I'm not surprised...

Are you?

The Economist delivers yet again, in terms of covering things that do, actually, matter. And I truly am not surprised that folks who exhibit traits like excessive germophobia are less ethical than the rest of us. It has always struck me as an odd behavior, that seems to afflict a certain kind of people more so than others. I just never had a good handle on the common thread. This research is certainly suggestive.

Oh, the irony

One has to appreciate that I had everything truly sorted out before I left for BGG.con... just check the post below for all the travel plans.

The execution was flawless. I woke up at 4AM, got to the BART station about 6 minutes before the train, got to the airport about 70 minutes before the flight... strolled casually to the terminal, walked to the departing flights screen and could not locate my flight. Figured it must be leaving from the other terminal, walked over there, and through security...

... or rather, attempted to do so.

Because as soon as the security guy had my boarding pass, I knew something was very, very wrong. A moment later I understood why as he handed it back to me. I was at the wrong airport.

I am so used to flying out of Oakland that I just went there out of habit. Gotcha! the flight was out of San Francisco International.

I picked up my bag and RAN outside to the line of cabs waiting. I jumped in the first one and asked the driver how fast he can make it to SFO. His response was "my record is 29 minutes". I white knuckled the door handle and told him "GO!".

The time was already very near to 6:30. My flight out of the SFO was leaving at 7:25. We had to stop at an ATM along the way so I could get money out to pay him.

What a ride it was! he dropped me off curbside SFO at 7:01. I grabbed my stuff and, again, RAN to security. They took one look at me and moved me to a special line to process me ahead of others. I was out of security at 7:08. I ran to the gate. I got there at 7:12 as they were tidying up. The lady kindly let me know that had I been 3 minutes later, they would have flown off without me. They already had a boarding pass printed for the person who was going to take my place on standby.

I still have no idea how I made it in time. The cab driver was brilliant; but it was rush hour, and it was pure luck that traffic wasn't any heavier. We only got delayed a bit twice at on and off ramps. The $100 cab fare completely blew my budget, but it still felt like a miracle.

The con was great, by the way. More on that later.

My first BGGcon - tomorrow!

And there we have it... after months of waiting, and years of being sad for never being able to make it... tomorrow at 4AM I am getting up to drag my sorry behind down to the truck, so I can drive it to Bart, so I can get to the airport, so I can get on the American Airlines flight that will take me to Dallas and to board gaming geek heaven, BGGcon 2008.

72 hours of board gaming nirvana with a collection of characters some of whom I have known for years on my favorite website.

My number one goal? a game of Die Macher.

Steve Eisman

I mentioned Andrew Lahde... but really, the guy you want to read about is this guy. It's long, but maybe one of the best articles about the meltdown I've ever read, and it's not even an analysis, but rather a tale.

Thank you Michael for sending it to me.

The market solution

Brilliantly funny editorial piece from the Economist.

Ubuntu

So all my weird problems are gone... some recent update fixed it all and my machine now has no issues with freezing or suspending.

But now there's a new kernel update (8.10, Intrepid Ibex), and it is so, so tempting...

Hmm.

Traveling

This is nuts. I was already booked to be out of town for four days next week (finally going to BGGcon! My first ever, and it's pretty darn exciting let me tell you).

Then I have my weeklong trip in early December. I come back on the morning of the 11th, and as of this morning, fly out again on the 13th for 3 more days.

All in, we're talking 14 days away in less than a month. I haven't flown this much in many years.

Conservative Awakening

Worth a read, especially if you're a liberal drunk with victory right now. He makes a good point - many points in fact. If I were speaking to a liberal crowd right now, I'd be saying - read this, and let's not allow this to happen in reverse.

Bistro

So yesterday I spent the day in Santa Cruz on a date with a lovely lady I met a few weeks ago. I got there around lunchtime and we managed to continue talking straight through 10:30PM when I simply had to get in the car and go for fear of otherwise not being able to make it through the drive back without falling asleep at the wheel.

That was fun. I hope we get to do it again.

In any case, at some point we touched on the financial crisis (can't avoid it these days) and I was explaining the role of credit default swaps in the whole mess, when I remembered a wonderful related article I had read recently on Conde Nast Portfolio. It's titled "The $58T Elephant in the Room", and I figured it's another one worth sharing.

You'll have to read it to get the title of this post.

A couple of articles

We have too many subscriptions.

In any case, here are a couple of articles I ran into recently that I thought were worth mentioning. First, The Case for Debt, from the Atlantic. Interesting discourse about public debt. The second one is an interview with Amar Bhide, from Inc magazine.

Both are worth reading if only to have a little bit of balance for the typically hysterical nonsense spewed by the media on a regular basis.

... and then...

I am stunned that in this election, prop 8 managed to pass.

In California? on a night like this?

Oh, you bigoted, narrow-minded, morally-corrupt little people of the churches of the central valley - we'll show you. Enjoy your moment, because this will get struck down next election (in 2010). And it may very well happen next year, when the courts determine - as they will, once the lawsuits roll in - that the amendment itself is unconstitutional on the same grounds it found so before (with regards to prop 22 and the more recent law). Sorry folks, but unequal protection under the law is unconstitutional, and no matter how hard you try, you cannot write into the constitution an unconstitutional amendment.

Don't listen to me, after all, I'm not a legal scholar, and while I'm pissed, I'm not talking from the pain in my heart. Oh no. The California supreme court has said the same thing when it made its original decision. Not only that, but the court has anticipated something like Prop 8, and has written in its May decision exactly how it will treat it should it pass. Remember, Prop 8 is a ballot measure classified as an Initiative. The people who came up with Prop 8 classified it as such so they could get it on the ballot in time for the election, but by doing that, they made the initiative itself illegal. Since it deprives a class of people from their basic rights, this should rightfully be defined as a revision to the constitution, which is something that the voters (whom the framers fully understood to be mostly ignorant) cannot put on the ballot. And don't think that the court has already addressed this issue in June; it has not. All it did was say it wouldn't listen to it until after the election.

Here is the quote, right from page 6 of the text of the decision:

"... we conclude that, under this state's Constitution, the constitutionally based right to marry properly must be understood to encompass the core set of basic substantive legal rights and attributes traditionally associated with marriage that are so integral to an individual's liberty and personal autonomy that they may not be eliminated or abrogated by the Legislature or by the electorate through the statutory initiative process." (highlighting is mine)

The court has set itself up for the possibility of a racist ballot initiative (for that is what it is in the eyes of the law which, remember, takes no account of religion due to separation of church and state) such as Prop 8 passing in November, and has reinforced that in June when they chose not to stay the decision until the election. It understands, as those twisted little minds don't, that equal protection trumps discrimination even if 99% of the population wanted the latter(*). To put it in very simple terms, just like we can't pass an amendment to not allow heterosexual couples to marry on the basis of sexual preference, we can't do so for homosexual couples either. Just like Loving vs. Virginia in 1967.

When the issue reaches the court - again - which it will in a few months, the court will simply point to its earlier decision and kill the amendment on constitutional grounds, forever burying this nonsense.

Wait and see.

(*) actually, to be technical for a minute, a significant majority of the population could do it. The way it works is that two thirds of the legislature propose a revision to the constitution. So conceivably, if enough constituents wanted this, they could get enough legislators to do it. But it cannot be done the way they tried to do with with Prop 8. Again, wait and see.

Wow

As a country, we did good tonight.

I know - just know - that one day I will get to tell my grandchildren about I voted for the greatest country on earth's first black president. I will get to tell them how it was my first presidential vote after coming here from a different country, and just a short time after having proudly become a citizen.

I will be able to tell them how I came to a country that was so great that it had stopped believing in its own unbelievably powerful effect and draw on every other person in the entire world. A country that was in the middle of a depression - not economic, but psychological and emotional - so deep and so overwhelming, that it should by all rights have started to self-destruct.

And I will be able to tell them how this country rose up to collectively shake off the sadness and despair, to look the rest of the world in the eye, and to say "you can't bring us down, and we will not beat ourselves". How we went to the polls and rejected the notion that we are done, and found the optimism and drive in our hearts to create a change so tremendous, so awe-inspiring, that even those who did not believe in it got inspired, and in turn, inspired us all (thank you, John McCain, for a truly beautiful concession speech).

Tomorrow will be a better day. America has been a little sleepy lately. We've woken up. Watch out.

This guy is... amazing

I've never heard of him before, but... if you're looking for inspiration, courage, and humility, he is it. Really.

Dear Republicans

Got this in the mail today... seems to have originated from an accountant by the name of Wallace G. Regardless, I thought it was a good one to pass on.

> Dear Republicans:
>
> If you manage to steal this election too, we blue-staters
> have decided we're leaving. We intend to form our own
> country, and we're taking the other Blue States with us.
>
> In case you aren't aware, that includes: California,
> Hawaii, Oregon, Washington, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan,
> Illinois and all the Northeast.
>
> We believe this split will be beneficial to the nation, and
> especially to the people of the new country of New
> California.
>
> To sum up briefly: You get Texas, Oklahoma, and all the
> slave states. We get stem cell research and the best
> beaches.
>
> We get the Statue of Liberty. You get Dollywood.
>
> We get Intel and Microsoft. You get WorldCom.
>
> We get Harvard. You get Ole' Miss.
>
> We get 85% of America's venture capital and
> entrepreneurs. You get Alabama.
>
> We get two-thirds of the tax revenue, you get to make the
> red states pay their fair share.
>
> Since our aggregate divorce rate is 22% lower than the
> Christian Coalition's, we get a bunch of happy families.
> You get a bunch of single moms.
>
> Please be aware that Nuevo California will be pro-choice,
> anti-war, and we're going to want all our citizens back
> from Iraq at once. If you need people to fight, ask your
> evangelicals. They have kids they're apparently willing
> to send to their deaths for no purpose, and they don't
> care if you don't show pictures of their children's
> caskets coming home.
>
> We do wish you success in Iraq, and hope that the WMDs turn
> up, but we're not willing to spend our resources in
> Bush's Quagmire.
>
> With the Blue States in hand, we will have firm control of
> 80% of the country's fresh water, more than 90% of the
> pineapple and lettuce, 92% of the nation's fresh fruit,
> 95% of America's quality wines, 90% of all cheese, 90%
> of the high tech industry, 95% of the corn and soybeans
> (thanks Iowa!), all of the salmon and lobster, most of the
> U.S. low-sulfur coal, all living redwoods, sequoias and
> condors, all the Ivy and Seven Sister schools plus Stanford,
> Cal Tech, and MIT.
>
> With the Red States on the other hand, you get kudzu and
> fried twinkies, and will have to cope with 88% of all obese
> Americans (and their projected health care costs), 92% of
> all U.S. mosquitoes, nearly 100% of the tornadoes, 90% of
> the hurricanes, 99% of all Southern Baptists, 100% of all
> televangelists, Rush Limbaugh, Bob Jones University,
> Clemson, and as one "scholarship" athlete put it
> so eloquently: "the "University of Arkansas State
> University."
>
> We get Hollywood and Yosemite. Thank you.
>
> Additionally, 38% of those in the Red states believe Jonah
> was actually swallowed by a whale, 62% believe life is
> sacred--unless we're discussing the war, the death
> penalty or gun laws, 74% say that evolution is only a
> theory, 63% that Saddam was involved in 9/11 and 61% of you
> crazy s-o-b's believe you are people with higher morals
> than we lefties.
>
> Finally, we're taking the good pot, too. You can have
> that dirt weed they grow in Mexico.
>
> Good luck and Peace out,
>
> The Blue State citizens of Nuevo California.

Walmart Custom CD, take 2: the disappointment

So last year I discovered Walmart's "create your own CD" online service, which excited me to no end; so much so, in fact, that I don't want to buy music any other way anymore.

I just went there to create a new country compilation, and something is very, very wrong.

Last year I could find anything I wanted. It was all there. My three (at the time) favorite Taylor Swift songs? they were there, and I have the CD to prove it. Well, go there now and you will find that Taylor Swift no longer exists on the service. The same holds true for staples like Dixie Chicks and Garth Brooks. In fact, the more I look through the site, the more convinced I am that they are shutting it down, because so much is gone.

Dammit!

That truly makes me sad. I guess I'll have to download or rip music then, because I swear to god, I'm sick and tired of paying labels - and artists! - for music I don't want, which is exactly what happens when you are forced to shell out $12-$15 (or more in some cases) for a CD full of shite music just so you can get the one song you want.

The Walmart model is perfect. A typical compilation costs a bit over $20 shipped. I will pay this much every day for a CD full of 18-20 songs I actually like.

Anyone knows of a similar service somewhere else? or is Walmart the only game in town, and one that seems to be dying at that? I don't care for MP3 - not interested, don't want another gadget to carry around, I just want a CD to stick in my car's player.