leviathan

A penny saved...

2011-04-05T04:57:00.000-07:00

...ain't going to cut the mustard for tuition anymore.

But of course there's a lot of folk out there that'll lend you some pennies, with interest, and your parents as co-signers. Somewhere along the line we forgot that "children are our future" and decided to turn them into cha-ching. The chart below shows what's happened for yearly tuition (only tuition, mind you) since 1996 at my alma mater, UNI. A small directional public school. Sorry about the blur...home-made OpenOffice.org docs don't seem to import well:

What a sweet linear relationship! I wish I saw that in all my data. As you can see, every year tuition increases around $362. Next year (11-12) just came out, and yep ~$370. So my paltry freshman ~$2,500 per year doubled in less than 10 years (~2004-5). And by the time Noah and Sophia get to college age, tuition could be $12,700! Per year. Excluding books, room and board. Including those costs it'll be around $22,000.

BTW, the same time tuition costs shot up almost 200%, Iowa median income stayed stagnant, from $44,000 to $48,000 (9% increase). So its not like our state is getting rich, or keeping up with inflation.

This isn't sustainable...and looks exactly like another bubble. Public universities were founded on the idea that helping college student costs is a public good. Now students are viewed as proxy cash dispensers for either 1) their well-off parents, or 2) future jobs. Most of the time it's probably #2.

Anyway, I've got 16 years to save up ~$160,000 for my kids.

A Dark Comedy

2010-08-22T06:20:00.000-07:00

If it wasn't so funny it'd be sad. Fortunately, its LOLs to the extreme...you can't make this stuff up. A former Burlington Coat Factory, two blocks away from Ground Zero, is going through a politically led election year media firestorm right now.

I really think debates like these are good for our country in the long run. Decades from now, assuming we go in the right direction, we can look back at all this silliness for what it is; fear-mongering. With the benefit of hindsight we'll see that this outrage flamed up by the media/politicians was just clever campaigning. Like Blair-Witch style rogue marketing.

But for right now we're in the midst of a politic-frenzy. At least until Joe Biden puts his foot into his mouth again. I've got Facebook invites from people telling me these "bastards cheered when the towers fell" to even comparing Islam to Nazis (IMO, Newt knows better; a 2012 campaign is definitely on the horizon...).My feeling is with stuff like this its good to try to find the original intent. If, for instance, the Muslims behind it thought of themselves as religious equivalents to Nazis, this would be a horrible idea. They have a website for their project, here are some quotes: "the Cordoba Initiative [GZ Mosque] is committed to bringing American Muslims and non-Muslims together through programs in academia, policy, current affairs, and culture." Etc., etc.

Of course, all this mushy "can't we all get along" talk could be a lie. Webpages are tailor-made for people to make stuff up. But, if you fact-check the Imam behind it, Feisal Abdul Rauf, you quickly find out that he's been a strong voice (one of very few) pro-America Muslims. So much so that many Muslims dislike him for his ideas on Americanizing the Muslim faith. And guess what? Right now he's over in the Mid-East promoting how Americans are open to faith. He's been doing this since 2007. I don't think he'll be back.

The tragedy of this is that by screaming out phrases like "Nazis" to Muslims, we're pushing them even further away. It reminds me a Christian Fundamentalist called "Brother Tom" who used to preach at UNI. He'd bring his 12 children, set up shop at the Union, and scream about how we're all sinners, going to hell, etc., etc. At first I thought he was genuinely trying to make us repent. Now though, I realize it was just a show for his kids to see how bad "out there" was. It invariably turned into a chaotic shouting match with profanities, stupid jokes, and ugliness from both parties. His kids saw how ugly we sinners can be, and ran back to ranch more scared of us secular humanist.

That's what we're doing. We're not going to convince terrorists of anything. But don't associate 1 billion people in Islam as terrorists, Nazis, blight, whatever. We're screaming now.

I'm all for stopping the Mosque, just do it the American way: buy them out and in it's place put up our sacred trinity: food, football, and beer (a.k.a Hooters).

Welcome Sophia!

2010-05-09T07:39:00.001-07:00

Sophia Ann Fields
April 21, 2010
5:56pm
7 pounds 4 ounces & 20 inches

Finally, eyes wide open.

Noah's a big brother! In the hospital, our baby girl at one day old.

Children's Television Workshop

2009-10-14T04:49:00.000-07:00

I've been thinking a lot about kids shows these days, mostly because I haven't paid attention in over a decade, and was wondering what happened. The last children's TV product I paid attention to was Pokemon, and that only through my nephew. Now I'm trying to stay tuned in on Sundays before my church of MTP, but it's difficult. Not to mention a whole slew of crappy content out there.

When I was a kid, pretty much the only educational experience in the country (without cable) was static-filled PBS. Everyone remembers '3-2-1 Contact' and 'Sesame Street'. But there are a couple of shows that were burned into my memory at an early age and somehow represent what childrens television out to be...slightly creepy.

Parlez Moi. This show was on during 9 am on weekdays, which means you first had to be at home sick to see it. I never watched the show without being hopped up on Robitussin, cephelexin, and Advil. That's the only way it should be viewed.

Read All About It. This has it all, multidimensional travel, sentient typewriters, and kidnapping. This program shows what you can do with unbounded imagination and a shoestring budget. Ala Dr. Who.

Fields Trek Fest

2009-07-04T18:32:00.000-07:00

Last weekend the Fields Family and RW crew got together to celebrate the rebirth of the Star Trek franchise at Riverside Iowa. Depending on your franchise history, its either the birthplace or childhood home of Captain James T. Kirk. Or possibly even the construction yard of the Enterprise.

They have a plaque in a back-alley that gives all the details. And a museum. And a gift shop. And a Casey's.

It was my first Trek Fest, and from various documentaries and media coverage I was expecting a whole slew of geeks dressed up in primary colors. There were a few, but the demographics were 90% small townsfolk in howling wolf t-shirts, 10% geek. Of course the 10% true Trekkies get all of the cameras pointed at them, and also have all the fun. This year three actors from the original series were in the parade; Sulu, Ohura, and Chekov. Ohura smiled at me.

Fortunately RW came prepared with classic Star Trek V posters, so at least we can say we made an effort to geek out (I'm spock).
The 10% to 90% ratio also works for the parade. Instead of Trek Fest they should have called it Firetruck and Shriners Fest... somewhere around 50 firetrucks from SE Iowa came (God help us if there was a fire in Keokuk), along with an army of those ridiculous Shriner 'two front end' cars. In the mix of all the flashing lights, horns and sirens I was able to make out about four Sci-Fi themed floats. All four received awards, and somehow one of the winners was a squadron of Storm Troopers/Jawas/Imperial Guards. Of course most hardcore Trekkers booed when they passed.

I don't think beggars can be choosers though. Next year I'm going as a Fremen to completely cluster-f**k the genres.
Noah had a blast, and got his picture taken with pretty much everyone...even if they had a blaster instead of a phaser.

Shroomin' on a Sunday Afternoon

2009-05-11T05:06:00.000-07:00

This past Sunday the Fields Fam went out to find the ever-elusive morel mushroom. In Iowa City. I was fairly skeptical, I've looked around this area every year, and never get anything. I think its cause most of the city has already scoured the area before we get there (our Timber is the only spot I can consistently find morels). But we set off anyway at a nearby park. Lo and behold, success!

I had Noah on my back the whole time, he was a lot more interested in me whapping may-apples with my walking stick than finding mushrooms. But while Noah and I were traipsing about Master-Blaster style, Hilary found some really nice ones.

Its the size of her hand!!!

After we got home I fried them up. Using only butter, of course. It's quite a bit more finicky than oil, as it starts burning really fast...but morels were made for butter.

Noah had "Vegetable Stew with Carrots and Peas". He wasn't happy.

Diligence

2009-03-12T14:38:00.000-07:00

After many years, someone finally put the first (and only?) Tripmaster Monkey video on the net. Shutter's Closed. As I recall a friend's brother got be be one of the background skaters.

Watch more Goodbye Race videos on AOL Video

I swear I've looked for that thing every couple months or so on youtube. And though I know that many Iowa musicians in the late 90's-early 00's loved (and still love) them, there really isn't a lot of internet content available for Tripmaster Monkey.

Now I need to find online copies of Oil magazine and Day Old Donuts .mp3s.

In the Kitchen

2009-02-16T18:00:00.000-08:00

For Valentines Day this year, instead of 'going out' (something which has proved to be almost impossible with baby), I decided to challenge myself and cook a wholly original (for me) supper. Nothing on the menu was something that I had tried before. Though sometimes I could hear Chef Ramsey shouting profanities at me, overall, I think I did a pretty good job.

Above are the four main parts of the meal, for starters we had a fresh spinach and strawberry salad with sesame seed dressing. Then a healthy bowl of french onion soup topped with provolone cheese, and a twice baked potato. The main course was a beef tenderloin with port wine reduced shallots.

After all that I decided to go with homemade flan for dessert. I've tried the flan-in-the-box version before, and while its quick to cook, it tastes like mashed paper. This was much better., if a bit more difficult to remove from the oven...(you've got to bake the ramekins in water). For wine we had Da Vinci Chianti, which tasted OK. I tried to find a wine that was made in Iowa that would work with this meal with no success. My new goal is to try to buy as much Iowa-made alcohol as possible. Our state needs those dollars!

Noah got his Valentines Supper as well. He's had his 'milk ala Enfamil' meal many times before, but he'll settle for nothing less.

Stimulate This.

2009-02-12T05:29:00.000-08:00

Let’s get pessimistic for a while.
What a time to have a kid. Either the world was always this dire, and I was blissfully self absorbed and didn’t see it…or its gone completely in the crapper the moment Noah was born and I started paying attention. Either way I’m scared.

I know the election of Barack Obama made (and still makes) people optimistic about our future. But America is extremely superficial, and elected him for extremely superficial reasons (he’s black, eloquent, voted against Iraq, he’ll save us all, etc.)

That doesn’t mean that Barack isn’t able to handle the task, in fact I think he might be more than capable, but he’s got a whopper of a mess.

What bothers me about this recession (now we can call it that) is that no matter what stimulus package we pass, we’ll have to innovate to truly get out of it. That’s the way America works. The last 30 years have seen the computer in the 80’s, internet in the 90’s, cell phone in the late 90’s. Now web 2.0.

Back in college I used to get into drunken arguments with a Danish economics major. He kept saying that the America’s days of innovation were over; other more hungry countries would take it away from us. This was back in 2001. He wasn’t completely right (smartphones and web 2.0), but our most recent ‘innovation’ has been moving magic money from house mortgages to investors. That's worked out well for us.

I really hope America can think of the ‘next big thing’ again. The possibilities are endless. Thomas Friedman would like that to be green energy. I would like that to be GMO'd pets. Let’s do it America! Beat those Dutch.

BSG + Commercials = Very Unsettling

2009-02-05T18:01:00.000-08:00

Noahbama

2009-01-25T14:26:00.000-08:00

Noah, with a little help from mom, celebrated with the rest of the world at the inauguration of Barack Obama. As you can see, he is very excited...he never thought he'd live to see the day a black man was elected president.

Though Noah admits he, like the rest of us, was caught up in the raw emotion of the event. He's still a little skeptical about whether Obama can translate his souring rhetoric into real, tangible policy changes.

Deja vu

2009-01-19T15:25:00.000-08:00

Let's sketch an outline:

Country A, a rich nation, keeps on getting hassled by Country B, a poorer, smaller nation. Some wouldn't call B a nation. B has had a long history of aggression against A, and vice-versa. After a while, in the name of 'security' for its citizens, Country A invades B, causing many casualties we can watch on the news and You-Tube. After a while the violence stops, aid comes in, and people forget about the whole incident.

That's the basic outline of both the Russian-Georgian, and Israeli-Palestinian conflict. There were a few notable differences, one (R-G) involved the invasion of a semi-autonomous state (Ossetia) by two countries, one to take it back and the other to supposedly stop 'ethnic-cleansing', as many of its citizens were pro-Russian. The other was to cease rocket fire into their country.

Despite how similar these conflicts might be, our nation decides to side differently in each case. The lowly small country Georgia, and the rich invading country Israel. Why? This makes no sense to me.

How do we, as a nation, so easily come to the conclusion who is justified and right in their actions? I can't. I honestly don't know what to believe anymore. We're supposedly in the 'information age', but most of the crap on the internet is light years away from true, honest, information. Pictures are photo-shopped, wikipedia gets edited, casualties are made up. I dare you to try any objective research...what you get is plenty of stories...a Palestinian Dr. who lost his three girls, kids getting shot in the head, schools getting bombed.

But the plural of 'anecdote' is not 'data'.

I'm not so jaded and cynical that I distrust all media. A good website that sources their data is www.ifamericansknew.org. It hasn't been updated in a while.

Update:

This video was #1 on digg yesterday:

I can't believe this. Mr. Waggle-arms and bloviate didn't have any clue about the history of this conflict, then gets all hyped up over something HE SHOULD HAVE KNOWN at the outset. This is what passes for the freaking news?

Israel raided Hamas fighters in November (link), and more importantly never got rid of the blockade (link)...but Hamas never stopped firing rockets into Israel (link). All of those were part of the cease-fire agreement. As cliched as it sounds, neither side is without sin. What's frustrating is that both the MSM, and the internet counter-culture (digg, youtube) both paint their side as justified, and the other as evil and misinforming.

What's undeniable is that Hamas are a bunch of thugs, and millions of Palestinians are suffering, and have been for over a year.

Good stuff found in 2008

2009-01-02T11:22:00.000-08:00

Bye-bye 2008. I'm kinda sad to see it go. Not only does it mean yet another year, but actually, I really enjoyed '08. Delpcon, Backbone/tornado trip, flood, Noah.

Some quick 'cultural' goodies I found interesting this past year:

In music, it seemed to me that there was a lot of high quality musicianship again after five years of lo-fi bands like Moldy Peaches, Kimya Dawson, Tapes n' Tapes etc. having a monopoly in my headphones. Peltgrande has an excellent post pointing out some really good ones. Here are a couple I liked that weren't listed in his blog:

This is a Fleet Foxes cover from a duo who appear to have time-traveled straight out of 1975.

This song started my new addiction to synth music and incomprehensible lyrics.

Crystal Castle Crimewave
Uploaded by Differentrecordings

Although I can't (or don't) read like I used to, I still find it fun. Two years ago I set a goal to read through the "Top 100" Science Fiction stories. I've completed almost 30% of them, and have a long way to go. This year I got Hyperion at the used book store.This book is great. Much like Dune, it drops you in the middle of a universe and doesn't hold your hand trying to describe every little detail of culture, technology, or politics right away (I'm still not 100% sure what the 'Hegemony' is). Because of that you can delve into a great story that much quicker. Plus, this author seems to have researched everything. Poetry plays a huge part, as does CSI and family.

Only 14 more days till BSG!

So...Vilsack?

2008-12-25T15:31:00.000-08:00

So it looks like Obama's got most of his cabinet picked. And for the most part, I either like the choice or don't know enough about it to make an educated decision. There is one that makes me wonder though; Thomas Vilsack as Secretary of Agriculture (pic related).
(BTW...he loves honey.)

First off, I don't have anything personally against the guy. And, according to national press, he's "even handed" and Iowa was "thrown a bone" with this pick because of our excellent Democratic caucus this year. But seriously, is Vilsack the best person in America for this job? Sure, I'm sure he's seen lots of corn in his day, as anyone working in Iowa would, but his experience and history is as a trial lawyer (they seem to know everything, don't they?). Not an agri-economist, scientist, or even farmer.

All that aside the major concern I have with Vilsack was a goal he set for Iowa back in 2003...which, at the time, made headlines:

"By 2010, Iowa will eliminate all impaired waterways."

Now that we're one year away from the established deadline. Let's see how we're doing:
I don't have the bar graph showing data for 2006 or 2008, but as you can see, impaired waterways in Iowa are well on the way to topping 400. Yikes. Its so bad we're now measuring poisonous algae blooms in our streams and lakes.

This trend is no surprise to anyone, even small schoolchildren. There are a multitude of reasons why. For one thing, it takes a long time (over decades) to actually clean up river systems when they've been polluted (even if the land has completely changed). Another issue is that EPA is always expanding the list of what makes a water 'impaired'. But the main reason is that the way we farm today simply pollutes water badly. The way we farm hasn't changed drastically in the last 50 years.

So why would Vilsack make a pledge six years ago that Iowa would have no impaired waterways? That about the same as me saying "By 2013, all coal power plants will be replaced by the power of imagination!" To make such a pledge, in my mind he must be either a) completely stupid or b) playing politics. Neither one of those is a great choice. I don't think that Vilsack is dumb, the only answer that makes sense to me is that he was doing what a lot of politicians do, make promises that sound great, without mentioning the cost, or even thinking they would happen. He also probably knew that by 2010 most people would have forgotten about his pledge and he'd be up on the next political level.

Well I haven't forgotten. I'd really like to hear him answer for that crazy/insane pledge he made as governor of Iowa a long time ago.

Cylons and Dice

2008-12-08T16:53:00.000-08:00

So, finally, here’s some good news…there is a Battlestar Galactica Board Game for us who love, you guessed it, Cylons and dice.
Yes folks. And from what I’ve read online, its easy to understand, with quick rounds, and ~two hour play times. What fun. I’ve owned the BSG Roleplaying Game for over a year now, I don’t even want to begin to start a campaign on those crazy ‘cortex’ rules. Intelligence is 1d8…stamina is 1d10??...What??

...Only about a month before the final 'season' starts.

Leviathan's uber Top Five RPG-apalooza

2008-11-24T17:26:00.000-08:00

I’m beginning my annual winter roleplaying game this year, and I have to say I’ve picked been a good one: Fallout 3. For the next couple of months I’ll be relishing the Washington Wastelands by picking pockets, blowing up cities, and just causing general havoc.

As you all know by now, I'm sure...I have excellent taste. So I've decided to rank the top five video game RPGs I’ve played. Actually…let’s say ‘of all time’. Yeah, that's better. Although my sample size is only around 75 games total, only half of which were finished, you can feel safe in taking this list to the bank, depositing it, and getting all your money back in this top five list of pixilated RPG pleasure. I only play the best. That means no Nintendo.

5) Lands of Lore II: Guardians of Destiny.

I don’t know why this gem of a game has been forgotten. Sure, its got that cheesy late ‘90s real video capture with, at best, B-level acting. But the story for this complex game involves gods, demons, oracles, even a town of cat-people. Plus you’re cursed by a witch and randomly shapeshift from wise-cracking human, to pigmy lizard, to grunting monster lizard. Instead of going for the standard semi-medieval, or far future, period like so many games, Lands of Lore II goes for almost Greek-like world view of gods, monsters, and demons all living together. Its great.

4) Panzer Dragoon Saga.
This game was the sole reason I purchased a Sega Saturn. And, though the Saturn graphics are horrid, I played through this sucker twice. All you need to know about the game is that you ride a shape-shifting dragon and fly through a future destroyed world where everything has been genetically modified. Very Japanese. But the great story involving you, your pet dragon, and a 5,000 year old GMO’d girl named ‘Azel’ is phenominal. Most of the true die-hard Sega fans agree with me on this one, if you try to buy this game today you’re going to pay at least $200.

3) Ultima Underworld II.
In 1992, a year before Doom supposedly ‘invented’ the first-person shooter, Looking Glass Studios (rest in peace) brought out the real-time gem known as Ultima Underworld. Though UWI was technically great (you could jump, look up, down, fly), the story was rather simplistic – get out of the underworld. With UWII, Looking Glass kept almost the exact same graphics and interface, and focused on creating a great story that greatly expanded our knowledge of the major villain in Ultima 7, released just prior to UWII. In this game you explore many other worlds that the Guardian has conquered, you also can truly customize your character, being either a spellcaster, ranger, or in my case, a thug who punched his way into saving the world. Although there is only one ending, during the game you can kill whomever you want, and the spell system of runes instead of reagents is wonderful, as is all your items having their own unique slot.

2) Skies of Arcadia.

You’re Vyse, a teenage kid with love for swashbuckling adventure. You live on a planet made of many tiny floating islands. Your best friend, Aika has just watched a Moonstone fall on nearby Shrine Island. What do you do? Go cartoon teeny-bopper adventuring, of course. At the end of your travels you’ve been to the moon, discovered ancient technology, and fallen in love. Yeah, its very Japanese, but its also very Pirates of Dark Water. Finding treasures, interesting characters, Oh, plus you’ve got ship to ship battles!

1) Mass Effect.

Take Blade Runner, mix it with the Fifth Element, add a little BSG (all this has happened before) and finish it off with KOTOR-style character interaction, and you’ve got the absolute best RPG ever, Mass Effect. At the start of this game you’re trying to find an ancient beacon left by an extinct race. At the end, you’re humanity (et al.’s) only chance for survival. Although its got a great, original story, what really sets this game apart is its depth. You want to know the history of the Citadel, your character, Mass Relays station? No problem, just go to your character terminal and read the pages and pages of background text. BioWare must have dedicated countless hours to writing history, tech specs, and character details before releasing this game. Another plus: although it unabashedly steals from plenty of known sci-fi memes, it uses them to weave together a story that feels, at least to this rpg-er, extremely original.

UNI Panther Pushers

2008-11-18T05:01:00.000-08:00

Unfortunately, it looks like two important players for UNI have been busted for marijuana: Johnny Gray and Victor Williams. Johnny with ‘intent to distribute.They both have been dismissed from the team.

That sucks. Those two players accounted for over 50% of pass completions this year. Johnny Gray had streaks of greatness when returning punts. Hopefully they’ll still make a run in the playoffs.

Yes, division 1aa (FCS) football has playoffs, thank heavens.

Noah at Two Months

2008-10-27T04:55:00.000-07:00

Noah's been out of the womb for two months now. So far he's seemed to enjoy himself, but boy is he hungry all the time. When he's not trying to get food he seems to be really baffled with the world. Bright lights, sounds, his own hands, etc.

Bran Van Nostalgia

2008-10-14T05:39:00.000-07:00

Gosh. I have no Idea why Bran Van didn't become the biggest thing since Beck. Its a shame.

I guess they got fairly popular in EU, since there are a lot of home-made vids from folks in France. I like this one a lot.

I have the power!

2008-10-12T17:27:00.000-07:00

And my first son-justified-but-completely-self-indulgent-purchase is...
...
...
...
...
...
(drumroll please)
...
...
...
...
...
...

That's right. Castle Grayskull beeiaatches! I found it for $10 including 7(!) Masters of the Universe figures with all their swords, comics, and add-ons. Battle armor He-Man, Skeletor, Man At Arms (aka Waste of Time), Orko, and a bunch of others I can't name.

Notice the laser is still on top? Heck, the trap door even works.

Some history. Before I went to kindergarten my entire play-world involved whatever games I could think of for me, my younger sisters, and other various farm animals. Games like old tree-trunk space-ship adventure, church songs to cows, and twirl a cat in a bucket filled our afternoons. Then, within the first week of starting kindergarten, kids with a TV that got something other than PBS told the rest of us about He-Man, and his daily trials with Skeletor.

And they had lots of toys, magical toys.

I'm sure GI Joe was big at that time too. But that never really interested me. He-Man, after all, was the Master of the Universe, not some rinky-dink planet. Universe is always better in my book.

Back to the toys. Of course as a kid, especially in our little class, you had to have the coolest toys to be the coolest kid in class. Most everyone else had at least heard of He-Man and had a couple of action figures to play in the games. I remember being behind the eight-ball so bad that I brought some toy bird to play along as Sorceress. Someone told me later that Sorceress was a woman. I didn't know that.

I wanted to get Castle Grayskull so bad my Kindergarten year I cut it out of our 1983 JC Penney Christmas catalog and hung it on my wall.

Needless to say, for better or worse, no Grayskull for me that year. Or any other year. It became quickly obvious to me that I wasn't going to be the coolest kid in class. Grayskull probably wouldn't have helped anyway.

Now, 25 years later, Grayskull is mine. I mean Noah's.

...jealous?

Pumpkin Fields

2008-10-07T05:03:00.000-07:00

The Fields Fam went to Anamosa this past weekend to see the 20th annual Jones County Pumpkin Fest. Funny, I didn't know about the previous 19. Like most festivals, this one started with a 5k 'pumpkin run'. Which, being a glutton for punishment, I decided to run. I haven't run once since Noah's been born.
It hurt. Not a good hurt either. The race itself was beautiful. Anamosa's a hilly town, and this 5k hit some pretty decent ones. We even ran next to the Wapsipinicon River for about a mile. It looked very pretty, but (and I'm not kidding here) the Wapsi stunk like pure sewage.

My entire family, sans dad and Hilary, also ran. Mom, being a lightning bolt finished 2nd in her age category. She was very happy. Below is a picture of all the winners of the race, including mother. I didn't even place.

The largest pumpkin in Jones County this year was a respectable 1,400 lbs. Not bad. Last year Jones County had the second largest pumpkin in the world at almost 1,700 lbs. I wonder what they do with those things after the fest.

Magic Money

2008-10-01T04:29:00.000-07:00

I was at a conference the last couple of days, so I intentionally payed no attention to the news. Nothing but karst topography and groundwater interactions. What a trip.

...and what a difference a couple of days makes. Listening to radio on the way home, I heard that we got ourselves into a predicament where we drastically need investors from other countries to 'have confidence' in our markets to keep us afloat. The radio talking heads thought that confidence was eroding.

Ya think?

Who would have confidence in a system that gives loans to people based on no money down and no proof of income? A person that believes in 'magic money', that's who. You see, with magic money, the its the money itself that makes value and goods. Much like Dumbledore conjures up entire banquets in Harry Potter with a flick of his wand.

So...what are we getting into here?

2008-09-21T17:00:00.000-07:00

So I’ve read the bailout proposal. At the size of a longer blog post, most people will hopefully be able to read the dang thing and think about it a bit, even if our congress doesn’t.

There are two items that strike me about this deal. For one, Congress, and us taxpayers are giving Mr. Secretary, one man (or woman) immense powers and cash, without any restrictions. Is that really a safe way to spend $700,000,000,000? When I spend $700 on Amazon.com, and it comes broken, you better believe I send it back, plus I take a lot of time to research how to get the most out of my money.

…Congress has what, five days?

To protect our ‘investment’ the secretary has these guidelines:

Sec. 3. Considerations.

In exercising the authorities granted in this Act, the Secretary shall take into consideration means for--

(1) providing stability or preventing disruption to the financial markets or banking system; and

(2) protecting the taxpayer.

Secondly; I assume that the plan will be for the taxpayers to buy these mortgages as the Secretary sees fit, and then sell them when the market goes back up again. Well, um...what if it doesn’t go up? But continues to decline in the foreseeable future?

In fact, you could make an argument that this bill and circumstances are set up exactly that way. Right now, the market needs money, so paying more for failed mortgages gives that quick infusion of money, and looks great in the short-term. Over time though, all of those quick sales at higher prices will come home to roost. Yet another bubble that will burst… this one caused directly by the government.

You just know, like everything else government does, in five years time people are going to look at this as a quick-fix mess.

Bureaucracy

2008-09-17T10:57:00.000-07:00

I’m sure if you ask most anyone today, the word ‘bureaucracy’ conjures up feelings of ineptitude and mismanagement. Although most people work within some sort of ordered system (by default a bureaucracy), in many minds the word is almost tied with ‘liberal’ on the negative connotation scale.

I happen to work in one of those long governmental bureaucratic chains, and I must admit, its pretty ridicules. The first time I realized how bad was in 2003 at an environmental conference watching a distinguished EPA speaker. The guy was probably somewhere in federal middle management. Mr. EPA is giving a presentation on new state perchlorate contamination standards, measured in parts per billion… as most scientists would show- μg/L. At least any scientist that has taken an undergrad chemistry course. However, in Mr EPA’s talk, every single slide of his powerpoint has λg/L. We saw it about 50 times throughout his presentation.

For those of you who haven’t taken a college physics course, lambda (λ) is a symbol for wavelength. Nothing to do with concentration. Mr. EPA is talking about state standards (which we have to enact), and using the wrong symbol. Or, taken further, we must invent a whole new way to measure concentration to meet EPA standards.

When called out on it from a member of the audience, he simply said “It means parts per billion.” And brushed it off like somehow we’re the ones who didn’t understand.

And that, in a nutshell, details what’s inherently wrong with bureaucracies. You see, we lowly ‘state’ people couldn’t tell him he was wrong because we’re below him on the bureaucratic totem pole. The only way he would have righted his wrong was if someone from higher up the chain -District Manager or something- would have corrected him.

Does that make bureaucracy inherently bad? Absolutely not. But it does make it overwhelmingly dependent on the abilities and aptitude of those in higher management. That’s why good private sector presidents/CEO’s get paid so much; private companies know how important it is (at least the successful ones do).

On the public side, we’re seeing friends or major contributors of the governor, president, etc. in heads of agencies in which they have little to no experience or qualifications. That inexperience trickles down and permeates the rest of the agency. Then you get what we've got today.

Noah Levi Fields

2008-09-14T15:44:00.001-07:00

So on August 30, 2008 my life changed forever. Just as promised by all the other parents out there. After an 'average'(!) labor of about 10 hours or so, Noah came into the world a very healthy boy. Healthy enough to be 9 lbs. 10 oz., with a HUGE head...which Hilary handled like a trooper, I must say. I almost passed out. Anyway, after a little scare about his innards not working correctly (they were just plugged up), we got to take him home. We've had a great time with him at home, and its great to see him do those little things, like focus his eyes, and make funny faces, that I never would have thought were important just a couple of years ago.

Although I was prepared for the total lack of sleep, I never really thought about how much more nerve racking your life is going to get with a child. I remember as a boy doing stupid, dangerous things like playing on farm machinery and getting trapped with the hogs. I never 'got' why mom and dad looked so concerned.

That's changed. I was paranoid about everything those first couple of nights.

Thanks to everyone who sent us food, congrats, and thoughts these past couple of weeks. We really appreciate them!

Start

2008-06-26T10:47:00.000-07:00

This is an attempt to write down various happenings/opinions, etc. that I have. Since myspace/facebook have turned into countless quizes and spam messages, thought I should give it a try.