so according to my mom my brother got up last night in the middle of the night, passed out in the bathroom on the floor and must have hit his face on something so they took him to the er where he got 7 stitches in his chin, an MRI and some fluids...turns out something is weird with his kidneys and he is at home...i am not sure what is going on now, but it seems strange this would come on all of the sudden.
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Friday, December 26, 2008
Wednesday, December 24, 2008
merry christmas
Eight-year-old Virginia O'Hanlon wrote a letter to the editor of New York's Sun, and the quick response was printed as an unsigned editorial Sept. 21, 1897. The work of veteran newsman Francis Pharcellus Church has since become history's most reprinted newspaper editorial, appearing in part or whole in dozens of languages in books, movies, and other editorials, and on posters and stamps.
"DEAR EDITOR: I am 8 years old.
"Some of my little friends say there is no Santa Claus.
"Papa says, 'If you see it in THE SUN it's so.'
"Please tell me the truth; is there a Santa Claus?
"VIRGINIA O'HANLON.
"115 WEST NINETY-FIFTH STREET."
VIRGINIA, your little friends are wrong. They have been affected by the skepticism of a skeptical age. They do not believe except [what] they see. They think that nothing can be which is not comprehensible by their little minds. All minds, Virginia, whether they be men's or children's, are little. In this great universe of ours man is a mere insect, an ant, in his intellect, as compared with the boundless world about him, as measured by the intelligence capable of grasping the whole of truth and knowledge.
Yes, VIRGINIA, there is a Santa Claus. He exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist, and you know that they abound and give to your life its highest beauty and joy. Alas! how dreary would be the world if there were no Santa Claus. It would be as dreary as if there were no VIRGINIAS. There would be no childlike faith then, no poetry, no romance to make tolerable this existence. We should have no enjoyment, except in sense and sight. The eternal light with which childhood fills the world would be extinguished.
Not believe in Santa Claus! You might as well not believe in fairies! You might get your papa to hire men to watch in all the chimneys on Christmas Eve to catch Santa Claus, but even if they did not see Santa Claus coming down, what would that prove? Nobody sees Santa Claus, but that is no sign that there is no Santa Claus. The most real things in the world are those that neither children nor men can see. Did you ever see fairies dancing on the lawn? Of course not, but that's no proof that they are not there. Nobody can conceive or imagine all the wonders there are unseen and unseeable in the world.
You may tear apart the baby's rattle and see what makes the noise inside, but there is a veil covering the unseen world which not the strongest man, nor even the united strength of all the strongest men that ever lived, could tear apart. Only faith, fancy, poetry, love, romance, can push aside that curtain and view and picture the supernal beauty and glory beyond. Is it all real? Ah, VIRGINIA, in all this world there is nothing else real and abiding.
No Santa Claus! Thank God! he lives, and he lives forever. A thousand years from now, Virginia, nay, ten times ten thousand years from now, he will continue to make glad the heart of childhood.
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"DEAR EDITOR: I am 8 years old.
"Some of my little friends say there is no Santa Claus.
"Papa says, 'If you see it in THE SUN it's so.'
"Please tell me the truth; is there a Santa Claus?
"VIRGINIA O'HANLON.
"115 WEST NINETY-FIFTH STREET."
VIRGINIA, your little friends are wrong. They have been affected by the skepticism of a skeptical age. They do not believe except [what] they see. They think that nothing can be which is not comprehensible by their little minds. All minds, Virginia, whether they be men's or children's, are little. In this great universe of ours man is a mere insect, an ant, in his intellect, as compared with the boundless world about him, as measured by the intelligence capable of grasping the whole of truth and knowledge.
Yes, VIRGINIA, there is a Santa Claus. He exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist, and you know that they abound and give to your life its highest beauty and joy. Alas! how dreary would be the world if there were no Santa Claus. It would be as dreary as if there were no VIRGINIAS. There would be no childlike faith then, no poetry, no romance to make tolerable this existence. We should have no enjoyment, except in sense and sight. The eternal light with which childhood fills the world would be extinguished.
Not believe in Santa Claus! You might as well not believe in fairies! You might get your papa to hire men to watch in all the chimneys on Christmas Eve to catch Santa Claus, but even if they did not see Santa Claus coming down, what would that prove? Nobody sees Santa Claus, but that is no sign that there is no Santa Claus. The most real things in the world are those that neither children nor men can see. Did you ever see fairies dancing on the lawn? Of course not, but that's no proof that they are not there. Nobody can conceive or imagine all the wonders there are unseen and unseeable in the world.
You may tear apart the baby's rattle and see what makes the noise inside, but there is a veil covering the unseen world which not the strongest man, nor even the united strength of all the strongest men that ever lived, could tear apart. Only faith, fancy, poetry, love, romance, can push aside that curtain and view and picture the supernal beauty and glory beyond. Is it all real? Ah, VIRGINIA, in all this world there is nothing else real and abiding.
No Santa Claus! Thank God! he lives, and he lives forever. A thousand years from now, Virginia, nay, ten times ten thousand years from now, he will continue to make glad the heart of childhood.
Mail me!
Monday, December 22, 2008
today at work was exceptionally hard. along with faith, one of our oldest clients, 3 months shy of his 102nd birthday died last night, according to his daughter he was snug in his bed, blew his caregiver a kiss goodbye, and quietly died, as she said "a true vieneese gentleman til the end." Sunday, December 21, 2008
i have been reading the updates about Faith all day...For those of you not in the know, Faith is one of my high school friends Corey and Jessica's newborn twin daughters. very early on in the pregnancy the dr's (she actually saw the perinatalogist that i saw with all 3 kids) told them that Faith would most likely die either at birth or shortly after as her head did not form properly-her twin sister Addison was fine. Jess has been keeping us all updated on her condition and the twins condition on her caringbridge website...
Jess was supposed to deliver on the 7th of Jan but those girls had other ideas (twins usually do) and late last night (saturday) both girls were born....it's been about 36 hours since birth and Faith is still alive and holding on. According to Corey the hospital has let him take her everywhere, she has been outside and seen snow, met her older sister Elizabeth and spent time with Addison who is in the NICU. Addison was born at the same weight Mya was 4 lbs 14 oz and is lazy as they say (Mya was too-not eating enough etc...) but is not on any major monitors etc..(this too was pretty similar to Mya)....
From what it sounds like from Corey's messages, they are just waiting to see how much longer Faith will keep alive; it sounds like they have both told her its OK to "go home" but she is still here.
I don't think I can think of much else worse in the world than knowing your child is going to die and spending the day(s) with her and waiting for her to die and there is not much you can do about it. as a parent, its a bad thing.
Right after I got the email that the kids had been born and saw their snapshots I pretty much had to hug the 3 monsterrugrats, as much as they tire us out, try our patience, make us miserably happy and cause dale to lose it often, we love them quite a bit...
happy solstice to all and if you are of the praying to a higher power type, feel free to wing a prayer up for the montiho family...
if you arent of the praying to a higher being type maybe just a good thought out in the universe would suffice.
as for me, i lit a candle for faith and for her family.
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Jess was supposed to deliver on the 7th of Jan but those girls had other ideas (twins usually do) and late last night (saturday) both girls were born....it's been about 36 hours since birth and Faith is still alive and holding on. According to Corey the hospital has let him take her everywhere, she has been outside and seen snow, met her older sister Elizabeth and spent time with Addison who is in the NICU. Addison was born at the same weight Mya was 4 lbs 14 oz and is lazy as they say (Mya was too-not eating enough etc...) but is not on any major monitors etc..(this too was pretty similar to Mya)....
From what it sounds like from Corey's messages, they are just waiting to see how much longer Faith will keep alive; it sounds like they have both told her its OK to "go home" but she is still here.
I don't think I can think of much else worse in the world than knowing your child is going to die and spending the day(s) with her and waiting for her to die and there is not much you can do about it. as a parent, its a bad thing.
Right after I got the email that the kids had been born and saw their snapshots I pretty much had to hug the 3 monsterrugrats, as much as they tire us out, try our patience, make us miserably happy and cause dale to lose it often, we love them quite a bit...
happy solstice to all and if you are of the praying to a higher power type, feel free to wing a prayer up for the montiho family...
if you arent of the praying to a higher being type maybe just a good thought out in the universe would suffice.
as for me, i lit a candle for faith and for her family.
Mail me!
Monday, December 15, 2008
why i hate christmas
1. decorating. I have to take a full day off work to put all this stuff up around and outside my house. does anyone help, no. can anyone help, no. then 30 days later, it all comes down and i have to put the stuff i took down to put the stuff up, back up.
2. storage. i have NO storage in my house, zero. we have a bi-level. that means, no basement. all the extra space in my house is used to store the christmas shit. tree, bins of crap, wrapping paper, 87 different kinds of garland.
3. endless family functions. i love my family, on each side. they are all wonderful and good and very very nice. the problem is that by jan 1st, i have had at least 5 christmases. this is, i will admit, partially my fault.. after the disasterous "3 christmases in one day" of 2005 where by the last christmas of the day my girls were THROWING presents at my dad to OPENOPENOPENNOWNOWFASTFASTMOREMOREMOREMORE. and screaming and crying as they were, overtired, overstimulated, overexausted and chrismas overload. i decided "THERE SHALL BE NO MORE THAN ONE CHRISTMAS PER DAY." so this means my schedule is usually as follows:
work christmas party (which I plan)
twins christmas party (which i cook for and bring presents to, and scream at the kids not to wrestle with the other kids and please dont stand on that there and dont step on the baby twinlets crawling around)
christmas eve with my parents, which may or may not include my extended moms side of the family (which is better if it does since my cousins are awesome and this means i dont have to have a separate "that side" of the family christmas) but i could have one so we will throw in:
that side xmas
christmas day with dales family (fun and relaxed with a good breakfast/brunch, its mostly the highlight of the season since its only the few of us)
opening presents at our house (somewhere this happens in between all this and this year we get mr bear, so thats a plus)
baumer family xmas-not too stressful, but we drive to whitewater and there are something like 1982726 people all crammed in aunt margies small house and with all the second cousins (ages 9 to 3 ish and i think there are 4547 of them) it gets a bit cramped, at least if its warm we can send the kids out in the back 40 to run around with the dogs and horses.
then there are random work potlucks, possible dale work functions and 6 days later? owens birthday.
by about this time, i start to hate christmas.
4. gifts. I shop all year, we have approx., 209298298732 people to buy for, and about 232632987 people i feel i should get something small for (neighbors, friends of friends, my 287987391273192743 family members) and its important for the kids they have an EVEN number of presents between them-plus owen has a birthday 6 days later which means even more gifts. i am wrapped out, bowed out, shopped out and broke. plus now that the kids are actually aware of TV and commercials I am innundated with the "iwantthat" over and over and i actually have to buy crap for st nicks-which is fine because we did the "here are new crayons and glue sticks for school" which made them happy but that will only work, at most, another 2 years, then i get into the "i better get _____ since _____ in my class got ____and you must hate me."
5. christmas carols/songs. i love christmas carols. i love christmas songs. i do not like them since oct 31 non stop on 99.1 wmyx. after 2 months of the little drummer boy and that retarded song about a kid who wanted shoes for his dying mom. I WANT TO DIE.
6. Christmas cards. i get mine done before thanksgiving. they sit in a box till dec 1 and then i mail, every year i forget like 5 people and have to dig through all the mostly empty xmas stuff boxes to find the remaining cards and send them out to people i forget. its not a reason to hate christmas per se, it just annoys me to have to dig through boxes.
7. "that house is better." this is according to my kids. this grandma is the better grandma. "why?" she gives us gum and has fun toys. "well what about your other grandma?" she always gives us clothes. so i get to explain how each grandma doesnt have to give anyone anything at all if we are going to complain.
8. the santa threat. "be good or santa wont bring you anything." it doesnt work, its never worked and yet i find my self saying it at least 10 times a day.
no more christmas. can we just skip it and move right towards groundhog day?
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2. storage. i have NO storage in my house, zero. we have a bi-level. that means, no basement. all the extra space in my house is used to store the christmas shit. tree, bins of crap, wrapping paper, 87 different kinds of garland.
3. endless family functions. i love my family, on each side. they are all wonderful and good and very very nice. the problem is that by jan 1st, i have had at least 5 christmases. this is, i will admit, partially my fault.. after the disasterous "3 christmases in one day" of 2005 where by the last christmas of the day my girls were THROWING presents at my dad to OPENOPENOPENNOWNOWFASTFASTMOREMOREMOREMORE. and screaming and crying as they were, overtired, overstimulated, overexausted and chrismas overload. i decided "THERE SHALL BE NO MORE THAN ONE CHRISTMAS PER DAY." so this means my schedule is usually as follows:
work christmas party (which I plan)
twins christmas party (which i cook for and bring presents to, and scream at the kids not to wrestle with the other kids and please dont stand on that there and dont step on the baby twinlets crawling around)
christmas eve with my parents, which may or may not include my extended moms side of the family (which is better if it does since my cousins are awesome and this means i dont have to have a separate "that side" of the family christmas) but i could have one so we will throw in:
that side xmas
christmas day with dales family (fun and relaxed with a good breakfast/brunch, its mostly the highlight of the season since its only the few of us)
opening presents at our house (somewhere this happens in between all this and this year we get mr bear, so thats a plus)
baumer family xmas-not too stressful, but we drive to whitewater and there are something like 1982726 people all crammed in aunt margies small house and with all the second cousins (ages 9 to 3 ish and i think there are 4547 of them) it gets a bit cramped, at least if its warm we can send the kids out in the back 40 to run around with the dogs and horses.
then there are random work potlucks, possible dale work functions and 6 days later? owens birthday.
by about this time, i start to hate christmas.
4. gifts. I shop all year, we have approx., 209298298732 people to buy for, and about 232632987 people i feel i should get something small for (neighbors, friends of friends, my 287987391273192743 family members) and its important for the kids they have an EVEN number of presents between them-plus owen has a birthday 6 days later which means even more gifts. i am wrapped out, bowed out, shopped out and broke. plus now that the kids are actually aware of TV and commercials I am innundated with the "iwantthat" over and over and i actually have to buy crap for st nicks-which is fine because we did the "here are new crayons and glue sticks for school" which made them happy but that will only work, at most, another 2 years, then i get into the "i better get _____ since _____ in my class got ____and you must hate me."
5. christmas carols/songs. i love christmas carols. i love christmas songs. i do not like them since oct 31 non stop on 99.1 wmyx. after 2 months of the little drummer boy and that retarded song about a kid who wanted shoes for his dying mom. I WANT TO DIE.
6. Christmas cards. i get mine done before thanksgiving. they sit in a box till dec 1 and then i mail, every year i forget like 5 people and have to dig through all the mostly empty xmas stuff boxes to find the remaining cards and send them out to people i forget. its not a reason to hate christmas per se, it just annoys me to have to dig through boxes.
7. "that house is better." this is according to my kids. this grandma is the better grandma. "why?" she gives us gum and has fun toys. "well what about your other grandma?" she always gives us clothes. so i get to explain how each grandma doesnt have to give anyone anything at all if we are going to complain.
8. the santa threat. "be good or santa wont bring you anything." it doesnt work, its never worked and yet i find my self saying it at least 10 times a day.
no more christmas. can we just skip it and move right towards groundhog day?
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Monday, December 08, 2008
Sunday, December 07, 2008
i had a bit of a snit the other night, whereby late at night i told dale as much as i understand that because i get home 1st and it makes 100% sense that I should cook dinner every night, I was a bit burned out and wished he knew how to do more than breakfast (waffles or pancakes in toaster) and peanut butter and jelly and it would be nice if he could cook every now and again.
i am teaching him sloppy joes for lunch in about 10 min. i had to show him how to do grilled cheese last week. maybe i can get a whole day off from cooking soon. that would be awesome.
still reeling from my bosses decision to bail from the firm. it doesnt make sense to anyone in the office...if you havent noticed already, we (the usa) doesnt have the best economy right now and its going to be hard to convince clients to jump ship to a new firm during a bad market....and i am convinced that people just dont like change...i dunno, monday at work should be interesting!
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i am teaching him sloppy joes for lunch in about 10 min. i had to show him how to do grilled cheese last week. maybe i can get a whole day off from cooking soon. that would be awesome.
still reeling from my bosses decision to bail from the firm. it doesnt make sense to anyone in the office...if you havent noticed already, we (the usa) doesnt have the best economy right now and its going to be hard to convince clients to jump ship to a new firm during a bad market....and i am convinced that people just dont like change...i dunno, monday at work should be interesting!
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Friday, December 05, 2008
one of my bosses resigned today and went to a different firm (merrill lynch) i was a bit shocked, a bit dismayed, and more than a bit depressed by that. he was a really great boss and it was good working for him for the past year.
but hey, if someone would give me 200% of my base salary (and lets say I made 200k a year) up front to move firms, yeah, i guess i would move too.
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but hey, if someone would give me 200% of my base salary (and lets say I made 200k a year) up front to move firms, yeah, i guess i would move too.
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Wednesday, November 26, 2008
its been an odd week, i was off monday, worked yesterday and today, dont work thursday and work a 1/2 day on friday. its like i didnt work at all...
ive been a slug this week due to snow and vacation & slow kids in the AM i havent hit the gym since last week. tomorrow morning, we are so going with the kids. thanksgiving is at my folks place. the kids are sleeping over tomorrow night, so i get to run into Kohls at 7 am and see if anything looks interesting enough to buy...friday night- 0 plans....most likely x files season 3 (crap the cat is puking on the floor...fucking cat)...saturday the inlaws are watching the kids, dale and i are eating at Mr B's (thanks to kevin for the certificate) and staying at a hotel to celebrate his 34th birthday...sunday emily coming over for a playdate and watching the football...
monday for the birthday (32) i went and saw Twilight (meh, but r. pat was cute and all...or something...) then snuck in and watched Zach and Miri make a porno...funny...not clerks 2 funny, but funny. the movie made even better by the editorial comments of the guy and gal behind me...example: "oh no, she aint gonna show her titties......OH Dayum, she showed them titties."
weekly entertainment recap:
reading: the mercedes coffin-faye kellerman
1000 recordings to hear before you die
listening: The Beautiful Girls "la mar"
watching "xfiles: season 3" House (awesome supersized epi. this week), Pushing Daisies, Chuck, Top Chef, The Notebook
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ive been a slug this week due to snow and vacation & slow kids in the AM i havent hit the gym since last week. tomorrow morning, we are so going with the kids. thanksgiving is at my folks place. the kids are sleeping over tomorrow night, so i get to run into Kohls at 7 am and see if anything looks interesting enough to buy...friday night- 0 plans....most likely x files season 3 (crap the cat is puking on the floor...fucking cat)...saturday the inlaws are watching the kids, dale and i are eating at Mr B's (thanks to kevin for the certificate) and staying at a hotel to celebrate his 34th birthday...sunday emily coming over for a playdate and watching the football...
monday for the birthday (32) i went and saw Twilight (meh, but r. pat was cute and all...or something...) then snuck in and watched Zach and Miri make a porno...funny...not clerks 2 funny, but funny. the movie made even better by the editorial comments of the guy and gal behind me...example: "oh no, she aint gonna show her titties......OH Dayum, she showed them titties."
weekly entertainment recap:
reading: the mercedes coffin-faye kellerman
1000 recordings to hear before you die
listening: The Beautiful Girls "la mar"
watching "xfiles: season 3" House (awesome supersized epi. this week), Pushing Daisies, Chuck, Top Chef, The Notebook
Mail me!
Sunday, November 23, 2008
Wednesday, November 19, 2008
Monday, November 17, 2008
hero
Don't Bail Out My State
South Carolina's governor says more debt isn't the answer.
By MARK SANFORD
I find myself in a lonely position. While many states and local governments are lining up for a bailout from Congress, I went to Washington recently to oppose such bailouts. I may be the only governor to do so.
But I suspect I'm not entirely alone, as there are a lot of taxpayers who aren't pleased with Christmas coming early for politicians. And I hope these taxpayers make their voices heard before Democrats load up the next bailout train for states with budget deficits.
Several questions led me to oppose bailing out the states. They are worth asking, even if you supported bailing out Wall Street.
Who bails out the "bail-outor"?
Washington is short on cash these days and will borrow every dime of the $150 billion to $300 billion for the "stimulus" bill now being worked on. Federal appetites may know no bounds. But the federal government's ability to borrow is not limitless. Already, our nation's unfunded liabilities total $52 trillion -- about $450,000 per household. There's something very strange about issuing debt to solve a problem caused by too much debt.
Do you now have to be a financial "bad boy" to win?
Community bankers tell me that they are now at a competitive disadvantage for being careful about who to lend to, because others that were less disciplined will get a federal bailout. This is also true for states. Those that have been fiscally responsible will pay for or lose out to the big spenders. California increased spending 95% over the past 10 years (federal spending went up 71% over the same period). To bail out California now seems unfair to fiscally prudent states.
Was the economist Herb Stein wrong when he said that if something cannot go on forever, it won't?
Medicaid grew 9.5% annually over the past 10 years. That's unsustainable. But if Congress opens the checkbook now, there will be no reform.
Isn't government intervention supposed to be the last resort and come only when it can make a difference?
In 2008 bailouts became the first resort. Over the past year the federal government has committed itself to $2.3 trillion (including the tax rebate "stimulus" checks of last February) to "improve" the economy. I don't see how another $150 billion now will make a difference in a global slowdown. We've already unloaded truckloads of sugar in a vain attempt to sweeten a lake. Tossing in a Twinkie will not make the difference.
However, there is something Congress can do: free states from federal mandates. South Carolina will spend about $425 million next year meeting federal unfunded mandates. The increase in the minimum wage alone will cost the state $2.6 million and meeting Homeland Security's REAL ID requirements will cost $8.9 million.
Based on what I saw in Washington, the bailout train is being loaded up. Taxpayers will have to speak up now to change its freight, tab or departure.
Mr. Sanford, a Republican, is the governor of South Carolina.
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South Carolina's governor says more debt isn't the answer.
By MARK SANFORD
I find myself in a lonely position. While many states and local governments are lining up for a bailout from Congress, I went to Washington recently to oppose such bailouts. I may be the only governor to do so.
But I suspect I'm not entirely alone, as there are a lot of taxpayers who aren't pleased with Christmas coming early for politicians. And I hope these taxpayers make their voices heard before Democrats load up the next bailout train for states with budget deficits.
Several questions led me to oppose bailing out the states. They are worth asking, even if you supported bailing out Wall Street.
Who bails out the "bail-outor"?
Washington is short on cash these days and will borrow every dime of the $150 billion to $300 billion for the "stimulus" bill now being worked on. Federal appetites may know no bounds. But the federal government's ability to borrow is not limitless. Already, our nation's unfunded liabilities total $52 trillion -- about $450,000 per household. There's something very strange about issuing debt to solve a problem caused by too much debt.
Do you now have to be a financial "bad boy" to win?
Community bankers tell me that they are now at a competitive disadvantage for being careful about who to lend to, because others that were less disciplined will get a federal bailout. This is also true for states. Those that have been fiscally responsible will pay for or lose out to the big spenders. California increased spending 95% over the past 10 years (federal spending went up 71% over the same period). To bail out California now seems unfair to fiscally prudent states.
Was the economist Herb Stein wrong when he said that if something cannot go on forever, it won't?
Medicaid grew 9.5% annually over the past 10 years. That's unsustainable. But if Congress opens the checkbook now, there will be no reform.
Isn't government intervention supposed to be the last resort and come only when it can make a difference?
In 2008 bailouts became the first resort. Over the past year the federal government has committed itself to $2.3 trillion (including the tax rebate "stimulus" checks of last February) to "improve" the economy. I don't see how another $150 billion now will make a difference in a global slowdown. We've already unloaded truckloads of sugar in a vain attempt to sweeten a lake. Tossing in a Twinkie will not make the difference.
However, there is something Congress can do: free states from federal mandates. South Carolina will spend about $425 million next year meeting federal unfunded mandates. The increase in the minimum wage alone will cost the state $2.6 million and meeting Homeland Security's REAL ID requirements will cost $8.9 million.
Based on what I saw in Washington, the bailout train is being loaded up. Taxpayers will have to speak up now to change its freight, tab or departure.
Mr. Sanford, a Republican, is the governor of South Carolina.
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Thursday, November 13, 2008
fixing a hole?
ublished on Wednesday, November 12, 2008 by CommonDreams.org
'Too Big To Fail' Has an Easy Answer: Anti-Trust or Public Control
by Dave Lindorff
The one thing we are not hearing from Congress or from incoming president Barack Obama in the current economic crisis facing the country are the words "anti-trust" and "public ownership."
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'Too Big To Fail' Has an Easy Answer: Anti-Trust or Public Control
by Dave Lindorff
The one thing we are not hearing from Congress or from incoming president Barack Obama in the current economic crisis facing the country are the words "anti-trust" and "public ownership."
From the moment the crisis first struck, with the near collapse of AIG, the mantra has been that companies like AIG, Morgan Stanley, Merrill Lynch, Citibank, etc.--and more recently General Motors Corp. and Ford--are "too big to fail." That is, it is argued that these companies are so huge that if they were to collapse into the rubble they deserve to be, it would damage the nation irreparably.
The question is, if that is genuinely the case, why were they allowed to be that big in the first place, and why aren't we rethinking that policy?
It's not as though they got that way through organic growth by being successful at what they did. Hardly. GM was the quintessential result of a merger of smaller automakers. Ford grew too, by acquiring the competition, most recently Volvo. Most, if not all of those acquisitions were first vetted and approved by the Federal Trade Commission and found to be acceptable as a matter of economics and public policy.
In the banking industry, which is regulated, the picture is even worse, with the government first opening the door to the creation of national banking companies, and then routinely approving the gobbling up of one after another regional or even national bank by another. At some point we reached the point where the giants in the industry--Citibank, JP Morgan Chase, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, etc.--were able to say, when they ran into trouble, that allowing them to fail would have dire consequences for the national economy. This kind of extortion should never have been allowed to happen.
First of all, the argument for national banks never made sense for ordinary people, and wasn't necessary for large customers either. Large corporate fundings have always been done by bank consortia, and this could have been accomplished with the nation's banking industry fragmented into small state-chartered institutions. Meanwhile, small businesses and individuals always lose when a bank is national in scale. It is much more costly to handle the banking business of small enterprises and individual families than it is to handle the business of huge corporate clients, with the result that the major banks have made it costlier and costlier for small customers to do business with them.
The answer is clear. Bigness is fundamentally bad when it comes to capitalism. There is a point where any company in any industry becomes too big for it to be socially acceptable. Big companies not only attempt to behave in a monopolistic fashion by destroying or buying up the competition, both nationally or, as in the case of a retailer like WalMart or a bank like Citibank, locally, using their huge financial power to locally underprice the competition and drive them out of business (after which they are free to gouge the local customer base). They also ride roughshod over local political interests, demanding tax breaks, zoning waivers, etc. This being the case, the government should simply not be allowing corporations to achieve such scale and market dominance.
Companies, whether banks, car makers, or media companies, should never be allowed to grow to a point that they become "too big to fail." If that can be said about any company, whether because of the assets it holds, or because of the number of people it employs, it is time to break it up.
Think of GM. If GM were ripped up into six or seven competing companies, it is certain that at least one of those smaller entities would be producing electric cars by next year. The Saturn plant already made one, the Impact, that was wildly popular (see the excellent documentary "Who Killed the Electric Car"), and if left to its own devices to sink or swim, could probably be cranking those out in volume for the 2010 model year.
Some companies would certainly fail. But that's what is supposed to happen in a capitalist system.
This piece is not meant to be a paen to capitalism. But having said that, if you're going to have capitalism, which is the ruling ideology here in the US of A, you have to let it function as intended. As soon as the government comes in and starts encouraging the establishment of monopolies or quasi-monopolies, and preventing the failure of poorly managed enterprises or dying industries, as it is doing in the case of the banking and automotive sectors, it is no longer true capitalism.
That could work, too. Many democratic countries, including Japan, Sweden, France and Germany, have the concept of shared governance of corporations, in which large corporate entities are partially owned and run by government, and of planned economies, in which certain sectors are deliberately protected and promoted by government policy. The US has moved in that direction with the investment by the government in nine of the country's largest banks, and in discussions to provide $25-50 billion in financial assistance to the major US auto companies. But in the US case, the government is studiously avoiding demanding a role in running those companies. It is by design only a "passive" investor.
This is the triumph of ideology over rationality and the public interest. I recently interviewed a number of investment strategists in the course of working on an article for an investment magazine. They all had the same advice for worried investors: invest in shares of the "magic nine" banks that are recipients of tens of billions of dollars in bail-out money from the federal government. As they all point out, the government's stake in these banks means that they will not be allowed to fail, and moreover, they are in a unique position to use their flush capital reserves to acquire, at fire sale prices, the assets of smaller banks that are being left to sink or swim in the current credit crisis and recession. That is not a free market. It's a government program to reduce the competition in the banking sector and hand all the business over to a favored few giant banks.
Now that would be okay if the government, in return for its investment, were taking a management role in those favored banks. But it is not. Congress, the Bush administration, and, so far at least, the incoming administration of Barack Obama, have not been demanding a management stake in any of the companies that are getting bail-out funding. If the government takes ownership positions at all, it is taking non-voting shares in those companies, solely in the hope of someday getting some of the invested money back by selling those shares.
This is not just a rip-off of the taxpayer. It is a craven program to enrich big investors in the bailed-out enterprises, while putting control of the nation's economic destiny increasingly into a smaller number of hands of people whose interests are not even aligned with the national intereest (these are, after all, all transnational corporations only nominally headquartered in the US).
There is, of course, another reason that companies should never be allowed to become "too big to fail." That is political clout. The US political system is already largely an owned-and-operated subisidiary of corporate America. When companies become as large as AIG or GM or Bank of America, they also gain a disproportionate influence over the political apparatus that is an order of magnitude larger than their share of the national GDP. It's not just that they have limitless money to donate to political campaigns. They also, by their size, are able to dispense political favors in virtually every congressional district, much as the Pentagon has been doing for the past half century, and also to threaten national havoc if they don't get their way.
Don't expect much in the way of scrutiny of this bailout process from the corporate media, by the way, which has been engaged in the same process of national consolidation for the past few decades. But clearly, the public needs to wake up and start demanding that if our money is going to be used to bail out these corrupt and horrifically managed enterprises, we the people need to have a controlling interest in running them, so that they are run in our interest. Better yet, we should be demanding that these bumbling colossuses be broken up into little pieces, and then left to sink or swim on their own like the rest of us.
Dave Lindorff is a Philadelphia-based journalist and columnist. His latest book is "The Case for Impeachment" (St. Martin's Press, 2006). His work is available at www.thiscantbehappening.net
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Monday, November 10, 2008
| epic fucking fail |
| so i get home tonight, go about my normal making dinner, looking through backpacks, reading the paper, etc... and dale gets home etc.... then i walk back to my bedroom and water drops on my head from the ceiling. WTF? the ceiling under the air intake vent is dripping water down on my new hardwood floor...not good since-long time readers will remember-the ceiling caved in due to the FUCKING AIR CONDITIONER this summer. so I make dale go up in the attic and poke around while I call the guys that put it in basically demanding Jay call me to figure this out or come over and FIGURE OUT WHY I ONCE AGAIN HAVE WATER IN MY CEILING COMING DOWN ON MY HEAD! dale talks to the guy for 15 minutes, (no small feat as dale hates the phone) and closes all the vents in the walls and runs our dehumidifier...i guess our house is just extra humid or something, i dunno. this whole thing makes me so irritated and annoyed. At least it didnt cost me anything and nothing has collapsed, this time. work was sad again today...I am on dead client number 18 for the year and the 2nd in less than a week. sucks when the clients die and you have to talk their family members through the MOUNTAIN of paperwork being dead and having money entails. It's endless...and the more money you have, the more paperwork it takes to get your $$ to the people who you said should get it...and god forbid you leave it to like 76 different charities...one of our clients left her entire fortune to her church, her entire 5.6 million dollars. this little tiny church whose largest gift prior to that was less than 100k...I say that the church just got paid...eek. thankfully they are leaving the money at the firm. the cold is not getting better...if chaba reads this, it is much like the awful cold I had freshman year. Dale said I was sitting straight up in bed last night coughing in my sleep...i dont remember that one. i dont feel bad, i just cough a lot...and have used up like 900 boxes of kleenex blowing my nose. this week is shaping up to be slow and steady and uneventful. that is awesome.. |
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Friday, October 31, 2008
weird + random=whatever so today i had lunch with an old friend (and together we decided to be pals again and in public....no secret friends here) and we caught up with "people we used to know." found out a group of people who are firmly in the "used to know" camp are no longer friends with my husband because he married me.
nice. stay classy guys.
after my lunch (which was excellent by the way...I recommend stir crazy in brookfield) i called dale and apologized..."hey im sorry we havent spoken to these people in 4 years....and its all my fault."
my husband "that's ok...they all kind of suck anyways...i havent missed anything."
yea dale.
so upon reflecting on those people we used to know...we know way cooler people now..besides my ryan (mr bear to the kids), we have awesome neighbors (chris and dave and their 2 kids), i have a lot of women in my twins club who i like...shannon, my owen clothes hook up (and who needs to call me pronto!)
i work with awesome people...like my lunch date jena (who always pays and won't let me...one of these days I am buying her lunch!!!) and my coworker Mike (who kicks ass)...why should i be sad that I don't speak to people stuck in the same rut they have been in for the past 15 years? as damon said "its not that they arent grown up, its just that they are not growing" (or something profound like that...i dunno, we both had wine at lunch) what would i do with them today? get drunk at some bar and play video games? i think not...i would rather hang out with people who don't suck.
people who don't suck...that's who I like.
I like talking to the people i talk to from high school, some more now than i ever did in the 90s...i miss a few people i met in college...some more than others...i like to believe i miss a certain person more than i think i actually do...(especially after hearing what he's up to now...)
meh....anyways, i am full on s'mores (thanks chris and dave) and i have 800 lbs of candy upstairs (mini butterfinger and ind. skittles packages call to me, and i will resist the call)
night all friends, happy Samhain and Halloween folks.
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nice. stay classy guys.
after my lunch (which was excellent by the way...I recommend stir crazy in brookfield) i called dale and apologized..."hey im sorry we havent spoken to these people in 4 years....and its all my fault."
my husband "that's ok...they all kind of suck anyways...i havent missed anything."
yea dale.
so upon reflecting on those people we used to know...we know way cooler people now..besides my ryan (mr bear to the kids), we have awesome neighbors (chris and dave and their 2 kids), i have a lot of women in my twins club who i like...shannon, my owen clothes hook up (and who needs to call me pronto!)
i work with awesome people...like my lunch date jena (who always pays and won't let me...one of these days I am buying her lunch!!!) and my coworker Mike (who kicks ass)...why should i be sad that I don't speak to people stuck in the same rut they have been in for the past 15 years? as damon said "its not that they arent grown up, its just that they are not growing" (or something profound like that...i dunno, we both had wine at lunch) what would i do with them today? get drunk at some bar and play video games? i think not...i would rather hang out with people who don't suck.
people who don't suck...that's who I like.
I like talking to the people i talk to from high school, some more now than i ever did in the 90s...i miss a few people i met in college...some more than others...i like to believe i miss a certain person more than i think i actually do...(especially after hearing what he's up to now...)
meh....anyways, i am full on s'mores (thanks chris and dave) and i have 800 lbs of candy upstairs (mini butterfinger and ind. skittles packages call to me, and i will resist the call)
night all friends, happy Samhain and Halloween folks.
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Monday, October 27, 2008
winter
is now snowing out. I have not yet trick or treated. I am also sick. If things do not get better, I am not going to work tomorrow.
I have a busy arse week, running around to like 487 places doing 56327 things. I am finishing listening to Eclipse on ipod, reading "Lost" still listening to tons of Ben Harper and Joshua Radin and we finally watched Zohan last night: Dale's assessment, "that chick is really hot."
Happy Halloween
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I have a busy arse week, running around to like 487 places doing 56327 things. I am finishing listening to Eclipse on ipod, reading "Lost" still listening to tons of Ben Harper and Joshua Radin and we finally watched Zohan last night: Dale's assessment, "that chick is really hot."
Happy Halloween
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Thursday, October 23, 2008
catch ya up
i have a cold. it is a horrible cold and i feel like death...so i havent written much lately. I am at dunn brothers now and fortified with a large skim white choc. mocha i will try to catch you all up...
this week has been the slowest week for "stuff" in the last month (stuff being defined as outside work and school stuff that i have to schedule, do, run around for etc...) Thankfully I can breathe at the end of the day instead of wondering what/where i have to go.
this weekend is busy. i have two birthday parties, one playdate, and i really should clean up the house and finish painting my hallway. we shall see how this cold takes me down.
work has been a bit busy, nothing special, nothing interesting. at least i have wonderful bosses who rock. it could be worse. I just celebrated my 1 yr anniversary with the company last month.
whatcha reading/watching/listening to?:
reading: Lost by gregory mcguire and the fellowship of the ring by JRR Tolkien.
watching: pushing daisies (last night), ugly betty and the office (tonight), xfiles season 3 disc 3 & dont mess with the zohan (friday nite i think)
listening to: a lot of ben harper/ben harper and the innocent criminals, billy joel, and I am listening to eclipse on my ipod (3rd book in the twilight series)
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this week has been the slowest week for "stuff" in the last month (stuff being defined as outside work and school stuff that i have to schedule, do, run around for etc...) Thankfully I can breathe at the end of the day instead of wondering what/where i have to go.
this weekend is busy. i have two birthday parties, one playdate, and i really should clean up the house and finish painting my hallway. we shall see how this cold takes me down.
work has been a bit busy, nothing special, nothing interesting. at least i have wonderful bosses who rock. it could be worse. I just celebrated my 1 yr anniversary with the company last month.
whatcha reading/watching/listening to?:
reading: Lost by gregory mcguire and the fellowship of the ring by JRR Tolkien.
watching: pushing daisies (last night), ugly betty and the office (tonight), xfiles season 3 disc 3 & dont mess with the zohan (friday nite i think)
listening to: a lot of ben harper/ben harper and the innocent criminals, billy joel, and I am listening to eclipse on my ipod (3rd book in the twilight series)
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Monday, October 20, 2008
ive had a long day off. somehow my vacation day turned into running errands, painting, painting the wrong color which will necessitate more painting, fixing a costume that malinda tore 5 min after she put it on and then going to bed.
im really tired.
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im really tired.
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Saturday, October 04, 2008
we wont get fooled again!
the brewers slugged one out and we are on to game 4...way to go guys. i couldnt watch the game, i watched "forgetting sarah marshall." i cant remember seeing that much male full frontal nudity since the last time i had to watch caligula....it wasnt a bad movie, russel brand is pretty awesome...the outtakes with russell brand and with paul rudd were money.
dale has some sort of mysterious cold/virus/thing which means he is as useless to me as tits on a bull...thankfully MIL took the kids today and i was able to clean the house, dust the ceiling fans (joy and fun and sneezing) and head to ben franklin in oconomowoc...i needed some linen and dmc floss and mill hill beads/ yes this means i finished a cross stitch and am starting another one. had to place special order for more linnen and hand dyed threads lucky me.
tomorrow is the pumpkin farm, depending on dale feeling up to it...its in ixonia and is a great farm.
thats about it...good luck to the west band as they head up north for the weekend...
my cat is having sex with a cardboard box and im going to go pour water on her....
night all
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dale has some sort of mysterious cold/virus/thing which means he is as useless to me as tits on a bull...thankfully MIL took the kids today and i was able to clean the house, dust the ceiling fans (joy and fun and sneezing) and head to ben franklin in oconomowoc...i needed some linen and dmc floss and mill hill beads/ yes this means i finished a cross stitch and am starting another one. had to place special order for more linnen and hand dyed threads lucky me.
tomorrow is the pumpkin farm, depending on dale feeling up to it...its in ixonia and is a great farm.
thats about it...good luck to the west band as they head up north for the weekend...
my cat is having sex with a cardboard box and im going to go pour water on her....
night all
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Sunday, September 21, 2008
the wonder of myspace you reconnect with people who you were sure that:
1. you would never speak to again
2. would never speak to you again
3. you would never see again
4. you thought they died
reconnected with an old friend tonight, very strange in a 2 sort of way. Time and distance I suppose are enough to cover up old tracks.
hey to you old friend, hope we talk again.
it's wierd. there are people who I miss from my life not so much for the hanging out and assorted other crap, but because I had wonderful back and forth letters/emails/talks with them for so long that once they stopped I had a Shel Silverstein sized missing piece taken out of my life.
You can try to reshape new people into those pieces and it kind of works, but at the end of the day, no matter how awesome those new pieces are, can't help but miss the old ones.....For me personally I have had 3 missing pieces who loss I always felt beyond shit about.
1 person I have talked to, and apologized to (even though I didnt think it was really my fault, but after 5 years of thinking about it, I didnt see the harm in doing so) and will most likely not speak to again
1 person expects to see me someday in an airport
1 person i just emailed back 10 min ago
and after rereading that I must have gone back in time to my old journals because it all sounds so very emo and 11th grade ish....im going to post this and go check my back for a flannel shirt and backpack and see if i have a lot of black eyeliner on....
fucking packers. and fucking romo for not throwing that TD to T.O. Baby needs some more points this week since she sat TJ Houshmanzada on the bench.
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1. you would never speak to again
2. would never speak to you again
3. you would never see again
4. you thought they died
reconnected with an old friend tonight, very strange in a 2 sort of way. Time and distance I suppose are enough to cover up old tracks.
hey to you old friend, hope we talk again.
it's wierd. there are people who I miss from my life not so much for the hanging out and assorted other crap, but because I had wonderful back and forth letters/emails/talks with them for so long that once they stopped I had a Shel Silverstein sized missing piece taken out of my life.
You can try to reshape new people into those pieces and it kind of works, but at the end of the day, no matter how awesome those new pieces are, can't help but miss the old ones.....For me personally I have had 3 missing pieces who loss I always felt beyond shit about.
1 person I have talked to, and apologized to (even though I didnt think it was really my fault, but after 5 years of thinking about it, I didnt see the harm in doing so) and will most likely not speak to again
1 person expects to see me someday in an airport
1 person i just emailed back 10 min ago
and after rereading that I must have gone back in time to my old journals because it all sounds so very emo and 11th grade ish....im going to post this and go check my back for a flannel shirt and backpack and see if i have a lot of black eyeliner on....
fucking packers. and fucking romo for not throwing that TD to T.O. Baby needs some more points this week since she sat TJ Houshmanzada on the bench.
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Tuesday, September 02, 2008
Sunday, August 31, 2008
happy birthday girls
Happy Birthday Girls!
Current mood: 
awake
we ate lunchables at the patio for lunch (cheap and easy for me) and stopped at Toys R Us for Birthday present pick out (2 stuffed golden retrievers and a stuffed collie)...now we are at home and dale is stipping walpaper as we prepare to paint the library. I would like to get my 6 bookshelves out of our temporary library (before its current incarnation it was formally known as, my bathroom) and into here. We are painting one wall the same tannish orange as the big room and 3 walls a nice cream color.
Brewers are winning, cubs losing. suck it cubs, cardinals are losing...suck it cardinals.
tonight its birthday dinner at dennys (free) with the twins and painting.
I may even get a breather to play some diablo tonight (although not likely)
tomorrow: borrowing truck to get couches from inlaws and for the love of Mike, relaxing,
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Thursday, August 28, 2008
Sunday, August 24, 2008
Sunday, August 17, 2008
20 things porn believes (none of which are true)
20 things porn believes (none of which are true)
1.) Every man's body is hairless2.) Moving from one sexual position to another is a breeze
3.) Sex can happen two minutes after meeting someone for the first time. Three minutes if either person has something to say
4.) Sex can last for hours and will always feel good
5.) Women MUST talk or groan every moment of intercourse and every sentence must end with the word 'yeah'
6.) Everyone lives in, or knows someone with, a huge mansion
7.) Private detectives are easy to find and all have a large penis
8.) Everyone is bare backing it
9.) Sex at work is easy to pull off
10.) But not as easy as threesomes and orgies
11.) Friendships don't matter when sex is involved. Neither do bloodlines.
12.) Every guy lives in the gym and sleeps in a tanning booth.
13.) Everyone woman has a little lesbian in her..(wait, that might be true)
14.) Anal is normal and never needs to be asked for
15.) Expect greatness when the UPS guy says he has a "package" for you
16.) Most women wear garters. All day. Every day. Even with bathing suits
17.) Aqua Net is still a popular hair care product
18.) Every popular movie must be satired in a porno (i.e.- The Dark Nuts and Edward Penishands)
19.) People are having sex multiple times a day, everyday
20.) That we are interested in a plot
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Monday, August 04, 2008
you are a huge douche
1. brett favre
2. this guy i know from work...we shall call him sam. this guy owns a HUGE house he just built, two new cars and a home stereo/theatre/game room/entertainment center which he spent roughly 25-30k on, has HUGE student loan and credit card debt and a couple of young kids....but he went on a tear the other day about his wife "not allowing" him to buy another home audio thingy for the house because it was "her turn" and she wanted a full set of riding gear for horseback riding. He said no one should ever let their wife pull rank etc.. rant rant rant.
you fucking tool. you are the #1 reason our econ. is the way it is. the american who builds a 350k house, and has two new cars (with 7 year!! loans) and credit card debt, and student loan debt and who keeps buying more shit he doesnt need and making more debt which he will most likely never repay and has 2 fucking kids who will in turn, learn shitty spending habits from their crappy parents, be saddled with student loans, etc. etc...
some days you just have to fucking hate people
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2. this guy i know from work...we shall call him sam. this guy owns a HUGE house he just built, two new cars and a home stereo/theatre/game room/entertainment center which he spent roughly 25-30k on, has HUGE student loan and credit card debt and a couple of young kids....but he went on a tear the other day about his wife "not allowing" him to buy another home audio thingy for the house because it was "her turn" and she wanted a full set of riding gear for horseback riding. He said no one should ever let their wife pull rank etc.. rant rant rant.
you fucking tool. you are the #1 reason our econ. is the way it is. the american who builds a 350k house, and has two new cars (with 7 year!! loans) and credit card debt, and student loan debt and who keeps buying more shit he doesnt need and making more debt which he will most likely never repay and has 2 fucking kids who will in turn, learn shitty spending habits from their crappy parents, be saddled with student loans, etc. etc...
some days you just have to fucking hate people
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Saturday, August 02, 2008
I got the girls 5th birthday pictures back. even though i wanted to die (from strep) at the shoot and they were uncooperative, the shots turned out OK
A person I work with gave me state fair tickets, so we are taking the kids today, it is supposed to be HOT HOT HOT but we are going early. we also have to get malinda to the denist (i think she has a cavety) this morning.
i'm feeling blue for my boy down there in hot-lanta. sorry you are losing your woman next week. stay strong brother man....or better yet, come up here for your birthday and we will take you to chuck e cheese.
work has been LONG and boring this week. I am back to my 5 minutes of real work and 7 hrs and 55 minutes of time with nothing to do. if i could only play video games or something while i am there it would be so money.
owen is working at being potty trained. he had two days this week with 0 accidents, that is HUGE for him. i am comitted to no more diapers in 2009. which would be great since he will be 4 this year.
stuff i am watching this week:
be kind rewind-very boring movie except the part where they recreate ghostbusters (they call this "sweeding" the movie, you would really have to watch to understand) i rewatched that 4 times i laughed so hard/
six feet under season 4-ah so good.
reading:
and eternity by piers anthony, the last incarnation of immortality book. im sad.
listening:
a son of the circus by john irving & starting over with piers in audiobooks with death rides a pale horse (which is what dead like me is based on)
also listening to katy perry, the perishers, the weepies & some sonic youth.
kudos to me: for cleaning my bathroom this morning and mowing the lawn yesterday.
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Monday, July 28, 2008
hi, my name is charlie bartlett charlie bartlett is a fantastic movie....its like ferris bueller's day off except what if ferris went to school and helped everyone by prescribing prescription drugs?
seriously, go rent it.....i liked it almost as much as I liked juno...yet in a differemt way....conserv8 I think you and boo would really enjoy it....
i may just buy it to watch again
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seriously, go rent it.....i liked it almost as much as I liked juno...yet in a differemt way....conserv8 I think you and boo would really enjoy it....
i may just buy it to watch again
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Sunday, July 27, 2008
Friday, July 11, 2008
its a bad day when... you get up, get dressed, go work, work all day, pick up the kids, come home..and around 5 o clock you grab your ipod to make dinner and naturally when i have no pockets i put my ipod the only place a nice girl like me CAN put their ipod, in their bra cup.....only i realize i havent been wearing a bra all day. ALL DAY.
1 this is some sort of impressive feat as im a 38D and generally you would notice me boppin around, or i would. I happened to be wearing a shirt with a cami under and that is tight around the bodice so i gueesi didnt notice.....
sad.
and here i have shared with you all.
here is an exerpt from the "monkey prostitue" article in the NY times. go monkey's get your monkey 'ho on.
1 this is some sort of impressive feat as im a 38D and generally you would notice me boppin around, or i would. I happened to be wearing a shirt with a cami under and that is tight around the bodice so i gueesi didnt notice.....
sad.
and here i have shared with you all.
here is an exerpt from the "monkey prostitue" article in the NY times. go monkey's get your monkey 'ho on.
It is sometimes unclear, even to Chen himself, exactly what he is working on. When he and Santos, his psychologist collaborator, began to teach the Yale capuchins to use money, he had no pressing research theme. The essential idea was to give a monkey a dollar and see what it did with it. The currency Chen settled on was a silver disc, one inch in diameter, with a hole in the middle -- ''kind of like Chinese money,'' he says. It took several months of rudimentary repetition to teach the monkeys that these tokens were valuable as a means of exchange for a treat and would be similarly valuable the next day. Having gained that understanding, a capuchin would then be presented with 12 tokens on a tray and have to decide how many to surrender for, say, Jell-O cubes versus grapes. This first step allowed each capuchin to reveal its preferences and to grasp the concept of budgeting.
Skip to next paragraph 
Questions for Stephen J. Dubner and Steven D. Levitt
The authors of "Freakonomics" answered readers' questions on their bestselling book and new magazine column.
Questions for Stephen J. Dubner and Steven D. Levitt
The authors of "Freakonomics" answered readers' questions on their bestselling book and new magazine column.
For more information about the authors and Keith Chen's research, including photographs, academic papers and a live monkey cam, see www.freakonomics.com.
Then Chen introduced price shocks and wealth shocks. If, for instance, the price of Jell-O fell (two cubes instead of one per token), would the capuchin buy more Jell-O and fewer grapes? The capuchins responded rationally to tests like this -- that is, they responded the way most readers of The Times would respond. In economist-speak, the capuchins adhered to the rules of utility maximization and price theory: when the price of something falls, people tend to buy more of it.
Chen next introduced a pair of gambling games and set out to determine which one the monkeys preferred. In the first game, the capuchin was given one grape and, dependent on a coin flip, either retained the original grape or won a bonus grape. In the second game, the capuchin started out owning the bonus grape and, once again dependent on a coin flip, either kept the two grapes or lost one. These two games are in fact the same gamble, with identical odds, but one is framed as a potential win and the other as a potential loss.
How did the capuchins react? They far preferred to take a gamble on the potential gain than the potential loss. This is not what an economics textbook would predict. The laws of economics state that these two gambles, because they represent such small stakes, should be treated equally.
So, does Chen's gambling experiment simply reveal the cognitive limitations of his small-brained subjects? Perhaps not. In similar experiments, it turns out that humans tend to make the same type of irrational decision at a nearly identical rate. Documenting this phenomenon, known as loss aversion, is what helped the psychologist Daniel Kahneman win a Nobel Prize in economics. The data generated by the capuchin monkeys, Chen says, ''make them statistically indistinguishable from most stock-market investors.''
ut do the capuchins actually understand money? Or is Chen simply exploiting their endless appetites to make them perform neat tricks?
Several facts suggest the former. During a recent capuchin experiment that used cucumbers as treats, a research assistant happened to slice the cucumber into discs instead of cubes, as was typical. One capuchin picked up a slice, started to eat it and then ran over to a researcher to see if he could ''buy'' something sweeter with it. To the capuchin, a round slice of cucumber bore enough resemblance to Chen's silver tokens to seem like another piece of currency.
Then there is the stealing. Santos has observed that the monkeys never deliberately save any money, but they do sometimes purloin a token or two during an experiment. All seven monkeys live in a communal main chamber of about 750 cubic feet. For experiments, one capuchin at a time is let into a smaller testing chamber next door. Once, a capuchin in the testing chamber picked up an entire tray of tokens, flung them into the main chamber and then scurried in after them -- a combination jailbreak and bank heist -- which led to a chaotic scene in which the human researchers had to rush into the main chamber and offer food bribes for the tokens, a reinforcement that in effect encouraged more stealing.
Something else happened during that chaotic scene, something that convinced Chen of the monkeys' true grasp of money. Perhaps the most distinguishing characteristic of money, after all, is its fungibility, the fact that it can be used to buy not just food but anything. During the chaos in the monkey cage, Chen saw something out of the corner of his eye that he would later try to play down but in his heart of hearts he knew to be true. What he witnessed was probably the first observed exchange of money for sex in the history of monkeykind. (Further proof that the monkeys truly understood money: the monkey who was paid for sex immediately traded the token in for a grape.)
This is a sensitive subject. The capuchin lab at Yale has been built and maintained to make the monkeys as comfortable as possible, and especially to allow them to carry on in a natural state. The introduction of money was tricky enough; it wouldn't reflect well on anyone involved if the money turned the lab into a brothel. To this end, Chen has taken steps to ensure that future monkey sex at Yale occurs as nature intended it.
But these facts remain: When taught to use money, a group of capuchin monkeys responded quite rationally to simple incentives; responded irrationally to risky gambles; failed to save; stole when they could; used money for food and, on occasion, sex. In other words, they behaved a good bit like the creature that most of Chen's more traditional colleagues study: Homo sapiens.
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Monday, June 30, 2008
Friday, June 27, 2008
belief
thanks to dan, this about sums it all up for me too (thanks to neil gaiman)
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I have a friend that has often asked me what I believe in. While reading a book by Neil Gaiman, I came across a pretty good answer...
"I can believe in things that are true and I can believe in things that aren't true and I can believe things where nobody knows if they are true or not. I can believe in Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny and Marilyn Monroe and the Beatles and Elvis and Mr. Ed. Listen-I believe that people are perfectible, that knowledge is infinite, that the world is run by secret banking cartels and is visited by aliens on a regular basis, nice ones that look like wrinkledy lemurs and bad ones who mutilate cattle and want our water and our women. I believe that the future sucks and I believe that the future rocks and I believe that one day White Buffalo Woman is going to come back and kick everyone's ass. I believe that men are just overgrown boys with deep problems communicating and that the decline in good sex in America is coincident with the decline in drive-in movie theatres from state to state. I believe that all politicians are unprincipled crooks and I still believe that they are better than the alternative. I believe that California is going to sink into the sea when the big one comes, while Florida is going to dissolve into madness and alligators and toxic waste. I believe that antibacterial soap is destroying out resistance to dirt and disease so that one day we will all be wiped out by the common cold like the Martians in War of the Worlds. I believe that the greatest poets of the last century were Edith Sitwell and Don Marquis, that jade is dried dragon sperm, and that thousands of years ago in a former life I was a one-armed Siberian shaman. I believe that mankind's destiny lies in the stars. I believe that candy really did taste better when I was a kid, that it is aerodynamically impossible for a bumblebee to fly, that light is a wave and a particle, that there's a cat in a box somewhere who's alive and dead at the same time (although if they don't ever open the box to feed it it'll eventually just be two different kinds of dead), and there are stars in the universe billions of years older than the universe itself. I believe in a personal god who cares about me and worries and oversees everything I do. I believe in an impersonal god who set the universe in motion and went off to hang with her girlfriends and doesn't even know I'm alive. I believe in an empty godless universe of casual chaos, background noise, and sheer blind luck. I believe that anyone who says that sex is overrated just hasn't done it properly. I believe that anyone who claims to know what's going on will lie about the little things too. I believe in absolute honesty and sensible social lies. I believe in a woman's right to choose, a baby's right to live, that while all human life is sacred there's nothing wrong with the death penalty if you can trust the legal system implicitly, and that no one but a moron would ever trust the legal system. I believe that life is a game, that life is a cruel joke, and that life is what happens when you're alive and that you might as well lie back and enjoy it."
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Sunday, June 22, 2008
Go brewers go!
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Friday, June 20, 2008
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Sunday, June 15, 2008
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mildew and wet vac’s
Current mood: distraught
so if you didnt already hear, our basement got wet...we didnt get flooded (aka standing water) what we got was seepage (Water coming up through the foundation of the house) im writing this on dales computer so i cant upload pictures of our sodden carpet but i spent the entire day friday wet vac'ing or carpet cleaning sucking up water in my computer room library and our playroom (aka the one room we always do everything in)
thankfully most of the stuff i have in storage down here is in a plastic bin so very very little got ruined, we threw out some old sofa pillows from our old couch (no big loss) an old wood shelf my mom brought over (no idea why we had it for storage anyways) and random papers and odds and ends.
we have a total of 4 box fans, 3 radial fans, a new 175.00 dehumidifier running in the basement at all times....the combo of vac'ing and fanning and dehumidifiing has made the totally soaken wet carpets now just "moist" or "slightly damp" or pretty much dry. the problem is that now the whole house smells like damp or mildew or stale or i dunno what. my mom is against me cleaning the carpets now (til it all dries out) and i cant handle the smell. opening the windows all day yesterday didnt do much and its better to keep the ac on anyways to pull moisture out of the house. if anyone has any ideas for making the house smell purdy i would welcome them...
other than that, im pretty miserable overall.
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Current mood: distraught
so if you didnt already hear, our basement got wet...we didnt get flooded (aka standing water) what we got was seepage (Water coming up through the foundation of the house) im writing this on dales computer so i cant upload pictures of our sodden carpet but i spent the entire day friday wet vac'ing or carpet cleaning sucking up water in my computer room library and our playroom (aka the one room we always do everything in)
thankfully most of the stuff i have in storage down here is in a plastic bin so very very little got ruined, we threw out some old sofa pillows from our old couch (no big loss) an old wood shelf my mom brought over (no idea why we had it for storage anyways) and random papers and odds and ends.
we have a total of 4 box fans, 3 radial fans, a new 175.00 dehumidifier running in the basement at all times....the combo of vac'ing and fanning and dehumidifiing has made the totally soaken wet carpets now just "moist" or "slightly damp" or pretty much dry. the problem is that now the whole house smells like damp or mildew or stale or i dunno what. my mom is against me cleaning the carpets now (til it all dries out) and i cant handle the smell. opening the windows all day yesterday didnt do much and its better to keep the ac on anyways to pull moisture out of the house. if anyone has any ideas for making the house smell purdy i would welcome them...
other than that, im pretty miserable overall.
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Monday, June 09, 2008
wow!
goodbye lake delton
for those of you who live in or lived in wi, lake delton is no more. lake delton, home of the tommy barletts watershow and 10-15 lakeside resorts and numerous houses flooded earlier today and created a new channel, moved over the highway (hwy A) and rejoined the wisconsin river leaving a big mudhole with no water...we just were there last weekend and saw one of the last tommy barlett shows...the tommy barlett watershow (which has been in production for the last 55 YEARS) was canceled today due to lack of WATER.
ouch
downtown waukesha is flooded, and the river is expected to crest tomorrow...
enjoy the rain guys.
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Sunday, June 08, 2008
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Saturday, June 07, 2008
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