Busy, busy week

Man, I've been swamped this week! This whole election thing is just crazy. I've been expecting it to get hectic as we get closer to election day, but it's even more than I thought it would be. I didn't have much to base my expectations on, though - it's not like election day in Wyoming was anything near what happens in more populated areas of the country.

I mean, we were jumping around like crazy trying to gather and publish results for a single county with a population of, what, 40,000 total? And now, I'm in the middle of a battleground state in the presidential election and will be at the heart of gathering and online publishing results for 12 counties with a total population somewhere close to 800,000. At least here we have a staff to try and deal with it, instead of just having a single person sitting at the courthouse to send me results that I had to get typed up and published!

On top of that, we're in the middle of a couple big data stories that I can't just ignore. The most interesting one, to me at least, is the look we're taking at crime in the area. We've been running a Google map with real-time 911 data from the police department, which is pretty cool, but it's not all that useful in looking at long-term trends because it takes an eternity to load if you go back more than a week or so. I've pulled all the calls from this year out and put them into a spreadsheet, and we're looking at what addresses have been generating the most calls. Outside of agency locations that you expect to see a lot - police stations and hospitals, primarily - the top two locations are interesting, one expected and one surprising.

The expected location? The mall. As many stores and as many customers as it has, I fully expected it to be in the top 5 non-agency locations in the city - and it was No. 1 on the list.

The unexpected? A Wal-Mart! What?? What the heck is going on at this Wal-Mart that has it No. 2 in the city in police calls? This result alone has made the hours I've put into this project worth it (do you have any idea how boring it is to go through 80,000+ address listings and clean them up so that 123 N. Main, 123 N. Main St., and 123 North Main all turn up as the same address??). I'm really thinking we can pull a 1A centerpiece out of this, possibly even a series - "Counting down the top 5 locations that justify the police force!" - if we can just pull it out of the shadow of the election action going on.

And that is going to be tough! Heck, I've even been pulled away from data duties to get my hands dirty with some programming. We've had so much going on that the special design for the front page of the site on election day just hasn't been done, so that's what I spent probably 6 hours (of the 11 I worked yesterday!) working on. It's still not as clean and cool as I want it to be, but it's some good stuff. We'll have a real-time, interactive Flash map to show national results in the presidential election sitting to the side of an AJAX tab scheme for state races that will update live, with each race sitting under it's own tab with mugs of the candidates. And we'll have room to modify it with breaking stories or whatever we want to toss in there as the day progresses and stuff develops.

But, with Obama, Palin and Biden in the state today, and Obama coming to town on Saturday, and McCain expected to hit town in the next 2-3 days, it's going to be nuts around here. Trying to find room in the newshole to fit in a big investigative piece like this is going to be tricky, but we'll see what comes of it.

Random picture and thought of the day:

Man, when was the last time you saw gas under $2 a gallon? Probably a year and a half, at least, for me. I feel like such an old fart when I think that "back when I was in high school", I was buying gas for $0.75 a gallon on a regular basis, and I think the lowest I ever say it was around $0.62 or so. And that's only been 12 years!!

Marxism and socialism? I don't think so

So I saw a clip of this on CNN today where Biden responds a bit incredulously to a question about Obama and his plan to "spread the wealth" being called Marxist:



Here's where I have a big problem - not only with his response, but with the whole accusation here: These people have no clue what Marxism/socialism actually entails, neither the accusers nor the responses from Obama/Biden/the Democratic Party in general.

Nicely summed up on Wikipedia: Socialism refers to a broad set of economic theories of social organization advocating state or collective ownership. It is nothing like the "spreading the wealth" that has been stated. Nothing that Obama has proposed includes state ownership of any industry. Calling "spread the wealth" socialism might work as a first grader's definition, but it vastly distorts the heart of socialism.

Even universal health care is not socialism, even the way in which it's practiced in Europe and Canada. It's psuedo-socialism, but at its heart, the state doesn't own the health care system; it simply provides health insurance coverage to its citizenry while still allowing them to purchase different and better coverage if they so choose. True socialism would involve the states taking control of the hospitals and insurance companies and not allowing private competition. You can see some true examples of this in the way Russia and Venezuela have nationalized the oil industries, and see that this is very dissimilar to anything proposed by Obama or practiced in "socialized" health care.

I've heard the term tossed about in relation to the banking bailout, and it's just as bogus there. The argument goes that, because the government took stakes in the banks that they lent money to, this amounts to a nationalization of those banks. Pure BS. Why? Well, the stakes the government has taken are considered non-voting shares, so they don't get a say in how the bank is run beyond the requirements placed on them as part of the initial loan agreement. The purpose of the stakes taken is to eventually provide a means for the government to recover (a portion of) the money it has lent these banks, not to take them over and turn them into national properties that have been effectively socialized.

If you really want to get down to brass tacks, accusations that "spreading the wealth" are equivalent to socialism are accusations that every government in the world that collects taxes is socialist. Why? The very purpose of taxes is to collect money from all citizens according to the tax code, and then spread that wealth around to where the government deems it most appropriate.

Is that socialism? No; it's simply a misunderstanding of the basic definitions of socialism and government. If spreading the wealth actually was socialism, John McCain and George Bush would be some of the biggest socialists in the world based on the levels of government spending they have been in favor of over the course of the last 8 years.

So, until each and every one of these people has the courtesy to at least take a course in basic philosophy to learn the actual definitions of these terms they're throwing around, they need to check their rhetoric at the door and stick to terms they have at least a rudimentary grasp of.

Warlords: This takes me back

I've been totally hooked on a "new" game this weekend - Warlords IV.

When I was in high school, I can't even try to count how many hours I spent playing Warlords II on the Mac. When I stumbled across the latest version of this (which was only released 5 years ago...), I had to try it out and I'm quite enjoying it. It's a lot different from the version I played back when I was a young'n, but it's still a lot of fun and offers a ton of replay value.

I actually had a marathon session of gaming on Saturday, racking up probably 9 hours engrossed in Warlord-y goodness (with breaks for family duties here and there, of course). I haven't spent that long gaming in years, probably since '06 when I was still playing Warcraft. There is definitely a major time suckage potential in this game!

Dee-de-deeeee: Dumbass of the Year

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/10/24/mccain-supporter-who-clai_n_137484.html

Police tell KDKA that a campaign volunteer has now confessed to making up a story that a mugger attacked her and cut the letter B in her face after seeing her McCain bumper sticker.

Ashley Todd, 20, of Texas, initially told police that she was robbed at an ATM in Bloomfield and that the suspect became enraged and started beating her after seeing her GOP sticker on her car. [...]

This afternoon, a Pittsburgh police commander told KDKA Investigator Marty Griffin that Todd confessed to making up the story.

The commander added that Todd will face charges; but police have not commented on what those charges will be.

Authorities are expected to release more details at a news conference this afternoon.

Wow, seriously? You thought this was going to HELP McCain? You're a CAMPAIGN WORKER and you pull this stunt?? WTF are you thinking?? When you went to Pennsylvania, did you forget to pack your brain for the trip?

I keep thinking that I have seen the true depths of human stupidity, and then stuff like this happens and my opinion of humanity sinks another notch down the scale...

Solution to energy prices? Destroy the economy!

On the surface, it seems so counterintuitive - everything is going in the crapper right now, but oil/gas prices are plummeting? Wasn't it just a few months ago when the high cost of oil was the biggest threat to the world economy? And now, take a look at the price of oil over the last year (courtesy of NYTimes.com):



Oil is trading at roughly $20 a barrel less than it did a year ago after topping $140/barrel in July. Wow, so this is telling me that the value of oil has dropped by half in 3 months??

I look at this and it just strikes me as one more example of why the markets (ALL the markets, it seems) are, to put it bluntly, completely fucked up. The whole process just leads to overreaction, overspeculation, panic. "OMG, we're using oil! It's going to cost more, so bet that it will cost even more than that!"

Fast forward 3 months - "OMFG, everyone's broke, so less oil is being used, now I'm even more screwed because I locked in my price for winter oil in July and now it's half that price. I'm such an idiot!"

It just seems like there needs to be a better way to do all of this, even though I have no clue what that might be. Markets absolutely need to be able to react to changes in the conditions, but can't something be done to avoid or prevent these wild swings? If you look at that graph, there was pretty stable price point for oil around $90-100 or so. And at both the high in July and the low now, I'd bet that the "actual" worth of oil is still somewhere around that point of stability, though possibly slightly lower now that we're looking at decreased demand as the economy crumbles. It's just ludicrous to me that oil is trading so low now, even though that "decreased demand" is still going to be 10-20% higher than the demand in 2007 (instead of the 25-40% increase being projected in July that pushed prices through the roof).

If Opie, Andy and the Fonz endorse it, it's gotta be good

I saw this over on http://ianmcgibboney.blogspot.com/ and thought it was pretty funny, so I wanted to blatantly steal it ans put it here:

See more Ron Howard videos at Funny or Die

Rambling towards an identity

I've been working lately at trying to categorize myself. I know that labels are utterly meaningless in the end, but they're something that can be helpful in the process of trying to define oneself and explain to others what that definition might be.

Part of what's made it hard is how easily those labels get thrown around and abused in daily conversation, which has just been amplified and made so much worse in the course of the election this year. "Liberal" and "Conservative" have gotten to the point of practically being insults when lobbed across the aisle at the other party. I try to hold myself above that level of discourse, but I'm not guiltless by any means.

So what am I? In my own mind, I see myself as a moderately progressive liberal. On the core issues, that's where I see the majority of my personal beliefs being reflected. I do think that welfare and social security are good things and form the security net that is part of the social contract the government and people have agreed to. I do think it's wrong to have a wholesale legal ban on abortion, though there are forms of abortion that can and should absolutely be limited. I do think that the Second Amendment, while (arguably) granting the right to personally bear arms, does not mean that this is an unfettered right to own any and all forms of weaponry - it just makes so little sense to me that it requires a license to drive a car and get married, but not to own a gun. I do think that everyone deserves the opportunity to marry the person they love - straight, gay, transgender, whatever.

And in the more traditional, literal sense of what progressive and conservative mean, I think we always need to keep our eyes looking to the future and trying to adapt to the present in a liberal sense rather than keep looking backwards and simply trying to maintain tradition in a conservative sense. This is something that I think is at the core of the big split between red and blue, yet it often gets overlooked. The very words we use to define the two sides have some meaning. I understand that "conservative" originated with the meaning of fiscal conservatism, and that's something I actually think about a lot, but more on that later. But if you look at where politics stands today, conservatives tend to want to keep things they way they've always been - they want religion at the heart of society and government; they don't want the immigrants coming in and changing things; they don't want to let gays get married because that's not the traditional idea of marriage. And liberals/progressives look at these ways of doing things and see changes that they believe will make things better. When it reaches the point of trying to change the way things "have always been done", there's obviously going to be a huge clash and that's where we are right now.

That doesn't mean that this stuff is at the same level of what has happened in the past. Are the reforms liberals pushing for now of the same degree or importance of what the founding fathers did? The suffragists? The civil rights movement? The closest you can come to that might be with gay marriage. To me, it's not quite the same because that's a small portion of their rights (albeit an important one), the rest of which were fought for and protected as part of the other struggles in the 20th century. But for the most part, it really seems like all the "big" battles are over and now we're picking up the pieces and fighting the smaller battles that are left to be fought.

Maybe you could make a case that the one big battle left to be fought is the one for economic equality, and there are rumblings going on in the wake of the economic collapse that could lead to this happening. The problem I see here is that there's no clear path to "victory". I think it's fairly obvious that there is something inherently inequitable about 1% of the population controlling 60% of the wealth in the world.

But what's the answer? I certainly don't have it. I see potential in a socialist-inspired method, but the problems inherent in that system are difficult to overcome. How do you prevent the greed and corruption that turn socialism into Stalinist communism? How do you provide the motivation to reach as high as you possibly can with your talent without the incentive of proportionately greater compensation? That's the flaw with the concept of, "From each according to their abilities; to each according to their needs" - there is no motivation beyond simply believing that people will work as hard as they can. And from what I've seen, most people will be as lazy as they can get away with, so there needs to be something to motivate them.

To some extent, I think there is a lot to learn from Europe in this sense. Many countries there have found ways to incorporate pieces of democracy, capitalism and socialism together in a mostly cohesive framework. They have taken the idea of a social contract between citizen and government to heart, the idea that the purpose of government is to take care of its people - all of its people. They've decided that health care and education are fundamental to properly caring for and preparing their citizenry, and they've made the sacrifices needed to make it happen.

And after rambling off on a tangent, this brings me back to the idea of fiscal conservatism. At its heart, I truly believe in this principle. The goal of every government should be to never spend more than it takes in in revenue. Obviously, there will be times when this isn't possible such as wars, famines, and other crises. But we've seen vividly in the past year the consequence of overextending. What I don't agree with, and many conservatives have connected the ideas, is that fiscal conservatism means small government and minimal spending. Just because you believe in balanced budgets, that doesn't mean you can't add programs and increase the ability of the government to provide for its people; it just means you have to be able to pay for it.

That is the crux of the problem, because the only way to do that is to raise taxes. And I can't remember the last time I heard people on either side talk honestly about raising taxes. It seems like everyone just wants to lower taxes and still enjoy everything that we've come to expect from government - and more! But it doesn't work that way, and our $10 trillion national debt graphically illustrates that. You want to spend more? Well, then you need to collect more taxes. The idea that lowering taxes results in higher total revenues works to an extent, but I believe that it fails in the long run.

The simple - and only - answer is that, if you want to spend more, you have to raise taxes. If we had nationalized health care and I had higher taxes, but didn't have the $300 a month insurance premium I have to pay now, I'd bet that at best I'd pay a good deal less and at worst have a slight increase in total amount of taxes each month. Isn't that worth it to have health care provided for me, my family and everyone in the country that needs it regardless of income?

How does this all define me? It really doesn't; it mostly just gives a basis of explanation for me. Much of this has been at the heart of my thoughts for many years now. It's what I concluded was the "right" way to do things and what I've continued to investigate to make sure that it is still the "right" way to go about things over the ensuing years. And "right" isn't the right word - these are the things I think will be most helpful, most beneficial to me, my country and my fellow citizens. That doesn't make them "right"; it just makes them right to me. If you disagree with me, that doesn't make you wrong - it just makes you less "right" than I am!! :D

Today's funny: PartiallyClips

I'm going through the archives lately, so here's another couple from PartiallyClips that made me laugh:












What's really funny about the second one is how much our girls absolutely LOVE "badgersbadgersbadgers"! Jasmine will just walk up to me while I'm working on the computer and say, "Badgerbadger, daddy! Badgerrrrs!" They're so young, and yet already learning the fine art of being a hip interweb geek. I'm so proud of them! :)

Daily Show: Life in Wasillalalalala, Alaska

I laughed so hard I was almost crying:




Alright, ok... alright... I'm laughing again, so gimme a sec...


Alright. So, Wasilla, Alaska, has no fire department... no school system... no social services at all. And the mayor can only describe her job as signing checks once a week and holding staff meetings.

Well, golly gee, heck and darn, that sure does make Ms. Palin qualified to be governor of the state! Oh, well, maybe it doesn't. What's that you say? OH! She's not trying to be governor, she's the Republican nominee for VICE-FRICKIN'-PRESIDENT!!!! SCHWEEEEEEEEET!!! I'll feel safer knowing that, if they win, she'll be just one heartbeat of a 72-year-old with recurrent bouts of skin cancer away from being the single most powerful person in the world.

My funny of the day

From PartiallyClips.com:

Mish-mash

• Hmmm, Phillies and Rays in the World Series? I'm not overly surprised by the Phils, but the Rays are just such a shock. I know, I've had the whole season to come to terms with the fact that they are for real, but I'm still shocked. Having no real preference for who wins, I'll have to throw my support behind the Rays just because of their story. "Worst-to-first" is such a cool thing to see that it makes me smile a bit.

• NEWS ALERT: The Cowboys didn't lose this week! Despite 73 turnovers and 0 yards in offense, Wyoming managed to eke out a 0-0 tie against their Bye Week.

• Bullet points make it look like I have a lot to say even when it's just a bunch of random crap I feel like talking about. This is one of the key points I learned in college. Aren't edumacation great and stuff? Still, I've enjoyed being able to write on here, even if a lot of it is just random and inconsequential stuff like this. It's a good outlet for stuff I think about and mean to say, but just never remember to.

• As much as the thought of her being president scares me, I thought Sarah Palin did well on Saturday Night Live this weekend. And it's sad to me that she seems more qualified to be on a sketch comedy show than in the White House and yet is still a nominee for vice president...

• We had a ton of photos taken at the park this weekend. One of Kim's friends is looking to break into photography and was willing to do them for free to help build her portfolio, so we said sure. I'll have to post a couple photos when we get them back - some are SOOOOOO cute! For the last bit of it, we got Anisa (flying unicorn) and Jasmine (Minnie Mouse) into their Halloween costumes and let them run around and play in the park while snapping pictures. As we were getting ready to leave, a handful of ducks walked up out of the pond/lake to check us out and see if we had any bread to feed them. The girls were just thrilled that the ducks had come up to say "Hi!" to them! :)

Kiddo cuteness

The girls have been so cute lately - Anisa has grasped the concept of singing and has been learning the words, so I keep finding her singing as she goes around the house. I had to go into her room last night after bedtime and tell her to sing in a whisper because she was going to wake up her sister! And Jasmine is trying to be just like big sister now - she's only picked up words to "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" so far, but any time I sing it or it's playing in the room, she'll jump right in with her sister and try to sing away. It's so awesome to hear them both crooning away in their cute little girl voices!

I keep being amazed by just how much information Anisa absorbs from everything around her. This week, she's been fascinated with bones and wants a skeleton for Christmas to learn more about dem bones. There's some show on On-Demand that takes "Dry Bones" and has dancing skeletons illustrating each bone they're talking about in the song and then it goes back and gives an explanation of just what the foot bone is made of and what it does to help us stand, walk, etc. Well, Anisa just keeps dropping little knowledge nuggets that she picked up from that on me - "You can't stand without your backbone, daddy!" - and it's just so cool.

I'm a lame-ass whiner

I need something different. I feel like I'm in a total rut right now. Work is its own exciting beast right now, so that's good at least. But my personal time (which is pretty much non-existent, anyway) is just... blah. Don't take that the wrong way - I'm happy at home, I love being a dad and a husband and all that jazz. I'm just not doing anything that's simply me being me for me, if that makes any sense.

Life is just: Wake up, go to work, come home and eat dinner, put work in on Worldwinner, put kids to bed, chill for an hour or two, sleep, repeat. And I have no idea how to break the cycle.

I had been hoping that having a normal work schedule would give me a chance to be more normal and do more stuff outside of the house, and it probably will eventually. It's just tough right now and I feel like whining. I mean, I barely see the kids any more, so I try to spend time with them (even when they're frustrating me to the point of ripping my hair out!) when I get home so that I can feel like a dad instead of just a stranger that pops into their life every evening. But then it's 9 or 10 p.m., and what is there left to do at that hour? It's not like I've ever been a barfly (or could even afford it) and movies are just too damn pricey to see at the theater, let alone go by myself while Kim stays home with the kids.

And it's not like I know a whole lot of people here. Most people that I do know are working that Copy Desk schedule I lived on forever and are at work until midnight or 1 a.m., so it's not like I can go hang out with them. The sad thing is, I don't even know what it is I want to be doing - just... something. I don't have the time to spend gaming that I used to (and most good games require a significant investment of time to truly enjoy any more); I don't have the time, quiet or solitude to spend reading as much as I used to; I'm not in shape enough to enjoy playing basketball like I used to; and that's basically the extent of my recreational activities for the last 20 years. Yay me for being adventurous and outgoing!

What a week

The new job is certainly catching up to me. The first couple of weeks were fairly calm as I spent my time trying to figure out how this whole Data thing worked and putting together a Wiki to roll out to the room (that no one even uses yet... Ugh). I managed to score big with a 1A centerpiece that fell into my lap about presidential campaign contributions within the first week and a half - and then the work really started.

I've got my fingers in about 6 different projects right now, seeing what I can stir up, everything from statistics on the uninsured to foreclosures to teacher salaries to funding schools with taxes on casinos.

Normally, there's always a little breathing room during the day where you can take 10 or 15 minutes to relax a little and check out NYTimes.com or whatever catches your interest, but not the last couple of days. I've been trying to get databases cleaned up for 3 different projects, while figuring out stories worth pulling out of them and how to best present the data graphically in print. I've been able to occasionally tab over to see glance at the latest update on the front page of the Times (can you tell they're my preferred online news source?) maybe every couple of hours.

It's just kind of weird having to work hard for once. I've spent so many years able to just skate by without breaking a sweat that this is a nice change. How big of a freak am I - enjoying the fact that my job is a lot harder now!

Mo' money, mo' problems - Sinfest

I love Sinfest!!

Gaming on Worldwinner

I figured I'd share just what it is I do when I'm gaming on Worldwinner.com. I mostly compete in Tile City on there, though I also play Golf, Sudoku, and Big Money fairly often as well. I've put a couple videos up in the last couple of months to help other players, so here they are. They're not my best performances - this particular layout of Tile City is not my best, but they're fairly decent examples of the game.

Rachael Yamagata rocks my little world

Man, I am loving the new Rachael Yamagata album. The teaser she put out had me highly anticipating it, and she absolutely nailed it. And I've got a signed picture of her that came with the album, which just adds to the awesomeness factor! :D

The way she split up the tracks into 2 discs was such a nice touch. Normally, when there's an album with such distinct sounds, they're mixed together and you end up skipping through some songs that you're not in the mood for. Rachael, though? Not happening. She's got the "mellow", piano-based, traditional Yamagata sound all together on Disc 1 and the edgy, guitar-thrashing sounds on Disc 2, giving me the chance to take it all in without being jarred between her beautiful ballads and new push towards rock.

I have to admit, I was not looking forward to the "new sound" when I first read about it. Why mess with a good thing, ya know? But I have been pleasantly surprised. She's found a way to do it without being over the top and without losing the piercing lyrics that have always moved me. "Sidedish Friend" and "Accident" were perfect on the sampler, showcasing what she had done and laying the groundwork for the rest. "Faster" and "Don't" are simply awesome; some great music and the kind of lyrical depth and cleverness she excels at.

I couldn't be more excited right now about the concert next month. I just wish that instead of it being this cafe tour with like 6 artists on the bill, it was just Rachael on stage for like 4 hours playing everything on every album of hers plus whatever covers and such that popped into her head. I don't ask much, right?

A little bit of everything

• Well, the 'Pokes took on another Top 20 behemoth from the land of Mormon. And the result was similar to last time - a 40-7 walloping by No. 14 Utah. Hey, at least they scored this time, right?

• I might have been just a tad early on the Dodgers bandwagon. Going down 2-0 to the Phillies is not a good way to start the NLCS, but it's not over yet. If anyone other than Manny and Ethier could get some offense going, the Dodgers still have a shot. And if the Rays and Sox keep beating up on each other they way they are and go to seven games, that might open the door for whoever comes out of the NL to steal the Series.

• I'm thinking the Broncos really need to invest in some Super Glue™ after their first half against Jacksonville so far. It's pretty sad when you're this offensive juggernaut and have dominated the game, but turnovers have sent you into halftime down 10-7. This should easily be a 21-10 lead for the Broncos but they're taking notes from Wyoming on how to kill any chance of winning by turning it over whenever they get a chance.

• I have to give John McCain credit for the exceedingly noble and humane gesture of having the courage to stand up and publicly admit that, no, Barack Obama is not actually an Arab. No other politician would have had the intestinal fortitude to, you know, actually admit the truth and correct one of the lies out there that has been boosting his support. And yes, there's just this tiny, eensie weensie bit of biting sarcasm there. I mean, c'mon, when his own ads have been doing everything they can to cast this mysterious light on Obama's background (when there's two full memoirs in print and widely read that document his background), how can he expect the less-than-diligent followers out there to think anything else?

With all the hate and anger the McCain campaign (not necessarily McCain himself) has been pumping into this race, McCain should have been putting out the word a month ago that the sort of hate and rhetoric that's been circulating was simply false and way over the top. Instead, he corrects some ignorant bumpkin lady that states Obama is an Arab and I hear pundits calling him such a good guy for doing it. Ugh.

• Following up on my earlier post about the electoral college race, I've been taking a look at fivethirtyeight.com the last couple of days. It takes a much more computational approach to interpreting the polls, with various polls weighted based on past performance and agreement with simulations of outcomes. These guys cut their teeth working on statistical analysis of baseball and have done some impressive work there, so I'm interested to see how close their projections come to the poll predictions and to actual results.

• I wish I would have had the camera with me a little bit ago. On the way home from Wal-Mart, Anisa found a red pen and managed to almost entirely cover her legs with red ink... sooo funny! The best part was when she was trying to pull her skirt down on the walk to the front door to try and cover all the pen on her legs, saying, "Jasmine is going to be mad when she sees what I did."

And now for something entirely dif... well, not really all that different

Yeah, I've been focusing on the economy a lot lately, but it's been kind of hard not to. Not only is it a financial crisis of truly historical proportions (not to mention a perfect example of what unfettered and unchecked greed can result in), but through the mortgage markets it's having a profound effect on average people the way that 1972 and 1987 really didn't. Plus, it doesn't help that I've been neck deep in looking at mortgages and foreclosures in the area to try and make sense of the local impact as part of my work.

So now, I feel like writing something that has nothing to do with that.

• I'm jealous of Kim and the kids right now. While I was slaving away at work yesterday, they got to go to The Discovery Center here in Springfield. They got to dig for dino bones, see a giant tornado, turn on lights to see animals in the cave, and take turns running the Human Hamster Wheel. The girls were so excited about it when they picked me up from work yesterday, it really made me wish I could have been there. Had I been on my old schedule, I probably would have gone with them. Of course, on my old schedule, we (the adults, at least) probably would have been tired from only managing 5 hours of sleep and might have simply not gone, so I guess it's a trade off. Still, I definitely want to go with them one of these weeks soon.

• I'm getting more and more excited about the Rachael Yamagata concert. I feel like a giddy teenager again when I was thrilled about getting to see Ani for the first time. Not only that, but I get to see Alice Russell as part of the show, too! She'd been on my list of artists to get more of since I'd heard her with Quantic, but once I find out she'd be part of the concert, I went out and picked up "My Favourite Letters" and I've been seriously digging it. It's been on a pretty steady rotation in the car for my 40-50 minutes of driving to and from work each day.

• Ugh, that reminds me. I hate commuting. HATE it. And I know, it's not really commuting since I'm just driving from the south side of town to the middle of the city, but it still sucks. I never realized how lucky and convenient it was to live a total of 5 blocks away from work in Wyoming.

• This whole blog thing has been nice. Not that very many people read it, but it's still nice to have an outlet for things. Instead of losing all the random crap that floats through my head during the day, now I can manage to capture 1 or 2 of those thoughts and pretend to be a writer. Hey, at least my grammar and spelling are pretty good, right? :D

• Pizza. I like it. So there.

• You know, it sure seems like the Dodgers are going to be this year's Rockies. They're going to be the surprise team of the playoffs and then get absolutely spanked by the winner of the Boston/Tampa series, which should be a heck of a battle. I've got say, the whole Manny vs. the Red Sox storyline is an interesting one. Of course, it will get so overplayed and blown out of proportion if they meet in the World Series that I'll absolutely hate the story. I'm just wondering, how many times has a superstar-caliber player been traded mid-season and then met his former team in the championship that same year? I mean, in ANY sport. I honestly can't remember this ever happening, but I'm not the biggest sports geek in the world either so I could easily be wrong.

Freaky day on the Dow

So here's a look at what's happened today. This graph from the NYTimes.com is just freaky. I spent the whole day waiting for it drop below 8,000 again and it never quite made it there... then out of the blue comes this huge rally at the end. Man, watching this stuff happen is like watching a horse race - you never know what's going to happen. Of course, the livlihoods of millions aren't tied to a horse race so it's not entirely accurate.











And here's a peek at how the market has fared this week. That's just a hell of a dip.

It's almost disturbing to think that a nearly 2,000-point drop can be shown in just an inch of a graph... it doesn't do it justice at all. I'd love to see this graph up on an Imax screen just to really get a visual sensation of what has happened.















And finally, here's a look at the last year of crushing defeat to the Dow.

A heartfelt Thank You to the NYTimes Web site for providing the data and graphs for all of this. They've been my main source of morbid fascination to watch this all unfold.

How glad I am to be young

Reading this blog post made me happy about my relative youth:

Some may also wonder how long it will take the market to “recover.” It depends exactly what is meant by “recover,” of course, but one measure might be when the market returns to its pre-crash peak. The historical data is somewhat more distressing in this context.

After the Great Depression, it took 29 years — until 1958 — for the market to reach its pre-Depression, inflation-adjusted peak. After the 1970s recession, it took 24 years — until 1992 — for the market to make a full “recovery” by the same measure. So no matter whether you start from the recent 2007 peak, or from the market’s absolute inflation-adjusted peak during the tech bubble in 2000, we may still have at least a decade to go before full “recovery.”

So just to be optimistic, that means it will take at least 20 years for investments made in the last 10 years to return to the equivalent of their dollar value at time of investment. I've got plenty of time for my portfolio to recover, but what about all those folks in their 50s and 60s looking to retire soon? They'd been depending on their 401k and Roth IRAs and now in a year, the value of that has dropped by 40%. What the hell are they supposed to do, other than keep working longer?

This just underscores the need for Social Security reform being done in the right way. Could you imagine the outrage throughout the country if we had gone ahead and privatized Social Security into the markets 4-5 years ago? That would have just added a whole other layer of tragedy and human cost into the whole mess we're seeing now. I truly hope this puts an end to that whole proposal - it's never really made sense, and it makes even less sense now. Let folks do what they want with their personal approaches to retirement with 401(k)s, IRAs, savings accounts, CDs, and coffee cans full of money, but don't put the heart of the government safety net at risk of suffering the whims of the market.

The one thing that does make me a little bit happy about this is that any investments I make now are going to see a huge increase in value as the market recovers. That 40% drop in value means the investment power of my dollar is now buying 40% more. When things get better, that's going to be a huge payoff. Whee - I found a silver lining!!

Keeping up with political races

A self-described "poll nerd" has put together this site to take poll results and turn them into an estimate of the electoral college outcome in the presidential race. He's also been looking at the polls to see how the Congressional races are going to impact the balance of power in the House and Senate. A very interesting site, so I thought I'd share it.

Stock market, trading and bears - OH MY!

Ummm, what the hell happened?? I'd been keeping an eye on the market today, seeing it was down a bit as expected. Then I take a break and all hell breaks loose in the last hour of trading... Insane!

Today's numbers:

Oct. 9, 2008 - 8579.195, down 5618.91 from the high mark on Oct. 11, 2007, for a 39.58% loss since then.

That's also a 1015.74 pt loss since MONDAY, when I last posted numbers, for a 10.59% loss in the last 3 days...

I found an interesting NYTimes blog taking a historical look at the numbers - I guess I'm not the only historically-minded number junky out there. We should take pride! Americans always want to be the best, and now we're closing in on taking the biggest drop in the history of the market. Take THAT, 1932!!

Month without plastic

I had been reading this blog and completely forgot about it until today. I had stumbled across another one of the BBC's topic blogs and it reminded me that I hadn't caught the conclusion of the plastics blog.

It's a really interesting look at what changes life requires to minimize the use of plastic in every day life. I was impressed at her achievement - without going to extraordinary measures, she was able to reduce plastic use by 80%! That's a huge difference, but I also don't see it as being quite as easy for everyone as it was for her.

One big problem would be meat. She was able to stop by her local butcher for non-plasticized meat; I'm not sure many towns in America even have that option any more, so what other avenues would there be there? It would also require a big change in overall eating habits. Just about everything we buy, whether it's components to cook a meal or ready-made stuff to eat or snack on, is encased in some form of plastic. I'm sure I could find a fair amount at more eco-conscious stores (though I have to give credit to Wal-Mart for the push they've lead to reduce packaging over the last few years), but can I afford the cost? It's tough enough making ends meet when we're buying groceries at the cheapest place in town; seeing a 10-30% increase in that cost would be a big hit to take.

Some of her revelations and recommendations are definitely in my mind. The biggest one was to get a stainless steel cup to use for drinking, be it water or soda. I need to cut back on soda anyway (drinking 126 ounces of sugar water a day is probably a wee bit too much...), so it's a good plan. We've been trying to use our cloth bags at the store when we go shopping for a while now, but it seems I never remember that they're sitting in the car. And I'm definitely going to try to remember to take our own containers to restaurants to use as a doggie bag instead of relying on the styrofoam containers they usually supply.

All in all, I definitely recommend giving her experience a read. It may not change your life, but it will certainly make you think about things a little more.

That brings me to what I think was the most interesting part of reading this. What the BBC has done with its blogs is really interesting to me. They've taken these stories that would have been features or series in a newspaper and turned them into the personalized topic blogs. Just based on the comments, these have been a huge hit. I've been trying to wrap my head around ways to make blogs more useful to the media, and this approach really caught my attention.

The traditional way the big media sites have done blogging - having an expert writing stories on their blog and posting them immediately rather than on deadline - certainly has its place and can be hugely effective. But I think this more personal touch is a great addition to the methodology of news blogging. It certainly can be tricky; you have to find the right person/people to right it, people that can effectively communicate through a blog and are willing to invest the time and effort necessary; you have to find a topic that is going to be appealing and figure out a way to tackle it through a blog setting that is going to be interesting and worth coming back for. So there's going to be a lot of planning and forethought to make it work, but it seems to me like there is a big payoff whenever you do it successfully.

More numbers

Hmmm, can you tell I've been a little preoccupied with the slide of the economy into the gutter?

Just an update to some numbers from last week:

Since Oct. 11, 2007, the Dow has now dropped 4603.17 points to 9,594.93 as of 1:42 p.m. CDT today. That brings the drop in value of the market since it's peak to 32.42% in just 360 days.

Almost as disheartening? In the week since I last posted numbers on this, it's dropped 1,019 points for a 9.6% loss in 7 days.


Gaming
In lighter news, I have hardly been gaming at all lately. Now starting my fourth week on my new work schedule, it's just hard to find time to play. I'm still cruising along on Worldwinner, since that's basically my second job, but "fun" gaming just doesn't happen. I get home from work, and then it's dinner time and time to get the kiddos ready for bed. By the time that nightly fight is over and they've quieted down and fallen asleep, it's usually 9:30, 10. Then I end up finally relaxing a little and spending some time with Kim, which is about the only quiet time we get together. And all of a sudden, it's 11:30 and I'm tired and ready for bed. So where does gaming even fit in with all of that?

I can't say I'm upset or even unhappy about it; that's just the way life is some times. I'm hoping that as time goes on and we all get more used to the realities of the new schedule, things will get a little easier and my free time becomes a little more free. That remains to be seen, though.

Horror in slow motion

I have to say, this whole economic collapse is one of the weirdest experiences in my life. I've been around and aware enough for many world-changing events, but they all seemed to share a quality of *SMACK* it happened, then watch the aftermath. The Challenger and Columbia, 9/11, Iraq I and II, previous collapses on Wall Street, the Berlin Wall...

Maybe I've just remembered them all as big single events moreso than the reality of the situations actually warrant, but certainly none of them seemed to me to have the kind of prolonged agony the last year has subjected us to. I first started hearing rumblings about the housing market and mortgage industry last summer. I started seeing it have a real impact on the economy around January. And now, the last 3 months I've seen it start wreaking real havoc around the world. I sat there this morning watching the Dow Jones average drop below 10,000 - the first time it's been down to four digits since 2004 - and just wondering when the bleeding is going to stop.

It really makes me wonder how people managed throughout the Cold War. At least with the economic stuff, we can be fairly certain that we'll come out on the other side. We may not know exactly when or how bad it may get, but eventually we'll get things revved up again and back on the right track. With the Cold War, there was just no such certainty, no light at the end of the tunnel, no guarantee that we were going to come out on top or that you wouldn't wake up to the roar of nuclear apocalypse rushing at you in the night. Just with the little tastes I've had in the last decade, I'm glad I didn't have to live with that kind of unresolved fear hanging over my head all the time.

King John?

When I found this here, I could not believe what I was seeing.





His quote about 35 seconds in:

I’m not saying this is the perfect answer. If I were dictator, which I always aspire to be, I would write it a little bit differently. I would increase the FDIC insured deposits and done some other things.

Ummmmm.... WTF???? Seriously??? He's not joking. He's not kidding. He's saying that with a straight face. This is what you get when you see the real John McCain.

Never fails to deliver a laugh

If you have the time to spare and don't mind laughing out loud (meaning - this might not be the best thing to read at work), check out the Fail Blog to see the idiocy and miscues of humanity at their funniest.


Kid stuff
Apparently, Jasmine counted to ELEVEN by herself this morning. How did this happen? She hasn't even counted to two, and now she's up to 11? Heck, Anisa's got a year and a half on her and is only counting to 8 consistently.

Anisa has finally grasped the concept of "Why?" recently. I've been waiting for this to happen, and it's such a huge leap in logic. It means she's finally connected the dots on cause and effect; she knows there's a reason things happen now, which is just awesome. Of course, it also means that most requests and statements are now followed by her asking, "Why? But why, daddy?", which adds a whole new level of discussion. At least I already know the 2 ways to answer that and end a conversation: "Because" and "Why not?"

We picked up some of the Wizard of Oz dolls the McDonalds has been selling recently, and they're a huge hit. Both girls have been playing with them all the time and insisting on taking them to bed with them.

Quick question: Is there a remedy out there for the post-waking-up grumpiness? Both girls are relentlessly grumpy for about an hour or so after they wake up in the mornings or after a nap. It's not fun.

One thing I love about the girls is that they're so into reading. They absolutely love sitting down with their books and reading stories. One thing I worried about going into this whole parenting thing was that having all the TV and video and computer stuff would make them not appreciated books at all. That worry has been completely unwarranted. It's something we'll have to keep encouraging as they get older, but there's definitely a solid foundation there for them to build on.

Pushed off the cliff

Serendipity is funny - I was talking to my mom last night a bit about the causes of our current economic troubles, and then opened NYTimes.com this morning to find a rather striking article discussing just that.

Very brief summary: A 2004 SEC ruling dramatically increased the amount of debt the Big Boys on Wall Street were allowed to carry. The house of cards that led up this certainly had some foundations built in the Clinton, Bush I and Reagan eras, but this decision basically tried to see if pyramid of pachyderms (to steal a line from Dumbo) could balance on top of that house. How bad was it?

"Over the following months and years, each of the firms would take advantage of the looser rules. At Bear Stearns, the leverage ratio — a measurement of how much the firm was borrowing compared to its total assets — rose sharply, to 33 to 1. In other words, for every dollar in equity, it had $33 of debt. The ratios at the other firms also rose significantly."

Man, if that same standard was applied to me, I could carry nearly $1.5 million in debt.... that sure would be fun for a couple of years, but wow is the hangover is going to suck when the bill collectors show up.

And it makes me all the more confident that we're on the right path now to know that Henry Paulson, the Treasury Secretary leading us down the bailout path, sat there in this SEC meeting and thought this was going to be a great idea and had no qualms about approving it. What, are we now trying to get the U.S. government to a 33-to-1 debt ratio?

Ugh. I'm not looking forward to the next 10 years at all, regardless of who's at the reins.