Talk Talk Talk Talk Talk Myself to Death

Have a Great Fourth of July!

2009-07-04T08:28:00.001-05:00

Despite the implication of this 40-year-old cover, Captain America is indeed coming back. Keep that in mind as you eat hot dogs and apple pie and watch fireworks. There's nothing to worry about.

Captain Canuck Is Back

2009-07-01T23:52:00.002-05:00

What a great way to end Canada Day! A collection of Captain Canuck comics from the '70s by Richard Comely and George Freeman has just been released by IDW. Although it's ostensibly available in stores now, IDW doesn't seem to have done the best job of putting it out there, as Amazon just says it was published on Monday, and even IDW lists it as going in to their own catalog on June 16. My comics store didn't know anything about it. But if it's not out there yet, it soon will be! I don't have all the issues this collection brings together, but I've got a few of them, and these are fun comics! This book is certainly something to look forward to.

Happy Canada Day!

2009-07-01T07:41:00.000-05:00

And here's one for the tourists:

You Know Who You Are

2009-06-23T12:21:00.001-05:00

Here's a little something for those of us who've been missing the Binny's troubadour.

One More Time for the Theatre Building

2009-06-21T13:00:00.000-05:00

Last week, I passed along the information about an auction in support of Chicago's Theatre Building. It was scheduled to end a week ago, but quite frankly, they're not getting the interest that a lot of these items deserve. So the auction was extended a week--which means, it's in its final hours all over again! (The time is down to 8 hours as I post this.)

There are almost 100 items that still have no bids at all! This includes entertainment items, sports memorabilia, and books, DVDs, and CDs! Go look around and find something you'd like. And if you've already gone, go back and look again. (Mrs. Talk Talk Talk Talk Talk has her bids in for us.)

Take a look here for more information about the Theatre Building and its activities. It's much more than simply a performance venue. For just a taste, here's its Mission Statement:

1. To provide subsidized space, equipment and support for performing groups
We offer services to the performing arts community with an emphasis on emerging artists and companies.

2. To develop and produce new musicals
We nurture new musicals – from our professional writers’ workshop to our concert readings and studio presentations to our nationally recognized festival of new musicals.

3. To provide opportunities for emerging artists, administrators and performing groups
We offer an intensive internship program, affording students the opportunity to break into the field.

Who can argue with that? Go bid and support the Theatre Building!

Are You Watching TV?

2009-06-13T00:58:00.000-05:00

The big switch from analog to digital TV happened today, and you were either ready for it or you weren't. A Nielsen poll suggested that 76,000 households in Chicago were unprepared to lose their analog signal. I've mentioned before that we hadn't sprung for cable here at Talk Talk Talk Talk Talk Central, but our hand was finally called, so, after waiting almost until we couldn't wait any longer, we had to put up or shut up. The cable guy came out on Tuesday, so we're now concluding our third full day of cable. I guess that means that we were among those 76,000 households unprepared when they survey was taken last week. That means there are now only 75,999 households out of luck.

Some of those people tried to take care of what they needed to this morning when the Dish Network sponsored a "swap" of government coupons for converter boxes. Too many people showed up, however (it was an estimated crowd of 500), so some went home empty handed. We'll see whether most of these TV-less people work out a way to receive the new digital signal or if we hear more about their plight. The media is probably not concerned about making those voices heard, but we may become aware of them through blogs or other unconventional methods.

If you're one of those people, though, WWME (23), which has received some local acclaim as ME-TV, has a signal that's at a low enough power that it doesn't have to give up its analog signal. The station has started to broadcast the WCIU (channel 26) signal, with breaks for news from WMAQ (5) and WGN (9). I just checked it out on our sole uncabled TV, and I not only found a signal there, but there was one at channel 48, ME-Too, as well, broadcasting the normal Me Too schedule. Is that an oversight that will be gone in the morning, or will ME-Too continue for the foreseeable future, as well? For the time being, at least, that gives analog TV viewers two choices.

Support Chicago's Theatre Building

2009-06-12T02:31:00.000-05:00

Things are tough all over--we all know that. Everybody's finding it just that much harder (or considerably harder, as the case may be) to make ends meet, and everybody could use a little bit of help. But one place where it's particularly bad is in the arts. Many arts groups depend on government grants and other funding, and a lot of that comes from the states. The federal government's been looking for spending in relation to the stimulus package, but state governments have been doing little more than cutting back. Here in Illinois, for instance, the Illinois Arts Council is slashing parts of its budget. The Theatre Building in Chicago is set to lose 75 percent of the funding the Arts Council provided last year. They're on the case, though, to make up parts of that amount. Since the beginning of the month, they've been conducting an online auction that includes a broad variety of items (134 of them, to be exact). There are tickets to shows on the auction block, books, CDs, sports tickets and memorabilia (the Cubs, the White Sox, the Bears, the Bulls, and the Blackhawks are all represented--even the Green Bay Packers), furniture, travel packages--all kinds of stuff. The bidding finishes on Sunday evening, so you've still got room to browse, and the majority of items don't even have initial bids. There's plenty of good stuff yet to be had. And it's for a worthy cause. Go take a look!

Close to Home

2009-06-06T01:38:00.001-05:00

Atrios has been keeping a running tab on which banks are being gobbled up by the FDIC, and that's where I first saw the news that the Bank of Lincolnwood was being taken over. I don't have any money at the Bank of Lincolnwood, but I pass it every day on my way to work. (I'm linking to the locations webpage because the home page has info about the FDIC takeover). The main office of my employer is just down the block (although I work at a separate office a few miles further away). The Bank of Lincolnwood sign is where I can find out how hot or cold it is. I always thought it was funny that the bank had a second branch that was on the same street less than a quarter mile away--they have a time and temperature sign, too.

The bank has been sold to Republic Bank of Chicago (which is actually headquartered in Oak Brook), and it's expected to open under Republic's auspices on Saturday morning. It's too early to say for sure, but the majority of employees are expected to be kept on. According to the FDIC, the Bank of Lincolnwood is Illinois's sixth bank failure this year (other news reports identify it as this year's third Chicago failure) and the 37th in the nation. I've seen some of those others, and I don't mean to say that I didn't take them seriously, but it's interesting to note how the simple proximity of this one make the entire recession and economic difficulties we're in have more resonance for me. Or maybe not--perhaps that's what proximity is all about.

New Trends in Book Shows?

2009-06-05T02:09:00.001-05:00

Since I didn't actually attend this year, I haven't had much to say about BEA. Reports I've heard back from those who were there described a subdued show, which matches with much of what I've read online. One attendee talked about the specter of kindle that he could feel pervading the show, keeping everyone looking over their shoulder. Certainly it's hard to avoid questioning the future of the show (even if we try our best to avoid the equally obvious uncertain future of book publishing in general).

Peggy Burns, associate publisher of Drawn & Quarterly comics, didn't go to the show, either. Earlier this week at the D&Q blog, she explained why. It's true that BEA is extremely expensive if you're setting up a display, and if you're a small press, at some point you have to start thinking about diminishing returns. But Peggy also discusses the possibility of book shows for consumers, which may be more effective for smaller publishing concerns.

All of which brings us to the annual Printers Row Lit Fest, which puts on a consumer book show in downtown Chicago this weekend. There are two full days of events and talks on Saturday and Sunday, as well as plenty of booths for publishers and booksellers alike. Drawn & Quarterly will be there, along with some comics programming: Lynda Barry and Chris Ware share a stage to talk; Ivan Brunetti, book designer Chip Kidd, and author David Hadju (The Ten-Cent Plague: The Great Comic-Book Scare and How It Changed America) discuss the form; and Harvey Pekar talks about two different books on Saturday and Sunday, his adaptation of Studs Terkel's Working and his graphic history of the Beats. Neil Gaiman, who still has a finger or two in comics, will also be there, but not surprisingly, tickets are no longer available for his presentation (although no-show tickets will be released 15 minutes beforehand--it's all free, so it's very possible that some people who reserved won't show up). I haven't figured out exactly what my plans for the weekend will be yet, but it seems hard to go wrong in attending. The future of book trade shows? It could be along these lines.

Speaking of Printer's Row Lit Fest, it appears that Talk Talk Talk Talk Talk pal Stu Shea has sold out. It's been said that every person has a price, and if that's the case, it appears Stu hasn't been offered his yet--his integrity is intact. No, he's part of a "Cubbie Blues" panel with Sara Paretsky and James Finn Garner, among others, which also has also run through its free tickets. As with Neil Gaiman, a few tickets may become available just before the panel begins. For those of us who still can't get in, then I guess we'd better keep our eyes open for YouTube video.

What Exactly Are We Expecting of Our Judges, Again?

2009-06-02T02:28:00.002-05:00

Is it the Internet Age, or is it just me? I feel like we've been talking about Sonia Sotomayor for ages, but it's still just a week since Obama officially nominated her for the Supreme Court. There had been talk about her before the nomination came in, and that might be part of it. It could also be the single-minded argument of the Republican party branding her a racist (a courageous and valiant stand for them to make, because privileged white males have been downtrodden for far too long).

Aside from the silliness about Sotomayor being a racist, one of the primary complaints that conservatives are airing is that she would use her background as a Latina woman to trump the law. The good folks at SCOTUSblog have shown that there's nothing much to this, but it raises the point of how far, exactly, the right wants judges to go in ignoring their backgrounds. Partially, of course, it depends on whether conservatives think a judge's background works in their favor or not, because, as Jason Linkins pointed out at The Huffington Post, the backgrounds of Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito were among their key selling points for their Supreme Court nominations.

But even aside from the requisite right-wing inconsistency, the question is ridiculous. Part of what a judge is supposed to be offering is wisdom, and wisdom only develops out of experience. If we just want a straight reading of the letter of the law, then we don't need a judge at all. We should just get a computer. It wouldn't be hard to simply shift over to digital law, with a 1 for legal and a 0 for illegal. Or, since the Star Trek movie is still doing well, let's just have Obama nominate Mr. Spock (which wouldn't work, of course, because we're still more than 200 years away from Spock's birth). But that's not what we want. We want a judge who will weigh a case by looking at the law as written and perhaps considering its real-life ramifications. No living, breathing human being can help but filter that through her personal experiences and background. I'll admit that how judges allow this to influence their decision-making process can be a fair enough question, but in examining Sotomayor's appeals court record, SCOTUSblog has come up with nothing to suggest that she's beyond the norm, that she's doing anything beyond issuing unremarkable and reasonable decisions.

Memorial Day

2009-05-25T16:27:00.002-05:00

Here we are again, honoring and remembering those who have sacrificed in our name, and those who continue to put themselves in harm's way. We've got a new commander-in-chief this year, and a new strategy for the two wars he inherited. The current iCasualties count in Iraq, in which U.S. involvement is ostensibly winding down (whether military interests will drag their heals to avoid Obama's deadline remains to be seen), is 4,300 U.S. military dead, and 4,618 coalition fatalities. Afghanistan, which is picking up the slack for the drawdown in Iraq, currently stands at 687 American fatalities out of a total of 1,154 coalition deaths.

Let's keep this in mind when we're flipping burgers and grilling brats.

Mancow Advances the Torture Discussion

2009-05-23T03:05:00.001-05:00

No, really, he does. And in a positive way. Hard to believe, I know.

OK, he didn't plan it to go the way that it did. The whole thing started as a publicity stunt in which Mancow would undergo waterboarding on the air during his radio show so that he could prove that it's no big deal for a real man. He expected to "laugh it off." But then he actually went through with it.

Without training, regular people can stand only a few seconds of the process. A marine on hand at the studio said that 14 seconds is the norm. Mancow withstood about six seconds before pulling away. In friendly, casual, two-consenting adults waterboarding, of course, pulling away is allowed, but prisoners aren't generally afforded that luxury. Speaking afterward, Mancow was clearly shaken. He said that he although he didn't want to admit it, he now accepts that waterboarding is torture. (There's video of the experience at the site of WMAQ, Chicago's NBC affiliate.)

Steve Benen made the obvious point. Addressing those who refuse to acknowledge waterboarding as torture, he said:

This is not only absurd, it defies common sense: if this wasn't torture, we wouldn't have done it. The whole point is to do something so horrific that the detainee would feel compelled to give up information. If it were merely a "splash in the face," as some on the right have argued, why would Bush administration officials think it might be effective?

Mancow is not likely to change any minds, though. Christopher Hitchins conducted a similar experiment almost a year ago, and as I mentioned at the time, those who claim to believe that waterboarding is not torture do so for ideological reasons, certainly not for any reason based on its merit. Already, the gang over at Hot Air (I'm not linking--go find it yourself, if you must) have started their ridicule of Mancow's virility. What a way to debate a nation's morality.

Pringles Really Are Potato Chips After All!

2009-05-21T00:45:00.000-05:00

The U.K.'s Valued-Added Tax doesn't usually apply to food, but potato-based snacks are a different matter. As a snack food, they're presumably regarded as something less than a necessity. The good folks at Pringles, though, probably fearing that they were losing sales from customers who didn't want the extra VAT expense, thought that they might have a way around it. It seems reasonable enough--Pringles are much more bland than other potato chips, and they look and taste like they've been processed within an inch of their lives. Lives that they never had, by the way, because it seems like there's nothing natural about them in any manner.

Unfortunately, Procter & Gamble couldn't convince the British courts of that. Last year, a judge had bought the argument that, since Pringles are only 42 percent potato, have uniform taste and shape (a shape that "is not found in nature," by the way), and are packaged in tubes rather than in bags, they're actually more like cakes or cookies than like chips. Yeah, I don't understand how that argument got them the time of day, either. But common sense has prevailed. Pringles may not exactly seem like potato chips, but they're a lot closer to that than, say, Twinkies.

Now that's got me wondering. In a contest between Pringles and Twinkies, which would decay first?

Sidetracking the Torture Debate

2009-05-20T00:42:00.000-05:00

During my recent blogging downtime, I haven't been paying quite as close attention to politics as I had been, and I've got to admit that I'm a bit confused about the Republicans' recent tactics on torture. The CIA released a memo claiming that Nancy Pelosi was briefed on its torture tactics way back in 2003. Pelosi claims that she wasn't. So the GOP has taken the opportunity to pile on Pelosi and implicate her in whatever backwash all this torture has. One of the strongest arguments to this effect appeared in The Wall Street Journal under Karl Rove's byline: "If she knew what was going on and did nothing, does that make her an accessory to a crime of torture, as many Democrats are calling enhanced interrogation?"

Does he really want to go there? You don't need to follow that line of argument very far to see that it can't end well for Rove and his compatriots. Apparently, the idea is some sort of blackmail--if you implicate us, we'll implicate you back! That line might have some juice if being an accessory were worse than being a perpetrator. Matt Yglesias points out what else is wrong with this tactic:

But in their zeal to score a tactical win, the right has made a truth commission more likely not less likely. Obama wanted to avoid a backward-looking focus on torture in part because it distracted from his legislative agenda. But if we're going to be looking backward anyway, thanks to conservatives' insistence on complaining about Pelosi, then the move forward strategy lacks a rationale. And far from forcing a standoff in which Pelosi will abandon her support for an investigation, the right has forced her into a corner from which she can't give in to moderate Democrats' opposition to such a move without looking like she's cravenly attempting to save her own skin.

There's no sign that Pelosi or anyone else is backing off the truth-commission idea. And, indeed, by suggesting that Pelosi could be a target of an investigation, conservatives have helped cleanse the idea of the odor of victor's justice.

That last line raises another question. When can we expect David Broder going to take the Republicans to task for scapegoating Pelosi out of vengeance?

It's Monty Python Night Tonight!

2009-05-09T12:27:00.001-05:00

We've got our tickets to watch Monty Python and the Holy Grail with Terry Jones tonight. Mrs. Talk Talk Talk Talk Talk is making her plans to start getting a picture with and/or autograph from the second half of the Pythons (she's already got a snapshot with the difficult one, so it's all downhill from here). To get further into the mood, here's an article from earlier in the week from the Trib with some facts about the movie. One very disappointing note for me comes when they talk about how the film was financed. Against my better judgment, I guess I have to be appreciative to Andrew Lloyd Webber about something after all.

Postscript: Yes, it looks like this is turning into a special events blog. That's not my intention, but it seems to be the way things are working out for now. I'll try to do better as my various nonblogging responsibilities seem to tamp down for a bit.

Free Comic Book Day

2009-05-01T23:52:00.000-05:00

When I wrote a few weeks ago that I was going to slow down on my blogging, I had no idea that I'd end up being as busy as I've been. I hadn't intended to go quiet for two weeks, but, well, here we are. It's a good thing that there wasn't much going on in the outside world while I had to devote all my time to my latest work project (which will be a nice book on the national parks come August, or so). I'm glad that I came to my own decision on the matter, though, because I would've had to quit for a few days anyway, but I would've been much more upset if I'd been forced to end my streak of daily posts rather than choosing to end it on my own terms.

There is an awful lot to catch up on, and I'm not sure exactly how much I'll actually get to cover, but for the time being, I'll just remind you to go out and find your local comic book store and then drop in on Saturday for Free Comic Book Day. Just like I've been working and not paying as much attention to what else is going on, I haven't been paying attention to Free Comic Book Day, either, so I just took a look at what various companies are offering myself. There appear to be almost 40 different titles, some all ages and some not, and while you can't expect every store to have every title, the bigger comics will be in most places. If you're not sure where your closest comic store might be, the Free Comic Book Day site has a locater that can tell you which ones are participating. For those of you looking for autographs, various creators will be appearing all over the country.

Go explore comic stores near you and find out what intrigues you (for free or otherwise). Then come back here to report how you liked what you got.

Record Store Day

2009-04-18T00:32:00.000-05:00

What music are you planning to buy on Saturday? It's Record Store Day, so whatever you get, make sure that you buy it in a record store. It's seemed to me that record stores are getting fewer and farther between, a perception that's only reinforced when Stereogum opens its Record Store Day story by asking, "When's the last time you went to an actual record store? Like where you have to walk through a door and can't just click 'download'?" Is it that unusual nowadays to go to a record store and browse? Maybe it is. So that's all the more reason to hit the stores tomorrow.

This event just seems to be growing and growing--this year is chock full of record stores with special programming. Check the interactive U.S. map for who and where (or, outside of the States, here's an international page (with seventeen countries featured). Also, a number of artists are providing limited vinyl releases, mostly singles, but a few albums. Here's a list of what was scheduled to be available. Douglas Wolk helpfully offers his own run down of much of those releases at Pitchfork, although he also reports that the offerings from Elvis Costello and Modest Mouse, as well as a New Order reissue, aren't going to make the deadline by tomorrow.

Who's Tea-Bagging?

2009-04-15T13:09:00.000-05:00

Today is Tax Day. The right wing is going crazy with its tea-bagging--and they claim they're going to have tea party protests, too. I'd do a Google search to see if there are any good images from the demonstrations, but I'm afraid much of what I'd find would be "not safe for work," and I'd prefer to hold on to this job for the time being, thank you.

The protests are supposed to take their inspiration from the Boston Tea Party (which all of a sudden makes more sense when you realize Sam Adams was brewing beer and the plot was likely hatched down at the alehouse), but I'm not sure quite how far you get with the line, "Taxation with representation, but we're still mad about it anyway." Steve Benin may have the best explanation:

So, at some point in the future (we don't know when), some politicians (we don't know who) might find it necessary to raise taxes. Whose taxes would be raised? It's too soon to say. How much would taxes go up? No one knows.

But the mere prospect of a possible future tax increase has led untold thousands of activists, an entire cable news network, corporate lobbyists, conservative bloggers, conservative talk-radio hosts, and Republican officials to organize a series of national events. With extraordinary foresight, they've organized thousands of rallies to register their outrage, not at existing tax rates, but at tax policies that haven't been proposed, but might exist at some undermined point.

The best line about all of this, though, came from David Shuster Monday night on Countdown. He'd just discussed how one of the prime movers in the tea-bag movement was former House Majority Leader Dick Armey.

If you are planning simultaneous tea bagging all around the country, you're going to need a Dick Armey.

We'll be back with more family-oriented material soon, as long as the right wingers will lay off the blatant set ups.

Happy Easter!

2009-04-12T07:37:00.000-05:00

Mixing Media

2009-04-11T00:35:00.000-05:00

I'm way behind on this. Eddie Argos had this picture on his blog back in February, and Art Brut announced it on their page a week before that. Jeff Lemire posted it last week, on both his blog and the Standard Attrition group blog. Heidi MacDonald picked it up from there. And now I'm mentioning it.

I have to admit that Jeff Lemire and Eddie Argos/Art Brut aren't the most obvious team-up, but it's not that surprising. Argos is already on the record about being in love with Lemire's Essex County trilogy (even though he's admitted that hockey and farming are not what draw him to read comics), having praised it up and down in his sometimes comics review column that I've mentioned before. He even told The Daily Cross Hatch that he wanted to write the soundtrack for an Essex County movie (no, there's no actual Essex County movie underway that I've ever heard). Although Art Brut was nothing close to the music going through my mind when I read those books, I've got to appreciate the enthusiasm. On the other hand, I've also noted my appreciation for Lemire and his work, so I'm glad to see him get the recognition and acclaim.

Art Brut vs. Satan is out on April 21, too late for Record Store Day, but buy it from your local record store (if you still have one) anyway. Aside from the lovely Jeff Lemire cover, you'll get a record produced by Frank Black/Black Francis/that guy from Pixies and featuring a song called "DC Comics and Chocolate Milkshake." Take a look at the video for the first single, "Alcoholics Unanimous," at the Art Brut announcement page. It's got that old Art Brut joie de vivre and bodes well for the album.

The Case on Torture

2009-04-08T23:53:00.000-05:00

This week's New Yorker has an interesting piece on Philippe Sands, the English law professor and barrister whose book Torture Team may have played a large part in getting the ball rolling in Spain on potential criminal charges against Alberto Gonzales, Douglas Feith, John Yoo, and others in the Bush administration for torture. Sands delved into the problem of torture during the Iraq War after seeing the Abu Ghraib pictures.

Sands said that he read the protestations of innocence from Bush Administration officials, who blamed a few "bad apples" for the incidents, with the eye of a barrister. He recalled, "I could spot right away that they were speaking as advocates of a cause. So I decided to find out what really happened."

He was able to get access to a number of people involved, actually conducting interviews with Feith and others. The more he explored, the more unhappy he became.

"I spent two years trekking around the country, finding out that they were manifestly untruthful," Sands said. "I've got a particular bugbear about lawyers," he added. "If not for lawyers, none of these abuses would have ever occurred."

One of the Spanish lawyers trying to bring the charges has given Sands credit for identifying "who the targets were." It's far too soon to know what will become of these efforts, but for the time being, those particular ex-Bushies should probably keep all their traveling domestic.

He Called It

2009-04-07T00:58:00.000-05:00

Although he had them defeating Louisville for the national championship, Barack Obama picked North Carolina to go all the way. Is there anything this guy can't do? Watch him work it out.

It's My Blogoversary

2009-04-06T21:06:00.001-05:00

Four years ago, I started this blog up as sort of a whim, as an argument with myself that, as a writer, I should be writing. The blogoverse was much different back then. Although there were people who were making money with their blogging, it wasn't seen as the professional concern that it's since become. Daily Kos has turned into a monster of sorts; Talking Points Memo is a full-fledged journalistic operation; and they're not the only two, by any means. A number of bloggers have taken professional positions with magazines or organizations that allow them to put all their energies into blogging.

My ambition was to expand awareness of myself as a writer, and I may or may not have done that. I realized very quickly, though, that in as fast-paced an online world as we were even four years ago, that I had to provide regular updates to get people coming back. Although I rarely made this promise explicit, I vowed to myself that I'd have at least one thing posted (more than that if possible) every day as I was getting established. I figured that I'd do that for a while, and then once I had some sort of a following, I could maybe let up. Partly because my following never really numbered more than a handful and I was still looking to expand, I've put up content for every day of the last four years. Sure, sometimes I complained (although I hope I never got too whiny), and sometimes there wasn't very much, but there was always a daily presence on the blog.

Now we've reached a point, though, when Jim Henley (still at least ostensibly my compatriot at Howling Curmudgeons, although posting at that site has withered quite a bit itself, lately) can write a post about bloggers who post too much (even if it was helping to set up his later April Fool's post and is thus not trustworthy as a serious post itself, his point is still a good one). As much as I enjoy blogging (and, even when I've gotten annoyed with it, you can safely presume that I've enjoyed it or I wouldn't have kept it up this long), I can't be one of those guys. Since I started blogging, I've been promoted in my regular job to a position with more responsibilities and demands on my time, and I simply can't keep all of it up. If you're one to look at posting times, mine were mostly live--that's when I really wrote and posted (although that Hulk baseball one was a lie; I really put it up just a bit after 2:00 AM, but I didn't want it to be right on top of the previous post). When you add those times with the extra hours I've been putting in at work, it all adds up to me being spent.

So I'm not stopping blogging, but I am ending my commitment to have a new post every day. I'm no longer going to sit up and refuse to go to bed until I've written something. Maybe I'll start getting some sleep and posting ideas that aren't so worn and threadbare. It's possible that this might even be a good thing. (I'm sure Mrs. Talk Talk Talk Talk Talk will be pleased.)

I went back to look at a few of my earliest posts, and I was pretty upfront with the idea that I didn't necessarily know what I was getting into. That's the case now, too. I'm not sure which way this will go. Will I rarely write something new to go up? Or will the lack of a solid deadline free me up to write almost as frequently as I have been doing? I don't know. I guess we'll find out.

Batter Up!

2009-04-06T08:12:00.000-05:00

Another Opening Day. Go Red Sox!

More Doom and Gloom

2009-04-06T01:37:00.000-05:00

Sorry. It's hard to escape it these days. Salon.com put up an interview with Nobel-Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz. It originally appeared in Der Speigel before the G-20 conference, and it touches on many of the same criticisms that we've been hearing, but I guess we just need to keep seeing those criticisms over and over until we start taking them to heart.

Many people are comparing the financial crisis to the Great Depression. Will it really be that bad?

It's going to be bad, very bad. We're experiencing the worst downturn since the Great Depression, and we haven't reached the bottom yet. I'm very pessimistic. Governments are indeed reacting better today than during the global economic crisis. They're lowering interest rates and boosting the economy with economic stimulus plans. This is the right direction, but it's not enough.

The American government has committed over a trillion dollars to save the banks and $789 billion to boost the economy. Do you think this is too little?

I do. More than $700 billion sounds like a lot, but it's not. On the one hand, a large part of the money will first be given out next year, which is too late. On the other, a third of it is drained away by tax cuts. They don't really stimulate consumption, because people will save the majority of that money. I fear that the effect of the American economic stimulus plan won't be even half as big as expected.

At least governments worldwide are bracing themselves against the recession, as opposed to the global economic crisis where they accelerated the recession through their savings policy.

That's right. That's why I'm confident we'll get off lighter than during the Great Depression. On the other hand, there's a series of developments that make me very anxious. The state of our financial system, for example, is worse than it was 80 years ago.

Well, maybe it's not completely doom and gloom. Read it all to get a hint of how we need to address our problems.