates, based on their credit rating. Which has nothing to do with the individual credit rating of the owner of any one of those loans. In fact, I'm not sure you could identify the substantive "owner" of a home mortgage that was securitized; and if you could, it would be more than one person (or entity); and every one of those multiple entities would have to sign off on a change to the contract. Unless the government rewrites the contracts by fiat, which is what Dubya is proposing.
And if that happens, the people who bought those securitized mortgages will lose money. Figure how likely it is they'll cooperate with this. Of course, they're going to lose money anyway, because they backed a dead horse; but with this plan, they'll have somebody to sue - and it'll be our government. Isn't that a great idea??
Tuesday, December 04, 2007
Don't Relax Yet
I see the Department of National Intelligence (which is an oxymoron) has now concluded that, in contradiction to its firm statement 2 years ago that "Iran was currently determined to have nuclear weapons", it has now discovered that Iran in fact shut down its nuclear weapons development program in - wait for it - 2003. In other words, at the time they assured everybody that Iran was actively developing nukes, it actually hadn't been working on them for 2 years.
Of course, the fact that Mahmoud Ahmedinajad has been jumping up and down for 5 years yelling (in effect, and in Farsi), "Nyaah, nyaah, we're gonna enrich uranium and you can't stop us!" does rather color the issue. He also says they only want the uranium for peaceful purposes; but of course, nobody believes that.
When I read this article, my initial reaction was, surely we can relax now. Surely, the wingnuts in the Executive Branch now have no conceivable grounds for bombing Iran. But I've reconsidered - at least in part because Dubya stood up this morning and basically said, this doesn't make any difference, they could restart the program any time. This is the argument of a man spoiling for a fight. It is also, I'm afraid, the argument of a man who spent too much time in childhood watching Davy Crockett - I keep getting the echo of the motto Disney gave their hero: "Decide what's right, then go ahead." Davy Crockett never reconsidered the fact that he might have been wrong in the first place, and neither does Dubya. Oliver Cromwell, where are you, now that we need you?
Considering the mess Dubya made in Iraq, I don't know why he thinks he could do a better job taking on Iran, but he does seem to think so, God help us all.
Furthermore, if you think about it, why should he - or we - assume that anything at all the Dept. of National Intelligence says is correct? These people can't get to the bottom of the stairs without a map. They still - the last time I heard - have no resources on the ground in Iran, and in fact few or no staff members who even speak Farsi. How in hell can they claim to know anything about what's going on there? Do we just assume that the French and the Brits are kindly feeding them information??
Honest, if we can get through Dubya's last term of office without starting another fershlugginah war, I may begin to believe in miracles, because I can't see anything else out there that could stop him.
Of course, the fact that Mahmoud Ahmedinajad has been jumping up and down for 5 years yelling (in effect, and in Farsi), "Nyaah, nyaah, we're gonna enrich uranium and you can't stop us!" does rather color the issue. He also says they only want the uranium for peaceful purposes; but of course, nobody believes that.
When I read this article, my initial reaction was, surely we can relax now. Surely, the wingnuts in the Executive Branch now have no conceivable grounds for bombing Iran. But I've reconsidered - at least in part because Dubya stood up this morning and basically said, this doesn't make any difference, they could restart the program any time. This is the argument of a man spoiling for a fight. It is also, I'm afraid, the argument of a man who spent too much time in childhood watching Davy Crockett - I keep getting the echo of the motto Disney gave their hero: "Decide what's right, then go ahead." Davy Crockett never reconsidered the fact that he might have been wrong in the first place, and neither does Dubya. Oliver Cromwell, where are you, now that we need you?
Considering the mess Dubya made in Iraq, I don't know why he thinks he could do a better job taking on Iran, but he does seem to think so, God help us all.
Furthermore, if you think about it, why should he - or we - assume that anything at all the Dept. of National Intelligence says is correct? These people can't get to the bottom of the stairs without a map. They still - the last time I heard - have no resources on the ground in Iran, and in fact few or no staff members who even speak Farsi. How in hell can they claim to know anything about what's going on there? Do we just assume that the French and the Brits are kindly feeding them information??
Honest, if we can get through Dubya's last term of office without starting another fershlugginah war, I may begin to believe in miracles, because I can't see anything else out there that could stop him.
Friday, November 30, 2007
Thank You, Courtney Ruby
In the last few days I've had a feeling that I haven't had in as long as I can remember. I have been grateful to an elected official that I voted for, because that official was vigilantly performing the duties of her office. And the weird thing is, the office is not one of the high-visibility spots: it's the Oakland City Auditor.
At the last election, the race for City Auditor was actually one of the liveliest contests on the local ballot, with the former auditor (who had been in office for years and was accused of being impossible to work for and gutting the department) up against 2 likely-looking and well qualified newcomers, of whom Courtney Ruby, a CPA and former CFO, took the election and took office. Courtney Ruby has just released a hard-hitting audit of city payroll practices, and I feel like standing up and cheering. She's identified more than $3 million in "loosely monitored payroll transactions" over a 3 year period, and she says she's not done.
The reaction from the city administrator, Deborah Edgerly, was disgracefully unprofessional - she called the report "inaccurate and misleading," and somewhat grudgingly agreed to work with the auditor and the city council to identify "payroll policies and practices that need changing." I translate this response as "You don't understand how we do things here." But I think Ms. Ruby does understand how we do things here, and she's just documented it publicly.
Chip Johnson of the San Francisco Chronicle says it's the "first independent fiscal analysis coming out of Oakland City Hall in the 10 years I've covered the place." He further points out that Ms. Ruby, formerly with the East Bay Conservation Corps, is not part of "the city's political cabal" - well, exactly. The problem with Oakland is exactly that long-standing political cabal, of which, I may add, Mayor Dellums is a member in good standing; the purpose of the political cabal is to appoint some friends to well-paying commissions and award lucrative contracts to other friends - I can't think of another reason why the same names keep turning up over and over. Managing the city of Oakland in a fiscally responsible manner isn't on the table, as far as this citizen can see: we pay the taxes and pay the taxes, and still there's no money for police, for fire coverage, for street repair - the money must be going somewhere. Well, we now know that $700,000 a year is paying for automobile allowances for 238 city employees. How many cops would that hire? And why aren't these people taking public transit, or using vehicles from a pool?
Hey, Ms. Ruby - wanna run for mayor next time?
And as for Ms. Edgerly - can we please have Robert Bobb back??
At the last election, the race for City Auditor was actually one of the liveliest contests on the local ballot, with the former auditor (who had been in office for years and was accused of being impossible to work for and gutting the department) up against 2 likely-looking and well qualified newcomers, of whom Courtney Ruby, a CPA and former CFO, took the election and took office. Courtney Ruby has just released a hard-hitting audit of city payroll practices, and I feel like standing up and cheering. She's identified more than $3 million in "loosely monitored payroll transactions" over a 3 year period, and she says she's not done.
The reaction from the city administrator, Deborah Edgerly, was disgracefully unprofessional - she called the report "inaccurate and misleading," and somewhat grudgingly agreed to work with the auditor and the city council to identify "payroll policies and practices that need changing." I translate this response as "You don't understand how we do things here." But I think Ms. Ruby does understand how we do things here, and she's just documented it publicly.
Chip Johnson of the San Francisco Chronicle says it's the "first independent fiscal analysis coming out of Oakland City Hall in the 10 years I've covered the place." He further points out that Ms. Ruby, formerly with the East Bay Conservation Corps, is not part of "the city's political cabal" - well, exactly. The problem with Oakland is exactly that long-standing political cabal, of which, I may add, Mayor Dellums is a member in good standing; the purpose of the political cabal is to appoint some friends to well-paying commissions and award lucrative contracts to other friends - I can't think of another reason why the same names keep turning up over and over. Managing the city of Oakland in a fiscally responsible manner isn't on the table, as far as this citizen can see: we pay the taxes and pay the taxes, and still there's no money for police, for fire coverage, for street repair - the money must be going somewhere. Well, we now know that $700,000 a year is paying for automobile allowances for 238 city employees. How many cops would that hire? And why aren't these people taking public transit, or using vehicles from a pool?
Hey, Ms. Ruby - wanna run for mayor next time?
And as for Ms. Edgerly - can we please have Robert Bobb back??
Thursday, November 29, 2007
Family Trees
This is a week or so old now, but hey - who said I had to be current?
I'm bemused by the flap over the 2007 Lowe's catalog and its "family trees". For those of you who missed this, when Lowe's Home Improvement Stores published their 2007 catalog, they had a page or three advertising symmetrical cone-shaped (more or less) objects resembling pine trees, which the catalog labeled "family trees."
Everybody who saw the catalog said, "Hey, those are Christmas trees;" the American Family Association responded to this with a mass email campaign protesting the wording ("put the Christ back in Christmas" etc. etc.); and Lowe's publicly apologized ("It certainly was not intended to offend anyone.") and republished the catalog, now including "Christmas" trees.
I hardly know where to start here. Lowe's evidently feared, in some spasm of excess political correctness, that it would offend its non-Christian customers if it referred to "Christmas" trees. I've been doing a little research on how many members of various religions live in the United States, and nobody's really sure of any of the numbers, but in various surveys of religious preference over the last few years, between 70% and 85% of respondents said they were Christian. If you assume this mirrors Lowe's customer base, then in attempting to please roughly 15-30% of their shoppers, they managed to offend the other 70-85%. This strikes me as poor judgment. Not to mention the fact that they looked silly as hell, since the Christmas tree is an instantly recognizable cultural icon and has been for roughly 200 years.
And to finish off their folly, they did this in the Dallas-Fort Worth area (or at least that's where the linked news story was published). This will probably offend any residents of Dallas-Fort Worth who may read this, but it's not an area I associate with, shall we say, non-mainstream religions. I'm sure there are Jews and Muslims and maybe even a few Wiccans in Dallas-Fort Worth, but the vast majority of the population is evangelical. In fact, I'm not sure Catholic isn't considered non-mainstream there.
These numbers also make the American Family Association look a little, um, over-sensitive. Believe me, Christianity is in no danger in the United States. In fact, those of us who believe in the separation of church and state sometimes get a little nervous.
But the real thing that boggled my mind was: in this day and age, who in tarnation would buy a Christmas tree from a catalog?? Delancey Street already has tree lots up all over San Francisco. By next weekend you'll be tripping over pine branches in every parking lot in America. And Lowe's thinks people will order them by mail??
I'm bemused by the flap over the 2007 Lowe's catalog and its "family trees". For those of you who missed this, when Lowe's Home Improvement Stores published their 2007 catalog, they had a page or three advertising symmetrical cone-shaped (more or less) objects resembling pine trees, which the catalog labeled "family trees."
Everybody who saw the catalog said, "Hey, those are Christmas trees;" the American Family Association responded to this with a mass email campaign protesting the wording ("put the Christ back in Christmas" etc. etc.); and Lowe's publicly apologized ("It certainly was not intended to offend anyone.") and republished the catalog, now including "Christmas" trees.
I hardly know where to start here. Lowe's evidently feared, in some spasm of excess political correctness, that it would offend its non-Christian customers if it referred to "Christmas" trees. I've been doing a little research on how many members of various religions live in the United States, and nobody's really sure of any of the numbers, but in various surveys of religious preference over the last few years, between 70% and 85% of respondents said they were Christian. If you assume this mirrors Lowe's customer base, then in attempting to please roughly 15-30% of their shoppers, they managed to offend the other 70-85%. This strikes me as poor judgment. Not to mention the fact that they looked silly as hell, since the Christmas tree is an instantly recognizable cultural icon and has been for roughly 200 years.
And to finish off their folly, they did this in the Dallas-Fort Worth area (or at least that's where the linked news story was published). This will probably offend any residents of Dallas-Fort Worth who may read this, but it's not an area I associate with, shall we say, non-mainstream religions. I'm sure there are Jews and Muslims and maybe even a few Wiccans in Dallas-Fort Worth, but the vast majority of the population is evangelical. In fact, I'm not sure Catholic isn't considered non-mainstream there.
These numbers also make the American Family Association look a little, um, over-sensitive. Believe me, Christianity is in no danger in the United States. In fact, those of us who believe in the separation of church and state sometimes get a little nervous.
But the real thing that boggled my mind was: in this day and age, who in tarnation would buy a Christmas tree from a catalog?? Delancey Street already has tree lots up all over San Francisco. By next weekend you'll be tripping over pine branches in every parking lot in America. And Lowe's thinks people will order them by mail??
Sunday, November 25, 2007
Vacation Photos
Last summer I blogged at some length about the vacation we took to England and Wales, but posted no pictures. Well, I'm slow, but I do deliver (after all, there were sixteen rolls of film to go through!), and I've now got photo galleries posted on www.karenivy.net for the first 3 legs of our trip: London and Greenwich, Kent and East Sussex, and Devonshire (mainly Dartmoor). Feel free to go and browse. I hope you enjoy looking at them as much as I enjoyed taking them. Keep checking back - I still have Wales and the Chester-York trip to do!
Saturday, November 17, 2007
No Turkeys
Despite the time of year, this post is not about Thanksgiving.
A small flock of wild turkeys has moved into our neighborhood. I've seen them twice now - both times, en route to somewhere else and with no camera to hand. The first time, they were ambling down the middle of my city street at 5 o'clock in the evening, about 5 of them, and I saw them as I came out of the house to go to water aerobics. I tried to get a shot (from across the street) with the soi-disant camera in my cell phone, but it was not up to the challenge.
The second time (yesterday), my husband and I were driving toward the freeway around 8:30 in the morning, and there they all were, by the community playing field fence, up the canyon. Still no camera except the cell phone, and besides we had an appointment to get to. But I clearly saw the comb on the tom turkey, and the color shading on his feathers.
Now, I really want a photo of these critters. This is why I bought that 300mm lens. They are elegant birds, long and lean, standing somewhere between knee and hip high to an adult human; and it amazes me that they're willing to come this far into civilization. The community playing field is right next to the elementary school, and the whole area was full of kids, and parents, and commuters on their way to work via the back route to the freeway. They obviously don't mind people; so I'm stalking them, camera in hand, in the morning and evening. No luck today, only pigeons and sparrows; although I did discover that someone has plastered the base of about two sections of the fence with corn kernels and some other kind of large brown seed.
Shades of my late mother-in-law, who used to be a regular customer of the feed store in her Wisconsin village; she bought 50 lb. sacks of corn to feed the deer and squirrels. I'm sure that some of the critters who grew up on her handouts must have starved to death after we moved her to California.
The turkeys may also have been deterred by this afternoon's soccer game, played by six-year-olds, in raucous progress on the playing field. The start of school is lively enough, but this was even more energetic. It's very odd watching six-year-olds play soccer - they're all about the same height (short; they looked like they were knee high to the adults) and moving very fast. With them all in similar uniforms, it was like watching a flock of wading birds flow back and forth across the beach, except that wading birds aren't screaming and chasing a soccer ball.
Still, it's a nice walk up the canyon to where I saw them last, and you never know, maybe I'll get lucky one day and there they'll be. I'm keeping the camera just inside the front door.
A small flock of wild turkeys has moved into our neighborhood. I've seen them twice now - both times, en route to somewhere else and with no camera to hand. The first time, they were ambling down the middle of my city street at 5 o'clock in the evening, about 5 of them, and I saw them as I came out of the house to go to water aerobics. I tried to get a shot (from across the street) with the soi-disant camera in my cell phone, but it was not up to the challenge.
The second time (yesterday), my husband and I were driving toward the freeway around 8:30 in the morning, and there they all were, by the community playing field fence, up the canyon. Still no camera except the cell phone, and besides we had an appointment to get to. But I clearly saw the comb on the tom turkey, and the color shading on his feathers.
Now, I really want a photo of these critters. This is why I bought that 300mm lens. They are elegant birds, long and lean, standing somewhere between knee and hip high to an adult human; and it amazes me that they're willing to come this far into civilization. The community playing field is right next to the elementary school, and the whole area was full of kids, and parents, and commuters on their way to work via the back route to the freeway. They obviously don't mind people; so I'm stalking them, camera in hand, in the morning and evening. No luck today, only pigeons and sparrows; although I did discover that someone has plastered the base of about two sections of the fence with corn kernels and some other kind of large brown seed.
Shades of my late mother-in-law, who used to be a regular customer of the feed store in her Wisconsin village; she bought 50 lb. sacks of corn to feed the deer and squirrels. I'm sure that some of the critters who grew up on her handouts must have starved to death after we moved her to California.
The turkeys may also have been deterred by this afternoon's soccer game, played by six-year-olds, in raucous progress on the playing field. The start of school is lively enough, but this was even more energetic. It's very odd watching six-year-olds play soccer - they're all about the same height (short; they looked like they were knee high to the adults) and moving very fast. With them all in similar uniforms, it was like watching a flock of wading birds flow back and forth across the beach, except that wading birds aren't screaming and chasing a soccer ball.
Still, it's a nice walk up the canyon to where I saw them last, and you never know, maybe I'll get lucky one day and there they'll be. I'm keeping the camera just inside the front door.
Sunday, November 11, 2007
Sunny Days
It's nice to see the sun again. You can't rely on it, if you live in a coastal city; fog comes with the territory, or that medium-level cover of dry gray clouds they call "the marine layer." Yesterday it even rained; but for the whole last week we've had clouds, pretty much all day every day. I think there was one sunny day.
Now that I'm retired, I spend a lot of time in the house. Our house is an active pleasure to be in on a sunny fall or winter morning. The whole south side is covered with windows, and the southerly sun streams in and warms the place up, physically and spiritually. On a cloudy day, though, everything is gray, the sky, the neighborhood - even the yard seems subdued, despite my husband's efforts to have something in bloom at all times.
The most annoying days are when the clouds just sit on the East Bay hills, like the cloud that followed Joe Btfsplk around in L'il Abner, and the rest of the Bay Area is sunny. Talk about unfair! When I worked, I had a sporting chance of seeing some sun in Concord. But then, of course, I had to work... and the policy at the office was to keep the blinds closed at all times to keep the building temperature even and save energy. (Gee, thanks, guys.)
Today we had some early clouds, and then they blew over and the sun came out, so the house was happy again all morning. It really makes me think of "The sun pours down like honey" (but not on Our Lady of the Harbor) from Suzanne. I'll have to think of something to do this winter to ward off Seasonal Affective Disorder.
Now that I'm retired, I spend a lot of time in the house. Our house is an active pleasure to be in on a sunny fall or winter morning. The whole south side is covered with windows, and the southerly sun streams in and warms the place up, physically and spiritually. On a cloudy day, though, everything is gray, the sky, the neighborhood - even the yard seems subdued, despite my husband's efforts to have something in bloom at all times.
The most annoying days are when the clouds just sit on the East Bay hills, like the cloud that followed Joe Btfsplk around in L'il Abner, and the rest of the Bay Area is sunny. Talk about unfair! When I worked, I had a sporting chance of seeing some sun in Concord. But then, of course, I had to work... and the policy at the office was to keep the blinds closed at all times to keep the building temperature even and save energy. (Gee, thanks, guys.)
Today we had some early clouds, and then they blew over and the sun came out, so the house was happy again all morning. It really makes me think of "The sun pours down like honey" (but not on Our Lady of the Harbor) from Suzanne. I'll have to think of something to do this winter to ward off Seasonal Affective Disorder.
Kaddish
Mourn for the seabirds, and the fish, and the crabs. Mourn for the beaches, and the creatures that live on them. Mourn for the people who eat the fish they catch at the piers. Mourn for the migrating birds on the Pacific Flyway. We have destroyed San Francisco Bay. Our addiction to oil has murdered the creatures, and covered San Francisco Bay with oily sludge.
The blame game has begun. Was it the bar pilot? Was it the ship's Chinese crew? Were the instruments bad? Was the fog part of the problem? Can we sue the owners of the ship? Who owns the ship, anyway? In a real sense, none of this matters; the damage is done, and the cleanup will take months if we're lucky, years if we're not. They're still finding stuff from the Exxon Valdez spill. But in a real sense, we are all, ourselves, responsible - because we can't stop using the oil.
Mourn.
The blame game has begun. Was it the bar pilot? Was it the ship's Chinese crew? Were the instruments bad? Was the fog part of the problem? Can we sue the owners of the ship? Who owns the ship, anyway? In a real sense, none of this matters; the damage is done, and the cleanup will take months if we're lucky, years if we're not. They're still finding stuff from the Exxon Valdez spill. But in a real sense, we are all, ourselves, responsible - because we can't stop using the oil.
Mourn.
Thursday, November 08, 2007
More Roosting Chickens
I'll admit I didn't see this one coming. On Tuesday Consumer Reports announced that they won't automatically recommend Toyota vehicles without reliability data on the specific design, after 2 Toyota models (the Camry V6 and the Tundra 4 wheel drive V8 pickup) were rated "below average" in predicted reliability. (The Camry??)
In the same report, 3 Ford models (the Ford Fusion, the Mercury Milan and the F-150 V6 pickup) made the "most reliable" list.
Ford is more reliable than Toyota? The world is coming to an end.
Well, Toyota's world may be, and in an article in the San Francisco Chronicle yesterday, we may have an explanation. A former quality control inspector at the NUMMI plant in Fremont, CA, a joint venture between Toyota and General Motors, is suing both firms on the grounds that they retaliated against her when she reported multiple defects on "thousands of vehicles" coming off the line. According to the suit, eight years ago managers began altering her defect reports to lower the Daily Defect Per Vehicle numbers.
The interesting point here is that the NUMMI plant doesn't make the vehicles Consumer Reports just downgraded. It makes Toyota Tacomas and Corollas, and Pontiac Vibes. Might be interesting to check the Consumer Reports reliability ratings on the last 5 years or so of those models.
Toyota's market position has been based for years on draconian quality control. Looks like Draco has been laterally arabesqued....
In the same report, 3 Ford models (the Ford Fusion, the Mercury Milan and the F-150 V6 pickup) made the "most reliable" list.
Ford is more reliable than Toyota? The world is coming to an end.
Well, Toyota's world may be, and in an article in the San Francisco Chronicle yesterday, we may have an explanation. A former quality control inspector at the NUMMI plant in Fremont, CA, a joint venture between Toyota and General Motors, is suing both firms on the grounds that they retaliated against her when she reported multiple defects on "thousands of vehicles" coming off the line. According to the suit, eight years ago managers began altering her defect reports to lower the Daily Defect Per Vehicle numbers.
The interesting point here is that the NUMMI plant doesn't make the vehicles Consumer Reports just downgraded. It makes Toyota Tacomas and Corollas, and Pontiac Vibes. Might be interesting to check the Consumer Reports reliability ratings on the last 5 years or so of those models.
Toyota's market position has been based for years on draconian quality control. Looks like Draco has been laterally arabesqued....
The Chickens are Coming Home To Roost
The news over the last couple of days has been interesting, and is summarized by a comment in this week's Economist (not an exact quote): According to bankers, the four most expensive words in the English language are, "This time it's different."
Let's start with the bankers. Over the last couple of weeks everybody's 3rd quarter report has come out, and the red ink looks like the floor of a slaughterhouse. The chairmen of Merrill Lynch and Citigroup have been bounced. (Don't weep for them; they won't starve.) Citigroup in fact is in such bad shape that people are beginning to wonder whether the guvmint will have to bail it out (which probably means it's too late to sell my stock, fortunately not a large stake). As I commented in September, the investment banking industry thought it had invented a way to manage mortgage lending without actually personally taking any risk that the borrower would default; and they were wrong.
The fallout isn't restricted to bankers, and the bankers haven't heard the worst yet, because most of them are also in the credit card business. The fallout from subprime delinquencies is about to hit the credit card business, according to an analysis Tuesday from AP. The same people who took out mortgages they couldn't pay were carrying credit card debt they couldn't pay. In fact, some of those adjustable mortgages were refinances to pull out cash to pay off other debt... The whole industry is now watching nervously to see what The Consumer does during the upcoming Christmas season.
How does this come under "This time it's different"? Back to the subprime crisis: this time it was different because the housing market would continue to rise indefinitely and everybody would be rich because of their house. Except it didn't. This time it's different because for 40 years consumers in this country have been running their lives on credit and the bills have never come due - there was always another credit card, or you could refinance the house and "cash out" because the housing market was always going to keep rising. (Except in 1989 but nobody remembers that.)
If I sound a little sanctimonious here, I'll admit that, at one time in my life, almost 30 years ago, I ran on credit. My paycheck was never quite enough, and I had I think 7 or 8 credit cards with balances on all of them. But - I got a small windfall, and I used the windfall to pay off all my credit cards, and I've never put anything on a credit card since that I couldn't pay off at the end of the month. The only debt we have is a mortgage and we'll pay that off shortly. I'm back to where my parents were except that they didn't have a mortgage; they paid their house off in 1952. So I'm watching this from the outside; but I live here, and if we have a major recession it'll hit me too.
I've been wondering for years when this was all going to fall over, and I have a bad feeling that it's about to. And you know something? If it falls over, we'll have done it to ourselves. We made the choices. We decided we could pay for it later. Well, folks - it's later.
Let's start with the bankers. Over the last couple of weeks everybody's 3rd quarter report has come out, and the red ink looks like the floor of a slaughterhouse. The chairmen of Merrill Lynch and Citigroup have been bounced. (Don't weep for them; they won't starve.) Citigroup in fact is in such bad shape that people are beginning to wonder whether the guvmint will have to bail it out (which probably means it's too late to sell my stock, fortunately not a large stake). As I commented in September, the investment banking industry thought it had invented a way to manage mortgage lending without actually personally taking any risk that the borrower would default; and they were wrong.
The fallout isn't restricted to bankers, and the bankers haven't heard the worst yet, because most of them are also in the credit card business. The fallout from subprime delinquencies is about to hit the credit card business, according to an analysis Tuesday from AP. The same people who took out mortgages they couldn't pay were carrying credit card debt they couldn't pay. In fact, some of those adjustable mortgages were refinances to pull out cash to pay off other debt... The whole industry is now watching nervously to see what The Consumer does during the upcoming Christmas season.
How does this come under "This time it's different"? Back to the subprime crisis: this time it was different because the housing market would continue to rise indefinitely and everybody would be rich because of their house. Except it didn't. This time it's different because for 40 years consumers in this country have been running their lives on credit and the bills have never come due - there was always another credit card, or you could refinance the house and "cash out" because the housing market was always going to keep rising. (Except in 1989 but nobody remembers that.)
If I sound a little sanctimonious here, I'll admit that, at one time in my life, almost 30 years ago, I ran on credit. My paycheck was never quite enough, and I had I think 7 or 8 credit cards with balances on all of them. But - I got a small windfall, and I used the windfall to pay off all my credit cards, and I've never put anything on a credit card since that I couldn't pay off at the end of the month. The only debt we have is a mortgage and we'll pay that off shortly. I'm back to where my parents were except that they didn't have a mortgage; they paid their house off in 1952. So I'm watching this from the outside; but I live here, and if we have a major recession it'll hit me too.
I've been wondering for years when this was all going to fall over, and I have a bad feeling that it's about to. And you know something? If it falls over, we'll have done it to ourselves. We made the choices. We decided we could pay for it later. Well, folks - it's later.
Sunday, November 04, 2007
One Touch of Venus
This weekend's entertainment was live, not Netflix - we went to San Francisco to see a friend of my husband perform in "One Touch of Venus", done by 42nd Street Moon. This show isn't very often performed - what 42nd Street Moon does is musicals that aren't often performed - but we thought it was fabulous: music by Kurt Weill, lyrics by Ogden Nash and S. J. Perelman. It was lively, very funny, the cast of 10 played, sang and danced at least 15 parts with great verve. The experience was improved by the very small Eureka Theater - the audience was practically in the performers' laps and vice versa.
This isn't your "standard" musical production. First, they didn't have a full cast. Second, the sets consisted of one chaise longue, one standard chair, about 5 black and white cubes, and the piano, on which various people leaned or sat. Third, the piano, played by the music director (Dave Dobrusky) throughout the performance, constituted the entire musical accompaniment. Fourth, some of the performers carried "scripts" in some scenes - but I didn't even realize they did until the discussion after the show. Everybody was carrying binders or folders around, but most of them had reasons to carry binders and/or folders around.
I won't review the plot here - the Marin IJ did that last week if you're interested. I just wanted to recommend everybody, go see a live musical sometime, preferably a comedy. It is fantastic fun and has no relation to renting the DVD from NetFlix. In fact, it's playing through Nov. 11 - see the 42nd Street Moon web site. If you're in the S.F. Bay Area you may still be able to get tickets.
I have to quote, though, what the IJ said was the best line of the evening. One of the characters, having spent the night drinking "Shostakoviches", malted mare's milk and vodka (??!), is asked how he feels the morning after, and says: "All my teeth feel like they have little sweaters on them." Thank you, Ogden Nash, we've all been there and felt like that...
I also want to let my readers know that I don't spend all my time worrying about coups in Pakistan.
This isn't your "standard" musical production. First, they didn't have a full cast. Second, the sets consisted of one chaise longue, one standard chair, about 5 black and white cubes, and the piano, on which various people leaned or sat. Third, the piano, played by the music director (Dave Dobrusky) throughout the performance, constituted the entire musical accompaniment. Fourth, some of the performers carried "scripts" in some scenes - but I didn't even realize they did until the discussion after the show. Everybody was carrying binders or folders around, but most of them had reasons to carry binders and/or folders around.
I won't review the plot here - the Marin IJ did that last week if you're interested. I just wanted to recommend everybody, go see a live musical sometime, preferably a comedy. It is fantastic fun and has no relation to renting the DVD from NetFlix. In fact, it's playing through Nov. 11 - see the 42nd Street Moon web site. If you're in the S.F. Bay Area you may still be able to get tickets.
I have to quote, though, what the IJ said was the best line of the evening. One of the characters, having spent the night drinking "Shostakoviches", malted mare's milk and vodka (??!), is asked how he feels the morning after, and says: "All my teeth feel like they have little sweaters on them." Thank you, Ogden Nash, we've all been there and felt like that...
I also want to let my readers know that I don't spend all my time worrying about coups in Pakistan.
Saturday, November 03, 2007
The Dictator
Well, he's done it. The BBC reported today that General Musharraf has declared a national state of emergency in Pakistan, suspended the constitution (including free speech), and replaced the chief justice. That would be the chief justice he tried to suspend earlier this year, which caused the entire legal profession to take to the streets. This move, of course, is because he was reasonably sure the Supreme Court was going to rule that his recent election to the presidency was unconstitutional because he failed to resign as army chief first, despite having promised to do so at least 4 times that I recall offhand. From the AP article:
It's unfortunate that the known civilian alternatives to Musharraf, Nawaz Sharif and Benazir Bhutto, have been tried before and found grossly corrupt. In fact, both of them left the country some years ago to avoid arrest on corruption charges; and Bhutto has negotiated her return on the condition that the charges be lifted. The third alternative, of course, is the native Islamic militant political wing. So there aren't any good alternatives for Pakistan: an only moderately competent dictator, versus two known corrupt civilian politicians, versus the Pakistani equivalent of the Taliban.
But shouldn't we allow the Pakistani people to decide on their own what government they want? Isn't that the whole principle of democracy? We've developed much too much of a tendency in recent years to accept the results of democratic elections only if they bring people we like to power. Classic examples here are Hugo Chavez in Venezula and Hamas in Palestine. Whatever you think of them - and I don't like either of them - they were fairly elected (in Chavez' case, at least the first time; and he does have tremendous support among the poor); whereupon we took it on ourselves to declare that those people aren't suited to form a government. Unfortunately for Hamas, there's no oil in the West Bank or Gaza, so they couldn't ignore us the way Chavez does.
But back to Pakistan - every rational observer saw this development coming. It's too bad that the U.S. government (which seems to have thought that having Condi Rice call Musharraf at 3 AM Pakistan time, to urge him not to declare a state of emergency, would do the trick) can no longer be considered a rational observer.
A copy of the emergency order obtained by The Associated Press justified the declaration on the grounds that "some members of the judiciary are working at cross purposes with the executive" and "weakening the government's resolve" to fight terrorism.Why are we supporting this man? Are we back to the bad old days of "he's an SOB, but he's our SOB?" This is pure and simple dictatorship. The Bush administration considers Musharraf a vital ally in the war against terror, despite the fact that he has been entirely unable to control the Taliban in the border area next to Afghanistan. Condi Rice, next door in Turkey (trying to keep the Turks from invading Iraqi Kurdistan, I assume), is blethering that the U.S. "does not support extraconstitutional measures" and "urging a quick return to civilian rule." This is balderdash. Musharraf is still in power exactly because he declares a state of emergency every time he is faced with a genuine election (which he would lose; he's massively unpopular in Pakistan). Supporting him merely convinces the rest of the world that Americans really are arrogant, militaristic bastards who are using the "war on terror" to advance a set of principles that have everything to do with power and oil, and nothing whatever to do with freedom and democracy.
It's unfortunate that the known civilian alternatives to Musharraf, Nawaz Sharif and Benazir Bhutto, have been tried before and found grossly corrupt. In fact, both of them left the country some years ago to avoid arrest on corruption charges; and Bhutto has negotiated her return on the condition that the charges be lifted. The third alternative, of course, is the native Islamic militant political wing. So there aren't any good alternatives for Pakistan: an only moderately competent dictator, versus two known corrupt civilian politicians, versus the Pakistani equivalent of the Taliban.
But shouldn't we allow the Pakistani people to decide on their own what government they want? Isn't that the whole principle of democracy? We've developed much too much of a tendency in recent years to accept the results of democratic elections only if they bring people we like to power. Classic examples here are Hugo Chavez in Venezula and Hamas in Palestine. Whatever you think of them - and I don't like either of them - they were fairly elected (in Chavez' case, at least the first time; and he does have tremendous support among the poor); whereupon we took it on ourselves to declare that those people aren't suited to form a government. Unfortunately for Hamas, there's no oil in the West Bank or Gaza, so they couldn't ignore us the way Chavez does.
But back to Pakistan - every rational observer saw this development coming. It's too bad that the U.S. government (which seems to have thought that having Condi Rice call Musharraf at 3 AM Pakistan time, to urge him not to declare a state of emergency, would do the trick) can no longer be considered a rational observer.
Friday, November 02, 2007
Eighty Days
It's dark on weekend nights again, so we've restarted the Netflix subscription. Last weekend we watched an all time classic - David Niven and Cantinflas in Around the World in 80 Days.
This thing is fabulous. Watching Cantinflas alone is worth the whole price of admission; and then there are all the cameos. Go look up the cast on IMDB - everyone who was anyone had a cameo in that film, although I thought the real high point was the San Francisco saloon, where Niven was accosted by Marlene Dietrich as a saloon madam, thrown out by George Raft as her boyfriend - and the whole event was accompanied by a saloon pianist who suddenly turned around to reveal Old Blue Eyes - Sinatra himself, aged I guess about 40 and at the top of his form. This was a real cameo as he didn't even have a line!
This movie has everything. It has bullfights. It has mysterious Tangerian yachtsmen. It has elephants. It has a daring rescue - several daring rescues. It has collapsing railway bridges, and attacking Sioux. It has drugged drinks, and missed connections, and a desperate dash for the finish line. If you've never seen it, rent it. If you have seen it, rent it again. But start early - 80 days takes 3 hours!
This thing is fabulous. Watching Cantinflas alone is worth the whole price of admission; and then there are all the cameos. Go look up the cast on IMDB - everyone who was anyone had a cameo in that film, although I thought the real high point was the San Francisco saloon, where Niven was accosted by Marlene Dietrich as a saloon madam, thrown out by George Raft as her boyfriend - and the whole event was accompanied by a saloon pianist who suddenly turned around to reveal Old Blue Eyes - Sinatra himself, aged I guess about 40 and at the top of his form. This was a real cameo as he didn't even have a line!
This movie has everything. It has bullfights. It has mysterious Tangerian yachtsmen. It has elephants. It has a daring rescue - several daring rescues. It has collapsing railway bridges, and attacking Sioux. It has drugged drinks, and missed connections, and a desperate dash for the finish line. If you've never seen it, rent it. If you have seen it, rent it again. But start early - 80 days takes 3 hours!
Thursday, November 01, 2007
U.C. Is At It Again
I absolutely can't believe the article I read in today's San Francisco Chronicle. A committee of U.C. faculty have decided that the university's method of determining student eligibility for admission is "too rigid", and is therefore "unfair to some students." Their solution to this problem? Restrict guaranteed university access even further. The 1960 Master Plan for Education guarantees University admission to the top 12.5% of graduating high school seniors; the Board of Admissions and Relations with Schools wants to reduce that guarantee to the top 4%.
The theory is, you see, that students in rural and inner-city schools are disadvantaged because their schools don't offer all the necessary college prep courses, and they don't have enough counselors to make sure they take the courses and do the required tests. This is all true, of course, and is further complicated by the fact that the inner-city kids also have a list of other well-known problems (low income, family breakup, constant danger from random shooters, etc.). But some of them do make it - and they are materially aided by the policy that the top 12.5% of graduates from their high school have guaranteed admission.
The faculty members are concerned that there are students (God defend us!) who now "slide in" to Cal by "doing the minimum work to be eligible." So they want to "improve standards" by raising the bar so these kids - who are now DOING the necessary work! - don't have guaranteed admission to Cal. Only the top 4% will get guaranteed admission, everybody else has to "compete" - including any of the rural and inner-city kids who might have been guaranteed a slot under the 1960 rules! Furthermore, nobody will be guaranteed a slot at a UC campus with available seats, as they are now; if your primary choice rejects you, you have to be re-evaluated again by your second choice campus, and so on.
I couldn't make this up if I tried. They are trying to expand the pool that gets into Cal by raising the bar for everybody below the top 4%? The whirring sound you hear is George Orwell, spinning in his grave at a level of doublespeak worthy of his masterpiece. And this does it for me - if this is how the faculty thinks, my donation to U.C. this year will go to Alumni Association scholarship funds, not to the general fund.
Also, someday I'd like someone to explain to me what's wrong with doing the minimum work necessary to make the grade. Does everyone have to be an overachiever? If you make the grade, you make it. The effort necessary to be in the top 12.5% of your school is not trivial; and the tests you have to pass - twice - are also not trivial.
To do them justice, the article quoted a number of faculty, and at least one regent (who has been actively involved in admissions and had never heard of this) who are as disturbed by this proposal as I am. So it may never come to pass, and a good thing if it doesn't. But it should never have seen the light of day as a serious suggestion.
The theory is, you see, that students in rural and inner-city schools are disadvantaged because their schools don't offer all the necessary college prep courses, and they don't have enough counselors to make sure they take the courses and do the required tests. This is all true, of course, and is further complicated by the fact that the inner-city kids also have a list of other well-known problems (low income, family breakup, constant danger from random shooters, etc.). But some of them do make it - and they are materially aided by the policy that the top 12.5% of graduates from their high school have guaranteed admission.
The faculty members are concerned that there are students (God defend us!) who now "slide in" to Cal by "doing the minimum work to be eligible." So they want to "improve standards" by raising the bar so these kids - who are now DOING the necessary work! - don't have guaranteed admission to Cal. Only the top 4% will get guaranteed admission, everybody else has to "compete" - including any of the rural and inner-city kids who might have been guaranteed a slot under the 1960 rules! Furthermore, nobody will be guaranteed a slot at a UC campus with available seats, as they are now; if your primary choice rejects you, you have to be re-evaluated again by your second choice campus, and so on.
I couldn't make this up if I tried. They are trying to expand the pool that gets into Cal by raising the bar for everybody below the top 4%? The whirring sound you hear is George Orwell, spinning in his grave at a level of doublespeak worthy of his masterpiece. And this does it for me - if this is how the faculty thinks, my donation to U.C. this year will go to Alumni Association scholarship funds, not to the general fund.
Also, someday I'd like someone to explain to me what's wrong with doing the minimum work necessary to make the grade. Does everyone have to be an overachiever? If you make the grade, you make it. The effort necessary to be in the top 12.5% of your school is not trivial; and the tests you have to pass - twice - are also not trivial.
To do them justice, the article quoted a number of faculty, and at least one regent (who has been actively involved in admissions and had never heard of this) who are as disturbed by this proposal as I am. So it may never come to pass, and a good thing if it doesn't. But it should never have seen the light of day as a serious suggestion.
Thursday, October 25, 2007
"There will be help ..."
"... for the people of California," said President Bush, as quoted on CNN today.
That's what you said about New Orleans, Mr. Bush. Call FEMA for help, you said.
Yeah, right.
That's what you said about New Orleans, Mr. Bush. Call FEMA for help, you said.
Yeah, right.
Tuesday, October 23, 2007
Wildfires
Did you know you can see the smoke from the southern California wildfires on the 2KM and 4KM Pacific satellite photos? Check out the Satellite link on the National Weather Service web site (this link should display the forecast for Oakland, from which you can see the Pacific satellite shots).
In fact, SFGATE.com has a NASA satellite image in which you can see the flames. From orbit.
Sorry, folks, but this is the price we pay to live in a state where fire is a normal part of the ecosystem. It's also the price we pay for suppressing fire for a century - the fuel built up to the point that, once it starts, we can't stop it. The native Americans, I recall reading, used to schedule controlled burns on damp calm fall days; but they didn't build housing developments.
I don't see it online, but the article on the fires in today's paper Chronicle says that people in San Diego watched the flames hopscotch over I-15 - a 10 lane freeway. These fires are being driven by Santa Ana winds up to 100 mph - I don't see how they can stop them until the wind dies. I'm just grateful that Northern California is only getting mild winds and (at the moment) nothing serious is burning. The Oakland Hills Fire was 16 years ago, but I still get nervous on a hot windy fall day.
There's no moral to this post. I'm just scared. And the fires are 500 miles away.
In fact, SFGATE.com has a NASA satellite image in which you can see the flames. From orbit.
Sorry, folks, but this is the price we pay to live in a state where fire is a normal part of the ecosystem. It's also the price we pay for suppressing fire for a century - the fuel built up to the point that, once it starts, we can't stop it. The native Americans, I recall reading, used to schedule controlled burns on damp calm fall days; but they didn't build housing developments.
I don't see it online, but the article on the fires in today's paper Chronicle says that people in San Diego watched the flames hopscotch over I-15 - a 10 lane freeway. These fires are being driven by Santa Ana winds up to 100 mph - I don't see how they can stop them until the wind dies. I'm just grateful that Northern California is only getting mild winds and (at the moment) nothing serious is burning. The Oakland Hills Fire was 16 years ago, but I still get nervous on a hot windy fall day.
There's no moral to this post. I'm just scared. And the fires are 500 miles away.
Not Getting It
The San Francisco Chronicle notes today that student fees at the University of California, and at Cal State University system, increased this year by 10% (9.7% at UC is close enough to round off).
Nationwide, student fees increased 6.6% on average - two-thirds of the increase in California. And inflation, which you might think would drive this? Under 2% nationwide.
Why are student fees increasing at five times the rate of consumer inflation?
Long ago when I attended the University of California, my student fees were in 3 figures. Per year. (Of course, I could live on $10 a week then, too.) The theory behind the U.C. and C.S.U. systems was that higher education was a public good, which should be subsidized. This means that everybody pays some taxes toward it; and everybody's kids can attend. I understand that U.C. "provides more financial aid than other state systems." (With price increases like that, I hope to God they do!) Here are the explanations U.C. gives for the increase:
I don't want California to become a state where only the rich can afford to attend the state university system. I don't consider that a good use of my tax money.
I'm so pissed at U.C. that I'm considering halting my donations to the University proper. I'll still donate to the Library; but the money I was giving to the Chancellor's Fund, I may now give to the Alumni Association, for scholarships - they'll need it.
Nationwide, student fees increased 6.6% on average - two-thirds of the increase in California. And inflation, which you might think would drive this? Under 2% nationwide.
Why are student fees increasing at five times the rate of consumer inflation?
Long ago when I attended the University of California, my student fees were in 3 figures. Per year. (Of course, I could live on $10 a week then, too.) The theory behind the U.C. and C.S.U. systems was that higher education was a public good, which should be subsidized. This means that everybody pays some taxes toward it; and everybody's kids can attend. I understand that U.C. "provides more financial aid than other state systems." (With price increases like that, I hope to God they do!) Here are the explanations U.C. gives for the increase:
to maintain and improve the quality of instruction, expand student mental health services, increase financial aid and help raise faculty and staff salaries closer to market rate.I'm tempted to suggest that if they didn't raise the student fees so high, they could budget less for financial aid, and that student mental health might be improved by not having to worry about money; but let that pass. What really fries me are the salary increases, which I doubt seriously are going to the faculty. The salary increases are going to pay senior executives in the U.C. system corporate-grade salaries (yeah, I've heard all the arguments, and I don't believe them), and they're taking it out of the students' hides. This is just plain WRONG, and it will produce an uneducated underclass in California which can't do the "knowledge industry" jobs that everyone says the economy needs, because they can't read or think.
I don't want California to become a state where only the rich can afford to attend the state university system. I don't consider that a good use of my tax money.
I'm so pissed at U.C. that I'm considering halting my donations to the University proper. I'll still donate to the Library; but the money I was giving to the Chancellor's Fund, I may now give to the Alumni Association, for scholarships - they'll need it.
Sunday, October 21, 2007
Freedom's Just Another Word
Retirement is very strange. For the first time in my life, I have absolute freedom to choose what I want to do. If I want to sit in the backyard and read trash novels all afternoon, I can. I can do other things I used to have to fight to have time for: exercise at the gym; rehearse music; blog; do genealogical research; shop. And what is the result of all this? You've got it: I can't decide what I want to do...
Oh, I'm not really that unfocused. I have my List of volunteer opportunities, that I thought I might like to do; I'm actually doing one of them (I'm now a special director, and the webmistress, of the Oakland Symphony Chorus). Another of them was to volunteer with a group that teaches financial literacy: I tried them, and they were such disorganized flakes that I decided my choices were not to deal with them at all, or take them over and run them. I opted to walk away. Also, I've accumulated a couple of unpaid "I could work on that" projects.
But none of this feels real yet. I'm trying to learn Joomla, the open source content management system, with the object of becoming a pro bono web designer for non-profits. I've gotten far enough to realize this means I also have to learn JavaScript, PHP, and XML...
Also, to be honest, one of the things I liked about working was all the people that were around. Yeah, I can do serious technical study by myself in the house; but I don't have anybody to TALK to. I need people to talk to, I'm beginning to realize. So maybe I need to go back to the list and check out something that would put me in a group of people.
I read one "what to do in retirement" article that suggested making no major decisions for at least a year after retiring. Maybe that makes sense. But it's odd how intimidating is the prospect of absolute freedom.
But none of this feels real yet. I'm trying to learn Joomla, the open source content management system, with the object of becoming a pro bono web designer for non-profits. I've gotten far enough to realize this means I also have to learn JavaScript, PHP, and XML...
Also, to be honest, one of the things I liked about working was all the people that were around. Yeah, I can do serious technical study by myself in the house; but I don't have anybody to TALK to. I need people to talk to, I'm beginning to realize. So maybe I need to go back to the list and check out something that would put me in a group of people.
I read one "what to do in retirement" article that suggested making no major decisions for at least a year after retiring. Maybe that makes sense. But it's odd how intimidating is the prospect of absolute freedom.
Friday, October 12, 2007
Down in Flames
This subject came up today in two wildly different contexts, so it clearly deserves a blog post.
Barney Frank has fired both barrels at the members of the LGBT community who are attacking Congress, and him, for dropping transgendered people from a job discrimination bill. His point is that they can pass the bill with job protection "only" for gays, lesbians, and bisexuals, but if they include transgender people, it will be one step too far for some of the votes they need, and they won't get any job protection at all.
Mark Morford's column today dealt with the fringe responses he's gotten from people to his recent column which was mainly (but not entirely) enthusiastic about Whole Foods, which he feels on balance has added more to the grocery business in the U.S. than it has subtracted, even though not everything it sells is organic, and the takeover of Wild Oats may be uncompetitive, and yes, it is anti-union.
Both of these articles are worth reading. I particularly enjoyed Morford's comparison of the complaints he got from the extreme left about Whole Foods (Whole Foods is terrible, they drive mom-and-pop stores out of business, their takeover of Wild Oats used questionable tactics, etc. etc.) to the responses of the extreme fundamentalist right, for whom no intermediate prohibition of things they object to (ban all abortions!) is ever enough. Barney Frank (who didn't write the article) is a rare case of a working politician giving the extremists in his own constituency (yeah, he officially represents Massachusetts, but on gay rights he's pretty much The Gay Congressman) some realistic feedback about the impossibility of their demands.
Both of these situations remind me of a mother telling her five year old, "You may have a single ice cream cone but no, you may not have a double, and stop yelling or you won't get anything."
There's a mind-set out there, and you find it in all sorts of groups, for whom the perfect is the enemy of the good. If we can't get every single negotiating point on the list, we have lost the battle; BUT, we stuck to our guns, and so we are Morally Superior. Even if we haven't accomplished one single thing we set out to do.
They can't prioritize, and they can't compromise. They can't see that (in Barney Frank's example) it's a good thing to get protection against job discrimination for gays, and lesbians, and bisexuals; and maybe even when that's been in place for a while and the world hasn't ended, we can go back and try to add transgender people to it. In the Morford example, they can't accept that an organization is Good (or at least, Not Evil) unless they agree with every single action it takes.
When I married my husband, 20-odd years ago, he was politically active in the Sierra Club. I remember him complaining at the time that there was a small group of people in the Club who would rather go down in flames ("the boy stood on the burning deck") than yield one single minor point on their agenda. I don't know how many of those people are still there; all he does with the Sierra Club now is go on hikes.
Politics is the art of compromise, folks; this is what Barney Frank is trying to say. You can't always get everything you want, the first time you try, or even the fourth or fifth. And you can't get anything without giving something. I own a detective story, in which a large business is negotiating a contract with a foreign government. This business includes, in every proposal, at least one item which is there for the purpose of being given up, so as to be able to stand firm on the stuff they really want. Now, that's negotiation.
I don't like negotiation; I don't do it especially well. But by God, I understand it. The problem with the Christian fundamentalists is that they believe God is on their side. I don't know who the lefties think is on their side - Gaia? The Goddess? The Flying Spaghetti Monster? But all of these absolutists take these stances because They Are Morally Right, and therefore they can't give up a single item because it Would Be Wrong.
We will never get anywhere that way, folks.
Barney Frank has fired both barrels at the members of the LGBT community who are attacking Congress, and him, for dropping transgendered people from a job discrimination bill. His point is that they can pass the bill with job protection "only" for gays, lesbians, and bisexuals, but if they include transgender people, it will be one step too far for some of the votes they need, and they won't get any job protection at all.
Mark Morford's column today dealt with the fringe responses he's gotten from people to his recent column which was mainly (but not entirely) enthusiastic about Whole Foods, which he feels on balance has added more to the grocery business in the U.S. than it has subtracted, even though not everything it sells is organic, and the takeover of Wild Oats may be uncompetitive, and yes, it is anti-union.
Both of these articles are worth reading. I particularly enjoyed Morford's comparison of the complaints he got from the extreme left about Whole Foods (Whole Foods is terrible, they drive mom-and-pop stores out of business, their takeover of Wild Oats used questionable tactics, etc. etc.) to the responses of the extreme fundamentalist right, for whom no intermediate prohibition of things they object to (ban all abortions!) is ever enough. Barney Frank (who didn't write the article) is a rare case of a working politician giving the extremists in his own constituency (yeah, he officially represents Massachusetts, but on gay rights he's pretty much The Gay Congressman) some realistic feedback about the impossibility of their demands.
Both of these situations remind me of a mother telling her five year old, "You may have a single ice cream cone but no, you may not have a double, and stop yelling or you won't get anything."
There's a mind-set out there, and you find it in all sorts of groups, for whom the perfect is the enemy of the good. If we can't get every single negotiating point on the list, we have lost the battle; BUT, we stuck to our guns, and so we are Morally Superior. Even if we haven't accomplished one single thing we set out to do.
They can't prioritize, and they can't compromise. They can't see that (in Barney Frank's example) it's a good thing to get protection against job discrimination for gays, and lesbians, and bisexuals; and maybe even when that's been in place for a while and the world hasn't ended, we can go back and try to add transgender people to it. In the Morford example, they can't accept that an organization is Good (or at least, Not Evil) unless they agree with every single action it takes.
When I married my husband, 20-odd years ago, he was politically active in the Sierra Club. I remember him complaining at the time that there was a small group of people in the Club who would rather go down in flames ("the boy stood on the burning deck") than yield one single minor point on their agenda. I don't know how many of those people are still there; all he does with the Sierra Club now is go on hikes.
Politics is the art of compromise, folks; this is what Barney Frank is trying to say. You can't always get everything you want, the first time you try, or even the fourth or fifth. And you can't get anything without giving something. I own a detective story, in which a large business is negotiating a contract with a foreign government. This business includes, in every proposal, at least one item which is there for the purpose of being given up, so as to be able to stand firm on the stuff they really want. Now, that's negotiation.
I don't like negotiation; I don't do it especially well. But by God, I understand it. The problem with the Christian fundamentalists is that they believe God is on their side. I don't know who the lefties think is on their side - Gaia? The Goddess? The Flying Spaghetti Monster? But all of these absolutists take these stances because They Are Morally Right, and therefore they can't give up a single item because it Would Be Wrong.
We will never get anywhere that way, folks.
Thursday, October 11, 2007
Lies, Damned Lies, and Alcoholism
This post was inspired, as sometimes happens, by Jon Carroll's column in today's San Francisco Chronicle. Mr. Carroll wrote an extended fantasy on what might have been the process by which Marion Jones chose to take performance-enhancing drugs, and the mental processes by which she supported and justified not only the drug-taking but the fact that she had to hide it (because it was illegal). I recommend the column, the analysis is brilliant. But it startled me, because on the same day it was published, I read and commented on my husband's extended (29 page) analysis of his life, and his experiences with compulsive/addictive behaviors (first bulimia and then alcoholism), how he got into them, and how he has gotten out of them.
The scary thing about the fantasized thinking of the person lying about sports drug abuse and the real thinking of the bulimic or alcoholic, documented in my husband's account, is how close they are.
It isn't really that bad. People make too much of this. Besides, I'm in control; I don't really have a problem.
I seem to recall from Mr. Carroll's much earlier columns that he himself had an issue with alcoholism, which he has overcome; I wonder if he consciously remembered any of that when he wrote this piece.
The question, of course, is: to what was Ms. Jones addicted? She seems to be displaying addictive behavior, but the substances she took aren't addictive in the normal sense. I've never heard that you get withdrawal symptoms from quitting taking steroids, or whatever. I have to conclude that she was addicted to: fame. She liked being Numbah One. She convinced herself that she would have been Numbah One anyway, and the drugs didn't really make that much difference. Except that they did.
The scary thing about the fantasized thinking of the person lying about sports drug abuse and the real thinking of the bulimic or alcoholic, documented in my husband's account, is how close they are.
It isn't really that bad. People make too much of this. Besides, I'm in control; I don't really have a problem.
I seem to recall from Mr. Carroll's much earlier columns that he himself had an issue with alcoholism, which he has overcome; I wonder if he consciously remembered any of that when he wrote this piece.
The question, of course, is: to what was Ms. Jones addicted? She seems to be displaying addictive behavior, but the substances she took aren't addictive in the normal sense. I've never heard that you get withdrawal symptoms from quitting taking steroids, or whatever. I have to conclude that she was addicted to: fame. She liked being Numbah One. She convinced herself that she would have been Numbah One anyway, and the drugs didn't really make that much difference. Except that they did.
Sunday, October 07, 2007
NASCAR
No, I haven't got a new hobby. But my usual stationary bike at the gym is down for repairs, so I had to use the ones on the 3rd floor that face a wall-sized plasma TV; and it's impossible to ignore it completely because it's so big. (Also one of the reasons I hate TV is that I find it impossible to ignore.) So I found myself this morning cranking away on the bike and looking at what looked like Highway 880 on a good afternoon with the traffic flowing smoothly along - except that the cars were all plastered with advertising, and the road was oval, and no 2 cars had more than one car length between them. Also they were going 190 MPH, or so the closed captioning said. But there they were, bumper to bumper and hubcap to hubcap, 3 lanes wide - nobody changing position, nobody trying to pull forward, nobody doing anything.
This is entertainment? I can see this on the traffic cams, except for the advertising - and, even the Nimitz doesn't get to 190 MPH. Around and around they go, and they never stop or move or change position or whatever.
Interval follows in which I read a couple of Economist leaders, and I look up again and it's worse - they're all in a single line. Still bumper to bumper, still going like bats out of hell - all in one line. I figure, if this goes on, the guy in the front car has it wrapped. (I think the guy in the front car was Dale Earnhardt, Jr., but if so he didn't have it wrapped - see results for Talladega.) It's all very symmetrical and not very interesting.
Back to the Economist, and a couple of articles later I look up to see a car break formation, roll three or four times while flames shoot out of the engine compartment, and fetch up on its roof in the infield. Following this, 2 or 3 other cars (which are now back in multi-lane formation) bash into each other and the wall, kicking up more smoke and dirt. OK, I guess they do change position occasionally. I was impressed when the first driver disentangled himself and walked away from the wreck - now, that's safety equipment!
But I still don't understand what gets so many people so excited about watching a bunch of cars follow each other decorously around an oval track, even if it is at 190 MPH.
This is entertainment? I can see this on the traffic cams, except for the advertising - and, even the Nimitz doesn't get to 190 MPH. Around and around they go, and they never stop or move or change position or whatever.
Interval follows in which I read a couple of Economist leaders, and I look up again and it's worse - they're all in a single line. Still bumper to bumper, still going like bats out of hell - all in one line. I figure, if this goes on, the guy in the front car has it wrapped. (I think the guy in the front car was Dale Earnhardt, Jr., but if so he didn't have it wrapped - see results for Talladega.) It's all very symmetrical and not very interesting.
Back to the Economist, and a couple of articles later I look up to see a car break formation, roll three or four times while flames shoot out of the engine compartment, and fetch up on its roof in the infield. Following this, 2 or 3 other cars (which are now back in multi-lane formation) bash into each other and the wall, kicking up more smoke and dirt. OK, I guess they do change position occasionally. I was impressed when the first driver disentangled himself and walked away from the wreck - now, that's safety equipment!
But I still don't understand what gets so many people so excited about watching a bunch of cars follow each other decorously around an oval track, even if it is at 190 MPH.
Wednesday, October 03, 2007
The War Tax
Once again, the news carries things I wouldn't dare to make up.
Some leading members of the House Appropriations Committee today suggested refusing to fund the President's $200 billion continuing appropriation for the Iraq war, and recommended a war tax to fund the combat operations. This is so appropriate, and so reasonable, that I'm appalled to find Nancy Pelosi shutting it down. I'm even more appalled to hear the Republicans yelling "tax-and-spend-Democrats, nya nya nyaaa!" The Republican party is in the process of bankrupting this country on this stupid war, but God forbid we should raise taxes to pay for it.
Do these people have any idea how long we're going to be paying for this asinine war?? Worse, do they realize who's holding the Treasury bills that are allowing us to continue it? (Hint: it's China....)
And in the same week, the most spendthrift president in history, outdoing even Ronald Reagan, chooses to show his fiscal conservatism by vetoing - health care for poor children! After all, they will never vote Republican, especially if they have no health care (since they will likely die before they can vote). 72% of the country was in favor of expanding the SCHIP program, not to the "middle class" (as Boss Bush suggests), but (in some places) to people who make 300% of the official poverty level (a whacking 50% increase, it was 200%).
Do you know what the poverty level is? Dubya doesn't. It's $20,650 per year for a family of four. (And, I may add, it's the same in California as it is in South Dakota. Only Alaska and Hawaii get higher rates.) So right now people who make up to $41,300 to support a family of four can get this coverage; and the vetoed bill would have expanded it in some places to people who make $61,950. You try to support four people in the San Francisco Bay Area on $62,000 a year. That's $5,162 per month in a place where 4 bedroom houses can rent for as much as $4,600! OK, that's a "lovely 2 story executive" something in Saratoga, a known high-rent district; but a quick glance at Bay4Rent.com shows that a 3 bedroom anything (minimum for a family of 4) rents for $2000 and up. (I'm not a member - I Googled "4 bedroom apartment san francisco.") There are cheaper ones, but I hesitate to think what the neighborhood looks like.
That's almost 40% of the monthly income at a generous 300% of the poverty level, and we haven't started talking about utilities and food yet. Does the SCHIP extension begin to look a little less unreasonable?? Oh, sorry, I forgot - you're probably in favor of it.
It looks like Congress may be cranking up for an override vote, and you know, if they can override this veto, I may forgive them blowing off the war tax. Would be better if they could do both, of course.
Some leading members of the House Appropriations Committee today suggested refusing to fund the President's $200 billion continuing appropriation for the Iraq war, and recommended a war tax to fund the combat operations. This is so appropriate, and so reasonable, that I'm appalled to find Nancy Pelosi shutting it down. I'm even more appalled to hear the Republicans yelling "tax-and-spend-Democrats, nya nya nyaaa!" The Republican party is in the process of bankrupting this country on this stupid war, but God forbid we should raise taxes to pay for it.
Do these people have any idea how long we're going to be paying for this asinine war?? Worse, do they realize who's holding the Treasury bills that are allowing us to continue it? (Hint: it's China....)
And in the same week, the most spendthrift president in history, outdoing even Ronald Reagan, chooses to show his fiscal conservatism by vetoing - health care for poor children! After all, they will never vote Republican, especially if they have no health care (since they will likely die before they can vote). 72% of the country was in favor of expanding the SCHIP program, not to the "middle class" (as Boss Bush suggests), but (in some places) to people who make 300% of the official poverty level (a whacking 50% increase, it was 200%).
Do you know what the poverty level is? Dubya doesn't. It's $20,650 per year for a family of four. (And, I may add, it's the same in California as it is in South Dakota. Only Alaska and Hawaii get higher rates.) So right now people who make up to $41,300 to support a family of four can get this coverage; and the vetoed bill would have expanded it in some places to people who make $61,950. You try to support four people in the San Francisco Bay Area on $62,000 a year. That's $5,162 per month in a place where 4 bedroom houses can rent for as much as $4,600! OK, that's a "lovely 2 story executive" something in Saratoga, a known high-rent district; but a quick glance at Bay4Rent.com shows that a 3 bedroom anything (minimum for a family of 4) rents for $2000 and up. (I'm not a member - I Googled "4 bedroom apartment san francisco.") There are cheaper ones, but I hesitate to think what the neighborhood looks like.
That's almost 40% of the monthly income at a generous 300% of the poverty level, and we haven't started talking about utilities and food yet. Does the SCHIP extension begin to look a little less unreasonable?? Oh, sorry, I forgot - you're probably in favor of it.
It looks like Congress may be cranking up for an override vote, and you know, if they can override this veto, I may forgive them blowing off the war tax. Would be better if they could do both, of course.
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