I'll be turning 41 tomorrow. My 40th year was really a bit of a blur. MS clouded my thoughts and made really lethargic for long periods of time but i think I've got it mostly under control now. My doctor explained MS like this, there are two ongoing issues with the disease, damage to the nerves, and the inflammation that causes that damage.

Right now there isn't a whole lot that can be done about the nerve damage, but the inflammation is a good target for improvement. I stumbled across Gary Taubes's writing about weight gain. His ideas that insulin, caused by carbs in the diet, is the main factor is weight gain seem to make a lot of sense, and it certainly has led to me losing some weight. What I was surprised about was how much clearer my thinking was and how much better my balance was. That didn't make a lot of sense to me, but I liked it.

In my usual poring over the internet, I think I stumbled across the reason for that. It turns out that carb rich foods spur on different types of inflammation. I don't know the mechanism, but it certainly seems to fit my experience.

I have also come across a new supplement that I think is really helping me. It's called Anatabloc and it is supposed to be a miracle anti-inflammatory substance. There have been some great studies done on various conditions and it seems to really help. This stuff is really expensive as far as supplements go, but in my short time using it, I feel like its worth it. This is the very definition of a small sample size, but in my two days at work with it, I have felt almost normal. In addition, I have not had any leg cramps at night either. I'm going to keep using this for a couple of months and see how it goes. Think I'll give it a test and try a favorite meal that is guaranteed to make me feel blah, Chic-Fil-A. One of their sandwiches and fries will usually make me swim my and dizzy, we'll see if this supplement has a mitigating effect.

I can do that because I have the next 7 days off! I'll be going down to see the folks and see a friend or two, should be fun.

They've finally made a digital camera that I think I'd like to use. Usually that would be no big deal, Isaac liking a camera, big surprise. Of course I just recently talked about how digital doesn't excite me and I'm going to do analog stuff… Of course, the last half of my "analog" photography was going to be digital anyway. There's still the magic of the alchemy and the making of a physical thing. And of course it feels good doing something low tech. So I think I'll still do it, I think. The problem isn't the cost so much, the problem is that the cost involved is on decidedly unsexy things. I need to get a scanner, a light meter, chemicals, and some processing equipment like beakers and tanks. To me, that's like buying a bunch of socks. Necessary but not something you enjoy spending money on.

Buying a new camera on the other hand… And of course, the camera is just an excuse to buy some lenses. I am still a total lens snob. I love good lenses for the images they create but also as objects themselves. That's why I could never own any Sigma or Tamron lenses. They might have been fine performers, they felt like junk to me. My Leica lenses, various Zeiss lenses I've owned or own, the Pentax lenses I've owned, and all of the large format lenses have been joys to use and to hold. That's one of the reasons this camera has caught my eye.

 

It is a bit odd looking, as far as cameras go, but the top plate and back plate are really what caught my eye.

 

 

(all pictures from Pentax)

I have never liked digital cameras. I have long since appreciated their performance, but the cameras themselves were just awful. Lots of little buttons spread everywhere. On small cameras, important setting hidden inside menus or arranged in weird ways. This one is the first reasonably priced digital camera that appeals to me. Very clean, the important stuff is readily accessible without a lot of gunk clogging up the interface. The conventional wisdom on the camera forums is that this thing is the ugliest camera ever made. That was my first impression as well. But the more I looked at it, the more I realized I was just reacting that way because other cameras don't look like that, and maybe the yellow version that is being shown had something to do with it as well. The more I looked at it, the more I appreciated how it was designed.

I had previously liked some of the small Sony cameras. They don't make any lenses I like but you could adapt other companies lenses to them as long as you were willing to give up auto focus, auto exposure and even auto aperture. If I were going to go that route, I would have used the Pentax lenses (21mm, 35mm macro, and 55mm) because they are amazing and they are about 1/3 the cost of the likes of Leica. So when Pentax came out with this camera, things started to fall into place.

I have some other things that need to be taken care of (oh the joys of adulthood…) and it's still not nice enough outside to go shooting anyway. I'm hoping that by the time spring rolls around I'll be shooting again...

 

 

 

Dad and Butler brought up my CD collection when they moved me into Rick's place. I packed them up before I went to Yemen and haven't seen them since. It's amazing how much space 400+ CDs take up! I'm in the process of ripping them to my computer where they will take up considerably less space. Don't know what I'll do with them afterwards, do people still buy used CDs?

The box I'm working on now has part of my classical collection with some jazz thrown in. I'm struck at the number of discs I got through services like the BBC magazine and the Musical Heritage Society. Before them it was BMG and some other CD service. Before that I was a member of the RCA club for cassettes. You remember those clubs right? They send you 12 or 13 albums for a penny and you only have to agree to buy… what was it, 10? more CDs in the next year. Of course b y default they would send you one a month unless you sent in the paperwork on time. Each time you bought something at full price (17.99 if I remember correctly) they would give you a certificate to buy the next one at half price.

I tried to remember to send in the "do not send me the selection of the month" letter every time for the popular music clubs. I'd screw up from time to time of course and I'd get something or other that I didn't want. I think the only time that ever worked out was the time I got Pat Benetar's "Live From Earth" cassette. That was pretty good, at least 13 year old me thought so...

I went ahead and got the selections of the month with the classical clubs mostly because I wanted to hear a lot of different things. The BBC Music magazine was supposedly a cornucopia of classical music information, but I really only ever cared about the CDs that came with it every month. I got some stuff that I never would have thought of getting that way. I never would have dived into early music otherwise. Of course, I also wouldn't have gotten any of the early English operas either, anyone want a copy of "Alfred?"

We've come so far in such a short period of time. Convenience is king nowadays. It is trivially easy to find and download almost anything you want. The world of popular music is your oyster with new streaming services like Spotify MOG. Classical and jazz folks still have to buy their stuff mostly, but it is out there. The streaming and downloading options for popular music sound just fine with the compressed formats. The classical types have a variety of high res formats available to them too.

When the CD came out, we couldn't believe how nice it was. There was no surface noise, no pops, no cracks and most people mistook the absence of defects for sound quality. CDs and CD players eventually got really good and we figured, "This is it, this is the ultimate audio medium." Of course having no medium at all has proven to be far nicer, and at no penalty of sound quality. When I sold audio gear, I fantasized about having a 300 CD changer so I could have most of my music in my system at all times. These eventually came into being but they were always too clunky, slow, and prone to breaking down. Now I can stream 12 million songs whenever I want for 10 bucks a month, life is good!

 

ADDENDUM:

 

I just googled BMG Music Service, just for old times sake. It's hilarious. Towards the bottom, there is a pane that says BMG Music Service is what Columbia House Music was. Then the pane above that says that BMG Music Service is closed and is now Columbia House DVD service… Anyway, the deal isn't too bad really, you have to get 12 CDs for a little under 50 bucks. That's pretty cheap. I can't imagine having to deal with the clutter of all of those CDs mind you. The selection is straight out of the 80's. They boast of having over 14,000 albums to choose from! That was impressive back a ways, but nowadays with iTunes having 18 million songs, 14,000 is laughable. I can only imagine that it is filled with the blandest radio hits type of folks too. Good luck with that Columbia/BMG/Columbia!

I've been pretty good about my diet. I'm allowing myself one day a week to eat bread or rice, the rest of the time it's veggies and meat. I've felt pretty good, very little of the usual muddy headedness and balance problems. It's also striking what happens when I deviate from it. My father and stepmother moved me into my new/old place (more about that in another post) and then took me out to dinner. We went to a really nice Indian place around the corner. You can't very well eat Indian without bread and rice, so I ate bread and rice. Ice cream was offered later and I couldn't say no. The next night, my mother made a family favorite, Hungarian goulash. I have no idea if it's actually Hungarian or not, but it sure is tasty. It's served over a bed of noodles. Well, it's an unusual treat, and mom made it, so of course I was going to chow down. I felt lousy for the next two days. Dizzy, fatigued, and muddleheaded. Started eating my usual meat veggie diet and it cleared up within a day. Maybe it's a coincidence, but it does fit in with the longer pattern I've noticed.

As far as the diet part is concerned, I weighed myself yesterday and I came in at 204. That compares with 219 three months ago. Yes, I used two different scales, but that's a big enough difference that I know there's been a real loss.  It's good to drop the weight, my jeans certainly fit better. I've also started to check my blood pressure in the morning. I'm averaging around 120/67ish. The months previous to me starting my diet I was hitting 130 and 140 at my monthly infusions. Yes, it's only been a handful of days, and my previous measurements were only done once a month where any old thing could throw them off. Still, I like the difference:) It's possible losing the weight could be enough to lower the BP, I don't really care. I'm going to continue weighing myself and taking my blood pressure, who knows, maybe I'll start exercising or something too. The diet is pretty easy to stick to, especially since I have a cheat day built in. After I've been on it for several more months, I'll go get my blood drawn and see what it looks like.

"It rains on the just and the unjust alike. What do you think that means?"

"Oh, teacher! It means good things happen to both good and bad people."

 

That was an exchange I had with my class in Yemen. The saying is from the Bible (I can't remember where in there) and my first reaction to the student was that they had it completely backwards. WIth just a second's worth of thought though, I realized that their view of what rain means is probably a lot closer to the Bible's than my Euro-centric vision. Rain is a good thing when you live in a parched place. While we usually associate rain with melancholy, cancelled picnics, and general ickiness, they rightfully see it as a life giving gift.

It made me wonder what else we have been getting precisely wrong out of the Bible because of the culture we are in now. Some things that seem obvious to us might have had a very different meaning back then. We need to remember who was being taught to. I don't have any hard evidence, but it certainly seems like Yemen is much closer in climate and culture to 30 AD than we are in the US. With that cultural filter put into place, let's take a look at two different well known teachings from the New Testament.

But I tell you, Do not resist an evil person. If someone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also.

This is usually seen as a straightforward appeal to pacifism by Jesus. If a guy hits you, you shouldn't resist, right? Well, it could be a little different… The translation of that passage is pretty consistent, with most translators using slap, some use smite. The really interesting thing is that they all say "cheek." None of them say, "If someone gives you a black eye, don't hit him back," or even "If someone slugs you in a bar…" No, it says if someone slaps your cheek, you should offer the other one to be slapped as well. What's the significance of a slap on the cheek?

Even in western culture, a slap across the cheek is the universal symbol of disrespect. There is no damage involved, there are far more violent things you can do than slap someone. What a slap offers that a punch doesn't is shame. I was warned by some of the expat "old timers" in Yemen to never slap a guy. If I got into a fight, well, that can happen. But if you slap him, he will be forced to defend his honor and that will have much worse endings than a brawl.

With that in mind, that passage may not have much to do with pacifism but with keeping your cool and not escalating things. Don't let concepts of "honor" drive you to committing a worse sin than the guy that hit you did. Modern day Yemen, and I'm sure all of Semitic culture going waaaaaaay back has many problems with honor related violence. I'm pretty convinced this passage is addressing that instead of being a blanket exhortation of pacifism.

 

Homosexuality isn't actually mentioned all that much in the Bible. Lots of conservatives will point to the Old Testament's "sodomites" as a counter example but word is a really dodgy interpretation. The King James version sounds weighty, but most Bible scholars lament its awful translation. A more accurate translation is "temple prostitute." It certainly makes more sense when read that way.

Jesus didn't actually say anything at all about homosexuality. I think that's significant as I put the most weight on what "The Man" says more than anyone else. But others disagree. Paul was pretty straightforward in his commendation of homosexuality though, and that's where a lot of nontrivial discussion about it in Christian circles comes from.

My personal opinion is that a lot of Paul's writing sounds like Paul spouting off. He certainly doesn't sound like Jesus, and he wasn't around for any of Jesus's teachings. But let's ignore that for the time being… It shouldn't be a surprise, but there is actually a fair amount of confusion about the translation of the word Paul used that most conservatives assume is homosexual. It could mean a variety of other things instead. But let's ignore that too and concentrate on the audience that Paul was preaching to.

One of the worst kept secrets in the middle east is how much guy on guy sex there is. To our eyes, it is clearly homosexual sex, but they have a little different view of it in Yemen. Keep in mind that guys never see any women over there that aren't their mother or sister until they get married. Starting in puberty, guys are only with other guys. Hormones being what they are, things go on. From a western perspective, they are all engaging in homosexual acts. Over there, people tend to mostly ignore younger guys fooling around with each other. It's a little more tricky when they are older. Yemen, like most Arab countries doesn't consider the one "giving" to be engaging in a homosexual act. It's my understanding that if you're married and doing this, it's a much more serious problem...

My point is this, I don't think it's too much of a stretch to think that the same behavior was going on back then. Taken in that context, I think it very likely that Paul would be addressing the guys screwing around because they are horny. That's a far cry from people wanting to marry each other.

Maybe I'm full of it, but I really do believe that a lot of the stuff we supposedly learned from stories in the Bible have been twisted around completely. That is a translation issue, but we need to understand how big a role culture plays in understanding what is said. Somehow we need to put ourselves into the hot, arid, conservative culture of 30 AD. Yemen is about as close as we'll get today.

I've been following the Facebook page dedicated to former employees of Penn Camera and participating in the nostalgia. People are digging out old pictures and we're all remembering what it used to be like.

It got me thinking about photography again. I haven't been shooting much in years. I brought back a smattering of old pictures from mom's place, mostly stuff I did in school and decided to share some of them on Facebook. Looking at, and holding these things brought back a lot of memories.

Digital photography has never done much for me. I just can't get excited about it. When I looked at the prints and polaroids I made in school, I remember shooting it, but I also remember making that object. THe process of developing the negatives, cutting them up, making the prints in the darkroom, even matting and framing them are all part of the interest for me. There is a difference between capturing an image and taking a step in making an object. The film I develop was what received the light, and the chemicals I chose determined how that light would look on the film.

I know, it all sounds silly, but it does make a difference. Digital photography to me puts almost all of the emphasis on getting the shot. Yes, there is post processing, but I always feel like I'm doing a spreadsheet or something when I'm manipulating data.

I have been thinking that I should get a "real" digital camera soon. They really are remarkable these days, far far better than when I was selling them. No matter what comes out, I just can't get excited about the gear, or the process. Certainly not excited enough to spend what it will take to get one of the cameras that interest me.

Then it struck me. All of the most recent pictures that I have a connection to were taken with cameras I still own. My best pictures in Yemen were taken with a Chinese folding camera from the mid sixties and a pinhole camera. Here was my rather radical idea; why not shoot film?

I immediately liked the idea. I figured I'd do a "last hurrah" with the cameras I own. Thought maybe I'd use the B&W slide service I've used in the past. The slides you get back from them are just gorgeous. Shooting film in the quantities I have in mind isn't all that expensive, or at least it wasn't until I looked at those slides. It would almost $20 a roll in processing, etc. Way too much, no matter how beautiful.

The second thought that struck me was why don't I develop it myself? Film processing is dead simple, and incredibly cheap. Now we're talking...

I'll need to buy a few more things like a light meter, processing equipment, and the chemicals. The big expense will be the scanner. Yes, I could buy a passable digital camera for that kind of money, but I wouldn't use it. I may have finally grown up, the thought of owning the niftiest camera doesn't really excite me any more. The few things I have to buy are less expensive enow than they were when I sold them.

Here's my plan. I am going to primarily shoot with medium format film with small cameras. I'll develop the film myself and scan it myself. I'm going to try to use a single film type but probably use two different developers. This all sounds really exciting to me now, with any luck I'll be ready (and still excited) when spring comes around. It'll be good to flex my creative muscles again.

I cringe whenever I read about child labor laws. Western, prosperous countries have a real aversion to the thought of child laborers and anew quick to denounce and to combat it. Every time another concession is reached to limit child labor the success is trumpeted and progress is seen to have been made. Funnily enough, I have never seen any of those organizations track the outcomes of the children themselves to see if they are being helped.

Like everything else in life, the issue of child labor is about options. I can guarantee that whenever you find child laborers, you will find crushing poverty as well. I believe the best way to think about child labor is to imagine what they will do if they are not allowed to work legally. Clearly, if they needed to work before, the passing of a law will not change that circumstance. We have an analog of what happens right here in this country with illegal aliens. When you are not permitted to work legally, you are driven underground. You might find regular work, but at a much lower rate of pay. The ones that aren't lucky enough to find work as gardeners, carpenters, cooks, etc. or aren't willing to accept the low wages end up in the black markets. Drugs, prostitution, and other types of illegal activities are careers open to people that can't find legal jobs.

I don't have any evidence, but there are plenty of anecdotal accounts of sheet children being forced out of jobs by the new laws and into much less savory occupations. The stories from Yemen alone are heartbreaking, I can't imagine what its like in more urban places like SE Asia.

I wish that people that pursue these laws would spend as much time worrying about what the kids will do once they lose their job. I also wish that people in the US and Europe would understand that they don't really have a good idea of what real poverty is like and what choices people living in it face. Child labor is a terrible thing, no doubt, but if we're going to take that away from kids, we need to provide them with something other than the thing they are avoiding by working...

I had been working at Penn camera off and on for almost 7 years when I decided to move out of the country. I had learned a lot at Penn. My sales technique was honed there and I learned how to deal with people, both customers and employees. I thought it was time for a change, so I decided to move.
I eventually decided to move to Yemen. The decisions leading up to that are a whole other story. By the time the date for me leaving came up, I had saved up over 20 grand for the trip. Believe me, I thought long and hard if spending  that money was the best thing I could do. Ultimately, I spent my mid-life crisis  over there, you can read my blog on my time over there if you want.
I could have invested that money, or I could have put it down on a house. All the while I would still be working at Penn. While I was in Yemen, the stock market tanked and I lost about half of my investments. I would have undoubtedly have invested that 20 thousand the same way, so I would have probably lost 10 grand. I felt pretty good about that, my experiences in Yemen were certainly worth that! Of course, I could have bought a house. We all saw what happened to housing prices...
So, looking back, I cannot believe how lucky I am to have spent my money on that experience. Looking back, it was the very best thing I could have done. May be the only time I've done that...
When I came back, I needed a job. Ramona was more than happy to hire me again. I really wanted something different though, so I stayed unemployed for a while longer while I looked around. After I got diagnosed, I was even more in need of a job. I had finally gotten through to the company I had wanted to work for, and they offered me a job, at  little more than half of what Penn had been paying me. Ugh. That was a tough decision. Ultimately, I couldn't shake the feeling that Penn was on shaky ground going into the future. Photography just wasn't what it once was, and it's all Penn really did. So I took the hit in pay in the short term.
It has payed off. Penn Camera declared bankruptcy the other day. The company I work for is incredibly stable and I now make what I used to. Plus, the benefits are quite a bit better. I was about 50/50 at the time I made my decision, thank God I did what I did. I also think that my trip to Yemen helped with this as well. If I had been working at Penn all along, it would have been much more difficult, maybe even impossible to take that hit in pay to work somewhere else. Starting from scratch, I didn't have the baggage of a rent or lifestyle maintenance to worry about. I had gotten used to being poor, I even lived in a third world country!
So maybe my trip to Yemen was divine providence. It was the best use of my money, it was an amazing experience, it was the very last time I could do something like that, and I think it helped me start a new career. If I had stayed put, done the safe thing, at best I would now be on disability. I certainly would be a lot poorer in spirit.
 
My heart goes out to the folks that were still working at Penn. Starting over is tough, believe me I know.
I'll miss Penn Camera, and I'm thanking God I made the decisions that I did. Who would have ever thought that Yemen would be the best thing to happen to me?:)

Glenn Greenwald hits one out of the park when describing the relative shortcomings of the two more "liberal" candidates in this year's presidential running, he gives what he calls an honest, candid, and rational way for a democrat to defend voting for Obama.

Yes, I’m willing to continue to have Muslim children slaughtered by covert drones and cluster bombs, and America’s minorities imprisoned by the hundreds of thousands for no good reason, and the CIA able to run rampant with no checks or transparency, and privacy eroded further by the unchecked Surveillance State, and American citizens targeted by the President for assassination with no due process, and whistleblowers threatened with life imprisonment for “espionage,” and the Fed able to dole out trillions to bankers in secret, and a substantially higher risk of war with Iran (fought by the U.S. or by Israel with U.S. support) in exchange for less severe cuts to Social Security, Medicare and other entitlement programs, the preservation of the Education and Energy Departments, more stringent environmental regulations, broader health care coverage, defense of reproductive rights for women, stronger enforcement of civil rights for America’s minorities, a President with no associations with racist views in a newsletter, and a more progressive Supreme Court.

 

He was comparing Obama's policies to Ron Paul's. Greenwald does a good job of pointing out why people might want to vote for either one, but it is important to look at what "liberals" should value more highly. Not enough liberals admit to Obama's shortcomings, and they are numerous from a liberal's point of view. In the same vein, liberals seem to have a knee jerk reaction to Ron Paul without giving enough credence to his strong points. The article is illuminating in that it exposes the desire to instantly discredit "the competition" for any negative parts of their plank. Of course doing that requires you to overlook the very real problems of your own candidate. No politician is free from taint, free from problems. What needs to be done is to prioritize what is important to you and then decide if a president can wield much power over those things.

I've written at length about how disappointed I am with Obama's foreign policy, war mongering, executive power grabs, solidifying of Bush doctrine, bailouts, and erosion of civil liberties. Ron Paul is directly opposed to all of those things, and has been for 40 years. Yes, some of Paul's theories make my skin crawl, I don't like his stance on immigration, and I'm not sure I agree with his abortion policy objectives, but I'll take the trade off. I'd like to think that all of the people that hated Bush Jr. would also like Paul more than Obama simply because Obama is a lot closer to Bush in all the worst ways.

I've met plenty of people that don't like Obama, but have shrugged their shoulders and said, "What choice do I have? Perry? Gingrich?" It may still come to that, but there is a chance that we might have a very real alternative this next time around. Say what you want about Paul, but he is very different than Obama, and I think his positives outweigh the negatives. Suffice it to say that he really differs from the rank and file of the republicans too, so he still may not get the nomination. If he does win the nomination, I will have no choice but to vote for him because I hate war. War on other countries and war on our own citizens (both through military actions and the war on drugs). If he doesn't get the nomination, who will agitate against war? Certainly not any of the other republicans, and Obama can't exactly repudiate all of his foreign policy. Read the article and watch the video clips, Ron Paul is the only one saying what needs to be said.

 

Progressives and the Ron Paul Fallacies

 

Newsletters published under Ron Paul's name have started to be talked about again now that he's a front runner in Iowa. These came up last election too. He disavowed them then and now. They are still a problem for him though. The newsletters are pretty bad, they talk about race wars, gay bashing, and anti-semitism. Paul has claimed that he wasn't involved in writing them and wasn't aware of what was being published. That's tough to believe...

On the other hand, the newsletters really don't sound like him. Paul has been very consistent over the years in preaching about liberty and freedom. That includes gay rights and the ignoring of color. How many other politicians point out the racist motivations for drug laws? Surely a racist wouldn't explain how drug laws unfairly target minorities, let alone point out that it was the minority use of those drugs that led to the formation of those laws?

Paul has been consistent enough with his proclamations and votes that I don't think that anyone really thinks he is a racist. I don't understand the tactic some of the really far left commentors have used, essentially claiming that because there are racists and homophobes supporting Ron Paul that he shouldn't be supported. Part of libertarianism is the tolerance of ideas, including ones you don't like. I certainly don't see why Paul shouldn't take money from anyone that wants to give to him. After all, if you can take money from racists and use it to promote liberty for all, that's got to be a good thing.

I think the best critique of this situation is that it shows a real problem with Paul's decision making process and attention to detail. Certainly it calls into question just how politically un-savvy he is. Sure, there is an impetus to allow anyone to help you out, and in libertarian political circles I'm sure it's impolitic to critique belief systems. Still, making a stand against racists shouldn't be too hard to do and him not doing it might cost him in the long term. Shame, really, as his nomination would really show the political process actually representing people's frustration over the status quo. I'm pretty sure I'm going to be disappointed, again...

US doubt intelligence that led to Yemen strike. That's the name of an article in the Wall Street Journal that describes what sounds like a Yemeni official fingering a political rival as Al Queda so the US could kill him. I've been beating this drum for a long time. The Yemeni government has long used the bogeyman of Queda to eliminate rivals. It was commonly understood over there that when the Yemeni government claimed to have killed Queda operatives, it was probably killing political rivals. When there was tribal violence, it was usually ascribed to Queda.

All forms of intelligence in Yemen are untrustworthy. There are too many local power struggles and not enough transparency to accurately understand what motivates most of the violence over there. It shouldn't surprise anyone that US military force is used as a convenient way of solving local disagreements. If we give them the power to direct force, it will be used in ways that best suit them.

I'm still not convinced that Queda in Yemen poses any threat to the US. They were the picture of incompetence in Yemen, and their attempts outside of the US have been laughable. Even if they are a threat, Yemeni sources are about the least trustworthy you can find. I don't think it's too much to ask that we get clear intelligence before we kill someone. Is that really too weird a suggestion?

I've been going to physical therapy for a couple of weeks now. I already feel stronger. I don't have the worrying weakness going down the stairs, and I can balance much better with my eyes open. Eyes closed is still a bit of an adventure. I've been doing an exercise where I walk heel to toe in a straight line. I feel like I'm on a tightrope even though I'm just walking across the floor. Lots of balance checks and arm waving to keep on the line. I tried doing it with my eyes closed for the first time the other day. Woosh. I used a couple of poles like I was cross country skiing to keep my balance. Usually my legs are really tired at the end of these sessions, the use of the poles made my arms and shoulders tired. Still, it was good to do, I'm sure I'll get better as I do it more often.

The most important thing I've learned so far is that I can't exercise like a normal person. If I were training for sprints or something, I would need to push myself and wear myself out during the workout. I've been told by my therapist that that kind of workout is detrimental for someone with MS. If I exhaust myself, it will take much longer to recover, and I will feel worse than when I started. That certainly jibes with my experience. We are taking it much more slowly than I would have anticipated, but I think it's paying dividends. I'm doing horizontal squats at a much lower weight than I had been doing them before. We keep building up the number of reps and the number of sets, but it is done in such a way that I'm not getting exhausted.

The bad thing is that I am now super paranoid about how much effort I'm expending. I now realize that when I leave work exhausted, I am really doing myself no favors and setting myself up to feel rotten for longer periods of time. I've missed a fair about of work these past couple of weeks because I'm afraid of going to work tired and then wearing myself out walking around for the rest of the day. I'm going to have to make a concerted effort to sit down at work, that's all, no more giving up every ounce of energy. Like I said, I do feel stronger already and I think if I keep up a good mix of proper exercise and good rest, things will be much better long term. Wish me luck!

I would rather live anywhere than North Korea. Somalia, Cuba, even Haiti are more appealing. The DPRK is the last holdout of old school "socialist" autocracies. Yes, both Cuba and Venezuela are still claiming to be socialist, but neither reach the depths of North Korea, the Soviet Union, Pol Pot's regime, or even East Germany. I put socialism in quotes because of course socialism is just a ruse used by the leaders to grasp power and stay there. Those sorts of places have the worst inequality of anyplace. I think Hugo Chavez had the same idea, but he isn't able to muster the same kind of oppression. Among all of socialism's flaws, the attraction of power hungry men and their ability to wield it ruthlessly is probably at the top of the list.

Well, the world has one fewer thank God. We can only hope that this destabilizes the existing power structure. It's amazing to think that the Dear Leader managed to put North Korea in place where a civil war would be about the best case scenario and the status quo the worst. My heart goes out to all of the people of North Korea, you've suffered for too long.

 

Kim Jong-Un Privately Doubting He's Crazy Enough to Run North Korea from the Onion

Comparing North and South Korea at night

Remembering Kim Jong-Il's Victims by Reason magazine

American Blogger's Vacation in North Korea

I've been on the diet almost two weeks now. Gotta say, I'm impressed. I think I've lost 6 or 7 pounds, it's hard to tell since I don't have a scale but my pants are now noticeably loose. My jeans had been uncomfortably tight, now I'm cinching the belt a bit more. Plus, I actually have to tie my pajama bottoms now. Plus, I still haven't had any dizzy/lightheaded spells since I started the diet. All I've done is cut out most of my carbs. All I'm eating is meat and vegetables. Gary Taubes ideas made a lot of sense to me and so far I'd say he was on the right track.

He actually advocates a high fat diet, and I've been following that. One aspect of his theory certainly seems true, the number of calories really doesn't matter. I have been eating eggs and sausage for breakfast and learning to love bratwursts, kielbasas, and other sausages. I've had more than a few burgers in the last couple of weeks. In short, I'm sure that my calorie consumption is far higher than it had been before, but my weight has come down. Eating at work has proven to be a little more challenging, I can only eat but so many salads. There is a mall Thai place, I can eat there (with no rice) since they don't bread their meat and they have lots of veggies. I'm going to have to find some variety there so I don't go crazy.

As much as I love my white rice, bread, crackers, not to mention sweets, it hasn't been all that hard to do this. Partly I think it's because what I do eat is so filling I don't have the cravings to munch nearly as much as before. I've also found some things that allow me to snack, like Trader Joes power berry trek mix (almonds, cashews, dried cranberries, and yes, some chocolate) and their Soy and flaxseed chips. I do have to watch them, but they have a lot of fiber so they aren't as carb heavy as regular chips are.

I'm also eating more veggies. Trying to eat more salads, green beans, and mixed vegetables. Yeah, they have carbs, but not a whole lot. Think I'll be OK with a few creeping in here and there:)

Weight is only one part of course, I'm going to try to keep tabs on my blood pressure, cholesterol, etc. Taubes is adamant that there is very little science to back up the conventional wisdom that fats clog up your arteries. Still, when you go against the grain, you need to make sure that there's a reason the conventional wisdom is what it is.

Anyway, I plan on keeping on as long as I keep losing weight and feel good. I'll keep you updated!

Ludwig von Mises summed up the entirety of political "solutions when he penned:

 

Scarcely anyone interests himself in social problems without being led to do so by the desire to see reforms enacted. In almost all cases, before anyone begins to study the science, he has already decided on definite reforms that he wants to put through. Only a few have the strength to accept the knowledge that these reforms are impracticable and to draw all the inferences from it. Most men endure the sacrifice of the intellect more easily than the sacrifice of their daydreams. They cannot bear that their utopias should run aground on the unalterable necessities of human existence. What they yearn for is another reality different from the one given in this world. They long for the “leap of humanity out of the realm of necessity and into the realm of freedom.” They wish to be free of a universe of whose order they do not approve.

 

I got that from the Mises Institute blog talking about how the OWS crowd is attempting to shut down west coast ports. So many people have definite ideas of what should be accomplished and how to accomplish it, they don't take any time to try to understand what might happen if they actually do what they intend. Their daydreams of sticking it to the 1% are going to cost a lot of regular folks paychecks. If they had their way, they would punish the 1% by making it much more difficult for everyone else to get stuff from Japan, Thailand, Vietnam, and yes, China. Even a basic understanding of economics would allow them to understand that it is impossible to "hurt" one group in isolation without affecting everyone else.

Mises.org also quotes Rothbard in that same post:

 

It is no crime to be ignorant of economics, which is, after all, a specialized discipline and one that most people consider to be a “dismal science.” But it is totally irresponsible to have a loud and vociferous opinion on economic subjects while remaining in this state of ignorance.

 

You can do what you want with yourself. Because it is impossible to know but the largest first order effects of any overall economic activity, acting on everyone else's behalf should be the first warning sign that you're out of your depth.

Had my first physical therapy session yesterday. It was mostly an initial screening, seeing where I was and what I wanted to do etc. The physical therapist was happy with my general strength and flexibility. I kept trying to tell her that most of my problems don't show up until I've been on my feet for a while, but she reassured me that most of her patients come in much worse. I had gone in worried about my strength and balance, in that order. My function strength seemed OK, but my balance was actually worse than I thought.

I did a simple test, stand on one foot for 30 seconds. It was tough on my right foot, and my left was noticeably worse. Doing with my eyes closed was hopeless, I was going over in under 5 seconds. She assigned a list of 5 exercises to do. We would concentrate on balance first and then work our way into the strength part. She thought I'd be able to do the first three with little problem, but that the last two would be challenging. I went home and then started my exercises a few hours later. Wow. Standing on one foot was still challenging to me, but rowing 2 sets of 30 seconds on each foot was really difficult, it really took it out of me. And that was the first exercise! The second one involved standing on one foot while moving the other leg. I couldn't even do two sets of that.

I called it quits for the night. I figured that between the exercises at the office and the food shopping I had done, my legs were too tired. This morning was a classic example of struggling to wake from a coma. I was in bed for what seemed like forever, still dreaming but knowing that I had to get up. It took an unbelievable amount of willpower to actually get up. There was no way I was going to get to work on time, so I called them up, ate, and then did my exercises. I think my initial suspicion was true about being tired the day before because this time I was able to do both sets of both exercises. It was still difficult, but I could do them. I was tired though. Had to rest afterwards. I tried going to work, but that didn't work out so well. I knew I was in trouble when the walk from the car to the store totally wiped me out. My legs were rubber, and my glutes, calves, and hamstrings were all aching. I turned right around and went back home. As bad as I felt, standing on my legs for another 7 hours was not going to do me any favors.

So I'm guessing my currently prescribes exercises are both strength and balance ones. I have so little strength in my legs that even standing on one foot for 30 seconds at a time is a good workout. No wonder I felt so awful when I did 20 minutes on the exercise bike! I have my first real session tomorrow, I'm sure I'll be really tired at the end of it. I've already warned work that if I feel like I do today on thursday, I won't come in. Still, this is a different type of exhaustion, this is a physical exertion one, so I'm hopeful that even a few sessions like this and I'll be noticeably better. Wish me luck!

Have you ever heard a song that encapsulates basic tenets of Buddhist beliefs? No, neither have I, but I might have created one and I quite like it.

It all started when I stumbled across Ty Segall's Imaginary Person.

 

 

It's a lovely little bit of psychedelic/garage pop, you'd be forgiven if you thought it came out in 1968. I think it was actually made in 2002. I think it is about someone trying to convince themselves that they aren't crazy. The chorus could either be "You are an imaginary person, you're in my head but I am certain you aren't real," or "You are real…" Because of the charming low-fi quality, it's impossible to tell.

Well, I was humming it to myself the other day and I mistakenly sang the lyric, "I am an imaginary person…" I thought that was pretty funny, but the more I thought about it, the more it reminded me of zen. Zen practitioners have the unenviable task of looking past themselves, of realizing that what they think of as self is an illusion. The self can't be your thoughts and memories, otherwise where do you go when you sleep? Naturally, this leads to some real cognitive dissonance and confusion. Apparently that's par for the course and is the basis of serious zen. So with apologies to Ty Segall, here is the first zen psychedelic/garage pop song. I've modified the lyrics a bit, but imagine them in the regular music and see what you think...

 

 

say say, i can't say what I'm tryin' to do to me oh no oh no oh yea

cuz I'm in my head so i never go to bed oh no oh nooh no

talk talk, it's all I do so i never talk to you oh no oh nooh yea

cuz I'm in my head so i never go to bed oh no oh no

cuz I, I am an imaginary person

I'm in my head, but i am certain I'm not real

I am an imaginary person

I'm in my head, but i am certain I'm not real

yea, I'm not real

I'm not real I am real I'm not real

 

Nothing will make you focus on your health like feeling lousy. November was a pretty bad month for me, missed a bunch of time at work. I'm feeling better now and I think, maybe, that a change in diet might have helped.

Here's the thing about nutrition, nobody has any idea what's going on. You can read all you want, you'll only find two constants. Sweets, candy, pastries, etc. are bad. If you eat them at all, you should only do it once in a while. The other thing that is constant is that vegetables are good, you should eat them. Everything else is up in the air, even with vegetables. How much should you eat? Should you eat anything else? Should they be cooked? Any given recommended diet can be argued against. An all meat diet is better than vegetarian, meat is a kind of poison, low fat is the way to go, no high fat is, avoid eggs, eggs are good for you, low salt diets are good for people with high blood pressure, low salt diets might kill you, it goes on and on.

Russ Roberts made the connection between nutrition and macroeconomics in this episode of econtalk, a podcast about economics. There are a lot of ideas out there in the nutrition world, many of them are contradictory. When there is any science involved at all, it isn't overly convincing and doesn't do much to counteract anyone's previous beliefs. In both fields, there is a lot of wisdom being given by experts, but there isn't a whole lot of results to go with their ideas.

Gary Taubes has done a lot of research on nutrition and diet and has found that there is precious little evidence for the conventional wisdom of a low fat diet being good for losing weight and being heart healthy. What he did find seemed to point towards the opposite. He espouses a low carb diet and promotes the idea that sugars are the real killer. In the podcast, he and Russ talk about the Atkins diet and how well it works. It really does allow you to drop pounds quickly, it is repeatable and is documented in many places. The only catch is that it isn't clear if you're killing yourself doing it. That is, we have conventional wisdom telling us that eating all that fat will clog up your arteries, but there isn't much evidence either way. He has spent a lot of time finding out how that theory has gotten popular, turns out actual science wasn't as involved as good old fashioned advocacy was.

I had been feeling really lightheaded, dizzy, and out of it for a while when I heard this podcast. I started to think about what I usually ate and things like white bread (bagels, French bread, white bread on my sandwiches), rice, and potatoes. All of these things were on Taubes' list of do not eat list. The carbohydrates cause an insulin spike and then cause general mayhem in the body according to his theory. I figured, what the heck, and tried to follow his advice.

Well, no more dizziness, my head was clear, and I wasn't so effing tired all the time. What bread I ate was multigrain, pretty hardy stuff. I ate veggies, meats, and a little bit of brown rice. It wasn't a subtle difference. Of course, it was hardly a rigorous trial either. Think I'll do two weeks on his diet and then go back to my regular fare and see if I notice a difference. His ideas make sense to me, but there are other sensible diets out there too. Because it is impossible to sort out the signal from the noise in the nutrition world, I am going to go with what makes me feel healthier and follow that up with checkups. What else can you do?

I remember writing in grad school about how certain macroeconomic theories seem to work for a while and then they fall apart. It seems completely reasonable to me that economies can change and need different solutions at different times. I am open to the possibility that different people have different genes, different hormone levels, and different metabolisms and so need different diets. Is it possible that lots of those diets are good ones, for the right people? I dunno, but if I can keep feeling like this last week, I'll be happy changing my diet a bit.

Most actual investment (as opposed to places to park your money) involves buying debt. Or to put it another way, you loan money with the hope of making more later on. Bonds are the most common way to do direct investment, you have a time frame and a specific rate of interest. Stock IPO's are another way of investing in a company. 

In my mind there have been three important, long lasting comic strips that have defined the genre. Peanuts, Doonsbury, and Pogo. What? You haven't heard of Pogo? Walt Kelly, the creator, died in the mid 70's so those of you in my generation or later can be forgiven for not being familiar with it. Kelly was able to use swampland animals to make pithy comments on culture and skewer politicians that went too far. His most famous series involved making fun of Joe Mcarthy and the House Unamerican activities committee. It was pretty bold back then. Not only that, Kelly was a master illustrator. His panels are masterpieces, his drawing and lettering are still unsurpassed. He was able to do slapstick very well because of the artistry of his drawings. His lettering did an amazing job of differentiating between characters and their personalities. The strip ran for 30 years or so and had a tremendous influence.

So where the reprints? It's a fair question. I don't have a good answer for it. There seems to have been a sort of curse when it came to Pogo reprints. There were a bunch of them done in the 60's or 70's I think but they weren't particularly comprehensive. My father has a handful of these and this is where I discovered Pogo. I once brought some up and let my roommate in college read some of them and he got hooked too. Eclipse comics tried to reprint some of the old Pogo comic books and they went out of business after publishing only 5 of them. Fantagraphics started a reprint series and got about 10 thin soft cover books out. That petered out too, and I never did find out why.

Fantagraphics announced that they were going to do a proper reprint of all of the Pogo books, starting from the very first ones going all the way through to the end of the series. Things stalled for years, most people assumed that it just wasn't going to happen. Fantagraphics finally had a ship date, and I got really excited, so I ordered the book. That was in June 2010. I just got the book today.

It did take a while to get here, but it is a beautiful book. It's bigger than the Peanuts books Fantagraphics is doing, and it's a good thing. Kelly wrote for the larger panels that were available in papers back then. His artwork is filled with amazing details and you really do need to have larger panels to take advantage of it. It took a long time, but the wait has been worth it. I'm going to keep my fingers crossed and hope that they are able to release the entire series, Walt Kelly's legacy has been waiting too long!

Italy has now officially gone over the "Oh Shit!" threshold for financing its debt. It can't roll over its debt obligations when the interest is north of 7%. There are talks of the IMF getting involved which means that the US taxpayers may end up footing some of this before its over. Germany is supposedly looking at drafting language to allow countries to leave the Euro zone. They have gone from wanting to do anything to keep the Euro going to this in the span of a few weeks. Greece was manageable, but Italy is not. If they are able to scramble and eek out some sort of something or other to keep Italy from defaulting, it will totally tap out Europe. What about the other countries teetering on the brink? Spain, Portugal, Ireland. Hell, even France isn't looking so hot.

It's looking bad. I hate sounding like a broken record, but it is painful to watch this unfold. There's no question that Europe's issues are going to depress everything even if they manage not to drag anyone else down with them. I really worry that the Obama administration, or even the Fed on its own (can they do that?) will jump in and try to bail out Italy. The IMF is a back door way of doing it, but there may need to be much more cash needed than is in the coffers of the IMF. It's not as though we have any money to send them of course, any aid we send would be in the form of printing vast sums of money, again. At some point, worthless currency will be chasing bad debt. It would have to come to a crashing halt at some point, right?

What needs to happen is what econo-wonks call "deleveraging". In regular speak, that means writing off and clearing away debt. Clearly, there is far more debt than there is funds to pay for it, so a lot of people that bought those bonds will have lost all that money that they "invested." Treasury bonds have microscopic yields right now. As James Grant has pointed out, you earn interest in exchange for debt. Right now, treasuries will pay you less than the inflation rate, so you'd be losing money. Money market funds are currently paying a single basis point in interest. That is one one hundredth of a percentage point. As Mr. Grant says, it is "the profitless assumption of risk." Every place you put your money has risk, if you put it in something that pays you nothing, all you have is risk...

It looks like everything is bound to go down in value during this mess, everyone is going to lose something. Gold is looking like a good way to store your value… probably. I still like my idea, wait for stocks to take a big hit and then get my money out of the money market fund. I'm hoping to jump in at a point where most of the losses have already occurred, but trying to call the bottom of a market is always a fool's errand. I don't have a good idea when the best time will be for buying stuff, but I hope I know it when I see it!

 

Hold on folks, it's going to get ugly!

When I went to the doc last, I wasn't really having one of my good days, and it sounds like that clouded my perception of what happened and the advice I was given. They still haven't gotten back the results of the JC virus antibodies test, but regardless of what it comes back as, I will continue to take tysabri. My doc explained that he doesn't consider me to be a high risk patient for PML since I have never had any other MS drugs or anything else that could mess up my immune system. He also came as close as I think he could to saying that it would be a really bad idea to stop this particular treatment because of the outlook otherwise.

That's a relief really. This drug has a really good record of reducing new lesions and slowing the progression of the disease. As a bonus, the side effect I have been getting from it has been me feeling better for the couple weeks after. There are now other, oral, treatments on the market now that seem to have the same effectiveness against MS, but also have more common nasty side effects like heart problems, etc. There are also some drugs that need to be injected either every other day or once a week that don't work as well, and they have the predictable side effect of making you feel like you have the flu...

So, like I said, I'm glad I'll be staying on this. They'll keep monitoring me for signs of PML, but it's still a rather rare thing. 200 people out of 50,000 have gotten it, and a significant number of them had immune suppressing treatments too. I like my chances...

I'm also going to start going to physical therapy. Not really sure what's involved with that, but I think it's a good idea. My muscle mass has gone down considerably in general, and in my legs especially. Thought it would be a good idea to get an actual workout plan targeting what I've got going on instead of me just killing myself on the bike or something. I don't know what impact this will have with work, but it's something I'll have to work out.

So that's the news, mostly more of the same, and that's a good thing as far as I'm concerned.

Every treatment has risks associated with it. The big, bad risk for the treatment I'm on for MS is a brain infection known by the acronym of PML. It's pretty nasty. If you're lucky, you die from it. The ones that don't are pretty severely brain damaged. When I had started my treatment, it looked as though the incidence of that side effect was 1 in 3000. In addition, the people that did get it tended to have a history that I didn't have (previous use of immune sup present drugs). That's not too bad of a risk although I would say that if given the chance to do something that had me dying in 1 out 3000, I wouldn't do it in regular life.

The factor weighing on me from the other side is that I am in probably the worst of all demographics for MS outcomes. I am male, my symptoms showed up as motor skills first, and it also presented with lesions on the spinal cord. Looking at the data, people with those markers tend to deteriorate faster and end up less mobile than other populations. So disease management is important. Tysabri seems to be the only treatment worth a damn, despite the risk of PML, so that's what I have been doing.

Now there is some new information out and it is making me question what to do. It turns out that all of the people that got PML also tested positive for JC virus antibodies. The JC virus is  relatively benign virus, unless you are doing something that compromises your brain's immunity, then you can get PML. Last I read, about 60% of the population has been exposed to the JC virus. The new numbers suggest that if you have the JC virus antibodies, your risk of getting PML while on tysabri is 1 in 500.

That's a lot worse than 1 in 3000. The risk of infection is still unlikely, but not as unlikely as I would like. The good news is that if I don't have the antibodies, it doesn't look as though I'll be a candidate for PML at all, or at least until I'm exposed to to the virus… I got my blood drawn yesterday to test for the presence of the antibodies. I'm really hoping that they come back negative. If it does, I'll continue doing my treatment. If it comes back positive, I'm not sure what I'll do. Without treatment, there is a much better than 1 in 500 chance that I will be put in a very bad way from MS. On the other hand, it won't kill me or damage my brain either. There really aren't any other decent proven treatments out there.

So that's the potential decision I'll have to face, a more certain bad thing vs. a less certain very bad thing. Let's just hope for a negative test result, that would make so much easier...

I was poring over some information on a new drug I was going to start when I ran across a fascinating table. It was listing the incidence of side effects with the drug as opposed to the group on the placebo. It was no surprise to find the drug had some side effects,what did surprise me was how there were side effects ascribed to the placebo as well. All of the instances of dizziness, upset stomachs, dry mouth, etc. in the placebo group had to have been caused by something else and yet I'm sure that those people blamed the pill they were taking because they were being asked about it. When they fill in the questionnaire about effects of the pill, any old thing that happened would be the pill's fault.

Man, if I were in a study like that, I'd go crazy. I'm sure I would constantly try to outguess the study, to try to figure out if I got the placebo or not. Hell, I do that every day with MS. Any little twinge I feel I start to wonder if it is the MS or something else. It's one of the more maddening aspects of this disease, it could manifest itself in almost any way.

My doctor threw in another wild card for me yesterday. I had just started to take some samples of the pill I mentioned earlier and I was talking to him about how it affected me. One thing that I noticed was how hungry I felt when I took the pill. That confused me because I thought that stimulants were supposed to suppress appetites. I haven't really felt hungry for a long time now. I do feel the effects of being hungry, but I don't really feel hungry if you know what I mean. One other thing that I mentioned was several times during the past week I suddenly felt as though I was on the verge of tears without knowing why. I wasn't sad, or morose or anything, and the feeling passed fairly quickly. Still, it was unnerving. I figured it was a side effect of the pill. The doc pointed out that if I had felt that on a day I hadn't taken the pill it wasn't the pill. Hmmm..

He mentioned some syndrome about as long as my arm that described patients with lesions in the frontal lobe experiencing the physical aspects of emotions without feeling the emotion itself. Ugh. He checked my latest MRI and said he didn't see any evidence of that. Whew!

Then he asked, "Do you think you're depressed?" Well no, not really. He said that some of the symptoms fit, tiredness, cloudy thinking, lack of appetite, desire to sleep all the time… On top of that he also told me that some tremendous number of MS patients are also clinically depressed. Sometimes that's from coping with a chronic condition, but other times it can actually stem from physical changes in the brain.

Great. I really don't feel depressed, or morose, cynical, or anything like that. Yes, I do get blue and upset over my condition but I'm mostly optimistic in my life. Still, there are a lot of other symptoms that I have… Grrr…. Now I'm wondering if what ails me on any given day is MS, or depression, or maybe MS related depression, or MS caused depression…. Oh and guess what, there are pills for that too! I'm so sick of being offered pills, I'm so sick of worrying about juggling side effects. I am really leery about mood altering drugs. Anytime prescriptions for a certain type of drug skyrockets over a short period of time I am very suspicious. Anti-depressants certainly fall into that category.

My doctor did speculate that one of the reasons I might have felt hungry when I took the stimulant was that it lifted my mood. If my appetite had been surprised via depression, that would make some sense. Of course that also feeds into the suggestion that I actually am depressed but don't realize it. For now, I am going to try this new pill and see how that works. I am going to continue to put off anti-depressants until there aren't any other options, or until I convince myself that I really am depressed. Ugh.

Reading last Sunday's Doonsbury really got me pissed off. Once again, Trudeau is hung up on what the top 1% income bracket is making. When BD finds out that the top 10 hedge fund managers were paid 18.8 billion, his reaction is, "It's game over - The Rich Won!"

 

Funny, I didn't realize we were competing, or playing a game or whatever. What, exactly have they won? And how are we less better off because of it?

BD keeps ranting, "Might as well just send them the rest of our money now, They're going to get it all eventually anyway!" Umm, right, because those evil hedge fund managers were raiding your checking account, right? They were hoarding all that money so that you couldn't get a sot at it, is that it? How is BD, or the rest of us for that matter, involved with hedge funds? How have they impoverished us? Why the assumption of guilt, why the feeling of being personally attacked?

 

I would be very sympathetic if Trudeau were to detail how much money people made off the bailouts by the US tax payers. Through the government;s largesse, a few politically connected groups had their fortunes protected with our tax money. As unfashionable as it may be, I don't mind people making vast sums of money through voluntary transactions. If it is voluntary, it doesn't affect me. If my masters DC decide to protect cronies with my money, that is theft. Why isn't Trudeau angry about that? Why isn't BD making his check out to the Treasury? The hedge funds are leaving him alone, the feds aren't...

 

The OWS crowd have been using the 99% rhetoric to great effect, but once again, I think they are misguided. When Steve Jobs died, several reporters asked some OWS folks what they thought of him. The reactions were overwhelmingly positive despite the fact that Jobs was certainly in that 1%. I like to think that if pushed on the matter, most of those folks would admit that Jobs did it right. He made stuff that everyone wanted and became rich doing it (and pulled lots of people out of poverty along the way). He never went to the government for help, even when Apple was on the verge of bankruptcy. Jobs wasn't alone, there are plenty of entrepreneurs in the 1% that have provided services and goods for us. So why rail against the 1% when there are clearly great people in there? Why not protest against the people that get money from us without our permission? Why not protest against the ones giving away our money without permission?

 

Why indeed. People that make money by providing us things are great, people that essentially steal are not. Why are the two so often confused with one another? When will most people see that the dirtiest money flows out of DC? Why don't people protest that? Oh right, they did, and got called racists for their trouble...

 

 

I've been reading about the OWS protests and the one thing that is clear is that they are not a monolithic entity. There is general discontent over "Wall Street" and how they profited during this downturn, and there seems to be a general stance against "capitalism" and corporations. a more nuanced view seems to be that only "bad" corporations are the target of their ire. A generally accepted solution to this is that the government should do more, more regulation and more observation are what the protesters seem to be calling for the most.

You might not be surprised to hear that I don't agree with their solution. I agree with the anger over bailouts, over saving failed companies with taxpayer dollars. The difference is that I direct my anger towards the ones that did the bailing out and set up the system that encouraged the financial entities to take the risks they did.

The OWS crowd seems as though they are so blinded with their view that Wall Street equals greed that they have never wondered why the banks and financial houses did what they did. The combination of low interest rates, guaranteed loans, and various regulations that made it profitable and logical to sell off and re-buy derivatives of mortgages was set up by the federal government, and then the feds bailed out the institutions that got into trouble doing that. Wall Street will always be about making money, but when there are actual risks of losing everything, they will not act so crazy. The bailouts have to stop, the distortions have to stop. Turning to the cause of the problems for a cure is incredibly misguided.

 

It's also funny how the various anti-semitic signage seen at these things has been dismissed as crazies in the midst of the protest, unlike the tea party. One group is labeled as racists for their fringe and another is given a free pass over the crazy ones in their midst. It's also strange how there are widespread reports of arrests of the OWS crowd when there wasn't with the tea party crowds despite the fact the tea party had bigger gatherings.

 

So yeah, I'm with them on the anger about corporations profiting at taxpayer expense. They have lost me on the whys and the solution though.

Ok, the moment I withdrew the bulk of my portfolio from stocks, the market went on a bull run. Grrr.. That's the thing about being conservative, you avoid the downside, but you miss the breakouts too.

 

Still, noting has changed for the better in Europe. There's still a lot of shuffling of deck chairs over there. It all looks pretty flimsy. Greece is still on the verge of default, and there's no telling how that is going to affect the rest of Europe, but it won't be good. Both Italy and France are facing downgrades on their debt. In response, the ECB is about to ban the reports of downgrades… Like I said, I'm still sure of what is going to happen, we'll see how the next 4 or 5 months play out. I'm still sitting on mostly cash and I think that will be the best position when the events in Europe start to unfold.

From Megan McArdle's blog:

 

"In an interview with IMF advisor Robert Shapiro, the bailout expert has pretty much said what, once again, is on everyone's mind: "If they can not address [the financial crisis] in a credible way I believe within perhaps 2 to 3 weeks we will have a meltdown in sovereign debt which will produce a meltdown across the European banking system. We are not just talking about a relatively small Belgian bank, we are talking about the largest banks in the world, the largest banks in Germany, the largest banks in France, that will spread to the United Kingdom, it will spread everywhere because the global financial system is so interconnected. All those banks are counterparties to every significant bank in the United States, and in Britain, and in Japan, and around the world. This would be a crisis that would be in my view more serrious than the crisis in 2008.... What we don't know the state of credit default swaps held by banks against sovereign debt and against European banks, nor do we know the state of CDS held by British banks, nor are we certain of how certain the exposure of British banks is to the Ireland sovereign debt problems."

 

Sounds pretty dire. The good news is that it is two to three weeks away. If you're going to have a banking crisis, it's best to have it in slow motion. I've been worried about this for a while and it struck me the other day, this is an ideal investment situation. There's no reason to go down with the ship. I liquidated the vast majority of my holdings in my 401k and am now mostly in cash. I closed out my stocks with a small profit. Now I'll wait until things implode and buy when stocks are cheap. Foolproof, right?

Welllllll, there's one little problem. My cash is actually held in a money market fund. Those are usually considered the safest types of accounts and are treated just like cash. The potential problem is that if the credit default swaps (essentially insurance against going bankrupt), are what the above paragraph was taking about, that's the counter party risk that can bring down the banking system. If a CDS needs to be redeemed, money sitting in money market funds will be a likely place to get the money necessary to pay out the claims. Oh, and my 401k isn't FDIC insured, so if the money market goes away, so does all of my retirement.

So what to do? I really don't feel like losing a lot of money like I did the last time the stock market melted down. I was overseas and out of touch in 2008, this is unfolding slowly enough that I feel like I should be able to avoid it. My plan is to act quickly once things look bad. I hope to buy as soon as things tank.

 

Of course if we're all lucky, this won't happen. I won't be in any worse of a situation. I do want to be prepared if things come to a head though. Hang on to your hats folks, this could get rough. Oh, and stay away from bank stocks:)

Spotify is the later music service to get my money. I already subscribe to LastFM and Slacker Radio. Slacker is a great way to hear new music and LastFM gives me a radio station based on my own curation. Spotify lets me listen to any song any time I want to.

Yeah, any song I want, any time I want. How amazing is that? If I hear a new song, I can look up the artist and listen to any of their albums. That's in addition to all of the older stuff too. For 10 bucks a month I get no ads and can stream the music through my iPhone and squeezebox. I thought I had a big collection before...

The last couple of nights I have been going through Aweditorium on my iPad, finding interesting artists, and then looking them up in Sporitfy. It's a great combo. It's true that Spotify doesn't have everything,. They don't have any Beatles or Led Zeppelin but that's hardly the end of the world. Plenty of people would tell you that's a blessing. And it's true my favorite Flamenco album and a live Cynics albums aren't in there either, but those are a little bit obscure. A little more worrying is the absence of A Joy Division album called Warsaw. I'll have to do some more digging to see how many albums aren't in there.

 

As it stands right now, I'm having a hard time figuring out what I'll be using iTunes for. Yes, I do have a few things on there that aren't in the streaming version of Spotify, but Spotify also allows me to use my iTunes library on my computer and I can sync music to my phone with it as well. I'm pretty sure Spotify has a higher quality bitrate as well… I don't think I'll actually erase my iTunes library, but I doubt I'll be playing it very often.

If you haven't yet, check out Spotify, it is amazing.

When he announced that he was stepping down from CEO, we knew it wasn't a good sign. Still, the news wasn't any easier to hear. I have loved the products he has helped bring to market, but more importantly I love the institution he has left to us. To borrow from John Gruber, Apple the company is Steve's greatest creation.

Steve, I thank you for your vision and the opportunity to take part in what you started.