Monday, December 15, 2008

Winter Whimsy

The snow has fallen, not to mention the temperature, and I find myself unable to focus on anything related to school or even writing for that matter. It's like I've regressed tot the age of twelve and snow this close to Christmas is just too much to handle in my little brain.

It's a bit different for our cats. They seem a bit miffed about the whole snow thing. It really cramps their style, so to speak. It has lead to two hyper cats, that is when they're sleeping. This combination of distracted Eric and hyper cats has lead to some interesting conversations where I try to reason with the furry little beasts that if it was cold and snowy twenty minutes ago, it is still that way now. They pretend to not understand what I'm saying. But, I'm not as a complete an idiot as they take me to be. I know they understand the tone of my voice, including sarcasm. Why else would they roll their eyes at me so much?

I guess the solution is to get all bundled up, throw the cats out into the white stuff and then chase them around and throw snowballs at them. Of course, it's nice and warm in the apartment and this chair is pretty comfy...

Thursday, December 11, 2008

Television ate my Soul

Kill your television before it eats your soul. Seriously.

I spend a significant portion of my week with geeks and nerds in training. They start off each class telling whomever will listen that they didn't have enough time get whatever it was that they were supposed to do done. The conversation generally moves to boasting about how high a level their character is in the game-of-the-week (which is World of Warcraft). They may or may not stop briefly in the topic of which comic book is being made into a movie. They never discuss the merits or detriments of such projects or of movies that have already come out, but they sure will (mis)quote a lot of dialogue from the films. Inevitably, the conversation winds up on the television shows watched by one and all, well almost all as I am not really up to their level. I've made it clear that I watch three shows which equals four hours of programming per week, and none of it on an actual television. Any viewing above and beyond this comes from Netflix, as there are so many movies and so little time. Without fail I am asked day in and day out if I've seen show X or Y or Z. I haven't, nor will I, as apparently everyone I know is incapable of discussing a show apart from regurgitating events that happened - especially when they are trying to convince me to watch a show. Hmm, let's see, it's a suspenseful show to which you've just told me the twist ending; odds are I'm not going to freaking watch it. Okay, 'freaking' is not my first word choice.
As inevitable as ruining a media format for me, the topic turns to who watches the least amount of programming. It is always the biggest nerd/geek in the room who claims to watch the least amount of television, you know, except for the two hour-long dramedy, investeality shows, and the news, oh and don't forget Letterman, and since they're up they watch Conan; but seriously that's all the television they watch, oh unless you count what they stream to their computers which doesn't really count because they're reading their emails on the commercial breaks.

I'm pretty addicted to the shows I watch, so I understand how one could slip away into the nether regions and blow four or five hours a day. But, I guess I'm also on the path to recovery if I can admit how much I watch and understand the trade-offs of time spent watching television programs versus everything else life has to offer.

As you look up at me sitting on my high-horse, you're probably wondering what I think the geeks and nerds in training should be doing with their time. The obvious answer is reading for class and oh, I don't know, maybe their homework. Or instead of talking about how someday they are going to ... oh never mind. They're not listening anyways, as I'm sure the commercial break is over and they've forgotten that I'm still here.

Tuesday, December 09, 2008

Holding my Breath

I learned just about three years ago that I shouldn't hold my breath. Like the rest of you humans, holding my breath makes the pressure in my eyes increase and as we all know, high pressure is bad. If it wasn't bad, it would just be called 'pressure'. Or maybe it would be called 'relaxing'.
I actively try to avoid holding my breath. I've cut out my long under water swims, nixed seeing how red I can make my face and given up holding my breath at red lights.
Today I was out for an invigorating constitutional and was required to hold my breath twice, which as you can imagine ticked me off just a little bit. The first time was due to a groundskeeper mowing the lawn at an apartment complex I was walking by. His mower was gas-powered and was chugging out black smoke as he walked behind the mower pushing on towards even more carbon monoxide production. It turns out I dislike carbon monoxide even more than I dislike holding my breath so I took a deep breath and marched past, holding the air in until I was two-thirds of the way so that I could slowly exhale the last bit and minimize holding my breath. The second time holding my breath came about 10 blocks later as I walked near a coffee cart with a car at the window waiting on their double shot tall skim something. This was the only car I saw while I was out today that exhaust of any color coming from it's tail pipe. So, once again I took the breath, did the walk and began exhaling just as I passed behind the mobile carbon mnoxide factory.
Thank goodness my eyes didn't pop!
I hope that in about 42 days a certain President of the U.S. with the initials, Barack Obama, will take another look at national emission standards. Well, I'll be happy if he has one of his employees do it. What's Al Gore doing these days?

Sunday, December 07, 2008

Market Meltdown

Like most citizens of the world who have the luxury to contemplate their country's economy, I've been wondering where all of the money went. I feel that I have at least a basic understanding of who is losing money and why. I understand why the mortgage market is broken. I understand why the banks are not lending. I understand why Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke and Secretary of the Treasury Henry Paulson's bailout plan is not working (and why it can't work). What I don't understand is where all of this money that has been lost has gone.
Or do I?
At every step of the loan process, someone was taking a cut. In most cases the money was quickly turned into bonuses for employees and management at the mortgage companies, investment banks and even the regular banks. Dividends were paid out to shareholders and invstors holding premium stock. But can trillions really been paid out? Probably not, but certainly several hundred billion dollars were.
So where is the rest?
I started thinking about a question that may be as important as where the money went, where did the money come from? The answer to this question might shed some light on the first question.
A lot of the money, hundreds of billions to trillions of dollars, was float between companies and individuals as credit. That's right, they just made it up. There wasn't any money being exchanged, there were only promises of money in the future.
The Federal Reserve system has put hundreds of billions of dollars into this part of the economy, this is also money that was just created out of thin air, though in some case government bonds were sold.
The third place that was funding the bubble (sub-prime, housing, stock market) was market speculation. Didn't you ever wonder how a barrel of oil that can be turned into a set number of gallons of gas lets say, that will function to move automobiles roughly the same amount of miles, can be worth $70 one day, eight months later $150 and six months after that $40? The same amount of gas comes from the oil. Cars using the gas can drive roughly the same amount of miles. The price fluctuation is all speculation. While this doesn't necessarily create money out of thin air, it does provide great motivation for the first two reasons I give to do it.
Now market speculation is not reserved to the oil industry, but occurs in every industry, with every agricultural crop and in most service oriented areas of the economy.
Who was it deciding that your house should double in value every ten years? That would be the speculators.

So, the money went to the fat cats and the businesses they run to be distributed to shareholders of premium stock certificates that were eligible for dividends. But, most of the money that has "been lost" was never there in the first place.
If people knew this, they might be more likely to stop panicking, so why wouldn't the Federal Reserve or any other part of the government, or any of the businesses involved tell them this? It would help the market settle out now, wouldn't it? Probably not. I think it would lead to a (greater) distrust of the above mentioned entities and individuals associated with them. It might even lead to people losing their jobs and companies going out of business, maybe even to reforms to keep this from happening again in the future.
Well, we can't have that, now can we?