Quote of the Week

Not that this will be a habit mind you. I just thought this was an interesting quote. From The Big Money:

"Inflation is the bacteria of the financial world: It carries a certain ick factor and can cause a lot of trouble if allowed to grow unchecked, but a carefully calibrated amount is essential to keep the bigger, loftier parts of the system functioning properly."

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Palin as President

Funny - and creepy. Keep clicking on the door.

http://www.palinaspresident.us/

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Meltdown Defined

A friend sent this link: stick figures demonstrating the global financial meltdown.

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Slate Posts on Small Town Theory

An interesting article on Slate about three weeks ago takes on the whole "small town vs DC bit".

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OMG! Violence Against Women!

But - it had me laughing, bc despite knowing what would happen, I had no idea when.  

Embedded Video

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Barack Jokes About His Reputation and Identity

Funny stuff - and proof that even the ugliest partisanship does not extend fully into DC

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7675927.stm

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Yeah, that about sums it up.

I normally take Salon with a grain of salt, but I can never turn down a column by Joan Didion. Today she writes:

"We could argue over whether "intelligent design" should be taught in our schools as an alternative to evolution, and overlook the fact that the rankings of American schools have already dropped to twenty-first in the world in the teaching of science and twenty-fifth in the world in the teaching of math. We could argue over whether or not the McCain campaign had sufficiently vetted its candidate for vice-president, but take at face value the campaign's description of that vetting as "an exhaustive process" including a "seventy-question survey." Most people in those countries where they still teach math and science would not consider seventy questions a particularly taxing assignment, but we could forget this. Amnesia was our preferred state. In what had become our national coma we could forget about Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers and Merrill Lynch and AIG and Washington Mutual and the 81,000 jobs a month and the fact that the national debt had been approaching $10.6 trillion even before Henry Paulson and Ben Bernanke mentioned the imperative need to spend, which is to say to borrow, $700 billion for securities backed by bad mortgages, a maneuver likely to raise the debt another trillion dollars. ("We need this to be clean and quick," Paulson told ABC.)"

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Kids

What is it with the men I meet? They all ask pretty quickly about kids. They want them. I can't have them.

I want kids, have wanted kids, even though my life isn't set up for them financially. it's something to work for. However, I can't actually get pregnant.

I think I would make a great mom. I'm patient and diligent, A good listener and, when required, a strong advocate. Last summer, after a group of kids kicked my niece off a playground, I tracked them down along with their parents and got an apology.

So, this is the second man I've dated who jumps to the kid question right off the bat. He wants 'em. I can't have 'em. I mention adoption, but I know it's not the same. Men who want kids want to pass on their genetic material. In market terms, I'm a bad investment, a complete waste of time.

So anyway, it makes me sad. It's one of those life-unfair things. I see it, i know it, I understand it, but I don't like it and wish it weren't so, and I just had to say that

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Shatner

I don't know where to begin with this.

Whoever made it doesn't know how to end it.

Embedded Video

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In Lighter News

In this election season, we all need something to give some non-partisan relief. Herein, the Ukulele Orchestra plays the theme from 'Shaft' on, you guessed it, ukulele.

Watch for the weird-beard in the audience.

http://gawker.com/5059074/the-theme-to-shaft-ukulele-style

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Excesses of the Decade(s)

Here is something I don't understand: when people talk about the "excesses of the decade" as if excess defines a given decade.

The seventies: the excesses of the decade as demonstrated by disco, coke, and lounge suits. Then again, wasn't this the decade that faced stagflation and the first major oil crisis?

The eighties: Reagnomics, leveraged buyouts, and the "greed is good" meme. But this was a decade bookended by a nation hoping for "Morning in America" and the 1987 Wall Street collapse, not to mention the Savings and Loan crisis.

The nineties: a tech boom! the New Economy! Valuation based on hits per page! Yet, the decade started in a near-recessionary state and ended with the collapse of the first tech bubble, and there were adjustment fits as defense spending was downscaled.

Now, the NYT has referenced the excesses of the past decade, i.e. the aughts, and it is true that the housing bubble has been absurd and our economy has been propped up by easy credit. However, we had a near recession near the start, faced the collapse of Worldcom and Enron in accounting scandals, and now, we are coming into a very real recessionary state.

So which is it? Are these decades excessive in their entirety, or does the economy move in a cyclical state?

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