29. November 2008 by admin.

Today’s newspapers, like last Saturday’s, brought news of a gruesome death: a Wal-Mart employee on Long Island was fatally trampled by shoppers when opening the store yesterday morning.

Yesterday was Black Friday, when we’re all supposed to go out and buy stuff.  And I missed it.

As near as I can tell, we started calling the day after Thanksgiving ‘Black Friday’ about ten years ago.  Before that, it was simply a day that most of us had off from work, possibly given over to shopping, but mostly for hanging with one’s relatives, rest, and recovery from excess turkey ingestion.

But somehow it became all about the shopping.  And since no marketing phenomenon is complete without a catchy name, we called it ‘Black Friday,’ in a paroxysm of political correctness, in which the color ‘black’ is divorced from its usual sense in Western culture of death and destruction.

Of course I looked over the deals that were in Thursday’s papers: each newspaper came with an advertising supplement bigger than the newspaper itself.  But there was nothing that I really wanted.  As far as big-ticket items, we’d all like a new TV set, but the sets we have are serviceable.  If they were offering a nice TV for $100, I might have made the trip, but the sets that I was considering were going for $700, down from $1,000 or so.  And I’d like a computer to replace my desktop machine, which I bought in 1999, but that will have to wait until I’m feeling flush.

In any case, I had work to do at the office, and money is tight this month.  So I went in to work, and enjoyed the productive peace and quiet.

Posted in Life Goes On, Money | No Comments »

28. November 2008 by admin.

First of all, Happy Thanksgiving to whoever might be reading this.

It was another quiet Thanksgiving in our house.  We don’t go visiting relatives: my wife and I are both only children; our parents have all passed away; our other relatives don’t live nearby.

For many years, I didn’t have much to do with my relatives.  It wasn’t that I had anything against them, but later I understood that my relatives thought there was something vaguely wrong with me.  Or maybe it’s just that we have don’t have much in common.
So for Thanksgiving it was just my wife, my son, and myself.  I think I like it that way.

This morning, I made a traditional dinner.  I cooked the turkey according to the directions on the Butterball Web site, and it came out slightly overcooked.  Not terribly badly, but a little bit dry: it would have been better if I had taken it out of the oven about 20 minutes earlier.
I have to believe that the lawyers have figured out that nobody will sue them for an overcooked bird, but people will sue for an undercooked bird that makes them sick.  The published cooking times are therefore overly long for their protection.

In the evening, we went to see the new James Bond movie, Quantum of Solace.  The ‘rebooted’ Bond, in his second outing, has already gotten tiresome.  Whereas the old-school Bonds (Connery through Brosnan) got by on their wits and Q’s clever gizmos, Daniel Craig’s Bond is simply indestructible.  If you try to shoot him, he wil simply bounce out of the way.  It was clever at first, and now it’s just repetitive.

Quantum is, apparently, a secret organization of powerful men who hold meetings during live opera.  And their sinister plan for world domination is actually a part of the normal business-school curriculum (How to Screw Over Third-World Peasants).

So are they really villains after all?

Even the Bond-movie-as-travelogue disappoints: we’re told that Bond is traveling to Haiti and Bolivia, when in fact, the scenes in those countries are actually shot in Mexico, Panama, and Chile.

Perhaps I can’t go home again.

Posted in Life Goes On, Movies | No Comments »

23. November 2008 by admin.

Last week, I was on a most remarkable business trip.  I was sitting in a park there, starting to write up my observations, when something happened that caused me to reconsider everything I was thinking.  I’m going back again in the near future, and will write about it then.

But since returning on Monday, and in spite of the business-class seat on the airplane on which I could actually sleep, I’ve been in a funk.  I’ve been tired and not wanting to do very much.  And in all, it’s been a crappy week:

• My PDA phone seems to have failed.  The battery, which used to be good for 3-4 days, barely lasts one day now, and about 70% of the time that I try to make a call, it fails.  I’m back to using my old phone for communication.  I know that I can probably get a replacement if I go to the AT&T store in midtown, but beyond that, the PDA phone hasn’t been as useful as I imagined it.
• New York State is going broke, but the Legislature doesn’t want to do anything about it.  Both the Democrats and the Republicans are beholden to the public employee unions, and so will not do anything that would inconvenience the civil service.
• It was another barf bag week for Dow Jones, with the Industrials closing below 8,000 on Wednesday and Thursday night before gaining ground on Friday.
• In yesterday’s paper, there was a report of something that I knew would happen someday, but hoped never would: a young man killed himself while broadcasting the experience over the Web.  He took an overdose of sleeping pills and tranquilizers, and it was only after a few hours of watching him immobile in his bed that something seemed wrong.
• And the Sunday Daily News, which cost $1 since the 1980s, went up today to $1.25.

This week can only be an improvement!

Posted in Networking (computer), Life Goes On, Things Falling Apart, PDA | No Comments »

9. November 2008 by admin.

Today’s Daily News, for at least the third time in the last seven days, includes a supplement with big pictures of Barack Obama.  Today we’re treated to the famply photo album, with pictures of our next President as a little kid, then growing up, and with his wife and family.  And even the New York Post, which supported McCain, is running photo spreads of Obama.

We get it: he’s the President-elect, and he’s good-looking.  We already know what he looks like.  He’s married, and his wife and family are good-looking too.

For my part, it’s another passel of waste paper that I’ll ultimately have to bind up and throw away.

It’s not that I’m against Obama.  I voted for him, and I wish him success as President.  We will all suffer if he fails.  (And thereby hangs another tale, perhaps for another day.)

But I can’t remember similar photo spreads for previous Prseidents-elect.  And somehow I can’t imagine the same treatment for McCain and his family if he had won the election.

During the campaign, the New York Post used to chirp about media bias in favor of Obama.  For my part, I found that the media (newspapers, TV news, etc.) was almost useless in helping to understand the positions of either candidate.  For me, the best source of information was the debates, where the candidates were able to explain their positions at length themselves.

Although I don’t have the data, I believe that many journalists are liberals: they see misery in the world around them, and perhaps believe that the government should do something about it.  But in this campaign, I didn’t see very much bias in reporting the substance: the details of both candidates’ plans were uniformly treated with disdain.

There is, however, a substantial bias in favor of the photogenic and the telegenic.   On the Republican side, Sarah Palin seemed to snag far more news coverage than McCain.  And on the Democratic side, Joe Biden, Obama’s running mate, was almost the steath candidate, appeaqring very infrequently in news reports.

I have to wonder what would have happened if the Democrats had nominated an elderly war hero, and the Republicans had nominated a charming, attractive young man….

Posted in Media, Barack Obama | No Comments »

8. November 2008 by admin.

I headed out bright and early Tuesday morning to pull the lever for Barack Obama.  The polling place was busy, but curiously, nobody was waiting to vote in my district, so I got in and out fast.  So that’s that.

And yet…

Some years ago, I read Thomas Frank’s book, What’s the Matter with Kansas?, and wondered at the political landscape where the struggling Kansans would consistently vote Republican, despite the fact that Republican policies were taking their jobs and leaving them worse off.

A New York Post op-ed piece at the time suggested that the Kansans were simply looking out for their own self-interest: they wanted to pay lower taxes.  But it’s more than that.

The United States used to stand for the idea of a place with limited government where one could work hard, compete fairly, and succeed.  The rest of the world probably still believes that, to some degree.  But for those of us who live here, it seems rather different.  I’ve speculated about the causes for that in these pages, and so won’t rehash that here.

I live in the city, and I’m pragmatic: I see that the changes around us under the Republicans (not necessarily initiated by the government, but encouraged by its free-market policies) are changing our country into something that we Americans are not necessarily morally, emotionally, or mentally prepared to face: a new era of competition for all of us.

So I’ll vote for Obama, to take a step away from that.  But it is a step away from what the United States traditionally stood for, and, yes, a step in the direction of socialism.

On the other hand, in cherishing what we stood for, unlike the Kansans of Franks’ book, I wouldn’t (and didn’t) vote for McCain as the more ‘true American’ alternative.  McCain is for big government too, just in a slightly different flavor.

But now I understand where the Kansans are coming from.

*          *          *

The MTA, our local transportation agency, is renaming what we always knew as the Triborough Bridge as the Robert F. Kennedy Bridge.  The name refers to a group of toll bridges that connect Manhattan, the Bronx, and Queens.

We’ve known for some time that the MTA is in dire financial straits: another subway and bus fare hike seems inevitable for next year.  So why are they spending hundreds of thousands (and perhaps millions) of dollars to rename a bridge that had a perfectly good (and functional) name to begin with?

Posted in Dysfunctional Government, Presidential election | No Comments »

3. November 2008 by admin.

About two weeks ago, one of my colleagues sent me this cartoon:

My immediate reaction was that, well, my colleague is a Republican.   But there’s a little bit more to it than that.

I know that giving to those who are ‘too lazy’ doesn’t work.  Despite the best intentions, it engenders laziness and corrodes personal honor.

But what happens when the world changes, and those who did not set out to be lazy find themselves in dire straits?  Unemployment is creeping up, and jobs are hard to find.  The eight-hour workday, for many, is a quaint relic of the past.  And almost every night on the news, there is a report of some large corporation or another firing a few thousand staffers.  For my part, I left my last job (and went into business for myself) because I was expected to give over my weekends for unpaid overtime, and was still in the doghouse with management for overrunning my budget.

Barack Obama, the Democratic candidate for President, proposes to reduce taxes for most of us, while increasing taxes on those earning over $250k per year and closing corporate loopholes.  It doesn’t solve the real problem, but it helps.  One aspect of Obama’s plan is that more people in the lower income levels would actually receive a tax credit instead of paying Federal income taxes.

The New York Post calls that ‘welfare.’  Perhaps, but a refundable tax credit is not enough to live on; it’s just intended to make life a little easier.  As long as the tax credit is tied to some actual earned income, it’s not going to erode the value of work.

To take the contrary view, that of the Republicans, is to redefine ‘lazy.’  If you want to go out and work, even if it’s physically demanding, you’re still ‘lazy’ if you expect your employer, in return for your efforts, to take care of you through health insurance or other benefits, or you expect to be able to have a working life that allows you time for your own pursuits.

The major problem with this view is that most of us were not brought up to be entrepreneurs and be comfortable taking risks.  We may like the sensation of risk–such as one experiences when bungee jumping or skydiving–but those activities, with their redundant safety measures, are probably safer than crossing the street, and do not prepare us to manage risk in our lives.

While many of us may have set up lemonade stands when we were kids, I can’t remember taking a course in high school or college about the basic principles of business.  (There were courses in economics, which is not the same thing.)  And I wonder how our young people, who live in constant communication with each other with their cell phones and their computers, will adapt to the process of going into business for one’s self, which is intensly personal and involves, to a surprising extent, being able to keep secrets.

But that is what lies before us under the Republicans.   And in that direction, to take the zeroth-degree approximation, lies armed revolution: we will learn to be violent before we learn to be businessmen. Actually, we already know how to be violent, so it won’t be a big leap.

And that is why, despite my misgivings about Barack Obama, I will pull the lever for him tomorrow.

Posted in John McCain, Presidential election, Money, Barack Obama | No Comments »