10/15/2008

Two weeks ago, we heard Ben Bernanke screaming, “Holy crap! If we don’t vote this $700 billion bailout package into law this very week the entire economy is going to implode and everyone will die!”

Or something like that.

Regardless of his actual words, the message from the Treasury and the Fed and all of the other so-called “experts” was that we needed the bailout package and we needed it right away. So Congress caved and gave them their money.

Now things aren’t looking that great, we’re still sliding inexorably into recession, and it’s clear the bailout really isn’t all it was advertised to be. But never fear– Bernanke is back, except this time he’s saying “Well, hey, it’s going to take some time for stuff to happen.”

So which is it? Quick action? Or wait and see?

I suspect I could do a better job running this economy than the clowns in charge right now. And I’m a physicist.

10/11/2008

I tried hard to be proud of my service, but all I could feel was shame. Racism could no longer mask the reality of the Iraq occupation. These are human beings. I’ve since been plagued by guilt. I feel guilt any time I see an elderly man, like the one who couldn’t walk who we rolled onto a stretcher and told the Iraqi police to take him away. I feel guilt any time I see a mother with her children, like the one who cried hysterically and screamed that we were worse than Saddam as we forced her from her home. I feel guilt any time I see a young girl, like the one I grabbed by the arm and dragged into the street.

We were told we were fighting terrorists; the real terrorist was me, and the real terrorism is this occupation. Racism within the military has long been an important tool to justify the destruction and occupation of another country. Without racism, soldiers would realize that they have more in common with the Iraqi people than they do with the billionaires who send us to war.

I threw families onto the street in Iraq, only to come home and find families thrown onto the street in this country, in this tragic and unnecessary foreclosure crisis. Our enemies are not five thousand miles away, they are right here at home, and if we organize and fight, we can stop this war, we can stop this government, and we can create a better world.

— Corporal Michael Prysner, U.S. Army Reserve Aerial Intelligence Specialist, in an excerpt from Winter Soldier: Iraq and Afghanistan

10/10/2008

Like everyone else, I’ve watched my stock portfolio get demolished the past few weeks. I kissed several years’ worth of retirement savings goodbye. But I suppose my losses pale in comparison to those felt by Bill Gates (who lost about $2.5 billion since September) and Larry Ellison (who dropped $1.6 billion). In fact, it’s Warren Buffett who has shown us how smart he is about investing, because he’s made $8 billion in the same period and now stands as the richest person in America.

Must be rough.

10/10/2008

I started reading Seth Godin’s blog and found some good articles. In one that caught my eye he discusses how many people perceive “effort as a myth”, meaning we are always seeing examples of others who are extraordinarily lucky and thus have an easier life than us, or accomplish things we never think we will.

But he dispels that myth by talking about luck, and what he says is insightful:

The thing about luck is this: we’re already lucky. We’re insanely lucky that we weren’t born during the black plague or in a country with no freedom. We’re lucky that we’ve got access to highly-leveraged tools and terrific opportunities. If we set that luck aside, though, something interesting shows up.

Delete the outliers– the people who are hit by a bus or win the lottery, the people who luck out in a big way, and we’re left with everyone else. And for everyone else, effort is directly related to success. Not all the time, but as much as you would expect. Smarter, harder working, better informed and better liked people do better than other people, most of the time.

Effort takes many forms. Showing up, certainly. Knowing stuff (being smart might be luck of the draw, but knowing stuff is the result of effort). Being kind when it’s more fun not to. Paying forward when there’s no hope of tangible reward. Doing the right thing. You’ve heard these things a hundred times before, of course, but I guess it’s easier to bet on luck.

I think this is true, and it inspires me to use more effort and less luck.

10/10/2008

“There are 10^11 stars in the galaxy. That used to be a huge number. But it’s only a hundred billion. It’s less than the national deficit! We used to call them astronomical numbers. Now we should call them economical numbers.”

— Richard Feynman

10/09/2008

I was poking around the internets tonight and found an interesting test. It’s intended to determine how well your eyes can distinguish colors. The test consists of arranging a four series of 25 randomly-ordered colored squares

into lines organized by hue.

According to the author of the article I was reading, this is quite difficult and in fact most people have mediocre “color vision”. I’m not sure if he was overstating the difficulty of the test or not, but after just a few minutes of rearranging the squares I was given a perfect score:

(No, I didn’t take the test over and over until I got it right. This was my first try.)

So I guess I have some kind of superhuman color vision or something.

10/08/2008

It’s rare that I finish an entire book in a single sitting. But I just did: I picked up Ron Paul’s The Revolution and started reading it, and was so enthralled that I blew through all 180 pages in one shot.

My political views are very much in the Libertarian camp, with some mixings of Constitutionalism. I seldom find anyone with whom I agree completely in politics. Even Laralee and I have our differences, although luckily she’s not a staunch Republican or Democrat. But reading Ron Paul’s book, I found that I agree with him on nearly every level, in every point he makes and every example he cites. His book is powerful, and it should be recommended reading for anyone who is watching what our nation is becoming and doesn’t like it.

When pollsters have shown up at my door, or called me on the phone, these past few weeks to ask who I’m going to vote for in the November presidential election, it’s always fun to tell them “Ron Paul”. They’re flustered because he’s not one of the choices: there are only two choices, right? The black guy and the old guy?

And despite the fact that Ron has withdrawn from the presidential race, I’m going to vote for him anyway. I suspect I’ll be joined by a million others who supported him in his unusual– but very eye-opening– bid for the presidency last year. There are a lot of people who resonate with what he’s proposing, and quite honestly it’s been a long time since I’ve agreed so wholeheartedly with what a politician is spouting.

Read the book. Vote for him. Join the revolution.

10/08/2008

Tom is always fond of posting song lyrics, and so I thought of him as I was listening to some Queensryche at work. “Spreading the Disease” just came up in my playlist, and the lyrics seem unusually apropos in the current political/economic environment:

Fighting fire with empty words
While the banks get fat
And the poor stay poor
And the rich get rich
And the cops get paid to look away
As the one percent rules America…