Really quick blog.

Surviving at the new job. Surviving at the old job. Getting up on time. Kinda tired. Driving more than I'd like. But I rationalize it by saying biking and BARTing would waste some of my already precious time. The two job situation will last for two more weeks. Hope to be able to sleep when its over. Not that I am total sleep deprived. Not sure to do with the extra money I'm making.
Whether to invest it or save it for moving out of the parents house. Did George ever do that.

What do I do at the new job? Enter data into excel spreadsheets and help users navigate our companies software. Something you could see George doing in a Seinfeld episode. Not sure how it would end for George at this job... Maybe I'll think of the ways George would get fired (or promoted) from this job in my next post.

Looking forward to visiting Indiana in July and seeing family. No time for picture with this post.
Best.
GCNOF

Up Come Abubblin' Crude

It certainly is one plum of a pickle

Rand Paul may have stumbled on a genuinely honest statement about the BP oil spill: "accidents happen" and we shouldn't play the "blame game".

At first blush it sounds appallingly dismissive of an evironmental and economic disaster. And it also overlooks the admittedly preliminary evidence that BP, Transocean, Halliburton and Federal regulators were all turning a blind eye to short cuts that caused this spill. Certainly there should be a criminal as well as civil investigation, but there probably won't be. And BP will probably pay the cost of clean up, but not nearly all the actual costs of the spill. There is no hope for justice when so much money is involved. Remember the consequences for Exxon after their now quaint-seeming mishap in Alaska.

But none of this is really the point. No matter how many safety regulations the fed actually enforces, as Paul says, "accidents happen". It is inevitable that off-shore drilling will involve some catastrophes of this kind. And what would justice really amount to in this situation? What amount of money would "make whole" the people whose livelihood depends on the Gulf?

We may be spending a lot on the clean up, but how much are tax payers going to spend on unemployment and other social services for Gulf fisherman, and tourism business owners and staff; how much wealth evaporated in lost real estate value? Not just now, but for decades, possibly a century, this will have a depressive effect on the economy of the Gulf states. How could anyone shoulder that cost? The people of the Gulf states and every US citizen are gong to find out.

But Paul doesn't like the "blame game", and he is right. It doesn't matter who we blame; it matters what we do about it. Obama and Congress's role isn't to catharticly channel our collective anger, their job is to enact policies that have practical benefits to our country.

"Pro-drillers" like Sarah Plain, Rand Paul and the President argue that off-shore oil drilling is an economic imperative. Any real economic evaluation of the price of oil needs to include all these costs. In comparison, an enormous investment in green energy seems like a deal.

Hitting The Hard-Deck

The lesson learned from Sue Lowden's travails? There is a limit to the idiocy a politician can spout. Mid-recession supply-side economics, "whats a magazine?", there were no domestic attacks under Bush, crypto-socialism, death panels, Census conspiracies, birth certificates; it seemed like there was no assertion so stupid that it would turn voters off. Sue Lowden dug deep and found an unforgiving rock-bottom at "pay your doctor in chickens". I guess there might be hope for American democracy after all.

Aye, the weight-freight, Hamish!

Is real estate the socio-economic version of lapel size?

George Costanza's Yankees

Through all his troubles, my hero George Costanza does finally get a job. A job that he keeps. He does take a lot of crappy jobs first.

Maybe I found my George Steinbrenner and Yankees. Who knows? I hope to start this week or next.

It's a contract hire, so they can fire me any time; maybe even before I start working for them. That would be classic!

If I do keep the job, the company is located in the town over from where I currently reside. I do hope to move. But it is near BART, which is awesome.

Does George ever move out of his parent's house? I don't remember him having his own place...
Well that decision is a couple of months down the road at the earliest. Well that's it for now.

Maybe I'll post more this month. but I almost definitely won't be traveling much for awhile.

A Stephen Gould Moment

The other day I was looking at a Childrens' Zoology Encyclopedia and I had a random thought:

All the marsupials that live in Australia are more closely related to each other than they are to other mammals. Yet in terms of gross anatomy, each one resembles another common mammal. Koala 'bears", Tasmanian "wolves" (Thylacines), kangaroos, which look like the consequences of a Romeo & Juliet situation between a deer and a rabbit, echidnas which look a lot like hedge-hogs, platypi which are essentially beavers going as ducks for Halloween, etc.

What I am wondering is whether this is evidence of the limitations imposed on evolution either by environmental conditions or fundamental aspects of organic chemistry. Like there are only so many kinds of things that could thrive on planet Earth as it is, or even only a limited number of shapes that you can make with amino acids. Is there a well of untapped creativity in natural forms, or are the things that we see around us the extent of what could be?