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Items by Randy

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Bad Haiku Day

Posted: July 14th, 2010, 12:56am EDT by Randy

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the vacation not taken:

magical kingdom
tribe wandering desert
unresolved issues

Zen Warrior:

dharma dilletante
mind, body awakening
taekwondo, really?
How did Obama keep that water in his mouth?

Posted: February 5th, 2010, 2:09am EST by Randy

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President Obama must have never made a prank phone call back in the sixth grade.
The Daily Show With Jon Stewart Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
The Dick Swett Incident
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show
Full Episodes Political Humor Health Care Crisis
Could it be?

Posted: January 31st, 2010, 11:06pm EST by Randy

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I looked at my blog's site meter for the first time in ages this morning and saw that I had been visited by someone from a mythological locale:

Location Continent : North America
Country : United States (Facts)
State : Alaska
City : Wasilla
Lat/Long : 61.5235, -149.5748 (Map)
Distance : 3,373 miles

Could it really be her?
Christmas 2009: Wow, it really worked this time!

Posted: December 30th, 2009, 11:51pm EST by Randy

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After numerous disasters (Christmas 2007, for example, was the worst day of my entire life), irritations, and disruptions, we finally had a Christmas go right. It went well enough that I no longer officially hate Christmas.

We drove up to Alexandria on the 23rd, set up our tiny hotel tree, and wrapped presents. We took out the boys one at a time on XMAS Eve, Adam first. They opened their presents, then went about their usual Alex routines with us. Next year, we'll take Toby out first. He was very upset when we got to Home Deopt and it was already closed. He took a HD book back to school with him a couple of weeks ago and had me draw a Home Depot, so I suspect he had built up a HD visit in his mind for a while. It crushed him when we couldn't do it. Everything should still be open in the morning next year. We repeated the routines on Christmas Day, though we could only take them to the hotel and not to any of their other places, all of which were closed. After we returned Toby to St. Mary's on XMAS Eve, DW and I bought pizzas for the overnight staff at St. Mary's, delievered the pizzas to the school, then drove to Natchitoches, Louisiana, for that town's spectacular lights display. They've been at it for 83 years, and it's quite a sight--and it's well worth a holiday visit to Louisiana. I'm just saying.

The Boy Tree at our house. I gathered up all of the plush toys we've taken from the claw machines at WalMart and used them as ornaments. The crowning touch is having Bat-Man serve as the star, a suggestion DW made.

The Girl Tree at our house. It's pretty and elegant, and DW added more color to it this year.

DW brought home a little WalMart one day, and shortly thereafter I became attracted to the WalMart Cowboy Christmas village and its saloon, outhouse, and windmill. I'd never put up a village before.

DW and I visited Celebration in the Oaks in New Orleans City Park this year. Major fail. The lights looked like they were purchased at WalMart or Target, and half of them didn't work anyway. Celebration in the Oaks used to be a big deal, with fabulous light displays and other seasonal junk. Now it's like a dinky county fair. So sad. Thankfully, we saw Avatar just before we went there, so the evening was a net gain.

My best seasonal photo of Toby has him choosing the perfect cereal on Christmas Eve. He bought Cookie Crisp, which I had to eat after he left it at the hotel.

Adam opened his own presents this year, for the first time ever. He usually could care less about them, but he kept a few for himself this time around.

Adam and I saw this unattended fire engine outside one of the local WalMarts during his post-holiday home visit. He had some fun with it. No, I didn't open the door and turn on the sirens and lights, but that doesn't mean I didn't want to.
Hey, America, welcome to the dark side!

Posted: September 18th, 2009, 1:28am EDT by Randy

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The Daily Show With Jon Stewart Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Back in Black - Angry Outbursts
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show
Full Episodes Political Humor Healthcare Protests
Fools and Their Money

Posted: September 15th, 2009, 7:54am EDT by Randy

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Fool's Gold: How Unrestrained Greed Corrupted a Dream, Shattered Global Markets and Unleashed a Catastrophe: How an Ingenious Tribe of Bankers Rewrote ... Made a Fortune and Survived a Catastrophe by Gillian Tett

My rating: 5 of 5 stars
I've done a fair amount of reading about the Panic of 2008, and Gillian Tett's "Fools Gold" explains the exotic investment instruments at the heart of the panic better than any other work I've read. A group of derivatives traders at J.P. Morgan created commoditized credit default swaps in the early 1990s as a way to move risk off the company's books, freeing up capital for lending and investment that otherwise would need to be held in reserve. Morgan made payments to AIG, which assumed the risk that Morgan's assets would go into default. Derivatives traders at other firms began assembling securities backed by subprime mortgages, trying to put together instruments that would be just risky enough to obtain returns but safe enough to obtain AAA ratings. They then paid AIG to assume the risk of the mortgages underlying those securities going bad. However, many institutions kept what they thought were the least risky of these mortgages on their own books, as they could not obtain much in the way of returns on the securities that they would back. The whole thing was unregulated by government, and the ratings agencies were easily bamboozled into turning poo into gold (as it turned out). As the cruddy mortgages went bad, AIG began to take on water. When the less risky mortgages went bad, the financial institutions themselves sank.

Interestingly, J.P. Morgan did not get into the business of mortgage backed securities. Morgan's mathematicians could not put together a risk model with the kind of integrity to which they were accustomed. First, they had no data on what could happen if real estate values ever declined. Second, they had no long-term data on default rates for the kinds of subprime mortgages that proliferated in the early and mid 2000s. Moreover, Morgan/Chase chairman Jamie Dimon pushed the concept of a "fortress balance sheet" containing rock-solid assets on which the bank could rely if things went to hell. Dimon pushed Morgan's derivatives traders to investigate getting into the business of mortgage backed securities a couple of times, but, consistent with the notion of a "fortress balance sheet," he accepted the traders' reasons for staying away from that business.

The book contains a brief account of the events leading to the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy that turned a situation into a panic, and concludes with Tett's cultural analysis of U.S. and U.K. investment houses.

View all my reviews >>
How did Kazakhstan get me to Logan, Utah?

Posted: September 7th, 2009, 1:04am EDT by Randy

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Your humble correspondent spent a few days last week at a knda, sorta family reunion (my favorite kind of reunion) in Logan, Utah, and the better part of one day in Rexburg, Idaho. This was an entirely people-centric trip, meaning that I did not go hiking in the Bear River Range or any other local adventures in which one cannot participate 'round these parts. Also, one of DW's old friends left open the possibility of getting together for dinner. With such a short turnaround (Friday-Tuesday), I thought it best not to make any meeting arrangements with my own Utah friends. DW's friend crapped out on us, but that may have been for the best, as it gave us a free day.

Present at said reunion were gentle readers Bill and Karen, along with Superbaby Sammy, guests of honor gentle reader KA and her family, DW's other siblings, and DW's parents. KA's DH recently took a position at the Agency for International Development, and he will be posted in Kazakhstan. As we know from one recent motion picture, Kazakhstan is friendly to Americans:

KA's DH is an agricultural economist by profession, so I am looking forward to photos of the Kazakhstan branch of the family, decked out in native costumes, standing amidst amber waves of grain. Anyhow, their imminent move to Kazakstan for a couple of years led us to have a gathering.

The most fun person to observe at this mini-reunion was gentle reader Bill, who came to town and bought two cars in one day. And he and gentle reader Karen signed on a house in Idaho that morning. It was fun to follow Bill's odyssey as he went to the dealership and back a few times until he and Karen obtained the right two cars. Talk about taking a plunge.

On Monday, DW and I drove up to Rexburg, Idaho, where one of DW's sisters had a baby as the rest of us were reunioning in Utah. Rexburg's welcoming sign is just a bit aggressive as to every other town in the United States--"America's Family Community." I'm sure most of the people there are very nice, but I kind of formed the impression that the town itself looks as if it's 1955 and built to stay that way. DW attended college there for one year, and she confirmed that it looked exactly the same as it did 20+ years ago. It might be interesting to set a cultural anthropologist loose there. But not in my SIL's neighborhood, which is jarringly new when compared to the town we drove through to get there. We had a great visit up there and hated to leave.

Anyhow, that's my Utah trip in a nutshell.
iGoogle Experiment

Posted: August 17th, 2009, 2:59am EDT by Randy

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I discovered iGoogle yesterday, G's customizable home page. There is a gadget for blogger, so I placed one on my page. Also, I may move from hotmail to gmail, but I'm not sure about that one yet. The one advantage to gmail is that it will push e-mails instantaneously to my iPhone, instead of having to have them pulled via a third-party app. Also, I had to replace my Apple Mobile Me calendar with a Google calendar recently in order to sync my laptop and iPhone reliably (Mobile Me for Windows is ridiculously bad). Interestingly, Google uses Microsoft's Exchange servers for sync, while Microsoft itself will not use its own Exchange servers so its Hotmail and Windows Live subscribers can sync to their iPhones. Gotta love companies that don't play nice together.
Mad World

Posted: August 13th, 2009, 6:23am EDT by Randy

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Season Three of Mad Men commences on Sunday night. We just finished Season Two on DVD. IMHO, the second season put this show on the level of the best television shows in history, right up there with The Sopraons, Seinfeld, and The Real Housewives of New Jersey.
Can I Run for President Now?

Posted: July 24th, 2009, 1:12am EDT by Randy

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In the interest of full disclosure to my fellow Americans, I have reviewed my copy of my original birth certificate, exactly as it was presented to me, black-outs and all. My middle name at birth is blacked out, so it could be Muhammad or Hussein. Moreover, the certificate doesn't indicate my race or religion, so it could be that I was born a Black Muslim. However, my pasty skin and blue eyes, and the apparent absence of mosques from Somervell County, Texas, in 1962 would seem to call into question these possibilities. But, hey, someone will need to lean on the Denton, Texas, 16th District Court to gain definitive answers to any questions about my middle name, race, or religion. I've given you all that I can. Now, can I run for President when Obama becomes ineligible for reelection in 2016?
Bad Show, Great Review

Posted: July 8th, 2009, 1:21am EDT by Randy

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I sat through an episode of Bravo's NYC Prep reality show last week and was rewarded by the review on Gawker.com, to wit:

There was a moment on NYC Prep last night that was just so brutal, so true-to-life, that I feel I just have to get it out of my system and talk about it right now. Camille and her teeth.

Hopefully you remember the moment to which I'm referring. Glass-eyed Camille is sitting at the fancy club birthday party and chatting up the rumply Russ troll that is Sebastian. See, she was trying to get information out of him so she could run and tell poor pointy-faced Kelli, but she's also a teenage girl and he's a teenage boy that everyone's in lurve with so she was also trying to flirt with him, just a little bit, just a little sad, aching bit. So she asked him some dumb question and gave him a big smile and a little coy head tilt and he just said to her: "You have something in your teeth." And there in the still glass of her eyes, something exploded or crumbled. She laughed and said "Wait, are you being serious?" and he nodded and she covered her mouth and ohhhh holy Anything in heaven, it was just so... We've been there. We've all been there as someone is just so flippant and casual about mortifying you. That she'd been leaning in close, trying to act cool (See, I can talk to boys...) and then there it went, up in smoke like flash paper. Oh man. It just hurt my soul and tickled my funny bone and then poor Camille just sat there, deflated and quiet, while the rest of the party raged on. Agh. A primal scream to you, poor Camille.

. . . .

Over in richtown, little PC was feeling blue. PC was feeling lost and strange. Something was changing in him, something he couldn't quite explain. He went to see an old girlfriend of his, a wise girl of 19 who said that he just needed a change of scenery. Needed to get out of that cliched Upper East crowd, needed to shake things up, to open himself up like windows in a shuttered summer house. Let the clean air in. The 19-year-old looked as though she had something else perched delicately on the tip of her tongue, a small sparrow of knowledge, and she almost let it flutter out but PC just looked so sad and so worried just then, on that little black couch, and she decided now wasn't the time. But PC still didn't feel better so he went to see a therapist. You know, the kind of therapist who holds her sessions in the I Dream of Jeannie bottle house and lets the session be taped. PC said that he was very hard on himself, that he didn't let himself show feelings, and the therapist too felt that little sparrow alight on her tongue but she swallowed, gulped it down like so many other people in poor PC's life, and he just stared off at nothing in particular and felt the gears of his feelings grind on in their lonely way.

There are times when bad TV is the best TV.
Puddle of Evil

Posted: July 8th, 2009, 1:00am EDT by Randy

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DW and I watched the first two seasons of Damages in marathon sessions stretching over one week. Glenn Close stars as Patty Hewes, New York's most celebrated plaintiffs' lawyer. Hewes is openly ruthless, but few know just how ruthless she really is. The show opens with a seemingly naive new lawyer, Ellen Parsons (Rose Byrne), taking a job with Patty, in order to help common men and women fight for justice against big, evil corporations. In S1, those evil corporations are personified in the character of Arthur Frobisher (Ted Danson). Frobisher has a jolly exterior, but he is utterly ruthless and amoral on the interior, just like Patty. Frobisher's lawyer (played by Zejlko Ivanek) is Patty's nominal adversary, but Frobisher is the real adversary of S1. Patty sues Frobisher on behalf of his former employees after his company collapses in an accounting scandal, a la Enron. As the suit progresses, the main characters drag themselves down deeper and deeper in a puddle of evil. Ellen is compromised with surprising ease, but she rationalizes her actions as a necessary evil in Patty's crusade for the common folks. Patty and Frobisher, meanwhile, will stop at absolutely nothing to come out ahead. Murder and official corruption are not above these two eeeeevil people. Everybody, it seems, has a hidden agenda, and most of the characters are thoroughly rotten.

Damages plays like a kind of 24 for s-m-r-t people, in that there are unexpected plot twists galore. Also, there are three or four storylines moving along simultaneously--some present, some past, some future. The storylines merge nicely towards the end of each season. The production values of this show are first-rate; the tinting and texture of the past and future scenes distinguish them from the present ones, though the producers added temporal subtitles in S2 (e.g., "6 months later"). Some scenes were filmed with handheld cameras, giving them a jumpy, neurotic quality matching the characters' mental state. The writing is excellent, but the quality of the acting really holds the show together, IMHO. Glenn Close and Ted Danson are over-the-top mean and evil, though both appear to be reasonable professionals to those who don't know them. Close and Ivanek took home Emmys for Season 1, and Rose Byrne, Ted Danson, William Hurt, Marcia Gay Harden, and Timothy Olyphant all managed to hold their own.
Puddle of Crazy

Posted: July 8th, 2009, 11:58pm EDT by Randy

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One must wonder how Sarah Palin's mind actually works.

OP-ED COLUMNIST
Now, Sarah’s Folly
By MAUREEN DOWD
Published: July 4, 2009
WASHINGTON

Sarah Palin showed on Friday that in one respect at least, she is qualified to be president.

Caribou Barbie is one nutty puppy.

Usually we don’t find that exquisite battiness in our leaders until they’ve been battered by sordid scandals like Watergate (Nixon), gnawing problems like Vietnam (L.B.J.), or scary threats like biological terrorism (Cheney).

. . . .

As Alaskans settled in to enjoy holiday salmon bakes and the post-solstice thaw, their governor had a solipsistic meltdown so strange it made Sparky Sanford look like a model of stability.

. . . .

Even some conservative analysts admitted that the governor’s move seemed ga-ga before venturing the spin that Palin might be “crazy like a fox,” as Sarah’s original cheerleader, Bill Kristol, put it.

. . . .

Why not? Palin/Sanford in 2012, with the slogan: “Save time — we’re already in Crazy Town.”
I like the phone

Posted: June 30th, 2009, 3:38am EDT by Randy

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I didn't realize there was a person on the other end until I watched the video.
The New Louisiana Hayride

Posted: June 19th, 2009, 6:41am EDT by Randy

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Mary doesn't like Bobby. This promises to be fun:
Barbarians? On Wall Street?

Posted: April 27th, 2009, 2:06am EDT by Randy

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Barbarians at the Gate: The Fall of RJR Nabisco by Bryan Burrough

My review
rating: 5 of 5 stars
I've been on a tear reading about smart people who do stupid things with other peoples' money, so I downloaded this classic to the Kindle and read it very quickly. RJR/Nabisco's President Ross Johnson was obsessed with his company's undervalued stock and with living the high life, and he hit on the idea of arranging a leveraged buyout. He evidently figured that a lowball bid would let him continue running the company as he saw fit. After he announced the idea to RJR's board, all hell broke loose. Johnson's team ended up losing out to Kohlberg, Kravis, and Roberts--in part because the company's board wanted to be rid of Johnson--and Johnson pretty much had run out of enthusiasm for the deal anyway (paying $112/share would mean a lot more cutting back than $75/share would). This book reads like a novel, with egos, ulterior motives, deceipt, grudges, broken friendships, and greed galore. The final sentence of the new edition of the book sums it up nicely: "you couldn't make this stuff up."

View all my reviews.
And I thought bridge was an old ladies' game

Posted: April 22nd, 2009, 1:41am EDT by Randy

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House of Cards: A Tale of Hubris and Wretched Excess on Wall Street by William D. Cohan

My review
rating: 5 of 5 stars
I began reading financial journalism on a semi-regular basis during the Enron collapse, and began watching CNBC after the panic last fall. I have absolutely no background in business or finance, but the ups-and-downs of the markets fascinate me. Given my lack of any background, I know whether a particular book or article is well-written based on whether I can actually understand it.

William D. Cohan's "House of Cards: A Tale of Wretched Excess on Wall Street" ranks with Bethany McLean's "The Smartest Guys in the Room" as an accessible work of business writing that is so well put-together one doesn't want to put it down. Cohan's book is the tale of the late Bear Stearns & Co., which went from being the fifth largest brokerage house in the U.S. to being flat broke in ten days during March 2008.

The book takes its title from a peculiar aspect of Bear's corporate culture--its long-time CEO Jimmy Cayne was a championship level player of the card game bridge, and Bear entered teams in high-level bridge tournaments. Indeed, Cayne was off at bridge tournaments during key crises in the collapse of his firm and couldn't be bothered to return to New York.

Cohan's book opens with a riveting blow-by-blow account of the ten-day collapse of Bear and its ultimate forced absorbsion by JPMorgan Chase at the behest of Treas. Sec'y Henry Paulson, Fed. Chmn. Ben Bernanke, and N.Y. Fed. Pres. Timothy Geithner. Cohan then provides a history of Bear and its overbearing, colorful leaders, most importantly Cayne and his predecessor Ace Greenberg. Bear was unlike its rival firms in its contempt for family pedigrees, MBAs, and strategic planning. It was the street urchin with a huge chip on its shoulder, and the firm's strategy was simply to make lots of money. Bear's corporate culture was very much like a mens' locker room, and the firm had clients that other Wall Street firms viewed as unsavory. Bear's employees were loyal to a fault, and its leadership team rarely changed, with the dictatorial Greenberg and/or Cayne running the show. Greenberg and Cayne lacked formal educations in finance themselfves and they tended to hire based on instinct rather than credentials. All of these factors led to a firm full of very specialized moneymakers, with nobody really understanding the full scope of the business or the risks inherent in some of Bear's operations.

Bear pretty much originated the infamous mortgage-backed securities, and the firm went heavy into debt obligations backed by subprime loans. Once those became near difficult to value, they could not be sold. Cayne did not understand much of anything about these securities, and he fired the one person in the firm who really did shortly after two of Bear's hedge funds collapsed due to plunging values and outright fraud.

Rumors about Bear having too many illiquid assets and not enough capital began spreading on the Internet in early March 2008. Cayne was off playing cards, and then-CEO Alan Schwartz was off in Florida at Bear's annual media event. Neither understood the gravity of the firm's situation or the likely effect of the rumors in an already jittery market. The rumors turned out to be largely true--although the firm had a large cash cushion, it was nowhere near enough to take a massively leveraged firm (Bear's leverage was usually around 50:1) through any crisis of confidence, which is exactly what followed. Redemption calls were fast and furious; short sellers (some perfectly legit) drove down the company's stock value; other firms (notably Goldman Sachs) refused to stand as counterparties for their own clients against Bear; and the overnight lenders who financed Bear's day-to-day operations stopped lending to the company. A loan from the Fed to Chase (a regular bank with access to Fed funds) to be loaned to Bear (an investiment bank with no access to Fed funds) had exactly the opposite effect it was supposed to have ("oh my God, they're worse off than I thought!" instead of "well, now they've got the money and time to sort things out"), and, one day later, forced negotiations began with JPMorgan Chase.

Cayne and other Bear muckety mucks were interveiwed extensively for the book, as was current Treasury Sec'y Tim Geithner. The book is well-sourced and well-written, and Cohan doesn't pull punches even as to the major contributors to his work.

"House of Cards" shows how thin was America's veneer of hyper-prosperity, much as Hurricane Katrina showed how thin is the veneer of the infrastructure of our advanced society, and much as the release of the torture memos showed how thin is the veneer of our supposedly evolving standards of decency. I seeem to like veneer today; anybody for a patina instead? When it comes down to it, we're never far away from a Hobbesian state of nature, where life is nasty, brutish, and short.

View all my reviews.
Basic Cable Brouhaha

Posted: March 12th, 2009, 6:20am EDT by Randy

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Jon Stewart's war with CNBC should reach its apex tonight when Jim Cramer appears on The Daily Show.

.cc_box a:hover .cc_home{background:url('http://www.comedycentral.com/comedycentral/video/assets/syndicated-logo-over.png') !important;}.cc_links a{color:#b9b9b9;text-decoration:none;}.cc_show a{color:#707070;text-decoration:none;}.cc_title a{color:#868686;text-decoration:none;}.cc_links a:hover{color:#67bee2;text-decoration:underline;}The Daily Show With Jon StewartM - Th 11p / 10cCNBC Gives Financial Advice Daily Show Full Episodes
Important Things With Demetri Martin Political Humor
Economic Crisis

.cc_box a:hover .cc_home{background:url('http://www.comedycentral.com/comedycentral/video/assets/syndicated-logo-over.png') !important;}.cc_links a{color:#b9b9b9;text-decoration:none;}.cc_show a{color:#707070;text-decoration:none;}.cc_title a{color:#868686;text-decoration:none;}.cc_links a:hover{color:#67bee2;text-decoration:underline;}The Daily Show With Jon StewartM - Th 11p / 10cBasic Cable Personality Clash Skirmish '09 Daily Show Full Episodes
Important Things With Demetri Martin Political Humor
Economic Crisis
Puddle of years

Posted: February 14th, 2009, 8:13am EST by Randy

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Good gracious, gentle readers; this blog turned five years old on Thursday. I suppose I might have a moment of self-doscovery were I to read all my posts from 2004 forward, but I don't really have the time.
Rough Birthday

Posted: January 21st, 2009, 2:58am EST by Randy

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T's 12th birthday was last week. He surprised us by singing all four lines of "Happy Birthday" to us. He picked up a copy of Kung Fu Panda during his last visit home, so we got him a panda cake. It was a hit.

We played games at Chuck E Cheese, as well as the usual beanie crane in the WalMart foyer. T was as interested in the mechanical dancing mouse as he was in the games, but he was terrified of the faux rodent when I took him up to it.

T's obsessive compulsive behaviors have increased sharply, and his ability to self-regulate has decreased proportionately. The newest obsession is La Quinta hotels, based on an ad on the back of Rand McNally. He loves the logo of the Sun, and he demands "Sun, please" whenever we pass a La Quinta. Alas, there is a new LQ close to the house and, worse, next to WalMart. The LQ thing has combined with his ongoing obsessions with elevators, airplanes, and McDonald's French fries. T's tantrums when his obsessions were not indulged were pretty bad, and it was deeply saddening to observe. I'm really not sure exactly how to address these issues--I'm not crazy about upping his meds, and I don't know that a nazi behaviorist crackdown would have much effect--not to mention that I'm constitutionally incapable of such a thing.
Scary Fire

Posted: January 20th, 2009, 12:08am EST by Randy

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Shortly before 4 p.m. yesterday, DW yelled that there was a fire I needed to come out and take a look at. Sure enough, there were flames roaring about 25 feet or so back in the woods from our fence. By the time I got our garden hose stretched out to attempt to drench our fence, I noticed that the north wind had driven the flames much closer and that the tops of the trees next door were engulfed in flames. A commander from the St. Tammany FD was already parked in front of our house by the time we ran from the house. A fire engine appeared shortly thereafter, followed later by three more. The firefighters were able to get the flames under control before any houses were damaged, but, damn, it was a close call.

My back fence.

The next-door neighbors had the worst damage on the street; evidently some of their vinyl siding melted.

We were reassured by the sight of this truck parked in front of our house (in the background) when we ran outside.

I went out in the smoky haze this morning and noticed how far into the yard the flames actually spread. My back yard is dinky, and the house juts back into it, so the black spot in the grass isn't terribly far from our back bedroom.

It's still hazy on my block. We need a strong wind or a heavy rain to get rid of the smoke.
Arrested for Aspergers? WTF?

Posted: January 14th, 2009, 8:00am EST by Randy

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An 8-year-old girl in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, with Asperger's Syndrome was arrested and taken to juvie after acting out when her teachers would not allow her to wear a cow costume to a party. Yes, they jailed a kid over an effing cow costume! If I were her dad, I would go and bite those teachers myself.
New Age President?

Posted: January 14th, 2009, 1:12am EST by Randy

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Dreams from My Father by Barack Obama

My review
rating: 5 of 5 stars
Early in the presidential campaign, I read Barack Obama's "The Audacity of Hope," which made me like the guy as a potential POTUS. That book contains discussions of policy that are conventionally liberal in tone, but that touches "third rail" issues like faith and race in ways that suggest Obama is more open and thoughtful than the average politician, liberal or conservative.

"Dreams from My Father," first published in 1995, gives us great insight into Barack Obama as a person. The book is about race and inheritance, and it takes Obama from his upbringing in Hawaii (the least race-conscious state in the U.S.) with his white mother and grandparents, through his growing consciousness about race and his discovery of what it means to be black in America, through his community organizer days in Chicago, and to his first trip to Kenya and meetings with his father's African family.

Obama has the perspective of an outsider/insider on the African-American community. He was raised to be proud of his black roots--his grandparents were very open about race for people of their generation--but he had to study black history and associate with other African-Americans before he could really understand black America and become a part of it. It is, perhaps, from this experience of observation and study that Obama developed keen senses of detachment and insight. This guy had more self-awareness at age 33 than most of us can hope to gain in a lifetime--though I have to wonder whether a small child would have the feelings and insights that Obama attributes to his much younger self. Obama also appears to have keen insight into other people and their circumstances. Whether these traits will serve him well as POTUS remains to be seen, but a self-aware President is something we really haven't seen at all in the United States since, perhaps, FDR and Harry Truman.

Obama's absent father--an intellectually brilliant Kenyan civil servant--was built into a legendary figure by his mother's family. Obama as a child felt something of a burden to live up to his father's legend. His Kenyan half-sister Auma shattered the illusion of Barack Senior when she visited Obama in Chicago after their father's death. Obama writes that he would have laughed out loud after discovering that his father wasn't all he was cracked up to be. Now, I know from my own experience that most, if not all, men have a moment when they come to that kind of realization about their fathers--even if it is just the simple realization that our dads are humans and make human mistakes within a reasonable margin of error. But most of us are fortunate enough that our fathers are around to show us their flaws and foibles, and we don't know our fathers only from legends with which we are indoctrinated.

One theme throughout the book is the relationship of people to power. Obama's Indonesian stepfather had his independent spirit beaten out of him by the government of Indonesia; Obama observed political power on a micro level on the South Side of Chicago; and Obama's father simply failed to understand that power in Kenya was derived from connections to that country's then president-for-life, Jomo Kenyatta. According to Obama, it was in Indonesia that his mother had an insight about her then-husband and his relationship to power, and she packed Barack back to Hawaii when she feared that he, too, would be ground under by the powers that be in Indonesia. Obama's insights into the relationship of people to political power should serve him well as President, if only to help him understand and shape his behavior as the most powerful political figure on the planet-and to keep the reigns on the powerful personalities he has placed in powerful positions.

This is one of the best memoirs from a political figure I've ever read, perhaps because it was written before Barack Obama became a political figure. Whether the detachment and insight that are apparent in the book are useful traits in the Obama presidency remain to be seen.

View all my reviews.
A Disappointed Man

Posted: January 14th, 2009, 12:24am EST by Randy

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.cc_box a:hover .cc_home{background:url('http://www.comedycentral.com/comedycentral/video/assets/syndicated-logo-over.png') !important;}.cc_links a{color:#b9b9b9;text-decoration:none;}.cc_show a{color:#707070;text-decoration:none;}.cc_title a{color:#868686;text-decoration:none;}.cc_links a:hover{color:#67bee2;text-decoration:underline;}The Daily Show With Jon StewartM - Th 11p / 10cSix Days Seven Nights Barack Obama Interview
John McCain Interview Sarah Palin Video
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Jon Stewart's definitions of "disappointment" appear to differ from the President's.
My New Addiction

Posted: January 6th, 2009, 6:47am EST by Randy

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I still pretty much suck at it, but this game has dominated the past few evenings. I operate the controller and DW watches intently, looking for things I may be missing. I figure since we have a PS3, I might as well use it for its intended purpose instead of only playing DVDs on it.
Birthday

Posted: December 26th, 2008, 11:51pm EST by Randy

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Today is my 46th birthday. I'm just saying.
Christmas 2008

Posted: December 25th, 2008, 10:57am EST by Randy

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Last Christmas was one of the worst days of my entire life, for reasons I don't care to revisit. DW and I decided to try something different this year.

We took a hotel room in Alexandria, Louisiana, where we put up a small Christmas tree and laid out the kids' presents underneath it. We brought them over individually on Christmas Eve to open presents and play. That way, T could make his WalMart rounds and A could eat at Subway.

A, as usual, ignored the Christmas tree and the presents underneath.

T got the added bonus of watching DW have a Zen experience with the beanie cranes at WalMart. She became one with the machines and was lifting plush toys left and right--and doing it with her non-dominant hand, to boot. T was jumping up and down with joy.

After we returned T to school, DW and I motored up to Natchitoches, Louisiana (50 miles NW), to view that town's fabulous Christmas lights. When I was a kid, we drove through Natchitoches every year shortly before XMAS on the way to Baton Rouge from our home in Oklahoma, and I could see the lights all set up and ready to go. But it was too far from our grandparents' house for my parents to be bothered with driving us back up to see the lights at night. So I finally got to see them, something I highly recommend.

We went by our kids' mini-group home Christmas morning after they attended mass and opened their Santa Claus presents, which appeared mysteriously while the kids were at church. We had a nice visit, then drove back home. The kids' school provided them with a tasty looking Christmas lunch, but DW and I had our own arrangements fall through. DW made a Christmas dinner of truck stop nachos, and I had a can of Spaghetti-Os with sliced weenies. So much better than a repeat of the same meal we had a month ago.
Autism at Home

Posted: December 24th, 2008, 11:52pm EST by Randy

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CNN.com has a decent article today about family life with an acting-out child with autism in the home. One thing the article doesn't mention is that there's a strong push in the state legislatures to force insurance companies to cover evidence-based interventions like the ABA techniques described in the articles, and Barack Obama filed a bill for similar legislation in the Senate a few years ago.
On the Night's Plutonian Shore

Posted: December 20th, 2008, 10:42pm EST by Randy

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I dreamt last night that a collaborator--someone I didn't recognize--and I had written a law review article exposing corruption at the highest levels of government. Yeah, yeah, I know, a law review is a most inappropriate venue to break the news of a scandal. But what can I say? It's a dream. Anyway, my coauthor and I were rather proud of ourselves. We must have been members of the law review, as we were showing a small group of professors a completed copy of the article.

Instead of being shocked, dazzled, or impressed, one of the professors completely ignored the text and started looking at footnotes. "Your font is all wrong," she said, and she also helpuflly pointed out numerous perceived Bluebook citation and style errors. I know that book reasonably well, but I don't remember whether or not the professor was correct. I was e little hurt by the criticism, particularly as nobody gave a hoot about the scandal we had uncovered.

Dreaming about the Bluebook. Yikes. I suppose next week I'll have a dream where I tiptoe through the entire Oxford English Dictionary.
Good Books

Posted: December 7th, 2008, 3:04am EST by Randy

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The TLS books-of-the-year edition is out. Alas, mine usually makes it here a couple of weeks late. I suspect that the print edition will have recommendations from many more reviewers than the online edition offers. I used the best books list to pick up a couple of excellent books last year; perhaps I'll do the same this year.

Or maybe I'll just wait for the next Stephanie Meyer vampire novel to come out. Confession--I've actually not read any of Meyer's books, though DW has, and three of them are in the bookcase on my side of the bed. We saw Twilight and Quantum of Solace on successive days last weekend. Surprisingly, I thought Twilight the better of the two. Love Daniel Craig as James Bond, but, man, Quantum is just plain dull.

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