Archive for November, 2008
November 23, 2008 at 10:05 pm · Filed under General
S and I played disc golf at the U. For those of you who don’t know, today was gorgeous. Olympics and Cascades in full, crystal-clear view. Fun times, too, probably because we didn’t use disc-golf discs, just normal ones. E and I haven’t been getting out of the house as much as we’d like on weekends (there’s a lot of reading and coffee drinking), so it was quite the welcome change. neither S nor I had ever played disc golf before, but neither of us made total fools of ourselves, loosing discs in the big duck and ecoli infested fountain, for example.
I’ve been reading a lot on the proposed ‘big 3′ bailouts. i’m definitely in favor of the bankruptcy route, for the record, but here are some interesting tidbits i read last week:
On Sunday, President-elect Barack Obama asked, “What does a sustainable U.S. auto industry look like?”
Well, it looks a lot like the automotive industry run by “foreign” car companies that insource jobs into the U.S. In 2006 these foreign auto makers (multinational auto or auto-parts companies that are headquartered outside of the U.S.) employed 402,800 Americans. The average annual compensation for these employees was $63,538.
(From Matthew Slaughter’s editorial)
And from Mitt Romney (who knew?)
That extra burden is estimated to be more than $2,000 per car. Think what that means: Ford, for example, needs to cut $2,000 worth of features and quality out of its Taurus to compete with Toyota’s Avalon. Of course the Avalon feels like a better product — it has $2,000 more put into it. Considering this disadvantage, Detroit has done a remarkable job of designing and engineering its cars. But if this cost penalty persists, any bailout will only delay the inevitable.
November 18, 2008 at 11:22 pm · Filed under General
the past two weekends E and I have been doing a marginally better job of getting out of the house. 2 weeks ago we hit Alki Beach / West Seattle. Possibly because we watched Sleepless in Seattle? In any case, the sunset was incredible, and I regretted leaving my tripod at home.
Last weekend, we went back there, under the pretense of studying. I found us a schweet coffee shop w/ urban spoon, but we didn’t realize there’d be kids, so we opted for a Vérité (local coffee/cupcake chain) instead. I got some economists/wireds read, and who knows what E accomplished. we didn’t stay there late enough to get afternoon/evening sun, really, but I got some nice pictures in any case:
November 15, 2008 at 6:15 pm · Filed under General
The first one is on the looming energy crisis, and here’s a nice passage:
The gap now evident between what is currently being built and what will be needed to keep pace with demand is set to widen sharply after 2010,” the report states. This means that our margin for error for maintaining sufficient production will get increasingly narrow. Any sort of problem that disrupts this growth in infrastructure—political, geological, financial, or anything else—is going to kick off another oil shock. Oil is not only going to keep getting more expensive, but it’s going to be prone to many more of the sort of radical price swings we’ve seen in the past year.
About time to have a floor on the price of gasoline, perhaps?
And then there was an article by the writer of Liar’s Poker:
Eisman knew subprime lenders could be scumbags. What he underestimated was the total unabashed complicity of the upper class of American capitalism. For instance, he knew that the big Wall Street investment banks took huge piles of loans that in and of themselves might be rated BBB, threw them into a trust, carved the trust into tranches, and wound up with 60 percent of the new total being rated AAA.
Happily, though, we witnessed huge turnout at the protest against CA’s voting in favor of Prop 8 (or H8 as many signs called it) today. Yes, we’ve been at Bauhaus for a solid 5 hours today. Without further ado, here were some favorite sign slogans:
Jesus had two dads
When do we get to vote on your marriage?
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