writer's block

Things have a way of working out, I was out of work and now have a calculus student. I face a major decision. stay in California and (possibly) finish my Master's in statistics or leave to work as a writer. which maybe in DC or really anywhere.

It would be nice to change just a little bit. stay in California, but become a writer and still finish my Master's Degree in Statistics. moving across the country for a job, sounds kinda of risky, even if it is a place I know, like DC. too bad, I didn't get a writing job while I was living there the first time, maybe I would have never moved back.

DC is probably the most appealing city for me to move. I had quite a few friends in DC. and they have a good ultimate frisbee league. it's close to philly and my other relatives there. I could get back into that. I was happy there. I won't need a car, but I am hesitant to move. I like Lafayette, and California even though I was happy in DC, except about missing home and my social connections in Lafayette aren't that great, mainly old friends that I hang out with. I just like the hills, the weather and the vacation spots (Tahoe, the Pacific, San Francisc0).

I thought I would blog about this. I would like to be a journalist that focused on the science/break down the science for the common folk. I wouldn't have to be the expert. I could bring in other people that really knew the issues, like a statistician with a PhD., but I know enough about it, I think to be able to ask the right questions to an expert.

I think that is what I want to do, be a journalist. at least for today. fight misinformation. encourage children and young adults to value their mind. make thinking cool again. I guess if I am really serious about this, I need to write more.

here's my first blog in ages. I would love the peanut gallery to comment on my blog. stay in CA. move to greener pastures, DC or somewhere else, with a fresh start. I think getting a degree in statistics might help. it would be cool to move out of my parents' house. I'm about the right age for that to happen.

Why Facebook is like high school all over again

Hey it's that time of the month again. Yeah, time for my monthly blog update. Yay. Great. get excited.

ok now that you're excited. I'm tired and I have a little over a week to do a take home final for a class I got an incomplete two years ago. so at least I'm working on it. I think I still have a chance to get an "A". If so, I can reapply to the grad program in statistics. If I fail (not get an A). I promise to blog religiously. because I think writing is my only real love. I would call it a talent, but I'm not sure how talently I am. besides does the world really need another blogger? ok, I don't really care. I'd like to be that superfluous blogger that doesn't change the world in any way, maybe even making the world a little worse, annoying people, sharing stuff that shouldn't be shared, like vomiting, porn and masterbating. destroying the moral fabric of the next generation of Americans and all world citizens. but at least gets to write whatever he wants and that pays the bills.

speaking of which, yesterday was an eventful day for me. I saw a homeless guy, with a sign, "spare some change for a hooker, I'm sick of masterbating". I pretended that wasn't funny or unusual at all, just kinda of ignoring the guy, but I was definitely amused. these guys (homeless guys) scare me, but so does pretty much anyone "hanging out". I never learned that in junior high or high school or college. I don't know how to hang out and check out chicks walking by. I want to learn. can anyone teach me?

the other eventful occurrence yesterday was that I startle a skunk on my bike ride home (at ten pm.) luckily I didn't get sprayed, but I was worried.

I'm having a problem teaching, and this was actually something that initially stopped me from being a teacher. I get nervous around hot students, it kinda of inhibits my teaching. It's not that I have inappropriate thoughts. It's just that it's always been hard for me to communicate around and to attractive women, which is what teachers do. It's hard having hot girls in your class, I try not to stare, I hope I don't look at them disportionately to the other students. I have two weekend classes, which sucks, I hate having no weekend. it's hard to have as much fun during the week.

in addition to teaching, I've been using facebook. the positives you can reconnect with old friends. the negatives, everyone else is also there, kinda of like high school. it can be kinda of awkward. do I add this person or that person? I almost always say yes, if someone adds me, but I rarely add people unless I was really close to them. it's still awkward. there are times in my life that I would like to forget. facebook reminds me of those times. of course there are people that I would like to reconnect with, and facebook gives me that opportunity as well. it's a definitely a mixed blessing. I guess I kinda of live in an imaginary world, where there are only people I like in it, and the people that were just ok, don't exist. maybe I should accept that there are people in the world, classmates, that I'm just not friends with and that's ok. I still need to participate.

but, I do feel bad for high schoolers, that do most of their socializing on facebook. I hope that get to hang out in person enough. because ultimately internet connections just don't measure up to real life experiences.

I'm glad I didn't have the internet when I was in high school. I probably would have been whacking off to internet porn in high school and probably won't have been playing water polo or wrestling. who knows what would have happened to me? maybe I would be 33 with no car and still living with my parents. ok, I guess, it actually might not have made my life any worse. I definitely should have done more drugs, at least at this point. it couldn't have hurt.

GCNOF, Signing off, see you in September.

Erasing old voice mail

Hey all, I'm blogging again too. woo hoo.

Nothing too exciting. I deleted my voice messages today, from the last two months. There was the undergrad engineering student in my stats class that asked for my help with minitab, that I help only once.

That got me thinking: There was this older guy, seventy, kind of hard of hearing, definitely very social unaware, interrupting the professor, asking really random questions and random answers, who seem to be from the middle east. Even the professor told me how annoyed she was by him.

But after reading Kite Runner, I don't want to rule out that any older immigrant may have been in a position of power or a prominent figure in the community, who was forced by war to become, just another poor working class immigrant in the U.S. I love how reading can expand your mind and expose you to a deeper awareness.

I know in class this man had a fondness for generals. His statistics knowledge was great, but he was scared to use the computer. I wish he were able to get more help, I wish I was able to help him, but alas I was struggling to do just my own work. I wanted to him ask what he did back in his home country, but never got the chance. Maybe he will be in my program, if I ever get back in.

Then was also the phone message about the interview for the lab manager position at Stanford. That was a disaster. The first question was a killer, "Why is there a four year gap on your resume?" I never recovered. I don't know why they brought me in. but it wouldn't have been a good job for me, it was too far away and it wasn't going to be exciting enough.

Besides, I've got some work. I'm teaching my first GRE course on Sunday. hopefully I'll be prepared. there was also the message about ACT tutoring that I couldn't take, because The Review didn't train me to teach the ACT. next time, I'm just going to lie and say that I can teach it, buy a book, take the business and don't tell the Review. Please, if you work for the Review (Big Brother), please make a comment on my blog, so I know not to share. so far I swear, I haven't done anything inappropriate professionally.

E.g. Facebook says I should add a cute former student as a friend, but I have no idea why it suggests her? seems kind of random to me, thoughts on why it suggests her as a friend to me? those that have facebook expertise please chime in. don't worry, I'm not going to add her. although she is legal. Peace out. Safe travels. Safe parenting.

Musings on My first day in Ho Chi Minh City

The first thing you notice is the traffic. I don’t understand how half the city’s population has not been maimed or killed in a traffic accident. "Utterly crazy", does not even begin to describe the situation. It helps to understand that there are eight million people in Ho Chi Minh, and five million scooters. All the drivers care about is getting from point A to B as quickly as possible.
Almost anything is fair game on the road or sidewalk. Yes, the cars and scooters will go up on the sidewalk without warning. That is just how they roll. Walking is an extreme sport when you are in Ho Chi Minh.
Scooters are also willing to drive head first into oncoming traffic. If the scooter wants to go to a store on the other side on the street they just start going into oncoming traffic like it is no big deal. Magically, the cars and other scooters just go around them like there is nothing out of the ordinary. I was in a taxi today and we had scooters going the wrong way on either side of us.
However, nothing quite compares to the task of crossing the street. Possibly it is like the scene in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade where Indy has to cross the invisible bridge using his faith. When you cross the street, you just start walking into traffic with the understanding that everything will probably avoid running you over. You literally just start walking into the intersection regardless of the traffic. As long as you steadily walk forward you are safe; if you hesitate you are more likely to get hit. More to come.
Peace Out

This is Why I'm Phat

The Good Word on Pork Rinds

We all had a superior 4th of July in Missouri, especially the shortest member of the family. My uncle got us box seats to a farm-league ball game and my cousins set off some alarmingly big fireworks. That is how they do in the MO. And of course the food was great. My cousins actually made their own orange-infused, ho-made marshmellows for ho-made rocky-road ice cream (more on this see PurpleHouseDirt).

Another notable comestible was born in a moment of whimsy when a day-old, half-eaten bag of pork rinds happened to be sitting on the counter next to the bowl of excess hollandaise sauce. The newest addition to the Comfort-Fusion pantheon.

The Obama Report Card

Iraq: C-
Plans to reduce troops to 50K. Much more than the 10K he spoke of on the campaign trail, but a step in the right direction. We are pulling out of the cities, which is to say, instead of being targets in a slow-burning civil war, we will now be sitting idly on the sidelines. So what are those 50K troops for? Secure Iraq’s (Exxon’s) oil fields? Keep employment numbers up? Make funny faces at Iran?

Afghanistan: B-
Will increase troops and try to implement a smarter policy that relies less on bombs and more on engaging (bribing?) local leaders and securing (depopulating?)border with Pakistan. That would be nice. Maybe if instead of 40K more soldiers than promised were left in Iraq, he sent 40K engineers to Afghanistan to build infrastucture, we might have more luck winning hearts and minds. Apparently is far too much to ask that Afghanistan be democratic or that women be given any civil rights or that it not flood the world with cheap heroin. If we could accomplish the single task of not allowing Al Queda a safe-haven, we would at least be looking out for our own interests, if not the Afghanis’.

Torture: C-
Has (re)outlawed torture, but will not pursue an investigation to put the crimes of the previous administration into the public record, much less bring charges against anyone. At least now when the CIA tortures people, they are supposed feel bad about it.

Energy: B+
Strong support for the Cap/Trade Energy bill in the House. Conservative critics say it is too expensive and liberal critics say it is too weak. So, by the Goldilocks theory of political negotiation, it is probably just right. The question is, will it make it though the Senate? Hopefully it will work in tandem with the Stimulus Bill's promotion of green entrepreneurship. If we can export cutting edge energy technology to Europe, Asia and burgeoning economies around the world, and the Energy Bill puts some modicum of brakes on carbon emissions, we can save the world and our own bottom line.

Government Secrecy: F
Has already used the same twisted logic that Bush’s lawyers came up with to stonewall judicial orders. As with our presence in Iraq and the CIA’s actual torture policies, it is a foregone conclusion that the President is above the law. It doesn’t matter how obviously unconstitutional it is, how many Americans disagree with it or whether a Democrat, a Republican, or for that matter a Whig is in office, they will always lie, cheat and steal.

TARP/Bailout: F
I don't have a problem with Obama giving money to the States to spend on our country as our citizens see fit. It is all the money going to private businesses (GM, AIG, Goldman Sachs, Fannie Mae, etc...) that I find criminal. FOX News calls Obama a “Socialist”, but that implies our cash was buying us some control over these companies that are supposedly so necessary. Honestly, at this point, a little genuine populist tyranny would be refreshing. But I don’t see anyone making decisions about the use of private capital for public good; I just see old friends divvy up almost a trillion dollars between themselves. The Federal Reserve/Treasury/FDIC’s power-grab isn’t ambitious enough to be real Socialism or even Fascism, it’s more like cronyism hiding in plain sight: you scratch my back and I cut you a check from the public til. To put it another way, if giving away a couple hundred billion dollars gave Obama the political leverage to give the SEC some teeth, you could call the TARP the price of doing business, but it seems like there will never be the resources to investigate even obvious fraud, rating agencies and auditors will always operate with systematic (profitable) conflicts of interest and the guy asleep at the wheel will always have a 24 karat air-bag. Where is Naomi Klein with a little outrage at the manipulation of a national crisis for narrow personal gain?

Guantanamo: F
Will eventually close our Carribean gulag. Has already made it clear that a change of venue will not affect the underlying policy of holding foreigners in solitary confinement forever without any due process because our immoral, illegal, counter-productive policies have made it impossible to convict them in even the most biased court.. A the end of the day he seems to be saying: “I didn’t make this mess, so you can’t really hold it against me if I can’t fix it”. Possibly things will change on a “going forward” basis, but that would require the CIA to act thoughtfully in the interest of our national security.


North Korea: A
Unlike the “hawkish” previous administration that shot our wad occupying the one place in the Middle East we knew Bin Laden isn’t hiding, the one place that actually lets UN inspectors in, the one place where we already maintained a no-fly zone and a tight embargo, Obama is using our navy against a country that actually has WMDs and is dying to sell them to the highest bidder. If we start policing North Korean shipping, will they retaliate against South Korea or Japan? How committed should we be if the North Koreans try to escalate the issue? Conversely, will our best efforts at interdiction be enough to stop them from selling missles or nerve gas? And while we are playing bad cop with one hand, should we also send them food aid to relieve some of the pressure on their government and move them towards something like détente, or is that just encouraging dangerous actions? It is a complicated situation that has real consequences for our long-term security and I am not sure what the right answer is, but at least the policy bears some relationship to it’s stated aims.

Health Care: B+
This, along with energy policy, is his real test. He seems to be standing firm on his support of a publicly funded competition to HMOs, which is probably the straightest line to decent medical coverage for every citizen. Like the energy bill, we’ll have to see what happens in the Senate. If he can lead the Congress to some version of socialized medicine, that will be his permanent legacy and all else will most likely be forgiven. If he fails the history books will only have a sentence or two about his background and his eloquence, characteristics that are incidental to leadership. But if he succeeds he will be remembered as an FDR with a jump shot, or a JFK with actual accomplishments... BHO, a man for the ages. I am not holding my breath, but I am keeping my fingers crossed.

Toxic Avenger

Everyone is in agreement that something has to be done There also seems to be agreement that the root problem is a bunch of banks are going bust because they made bets on housing prices increasing and then double-downed on those bets and even 35-downed. Unfortunately for the rest of us, those banks were necessary to make loans that help businesses make things and help people buy those things.

But what to do exactly to encourage lending, rebuild confidence and help our country out of this current re(de)ce(pre)ssion? Bobby Jindal wants deregulation and a decrease in capital gains tax. He also salivates when he hears a bell. Ron Paul, if anyone asked him, would probably recommend buying gold and twiddling our thumbs. Among more proactive people there are two main views:

On the one hand you have the “Swedish “ (Swiss?) nationalization model: the Treasury takes over our most insolvent lending institutions and sells off their remaining valuable parts to other, more sound banks, who presumably would use those assets to capitalize loans to consumers and businesses, as it should be.

This plan has the drawback that for a time the government would be running previously private institutions. Most people agree that managing private banks is not something the government would be very good at. However, in the current situation, the Treasury Department probably couldn’t do a worse job than the private owners who drove these institutions into the ground.

Another drawback is that shareholders would lose a lot of value when the banks' assets are sold off in an auction that would resemble a fire sale. Some of these shareholders are the fabulously wealthy jerks who caused this mess, but many of them are your and Jon Stewart’s mother(s) who indirectly own stock through their pension.

As Arianna Huffington and Paul Krugman have pointed out, this loss is unfortunate and probably inevitable. If these banks are truly insolvent then nothing will make them solvent. That is a fact that no amount of clever financial shenanigans can defactify. However, Tim Geithner is willing to try.

The Treasury Secrety's plan is the other idea that is actually happening and as far as I can tell is really terrible. First the name: "The Toxic Assets Plan”. Is it a plan for toxic assets or a toxic plan for assets? Maybe a little bit of both.

Essentially, in the interest of avoiding nationalization, Geithner wants to help banks resell the assets that ruined them. Sort of like if your friend steps in dog shit so, to help him out, you lick his shoe. The Treasury will set up a government subsidized auction to encourage private investors to buy “toxic” (misunderstood?) assets from “ailing” (sneezy?) banks.

The nuts and bolts of how the government will encourage money managers to buy mortgage-backed securities from investment banks is described in a Time article:

an investor could put up $6, get matching investments from the Treasury for another $6, then obtain loan financing of $72 from the FDIC. This would allow the investor to purchase a security with an $84 auction price.

The loan from the FDIC would be collateralized by the security so, if the security turns out to be worthless, then the taxpayer is on the hook for the majority of the cost.

To put it in perspective, investors will be leveraged 6/1, which is pretty timid for a hedge fund, but this is solely for securities that are publicly acknowledged to possibly be nearly worthless. It is called “Toxic Assets Plan”; how much value does anyone think they will get? And if the securities turn out to be in fact worthless and the investor defaults on their FDIC loan, then the tax payer eats a total of 78 dollars to the investor’s 6. Not so risky after all, especially if they have already sold the security to a mutual fund in your 401K and charged a fee for the service.

As far as I can tell, the only real strength to Geithner’s plan is that Eric Cantor hates it. The minority whip is quoted in a Huff Post article saying:

As described, the plan seems to offer little incentive for private investors to participate unless the subsidy is made so rich that it comes at the expense of the taxpayer

It is probably the most coherent sentence he has ever uttered, and I can only agree. The banks wouldn’t be in such hot water if these securities were actually worth anything so paying people to buy them doesn’t make a lot of sense to me.

To recap: investment bankers ruined our economy by buying worthless securities with borrowed money. To fix the situation, the government is... encouraging people to buy the same securities with borrowed money. The irony is thick enough to cut with a chainsaw.

10/31 update: Nobel Prize Winner totally agrees with me