southernxyl

2009-11-07T23:40:00.006-05:00

It seemed to us that we had a very warm October, and I wondered if global warming was finally upon us. But it turns out that Florida appeared to be an exception.

Cooled down today, plus lots of wind (from Ida, somehow?) and we hung out a bit, ending up as usual at Lake Morton.

You can feed some of the birds by hand but I always draw back quickly because I'm afraid they'll bite me. Some of the birds are a bit jumpy too.

The pelicans are back.

Ibises like to hang out with them. They look like they must be related, but the pelicans look a lot calmer. The ibises are a bit frenetic. Maybe that goes with being smaller.

Sometimes when the pelicans are resting they turn their heads all the way around and nestle their beaks between their wings. It is the strangest looking thing.

2009-11-04T21:48:00.001-05:00

I get spam.

Am Juliet,a tall good looking young girl,so lovely
and caring with good understanding.fair in complexion,care with good
sharing,honesty.I saw your ad at www.jihadwatch.org which interested me much
and i decided to contact you.I really want to have a good friendship with you
even if you have married we can be friend ok ,i have a reason of
selecting you as my friend,pls if you wish to know more.Pls contact me
through this my id We need to talk and
know ourself more and equally share pictures to each other.hope to hear
from you.

Bye with a warmly
huggs.
Juliet

Who among us doesn't need/wouldn't like a warmly huggs? Still, I think I'll pass.

2009-10-16T20:52:00.001-04:00

Either a flu-like virus or a light case of flu this week. So here is my comment on one of the newsworthy events of the week:

2009-10-11T13:30:00.004-04:00

Personal maintenance weekend.

Friday I had a mammogram, which, as somebody (Linda Ellerbee?) pointed out sounds like you put your breast in an envelope and mail it off somewhere.

Yesterday morning I hit Curves, b/c I was only able to go twice during the week.

Today I got a haircut.

The woman who cuts my hair always kind of bugs me to let her color it or add highlights, and I always tell her no. I told her today that I'll be 49 years old next week, and I'm kind of pleased that I have no more gray than I do. She then whispered to me that she thinks my hair color is very nice, that she has to push the color, but that if her hair looked like mine she wouldn't color it either.
: )

2009-10-10T20:05:00.001-04:00

Vision.

Excerpt:

As I looked out a moment ago from the Reichstag, that embodiment of German unity, I noticed words crudely spray-painted upon the wall, perhaps by a young Berliner (quote):

"This wall will fall. Beliefs become reality."

Yes, across Europe, this wall will fall, for it cannot withstand faith; it cannot withstand truth. The wall cannot withstand freedom.

Thank you, President Reagan.

2009-10-08T20:27:00.006-04:00

A whole lot of stuff has happened since I talked to you last, dear diary.

We had massive layoffs at work yesterday, and pay cuts for those left standing. I got about a 25% pay cut. Not pretty but we'll be all right. Other people's pay cuts were much deeper and some, of course, were cut to zero. Among them were Kelly, and her husband, who worked with us too.

Adding insult to injury, Kelly is sick with flu this week. I made a pot of chicken soup for her last night. Kelly called today to tell me that that was the best soup in the universe, and to ask me to email her the recipe. Well, I don't have a recipe, I just threw some stuff in the Dutch oven. But I wrote one for Kelly, in the format I am accustomed to using. Here it is.

Production of Chicken Soup

1 Purpose
   The purpose of this work instruction is to describe the production of chicken soup.
2 Scope
   The procedure includes instructions for preparing the ingredients, cooking them, serving them, storing extra production, and cleanup. It is intended for family use, not for commercial soup production.
3 Safety
   3.1    General kitchen safety procedures regarding hot cookware and sharp knives are to be followed.
   3.2    Because raw chicken is used, care must be taken to clean the cutting board, cutlery, and any other objects that contact the meat.
4 Apparatus
   4.1    Kitchen stove.
   4.2    Dutch oven with lid, 4 or 5-quart capacity. A stock pot may be used.
   4.3    Cutting board.
   4.4    Knives suitable for cutting meat and for chopping vegetables.
5 Reagents
   5.1    Chicken.
      5.1.1    Three or four breasts. If boneless and skinless, cut into small pieces. If not boneless and skinless, remove the skin. Wash with tap water.
      5.1.2    Four or five thighs. Remove skins. Wash with tap water.
   5.2    One jar of hot salsa.
   5.3    Onion, about a 1-inch slice, chopped.
   5.4    Celery, two stalks, chopped.
   5.5    Bell pepper, one half, chopped. Yellow and red bell peppers should be considered for the addition of color.
   5.6    Rice, one handful.
   5.7    Frozen corn, one handful.
   5.8    Carrots, two, chopped.
NOTE: Vegetable amounts may be altered, or other vegetables added or substituted, if desired. Hard vegetables like potatoes should be processed with the carrots. Soft vegetables like tomatoes should be processed with the corn.
   5.9    Optional garnish: Avocado, peeled and cut into bits.
   5.10    Cornbread muffins.
6 Procedure
   6.1    Place the chicken in the Dutch oven with enough water to cover. Add contents of the jar of salsa and stir.
   6.2    Place the Dutch oven on the stove and adjust the burner to medium high.
   6.3    Add onion, celery, bell pepper, carrot. Stir occasionally as mixture comes to a boil.
   6.4    When mixture is boiling vigorously, cover and reduce heat to a simmer. Do not leave unattended.
NOTE: Heat must be adjusted so that simmer is maintained, but material does not boil over.
   6.5    After 45 minutes, remove meat and place on a large dish to cool slightly.
   6.6    Add rice and frozen corn to the Dutch oven. Stir.
   6.7    When meat is cool enough to work with, pull the meat from the bones, taking care to remove all bony material from meat. Cut or pull the meat into pieces of desired size.
   6.8    Return deboned meat to Dutch oven. Stir.
   6.9    Once mixture has returned to boil, remove from heat.
   6.10    Prepare an ice bath in the kitchen sink. Place Dutch oven in it for rapid cooling.
   6.11    Soup may be served immediately.
      6.11.1    Dip into individual bowls.
      6.11.2    Serve with cornbread muffin, and a garnish of avocado pieces if desired.
   6.12    Soup that is not served immediately must be refrigerated or frozen.
      6.12.1    The Dutch oven, once cool to the touch, may be placed in the refrigerator with the cover on. This material is good for up to a week and a half, individual servings to be warmed in the microwave as needed.
      6.12.2    Alternatively, individual servings may be placed in freezer bags and stored in the freezer for up to six months.
7 Cleanup
   7.1    Scraps left over from the chicken, containing skin, bones, and meat that was not separated from the bones or not used, should be taken out of the house immediately so that it does not begin to smell.
   7.2    Vegetable waste is not hazardous and may be disposed of or composted.
   7.3    Each family member should return his or her own bowl, spoon, and other dishes to the kitchen after use. The designated family member shall wash the dishes.

2009-09-20T11:54:00.003-04:00

I went to Kissimmee yesterday to visit F.

She had a cold last week. It's better now, but her supervisor is home with her kid, who has swine flu. So I brought my Dutch oven with me, and F and I went to the grocery store and bought some chicken, vegetables that she picked out, and a jar of hot salsa. We made a big pot of soup in her kitchen and I left the soup in her fridge, in single-serving tubs that she or her roommate can heat in the microwave.

She laughed when I told her what my plan was for the day - "did my distress signal reach the mothership?" Yes, it did, I told her.

De-boning the chicken after it had cooked turned out to be a little bit too gross for Miss F. I think I'm going to tell her she can try canned chicken in her next batch. It won't taste the same but the tradeoff might be worth it. I can't say that's my favorite part of the soup-making procedure, either. My favorite thing about making soup is that I can put into it whatever I feel like at that time. Every batch is different.

I've ordered a Dutch oven and a set of cooking knives for her, from Amazon (I heart Amazon!), and when her soup is eaten up I think we'll do a pot of beef stew. Probably make some cornbread to go with.

2009-09-19T22:10:00.003-04:00

I have to write approvingly of President Obama again.

I've been really irritated by all of the people - Maureen Dowd, Bob Herbert, Former President Carter for example - who have stated that the reason health care reform is being attacked is that the attackers are racists who don't want a black president to get what he wants. I was indifferent to President Obama's race during the campaign but I wouldn't have been if I'd realized that it was going to be made into a club to beat dissenters with.

But here's this article in the NY Times: Obama Rejects Race as Lead Cause of Criticism

WASHINGTON — President Obama said Friday that he did not believe his race was the cause of fierce criticism aimed at his administration in the contentious national debate over health care, but rather that the cause was a sense of suspicion and distrust many Americans have in their government.

Well, yeah.

“Now there are some who are, setting aside the issue of race, actually I think are more passionate about the idea of whether government can do anything right,” he told ABC News. “And I think that that’s probably the biggest driver of some of the vitriol.”

...

“Look, I said during the campaign there’s some people who still think through a prism of race when it comes to evaluating me and my candidacy. Absolutely,” Mr. Obama told NBC News. “Sometimes they vote for me for that reason; sometimes they vote against me for that reason.”

But he said that the matter was really “an argument that’s gone on for the history of this republic. And that is, what’s the right role of government?”

The president said the contentious health care debate, which came on the heels of extraordinary government involvement in bailing out banks and automobile companies, had led to a broader discussion about the role of government in society.

“I think that what’s driving passions right now is that health care has become a proxy for a broader set of issues about how much government should be involved in our economy,” Mr. Obama told CBS News. “Even though we’re having a passionate disagreement here, we can be civil to each other, and we can try to express ourselves acknowledging that we’re all patriots, we’re all Americans and not assume the absolute worst in people’s motives.”

I agree with all of this. As I said earlier, it's crucial that we have disagreements about the way things are done, because there's no in-depth conversation, no investigation, no oversight, if there is no skepticism or dissent.

2009-09-14T23:03:00.002-04:00

ABC's Terry Moran set the Twitter-sphere all aflutter when he wrote:

[I'm typing this]

Terry Moran: Pres. Obama just called Kanye West a "jackass" for his outburst at VMAs when Taylor Swift won. Now THAT'S Presidential.

We've reached out to Moran and will update this post when we learn more.

Now, an ABC spokesperson explains to POLITICO what happened:

"In the process of reporting on remarks by President Obama that were made during a CNBC interview, ABC News employees prematurely tweeted a portion of those remarks that turned out to be from an off-the-record portion of the interview. This was done before our editorial process had been completed. That was wrong. We apologize to the White House and CNBC and are taking steps to ensure that it will not happen again."

The White House had no immediate comment.

If true, I have new respect for President Obama.

Obama Calls Kanye 'Jackass'

2009-09-10T20:15:00.005-04:00

Quinctilius Varus, WHERE ARE MY EAGLES?

The 2000th anniversary of the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest is upon us.

(The backstory in this dramatization starts at about 7 minutes here.)

(And thanks to Jeff at Quid plura? for the heads-up, back in April or thereabouts.)

2009-09-09T17:39:00.002-04:00

Roger, who is with the Memphis/Shelby County Health Department, and I have been talking a bit about infant mortality in Shelby County.

IM correlates to poor education and to low socioeconomic status, and also to pregnancy in young girls. It does not necessarily imply lack of health insurance, although many people make that assumption.

Anyway, Roger wants to continue the conversation here b/c we were off-topic where we were.

2009-09-08T20:26:00.004-04:00

I read the text of Pres. Obama's speech to the schoolkids yesterday, and since I haven't read that he changed anything up, I suppose this is what he said.

In pursuit of political moderation of the type I strive for, and knowing my biases, when I read this I allowed the voice of President Bush to read it to me in my head, to see if anything stuck out as being really out-of-place. I meant for it to be W's voice but as I go back over it I believe it's George H. W. Bush I hear.

The part about the father abandoning the family was a little jarring, of course, and Obama's voice slipped in there but we got past that. For the rest, the only things I really noticed were a kind of lecturing tone I don't remember from either Bush, and the fact that the speech went on a little. People, especially kids, listen more if you talk less, I've found. Other than that, it seemed like a fine speech to me. If he makes a yearly tradition of this, I suppose it will not continue to draw the kind of negative attention it got this year.

...

Thinking about squirmy kids being expected to listen to a 15-minute speech made me think of this article: Don't Alienate Your Professor.

During class, do not: a) beat out a cadence on your desk while the teacher is lecturing; b) sigh audibly more than three or four times during a class period; c) check your watch more than twice during the hour.

Fewer families attend church every Sunday nowadays than in years past, and of those that do, children through their elementary school years get hustled off to children's church. So there isn't really a venue for them to sit by their mother and be trained to be still and not fidget when the adults are talking. Last spring at my MIL's funeral F sat between me and her six-year-old cousin Sarah. About midway of the service Sarah began to twist around in her seat. F reached over and put her hand on Sarah's leg and she straightened up and got still. (I told her later what a big girl she had been and that I was proud of her.) The thing is that Sarah's mother, my SIL, had explained to her how people act during such events, so she knew what was expected of her. I have to wonder how many college students who don't know not to beat out cadences or sigh loudly never had the opportunity, as little kids, to be made to sit still and behave.

2009-09-08T00:11:00.002-04:00

Public service announcement.

Here is how you post a link to a URL.

In this example, the site URL is http://link.com and you want it to show up as my article in your post.

Select the address of the site you want to link to, and type [ctrl]c.

Then type the following up to the first "

type [ctrl]v

and type the second " to the end.

2009-09-02T23:12:00.003-04:00

More thoughts about that political balance.

1 - The term "moderate" means different things to different people. For some, it means middle-of-the-road. For some, it means only moderate caring about the issues. For some, it means that they can't call themselves Republican or Democrat, or conservative or liberal, because they choose some opinions out of column A and some out of column B. That's not to say that they don't feel and argue strongly about those opinions. So IMO "moderate" is just about useless as a description unless there is some explanation as to how it is being used.

2 - There's not much point to having balance just to say you have it. I am pro-life, and adamantly so. I've described the thought processes that led me to this conclusion here and here. This is not a conclusion that I reached b/c I thought I was supposed to, or to toe somebody else's political line, but was the result of my careful thought about the subject. So I'm not moderate about it and I don't feel the need to balance it.

Other issues I am on the fence about, b/c I can't reach a decision I'm comfortable with. I'm OK to leave them on there; I'd rather do that than take a stand if I can't defend it. Still others I go back and forth about. Other people demonstrate strong opinions about them, and that's fine for them. Eventually I may reach some hard-and-fast conclusions on my own.

And I call myself a conservative, and vote Republican (usually, not always) because after I thought about the issues and reached conclusions as to what I thought, it seemed to me that they lined up more with these schools of thought than the alternatives. It doesn't mean that prominent conservatives and Republicans don't say things sometimes that irritate the stew out of me, or that I don't disagree pretty profoundly with some things that come out of my side of the aisle. It's been amusing to see the fancy footwork needed to support Sarah Palin's political ambitions, given that she has small children. I've never had a problem with working moms - I was one, myself - but that's been a sore issue for many on my side and I'm glad to see some people forced to think different thoughts there.

2009-09-01T20:47:00.003-04:00

I went to Curves after work today. (And let me interject that I appreciate the stress-relieving property of exercise very much right now.) There are two circuits of exercise machines. When I started there, the trainer showed me how to do the stuff on the circuit on the left, so that is the one that I always go to. Today there were four women on that one, and only one on the other, so I went to the circuit on the right. The trainer pointed out to me that I was on the different one, and I told her, deadpan, that I didn't want the building to tilt. That tickled her, and she repeated it to the other women. One of them asked me if I am a Libra.

Well, yes, I am. Ha ha. She is too. We Libras like balance, she said.

I like a balance in political thought, too, and it has to be a dynamic balance: it moves back and forth from the tension of people pulling it one way and the other. I'm not bothered too much by differences of opinion. I am bothered by people who pick up opinions from other folks without thinking them through, or who think "because I agree with the Republican/Democrat position on this issue, I have to agree with the Republican/Democrat position on this other unrelated issue". Or who have to criticize politicians of the party they don't favor, on principle. (Case in point - Michelle Obama's shorts. What the heck? Now that she's First Lady, she's supposed to morph into Dolley Madison? Ain't going to happen, and there's no reason why she should. If Dolley were a First Lady of today, she might wear shorts on vacation too.)

So partisanship isn't a dirty word to me, unless people put party ahead of country. I don't like to hear national politicians talk about defeating the other party, or about Americans who disagree with them being bad people. But people who think through issues and end up with different conclusions - that is absolutely necessary for the country to survive. America has changed a lot over the 200-plus years since its birth. It has had to, because the world has changed. Adapt or die. Having tension and even a certain amount of fighting and power-struggling in the various branches of government is kind of like recombinant DNA, in that it's a mechanism for change, and the government needs to change in response to the changing world.

I'm not comfortable with looking only at news sources and conversations that are biased the same way I am. Always afraid I'm going to miss some crucial argument and either look like an idiot or at least not draw the conclusion I would if I had all the facts.

Sometimes there's quite a difference between the lessons other people draw from current events. When Sodini killed those women at the gym, one opinion I saw was that their being at the gym was symbolic of people spending money frivolously to do things in such a way that they don't interact with other people, as they would if they got their exercise by walking or biking; and that this tendency of people in general to insulate themselves led to Sodini's loneliness, so that in a way those women brought about their fate. Even though they didn't even know him, nor he them. My thought here is that people need to be able to go to the dang gym without thinking they are making a sweeping social statement or taking on responsibility for the loneliness, or lack thereof, of total strangers. Sodini had some problems, all right, but they would not have been solved by these women not going to the gym.

On a different site, which I visit to get the left-wing viewpoint, I saw the argument that society caused Sodini's murderous spree, because it is a logical outgrowth of the misogyny that we see all around us every day. No explanation of why all the misogyny caused Sodini alone to do this thing, if we're all immersed in it. In this conversation, it was desired that the term "mental illness" not be applied to Sodini, because it smears people who have various degrees of mental illnesses of one type or another. If you can't place the blame on Sodini, I guess you have to blame society. My thought there is that "mental illness" must be too broad a term if you can't apply it to Sodini without smearing other people, and we need to find some way to express the deviation of a person who is fixed on the idea of killing other folks, lest that come to be thought of as normal. R suggests "homicidal maniac" and that works for me.

But I told R about these two views of society causing that incident, and he sighed, and then he said that as much as it pains him to agree with the left about anything, he thinks those folks are right about the misogyny. I don't watch TV anymore and haven't for a few years, but he does, and he says that what you see on the shows and on the ads is that women are things to be acted on. If you see this and you don't have the thinking skills or whatever it takes to compartmentalize this from your actual attitude and actions, then killing a bunch of women to express your dissatisfaction with life in general is the logical thing to do.

Sometimes I think that all of the bickering that we do about the hot topics of the day actually distract us from the real problems that need to be addressed. How the crap on TV affects society is one big issue, IMO. I've walked past the TV when one of the CSI shows is on, and am APPALLED by the images of dead and mangled people, and the coolness of the protagonists when they are confronted by this. If you set about desensitizing human beings to the torture and agony and death of other humans, I can't think of a better way to go about it than those shows. We have some godawful crime in this country and we just live with it. Murder rates that rival Baghdad at the height of the Iraq struggle. We aren't going to do anything about it because we can't focus enough to figure out what the problem might be and we lack the will to do anything about it. Teen pregnancy and the sexualization of little girls - that's another one that's killing us and we won't do anything about. I guess culture changes are the hardest changes of all to bring about, but cultures do change - no one would have dreamed of having the garbage we now have on TV and the radio a few years ago, and little girls used to be protected from sexual messages; somebody or something evidently is changing the culture, and not always for the better. But try to talk about these things, and you're pushed into a box with a label - "puritan" or "feminist" or whatever - and there's no engagement. It's discouraging.

2009-08-27T22:11:00.002-04:00

Doesn't it irk you, when you are reading a long comment thread somewhere full of interesting back-and-forth stuff and a certain amount of repetition, to have people comment "I haven't read all the comments but ..." and then proceed to make a point that's been made about ten times previous?

Like, if you can't be bothered to read the thread, why do other people who evidently can need your special wisdom?

2009-08-23T21:17:00.003-04:00

What do you suppose happens when you have a separatory funnel with a slow leak, and material that polymerizes when it contacts air?

This happened over Friday night.

Next day:

BTW, my lab doesn't look like this. We set these up elsewhere, in an un-airconditioned storage area, so the samples would be exposed to the same temperatures as the material out in the plant. No, we do not want this polymerization in our process. Still, it looks kind of cool.

2009-08-19T20:11:00.003-04:00

I had a moment today.

My tech moved a beaker on the hot plate. I asked why he did that. He did it because he didn't like hearing it sizzle (there was some water trapped beneath it).

I said that that reminded me of "The Cremation of Sam McGee". (Here's a fun reading.)

He didn't know what I was talking about. He has not read poetry.

Not "Lochinvar". Not "The Highwayman". Not "Little Orphant Annie". (I've seen the movie, he said. Not the same story, I said.) Not "Casey at the Bat". Nope, has not read poetry.

Sometimes I feel like an anachronism.

If I am, F is a worse one because she's the next generation. I remember that one day she called me from school, having a fit because in her Brit Lit class they had read Yeats' "The Stolen Child"* and her classmates were saying how cool it was that the fairies were taking the child to make his life better.

F broke her policy of keeping her mouth shut in that class to say, "It is not a good thing to be abducted by fairies!" Her classmates did not agree.

She pointed out that the fairies are giving trout "unquiet dreams" - did that sound like a good thing?

Her classmates pointed out that the child is "solemn-eyed".

"He's bewitched!" she said.

I asked F if they had not read "La Belle Dame Sans Merci". "We just read that in class!" she said. "Thomas Rymer?" *Sigh*.

So we're losing the important parts of our culture that warn us of danger and keep us safe. I fear for the republic.

*Here's the text and here it is beautifully set to music.

2009-08-13T22:05:00.001-04:00

Apparently a 14-foot python was not pulled from a storm drain.

Trapper Admits Python Hoax

Justin Matthews’ account of capturing a 14-foot Burmese python gave him 15 minutes of fame last month in the opening days of a statewide anti-python campaign.

Thursday he got his 15 minutes of infamy at a press conference convened by the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission after wildlife officials concluded the whole thing was staged.

...

Matthews told Bay News 9 that he had bought the snake, which he called Sweetie, at a Tampa reptile store and then staged the capture, saying the snake was found in a culvert in Bradenton.

He said the staging was part of a plan to educate the public about the python problem.

Matthews said, when the original owner who sold the snake to the reptile store saw his snake on the news, he contacted the Wildlife Commission.

“I do want to apologize to anybody that thinks this was wrong, what I did,” Matthews told Bay News 9. “To me, I’ll never do it again but as is turns out, like I say, I’m getting more calls, and I did raise awareness by doing this.”

Sigh.

2009-08-13T21:05:00.001-04:00

Willie Herenton picks up petition to run for Memphis mayor -- again

Less than two weeks after retiring as Memphis mayor, Herenton walked into the offices of the Shelby County Election Commission this morning and picked up a petition to run for the office again, election commission officials have just confirmed.

...

A special election is set for Oct. 15 for the mayoral vacancy created by Herenton's retirement July 30.

“I think it’s shocking for everyone to know that we’re about to spend a million dollars on a special election to replace a man who intends to run in that special election,” said Bill Giannini, chairman of the Shelby County Election Commission.

Words fail me.

2009-08-12T21:50:00.003-04:00

After the harrowing events of yesterday evening, during which I briefly considered calling 911 but ultimately prevailed without help, I am left with a question it is probably futile to ask:

Why would a cat want to try to eat a threaded needle?

2009-08-09T23:53:00.005-04:00

We had a perfectly wonderful evening today. (About to be yesterday.) We decided to go to Clearwater for dinner and then to the beach.

Dinner was had at the Mandalay Grill. Good food, good service.

And then to the beach. I had not planned to swim, so was wearing shorts and a t-shirt. The water, when I stepped into it, was not just not cold or not cool, but actively warm. I was beguiled further into it until finally I had to give R my watch and whatever else, and just go on in. If any of you were at Clearwater Beach on Sunday and saw a crazy middle-aged woman go swimming fully clothed, that was me.

Loved the warm, warm water, the sand under my feet, the swells lifting me and setting me back down - splashing my face if I wasn't paying attention. And watching the sunset. The water was lavender against the peach sky - you could see that from the beach - but actually in the water you could see the orange from the sun reflecting on the backs of the waves. Absolutely stunning.

That's me, coming in. I remember the feeling from childhood, of feeling very heavy as I came out of the water.

R is not so impulsive as I am. I offered to hold our stuff if he wanted to go in, but he declined. I asked him if I embarrassed him - he said no. I guess he's used to me.

We went onto the pier afterwards, and looked at the vendors' stuff, listened to the band (which wasn't bad at all) and got a snack for the drive home.

Now I have to go to bed. Work tomorrow. Work is the curse of the drinking class, I told R today. It's the curse of the wannabe beach bum class too, I reckon.

2009-08-05T21:28:00.002-04:00

Was going through the spam folder on my hotmail account, to make sure I wasn't missing anything.

Hotmail does a pretty good job these days, segregating this stuff.

Besides the usual lotteries I have won, and the rich childless widow who has cancer but is most disturbed by her stroke sickness, people who have died without wills whose attorneys have selected me to inherit from ("Being a well traveled man, he met sometime in the past or implicating him were nominated by one of his numerous friends abroad who wished you are not too sure again."), and phishing attempts from several different credit cards I don't have, I saw a new one. Subject line: "To see her pretty plaything once more". Body: "When it had got to the top.". And then a link.

No, wild horses could not make me click on that link.

2009-08-02T11:40:00.003-04:00

College Grad Can't Find Job, Wants $$$ Back

She went to college to boost her chances of finding a great job once she got out of school, but now that that hasn't happened, Trina Thompson wants her money back.

Thompson, a graduate of Monroe College, is suing her school for the $70,000 she spent on tuition because she hasn't found solid employment since receiving her bachelor's degree in April, according to a published report.

I may be the only person in the US who feels this way - but I kind of support her in this.

First of all, the student loan situation is a nightmare for a whole lot of people. Kids - and I say "kids" because many of them are 18 or younger - and their parents are promised "financial aid" but then the "aid" turns out to be loans that you have to pay back. And the schools and loan brokers promise them unicorns and rainbows once they get that degree. Well, if you're majoring in something like pharmacy, and you finish, you'll have your pick of high-paying jobs lined up. (Unless health care reform screws that up, and it could happen.) Otherwise, you're no different than any other person out there with a degree looking for a job, except that now you have this tremendous debt burden. Your parents, if they borrow money, are even worse off, because nothing is expected to change for them so that they have more money - and if they didn't have it for your tuition, they aren't going to have it later.

But people get snookered into these loans, probably because everyone they know is doing the same thing. Does that sound like the housing bubble, with an incredible number of people taking on debt they can't support to buy an overpriced product?

The girl in the story studied information systems, so it's not like she majored in women's studies or some other what-were-you-thinking subject.

The question is frequently raised, why does tuition cost so much. It goes up and up and up every year, well ahead of COL and things like that. And then one reads about extra programs that big schools offer, that cost a lot of money, because supposedly the kids and parents demand them.

What is the mechanism for a high school student or his or her parents demanding programs in universities that they will then have to offer their firstborn to pay for?

No, it's that if money can be got, a way will be found to spend it. Parents and working students are willing to cough up X to pay for college. If that's all there is, a college education will cost X. If the government steps in and offers Y, then magically the college education will cost X + Y. If it's expected, and accepted, that loans to Z amount can and will be gotten, then the education will cost X + Y + Z. Then you get the whole student-loan thing, which became parent loans too, and tuition costs skyrocket.

Unless you go to a modest state school, without the prestige of the Ivy League name, and where the classes are taught by professors and not by TAs who are concentrating on getting their own degrees while the professors are doing research and so on. F went to such a school, on an academic scholarship that covered everything except a very modest bit which we were able to kick in with no trouble. She doesn't have an Ivy League degree, but she does have a degree and a job, and is debt-free except for her car loan.

I think one of these days people are going to wake up, like they've had to wake up about the housing market. Lawsuits like the one Trina Thompson is bringing hopefully will speed this up. It would be good if people stop and think, think critically, before they blunder into that student loan trap. Much better for the tuition bubble to be corrected that way, than for there to be another bank crisis and another government bailout - although from what I read it may be too late.

2009-08-01T23:19:00.003-04:00

Memphis has undergone yet another change. This one almost has to be for the better.

Myron Lowery is sworn in as 66th mayor of Memphis

Thus ending the long reign of King Willie.

This is a plus:

Before his first official day in the mayor's office began at 12:01 a.m. Friday, Myron Lowery had already surveyed damage from Thursday's severe storms.

This is a minus:

Lowery has been using a city-issued vehicle and security staff provided by the Memphis Police Department. The mayor pro tem said he was pleasantly surprised when he encountered a traffic jam Friday afternoon, and his bodyguard flipped the police lights on and cleared traffic.

"He said, 'We do this all the time and we're going to get you there,'" said Lowery with a laugh.