There was something else planned for this space, but plans often go awry.
Today I found out that a project that I've been struggling to finish up for the last two weeks might be canceled. I suppose I could retrace the arc, like gravity's rainbow, of a project that for the last two years has done nothing but cause us grief. But I won't bore you. The strange thing is that I am cautiously relieved -- cautious because after eight years here I know projects tend to be like bad horror flick villains, hard to kill -- and numbed. The truth is that I haven't done well with this and I was hoping to redeem myself in the final moments. Now it looks like I won't get that chance. It's that little lie you get away with, the dirt that goes undiscovered under the rug.
This past weekend was full of similar, albeit minor reversals. Saturday in the South Bay was canceled and replanned in a different guise. Hawaiian food became Chinese Food and drinks at a Mexican Restaurant turned into dessert at a Bistro. A Sunday hotpot in Milpitas with business school classmates turned into an indoor picnic with toddlers in San Rafael. All good, all unplanned.
They tell me that life's what happens when you're making plans. It happens alright, it happens.
As of yesterday, the House managed to pass all 6 (or 7) of the resolutions on their 100 hours agenda. Of course now the Senate has to get off it's collective ass and start making them into Bills. And then of course we have to wait for our beloved Dictator to figure out what he's going to do. Now I'm not saying that these 6 resolutions were great, or even good. But it's good to know that our elected officials are at the very least, back to work.
Yesterday I read a series of Op/Ed pieces (1,2,3) in the Wall Street Journal, courtesy of my good friend B. I can't say that I agree with how the author presented it all. But I can say that I've had the exact same thoughts. Afterward reading the article, I started to think about equality. First, what do we mean when we say equality? To me it's apparent that people are inherently unequal. Certainly, I will never been the equal of Tiger Woods on the golf course. I think what we're striving for is equal treatment. Even this is a tough nut to crack, however. Take education for example, if you have two students, one with a desire and an aptitude for math and the other with a desire and aptitude for english, what are you going to do? Should you continue to treat them the same? Should we take every potato in the world and make them all into french fries?
We can try to provide all our children with the same opportunities, but we can't expect the same results, nor should we encourage the same results. Why then do we have standardized tests? To measure how well we're doing right? Perhaps that's the key, once you measure how well some one is doing, you've tossed out any possibility of equality. That is to say, all measurement is inherently unequal. Anyway, just a thought.
As a gift, a consultant that works for me gave me a 256Mb USB drive. I had been wanting one for a while and two weekends ago it would have been useful to have around. The first thing I did was to copy some data from my work computer to bring home. Consequently, I deleted all those files. I'm sure you already know where I'm going with this. I just got around to downloading those files on to my laptop and of course, many of them were corrupted. I suppose I could make an analogy to getting older and forgetting things. I suppose I wonder about where lost data really goes. But it's late and I'm depressed now and this is the best I can do.
It's no secret that we are an acronym obsessed society. And as much as I'd like to eschew their use, I think some of them are rather creative. For example, you probably know about DINKs - Dual income, no kids. But did you know what DINKs eventually become? SITCOMs - Single income, two children, Oppressive Mortgage. And for you single people (women in particular) just so you don't feel left out, there's SINBAD - Single income, No Boyfriend, Absolutely desperate. There's plenty of others out there, but I thought I'd rack my brain to see what I'd come up with: HONEYs - Home owning, not engaged, yuppies; CUTs - Co-habitating, unwed, thirty-somethings; and ARTs - Already, Retired, Twenty-somethings. Pretty bad huh? Alas, that's the best I could do for today. Tomorrow's not looking so good either....
It's been an eventful, if not exciting weekend. We made our way into the city on Saturday morning to get some pants altered and to do the same to C.'s hair. Afterwards we wrapped wonton's at R.'s and finished off the night changing a tire on the side of the freeway near Emeryville. We went to a bridal fair on Sunday, bought lamps at Lamps Plus, had dinner at Sommerset and then settled in to watch the premiere of 24. C. had to work today and I had a couple hours of it to do myself. Afterwards I made my way to Alameda for some quick Korean BBQ with friends and then back to Emeryville to watch Children of Men with J. Now I'm waiting for C. to come home so that we can run out to have dinner with some friends. Perhaps I should tape tonight's 24....
Just in case you missed it, "I've committed more than 20,000 additional American troops to Iraq."
I am reminded in these dark times -- by the words of a fool ... the FOOLER, if you will -- of something a truly wise man said, "The significant problems we face cannot be solved by the same level of thinking we used, when we created them."
One of the things you will hear when you seek good advice about investing in financial markets is to go buy an index fund (or stock) and forget about it. This is based on the theory that over the long haul there is no way to "beat" the market. It's also based on the practical fact that the less people monkey around with your money, the less of it they will take; also, the less you worry about your investments the happier you will be. This is all well and good, what surprises me is that it passes as profound wisdom. Indexes were created to measure the progress of the overall market. Their performance, broadly speaking, is an average of the performance of all U.S. stocks. So why can't these fund managers with their inside knowledge of equities out perform the market? Simple, the better they do as a good, the better the market does. On average, they simply CAN'T do better.
So I find it somewhat surprising that people are outraged at the ridiculous amounts of money being paid out to well-performing fund managers. I think that these can't possibly be the same people that have their money invested in the very funds they are criticizing. I mean, if you can't stand the enormous bonuses paid out to these individuals, pull your money out, put it into an index fund, that's where all the smart money is anyway. And if everyone invested in indexes, we could all be average together.
I was listening to a report about a guy in Iraq who had to choose between having his wife give birth in a hospital in a Shiite part of Baghdad or a Sunni part. He choose the one that was in an area of town which was not friendly to his faith, because it was better or closer or both, and risked being killed by the roving militia which came out every night. It struck me as courageous to simply exist in such a state of (what I would consider) powerlessness. Seriously, what kinda of choice is that? I think about how it compares to the complaints I often hear about how bad our country is an how we, as US citizens, have little power to stop it. We all have a little bit invested in this country, and there are lot of people around the world who will be affected by how we, as a collective, perform. Why is it that we can do little better than look to the people at the top and wonder why they're getting paid so much to do a such a shitty job
I have two friends who wed a couple of years ago. I was a little bit surprised because they had an on-going argument about where to settle down, the SF Bay Area or LA, as one was from down there and the other had always lived here. I find it curious that two regions so close geographically can be so different as to cause people to be wholly for one and wholly against the other. I imagine either seems pretty much the same to people outside of California. Yet, after only a couple of days visiting, I can say that I physically can't stand LA. Let me be clear, I have many friends there and I love going to visit. I don't mind the traffic and I am probably the only person that thinks that drivers are ruder up here. But in the end, it's the environment that kills me. I think if I stayed for too long I'd become addicted to Claritin. I found the air in New York easier to breathe.
Yesterday I listened to Terry Gross interview Sasha Baron Cohen. Turns out it wasn't terribly interesting, but if you love Borat and all of his other personas, you might want to listen to it on-line.
I also watched Nancy Pelosi become the first woman speaker of the house on C-Span. For some reason it was actually interesting to watch ... for about five minutes. Oh well, I don't really care if they're interesting, I care if they do the job that they promised to do.
We're leaving on a jet plane for warmer climes. It's been too long since we were in the City of Angels. Like most trips down there it will be far too short, I think I have just as many friends there as I have up here, and just as much familial obligation.
Last year I would have taken one look at the entry and deleted the whole thing. But this year I think I'll let it stand.
Late last week, in the waning hours of the old year, the office being as quiet as it ever is, I was in the hallway talking to a co-worker. For whatever reason he commented that he didn't trust politicians. As I am prone to do, without thinking I say, "You're not supposed to trust politicians."
"Why's that?"
And, because I have a horrible habit of saying things for shock value and not admitting it, I started to defend my statement, "You're not supposed to trust them, because power ... because people corrupt power. We, the people, we have the power, and that power comes with responsibility. And we then delegate that power. But you can't delegate the responsibility. Look it, there's a lot of pressure: lobbyists, money, what-not. And these are important decisions they're making. But you hand a guy a job and then you tell him you don't care. That's basically what we do. When they do a good job we don't notice and when they do a bad job we barely notice. When people do a good job you should tell them and when they do a bad job you should tell them. But we don't. It's our fault. It's our power, our responsibility. We're lazy, we've corrupted the power."
He just sort of nodded at this. After a few moments of silence we wished each other a happy new year and went on our way. I was reminded of this exchange listening to NPR this morning. And so here's a new year's resolution: I will pay more attention this year to what's going on in my country. And hopefully the few of your who still read this will do the same. Here's a first step, in the first hundred hours (which starts next Tuesday) of this next congress the Democrats plan to pass six (seven) major reforms:
1. Enact 9/11 Commission RecommendationsI'll let you know how it turns out too.