Wall Street Truth Laid Bare

There is a statistic in the May 23rd The Street article "War on Crime Revs Up on Wall Street",  by Peter Morici which in its simplicity points out the macro problem with Wall Street:

"In February 1998, the S&P 500 first closed higher than 1000. Since then, corporate profits are up about 210% percent, but equities have risen less than 35%. Corporate profits rose 6% annually, but investing in stocks paid a disappointing 2.3% a year"

 The article goes on to point out that the best and brightest are devoted to enhancing their own compensation rather than value for investors.  Would one expect more from the people attracted to finance?  This falls under the headline of No News News, but I'd never seen it so baldly stated.

And then there was Jay MacDonald's February 14, 2011 "Punch Line to Foreclosure-Gate" article on Bankrate.com which described Florida Attorney General's office's PowerPoint presentation entitled: "Unfair, Deceptive and Unconscionable Acts in Foreclosure Cases" (PDF).  The presentation was based on the AG's investigation of robosigning in the Sunshine State.

The presentation contains some interesting slides:

• examples of 6 different forged signatures for "Linda Green" (who had at least 14 different job titles), 
• 4 different signatures for Scott Anderson, 
• 3 different signatures each for Tywanna Thomas and Jessica Ohde who are variously identified as "Asst. Vice President" or "Asst. Secretary", 
• one document dated "9/9/9999", 
• several documents where the mortgage was assigned to "Bogus Assignee",
• stamped instead of signed signatures,
• bogus notaries (Notary stamps are good for 4 years, yet the examples showed expiration dates 5 years in the future), and
• excerpts of testimony from two people involved in robosigning.  (They say what we now know:  signatures were forged and nobody read the documents.)

It's worth a read.

Yaron Brook: Fwee Market Capitalism

Today's economic porn (The Daily Ticker with Aaron Task) included an interview Yaron Brook, president and executive director of the Ayn Rand Institute  I've found Ayn Rand good for a sad laugh.  Yes, if people were responsible and had the psychological orientation to meet her independent Objectivist model it might be worth supporting.

My personal belief is that, people being people doom Objectivism to the same fate as Communism: dustbin of history, fond illusion of idealistic youth, or something in between.  (Has anyone made an attempt to argue that Going Green may mean recycling/reusing the contents of the "dustbin of history"?)

That said I was very impressed (werry, werry impressed) that someone with a speech impediment could end up being the president of an organization. Yaron Brook's fire of conviction is subverted by taking like a baby.

Good News Means Bad Things

Osama Bin Ladin was killed yesterday. A symbolic victory, a boost to the aura of American prowess - not a single Navy SEAL killed- but given the distributed nature of al Qaeda, his death probably does little to reduce their threat.

As I drove to work  market reporters were reporting the favorable economic responses: the prices for gold and oil were down, but there was, of course, the contrarian warning: the US dollar, seen as the safest investment  will now find less eager buyers if the world is perceived as safer.  (Is it puckish to call the dollar a "gold standard"?)

It struck me as odd now, that I should unconsciously use the word "market" to mean financial doings rather than a green grocer. Perhaps I've unwittingly succumbed to a vast right-wing conspiracy.

Skater Dater, Music, and Lord Buckley

As I browsed around YouTube, I stumbled on a reference to Skaterdater, a short film about skateboarding made in 1965.

I'd thought it was charming when I saw it many years ago.  The two things I remembered about the soundtrack were the surf music and the fact that the film makers didn't need synchronized sound.  There is one point in the film where a funny noise is a lead into the next shot.

I was so taken with the soundtrack, surf music over the rumble of skateboards on asphalt, that I taped it off the theater speakers shortly after I saw it.  (It was a tiny theater and I knew the owners.) 

The link above will take you to the film on Google video so you can see it for yourself.

I checked the music credits: Mike Curb and Nick Venet, names which meant nothing to me until I looked up their bios.

Mike Curb, was a Republican Lt. Governor of California from 1978-1982 under the Democrat, Jerry Brown (II). He was involved in some political shenanigans: taking advantage of the law that put the Lt. Governor in charge when the governor is out of state, he tried to get several judges appointed while Brown was "out of California airspace." (The appointments were voided on Brown's return.)

Later, he was immensely successful in the musical business. Check out his bio.  I was impressed.  Especially so when he made news by calling on Belmont University to rehire a soccer coach who seems to have lost her position for being a lesbian.   here's a link to the story in on the Nashville Scene web site.

The other, Nick Venet, worked with recording luminaries from jazz, pop, and world music. Just reading the names Chet Baker,Stan Getz, Chico Hamilton ("Drumfusion"), Stan Kenton, Gerry Mulligan, and Lambert, Hendricks, and Ross flooded my mind with treasured memories of afternoons just listening to jazz on turntables. (Where did I get the time? Where has it gone?)

He worked with Lord Buckley the great hip and tragic comedian. You couldn't be hip way back in the 50's and 60's without knowing who he was. The two pieces I treasured were "The Nazz", the story of Jesus, "Scrooge", the retelling of Dicken's "Christmas Carole" in a dark ghetto dialect. You can imagine Lord Buckley as a mix of Redd Foxx and Robin Williams topped with the sound effect from Bill Cosby's early records.

A casual mention of "The Nazz", "the carpenter kiddie", "beat up retarded sparrow", or saying "merry Christmas with you" or "What's the matter with you baby?" brought a knowing smile to the cognoscenti. You were home.

Perhaps his most enduring legacy was this bit of trivia from Wikipedia:

"Venet created the "Produced By" credit on singles and albums and started album liner notes for crediting individual performers, musicians, and engineers of pop and rock records. Venet is primarily known for signing the Beach Boys and producing their early material."

He worked with Ravi Shankar, Nat "King" Cole, and Peggy Lee and Kay Starr.  Just amazing.  Dead at 61 from Burkitt's lymphoma.

Throwbots

How cool would it be to have one of these?

They're throwable robots with cameras from Recon Scout. You heave one of these things in (they'll survive a 30' drop onto concrete) and control it with a joystick. Designed for the military and SWAT teams.  You can get yours for just $6-9K. Ideal for braking up jail fights.

For more information, there are videos on YouTube. (Search for "recon scout throwbot" because "recon scout" is also the name for a knife.) Although intended to reduce exposing soldiers and police to hostile fire, I can fantasize a household loaner business to scour a house on a periodic basis to check under couches for missing retainers, rings, and keys.

Because of it's light weight an officer can hold the throwbot in one hand and still keep a weapon in the other.   Most of us are fortunate not to need to consider features like these when making purchases.  Other design features make sense: the throwbot is turned on by pulling a pin rather than flipping a switch to make it easier to activate with gloves, Hazmat suits, etc. and very difficult for the other guys to inactivate it.  (Of course the expectation is that the other side won't have the appropriate pin or a controller to turn off or jam the device.)

I'll know how common these things become when they appear in CSI reruns.  (They may be a standard feature of cop shows, but I'm at a disadvantage here because I rarely watch TV.)

Brutal Knitting

Next winter may be the time to let your freak flag fly.

Tracy Widdess, the knitter, will accept commissions.  If you want to stand out in a crowd, these knits will guarantee it.

$6,400 Kohler Numi Toilet

I kid you not.

If I ever get a chance to teach an intro Computer Science class, this will certainly be an item they'll have to discuss when asked we discuss what constitutes a computer.  Just look at the controls:
I guess in time it will not seem odd, but a toilet with speakers and audio input? I would have written that the bathroom seems to be the only place you can get away from ..., but now there's advertising in restrooms and we've all overheard cell private conversation in public bathrooms.

I imagine that the person on the other end of the conversation will ask if the other person is in a bathroom. It'll no longer be remarkable when the answer is in the affirmative.

What Do We Stand For?

An article mentioned a firm building their social networking system using Mason software, a name which was unfamiliar to me. A web search led me to George Mason University's web site and what you see below:

It reminded me of a joke from an old Pogo comic strip:  

Q: "What do we stand for?" 

A: "We don't stand for much."

Hacker vs. Hacker

There is a fascinating article in Business Week (I stumbled over it on Bloomberg BusinessWeek) about the cyber security firm, HBGary, being hacked by Anonymous, the anarchic cyber-guerrilla organization. The attack came after an official at HBGary boasting to the Financial Times that he would reveal the identities of the Anonymous's leaders in his presentation at the next RSA conference.

Steven Colbert put it this way: Anonymous is a hornet's nest. And [HBGary] said, 'I'm gonna stick my penis in that thing.'"

The real fun began when stolen documents were posted on line. The files revealed proposed campaigns to rival the dirty tricks of the Nixon era: infiltrate Anonymous to expose the leadership and a cyber-campaign of disinformation against WikiLeaks.  The corporate results were predictiable: clients disengaging and others making a point of distancing themselves from HBGary.

An interesting read for sure.

SteamPunk Star Wars & CG Society

TechRepublic had a link to images from CGSociety's Hardcore Modeling Challenge.  The image of Princess Leia seems destined for the men's magazines.

Stumbling around the CG Society web site showed just how stunning computer graphics has become.  The page for the challenge showed  a busty, no nonsense Leia.

I Get a Parking Space at 9:30 AM. How Depressing

A few years ago the faculty/staff parking lot on the west end of campus would be filled by 9:15.  I know.

There's a pattern to college parking.  Student athlete's and coaches park close to the stadium near the edge of campus while commuting students park as close as they can to the south campus academic buildings.  Residential students - lazy residential students - drive from north campus to south campus so they can walk less.  (The total time it takes them to walk to their car, drive about half a mile, and then walk to class is more than the time than it takes to walk to class from their dorm.)

Faculty generally try to park close to their offices, except those who try to park near their last class of the day. There are administrative parking spots which are occasionally occupied by students parking "just for a minute" while they try to dart in to a building to drop off a paper or pick up a form.   It's rumored that the campus police now have web cams watching these spots and get extra points for ticketing students parked in those spots because the fines are higher.

I use to get to the campus between 9:30 and 10 AM (and stayed to 11 PM) so parking close to the buildings where I worked was never an option during regular school days.  I didn't mind.  It was aerobic exercise and, when the weather wasn't inclement, a nice 5 minute walk.

Oh, so why depressing?  The available spaces mean that there are fewer employees as the University makes a concerted effort to cut expenses by cutting budget lines.  I always assume the worst.

Ask not for whom the spot is for.  Pretty soon it might not be me.

Gerund and Oxymoron

In the film History Boys, one of the teenage boys knowingly asks if a certain word was a gerund.  I knew it was a part of speech, but made a note to look it up.  Grammar Bytes provided the answer.  (Grammar Bytes' URL is chompchomp.com and, when I accessed it, displayed the head of a roaring gorilla.

So now, I've set a minor task for myself: to listen for gerunds.  All gerunds end in "ing", so, if I understand what I've read, it's a matter of distinguishing gerunds from present participles in which those same terms act as modifiers instead of nouns.

This reminded me of  a story from a student at Classical High School in Providence, Rhode Island.  He said his English instructor asked his students to cringe each time they heard an oxymoron, e.g., bittersweet.  I decided to verify that I still knew what an oxymoron is.

A quick look in Wikipedia turned up a several oxymorons I hear frequently: "objective opinion", "original copy", and "definite possibility".  It is only having seen it pointed out that it strikes me how we/I accept statements without question.  (I perhaps less than most, but still, I stand guilty as charged.)

"Original copy" seems to be valid, especially now that documents are created on laser printers.  What is the difference between the first copy printed, and the second copy printed?  The original might be bits in memory which was never stored on disk.  Or it could be on disk.  If two copies are printed at the same time, is one the original and the other a copy?

The two which had obvious reference to computer science were "virtual reality" and "constant variable". The first case seems appropriate. In the second, computer scientists have created computer languages to resolve the ambiguity.

A variable name is created to let the computer program store information. In some languages (and in some cases some incarnations of the same language) the language has no way to tell the computer that the data should not be allowed to change, i.e., that the variable is a constant. In other languages it can be explicit, the term constant is part of the declaration or the data type, e.g., a tuple in Pythonare immutable. (I just learned this.)

Back on the Range

For the first time in a long time I cooked dinner.  I was going to be home before the significant other and it was going to be Swai.  (I'd normally subject the reader to a long digression about my family's involvement with food, the games we'd play in restaurants (switching seats after ordering to see how server's recorded the orders, showing our knowledge by asking for rare steaks, playing Guess the Temperature (of the fryer), etc.), but I'll make it short.

I sauteed onions and orange pepper in a little oil, then, when there appeared to be no liquid to keep the onions from browning, I added some white wine (salvaged from a department party) to poach the onions.  As the onions looked soft enough, as an unhelpful description as I could manage, I used more of the wine to rinse out a garlic-flavored pasta source jar into the pan.  I plopped the defrosted Swai on top (God bless portion control!), sprinkled some cutup yellow squash over the fish, and allowed everything to poach for a few minutes.

My brother who knows his stuff advised me that the wine wasn't even good enough to be used for cooking.  I'm sure he's correct, but the people who eat his food are laying out a minimum of $80/cover and know  the difference between world class and good. 

I was so out of practice that I didn't remember to cook the potatoes to be ready when the fish was ready.  I used the microwave to nuke some quartered red bliss potatoes.  

All in all, I can say with some assurance that, the meal was non-toxic (my highest rating).  Salad would have been nice, but there was  no salad stuff at hand.  Nobody complained.

The evidence that I am not destined to be a food photographer is shown below: 

 

Suze Rotolo: The Girl on the Cover of Freewheelin'

My main squeeze told me that Terry Gross had replayed an interview with Suzie Rotolo.  My heart sank.  "She's dead?"  "Yes."

At one point, just knowing who Suzie Rotolo was marked you as hip.

For a significant number of us Suzie was an icon of a celebrated time, when folk music, "protest music", was the cutting edge of hip.  It was Suzie who open Bob Dylan's eyes to radicalism and art.  She was the girl on Bob Dylan's arm on the cover of The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan.

(In an interview on WNYC-FM Steve Earle said he spent a lot of time pointing German tourists in the right direction when they try to position themselves on 4th Street to look like Bob and Suzie.  Suzie herself said that she thought the picture made her look like a stuffed sausage.  She was bundled up because their flat was so cold.  Suzie thought Bob was under dressed to enhance his image.  But could it be that it was because he was from Minnesota?)

It would be hard to underestimate what she did for Bob Dylan or give her enough credit for just being herself.  The photo below is typical of an ordinary photo evocative of the time: legends of the scene with Dylan on the left, Suzie in the middle, and Dave van Ronk on the right. Now only Bob is left.

Pardon me as I blither on:

I first heard Cocaine Blues sung by Dave van Ronk and, in my mind, his version remains the definitive version with that great lyric:

"Cocaine's for horses/ and not for men/
They say it will kill me/ but won't say when/
Cocaine.  Run all around my brain."

It ranks right up there with  Willie Dixon's "If it wasn't for bad luck/I'd have no luck at all" and BB King's:

"Nobody loves me but my mother.
I said nobody loves me but my mother.
I say nobody loves me but my mother.
And she could be jiving too."

The Ex Outlet (Selling Your Ex's Stuff)

The concept of a web site to sell stuff associated with you ex seems obvious.  It's not clear that it is a viable business.  The stories of longing, betrayal, and remorse are nothing special, but might serve as object lessons for teens.

I was curious to see if the aggrieved parties were disposing of music, but music was not even a category.  Maybe the site's sample is too small, but I would expect that music plays as big a part in young people's lives as it did in mine.

I remember a women at a party looking through the host's record collection (it was many years ago) when she pulled one album from the shelf.  She stared at it for a couple of seconds, shook her head, before replacing it.  "I can't believe I slept with that guy." she said.  No one asked.

Maybe the exes took their music with them.  If the relationship was in the post physical media era there was nothing to leave behind except perhaps a docking station.

Adele and Steve

I found directions to Carol Nash's house while going through some 25-year old stuff.  I have no idea who she was.   I'm guessing she was one in a chain of associated friends in dogs: Oh, you're going to the Framingham show?  Would you mind taking something to give to Barbara who'll give it to Peggy at the Gorham show next month?  These would be scrapbooks, pedigree charts, etc.

Another something lost from memory.

On the other hand, an old ATT and bill had a phone number in Connecticut.  Probably Adele.  What the heck, I had just unearthed a cell phone with over a thousand hours.  Why not dial and see who answers?  When he recorded message said calls without caller ID were blocked I was pretty sure it was them.

And sure enough.  Steve answered.   We spent 28:35 catching up on 20 or so years of stuff.  Verizon made him an offer he couldn't refuse about 10 years ago.  Adele's story was less happy: she was forced out of her teaching position.  She's got a nice pension, but she loved teaching.  The adjustment's been rough.

Many years ago, when I first met met Adele she had a boyfriend who worked as a prison guard and seemed to spend most of his time on the second floor of her house talking on the CB.  In the first few years I knew her Adele had an anxious way of sucking her breath in through her teeth.  She said she was looking for a man who would keep her in chain link. 

Several years later day when I dropped a guy I never saw before came out to greet me.  "Hi, I'm Steve."  Seemed nice enough.  I didn't ask about the boyfriend.  Adele appeared a few minutes later.  (It would have been hard to sneak onto the property - they had, and still have a 3 dozen dog siren.)  She was smiling and for the first time I knew her seemed relaxed.

I said to myself, I don't know who Steve is, but he seems good for Adele.

About a year later I drove up and saw a change in the kennel.  As I related to a friend who met Adele when I met her, "Adele's found the man of her dreams."  It only took my friend a beat: "Chain link!"

Life was simpler then.

I've Got a Secret?

If you're looking for sensational revelations move along.

The other day someone told me about an incident which will put someone's career in jeopardy.  Almost nobody else knows.  Is it a secret?  What is a secret?  Is it a secret if it is just a matter of time before the whole world knows?  In the past "the whole world knowing" would certainly be hyperbole.  Now, anyone in the world of WikiLeaks, those interested enough to put a few choice terms in an Internet search engine can see your shame.

A campus security officer told the person who told me.  That implied that several layers of security already knew.  Legal probably got faxed a copy as soon as the complaint was signed.  By the time I heard it I'm sure Legal had briefed the President's office and PR had statements at the ready.

I, along with the person who told me, are morbidly interested bystanders in departmental dramas.  We have no input and won't be much affected by the outcome.  We are the bemused Greek chorus wondering how such bright, talented people can do such dumb things.

Will it be a scandal screaming from the headlines?  (Thinking in terms of headlines instead of making a buzz and going viral on the Internet marks my age.)  Perhaps, instead of a scandal, there will be a settlement. Not a cover up, but an agreement between parties, a monetary settlement, and another campus legend passed along in departmental small talk.

From one perspective the decision is clear: get rid of the malefactor.  (There's a pun for you.) From another angle, very good research notable publications and a sterling professional reputation with grants to match might compensate for a prickly personality.  The cynical view is that given the need for funds there will be some hesitation, but the school's reputation considered in light of its dependence on tuition will dictate a parting of the ways.  (The real cynical view is that there will be a new - and rare - job opening.)

A Quotes & a Stock Market Graph

That urgent push—"panic" is such an ugly word—to involve every single employee in acquiring and retaining customer also shows signs of driving down.
Kim S Nash, CIO, December 15, 2010, p34.

I thought this was an interesting graph.

The market's previous close was somewhat below 12,100.  The market is up 40 points.  Simple math says that something less than 12,100 + 40 should be something less than12,150, but look at the graph from finance.yahoo.com on February 8, 2011 about a little after 1 PM.

Ummm and then in the process of putting up this post I realized that I was looking at the previous day's graph.  Yahoo! hadn't  updated the image.  Is it odd that I expected the graph to be update without refreshing the screen myself?  It definitely was not odd that I would be so oblivious.  As I write (and finish my lunch in case anyone wonders if I'm slacking off at work), this is the current graph:

I'm guessing that the Dow text is updated continuously, but the graph isn't.  The 40 points shown in the first image represented the gain from the previous close near 12,160.

No mystery solved. 

John Sebastian's Folk Music

The local public broadcasting station played John Sebastian's folk music retrospective.  I was surprised to see that the music continued to appeal to me and struct by the performer's enthusiasm.  Any false notes eluded me.  Were they really that enthusiastic about their music?  Does the performer's earnestness strike those who weren't there as hoky? The show reminded me that the dismissal of the 50's as bland, ignored the passion for justice that exploded in the 60's.

Folk music became "protest music" with singers using a classic form for what was perceived as a new purpose, but some of the songs which defined the era, , were a political campaign song (the Kingston Trio's "Charlie on the MTA"), a call for justice ("If I had a hammer"), and woody Gutherie's populist "This land is your land".

At the end of the show, many of the performers seen in their earlier incarnations were shown performing at a folk revival in Pittsburgh.  It was reassuring to see the force of the Chad Mitchell Trio's singing belied their age.  Barry McGuire's "Eve of Destruction" with only slightly modified lyrics still carried it's old punch.   Jesse Colin Young's "Get Together" sounded as sweet as the first time I heard it and Roger McGuinn, back from Rio, still looks cool singing Bob Dylan's "My Back Pages", an anthem to angry youth, and Pete Seeger's "Turn, Turn, Turn".

It made me wonder if someone could write or, unbeknown to me, has written a contemporary song railing at Congress, the reactionary right, and others on my detestable s list wing echo chamber.

Death Wait on Hospira

The headline (on a January 21 AP story carried by Yahoo! Finance) read "US drug maker discontinues key death penalty drug". The story in brief was that Hospira Inc. decided to switch manufacture of sodium thiopental from North Carolina to Liscate, Italy, near Milan. Because Hospira could not guarantee Italian authorities that the anesthetic wouldn't be used in executions, the company halted production rather than risk being liable to Italian law.

Already in short supply and with batches of sodium thiopental set to expire in March, 2011 executions across the U.S. now have an additional problem besides pesky picketers.

Imagine executions being halted not by the will of the people, moral or legal qualms but a logistical problem.

I've wondered why people aren't executed by firing squad. Is it that today's criminals do not rise to the level of Joe Hill and Gary Gilmore? I would expect that some law and order/NRA/über-patriot types would be willing to organize flying execution squads, able, willing, and ready to be there to get the job done.

(A brief web check found that Utah, which executed Gilmore by firing squad, has gone the lethal injection route. And with one thing leading to another I learned that the gun Gilmore used to kill a shop clerk was for sale.  That in itself was interesting because the gun, which was evidence, had been stolen from a gun store and later returned to the owner.  The current owner turned down a $500,000 bid for the gun and had it up for auction at $1,000,000.

It brings to mind a story I saw (can't now remember if it was on TV or a film) where a fugitive in a story about the Old West raised money by turning himself in to collect the reward money.  Will Son of Sam laws prohibiting individuals from benefiting from their crimes now prohibit this?  What about people letting their relations turn them in to pay medical bills?  Commit an outrageous crime, call your main squeeze to reveal where you're hanging out, and indicate that it would be OK to reveal your location to the police, and wait patiently for the law to show up.)