Job Hunting: Day One

2009-02-09T13:47:00.005-06:00

I found my black socks this morning and knew it would be a good day. Let me explain. We have been sharing a hostel room with 3 French people who speak no english (bummer, we were hoping to make friends). Erin and I woke up really early to start our job search and the roomies were still asleep (of course, the ONE day they sleep in is the day we get up early). As we were getting ready in the pitch black room, I realized that I hadn't set out my black dress socks the night before (yes, we got dressed up- gotta make a good first impression, right?). I reached into my suit case and, miraculously, happened to pull out my black socks. Even Erin, who was REALLY nervous, knew that was a good sign.

We ate our breakfast and tried to mentally prepare for a day of rejection, and rejection was what we got- at least for the first hour. But, to our surprise, everyone was soooo nice! Even as they rejected us, they all smiled and wished us luck in our search or made small talk about our travels! Then came the most exciting part of the day- ERIN GOT AN INTERVIEW! At about 11am, when our feet were forming blisters and our spirits were starting to sink, Erin walked into a women's clothing boutique (Kris- think New Prospects). The woman behind the counter greeted her enthusiastically and asked if she was available for an interview. She went back that afternoon and was told that her interview was "stellar." The lady says as soon as she gets the green light from her higher-ups, she'll hire Erin! She happened to be wearing my black dress socks...

Job hunting wasn't the only thing on our plates today. This afternoon, we started calling around for apartments. We looked at several, but none of them were very nice, and trust me, our standards are not high. We looked at one yesterday that we're both in LOVE with, but it's a little pricey and out in the suburbs, so we'd have to take a bus to work. After seeing the quality of some apartments in this town, that bus ride isn't seeming so bad.

Tomorrow we're planning on hitting the other side of the river. There are a lot of restaurants over there we can apply at. We're also going to a bar with our friend Sheila (who went to Res and is studying abroad here) to a bar to see live Irish music tomorrow night.

Our 6euro/day budget has been successful so far, except for the 10 euro taxi ride we had to take today. We ate frozen pizza again last night (Kelly- it was chicken pesto with red pepper- you're a genius! Grazi's needs this on the menu... and one without chicken for me), cereal for breakfast, PB sandwich for lunch, and now we're eating pasta for dinner. It's a bland diet, but cheap! We might splurge on the candy machine tonight. The Snickers talks to me every time I walk by.

We've met a few people from Chicago over the last few days. The guy at the hostel desk moved here from Chi-town 7 years ago, a girl working at one of the restaurants I applied at was from the Southside, and a girl at the bar on Saturday was from Western Springs and goes to U of I! Small world, huh?

Well, I guess that's it for now. We would tell you about how great the weather is in Galway, but we heard it was 60 degrees in Illinois! We love you all and miss you TONS.

-Katie

You Got to Get Gas (in the Village of Schaumburg): a rejoinder

2008-11-11T10:57:00.006-06:00

Gas prices fell
I can see the appeal
Of a sprawling McMansion
On a pathetic
little
cul-de-sac.

You say we breathe with metallic lungs.

They breathe with mufflers.
BLOW OUT SALEs.

Funny thing is
Drug dealers in Schaumburg
Aren't that scary.

But
Flat taxes are.

What does it look like
When humanity (diversity, the rough colored edges of an old, beautiful thing not purchased at IKEA)
is
aborted
at
Birth?

It looks like Schaumburg.

The sad little, not-quite-rich little, paved little, Village of Schaumburg.

There is not enough Schaumburg for a long, fearful Sestina like I planned.

[To all my friends who lack the arrogance to think they understand the city, but know they understand the Village: edit this poem freely (but make your text color different)]

Playing Chess with T.S. in the Waste Land

2008-10-07T13:10:00.007-05:00

T.S. Eliot lives in an odd place in my mind. My vague impression is that Eliot resides in the same enigmatic and colorful corner of your mind. Even Sting, in a song that I cannot remember, quotes the opening line of Prufrock:

Let us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky

Some of my favorite lines from The Waste Land come from Part II - A Game of Chess. The great Professor Ira Carmen quoted these lines today in class from the infallible folds of his memory:

Footsteps shuffled on the stair
Under the firelight, under the brush, her hair
Spread out in fiery points
Glowed into words, then would be savagely still

I have read a few of his poems in the past, but he is impossible to understand without a thorough study. Luckily, the ocean of the Internet houses many aids.

Here is an excellent annotation of The Waste Land. Thanks to the double pane viewer, you don't have to leave the website to view the links. Perhaps even more precious than this is the audio recording of T.S. Eliot reading his own poem and inflicting his own pain and pleasure into each word.

Here is a decent annotation of The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock. And again, here is a wonderful recording of Eliot reading his own poem.

Here is the full text of the Four Quartets, which was one of Eliot's later poems and led to his Nobel Prize. Eliot recorded (at least) the first part of the Four Quartets: Burnt Norton.

I have found it most beneficial to read along with T.S.

The #1 Reason to Vote Obama

2008-10-01T20:03:00.004-05:00

Via my sister, here is all the proof I need that Barack Obama is the most brilliant leader in at least the past century:

As my sister said: "He only alienates the loser half of the city."

And the Greatest of These Is Love

2008-10-01T15:18:00.006-05:00

As Election Day approaches, most of us will be focusing on Obama v. McCain, and perhaps to a lesser extent on Senate and House races. But the country will also be making history of a different sort this November, when Californians vote on Proposition 8, a proposal to amend the California constitution to eliminate the recently recognized right of gay couples to marry. The defeat of the proposal appears likely (but not certain), and if it goes down, it will be the first time in this country's history that the right to same-sex marriage will be recognized through the direct will of the people (though it should be noted that Massachusetts' elected legislature rejected a similar amendment). You can donate to the effort to defeat Proposition 8 here.

Meanwhile, this ad made me cry:

Son of Why the World Is Not About to End

2008-09-30T14:19:00.004-05:00

So, it’s Tuesday afternoon and the birds are singing outside my window as a chill September breeze slides over my arms. Cars on Springfield Avenue drive by full of gasoline that’s down to $3.50 per gallon and readily available. People all over town go to work as they do every day, the Dow was up 250 points, and no citizens on the sidewalks seem in the least bit panicked. Pissed, perhaps, but not a bit panicked.

For over seven years, I’ve been talking about the coming crisis in the financial markets. In the last year, Prescott joined me in this publicly, although he says (and I have no reason to discount him) that he had realized that there was going to be a problem around 2004 or so. The purpose of this article is to explain why this happened, why more government interference is going to be a disaster, and why this is a golden opportunity to not only make America stronger, but also freer as a nation and more equal as far as its citizens’ compensation goes.

Economists are not scientists, despite their claims. When you have several competing theories (none of which actually work in predicting outcomes) that equally intelligent proponents are using as models, it’s not a science—it’s Las Vegas on a Friday night. If Economics and Finance theories really worked, all of the richest people on earth would be economists and financiers, rather than engineers, computer scientists, and storekeepers constantly succeeding in packing away the billions. Economics is not a science because there is only one human race—there’s no control group, therefore you cannot use the scientific method. Economists have to rely on computer models and past experience, and, as the disclaimer says, “Past experience is not an indicator of future performance.”

So, for the most part, we can listen to economists and financiers, but not too hard. A little later, I’ll link to an article by an economist who, I think, may actually get it. I don’t completely trust him, of course, because he has the same problems as the rest of them, but he may be onto something. Now, there’s at least one thing that, as far as I know, all economists agree on. They agree that bubbles occur due to uninhibited exhilaration on the part of investors and that they happen over and over again. Historically, they’re not even a result of the industrial revolution, since the first major one, the Tulip mania, occurred during the early 17th Century. (The investors even invented “short selling” during this bubble and got it banned twice by 1637, when the bubble burst.)

Bubbles happen, apparently, due to something deep-seated in human nature. They seem to be an inescapable characteristic of capitalism and investment in general. Nothing in the last 350 years has succeeded in eliminating them. Therefore, I would say, that it’s a safe bet that nothing in the next 350 will, either, if we keep capitalism as our economic system. (This is fine—capitalism gave us a standard of living so high in America that we could invent the Internet and give it away.)

If there are going to be bubbles, there is going to be a business cycle. The business cycle is not something sinister or evil, it’s a feedback loop—something engineers are intimately familiar with every day of their lives. There’s a scarce commodity so people sell it for a high price. Investors loan their money to the people who are buying it so that they can afford to get it. As the amount of the commodity becomes less, higher prices are asked and, by trading it back and forth, everyone makes money.

This is fine, as long as the prices paid by those traders are reasonably close to the actual value of the commodity. Bubbles occur when people become so excited at the prospect of profit that they lose sight of this objective quantity and begin paying more and more for that commodity. Eventually, one of three things happens and the prices drop drastically—either the government interferes, innovators find a way to produce a cheaper substitute for the product, or the investors suddenly come to their senses, as occurred with tulips. In any case, those investors who were stupid or careless and threw their money in at a value that was too high are taught not to do it again and become wiser. Some people gain, some lose, and life goes on without too much of a problem. Inflation is automatically dampened and the cycle starts over again.

Well, this cycle had been working successfully for almost three hundred years when, due to the Panic of 1907, the US congress voted to create the Federal Reserve System. Read the description of the crisis that created it carefully, noting that the situation then is very close to the one that we’re currently seeing. The purpose of the Fed was to dampen the business cycle and prevent bank failures by keeping enough money in the system to allow banks to recover from bad investments and have enough money to pay their depositors when they ask.

Now, a good engineer always asks, “Well, did the invention perform the way that it was supposed to?” Let’s look at past performance. From 1813 to 1907, the dollar gained 52% in value. From 1913 (the time of the establishment of the Fed) to 2008, it has lost 95.2%, even using the official figures, which I consider to be too low. Therefore, it can be concluded that the establishment of the Fed did not prevent inflation and may have even contributed to it. Has it dampened the business cycles? Again, no—as a matter of fact, the current head of the Fed claimed in a 2004 speech that the Fed, through errors, exacerbated the economic mistakes that caused the Great Depression.

During the last twenty years, the Fed has worked mightily to prevent the crashes in the business cycle due to the Internet’s allowing thousands upon thousands of new, stupid, greedy people to get into the investment market, not only here, but abroad. (Yep, this is what I’m saying: “E-trade got us into this.”) Since there has been no penalty for being a dumbass, dumbasses have kept running the prices of commodities higher and higher. This was merely annoying when the tech bubble was dependent on thousands of people clicking on each other’s websites for hours on end like Chinese gold-famers playing World of Warcraft. When the commodity that people were using to make tons of funny money, however, became houses, which are actually needed to live in, it became criminal.

It was obvious that the housing bubble was going to burst. After all, it’s not like America is either short on carpenters or land to put houses on. Rather than a roof over one’s head, houses were seen as an investment to hold for a while, then sell at a profit—the characteristic of any bubble. Many who look at the present crisis worry about those in low-income groups who bought more than they could afford (and I’ll get back to them later), but upper-middle class investors were just as prone to buy houses to roll-over that they couldn’t afford. It became short-selling with a yard attached, in essence. The vastly overpriced and (since they were unlikely to be paid) worthless investments were bundled and sold to investors worldwide who were also caught up in the exuberance of easy money. All the time this was happening, the Fed kept interest rates at rock-bottom to prevent any slowdown in the economy, creating a positive feedback loop increasing the rate of bad investments.

So, eventually, the inevitable happened. It was triggered by oil prices, more or less, but anything destabilizing would have done the trick. The bubble burst and housing prices plunged. Inflation crept up, moving long-term adjustable range mortgage rates higher. People couldn’t pay them and foreclosures started. The real values of bad investments became apparent when they could no longer be sold. This is where we are at the present time—teetering at the edge of a crash.

So, the government, the same people who have been creating this crisis for the last twenty years—hell, for the last century, if you consider just the Fed—come to the American people and say, “Hey, if you don’t allow us even more power, and, by the way, guarantee these stupid investments with your tax money, the world is going to end.” To no one’s surprise, the taxpayers, who, as a whole, are better investors than those playing the stock markets, said, ten to one, “hell no,” to their Congressional Representatives. (An interesting note is that the failure to pass the bill is now being written off as the American peoples’ inability to really understand what’s going on.)

So, the rescue program’s been voted down once, what should the government do? In my opinion, it should do absolutely nothing to ease the crisis. I agree with Dr. Miron at Harvard, the economist I mentioned earlier. Bankruptcy is the answer. Even those pushing the stabilizing program admit publicly that at best, it’s a stop-gap measure and another crisis will occur in a couple more years. Let the market fall to 8300—its natural level right now. Let stupid companies fail and be bought out by more intelligent investors, who still have money. That’s how capitalism is supposed to work. Things will be tough for a couple of years, but you know what—we’re Americans, we can handle a little bit of discomfort for a while—we don’t need to be put in a figurative car seat and taken for a ride off a cliff. After that, the business cycle will protect us from greed and stupidity.

Is there a role for government in this crisis? Yes—one of the only ones that government is morally good for—the protection of its citizens from robbery and fraud. Those individuals and corporations that lied to mortgage seekers, that bundled worthless securities and hid their low value, that encouraged lying, cheating boards of directors and controllers, and gave CEOs 300 times the salaries of the median worker in their firms need to be prosecuted and penalized the same as the poor kid who steals Nikes from his neighbor—triple damages plus community service.

At the same time, let’s debate the role, or, if we’re brave and innovative, the very existence of the Fed, at the same time. Its record’s been dismal; it cannot, from an engineering standpoint, do what it was designed to do. Perhaps it is finally time to retire it and give the business cycle the freedom to work its evolutionary magic.

This is not the end of the world. This is not even the Great Depression. It is a golden opportunity to make this nation better if we have the nerve to do so. Let’s tighten our belts, buy only what we can afford, be at our best and bravest, and built an honest, decent future for our country.

--Tom Trumpinski

"Valerie Plame"

2008-09-30T10:59:00.001-05:00

New song from the Decemberists:

Good stuff.

A better bailout

2008-09-30T09:25:00.002-05:00

A friend of mine spent a semester interning at the Center for Economic and Policy Research, an economic think tank in Washington, DC. She was convinced that Dean Baker is a brilliant economist, and because of my respect for her judgment, I often read his columns. Take a look at his latest, posted at Huff Po. Here's a key element that may become part of the bailout plan:

How do we go about getting the banks in order? Almost every economist I know rejects the Paulson approach and argues instead for directly injecting capital into the banks. The taxpayers give them the money and then we own some, or all, of the bank. (That's what Warren Buffet did with Goldman Sachs.)

Palin's Interview With Couric on Saturday Night

2008-09-29T22:12:00.001-05:00

Great skit.

Do They Still Play the Blues in Chicago?

2008-09-28T23:24:00.003-05:00

Here is the NLDS Breakdown:

Game 1: Derek Lowe (14-11, 3.24 ERA) vs. Ryan Dempster (17-6, 2.96 ERA)

Derek Lowe has a 4.42 ERA on the Road, and opposing batting averages is .251 vs. lefties and .240 against righties. So look for Fukudome and Edmonds to start, especially with DeRosa having a sore leg. Lowe has 45 BB to 147 SO, so it looks like he will tend to throw a lot of pitches. This is a guy who can be worked to knock him out of the game early to get to the Dodger bullpen, and set up the next game.

Ryan Dempster has defended his house. .243 against lefties, .213 against righties. The Dodgers have have decent lefties in Eithier and Loney. Dempster has a 2.86 at home, so he is pretty consistent. Uncle Lou is putting up his best home pitcher to start the series so look for them to start strong.

Game 2: Chad Billingsley (16-10, 3.14) vs. Carlos Zambrano (14-6, 3.91)

Another righty, Billingsley has a .274 opp ba against lefties (.225 against righties), so maybe we'll see some pinch hitting by Fontenot. He is 3.33 on the road with 58 walks from 59 strikeouts. Cubs can generate some walks against this guy. Patience is going to be a virtue, with Edmonds and Fukudome probably playing again due to their lefty bats.

Zambrano is Zambrano. A 3.77 ERA at home (3.18 ERA at night), this is a great place for him to pitch. We hope that the playoffs and the emotion of Wrigley will allow him to be in control as opposed to him getting freaked out. The person who will be the most responsible for keeping Zambrano in line is Rookie of the Year Geovany Soto, who has been handling this pitching staff well all summer. If he can keep Zambrano dialed in, look out.

Game 3: Hiroki Kuroda (9-10, 3.84 ERA) vs. Dick Harden (10-2, 2.07)

Hiroki Kuroda is the weak link of their three man rotation based on the numbers. Another righty, look for the Edmonds and Fukudome to play again. ERA at home is 3.68 with opp BA is .264 for lefties, .250 for righties. 42 BB, 113 SO, should throw a lot of pitches, another opportunity to get to the bulllpen early. However, after Kuroda allowed just two hits over five scoreless innings today, that makes eleven straight starts in which he hasn’t allowed more than four earned runs. Over those eleven starts his ERA is just 2.58, and he’s LA’s third starter at best. How many teams would kill for a first starter with those numbers? Granted, those starts were against Pittsburg, San Diego, and San Francisco, who were hardly offensive juggernauts, so we'll see.

Dick Harden is the man. 2.50 ERA on the road, with a .198/.168 for opp BA, lefty/righty. His issue is throwing a lot of pitches and getting rest between games. Don't anticipate that being an issue this game or going forward, given how much rest he will get due to the four man rotation and the days off for travel between games.

Game 4. Lowe vs. Charles Manson I mean Ted Lilly (17-9, 4.09 ERA)

Lowe is much better at home, with a 2.50 ERA. Still a righty.

Ted Lilly eats babies. And then he comes to the ballpark. His 4.09 reflects a slow start; he is 3.52 in the last 10 starts. He pitches better on the road (3.77 ERA vs. 4.50). He devours righties with a .219 right opp BA, vs. a .309 against lefties, so Ethier and Loney will have to be treated with care.

PITCHING STAFF ANALYSIS FOR DODGERS: The big news is that Kuo, one of their better relievers, will be out for the series, which is nice. The most likely remaining eight are Takashi Saito (2.49), Jonathan Broxton (3.13), Joe Beimel (2.03), Cory Wade (2.15), Chan Ho Park (3.23), Scott Proctor (6.05), Greg Maddux (4.22) and Clayton Kershaw (4.30). Their lead guys are pretty scary, but if we get to the bullpen early, we might be able to rope a dope these guys. Also, the Dodgers played the majority of their games against a few of worst producing teams in the majors, so those numbers might be a little deceiving.

PITCHING STAFF ANALYSIS FOR CUBS: Obviously the hub of this staff is Wood (3.26) and Marmol (2.68). If our starters can go 7 innings, we feel comfortable. After Wood and Marmol, we got lefty Marshall (3.86), lefty Cotts (4.29), Wuertz (3.63), Samardijia (our preferred 7th inning guy probably at 2.28), Marquis (4.53), and either Howry (5+) or Gaudin (4.40). So I would like to think overall we would have the advantage on paper pitching wise, but who knows.

COMPARATIVE OFFENSES We scored 855 runs to their 700 runs. So one would think that we are the more productive team, but Manny does change the complexion of the team. They have been scoring around 5-7 runs per game, against relatively decent pitching. So there is that.

INJURIES: As I mentioned, Kuo is out, which is a big deal. Soto and DeRosa haven't played recently but Uncle Lou has explicitly stated that Soto's injury is not that bad, and DeRosa's probably isn't, but they are just playing it safe. Either way, I think the Cubs, due to them clinching early, will be going into the playoffs as healthy as they can possibly be, probably in much better physical shape than any of their NL opponents. All catchers get beat up during the season, and Soto has got to be the freshest of the starters given the rest.

SUMMATION: Anything can happen in the playoffs, and the regular season don't mean squat. But on paper, one would think the Cubs would have the advantage. We'll see. Long story short, we shouldn't look past this team. On paper, we are better, but this is the playoffs.

Should I Vote for McCain or Obama?

2008-09-27T20:38:00.003-05:00

As I have aged, I have become better at keeping an open mind about politics. Instead of approaching elections with voting Republican as my default position, I have tried to enter elections with no default voting position. Because I am a conservative, having no default voting position will still lead to me voting Republican most of the time, but I have on occasion voted for Democrats. The most notable instance probably occurred in 2004 when I voted for current Presidential candidate Barack Obama over Alan Keyes for Senate (admittedly, not that tough of a choice).

I like smart people. Obama is smart. I like the world. The world likes Obama. For me the decision comes down to whether I would prefer to have a President who will repair our international image (though it would likely be just a mirage) or a President who will be better for cutting Federal spending, reducing the size of government, and kicking the asses of the D.C. scumbags. As I have had the opportunity to gain the wonderful perspectives of some brilliant international grad student friends of mine, the international perception issue is important to me. McCain will be seen as just an extension of Bush. He's just another old white man. Obama's image is a proxy for progress and a rejection of the Bush model, even though I predict no real change would occur. It would dissolve the international sins of Bush.

Something holds me back from voting Obama. It's always on my mind. I can't get over the fact that when McCain was purely a Senator and not running for President, he was a genuine statesman. We own few statesmen these days. Most of them are dead or never existed. McCain the Senator worked for bipartisan bills, he slaughtered pork spending, broke from G.O.P. groupthink, tried to get people to wake up about global warming, and rejected the anachronistic views of the Religious Right. He's a badass.

So who has refined and buttressed this view of mine? There can be only one answer: David Brooks. As always, he plucks a rough and unarticulated view from the back of my brain and crisply expresses it in a column. If not for him, the New York Times would be thoroughly insane.

The Grand Unified Unified Theory of Palin

2008-09-26T10:00:00.011-05:00

Ever since McCain "suspended" his campaign Wednesday, I've been struggling to figure out what's going on. Is this one of the greatest unforced errors in presidential campaign history, or a brilliant masterstroke that turns things around just as Mcain's poll numbers are beginning to slip?

Well, if you'll forgive a little conspiracy theory, here's a chronology I came up with. The bold headers are essentially factual, followed by my interpretation.

1. Sarah Palin gives an interview to Katie Couric on Wednesday afternoon.

Palin gives as bad an interview as anyone not sitting with a Daily Show reporter ever has. Seriously, have you seen this thing? A snippet:

...it's very important when you consider even national security issues with Russia as Putin rears his head and comes into the air space of the United States of America, where-- where do they go? It's Alaska. It's just right over the border. It is-- from Alaska that we send those out to make sure that an eye is being kept on this very powerful nation, Russia, because they are right there. They are right next to-- to our state.

Say what?

2. McCain cancels Letterman appearance at last moment, sits for unplanned interview with Couric.

By all accounts, Palin has spent the weeks since her selection cramming to improve her knowledge of the issues and her ability to speak in human-parsable sentences. This has not been entirely successful. Immediately following the Couric interview, which I'm sure McCain's people wanted to kill after the first 45 seconds or so, the truth finally hits home: this chick will never be ready to step onto a stage with Joe Biden.

As a little extra intrigue, Letterman finds out that McCain lied to him about why he had to cancel (must rush back to D.C.), and is in fact sitting down the street in Couric's studio. Dave goes nuts. I don't know that I have ever seen a more savage takedown by an entertainer, especially considering the two are longtime friends, Letterman has had him on dozens of times, and McCain used the show to announce his candidacy just last year.

3. McCain suspends campaign to "work on the economy" and proposes delaying the debate. Lindsey Graham even suggests Friday's debate be moved to take the place of the VP debate, which will be rescheduled for a time TBD.

After doing what damage control they can with Couric, the McCain camp tries desperately to think of a way to get out of the VP debate. And now that you mention it, McCain isn't too thrilled about debating Obama, either.

The debate on Friday is supposed to focus on Mr. McCain's perceived strength, foreign policy. Mr. McCain had not planned to devote large blocks of time to debate practice as did Mr. Obama, who holed up with a tight circle of advisers at a hotel in Clearwater, Fla., for several days to prepare.

Mr. McCain had a preparatory session on Wednesday afternoon at the Morgan Library in Manhattan, but advisers said it had been interrupted by his decision, announced immediately afterward, to suspend his campaign.

What to do, then? Hey, let's suspend the campaign! What does that mean? No one knows, but apparently it doesn't involve canceling interviews, campaign appearances, television ads, fundraising or the functioning of state offices. It does, however, mean not attending the debate. A debate the University of Mississippi has spent about $5.5 million preparing for. McCain talks about simply moving it to another night, but Ole Miss pretty much says it would be unable to hold it any other time.

Conveniently, this will also affect the VP debate, either by canceling it if the financial crises is not resolved by next Thursday or because Friday night's debate pushes it back. To sometime in late November, perhaps.

4. Though many reports say Congress is near a deal on the bailout by Wednesday night, McCain declares he's needed to broker a compromise and descends on Washington with his full media circus in tow, asking Bush to call a meeting with all the principles, including Obama. No one seems entirely certain what happened at the meeting Thursday morning, but all agree it ended with the tentative deal thrown into disarray.

Since McCain has declared the debate should be postponed while he ~~saves the country from a meteor~~ negotiates a compromise, he needs the deadlock to last at least beyond Friday. Hopefully all the way to Thursday. So he goes to D.C., meets with Republican House leaders, then proceeds to completely blow up the deal that's been worked on all week.

Also, he makes Hank Paulson beg like a bitch:

"I didn't know I was going to be the referee for an internal G.O.P. ideological civil war," Mr. Frank said, according to The A.P. Thursday, in the Roosevelt Room after the session, the Treasury secretary, Henry M. Paulson Jr., literally bent down on one knee as he pleaded with Nancy Pelosi, the House Speaker, not to "blow it up" by withdrawing her party's support for the package over what Ms. Pelosi derided as a Republican betrayal.

"I didn't know you were Catholic," Ms. Pelosi said, a wry reference to Mr. Paulson's kneeling, according to someone who observed the exchange. She went on: "It's not me blowing this up, it's the Republicans."

Mr. Paulson sighed. "I know. I know."

So, that's where we are. McCain scuttles Congressional negotiations on the bailout so that he can postpone the debates and avoid subjecting his barely-coherent running mate to the equivalent of a public shaming. Far-fetched? Maybe. But it explains the past couple days better than anything else I can come up with.

Update:

Well, maybe not. Game on!

Japanese Comedy and the American Viewer

2008-09-26T03:41:00.001-05:00

There's something about Japanese comedy that really cracks me up and I don't think that I'm alone:

It's almost 4 a.m. and I am watching this stuff and writing songs.

Jon Monteith takes on the world!!

2008-09-25T18:33:00.002-05:00

Check out Urbanagora contributor Jon Monteith's latest work on Equally Speaking with HRC. Good job Jon! Congrats!

Free Sarah Palin

2008-09-24T10:35:00.001-05:00

Okay, the media isn't all bad:

The Bailout Debate

2008-09-24T09:18:00.003-05:00

I've already stated here a couple times that I don't fully understand what's going on with the financial crisis, so I'll try not to get too cocky in my commentary on it. But I will say that it seems to me that the people in charge of explaining this to the American people are doing a really crappy job of it. The media (at least, the cable news media) has been presenting the situation as a choice between two alternatives: (1) "bailout," or (2) "no bailout." Except that this doesn't seem to be where the real debate is. As I understand it, the real issue is whether to add some combination of the following provisions to the current bailout plan:

Creating an oversight board and some sort of judicial or administrative review.
Taking an equity stake in institutions participating in the program to protect taxpayers.
Limiting executive compensation.
Tying the program to a second stimulus package.
Forcing Treasury to renegotiate mortgages for homeowners once it buys them up, in order to stabilize the housing market.

There seems to be near-universal agreement on #1, even among the administration. The rest seem to be where the real debate lies. I'm not entirely clear on which of the above provisions are included in Dodd's proposal (PDF), but for sure the first three are, I think #5 is, and I think #4 is not.

As far as I can evaluate these things, #1 strikes me as obviously necessary, #2 and #5 strike me as deal-breakers that Congress should force the administration to accept, and #3 and #4 strike me as good ideas to push for but not necessarily deal-breakers.

But again, I'm not going to pretend I know what I'm talking about. What is frustrating, however, is that if all I did was watch the news, I wouldn't be able to explain even the parameters of the debate, let alone get a feel for where I stand. Obviously this is complicated stuff, and it's difficult for anybody to explain it clearly, and it would be even more difficult to get Americans to pay close enough attention to understand things. But I'd feel better if I at least got the impression that these people were making an effort.

Anyway, here are a few sources that have been more useful to me than the TV: Paul Krugman, Calculated Risk, Greg Mankiw, Ezra Klein, and this post from Matthew Yglesias.

McCain vs. Obama on Tax & Economics

2008-09-23T21:32:00.005-05:00

Thanks to Professor Kaplan of the Illinois Law School for sending this fairly easy to read and neutral summary of the various tax and economic policies (mostly tax) of McCain and Obama. It does a good job of displaying their differences side by side and discussing the potential impact of their positions. Will the differences between the candidates in tax and economic policies have an actual impact on the economy? I'm unsure of the degree to which campaign proposals translate into real world change. In other words, how much actual difference exists between the candidates?

On a somewhat unrelated note, I hear that some libertarians (Tom) wish for a McCain victbry simply on the basis of the gridlock that it would create. They favor gridlock because it will theoretically slow Congressional spending. I'm not sure that I agree with the prediction of gridlock. It seems that government, like corporations, will craftily find the loopholes and will spend regardless of the formal impediments.

Epic fail

2008-09-23T17:27:00.003-05:00

Thanks to my pal Ryan for sending this to me and cracking me up.

(h/t: Eschaton)

Steven Spielberg Movies

2008-09-23T11:26:00.005-05:00

It feels a little bit like the world's going to hell in a handbasket today, but I'm just gonna keep doing these movie rankings. On this day of uncertainty and turmoil, I thought I'd go with a director known for being warm and fuzzy: Steven Spielberg. He gets a bit of a bad rap in some circles, but I think that's a little unfair. I think it's true that some of the films he's made that are considered his best work are over-rated (Schindler's List, Private Ryan), and it's also true that he's made some fairly bad movies over the course of his career. But it's difficult to ignore a big chunk of his work that is truly great stuff. From best to worst:

Raiders of the Lost Ark
Jaws
Catch Me If You Can
Jurassic Park
Munich
A.I.: Artificial Intelligence
Close Encounters of the Third Kind
Minority Report
E.T.: Extraterrestrial
Schindler's List
Saving Private Ryan
Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade
The War of the Worlds
The Lost World: Jurassic Park
Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom
The Terminal
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

Some significant omissions that I haven't seen: Amistad, Hook, Empire of the Sun, The Color Purple, 1941, The Sugarland Express.

The real dividing line in this list in my view is between #12 and #13. The movies from 13 down all ultimately fail, while those from 12 up are at least good, if not great. I have a feeling this list is less in keeping with conventional opinion than my previous two. That's probably because I'm not really a great lover of Spielberg's work. With the exception of the top 5 on this list, I'm not moved by much of his work. Still: those top 5 are really good stuff.

Google Chrome-agnon Man

2008-09-22T13:49:00.009-05:00

I downloaded Google Chrome with great excitement about 2 weeks ago. I generally love Google. I use Gmail, Gchat, Google Documents, Google Gears, Google Calendar, Google Maps, Google Search, etc. I use them everyday. Google's philosophy is simple elegance and an emphasis on efficiency and reliability. I expected the same out of Google Chrome.

At first glance, Chrome does fit into the larger Google philosophy. Firefox, which I have loved for many years, suddenly morphed into the clunky Internet Explorer in my mind. I transferred all of my bookmarks over with relative ease. My life changed; I broke up with Firefox, but like the crafty fox she did not beg, knowing I would come back.

Chrome is a 19th Century wooden house infested with bugs. Tabs close for no apparent reason. I could not get Youtube to function properly. I could not get MySpace's music player (I investigate a lot of bands) to work. Perhaps I was biased by the other bugs, but the rest of my computer seemed to run much slower, despite claims that Chrome is more efficient. Also, other programs seemed to crash more frequently than normal. Unlike Firefox, it has no quick search box in the upper right corner that allows you to search Youtube, IMDB, Answers.com, etc, without first going to those sites. It did not appear to me that Chrome could do anything that Firefox cannot already do. Also, at least so far, Chrome doesn't have the independent community creating helpful add-ons as Firefox has. A minor note is that the scroll bar on the right side of the screen is hyper sensitive. With all of this said, my guess based on their other products is that they will get it right in version 2.0 or 3.0.

It appears to me that Google spent more time on this promotional cartoon than on the product itself. To protest, I have created my own cartoon based on Page 36 of theirs:

To adopt Paul Mooney playing a movie critic on Dave Chappelle's show: Well, I made a cartoon, maybe they'll publish my cartoon. Sorry, that's a very obscure reference that only Kevin will understand and I cannot find the video anywhere online.

Kiyoshi Martinez lecture today at WIU

2008-09-22T09:54:00.001-05:00

Our buddy Kiyoshi is speaking today at Western about the future of journalism. Best of luck Yoshi!

Check out the preview story.

How to fix a printer

2008-09-20T16:34:00.001-05:00

Stanley Kubrick Movies

2008-09-19T14:55:00.005-05:00

I am highly resistant to writing about politics at the moment (and probably will be until the debates start up), and I lack the knowledge to write competently about the financial craziness that's been going on, so I thought I'd do another edition of what I did a couple days ago when I listed my ranking of Coen brothers movies. I'll try to make a little mini-series out of this with different directors, and hopefully it will provide a sense of levity as things get more intense the closer we get to Election Day. Today, I'm tackling the films of my all-time favorite director, Stanley Kubrick. From best to worst:

Dr. Strangelove, or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb
Paths of Glory
The Shining
2001: A Space Odyssey
Full Metal Jacket
A Clockwork Orange
Eyes Wide Shut
Lolita
Spartacus

Excluded from the list because I haven't seen them: The Killing, Barry Lyndon, and several of his very early films. This is a tough list to make for a couple reasons. First, Kubrick's movies are very different from one another, making them difficult to compare. Second, his movies can be very polarizing, 2001 being probably the best example of that, where one person might think it's the greatest movie ever and another will walk away hating it.

One thing I always marvel at when I think about Kubrick is that a single director somehow made my all-time favorite comedy (Dr. Strangelove), horror movie (The Shining), science fiction movie (2001), and war movie (Paths of Glory). Paths of Glory, by the way, is not as widely seen as many of his other movies, but people really ought to watch it. It's powerful and courageous in a way very few movies are. A lot of Kubrick's work strikes me as a series of attempts to cut through various absurdities, and where Dr. Strangelove manages that feat with hilarious satire, Paths of Glory manages it with deadly seriousness. That he's able to communicate in such different ways is a testament to his range, and that he's able to communicate so powerfully at all is a testament to his enormous talent.

Also, if there are readers out there who are big fans of Kubrick, I'd recommend the documentary Stanley Kubrick: A Life in Pictures.

Wandering the Economic Malaise

2008-09-18T14:26:00.007-05:00

Are we in an economic crisis? There are many opinions on this subject, and unfortunately, many of them correspond to the commentator's political opinions. Liberals are more likely to say that the economy is awful and in a state of ruins, implying that Bush is responsible and that a change of parties in the White House is needed. Conservatives are more likely to say that select stories about the economy are making it appear to be in a state of crisis, but that the overall market fundamentals are sound, conversely implying that a Republican White House can manage the economy.

I disagree with the notion that the President should be blamed or praised for the economy. The entire idea of a free market, if one truly exists in our country, is that economic power is so diffused that no single entity has dominant sway over it. This conception of the free market is in tension with the notion that the President has dominant sway over an economy - only one can prevail. The magnitude of forces acting upon the economy are far larger than the imagination and might of President Bush. I am sorry to tell you this, but if you disagree with me, you can find credible support. Check out this CNN article that displays the results of a survey of economists. It is interesting to view the results in light of the question whether the President can have any influence on the economics of a country.

How much should our government interfere with our economy? My claim that the President does not have substantial influence on an economy is made under historical Harvard Economics Professor, Ken Rogoff, argued in the Washington Post that the government ought to let large companies fail. He closes his article with some good words:

But by placing some of the burden on the shareholders and bondholders of the big financial institutions, financial regulators have at least forced some discipline onto the system, making bankers and investors think twice before they once again head off to the races. By allowing firms that took excessive risks to fail, regulators also reduce the political pressure to overregulate the system in the aftermath of the crisis.

Columbia Economics Professor and Nobel Prize Winner, Joseph Stiglitz, has long been among the liberal economists (Paul Krugman, as well) who blame all the world's ills on President Bush. I normally believe that Stiglitz has lost his sanity as he ages, but I appreciated some parts of his CNN article, "How to Prevent the Next Wall Street Crisis":

Consenting adults should be given great freedom to do whatever they want, but that does not mean they should gamble with other people's money. Some may worry that this may stifle innovation. But that may be a good thing considering the kind of innovation we had -- attempting to subvert accounting and regulations.

The recent Fortune Magazine article, "Recession...Or Not?," does a good job arguing that while bits of the economy are in crisis, the overall picture isn't that bad. I agree with him, at least for now. The economic fundamentals are approaching what countries like France and Germany experience as their average. Here is the most persuasive portion of his article:

There isn't any recession. The latest figures show that we clearly were not in one as of midsummer, whether you use the rule-of-thumb definition - two consecutive quarters of GDP shrinkage - or the looser concept of a sustained and significant economic decline. The economy shrank marginally (-0.2%) in the fourth quarter of 2007, but otherwise it's been growing steadily for years. In the most recent quarter it grew at a vigorous 3.3%, fueled not by government stimulus checks but by a strong rise in net exports. The OECD has just raised its forecast of U.S. growth for the full year from 1.2% to 1.8% - not blistering, but still the fastest growth of all the G-7 countries.

The funny thing about all of this is that Obama wants to make us more like Europe. If you look at his economic proposals, he is generally pushing us toward the big government safety net model of the old Euro countries, primarily France and Germany. Those models have high tax rates, high unemployment, painfully slow GDP expansion, ample protection for the poor and an appreciation of life over work. It is a mix of good and bad, at least for now. Unfortunately, their model is unsustainable. The disincentives to work or the incentives to emigrate to more vibrant economies are tremendous. But, don't allow me to contradict myself. I don't believe that Presidents can substantially influence an economy and the same will be true of Obama. Nevertheless, he can push our momentum in Europe's direction.

So, what do y'all think? Are we going to crash and burn? Is the financial sector of our economy going to drown the entire economy along with it? Should the government be bailing out big financials or does doing so create a problem of moral hazard? Will Obama make us more like Europe? Will McCain be so free market oriented that he allows the poor and uninsured to starve and go untreated?

The Center for Inquiry promotional video

2008-09-18T14:25:00.000-05:00

Check out this video promoting the Center for Inquiry. (h/t: Break the Terror)