American Madness

Eric Blair lived an interesting life. It should come as a surprise to no one that this life was noted, recorded and dissected into the daily pages of a journal. Now into the blogosphere come daily notations made by the man who would take the nom de plume George Orwell published 70 years to the day after they were first penned. From the Orwell Diaries:

From 9th August 2008, you will be able to gather your own impression of Orwell’s face from reading his most strongly individual piece of writing: his diaries.

This entry got me all hot and bothered about the daily life and philosophy of Blair. This was the man who believed the destruction of language is an essential part of oppression, laid bear in the creation of Newspeak for 1984. And I had reason to be excited; when the Orwell Project first posted, they teased us with one of Orwell’s most famous quotes from 1984: “War is Peace. Freedom is Slavery. Ignorance is Strength.” Oh man, this is going to be good. (more…)

I’m so busy lately that I can’t even meet friends for lunch (though I did manage that today). So, when a friend suggested we meet tomorrow, we ruled out lunch, dinner or coffee.

She asked, “How about a cigarette break without cigarettes.” Just walking around the block seemed less than productive, so I suggested we both bring a poem to read.

She said fine as long as we wrote the poems ourselves. I’ll admit to being a bit rusty at this, but here’s my contribution: a Shakespearean sonnet in ababcdcdefefgg form.

It’s about a long-distance relationship in which at least one partner is unwilling to admit that there’s no love, because to do so would require making difficult choices.

To Profess or Lust
Don’t knock the distant paramour, he said,
With trembling hand, the coffee cup held near.
A daily dose is lost, but still the bed
Is lit; the lust, from longing, ever clear.

When he, the night before, surveying ’round,
Felt pull the pulchritude within his ken:
Numbed with drink, the quiet voice sought, he found,
That stifled choice, and killed the question “when?”

Love can with hangover intrude, but worse
Finds those who, with love’s absence known, stay meek,
Let stressed smiles prevail, and, guilt-filled, rehearse
The bitter end to lies, and penance seek.

Denying lack of love, choice is dispelled
What true love is deferred, what future felled?

I’m a complete freak for organizational tools. I don’t subscribe to a particular system (such as Franklin Covey, which my friend Rick has mastered), but I do give a lot of thought to ease of use and effectiveness, especially as compared to slickness and coolness.

So I was a little too excited at running across D.I.Y. Templates, which features a directory of To Do List templates. They range from the quirky (the note card template seen here) to more complicated layouts that include daily or weekly timelines and checkboxes. There are forms for work stuff, finances, money, blah and even blahblahblahblah (spoken quickly).

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My friend and colleague Eric Baum is one of the few ambitiously moral people in this universe. Where for others caveat emptor is the watchword, Baum here notes that Wall Street’s recent failure to embrace the categorical imperative has meant inflicting an unforseen wound on itself.

Blowback
By Eric Baum

The Central Intelligence Agency has a term called ‘blowback’ to describe the unintended consequences of hostile actions. In financial jargon there is no term to describe such quid-pro-quo sequences, but the subprime debacle may prompt financial analysts to coin one (ed: payback?).

Hedge funds and other money managers that cater to institutional investors are running for cover amidst a credit meltdown that is now demolishing equity prices. Financial insiders know the sequence of events that produced multi-billion-dollar losses at hedge funds managed by Bear Stearns and Goldman Sachs. These insiders now expect more damage in the weeks to come.

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Apparently Penelope Cruz is jumping on the Green bandwagon as the lead story on Yahoo “What are some inexpensive tips to turn my house green?” This is just another of the bullshit Green articles I will not link to.

First off, why does Penelope Cruz need “inexpensive” tips? Did she gamble all of her money away from Volver? Or is she just to cheap to really care about the environment?

If you couldn’t tell I am tired of the current Green movement. It is not that I don’t believe there is a problem, cause there clearly is. It is this current fad of Green being a hot topic and getting lots of press. I feel like Green has become a catch phrase to sell more newspapers (which, if they truly believed in the green process would only produce online editions…) and get higher rating during sweeps week for news programs.

I have argued before that the government needs to up its involvement in the Green movement and then maybe this trend will last beyond teaching you to shut off your lights when you leave your apartment and was recently presented with the counter argument that Republican don’t really care about the environment. Well, guess what, the Republicans aren’t the only ones, because while this might be a hot topic for Democrats, since they took control of the House and the Senate I haven’t seen much improvement. Really forcing Green regulations on big businesses is just going to hurt the money coming in to all politicians.

I am also tired of hearing about companies like BP who are investing in finding alternate energy possibilities and are spending so many billions of dollars to build green buildings. Yeah, well BP has that money to spare to do this research and build these buildings. Want to know why? Because of relaxed environmental regulations that allow them to make billions upon billions of dollars each year by exploiting the worlds dependency on petroleum, they maybe trying to change their image and name to Beyond Petroleum. But they built themselves up as British Petroleum and are still reeling in the cash.

On a slightly more positive note: Ikea has decided to start charging for bags in the US, but has reduced the price of their reusable bags. Money raised by charging for bags will go to American Forests, the US’s oldest citizens nonprofit conservation organization. You can find more info about this on the Ikea website as well.

Also some architecture Greenery:
A new skyscraper going up in Dubai will produce its own energy
And some conceptual designs for some “Eco-Towers” that will harness the power of the wind

Guantánamo Detainees Stage Hunger Strike
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/09/us/09hunger.html?hp

Torture continues. Say what you want about the Khmer Rouge, the Hutu/Tootsie massacres, even the Stalinist purges, at least many of these atrocities were carried out in hot blood. Not so the current U.S. policy for Guantanamo detainees, which reminds me of a line from the movie Payback: “I’ll make this last 3 weeks,” says a mafia boss to a man from whom he is trying to beat information. “I’ll give you a blood transfusion to keep you alive.”

Even as detainees attempt to protest their horrendous, inhumane, sadistic treatment with hunger strikes, as they perhaps attempt to end their lives, our government does not allow that to happen. While not bringing charges against these men, they instead strap them into full body restraint chairs and force feed tubes down their nostrils. Does anyone doubt that this is yet another form of torture?

You know what? If this is what we’ve sunk to, if this is the state of our democracy, maybe we deserve what we get.

Warren Buffett, from his February 28, 2007 letter to the shareholders of Berkshire Hathaway (Available here, page 20).

In last year’s report I allegorically described the Gotrocks family – a clan that owned all of America’s businesses and that counterproductively attempted to increase its investment returns by paying ever-greater commissions and fees to “helpers.” Sad to say, the “family” continued its self-destructive ways in 2006.

In part the family persists in this folly because it harbors unrealistic expectations about obtainable returns. Sometimes these delusions are self-serving. For example, private pension plans can temporarily overstate their earnings, and public pension plans can defer the need for increased taxes, by using investment assumptions that are likely to be out of reach. Actuaries and auditors go along with these tactics, and it can be decades before the chickens come home to roost (at which point the CEO or public official who misled the world is apt to be gone).

Meanwhile, Wall Street’s Pied Pipers of Performance will have encouraged the futile hopes of the family. The hapless Gotrocks will be assured that they all can achieve above-average investment performance – but only by paying ever-higher fees. Call this promise the adult version of Lake Woebegon.

In 2006, promises and fees hit new highs. A flood of money went from institutional investors to the 2-and-20 crowd. For those innocent of this arrangement, let me explain: It’s a lopsided system whereby 2% of your principal is paid each year to the manager even if he accomplishes nothing – or, for that matter, loses you a bundle – and, additionally, 20% of your profit is paid to him if he succeeds, even if his success is due simply to a rising tide. For example, a manager who achieves a gross return of 10% in a year will keep 3.6 percentage points – two points off the top plus 20% of the residual 8 points – leaving only 6.4 percentage points for his investors. On a $3 billion fund, this 6.4% net “performance” will deliver the manager a cool $108 million. He will receive this bonanza even though an index fund might have returned 15% to investors in the same period and charged them only a token fee.

The inexorable math of this grotesque arrangement is certain to make the Gotrocks family poorer over time than it would have been had it never heard of these “hyper-helpers.” Even so, the 2-and-20 action spreads. Its effects bring to mind the old adage: When someone with experience proposes a deal to someone with money, too often the fellow with money ends up with the experience, and the fellow with experience ends up with the money.

I must agree with the initial thesis my colleague Adam, who writes that Google Was Evil, Is Evil, and Will Be Evil. I urge him to stick to his guns, despite a polite reply to Philipp Lenssen of Google Blogoscoped, who has challenged the (clearly prevalent) viewpoint that Google has shed its (apparently gilded) “good guy” reputation. Lenssen’s response seems an appeal more to emotion than to reason.

Google has great tools, and yes they started out with no advertising, but Google — a public company in its current incarnation — exists primarily to provide shareholder value via the exploitation of its useful services to drive revenue.

It is not a “good” company if it derives revenue from its services in such a manner that its clients and audience consider it more classy. Eschewing pop-up ads, content-covering ads, or other obnoxious forms of corporate promotion don’t make Google “good,” but merely savvy, as they are clearly focused on the long-term.

But there are ethical limits to a long-term focus. Google appeasers sound like any of a number of ends-justify-the-means historical apologists.

Are Google supporters so callow as to argue that censoring search terms is somehow benign? What if the NYTimes, as a condition of maintaining its print and web presence in China, voluntarily agreed to remove from its coverage and its content any mention of injustice at the hands of the Chinese regime? I certainly hope Times readers would see this is a total abrogation of a newspaper’s mission of informing the public, a mission all the more critical when that information is contrary to the wishes of a ruling elite.

How then is it any less critical for Google to allow all speech to reach those who would use the search portal as a means to access truth? Google has a responsibility just as great as any one newspaper, and in its aggregation of many news sources, as great as all newspapers combined, to allow information to flow freely.

The argument, by Google apologists, appears to be that the Chinese people will benefit so greatly from a legally-obtainable ability to search via Google, even with restrictions in place, that Google should clearly violate its own stated goal to not do evil. This is absurd, and presumes rather haughtily that Google is somehow an essential service and not merely another search offering.

Chinese dissidents will still be able to search for officially restricted information via proxy servers whether or not Google chooses to remain chummy with the Chinese authorities. Competitors like Yahoo and Baidu already provide basic search services. Google isn’t providing potable water, and no matter how much they’d like to think that they are filling some indispensable need they do not offer life-sustaining services, so there is no wisp of an argument for a “greater-good” plea.

What a deal with the Chinese government does allow is for Google to continue its profitable ventures in that country free of official condemnation.

Google, get over yourself. You are marginally more effective than your competitors at search and vastly smarter when it comes to data aggregation and advertising. Your stockholders should feel proud of your determination to increase profits by officially opening your platform to a Chinese audience. Your adherents, such as they are, should stop deluding themselves that your corporate mindset represents any but the most cynical.

So now that the courts have rules that a Pennsylvania school district cannot teach Intelligent Design (a lovely concept that says some “things” were created by a supernatural being), we can now ask the questions that need to be asked.

First of all, is it intelligent design that a sewage pipe runs through our recreational area? What kind of supernatural being would design such a thing? A supernatural engineer who flunked out of MIT?

Plus, why only one mouth? It is very difficult for some people to talk out of both sides of their mouth, and if they had two, hypocrisy would move along that much faster.

Finally, why do some male genitals hook to the left? I haven?t actually seen this phenomenon in action, but some women I know swear that it?s true. They also seem to think this model hits the G-Spot much more efficiently. This is confusing. Does this mean the G-Spot is on the right? Can?t we all compensate by moving a bit to the left? Is this more information than anyone needs to know?

Questions, questions.

I really wanted to pose these and other queries to the Dover Area School District in Pennsylvania. But now that the school board’s decision has been termed ?breathtaking inanity? by a federal judge, I?ll just have to ask my priest or rabbi or legalized Nevada hooker. Unless they overturn her, too.

Good news! Now you can help advance the cause of medical science, even after you’re dead!:

A biological anthropology professor at the University of Northern Iowa, Tyler O’Brien, envisions turning some prime pasture in the Midwestern state into a body farm, where human bodies — buried, stuffed in car trunks or exposed to the elements — can provide scholars and criminalists with new benchmark data on human decay.

“This idea has strong scientific value,” O’Brien said. “To answer the question of how long a body has been dead, how long a person has been missing, is critical to criminal investigations.”

O’Brien is seeking a grant of $400,000 to $500,000 from the National Institute of Justice and other organizations to obtain the land and set up the project.

This is big! And it brings up a number of valid concerns:

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