Christmas Spirit

No better way to celebrate the selling season than a little bit of Christmas caroling...

My Blogger Pic

I really should update my blogger picture to reveal a little more about myself.

Take a peek.

Yep... Carli Davidson has captured the "real me".

Math & Art & Science

Here's a nice video that combines humour and math with a little mythical earth history:



I especially enjoy the little bits of realism, like getting eaten by the Pythagasaurus. The problem with nerdy kids is that they don't have a healthy fear of the real world. Their math & science gives them a false sense of power and authority. The nice thing about art is that is can reintroduce these aspiring minds to the fact that math kills, like the Pythagasaurus. A little healthy fear is good for the budding scientist. And only the magic of art can help groom that fear.

The New Sing-Along: Too Big to Fail

Here is Merle Hazard back with another instant classic:



Here's the accompanying blurb about the song from Merle Hazard's web site:

“The Ballad of Diamond Jim” is out! It’s a twangy western number about banking regulation. Thanks to Paul Solman of the PBS NewsHour for his awesome interview with MIT’s Simon Johnson about this song, and for writing about it.

Great Minds are Working on the Pressing Economic Issues of Our Time

Yes, right wing opinion writers like Megan McArdle are busy writing about "the servant problem" for The Atlantic:

No More Servants

By Megan McArdle Oct 12 2011, 12:58 PM ET

The other day, Arnold Kling asked a sort of interesting question: why hasn't rising inequality resulted in in the much-predicted oligarchy? Or to put it as he does: with so many unemployed, and income increasing faster among the affluent, why aren't people hiring more servants?

In an economy where some folks are very rich and many folks are unemployed, why are there not more personal servants? Why don't Sergey Brin and Bill Gates have hundreds of people on personal retainer?

Some possible answers (some of them culled from, or inspired by, his comments section. I encourage you to read it through.)

1. Various forms of public assistance, and wealthier families, have increased the reservation wage. A servant in 1900 worked at least 10 hours a day, at least 5.5 days a week, and according to our archives, cost at least $25 a month for a "passable" one. Many middle class people could probably afford to pay about $500 a month, plus a room and some food, for someone who would take care of all the housework, all the time. But how many Americans would work for such a sum? Our house was built in that era, and either they didn't have live-in servants, or the help was sleeping in a pretty gnarly unfinished basement. You'd have to be fairly desperate to take the equivalent job today, and almost no one is that desperate.

2. There's a tax wedge. If servants were more common, the IRS would be more assiduous about auditing for payroll taxes, etc. (Already a problem for working women with nannies who end up in public service). My mother actually paid taxes for her cleaning lady, and it was not only expensive, but an administrative nightmare--somehow, the numbers never added up right, the paperwork got lost, etc. Taxes reduce the differential between the value of your labor and someone else's, because you don't have to tax you.

3. Regulatory overhead See above. The modern labor regulatory system is set up to deal with corporations, not individuals contracting for informal labor. Either the work ends up in the gray economy (illegals), or it's contracted out to companies that can amortize the regulatory overhead over a lot of workers (Merry Maids)

4. Management Workers have to be managed. They leave. (Hance Saki's memorable epigram: "She was a good cook, as cooks go. And as cooks go, she went.") They need to be replaced. Sometimes the replacement doesn't work out. All of this takes time. For the mistress of a house in the era before labor-saving appliances, managing servants was undoubtedly more pleasant than scrubbing the coal scuttles. But it was a job. And many high-paid women in the sub-Gates class have full-time jobs; they don't have the time to take on full time employees. A large servant class may have presupposed the existence of a large class of women at home.

5. Labor saving devices Servants were often standing in for things that machines now do more cheaply, and without stealing the silver.

6. Cultural mores We have a much greater affection for personal space than people did in the era of large families and small heating appliances. Most people don't want anyone else in their personal space.

7. Liability These days, you're liable for the actions of your employees in a surprisingly wide variety of circumstances. Safer not to have employees.

8. Communications, tools, and transportation increased the efficiency of outsourcing I don't need a gardener; I need to pay a landscaping company to come by once every few weeks and run their high-octane power mower around the lawn. In effect, we rent servants by the hour, and some of them are mechanical.

Darn... And I was so hoping that those millions of university grads could find "meaningful" work by entering "the service" for the upscale 1%. It would do them good to slave in close proximity to their "betters" so that they might appreciate how the productive "job creators" have risen to such economic heights. Too many people today think that a living wage is some kind of birth right. Oh for the "good old days" of the work houses where the penniless were shown how to earn their bread by putting in 12 hour days 6 days a week to pay for their own upkeep instead of burdening the taxpayer!

Failing this approach to thinning out the lolling mobs who are out on the street with their Occupy XYZ protests, maybe we should go for the Jonathan Swift approach and simply roast the unemployed and feed them to the hard working middle class to raise their protein input. If the penurious can't support themselves, at least they can be put to a useful service as fodder for the hard working middle class.

Oh... and I have a good fix for the problem with all those "underwater" homes. Give these financially reckless owners $1 and take over their homes and then give the homes to the rich to serve as "retirement homes for superannuated pets". I'm sure there are lots of the 1% who are tiring of old Rover sleeping all day. No zip. Farm Rover out to a "retirement home" and let the 1% buy a new, lively puppy. This makes the productive part of society happy, it gives a nice place for Rover to die, and the ousted former home owners can feel good knowing that their financial mistakes have been forgiven and their homes have now been put to socially productive work. Everybody is a winner!

On the Latest Great White Hope of the Republican Party

From an opinion piece by Maureen Dowd in the NY Times where she looks at New Jersey's governor Chris Christie announcing his non-candidacy for US president. First she side-swipes Obama then nails Christie:

People are longing for a president who can understand their pain, mix it up and get action — not one who averts his gaze, avoids conflict, delegates to Congress, wastes time hunting for common ground, cedes the moon to opponents and fails to get anywhere.

Our nuanced president sticks to gray, while the no-nonsense governor, as Joe Scarborough noted, “paints in primary colors.”

I love the way Maureen Dowd purple prose really spells it out. Obama, the master of nuance and shades of gray. Christie, the puffed up body that’s off-putting and who paints in primary colours. Funny.

Here's her bottom line:

The message from new books by Ron Suskind and Jeffrey Sachs, and from the proliferating Wall Street protesters, seems to be that President Obama is a captive of the banks who pursued policies that helped the very richest people in the country.

Americans who have been hurt want to identify the villains, and Obama is loath to target villains.

Christie can be a bully, but that may seem better than the alternative: a president who lets himself be bullied, and who lets the bullies run wild.

It is tragic that Americans voted in a man of "hope" and "change you can believe in" and instead got a schmuck lost in nuance, sold out to the ultra-rich, and unable to seize the historic moment to save his country.

A Vision of the Future

It takes a twisted mind, a cartoonist's mind, to put things into perspective and come up with the whacko future that awaits us. Here is Scott Adams of Dilbert fame trying his hand at this game:

According to biologists, billions of years ago the first sea creature wiggled onto the beach. This was a pivotal moment in life's long march from amorphous sea snot into the highest form of mammalian beings—hedge-fund managers. Many people see that as an improvement, but I'm not judgmental. What we don't know is why the first sea creatures were so anxious to leave their ocean habitats. My guess is that it had something to do with taxes.

Reliable people on television have informed me that taxes are the root cause of all behavior. And that means we can predict the future by looking at tax policy. In fact, I hear tax-related predictions every time I accidentally stop thinking about myself long enough to notice that others are talking. What I haven't yet seen is anyone correctly predicting the future based on tax policy. Apparently that burden has fallen to me.

Go read his article in the Wall Street Journal to see his vision in all its gory glory.

My only quibble with Scott Adams is that he has chosen the wrong side in this struggle for the future. Instead of the hedge fund managers taking the great leap from land back to sea, the really serious historic step will be taken by the land lemmings rushing to form a "more perfect union" and creating a real democracy, i.e. realize what was only a gleam in the eye of the architect's of America's Constitution. They will take the fateful step of stopping the flow of taxes from the bottom 90% into the pockets of the top 1%.

OK, I admit I have a lousy track record at predicting the future. But at least my vision has the benefit of decency and honourableness to its credit. Instead of constantly caving to the demands of the greedy rich who have painted the US and the world into a corner of bankruptcy and ruin, my vision has the benefit of letting the legions of hard working get a chance to inherit the fruit of their labour.

Bold Move by US Government

Finally, somebody in Washington has awakened and decided to fix the ills in America.

Here are the details of a bold new program to cut the costs of entitlements:



Yes. There is some really innovative ideas taking hold in Washington. I can't wait until they declare Washington, DC to be the new Area 51 and sell permits for "alien hunting"! That can fix two problems at once: increase federal revenues and thin out the overpopulated politician population.

The Price of Freedom is Eternal Vigilence

Flash! News from the front in the war on terrorism...

Here is an account of the incredible heroism of America's front line defense against terrorism. An alert border agent discovered a Canadian miscreant who willfully refused to divulge that she was carrying a know biohazardous material, the foundations of making a terrorist bomb, the well know "Ontario raspberry" in her car while crossing the border. The alert border agent spotted the illegal item and bravely did his duty to protect the American public from this brazen would-be-terrorist: he performed a strip search. Yes, it is an ugly task, but those officers have been trained to carry out all actions from strip search to waterboarding to protect the American public.

What is shocking is that the Canadian thinks she has some "human rights"! Those Canadians are outrageous. They should realize they have no more rights than Americans and the Americans happily gave up all their rights when their Congress passed the Patriot Act (then reaffirmed it and extended it with Patriot Act II). All law-abiding Americans know they have no rights. When the police tell them to strip, they strip. When the police bring out the rubber truncheons to encourage truth-telling, American speak up and spill the beans. Even the truculent Americans who push their police to bring out the big gun, waterboarding, realize this is all in the name of preserving "democracy" and "liberties" for the liberty-loving Americans.

Listen to what this cur, this dispicable Canadian alleges:

An angry and embarrassed Ontario woman who says she was strip-searched at the Ambassador Bridge without justification has sued two U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents.

The Detroit Free Press says Loretta Van Beek of Stratford filed the suit in Detroit federal court against the unnamed agents. She says she was en route to her Georgia vacation home last March when one agent strip-searched and groped her while the other one watched.

Van Beek says she was detained for two hours, then sent to a windowless cell and ordered to strip because she neglected to disclose she had raspberries in her vehicle.

The lawsuit claims one agent aggressively groped her breasts and genital area while the other watched. Van Beek says she was then photographed and fingerprinted and sent back to Canada.

Attorney S. Thomas Wienner of Rochester tells the Free Press the experience traumatized Van Beek and “She’s concerned she might not be the only victim.”

Every red-blooded American knows she should be grateful than "extreme measures" weren't taken. But rest assured, if she or her kind, try to bring that bright red fruit across the border, America's heros, the Border Agents, stand ready to take them out back and shoot them dead. As Barry Goldwater so eloquently put it: Extremism In The Defence of Liberty Is No Vice



Thank God for America... that beacon on the hill, that shining light of liberty, those patriots will not tolerate raspberries sneaking across the border!

Only pinkos and sissies go for this sick complaint by pastor Martin Niemöller who wimped out in Hitler's Germany:

First they came for the communists,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a communist.

Then they came for the trade unionists,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a Jew.

Then they came for me
and there was no one left to speak out for me.

I say:

First they let a woman with a raspberry cross the border,

Then they let somebody with a banana slip by,

Next is was a boy with some blueberries,

Then came those carrying kiwi fruit.

I tell you... we have to draw the line with raspberries. If not, they will be bringing in bombs and rockets, they will be sneaking al Qaeda across the border, and there goes the neighborhood. Property values will fall and the good people will have to flee to the suburbs! So stop them now before it is too late. Strip searches, truncheons, ripping fingernail out raw and bloody, waterboarding... whatever it takes. But don't allow a single raspberry more to cross that border!

The Future of Ranching?

I always enjoy the application of new technology to the daily work world. Here's a vision of ranching of the future... maybe...



You can see that the cattle are both scared but curious and it is funny to see them follow the robot truck. Cattle just love to be in a herd and I guess the truck is a good stand-in for a "leader" so they will follow it anywhere.

From Instapundit, here is a comparison of bloopers.

First, Obama:

Whoops! Good old Abe didn't found the Republican party. Close, but no cigar.

Second, Sarah Palin:

Oh my gosh! Riding through town to send "warning shots and bells"? That's a refreshing re-interpretation of American history.

I get a chuckle out of Glenn Reynolds' take on these blunders:

CREDENTIALED, NOT EDUCATED: “Palin knew Revere better than Obama knew Lincoln. . . . Obama inaccurately called Abraham Lincoln the founder of the Republican Party.”

Plus: “It’s even worse, because Palin’s (accurate) comments were made in an on-the-fly interview whereas Obama’s were in a prepared speech.”

America: Singing the Woes of the AAA Downgrade

I was always told that it was important to keep your spirit up in the hardest of times. Here's a song for my cousins south of the border feeling blue about the downgrade by S&P ratings agency of US federal credit from AAA to only AA+:



I guess the unemployed in the US can take up the honourable tradition of musicals, folk singing, tap dancing, and pan-handling. The wonderful thing about economics is they understand the value of these new industries. If $1 goes into one pan-handlers bucket and he turns and immediately deposits in the begging bucket of the next door pan-handler, and he in turn does the same with their neighbor, then the economy can revive.

If you can get the "velocity" of that money up near the speed of light, then that $1 can quickly circulate among all the unemployed, not just once, but thousands of times a day and you will suddenly have a thriving economy where the previously unemployed are now making over a thousand dollars a day busking on the street. With 25 million unemployed, that mean $25 billion in daily income and $10 TRILLION annually of new national income for the US via the unemployed now fully occupied in the "entertainment" industry.

That means the US would be instantly back on its feet and happy. No food, no lodging, but a lot of previously unemployed people shucking and jiving as fast as they can to keep that one dollar going from bucket to bucket. A truly "lively" economy.

US Credit Downgrade, the Future Scenario

Here is tongue-fully-planted-in-cheek Robert Reich giving the low down on what the credit downgrade on US debt will mean:



Argh! What a cruel and unusual punishment for poor Americans to suffer because they didn't elect George Bush to a third term as president. Under Bush, the moment S&P dared lower the credit rating he would have nuked NYC and made sure that idea was snuffed out and nobody would be left standing to suggest it a second time. Oh for the good old days of trigger happy Bush. He was a president who had a swagger and knew how to lead... even if he didn't know much about anything else.

Ahh... Now I Understand!

Understanding the S&P downgrade of US debt made simple...

Click to Enlarge
Who knew that it could all be so simple to understand!

Now... knowledge is power, and with that understanding in hand, Americans should be badgering their federal representatives to kick the economy into gear and create jobs and stop all this pussy-footing around.

As everybody knows, this was the work of the Tea Party, so they are now quietly celebrating:

Click to Enlarge
Yes... now I truly understand. Government does not work. Thankfully the Tea Party has found the way to have smaller government, and a smaller pay check in everybody's pocket. Wonderful!

Perfection

I love English humour. Here a panel takes on the task of identifying the "perfect" man...



Americans must be stunned by all this useless jaw snapping and wasted breath. Perfection? That was Ronald Reagan. Everybody knows that.

That's why Americans are busy right now adding a fifth president to Mount Rushmore and that's why Obama wants to pass a new tax on the rich in honour of him. Sadly, the Tea Party keeps misunderstanding one of the great legacies of the Reagan era, "Star Wars". The Tea Party is convinced that Reagan was calling for a "Start Wars". This latest dust-up in Washington over the debt ceiling was simply an homage to "the perfect man".

Robert Reich on Education

Sadly, here is Robert Reich arguing that education has needs up there in importance with financial capital...



Lots of luck on that. The Republicans would privatize all schools. Obama seems determined to ensure that big corporations and Wall Street get all the public funds.

Poor Robert Reich, he is fighting a losing battle. No politically important institution in the US wants an educated electorate. Walmart and McDonald's don't need more than a 6th grade education to employ its staff. I think the not-too-subtle message behind the hit TV show Are You Smarter than a 5th Grader? is that Americans are over-educated and government should stop "wasting" precious funds that could more wisely be spent by giving more tax cuts to the "job creators".

Everybody thought that the 20th century was America's century. I can see that the 21st century is truly going to be "America's Century". Finally all the manufacturing will be shut down and the rust belt pleasingly turned into weedy fields, the schools will have gone past being the horrors of neglected inner-city schools and will finally be closed down and boarded up, and the voters will be relieved of the tedious duty of deciding between Tweedledee and Tweedledum political parties. Instead, they will be handed ballots for elections with only a American Patriotic 'Super Committee' Party with conveniently "locked-in" agreement with "triggers" to ensure that voters have only the one choice in any and every election. That's true democracy in action just like the recent exercise in democracy that has so brilliantly resolved the debt ceiling "crisis".

Glad Tidings Comrade, the Heroic Workers State, the USSR, Has Won the Space Race!

Don't take my word for it. Read the story hot-off-the-presses...

Less than a week after the return of the Atlantis orbiter marked the end of the U.S. space shuttle program, the crowded streets and textile factories of Moscow erupted in celebration as the USSR officially declared victory over the United States in the Space Race.



"At long last, our great Soviet republic has conquered the West and achieved technological and ideological superiority over America," Kremlin representative Sergei Voronin said Wednesday, announcing the achievement to an audience of joyous beet farmers and steel factory laborers assembled in Red Square. "We have established our unrivaled dominion over the stars and planets and stand now at the dawn of a new era, an era in which the tenets of communism shall echo loudly across the Earth's entire expanse."

Go read the whole heroic story of how class struggle has led to a people's victory.

The good news is that our comrades in Russia have agreed to rent us room on the rockets so that we can travel to "our" International Space Station. Thank God for the generosity of the great Russian people!

Meanwhile, I'm thinking for apply for Chinese citzenship so that I might find room on one of their rockets one day.

The Latest in Debt Crisis "News"

As far as I can tell, this is the latest "news" on the talks in Washington on dealing with America's debt "crisis"...

Congress Continues Debate Over Whether Or Not Nation Should Be Economically Ruined

07.20.11


WASHINGTON—Members of the U.S. Congress reported Wednesday they were continuing to carefully debate the issue of whether or not they should allow the country to descend into a roiling economic meltdown of historically dire proportions. "It is a question that, I think, is worthy of serious consideration: Should we take steps to avoid a crippling, decades-long depression that would lead to disastrous consequences on a worldwide scale? Or should we not do that?" asked House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA), adding that arguments could be made for both sides, and that the debate over ensuring America’s financial solvency versus allowing the nation to default on its debt—which would torpedo stock markets, cause mortgage and interests rates to skyrocket, and decimate the value of the U.S. dollar—is “certainly a conversation worth having.” "Obviously, we don't want to rush to consensus on whether it is or isn't a good idea to save the American economy and all our respective livelihoods from certain peril until we've examined this thorny dilemma from every angle. And if we’re still discussing this matter on Aug. 2, well, then, so be it.” At press time, President Obama said he personally believed the country should not be economically ruined.

The above is an article from The Onion, one of the best "news" sites on the web because they don't take the "news" all that seriously. And because of that attitude, they are actually more perceptive than the mainstream press and actually more accurate in their portrayal of the "news".

Personally the debt "crisis" is a joke. The Republicans, who say that government spending must get under control "right now" or doom will happen, were perfectly happy 8 months ago to give away a $4 trillion tax break to billionaires and millionaires. Note: a tax break = add to the deficit. If you don't collect taxes, then your spending will exceed your revenue. But the Republicans haven't figured that out. All they know is that "government is the problem", "deregulate, deregulate, deregulate", what the world needs now is more tax breaks for the rich, and America will implode tomorrow if Obama doesn't agree to spending cuts immediately!

Latest Technology in Automotive Power Trains

In Montreal they've just debuted the new "hydro-powered car"...

As you can see from the video, there are still a few kinks to iron out before they turn this baby loose on the highway.



It certainly has all the "power" that you could desire, it just doesn't have the "acceleration" you expect from a modern engine.

Maybe the hydro-power if "flooding" the engine?

Patricia T. O'Conner's "Origins of the Specious"

This is a fun read about the English language, misuses and word origins, confusions and bad grammarians, and lots of lovely word play.

This isn't meant to teach you. It is a book to entertain you and get you more aware of the deep history of English and how we oft go astray in our "understandings" of proper word use. Here's an example:

If Americans aren’t sprinkling their English with real or imagined French, they’re mixing both languages in a stew of Franglais. And if a word looks the slightest bit French, we’ll pronounce it like French, even a word that’s been ye olde Englische since Chaucer’s day. I’m thinking of “homage,” which has been part of the English language since 1290. It should be pronounced HOM-idge or OM-idge. Whether or not the h is pronounced, the accent is on the first syllable. The French pronunciation oh-MAHJ is incorrect – and affected to boot – unless you’re in Marseilles (where it’s spelled hommage). Yes we did get “homage” from the French way back when, be we also get “adroit” and “toilet” and “voyage” from them, but we don’t say ah-DWAH, twa-LAY, and vwah-YAZH.

I definitely recommend this book as an entertaining way to while away a day.