Date posted: February 8, 2008 - Friday
Title: TW3 02/08/08
Current mood: calm
A Nation of Excess
We are a nation that can't seem to control itself. The national debt is a number so large few people can even write out all the zeros without developing writer's cramp.
Individually we spend too much and we eat too much. And we have no greater self control as individual people than we do as a nation.
Conspicuous consumption it's called. There are examples of this consumption all around us. But this last weekend is maybe the prime example.
Super Bowl Sunday.
These are just some of the figures Fox television enumerated during the pre-game. $9.5 billion spent on Super Bowl stuff. The 130,000 people the game draws to the city the game is played in are expected to spend $600 per day/per person. 48 million television sets are purchased in the days leading up to the Super Bowl. And finally, the television audience was estimated at 100 million people.
It's just a game. And that makes it even sillier when you think of all the money spent in association with it.
I just wonder if we will ever gain the measure of self control to avoid the excesses we seem to have become addicted to.
A Question of Heresy
I'm going to speak the words. I know it will seem like heresy to Wall Street, but I'm going to say them anyway.
I will not waste my money on the stock market.
When I was growing up people who invested in stocks, traded stocks and worried about the market were fewer in number. I seem to remember they were mostly relegated to older people with a lot of money to play with. I don't think I ever knew anyone who had a broker.
Over the last few years that picture has changed. Somewhere along the line it became "in" or "hip" for the regular guy to buy and sell stocks. It became 'popular' enough television ads were produced by several brokerage firms to attract new clients. With the popularization of Internet even more outlets became available for people to trade stocks.
I've seen them, these ads for people like Smith Barney and e-Trade. I saw one during the Super Bowl. Someone took a real child and animated the mouth to make it appear he was talking; talking about how he was buying stocks. I saw another ad earlier in the week where some guy was bragging about how he had just bought something on the stock market in China.
To me, buying stock is just another form of gambling. And gambling which might not have odds as good as those you get at a Vegas casino.
Since I have been unemployed for a while I decided to investigate the status of my 401K plans. I got a statement from one plan in December. I went online in January and checked my balance and found I had lost almost $500 in value in less than a month. Now there isn't a whole lot of money in the account anyway, so $500 is a significant change; and especially when it happens over a period of less than a month. The kicker is the statement of my account also said at my age I should have a different distribution of my money. They recommended I should move funds so that the majority of my money was in stocks. Not a recommendation which made sense to me based on what I later learned about the drop in value of my holdings.
The people who want you to buy stock say over time the stock market always goes up. They just don't tell you how much time it will take. But, knowing the impatience of most people when it comes to money, I doubt investors would really spend the time to make investing in stocks pay off.
Mostly, I think brokers just want to make money in the form of commissions off people without a strong knowledge of how to 'play' the market. I also believe the only people who make a real killing in stocks are large, institutional investors. The little guy just gets taken along for the ride. Oh, there might be some isolated success stories for a few little investors and they will brag about them to anyone who will listen, but I have to believe they are few and far between.
Me, I'm praying for a miracle and buying my weekly Lotto tickets.
Super Bowl Wrap-up
I'll keep this short for those of you who don't care about football.
I wouldn't have been happy with the outcome either way it went. I had my issues with both teams and their players.
So, I'm not real happy about the prospect of Eli Manning becoming as big a pain in the ass on television as his brother Peyton.
But at least the result wiped that smirk off Bill Bellichick's face.
Paper or Money?
Imagine carrying your own shopping bag into your local grocery store. Or having the checkout clerk ask you if you want an additional charge on your bill so you can have plastic bags provided by the store.
That's the way it is in Ireland.
Years ago a law went into effect in Ireland that made stores charge for the plastic bags they were handing out. It started off at 23 cents per bag and was recently raised to 33 cents. It was an effort to discourage the use of the bags which are not biodegradable and cause a mess in the environment. And a switch back to paper bags was discouraged because those were not only more costly to produce, but did more damage to the environment in their manufacture.
The law has virtually eliminated the use of plastic bags in the country. And Ireland is not the only place where this is the policy (although they are the one where it has been most effective.) A number of countries are trying to eliminate the plastic bag as a staple in retail stores. Not only are they a mess for the environment, but apparently they clog the plumbing systems in some places.
Could something like this happen in this country. Not very likely. Not only are people stubborn about their convenience, but manufacturers of plastic bags have stronger lobbyists and the overall retail landscape is more fragmented here than in Ireland.
But wouldn't it be a great idea? Eliminating those plastic bags and the harm they cause to the environment, the waste of fossil fuels used to produce them and the mess they make in your own home when you have to store them.
I Can't Read My Ballot
I had done my civic duty. I had voted. And now I was headed to the liquor store to do something I do more frequently; buy a Lotto ticket.
The school where I voted was something less than a mile from my house and the liquor store was about halfway home. I was almost there when I had a horrible thought. What if the liquor store wasn't open?
Why did I think that? Well, there used to be a law in California that bars and liquor stores couldn't sell booze until after the polls closed on election day.
No problem though, the store was open. And when I inquired if the law was still in effect the clerk behind the counter didn't have a clue what I was talking about. Now I know that liquor store has been there at least ten years and probably a lot longer. So my question is, when did the law change?
I actually think it was a reasonable law. Voting is tough enough when you have to figure out the arcane language on the ballots and reason your way through television ads for and against ballot measures. Can you imagine what a mess things would be standing in line with a bunch of drunks on election day? And how long the lines would be when there was a bunch of boozed up people trying to read and mark a ballot?
I Knew I Shouldn't Have Painted The House.
Recent studies have produced an "emerging" idea that long ago lead exposure can make an aging persons brain act like it is five years older than it is.
There were sharp cuts in lead levels some 20 years ago, but there is some indication now that older exposure could have a long-lasting effect on mental activity. And the implications are it is possible other pollutants like mercury and pesticides could also have lingering effects which appear many years later. Some recent research suggests being exposed to pesticides raises the risk of developing Parkinson's disease a decade or more later.
The headline here may be facetious because the exposure to lead is attributed to the use of the element in gasoline for so many years, but the prospect is frightening nonetheless.
Legitimizing the Nazi Defense
The Senate and House are wrangling over the updating of surveillance laws. Both houses of Congress will vote this week on changes to update the 1978 law without violating privacy rights. A proposed part of the update are amendments that would bar retroactive immunity for telecommunications companies that complied with government requests for records which were not accompanied by a warrant.
The Bush Administration in the form of Attorney General Michael Mukasey and National Intelligence Director Mike McConnell fired off a 12-page letter threatening a veto of any legislation which didn't provide immunity for telecommunications companies. Some 40 civil lawsuits have been filed against companies which provided spying information on American citizens to the government. The penalties against these companies could bring financial punishment which could bankrupt the companies the White House says.
Thus, if the law provides the protection for the telecommunications companies they could use the Nazi defense. "I vas only following orders." (German accent intended.)
Well the argument didn't work for the Nazis and it shouldn't work for telecommunications companies.
Part of the letter to Congress says, "Private citizens who respond in good faith to a request for assistance by public officials should not be held liable for their actions." Well, I served in the military and we were told we didn't have to follow an unlawful order. What exempts "private citizens", or in this case companies, from being responsible for their actions? Why should they have to bow down to unlawful requests, even if they come from the government, and be given immunity?
And how much longer can we live with an administration in this country which flouts the law at every turn when things don't go the way they want?
How Low Can You Sink?
I am completely at a loss when it comes to terrorists. Maybe I am too detached from things, but I just can't see killing a bunch of people to make a political point. Oh there have been times when I might have gladly maimed someone who had harmed me emotionally. I don't think I've ever approached murder, but there have been some steaming rages.
So suicide bombers are an even bigger mystery to me. If you want to kill someone to make a political point, what is the reason you kill yourself? Doesn't that just make you dead and the person you hate available to go on doing the things you are fighting against.
But now, I have heard the ultimate in just pure insanity in regards to terrorism. Apparently terrorists the other day strapped bombs with remote detonators to some women and blew them up in order to kill those they were terrorizing. It would be one thing if these women had made an informed decision to become suicide bombers, but these women had Downs Syndrome.
To me that is about as low as you can sink.
Can I Watch A Rerun, Please?
I was dubbing an old videotape to DVD the other night when I had a revelation. It was a movie I thought was worth keeping and there was nothing playing on my cable channels I wanted to see. I had originally taped this film off a cable channel which shows movies.
When the film was finished there were previews of future movies that would be playing on the channel. I was surprised because almost all the films that would be shown were good films, films I recognized and were worth watching.
It was then I realized there seems to be a real drop in quality of movies being made and shown these days. This was reinforced when I picked up this morning's paper and saw the reviews for two of the most recent films to be released. Both these films were panned heavily.
I also thought back to the movies that had been playing recently on the cable channels I pay for. For the most part they were turkeys and they had been repeating over and over for quite a while now.
Am I crazy, or has Hollywood really been producing a lot of crap recently?
And by the way, the movies that had been panned were:
"Fool's Gold"
"Welcome Home Roscoe Barnes"
"Over Her Dead Body"
And they took a shot at an older release "Norbit" as well.
Quickies
I watch a lot of movies on my cable channels. When I make a copy on DVD I like to record the length and the year the movie came out. I have noticed in the last few years movie makers no longer put the copyright date in Roman Numerals. Guess no one can figure those things out anymore.
I see Bill Gates continues on his path to take over the world. Now he wants to own Yahoo as well as Microsoft. Is there no end to the man's ego and lust for power? He rivals Oprah in that regard. And if he gobbles up Yahoo, like many analysts think is all but a forgone conclusion, Microsoft will control something like 80 percent of the web-based e-mail business. Can you say Big Brother?
President Bush has done it again. In a signing statement accompanying a recent bill he signed he said he would not comply with certain provisions of the bill he just signed. Who said he was above the law because he disagrees? It didn't work for Nixon and it shouldn't work for Bush.
I found it really interesting when the local San Diego paper listed its' recommendations for voting on election day. The paper recommended approval of three of the four Indian Gaming compacts up for voter review. The one they didn't want passed? The agreement with the tribe in San Diego county. Guess more
