Friday the 13th

Friday the 13th falls on a Friday this month.

The bike riding thing continues. I can now average 10mph for a bit over six miles. Not that impressive, but it's slowly getting there. At the rate I'm increasing my distance, I'll be ready for the Iceman Cometh Challenge in time to enter the geezer division. At this point, I can't even imagine riding 27 miles in one go.

I'm still puttering around with The Tax Geek thing. This weekend, I'm going to give serious thought to domain names and e-mail addresses and web space. If there isn't someone already using The Tax Geek, I may do some sort of Facebook thing. Or maybe not. Facebook annoys me in a number of ways and I enjoy the occasional hiatus from it. Having a business page would commit me to being a regular user. I also found a couple places in Lake Mary that would probably work for office space. One has better visibility, but the rent is more than I'm comfortable with. I've talked to a couple people about setting up shop together, which would help, but that complicates the whole thing by a lot. I found one space that was only $500/month and had a storage area. We would be able to ditch the $65/month we are paying to store our moving supplies as well as give me an office. The problem is that the place is completely invisible. The landlord had told me it was a second-floor office. We had been routinely driving by the building ever since we moved here and never realized it even had a second floor. Worse, there is no external signage other than a small plaque next to the door that leads up to the second floor offices. The plus side is that it's cheaper than anything we've found and he is only asking for a six-month lease instead of a full year. Still a lot of money for what I'm likely to generate in income. I'm also resurrecting an idea from last fall: jumping into an established office. I still have a guy's name who offered me that option. The problem is that his office is a fair jog away from here. It wouldn't be as crazy logistically as it was in New Hampshire when Debbie and I were sharing a car and I worked in Vermont, but it would be close. I could have Debbie dump me off, then bike home, but I would be riding nearly 20 miles. I'd like to think that I'd be up to that sort of trip by the end of summer, but that could get grueling as a permanent thing.

I realized the other day that I had not been uploading photos to Flickr after I took them off the camera. So over the last few months we've been to:

A beach near Bonita Springs. My aunt and uncle have a winter place there so we drove down to visit for a couple days.

Disney's Epcot. These are from mid-April. We just went there again Wednesday, but those photos are still on the camera.

Disney's Hollywood Studios. Twice. The second time was to meet up with some friends we haven't seen in close to 20 years.

Nice thing about having the Florida resident annual passes is that we can drive down anytime we have a free day and hit one of the parks. We don't pay for parking, and even the food is usually free using the Disney points we rack up on one of our credit cards. It's a great excuse to get some sun (OK; a lot of sun) and people-watch.

One sign of insanity is doing the same thing over and over, expecting a different result each time. A Florida developer has a new program called "A-Dollar-and-a-Dream" that allows someone to buy a brand new $150,000 house for a $1 down payment. Didn't we already try that one? I've also noticed the local car dealers are back with their no-money-down, no-payments-for-a-year deals. We really are quite insane.

Speaking of housing, Zillow's housing data is still showing housing in a complete free-fall, down another 8% year-over-year with no end in site. Sixteen million families are upside-down and will likely never see prices get back up to what their mortgage balance is. Good times!

Breathless Headline of the Week: No Breakfast for Kids Wearing 'Wrong' Shoes At Gradeschool.The basic story is that after ignoring a dress code violation for the entire school year, some bored school administrator decided to deny a couple kids their free-to-them-but-very-costly-to-the-taxpayer breakfast because they were wearing black tennis shoes instead of black dress shoes. Mom is so confused. But the real gem comes from the boys' auntie:

“I don’t care if they had on orange shoes, they were in line to eat,” Robin Price  says. “I’m not going to feed you because you have the wrong shoes? Shoes? No, no.”

Here's a thought: Why don't the two "adults" in these boys' lives drag their drug-and-alcohol-addled asses out of bed early enough in the morning to fix breakfast? It's not all that hard. I'm not suggesting laying out a six course spread or anything. What does a bowl of oatmeal or grits (Cream-o-Wheat for you Yankees) cost? Maybe a nickel if you include the cost of boiling water on the stove? And it's done in less than five minutes so Mom and Auntie can go back to bed to sleep off whatever they ingested the night before.And then schools could focus on oh... I don't know... teaching something? Other than entitlement, that is:

“I felt sad. We’re always supposed to have breakfast,” first-grader Noah Nicholson says.

Yeah kid. You are "always supposed to have breakfast." At home. You need to talk to the big people that live in your house with you about getting on that.

Pigs are petri dishes for evolving human diseases. Thanks to factory farms, those diseases are now evolving under selection pressure from antibiotics. The bottom line: nothing good will come of this. And we'll keep right on doing it anyway.

The federal government stopped building the border fence, so now Arizona is taking donations. So far, $1.5 million from nearly 35,000 donors. Anytime the economy tanks, immigration becomes a political hot spot. Living in an area of heavy Mexican immigration (legal and illegal), I can tell you things are already getting ugly.

I almost skimmed right past this one: a former coworker decided to give herself a $1.1 million raise. Lack of controls was an ongoing concern when I was there. Maybe now those in charge will stop sticking their fingers in their ears and la-la-la-ing when the subject comes up.

Well, I need some lunch and then start sorting the 230 or so pictures from Epcot. The biggest advantage of digital is also the biggest pain: it costs nothing to take photos so I keep pulling the trigger. Then I get home and have to sift through all those photos.

Later.

"Maximum shields, Mr. Worf!"

Our lease says we can't change the outward appearance of our apartment. Technically, what that means is that we cannot change out the blinds (for ones which are actually capable of keeping out light, for example) or hang anything between the blind and the window. Walking around the complex, what it seems to really mean is that it's OK to rip your blinds half down or allow your dog to eat the slats, but don't you DARE hang anything between the blind and the glass that would save energy or even block out light.

There is clear heat film that goes on the glass, but it would have cost around $50 per window. I doubt we would ever recover the cost in the time we are likely to stay living here. So after wasting time and gas trying to "buy local", I headed over to Amazon.com and picked up a few things [edited to add - total cost was about $50 with enough leftovers to do our next apartment]:

It only took a total of about three or four hours to do all the windows in the apartment except the office. (The way we have it set up, it would be impossible to open and close, and in the 10 months we've lived here, the sun has shone directly in that window exactly once.) It's a little dark, but that's the whole idea:

And we can open up to the outside world if we wish:

Now we know what it feels like to be a Hershey Kiss.

The hope is that by keeping the heat shields down during the day, then opening them and the windows at night, we can keep the electric bill below $100/month. (Doing the opposite in the two months of "winter" will likely eliminate the need to heat.) Today was the first full day with them all in place and it seemed to work pretty well. The indoor temp stayed below 79 degrees F even in our little sunroom, which usually runs up well over 80 when the sun starts cooking the windows.

We got our letter today from the front office telling us what our new rent will be. They only jacked it up by $25, so it looks like we won't have to send out an address change with our Christmas letters.

Gotta go; dinner is getting cold.

Debbie Says "Watch this!"

Up Hill Both Ways

When I started out on yesterday's ride, the wind was hitting me head on. I figured that was perfect; I'd have a tailwind for the ride back. Nope. Strong headwind. Both ways. Huh?!? Today I get a bit of a break; Debbie is riding with me so we're only doing a couple miles.

I see oil is below $100/barrel this morning. So much for $5/gallon gas. Not that we're out of the woods in the long term, but this will give people a bit of breathing space over the short term. Given the amount of froth in commodities in general, we'll likely see oil prices driven into the ground again, then bounce back up. Speculators don't change the direction of commodity prices; they only increase the volatility. Which makes the long-term picture for oil even more bleak. With prices whipsawing from $140 to $30 to $110 and now dropping again, all in a three-year period, it makes the sort of long-term planning and investing needed to significantly increase future oil production very difficult. In any case, at least the pressure is off for now so we can all go back to sleepwalking off a cliff.

Another Florida bank bit the dust yesterday, bringing the 2011 total to 40, well off last year's pace. And it was a pretty small bank, relatively speaking. Losing 40 banks in four months is disastrous by historical standards; that it's good news tells you just how bad things have been over the last three years.

The other good news is that businesses are hiring, which ironically caused the unemployment to go back up to 9%. The just-so story is that the increase in hiring caused people who had stopped looking for work (who are not considered "unemployed") to start looking again (causing them to be counted as "unemployed" again). Statistics brought to you by the same people who run Amtrak.

The backlash from killing bin Laden begins:

Pakistan's army broke its silence Thursday over the U.S. commando raid that killed Osama bin Laden, acknowledging its own "shortcomings" in efforts to find the al-Qaida leader but threatening to review cooperation with Washington if there is another similar violation of Pakistani sovereignty.

...The tone of the army statement was in sharp contrast to the initial response to the raid by the country's civilian leaders. Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani had hailed the operation as a "great victory" but made no mention of any concerns over sovereignty.

This will not end well. And for the gods' sake, can we have just one military operation that doesn't feature the mechanical failure of a helicopter?

The Mozilla team tells the Department of Homeland Security to go piss up a rope:

Mozilla's legal department didn't immediately comply with ICE's request to take down MafiaaFire and instead asked for more clarification. "Our approach is to comply with valid court orders...but in this case there was no such court order," Harvey Anderson, a member of Mozilla's legal team, recently explained on his personal blog. "Thus, to evaluate Homeland Security's request, we asked them several questions...to understand the legal justification."

Bravo!

Hobby or obsession:



A Storm has Arrived (NSFW):



AT&T will no longer provide unlimited broadband. This has little to nothing to do with keeping prices down or the cost of bandwidth. This is a blatant attempt to bollix up Hulu, Amazon UnBox and Netflix Streaming:

The blunt-force approach of a bandwidth cap does have the advantage of making users think twice about streaming HD movies from Netflix. That is, perhaps not coincidentally, doubly to the advantage of most big ISPs, because they’d rather have you spending money on their video services than paying a third party. Bandwidth-intense services threaten to turn the likes of Comcast, AT&T and Time Warner Cable into utilities — a dependable business, but not one that has the huge profit margins these companies have come to enjoy.

For now, the caps are high enough that most people won't ever hit them. An hour of high-def video is around 2.5GB, so a 250GB/month cap is 100 hours of streaming video. That's a lot in our case, but could be a problem with a connection shared by a family. And I'm sure those caps will come down once they are in place.

First we had earthquakes, then fires, and now floods:

Government engineers will blow up a third section of a Mississippi River levee on Thursday to manage flooding, as a wall of water roared down the nation's largest river system, threatening towns and cities all the way to the Gulf of Mexico.

What next? Famine? Pestilence? We've been able to ignore the Four Horsemen for a century due to our cleverness. But Nature always wins in the end.

It looks like yet-another computer worm has targeted Iran. No information yet on what specifically is being attacked. This is all great fun until the retaliation starts. To imagine that only the US and Israel are smart enough to create these is to be dangerously naive.

Well, gotta go make Debbie some waffles; she's sitting next to me whinging about getting her breakfast before it's lunch time.

Thighs Be Burnin'

I realized that since the end of tax season, I haven't been on my bike one single time. I've been looking at office space in Lake Mary for The Tax Geek, so I decided to see if I could ride from here to there. It's only 2.6 miles each way, a bit more than what I was riding to my old job, but I've been pretty much flat on my butt for the last couple weeks. The first attempt was yesterday. I made it. Barely. I had to jump off and stand in the shade for a bit when I got to Lake Mary, which is when I noticed that my tires were low on air. No wonder I felt like I was riding on loose sand the whole way. When I checked them this morning, there was only 25 pounds of air instead of the 60-65 I usually run when I'm on pavement. This morning was a much easier ride. I made the round trip in about 35 minutes which is a bit more leisurely than my usual pace (9mph vs. my more typical 11-12mph). In my defense, there was a stiff headwind for the return leg; hence the burnin' thighs. I hope to gradually increase my ride over the next couple months and see if I can get up to 10 miles or so. We'll see how it goes when morning temps are in the 80's instead of the 60's.

Well, I need to go wash off all the sweat.

Happy Star Wars Day!

May the Fourth be with you....

Mission Accomplished (?)

[Edited for a few minor details.]

I woke up this morning to news of dancing in the streets. The Great Satan, Osama bin Laden, is dead and his body thrown into the sea:

Osama bin Laden, the face of global terrorism and architect of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, was killed in a firefight with elite American forces Monday, then quickly buried at sea in a stunning finale to a furtive decade on the run.

Some random thoughts in no particular order:

I certainly hope our soldiers thought to wrap Osama in a fresh pig skin before they tossed his body out the chopper door over the side of the ship.

Whoever fed President Obama this line has a dark sense of humor:

The U.S. official who disclosed the burial at sea said it would have been difficult to find a country willing to accept the remains. Obama said the remains had been handled in accordance with Islamic custom, which requires speedy burial.

Heh. I'm sure our special forces were very concerned about Islamic custom as they dumped a bullet-riddled corpse out the chopper door over the side of the ship the instant they had proof that the body was indeed bin Laden.

This concerns me:

"Intelligence analysis concluded that this compound was custom built in 2005 to hide someone of significance," with walls as high as 18 feet and topped by barbed wire, according to one official. Despite the compound's estimated $1 million cost and two security gates, it had no phone or Internet running into the house....

The compound is about a half-mile from a Pakistani military academy, in a city that is home to three army regiments and thousands of military personnel.

A compound that cost a million bucks to build surrounded by 18-foot walls was built a half mile from three Pakistani regiments and a military academy. And no one noticed. In the movies, the super-villian can build a massively-fortified compound complete with nuclear missiles and a small army of guards in complete secrecy without the need to purchase or transport any of the necessary materials. Sorry, but this is the real world. The materials for those 18-foot walls and whatever was inside them had to come from somewhere. I don't care how well hidden in the hills the site itself was, the materials and people needed to build it didn't just materialize in situ. The most likely source for said materials and people is the near-by town. Ya know; the one with "thousands of military personnel." Which probably tells us all we need to know about how trustworthy this particular "ally" in the War on Terror really is.

[No attempt was made to hide bin Laden's compound. It was built in full view in the middle of a suburb populated by military personnel two New York City blocks from Pakistan's equivalent of West Point. As John Stewart observed on Sunday, if the military academy was a Domino's Pizza, they would deliver to bin Laden on foot. And again, this tells us all we need to know about our Pakistani "allies". ]

On a related note, how will this impact Pakistan's stability? The government that the US recognizes has at best a tenuous hold over what the lines on our maps identify as "Pakistan". Now imagine three regiments of the military pissed to the teeth that Islamabad allowed US forces to kill and body-snatch bin Laden, whom they were likely protecting, from right under their noses.

Personally, I feel the world is a better place with Osama bin Laden a corpse in an undisclosed location at the bottom of the sea. I hope this gives closure to the families of those who died on September 11, 2001. But I doubt this is over.

Derren Brown

Texas faith healing fraud exposed by Derren Brown.



I especially love the Sheriff Lobo wanabe threatening Derren Brown and his crew. With the economy in the toilet, I expect these faith healer and prosperity gospel douche nozzles to spring up everywhere just like they did when I was in high school.

If you don't remember, Derren Brown is this guy.

Why?

Because we can:

Days Off

In keeping with our recent tradition of using our days off to spend money we don't have on medical procedures, we hung out at the ghetto dentist for several hours Friday. Also in keeping with tradition, I was taken back 20 minutes after my appointment even though I was the second person of the day. Luckily, my cleaning only took half an hour, which put the hygienist back on schedule. Unluckily, there was another person between my appointment and Debbie's. Luckily, he got done on time and Debbie didn't take very long as they were only doing half her mouth. (Long story that ends with, "Yet another scam to milk extra fees in any way imaginable.") Now they want me back in a couple weeks for a follow-up. It was a cleaning! What the frack is there to follow up on?!?!

Anyway, when we got home I had two letters from the ghetto lab where I had blood and urine tests done last week. The first letter informed me that my urine was completely normal and there was no need to schedule a follow-up appointment. Thank the gods; I can still pee straight. The second letter informed me my blood results were in and I needed to schedule an appointment ASAP. I'm guessing the news isn't so good. I was hoping to get the results without paying for an additional office visit. While I was out to the ghetto clinic to visit the ghetto pharmacy to see if we was po' 'nough to get a discount on my insulin, I asked if there was any way I could get my lab results. The answer was an emphatic, "NO! Someone has to explain them to you!" I started to say that maybe there wouldn't have to be so much splainin' to us simple po' folk if they would stop printing everything in the Windows Wingdings font, but after 12 years working in healthcare, I knew it was pointless. A priesthood maintains its power through obscurity; hence the persistence of the Latin Mass, speaking in tongues, and medical paperwork written in pure gibberish.

Ran across this video of Cookie the Ticklish Penguin:



I note that our lease allows us to keep a bird. Might have to crank the AC a bit, though. And I want that sound he makes as a ringtone.

While we were out and about in Lake Mary, we cruised around collecting phone numbers in the windows of empty offices. We found a couple promising ones. Given that it was Good Friday, I didn't have a lot of luck getting in touch with people, but I was able to get a few figures. They ranged from the reasonable ($.80 to $1 per sq ft including trash and all utilities) to the silly ($3 per sq ft not including anything) to the sublimely ridiculous ($15 per sq ft; couldn't stop laughing long enough to asked if that included a weekly massage with a happy ending). This may yet work out. I'm certainly not going to jump into anything just yet. I'm still looking for that perfect place that can we can live in, have an office in, and have room to get our stuff out of the U-Haul locker. We had one that looked promising from the outside, but I don't think we can live in it due to zoning.

Florida is a weird place. More precisely, Florida is full of deeply weird people. The number of times a resident of the state of Florida is featured on Lowering the Bar (a blog devoted to bizarre court cases) should be disturbing to those in charge. But it most likely isn't:

Workforce Central Florida spent more than $14,000 on the red capes as part of its "Cape-A-Bility Challenge" public relations campaign. The campaign featured a cartoon character, "Dr. Evil Unemployment," who needs to be vanquished.

That's just... um... wow. I have no words.

We've all known the Fourth Amendment is dead, buried, forgotten and rotted away to dust. But yet-another story to just hammer that home:

The Michigan State Police have a high-tech mobile forensics device that can be used to extract information from cell phones belonging to motorists stopped for minor traffic violations. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Michigan last Wednesday demanded that state officials stop stonewalling freedom of information requests for information on the program.

..."Complete extraction of existing, hidden, and deleted phone data, including call history, text messages, contacts, images, and geotags," a CelleBrite brochure explains regarding the device's capabilities. "The Physical Analyzer allows visualization of both existing and deleted locations on Google Earth. In addition, location information from GPS devices and image geotags can be mapped on Google Maps."

And just in case you think you only need fear the government:

Security researchers have discovered that Apple's iPhone keeps track of where you go – and saves every detail of it to a secret file on the device which is then copied to the owner's computer when the two are synchronised.

Follow-up stories have Apple claiming the whole thing was just a bug. Yah. Uh huh. And my name is Kate Middleton and I'm off to jolly ol' England to shag Prince William.

Meanwhile:

The U.S. government plans to sell a significant share of its remaining stake in General Motors Co. this summer despite the disappointing performance of the auto maker's stock, people familiar with the matter said. 

Never mind the $10 billion in taxpayer money flushed down yet-another rat hole. That's loose change swept up by the night janitors in the Senate chamber these days. The simple fact that the federal government of these United States owns shares of General Motors is astounding. That not one WTF has been forthcoming from... well... anyone, ought to be terrifying.

Generally, I don't pay much attention when someone on the internet starts screaming that something people have been consuming for decades is somehow magically responsible for everything from cancer to bad breath. (The aspartame hoax e-mails, for example). When I started reading this New York Times article with the unfortunate title Is Sugar Toxic, my first thought was, "Great; here we go again." But instead of yet-another no-nothing running around screaming like their hair was on fire, the author lays out a pretty good case that it is possible that ingesting too much fructose does more than make you fat, that there is some research into that possibility but it isn't conclusive either way, and that follow-up studies are badly needed. In the meantime, good luck cutting out all sources of fructose outside what occurs naturally in fruits and vegetables. I read this article Thursday night, so I paid attention to what I consumed all day Friday. It was a little frightening. Other than beverages (water, unsweetened ice tea, Diet Coke) and some grapes (which naturally contain fructose), everything I stuffed in my pie hole had added fructose. I'm not sure how we would even go about avoiding the stuff. It's not like we can grow our own food or even make food from scratch living in our little ghetto apartment.

Because gas prices are getting up to the level that people are starting to squawk, energy is a hot topic. The typical conversation starts with "Well, if we'd just [insert impractical idea], we could go on consuming energy as if the earth were infinite," then goes downhill from there. One problem is that it's difficult to wrap your head around just how much energy we use and how it gets used. A second problem is understanding how inefficient our methods of energy use are. Here's a picture that helps:

You will need to click on that to view the full-sized image unless you're big into eye-strain. There are two things to note: all renewable sources amount to 8% of energy consumption. If you limit that to wind and solar, it's .8%. We cannot continue business as usual on renewable energy. The second thing to note is the amount of energy we consume that drifts off into space as waste heat without doing anything useful on the way. Nearly 58% of the our energy use goes up the chimney. Maybe instead of spending billions flying politicians to climate conferences for free food, booze and whores, or subsidizing energy sources that will never contribute anything meaningful, could we work on nudging that percentage down? I'm aware that most of that is the inevitable result of converting energy from one form to another and can't be eliminated any more than we can save energy by eliminating gravity. But can we do better? Are there inefficiencies that can be eliminated? Can we remove some of the conversions?

Or maybe we need to use less energy?

Nah! What am I thinking? This is America! It's a basic human right to leave lights on when we're not home, drive around in circles, hop on an airplane at the drop of a hat, and annoy the neighbors with our giant, lighted plastic Santa heads. We just need to drill baby, drill!

And speaking of which, we're off to visit Mickey again today while we have some time off.

Done

Another tax season is in the bag. It wasn't much of one; the office did more tax returns the first full week than we did the last six. I don't expect the franchise owners will bother with it next year. I'm guessing we barely made enough to cover payroll. Not that it matters; I won't be there either way.

Finishing up tax season also means I have to get my butt moving to make The Tax Geek more than just a pricey bit of paper in the file cabinet. I have a good idea of where I want to set up shop, but I have no idea what the rent is going to be. I'll likely do a bit of driving around on Wednesday and get some hard numbers. I should have the software I plan to use sometime today. [UPS dude just dropped it off! Woohoo!] Intuit gives the 2009 version away for free as part of their sales pitch. I was completely underwhelmed by their on-line version for tax preparers. I'm hoping their stand-alone software is more what I would expect from using QuickBooks and TurboTax. And of course, I need to find a starving artist somewhere than can come up with artwork for business cards, etc.

[Aside: I hate when I can't remember something I've seen a hundred times. I know there is a website where you can put work out to contract; virtualsomethingorother.com. The "somethingorother" part is an old word for someone you hire to get stuff done (like "majordomo" only more Southeast Asian). It's been discussed endlessly for over a year on Scott Adam's blog and now because I'm trying to think of it, it's just gone. Normally I write stuff like that down or at least toss it into my bookmarks, but for some reason I didn't. Or I did, but now can't remember where I wrote it down or in what folder I stuffed the bookmark. Getting old sucks dead bunnies.]

The government didn't shut down, but we still don't have a budget six and a half months into the budget year, and won't likely have one before summer. If there is any question our federal government is broken, there is no better sign than the fact that the single most important bit of work will still be incomplete nine months after the due date and a mere three months before the next version is due. If the reason for the delay involved coming to a middle path over some deep philosophical divide, I would likely be less harsh. Instead, we have over-grown children quibbling over crumbs while the nation slowly grinds its way down the slope of decline. I'm waiting to hear some adult conversation about what in Afghanistan is of such strategic importance to the US that we continue to borrow billions from the Chinese to fund our bumbling around in that particular hell hole. I would love to have it explained to me what penumbra formed by an emanation obligates me to pay for someone else's healthcare. Or make them whole after they lose their ass gambling in the derivatives markets. Or to pay for three meals a day for school students whose "parents" trade their food stamp cards for cash to piss away on drugs and alcohol. But our president claims that anyone who dares question the neo-liberal agenda is a stomper of puppies and strangler of babies, and advocates killing anyone over the age of 30. Returning the federal government to the size it was for two centuries will be a disaster. Thus Speaketh The One. Hear ye subjects and tremble.

And we accept this with barely a murmur.

Meanwhile, Big Sis says that adults can stuff their hand down the front of a six-year-old girl's pants and call it "proper screening procedures" as long as the adults come two by two with hands of blue. I think we all know what I would be called if I made a habit of stuffing my hand down the front of little girls' pants, disposable nitrile gloves or no.

And we just line up and take it.

We so deserve what is happening to us.

Speaking of which, we are up to 34 banks closed so far in 2011. That's significantly off last year's pace and the size of the banks involved remains of the small and regional variety. That may be due to the slower pace of foreclosures, or it may be due to smaller banks not being able to borrow billions for 0% interest from the Fed then use it to purchase T-bills paying 3.5% like the too-big-to-fail banks.

So, enough of my babbling. Here is someone that makes me look optimistic:

And a couple essays that run along similar themes:

Gaming Our Own Asses by James Howard Kunstler:

...Barack Obama has waited a bit too long to change the national storyline using the authority of his high office. It's not about "growth" and "recovery." It's about managing contraction and becoming a different sort of American society. Observers of the scene have made a mistake about Obama. He's not "eloquent." He's merely respectable. Being able to speak in grammatical sentences is not the same as having anything to say. It will be a sorrowful day when he is replaced by a genuine idiot like Michele Bachman, but it will happen because he wasn't able to set the tone for his times with something like a straight story....

Alternatives to Nihilism, Part One: A Dog Named Boo by John Michael Greer:

Any of my readers who would like to see how much of this fixation on hunting for scapegoats unfolds from an uneasy conscience need only suggest in public that ordinary Americans might bear some modest degree of responsibility for the unwelcome trends of the last few decades. The shrillness with which most Americans will insist that all the blame lies elsewhere makes it tolerably clear just how sensitive a nerve has been touched. What Carl Jung called "projecting the shadow" has become a potent political reality in America, but you don’t need a degree in Jungian psychoanalysis to realize that people who spend their lives pointing fingers at other people are trying to paste a villain’s mask on the rest of the world in order to avoid seeing it when they look in the mirror.

As usual, the real fun is in the comments. Greer's commenters are generally polite and provide useful input (something enforced mercilessly by JMG); Kunstler's are... um... not. Which just increases the unintentional humor factor to the stratosphere.

Well, I should go find something useful to do with my unemployed self. Maybe a nap.

It's Official

Now all I have to do is find cheap office space in a better part of town than I now work in.

The Federal Budget Pie

Just in case anyone isn't already aware of just how worthless the Congress and our president really are:

Pay Cuts and Gettin' Sued

Debbie found out on Wednesday that her work is "restructuring" their pay system; a turd-polishing way to say everyone is getting a 25% pay cut for all but the busiest three months. So we may be hitting the road again this summer. Our lease is up in August and if either of us can find something in the way of paying work over on the "good" side of Florida, we'll likely jump.

In other news, I received a letter addressed to me at the office where I work informing me that I'm being sued by one of our upstanding clients. It seems back in 2002 she stole money from the bank we use, and has been dodging them ever since. This year, they caught up with her and grabbed her entire Federal refund as repayment. There are at least three places in the paperwork that say applying for a bank product means that you agree that the bank has a right to do this. Of course, because I'm not psychic and didn't know that she owed the bank money from nine years ago, it's all my fault. So she is going to sue me. Not my employer or the bank that actually took her money. Me. Personally. Good luck with that.

And just because this tax season hasn't already been the Tax Season from Hell what with all the IRS software glitches and delays triggered by the large number of fraudulent tax returns we filed back in January, now we are looking at a government shutdown just in time for what is supposed to be the second-busiest week of the tax season. (I have my doubts on that score; one return for the entire office last week and only four returns so far this week.) It isn't supposed to affect most returns, but you can believe as much of that as you want.

The price of oil continues to creep upwards, toying with $112/barrel. No real surprise there other than the complete lack of any adult conversation regarding energy use. Obama's energy speech is the same speech made by every president since Nixon; business-as-usual must continue because we say it must and the energy necessary will fall from the sky because we are the Chosen People. Declining fossil fuel supplies combined with increasing global demand means nothing. We will burn food in our gas tanks while millions starve, and power our homes by magic pixie dust (otherwise known as nuclear fusion, a technology that has been 20 years from widespread deployment for my entire lifetime).

Yes. I'm in a bit of a mood.

I'm also bored out of my skull. In three-and-a-half hours, I've had a single phone call. Woo. I've already read all my regular web sites and read all the stuff I had in my backpack. I'm cranking through books like crazy with 4-5 hours of uninterupted reading time every day. There's a good chance I may have to make an emergency library run before I work there on Sunday. Ah well, in ten days, I'll have a great deal of free time.

I did run across a cool bit of video:


A Cosmological Fantasia from BDH - Burrell Durrant Hifle on Vimeo.

There is some amazing stuff in there. Watching is good for perspective. With titantic events like these happening in the universe, nothing that happens on this insignificant ball of mud really matters. I especially like the bit about three minutes in where our sun goes off its main sequence and burns Earth to a speck of soot. Right now, that makes me smile.

Have a great day!

Not a winner

Well, neither myself or any family member won the HUGE Powerball drawing Wednesday night. That means we all still have to go to work. Darn!

I got news Wednesday at work that they are changing our pay structure once again. This is the third time since I've started (Aug 2010)! So much for that pay raise for a few months! Ric is in the last part of tax season with [name of big-box tax place redacted], so his job is about done for the year. He is not too sure what will happen next. He would like to start his own business doing taxes. This will involve looking for "office space" since we can not "operate a business" out of our apartment. It will involve a bunch of other things too, but the office space will be one of the first to figure out. If we could find a place that has living space also that would be a bonus. Or at least big enough to have the extra storage room that would mean we could get rid of the storage space at UHaul we are currently paying an extra $65/month for.

Marjoe

A 1972 documentary of the "ministry" of Marjoe Gortner. The video quality isn't the best, but the content is... interesting.

A Bit of "Me" Time

I actually have a day completely off. No reason to drive anywhere, no to-do list; just a day to spread my butt on the couch. Woohoo!

Yesterday was International Weirdo Day at work. The first one was an old one-armed man, driving himself naturally, who didn't want to spend money on a lawyer and asked me to help fill out his divorce papers. When I told him as politely as I could that there was no way in hell I was doing that, he demanded that I tell him who would. Um, a lawyer maybe?

Weirdo number two was another old man lugging a hockey bag around full of stuff he was selling; queen sheet sets, remote control toy helicopters, etc. He became rather pissed when I told him no thanks; I was all set on helicopters and sheets purchased from dubious sources.

Weirdo number three was one of our fraudulent tax clients. Imagine Chris Rock if Chris cut his hair with hedge trimmers and lived on a nothing but meth and you get a good picture of how this guy looks and acts. He was coming back with a great deal for me: a whole trunk-full of pizzas from Dominoes (which were oddly enough in Papa John's pizza boxes; I guess Dominoes ran out...) for $20. I told him no thanks; I was about to leave and I didn't have any money anyway. He stood there staring at me for nearly a minute, then finally left, also pissed to the teeth. What gives? Just because I bathe regularly and wear a tie doesn't mean I have my pockets stuffed with $100 bills to buy random crap with.

Other than the weirdos, work is getting slower by the day. As of yesterday afternoon around 2pm, the entire office had managed to complete exactly one tax return for the entire week. The upside is I'm getting a lot of reading done and getting paid for it. The other upside is that I'm nearly 100% certain I'll be out on my own next tax season; I'm getting that together to the extent that I can while still working. Once tax season ends on April 18th, I'll be motivated to kick it into high gear given that I won't have a fall-back next year. The real trick will be finding office space. There's a lot of empty places around here, but based on the prices I'm seeing, you'd think empty office space was at a premium. I'm sure it's just a matter of looking around. Or maybe everyone around here really is delusional.

Speaking of delusional, does anyone sincerely believe the government is making money from owning General Motors? To paraphrase another honest politician, I guess it depends on what the meaning of "is" is:

In Obama's world, success means taxpayers only lost as much as $84 billion.

There are two possibilities; our president is either delusional or he is a liar. Given that he's a politician, do I really need to say which I think it is?

More delusion: we can continue to live our current lifestyle using only renewable energy sources:

Eco-campaigners who built a classroom powered by the sun believed they were paving the way for the future.

...But there is snag - its solar panels only provide enough energy to power a few lightbulbs.

As a result the classroom is bitterly cold and uninhabitable for lessons.

To begin with, whoever wrote this article clearly doesn't understand the different between photovoltaic panels and solar heating panels, unless he thought they were going to use electric heat run by photovoltaic panels. Given the level of delusion (and lack of basic math skills; calculating the amount of sun you have at any given site and what you can do with it is hardly rocket science), that may be the case here. Or just the usual lack of basic understanding we've come to expect from the media.

The cynic in me says the contractor likely knew full well that there was no way the thing would ever be usable and took the £25,000, minus a kick-back to the school official that signed off on the project, and ran. Looking at the photo, I don't see any possible way it could have ever worked as a classroom.

A study of who is most likely to cheat on their taxes:

The typical American tax cheat is male, single and under the age of 45.

I'm sure the local demographics skew things a bit, but the typical tax cheat in the office I work in is as likely to be a married Mexican couple working in the US illegally as a young single male. Both are cheating for the same reason: refundable tax credits. Get rid of those, I'm willing to bet that billions in fantasy income will evaporate from the economy over-night, and illegal Mexicans can stop wasting everyone's time and money, and go back to not filing tax returns like in the old days. I really need to do a post on tax reform one of these days.

Well, Debbie should be calling in a few minutes to tell me to get dinner started. Vacation is over.

Counterpoint

As an antidote to that last post, there's this:




Autumn Dawn is a relative of someone we knew back in Michigan. Amazing stuff.

The Hits Just Keep Comin'

Our most recent war seems to be going poorly.
Hamas is back to its old tricks, blowing up buses and lobbing rockets into cities.

Syria is killing protestors. (Will our Tomahawks fly into Tishreen Palace?)
Oil is up.
Gold and silver are up near record territory.
New home sales are at record lows.
Food prices are up.

But, hey! Stocks are up!

Elizabeth Taylor, RIP

Elizabeth Taylor died early today.

When I was growing up, we got a local UHF channel out of Detroit on our cable service (which then was just an antenna service). There was a show during week-day afternoons that played old movies with breaks for viewers to call in questions for the host. It was hosted by a guy who, to me, was old as dirt, which means he was probably in his forties or fifties. We didn't go to theaters, and other than Saturday morning Godzilla movies, there were very few movies shown on TV, so this show was about my only exposure to film.  (For you youngin's, there was no such thing as VCR's or DVD's or HBO. And get off my lawn!!) I saw Lassie Come Home, National Velvet and Cleopatra on that show (along with everything Shirley Temple ever starred in). In my mind, those will always represent what a movie is supposed to be, and Elizabeth Taylor is what a movie star is supposed to be.

Bored

Still not a lot going on at work other than getting bored silly reading stuff on the internet. I did manage to do one whole return this morning. I feel all tingly. So while Debbie is cranking out work like crazy, I'm wasting my time. Well, I still get paid so maybe "wasted" isn't the right word. It's just that I spend 99.9% of my time here reading blogs and e-mail, and posting stuff here when I feel the need.

Japan. I haven't said much over the last week-plus about what's going on over there mostly because there really isn't that much new information. The best source of information on the mess with the nuclear reactors is a series of interviews with a retired nuclear engineer. There is a great deal we just don't know; partly because it's an on-going event in an area completely destroyed by the earthquake/tsunami. It's not like someone at the power plant can pick up a phone and do an interview with CNN. Everything is smashed. The other problem is a lack of transparency from the power company in charge of the plant, which may be in part because everything is smashed. What is clear is that this is not some minor problem that will be fixed in a few hours or even days. However, there is also no reason to panic.

What probably disturbs me more than anything is the media focus on the power plant. Yes it is serious. Potentially very serious to those in the immediate area. But so is 18,000 dead and hundreds of thousands homeless. So are shortages of water and food. And burning refineries. And destroyed ports in a nation that imports 95% of its energy. And for the gods sakes, if you are going to make a living focusing on the nuclear plants, educate yourself! Learn what "critical" means in the context of a nuclear plant. Learn the difference between radiation and fallout. Quit screaming "meltdown" at every wisp of steam. Quit screwing up the units.

And it seems that while I went away for a couple days, our Nobel Peace Prize-winning president has started a third war. Without a declaration from Congress, of course, but we all know that's just some outdated idea from a bunch of dead white guys. One hundred-plus Tomahawk missiles were launch into Libya, including two that punched holes in the roof of the equivalent of the White House here in the United States. I seriously doubt that was necessary in order to enforce a no-fly zone in rebel-held areas. I have no doubt that the world would be a better place with one less bat-shit crazy dude in a fake military uniform, but I would love to see what document is being used as authority for the US to assassinate the head of a sovereign nation. Other than the We're Bigger Than You And We Can doctrine that seems to inform all US foreign policy for the last few decades.

Another country for us to occupy for all time without accomplishing anything. How many times do we have to get our collective nose cut off before we learn to quit sticking it in other people's business?

And after a few days of reality, the stock markets are back in the gentle fairyland of rainbow farting unicorns. We can all have a nice warm cup of cocoa now and go back to sleep. Don't pay attention to those spiking commodity prices and rising prices in the store. They can't hurt you.

And I still have 3 1/2 hours to kill. What else can I ramble on about?

It looks like NASA is making one more last ditch effort to contact the Spirit Mars rover, then officially calling it quits. Meanwhile, the Opportunity rover is still chuggin' along. These are definitely two of the crown jewels of NASA. Along with Cassini, which has sent back thousands of images that are beyond words:

As someone who grew up on grainy TV images from the moon, this stuff is amazing.

And I did another return! Woo hoo! Two in one day! And only two more hours to kill.

When is green energy not green? When it is wind power:

...Britain flaunts its environmental credentials by speckling its coastlines and unspoiled moors and mountains with thousands of wind turbines, it is contributing to a vast man-made lake of poison in northern China. This is the deadly and sinister side of the massively profitable rare-earths industry that the ‘green’ companies profiting from the demand for wind turbines would prefer you knew nothing about.

Every way of generating electricity has costs. We're seeing the costs of nuclear playing out in Japan. Wind farms kill birds, create toxic goo during their manufacture, and don't work as advertised. PV panels take 20 years to generate the power needed to build them. Coal miners die in mine cave-ins, mountain-top removal is an environmental nightmare, and living 50 miles from a coal-fired electrical plant will expose you to three times the annual radiation as living 50 miles from a nuke plant. Natural gas plants explode and fraking contaminates drinking water. Nothing is free from risk. If you really care about the environment, quit using so damned much energy! Depending on what numbers you look at, Europeans use between a third to half the energy Americans do and live approximately the same (and some argue better) lifestyle. It's not impossible to drastically reduce energy consumption; we simply choose to not think about it expecting technology to save the day once again.

Well, it's getting close to time for me to scoot out of this place, so I'll stop rambling.

Diet Coke Wins Battle in Cola Wars

U.S. sales of Diet Coke overtook those of Pepsi-Cola for the first time in 2010, making the diet soda the No. 2 carbonated soft drink in the country behind Coca-Cola, industry data are expected to confirm Thursday.

Occupying the top two rankings would mark a historic win for Coca-Cola Co. in its decades-old rivalry with PepsiCo Inc.

Yeah Coca-Cola rules!

Short Road Trip

This afternoon after Ric gets out of work -- we are on our way to Bonita Springs Florida. First time we are going in that direction. Ric's Aunt/Uncle live over there and we are having a small get together with them, his parents and a couple other cousins that are down in Florida.

Next weekend we both have off Saturday -- so may head to Disney World; head in a new direction for someplace to visit; or visit with Don and Shirley one more weekend before they head back up to Michigan.

I made #1 again last pay period at the office with my best cabin count so far (67). This pay period I know I did just over 50, but my insurance policies were really good. Usually when I hit bonus, I just get 16 (minimum for bonus), 17 or 18. This pay period I think I did 25. Should make for a nice bonus.

...And Stocks Go Up

Nothing seems to be able to stop the US stock market's upward trend. Not civil war in Libya, not governments toppling in Egypt and Tunisia, not $100 oil, not three years of declining home prices, not 15% real unemployment, not even and 8.9 mag earthquake in the world's third-largest economy. (More here, and video here and here.)

Remember: Markets are rational.

So, a woman walks into a courthouse with a monkey in her bra. No, that's not the start of a bad joke. A woman walked into a courthouse with a monkey in her bra. The best part, as usual, is at the very bottom of the article:

Asked who let the monkey through the metal detector, deputies quipped: “It wasn’t armed.”

And this guy makes more money than you do.

Have a nice day.

TED Talks

Hulu recently put up a batch of fifty or so TED talks covering every subject you can imagine. If you can tear yourself away from the Charlie Sheen Self-Destruction Reality Show for a few hours, these are certainly worth the time. A few of my favorites:

Sam Harris: Science Can Answer Moral Questions



Simon Sinek: How Great Leaders Inspire Action



Andora Suitak: What Adults Can Learn from Kids



Sir Ken Robinson: Schools Kill Creativity & Bring on the Learning Revolution





Good stuff. Enjoy.

Bummer

Unless a miracle happens -- it looks like Bob Seger won't be coming to Florida. The closest he will be is in Atlanta GA, but during the week. It also looks like he will be closing up the tour in mid May. So I doubt he will still be touring Michigan area the first week of June when I'll be back.

Bummer, bummer, bummer. SOMEBODY make sure to go see his concert and call me on your cell phone so I can hear part of the concert!

Today Ric is going to work 1/2 day then we are on our way over to see his parents for the rest of the weekend. They are going to be heading back to Michigan beginning the end of March. They will probably go home to snow still, but they must be back by Grandpa's birthday on April 8th. Between my schedule and Ric's for tax season we didn't get over to see them much this time. Maybe next "winter season"......

We're Saved!! (or not)

(And yes, I'm blogging from work which should tell you everything you need to know about how busy it is so far this week.)

A Massachusetts company claims it can make diesel fuel directly from a genetically-engineered cyanobacterium:

Joule Unlimited has invented a genetically-engineered organism that it says simply secretes diesel fuel or ethanol wherever it finds sunlight, water and carbon dioxide.

...Joule claims, for instance, that its cyanobacterium can produce 15,000 gallons of diesel full per acre annually, over four times more than the most efficient algal process for making fuel. And they say they can do it at $30 a barrel.

And when anyone questions the genius behind these, um, extravagant claims, to be polite about it?

Sims said he knows "there's always skeptics for breakthrough technologies."

"And they can ride home on their horse and use their abacus to calculate their checkbook balance," he said.

Yes, being a horse's ass is the hallmark of breakthrough science. So lets blow the dust off our abacus and do the math that Sims isn't capable of.

Fuel consumption for over-the-road travel (buses, trucks and automobiles) is around 174,930,000,000 gallons per year as of 2006. That was certainly kicked down by the current recession, but we all know the economy is going to bounce back any day now, which makes it good enough for our back-of-the-envelope abacus work. At 15,000 gallons per acre, that's 11,662,000 acres of algae. Double that for tankage, plumbing, maintenance roads, processing facilities, and everything else that you would need to make this work and we're up to 23,324,000 acres or 36,444 square miles. That's more-or-less the state of Indiana, if you're interested. Or 30% of the state of New Mexico is more likely because solar insolation is greater there.

Speaking of insolation, the sunniest place in North America (El Paso, TX) receives a maximum of 7.42 KWH/sq meter/day or 2,708 KWH/sq meter/year. 15,000 gallons of diesel per acre comes to 3.71 gallons of diesel per sq meter. At 40.7 KWH/gallon for diesel fuel, that means a net harvest of 151 KWH/sq meter or 5.6% of the maximum available sunlight. That doesn't sound too bad until you consider that a) that's using the maximum sunlight at the spot in North America with the maximum solar insolation, and b) photosynthesis is only between 3% and 6% efficient in naturally-occurring plants. We are supposed to believe that this genetically-engineered cyanobacteria can support itself and reproduce, and still be able to convert 5.6% of the maximum available sunlight into pure diesel fuel? I don't need to step in it to know bullshit when I see it.

Another problem: the fragility of engineered organisms. In spite of the media hype about Killer Korn from Outer Space (well, OK; Monsanto, which to media douche nozzles is about same thing), most engineered organisms must be carefully protected in a lab to survive. What happens to this Wonder Bacterium when real cyanobacteria start growing in the tanks? At the very least, it's going to kick that 15,000-gallons-per-acre production right where it hurts.

And another problem: What happens to that 15,000 gallons of diesel per acre when an entire ecosystem takes over the tanks? At the scale we're talking about here, there is absolutely no way to prevent that. There are plenty of microorganisms that would love to munch on those long-chain hydrocarbons we are trying to produced. Not to mention an entire biology textbook worth of organisms that would love to munch on our precious cyanobacterium (and each other, and still others that munch them and so on and so forth). Nature has a nasty habit of mopping up spare energy left lying about; ask a backyard gardener about the endless parade of critters from the microscopic to bears that constantly assault their veggies.

Looming over all of this: Net energy. How much energy is it going to take to build out and maintain the infrastructure for 35,000+ square miles of tanks and plumbing? How much energy to pump all that liquid around? How much energy to extract the diesel and get it into usable form? In other words, could you run the entire operation on the diesel fuel being produced and have any left over to sell?

I wish the scientists at Joule Unlimited all the luck in the world. It would be nice if this would work, even at triple the projected cost. But I'm keeping my horse and my abacus. Just in case.

#1 Again

Last pay period I was the top selling agent in the office. That makes it 2 times this year so far, 1 time I was #2, the 3rd time I was #3. Woo hoo.

We just had another new hire training class get done. They will start on the floor Monday. I believe there are 7 in this class. Some have travel agent experience, some don't. We will see how many last of this group. The last group - has 2 left (one is off site still) and from my class we have 3 left. With that many more people, I don't see me getting close to 50 cabins in a pay period, but you never know. (This pay period that will end next Friday -- I should be close again -- I already have 30+ from last week!)

HOT here -- in the low/mid 80's. Saturday was murder in our office -- the air conditioning was not on and no air moving around. My small fan did not seem to help me at all. I hope they have it fixed by Monday since today and Monday are suppose to be hotter than it got on Sat.

If anyone is driving to visit Florida from Michigan -- bring me some pickled bologna. I"m have CRAVINGS!!!! One of my nephews may be driving down the end of March and I already called to see if he will have room to bring me 2-3 jars! The other CRAVING is for Koegel hot dogs/viennas. Those I have to make sure who brings them down has space for a cooler and will keep them iced down for the whole trip so they don't spoil. Too bad we probably will have to fly home in June instead of driving because I would have brought home a cooler full of Koegel products.

Will try to blow the sun and heat up to youse guys in Michigan and the northeast coast! :-)

Almost Half-Way Done

We're only a few days away from the half-way point of tax season. I don't have to worry about filing any more fraudulent tax returns because we're not filing any tax returns. Period. The two busiest weeks of tax season were a complete bust and it has only gone downhill from there. I filed less than five returns all last week and exactly one return so far this week. Good thing I'm paid by the hour. At least I have lots of time to read random stuff on the internet that I can use to annoy anyone who still reads this thing.

I've used some of the slack time to get myself set up to do taxes on my own next year. I've already filed a couple returns under my own EFIN number; I'm hoping to find a half-dozen or so people with simple returns that haven't filed yet just to make sure everything is set up correctly in the software, etc. I should be able to find that many right here in the apartment complex. Maybe. I also need to set up a separate bank account and get set up to take credit cards. I probably won't do bank products (ERC's and RAL's) mostly because I don't want to do taxes for the kind of people who make use of those. I have moral objections to RAL's anyway (124% interest is usury by any meaningful definition of the word), and if I use a bank that offers both, I have to offer both. Easier to not mess with either and keep fees low enough that clients won't need to mortgage their house to pay them.

As Debbie already mentioned, we finally made it down to Uncle Walt's place to visit the animals and see the shows at Animal Kingdom. The one thing we both noticed was that if the grounds people don't get control of the bamboo, there won't be any room left for the people. In a couple places, it has gone seriously crazy. But we had fun if for no other reason than we got out of the ghetto for a few hours. The weather was perfect; warm and breezy with a skim of clouds to keep the sun off. In all, a good day. And now that we have our Florida Resident annual passes, we can skip down there anytime and hit any of the four main parks (no water parks) for nothing other than the cost of gas.

February 22, 2011: New Zealand's darkest day.



Nothing really to say. Maybe Atlas really did shrug....

Oil is dancing around in the high $90's while North Africa falls further into chaos. Gaddafi has decided to not go gently into that good night and is calling for the destruction of Libya's oil infrastructure while his Janissaries fire into the crowds and the military goes to war with itself. Mubarak is in exile and seems to be having medical problems. Whether those are the result of outside agency or the combination of stress and old age isn't clear. Given regional politics, we may never know. Not that it makes a big difference now; the military is in charge with the usual constitutional suspensions and dissolution of various political bodies. Only time will tell if the new boss will be just like the old boss, or if the military will play the same role it has played in Turkey. The former is the usual way of things. And don't forget about Bahrain, Tunisia, Yemen, Iran, House of Saud. We do live in interesting times.

The federal deficit for the current fiscal year is now expected to hit $1.65 Trillion. I can't imagine, from an economic perspective, why anyone would lend that kind of money to us; it's not like we will ever pay it back. Of course there are other reasons to loan money to people:

Leaked diplomatic cables vividly show China's willingness to translate its massive holdings of US debt into political influence on issues ranging from Taiwan's sovereignty to Washington's financial policy.

So China is James Spader and the United States is Robert Downey Jr. in Less Than Zero. Do the Chinese have us giving blow jobs yet?

Madoff is now claiming that banks and hedge funds were "complicit" in his Ponzi scheme. Well, duh. Everyone knew Madoff was up to something, but only a few suspected an old school pyramid scam. Most simply assumed he was getting information ahead of the market from inside sources. Few considered a Ponzi because no one thought it was possible to run one that big for that long. All were willing to take the returns he offered and not ask too many questions. Again, why is Madoff the only one in a prison cell?

Wal-Mart was on a tear when the financial world took a dump in 2008 and shoppers abandoned the malls and went in search of cheaper prices. Now they don't look so good:

The retailer reported its seventh consecutive quarterly decline in sales at U.S. stores open at least a year, posting a 1.8 percent drop that was much bigger than its worst forecast and showing how hard it is for a merchant that accounts for 10 percent of U.S. retail sales to overcome its own mistakes.

Seems like people are now moving even further down the retail food chain in search of cheaper prices. Too bad we can't buy stock in Goodwill Industries.

Home prices are still dropping. Federal regulators are still closing banks. Yale techno-weenies are shocked that expectations of a stock crash are rising even as the market does. The Yale Ivory Tower must not have windows.

Well, Debbie should be home soon and I have to dream up something for dinner. Later.

Where Are the Criminal Charges? Part II

From the Rolling Stone's article Why Isn't Wall Street in Jail?

Over drinks at a bar on a dreary, snowy night in Washington this past month, a former Senate investigator laughed as he polished off his beer.

"Everything's fucked up, and nobody goes to jail," he said. "That's your whole story right there. Hell, you don't even have to write the rest of it. Just write that."

I put down my notebook. "Just that?"

"That's right," he said, signaling to the waitress for the check. "Everything's fucked up, and nobody goes to jail. You can end the piece right there."

Being the Rolling Stone there are a lot more swears, and Mr. Former Senate Investigator is right; the rest of the article is six pages of example after example of how "everything's fucked up and nobody goes to jail." But take a few minutes and read the entire thing. The list of people exempt from the rule of law is getting rather long.

Where Are the Criminal Charges?

If a bunch of whites started kicking and punching a black reporter and camera operator, people would be led off in handcuffs. When it's the other way around? "Authorities are looking at the video to determine if any charges need to be filed." Doesn't seem to be any question to me, but I may not be sufficiently sensitive:



And yes, reporters can be a real pain in the ass, but understand this was not a funeral; just an impromptu gathering on a public sidewalk. The punks may think they own everything, but they don't.

Good News/good news

1) Bob Seger's tour is getting closer to us --- this weekend he announced a few more dates and he will be in Atlanta Georgia. Hopefully next set of dates/places will include Orlando Florida!

2) Today we will become the proud owners of two Florida resident annual passholder Disney World tickets. We are going down to Disney's Animal Kingdom today.

Annual passholders can come and go as we please to all 4 theme parks -- no black out dates, free parking, and park hopping capability. So...anyone that is heading to DisneyWorld -- let us know, maybe we can head down to meet you. Ric would love to ride the coasters with anybody. I get too sick after a coaster now, that it is not worth it for me and I hate that Ric can't go on them. (He won't go by himself and leave me alone -- even tho I've urged him to)

I"m sure Ric will have pictures to post after today's visit --- keep an eye out.

Inquiring Minds

People who wind up here after typing random phrases into Google Search seem to be an inquisitive lot this past few weeks. As a public service, I will try to answer your deep and searching questions:

Has anyone slept with Ric Savage?

Absolutely not. Like all rockers, Rick Savage took the mandatory Artist Vow of Celibacy required by all record labels. Besides, have you seen that dude, like, up close? Talk about a serious beating with an ugly stick....

What does the word "Arcosanti" mean?

First, congratulations on being one of the few Google Search users in several months to land on this blog using a search phrase that has anything to do with anything that has ever been posted here. To answer the question, that depends on who you ask and/or what part of their dementia cycle they happen to be in. The most popular answer: A portmanteau of "arcology" and "cosanti". Given that both arcology and cosanti are themselves portmanteaus, Arcosanti is likely the first ever recursive portmanteau.

Is Stampin' Up doing well in this present economy?

I'm sure that sales are in the toilet, but equally sure executive bonuses and stock options are at all-new highs. That's why America is on top! You should immediately invest every penny you have in Stampin' Up stock. Because everyone knows bloggers are an endless fountain of impeccable investment advise.

Paolo Soleri sketches?

First, same congrats as above. To answer with the same brevity as my questioner: Yes. Whether he sketches well seems to be a matter of some debate. As someone who is unable to draw a decent smiley face, I'm probably the wrong guy to ask. But you didn't, so again, good job on landing somewhere in the internet at least marginally related to what you are looking for.

The money brought people don't mess up with south sudan you will reach sky if you will?

Only if you sky reach the money mess of brought people that don't south sudan you first.

You have been enlightened. Go forth, be fruitful and multiply.

PS: To the seemingly-endless hordes out there deeply concerned with the spectral nature of unicorn flatulence: You scare me. Get help. Get drugs. Get hit by a bus. Whatever. Just stay away from me.