Conversations with the Supplicant

2005-07-10T21:20:00.000-04:00

Laffy loves his chair

A few unconnected trains of thought

2005-07-10T18:53:00.000-04:00

I posted earlier about the London bombings. I think that I should post my various threads of thought in case someone can make sense of it.

The Madrid and London style attacks are inherently more frightening, yet less dangerous than the 9/11 attacks. The London and Madrid attacks hit at infrastructure that nearly everyone uses and that we all expect to work. In addition, I would anticipate that the truly dangerous attacks would actively use suicide bombers.
Western Islam, which tends to be financed by the Saudi government and endorses the Wahabbi sect, is generally more radical than is Islam in other parts of the world. In addition, Islam seems to be picking up adherents among disaffected youth and, unlike in the 1960s, these disaffected youth are receiving a hateful ideology that devalues the lives of others.
If al-Qaeda becomes a global insurgency then it will become much more difficult to combat with military actions and will, instead, be fought at home using many of the same methods that police forces used to undermine pro-Soviet groups during the Cold War.

Looking forward to any thoughts on these points

Al-Qaeda and London

2005-07-10T11:36:00.000-04:00

I've spent the past few days thinking about the London bombings and how al-Qaeda appears to have changed over the past four years (ever since 9/11). Looking at the list of attacks that al-Qaeda has committed, it occurs to me that there might be a pattern. Al-Qaeda itself has generally focused on targets that offered the opportunity for very large numbers of casualties, or directly targeted U.S. interests, or had the potential to wreak havoc on the world economy. For example, al-Qaeda itself ran the operations against the U.S. Navy and the oil industry off the coast of Yemen (these directly impacted U.S. interests and the economy), but it was not al-Qaeda that conducted the Madrid bombings, but rather an "al-Qaeda inspired group." I think this pattern is born out in other attacks as well.

I'm still trying to figure out what that means, but I will get back to that later.

I'm back

2005-07-03T20:03:00.000-04:00

Sorry for the long period of silence. I've been struggling with some internal stuff that I am debating dribbling out to readers here. Problem is that I don't want to put it out there and find out that no one cares. So I'm struggling. Hopefully I'll post something explaining this cryptic post in a few days.

Jeezus

2005-05-06T20:31:00.000-04:00

I am watching "Bowling for Columbine" again and just realized that 34 minutes into the movie, a reporter talks about how Kliebold's diary apparently included references to hijacking a plane and crashing it into New York City.

Media storm... for L.G. and f'ing over the theocons

2005-05-02T21:28:00.000-04:00

I commented over at Bitch Ph.D. on the stupidity of pro-life policy... here is my rant

Can't we all get on the phone when ever the call-in shows are talking about this and ask that Randall Terry guarantee a good family and adequate education (pre-funded, of course) if this child is forced to have a child? Doesn't that last sentence really say it all? A child having a child... seems a bit ludicrous to me.

Every once in a while, I think that us Lefties need to learn how to exploit the media to our benefit rather than ceding the media to the theocons. I hate saying it, but let's take as much advantage of this situation as the Republicans are and ask them if they really think it is reasonable for a 13 year old girl to be forced to give birth? Ask them if they truly believe that poor single mothers cause crime, then why do they refuse to do anything to prevent the creation of more poor single mothers? Ask them why, if they are so pro-life, they cease caring about the newborn baby after birth? Ask them why they are forcing this poor girl to give birth to a baby who won't be able to get any milk becuase they just cut the FUCKING FOOD STAMPS!!! We can, we should, we must push Republicans to explain how their beliefs work. LG should not be forced to walk into some church and beg the parishioners for money. If you're with me, put a comment on my blog, I'll post something for y'all to respond to.

ABC f-ing hypocrites

2005-05-02T16:15:00.000-04:00

Following reading this, this and this I decided to write a very polite letter to ABC News at netaudr@abc.com:

To Whom it may Concern,

I am writing following news reports that your network
intends to air advertisements for Focus on the
Family's child-rearing website during your show
"Supernanny." I was wondering if you could explain
why you would approve and run the ad from Focus on the
Family when your network refused to air the United
Church of Christ's ad promoting tolerance on your main
ABC network. It seems that the two organizations are
on either side of the ideological spectrum and, if
anything, the UCC is more mainstream than is Focus on
the Family. In addition, when you refused to air the
UCC ad you told CNN that "we do not generally accept
paid advertising that espouses a particular religious
doctrine," how is this case different?

I look forward to your explanation.

Accounting nuances and IOUs

2005-05-01T20:50:00.000-04:00

I've been thinking over the past couple of days about the Social Security trust fund. A lot of conservatives and Republicans have been arguing that the trust fund doesn't exist because, in accounting terms, the assets of the trust fund (treasury bonds) are netted against the liabilities of the overall government. This is a nice, nifty argument, but a simple review of corporate accounting standards shows that to be false. In corporate accounting, if a subsidiary owes some liabilities to a third party then you can not always consolidate the subsidiary. In this case, the government should not properly be consolidating the trust fund by netting the treasury bond balances against each other because: (1) the government shouldn't consolidate in this manner since the majority of the risk is borne by the beneficiaries (this is a de facto, not de jure distinction) and (2) the Federal government has not guaranteed the liabilities of the Social Security system, therefore assets and liabilities should be separate from the overall government balance sheet.

Please explain...

2005-05-01T17:00:00.000-04:00

So, if I am understanding some of the current economic issues correctly, wouldn't reducing the federal deficit reduce the available supply of low-risk, dollar-denominated assets for foreign central banks to invest in? If that is the case, then won't those banks have to make one of three choices?

Cease their currency intervention as there is no place to invest the dollars they would bring in, which would allow exchange rates to resume fluctuating causing the dollar to decline further against Asian currencies but also causing the Chinese renmibi to appreciate relative to other Asian currencies
Continue intervening in the currency markets, but bid up the cost of treasury and agency securities, putting downward pressure on interest rates (incidentally, if they purchased short-term bonds, wouldn't the Fed then need to sell bonds from their portfolio which would reduce the monetary supply and, according to Milton Friedman, leading to a recession?)
Continue intervening in the currency markets and invest the proceeds in the corporate debt and equity markets (so, finally getting into the realm of productive investments)

Bush press conference

2005-04-28T20:56:00.000-04:00

Is Bush even looking up before calling on the next reporter? I.e. does he already know whose hands are up (or is someone whispering in his ear?)?

2005-04-27T22:29:00.000-04:00

Lafayette is hding out in the ~~doghouse~~ cathouse

Poor guy

2005-04-27T21:25:00.000-04:00

I had some spare time this evening and ended up reading Christian Westermann's testimony to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee staff when I found this gem of a comment:

Mr. Foldi: I understand, but the question is, when
you submit the request, do you also submit the INR comments?
Mr. Westermann: We can, yes.
Mr. Foldi: You can, but do you?
Mr. Westermann: Yes we do.
Mr. Foldi: Routinely, often, once in a while,
periodically.
Mr. Westermann: You see, sometimes we submit
comments immediately or sometimes we wait for the demarche co-
ordinator to send a response out to the whole community. And
so in this case, I submitted our comments right away.
Mr. Blinken: Why would you do that as opposed to
waiting for it to come back from clearance?
Mr. Westermann: Because Fred had given me the
impression that they wanted this to move fairly quickly. So
instead of
-- I thought I was adding value to the process at the time. [Emphasis added]

Outsourcing

2005-04-21T10:18:00.000-04:00

Brad Setser has a very nice turn of phrase in a recent post:

The US has outsourced savings to China, and East Asia more generally. East Asia, has, in a sense, outsourced consumption to the US.

Democrat's should nationalize 2006

2005-04-21T09:03:00.000-04:00

Having just finished reading The System and today's Washington Post article on the low-priority that the Republicans are giving the economy, it occurs to me that the movement to have an off-year Democratic convention would be a good idea. Let's get everyone together and write a new psalm book so that in the 2006 campaign, all of the Democrats will be singing the same psalms. That is what Gingrich did, quite brilliantly, in 1994 where he managed to outflank the Democrats. Think about it, if we have a single consistent message (that should be easy to tailor to local specifics), then we can take advantage of the current journalistic tendency of "he said"/"she said" reporting because every Democrat would be making the same general argument ("It's the economy stupid"). But the only way this works is if we can get everyone together and develop a broad, high-level, principled message that all of our candidates can sign on to and simultaneously agree on what our wedge issues are and how to respond to Republican wedge issues. An example of a Democratic wedge issue was developed by Hillary Clinton earlier this year: let's put Republicans on the defensive that they are opposed to reducing abortions through intelligent family planing, force the Republican candidate to defend an absolute ban on birth control in order to paint them as an extremist.

Example:

R: "Why do you like to kill babies?"

D: "I hate that Republicans force some women to make the difficult choice to have an abortion. All of this would be easier if moderate Republicans would join with the Democratic party and pass common sense family planning and child care laws."

Pharmacists and the Pill

2005-04-18T23:24:00.000-04:00

As some of you may know, my mother is a pharmacist, but I have not yet asked her for her thoughts on the whole pharmacist's conscience concept. It seems to me that if this theory (that any employee can use their own conscience in deciding what to do) gets taken to extremes, then I could have, as an investment banker, have refused to work with a number of conservative organizations (like Richard Rainwater) without risking my job... alas, that is not the case. These pharmacists should realize that they are employees and that matters of conscience should be left ot management, where such decisions can properly be made.

The new Politburo

2005-04-16T14:38:00.000-04:00

Steve Clemons at the Washington Note wrote about Chuck Hagel:

"He takes his job very seriously, and while clearly conservative, he detests radicalism and doesn't like to see the institutions responsible for generating good public policy corrupted by bad ideologically-inspired agendas. In his mind, the Soviet Union excelled in party officionados commandeering the helm of government from civil servants who had jobs to do."

This got me to thinking that the way Bush runs the government is very much like the old Soviet system with hiring and firings based on hewing to ideology, not hewing to the truth. Even scarier is that at least in the Soviet system, there was more than one voice, but with Bush there is only one voice (but I'm not sure if it is George Bush or Dick Cheney)

Bush-style tricks on the far side of the pond

2005-04-15T23:48:00.000-04:00

This article in The Guardian is yet another example of politicians passing the buck on "mistakes" that are designed to inflame public passions against the existing government. For example:

Mr Howard attacked the Labour record on infection control and, to underline the point, gave figures showing "the number of people who contracted MRSA in your local NHS trust". Each letter included figures for the recipient's constituency.

...

Constituents in Harrogate and Knaresborough were told 247 patients contracted the infection at a trust where there were only six new diagnoses of MRSA bloodstream infections at the hospital.

...

A Conservative spokeswoman said the mistakes were due to a typographical error and there was no intention to mislead voters.

The letters should have referred to the number of infections "in your local trusts", not "in your local trust." Constituents had been supplied with the figures in good faith.

"It was not a tactic. It was a mistake. We are not so stupid as to send out letters of this sort thinking that hospital managers would be confused about their own figures."

I am appalled at this blatant abuse of voters' fears of a significant, but easily overstated, public health threat that can, at least partially, be blamed on rampant over use of antibiotics in sub-therapeutic doses in the agriculture industry.

In layman's terms... MRSA (methicillin resistant staph. aureus) can be traced to the feeding of antiobiotics as growth promoters to livestock around the world. So next time you buy meat at the grocery store, please think about what it means for something to be antibiotic free.

Republicans can never win...

2005-04-15T23:41:00.000-04:00

... on health care. Even now, with essentially absolute control of all the levers of government, the Republicans are unable to resolve the financial issues in Medicare and Medicaid that makes life very difficult when it comes to balancing the budget. For those of you who care, something similar happened in 1994/5 when the Gingrish and his allies insisted on deep cuts in Medicare and Medicaid spending coupled with large tax cuts. FYI--they lost that time. It feels like Bush is repeating the Clinton play book, just doing it with far less skill and slightly different issues (Clinton started with healthcare and had budget issues with healthcare while Bush started with social security and his having budget issues with healthcare).

This is one of those times where I wonder why Republicans can not admit that reasonable, national health care reform is essential to the economic security of this country?

2005-04-15T09:32:00.000-04:00

Friday cat blogging!

Wow... read things carefully

2005-04-14T14:52:00.000-04:00

We all think that clinical research is completely cut and dry, either a drug works or it doesn't. Well, if that is your belief than look at these two headlines and quotes.

From the Wall Street Journal: Alzheimer's Drug May Help Delay Onset of Disease

Researchers have shown for the first time that a drug can slightly slow the progression to Alzheimer's disease among patients with mild cognitive impairment.

The same study, presented at the American Academy of Neurology's annual meeting in Miami, also showed that vitamin E had no impact. A previous study had suggested that the popular supplement could be helpful in slowing the progression of Alzheimer's disease. The new study, led by researchers at the Mayo Clinic, will also be published in the New England Journal of Medicine.

It showed that people with mild cognitive impairment, or those with memory loss beyond normal aging, who took the drug donepezil were at reduced risk of progressing to a diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease during the first year of the trial.

and this one from Forbes: Two Agents Fail to Fight Off Alzheimer's

The results from a long-awaited trial found vitamin E did not slow progression from mild cognitive impairment to Alzheimer's, as had been hoped. Nor did donepezil (Aricept) display any benefit over three years, although it was associated with a lower rate of progression to Alzheimer's over the first year of use.

"Everyone thought vitamin E would work better earlier, but there's nothing there," said Dr. Deborah Blacker, author of an editorial which accompanies the article in the June 9 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.

"That's tremendously disappointing," she said.

The Aricept findings were not so absolutely negative but, according to Blacker, "there's no resounding sense that it's beneficial. There is some benefit, and patients could certainly choose to discuss it with their doctor."

Avian flu-Vietnam

2005-04-14T14:46:00.000-04:00

Now, I'm not at all a professional, but....

WHO's April 14 Vietnam report suggests that the mortality rate of H5N1 is declining, or, perhaps, doctors are becoming more adept at identifying those who are infected with the virus. Upshot is that rather than 70% case mortality it looks like the mortality may be dropping below 50% (Vietnam has 41 cases, 16 deaths and 6 in treatment, so 39% have died so far and if everyone in treatment dies then we get a 54% mortality rate). Anyway, this is hopefully a good sign. I've always suspected that there is a higher background level of infection than the WHO data has indiciated becuase I suspect WHO data assumes that only the lab identified (i.e. sick enough to seek treatment) cases count as having been infected.

Please read...

2005-04-12T20:36:00.000-04:00

I just wanted to encourage whatever readers I have to swing on by battlepanda's website. I've appeared in a few comments on health policy. Hmm.... wonder why....

FYI--I'll be accepting at Yale next week, let me know if you think that is a good/bad idea

Friday cat blogging...

2005-04-10T16:29:00.000-04:00

Sorry I didn't get anything put up until Sunday...

Fannie, Freddie and Johnnie

2005-04-07T11:08:00.000-04:00

I'm watching John Snow testifying on regulating Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. It is incredibly frustrating. I don't think John Snow knows what the hell he is talking about and I think his lack of lieutenants shows here.

DeLay and prostitution

2005-04-06T21:08:00.000-04:00

Tom DeLay is in favor of prostitution. This is the family values majority leader?

Republicans are fiscally conservative?

2005-04-03T18:11:00.000-04:00

Washington Post has an article today that points out some unpleasant economic reality for republicans:

"Under Republican presidents since 1960, the federal deficit has averaged $131 billion a year. Under Democrats, that figure is $30 billion. In an average Republican year, the deficit has grown by $36 billion. In the average Democratic year it has shrunk by $25 billion. The national debt has gone up more than $200 billion a year under Republican presidents and less than $100 billion a year under Democrats."

Now, based on that, it seems like the sotry is the Republicans are the party of mismanagmenet. If President Bush ran a company the Board would have voted him out a long time ago and the investors would have voted with their feet. Where is this myth that Republicans know what they are doing when it comes to managing a budget? They can't do it at the Federal nor State level, so it is times for Democrats to come up with an argument to counter this BS.

2005-03-30T22:30:00.000-05:00

Heh, someone seems to get me.

2005-03-25T17:56:00.000-05:00

Lafayette on the chair

Private vs Personal

2005-03-21T23:09:00.000-05:00

The New York Times quotes Jim McCrery as saying:

"'To most people 'privatization' means you're going to take the program out of the federal government and put it in the hands of private individuals totally,' said Representative Jim McCrery, the Louisiana Republican who is chairman of the House Ways and Means Subcommittee on Social Security. 'That's not what I'm proposing, and it's not what the president is proposing.

'Accounts are not private in the sense that that individual has complete control over those accounts. He doesn't. His investment choices are very limited. He can't take the money out for any reason other than retirement. And he must annuitize a certain portion of it upon retirement.'

In short, a frustrated Mr. McCrery said: 'They are not private accounts. They are personal accounts.'"

To me this sounds an awful lot like saying they are 401(k)'s with an annuity bell. Personally (or is that privately?), I don't think the annuity bell adds all that much and I would certainly say that a 401(k) is both a private and personal account, but I lean towards calling it a private account precisely because it has restrictions on its usage. My checking account is personal, my 401(k) is private!

Yay me

2005-03-21T18:02:00.000-05:00

I just got into Yale's MPH program in health policy

FOX

2005-03-20T23:42:00.000-05:00

Per Majikthise's request, I sent an e-mail to her long list of media e-mails. I got the following reply from Fox News:

From: postmaster@FOXNEWS.COM
To: msandersen2001@yahoo.com
Date: Sun, 20 Mar 2005 23:38:42 -0500
Subject: Delivery Status Notification (Failure)

This is an automatically generated Delivery Status Notification.

Delivery to the following recipients failed.

     foxreport@FOXNEWS.COM

Date: Sun, 20 Mar 2005 20:38:22 -0800 (PST)
From: Martin Andersen <msandersen2001@yahoo.com>
Subject: Terri Schiavo
To: Martin Andersen <msa25@columbia.edu>

I am writing to express my outrage at the poor treatment you, representing the media,
have given the issues raised by the litigation surrounding Terri Schiavo.  While it
is very simple and appealing to report that there is hope for her, the medical
evidence does not support this position.  What is more, you have singularly failed to
point out that Pres. Bush signed a law in Texas allowing hospitals to determine when
care is futile and deny further life-extending treatment (one infant died last week
as a result of this law, a man is expected to die this week and there is litigation
around a third individual right now).  I am apalled at your complete and utter
betrayal of the public trust by presenting such a one-sided display.

Regards,

Martin Andersen

Contact the media

2005-03-20T17:33:00.000-05:00

I would urge my readers (all one of them ;-) to write to media outlets like CNN and point out the slant in their coverage of Terri Schiavo. At this point they seem to be presenting a case of what is tantamount to judicially approved murder of an essentially conscious woman. The rulings from Judge Greer make clear that is not the case

Power of power

2005-03-18T17:47:00.000-05:00

Alright, other than a cheesy title.... there is a point to this post. A friend of mine who works on Capitol Hill once commented that you can't fully understand the awesome responsibility that comes with power (this was in reference to the need to take things slowly even if the decision seems obvious). I have come to agree through the most unlikely path: jury duty.

Who would've thought that jury duty can change my mind like that, but there is a difference when a judge asks you "Can you put aside your reservations?" and reminds you that there is an oath to do so... it is, frankly, somewhat scary to contemplate. Anyways, I got booted from that jury, but have certainly come to understand how important the responsibility will be.

Statistical problems...

2005-03-16T23:11:00.000-05:00

...when drug companies conceal clinical trials.

Okay, time for a really boring post. But hear me out. I want to propose an additional reason why all clinical trials ever done on or with a potential or actual drug should be disclosed to the public. Consider the following scenario, I have a drug that I claim can extend life (note, this trial design is really lousy, but the point still holds) so I design a clinical trial where I enroll 500 people to take my drug and 500 people to take a sugar pill and I study when they die. Now, in actuality, I'm worried about the results of the trial, but I know that if it works I will make more money than God, so I set up 40 clinical trials just like that! Well then, I get lots of different outcomes, sometimes the sugar pill works better, sometimes the "drug," the point is, the outcome of each of the 40 trials is random, but among the 40 trials, I can reasonably expect at least 2 trials where I can say that random chance explains them away less than 5% of the time. Aha! Now I have met the conventional statistical hurdle to get FDA approval and if I can conceal the 38 trials that didn't work and only show the FDA the two trials that did work, then I would be golden, despite the fact that the other 38 trials showed that the drug didn't work and despite the fact that overall the pooled data might also show that the drug didn't work.

Fortunately this is only a thought experiment as it would be cost prohibitive to enroll 40,000 people in a trial likely to last many years.

PAYGO Ammendment

2005-03-16T16:17:00.000-05:00

I just saw the tail end of the vote on adopting Pay-as-you-go budgeting rules for the Senate and the Republicans held open the vote until Sen. Allen voted No and then immediately closed the vote at 50-50, meaning the ammendment failed. This is an utter disaster. If you look at the Clinton Years, PAYGO was key to achieving a budget surplus and now the Republicans have demonstrated a lack of interest in ensuring fiscal sanity.

Random thoughts on paychecks

2005-03-16T11:06:00.000-05:00

I was reading an article on tax policy when I started thinking about how health insurance and payroll taxes are reported to employees. The latter actually comes up from an incident at NYSEC's Social Security Forum yesterday.

In the case of health insurance, the U.S. tax code allows the employer to deduct the cost of providing health insurance while exempting the insurance premiums from being taxed at the employee level. While I am not against this idea, I would like it if paychecks would indicate the cost of health insurance that employers are incurring on behalf of employees. The labor unions already look at health insurance in this manner.

In reference to Social Security, the paycheck only shows a 6.2% SSA tax, but the employer also needs to match that tax payment, so most economics think that if the SSA rate were changed then wages would be reduced to compensate for the increased employer contribution. Therefore, employees really should be thinking of the SSA tax rate as being 12.4%, rather than 6.2% (BTW--this was a subject of massive contention among the old ladies sitting next to me at the forum).

Coming attractions...

2005-03-12T01:27:00.000-05:00

I've been working on some thoughts about getting and distributing HIV treatments in Africa, so that post should be coming in the next few days (hopefully tomorrow, err... today). Also planning on posting about Hotel Rwanda, which I saw on Thursday. Really freaky movie and makes me quite embarrassed to be a Westerner

Any legal friends out there?

2005-03-08T23:09:00.000-05:00

Great quote from a Salon article:
"The filing by Acting Solicitor General Paul Clement argues that it is President Bush's decision, not the court's, to determine whether the United States should comply with international law. Nevertheless, the administration has chosen to do so in this case, states the Feb. 28 filing, which was circulated Monday by the court."

Now, it is my understanding that we signed the 1963 Vienna Convention (which is the law in question) and that the Senate ratified said treaty in 1969.

According to the Constitution, and inparticular Article 6 Section 2:
"This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding."

So, someone please tell me why denying foreigners access to their Embassy representatives is not a major problem?

Sick shit

2005-03-08T12:07:00.000-05:00

According to Effect Measures, the Bush administration is experimenting with inflicting pain from a distance (actually it is scientists, to be fair). Anyways, EM says here that:
The US military is funding development of a weapon that delivers a bout of excruciating pain from up to 2 kilometres away. Intended for use against rioters, it is meant to leave victims unharmed. But pain researchers are furious that work aimed at controlling pain has been used to develop a weapon. And they fear that the technology will be used for torture . . .

Bankruptcy bill

2005-03-06T23:36:00.000-05:00

Well, Talking Points Memo has been a class act in covering the Social Security debate and has now extended to covering the bankruptcy bill. Based on historical precedent, this should be quite good and the authors seem to be credible so far.

Cooking lessons

2005-03-06T22:13:00.000-05:00

Ha! I've found a plan for the next several weeks, alas, only beginning in two weeks. I've enrolled in a cooking class at the New School. Hopefully it should be a lot of fun as I will learn:

making stocks, soups, and simple sauces; and how to poach, braise, stew, saute, fry, roast, and broil a variety of poultry, seafood, meats, eggs, vegetables, and fruits

Sorry for not writing in a while

2005-03-04T21:54:00.000-05:00

Well, I made it to New York. Felt like a terribly painful process to get here, but I am done, thank god. First off, the truck was too short to hold my couch easily, so packing the truck became a complete mess. I had hired a guy to help me and thought I would only need him for 2 hours, but in the end he worked with me for 5 hours to load the f-ing truck. Of course, the driver was completely useless. Grrr..... And then the story of the storage site! I got too small a space! So frustrating. Thankfully David was smart enough to realize that we were going to have a problem before we struggled with packing the room, so we managed to avoid any major damage in the packing process.

Since then I had finally gotten my learner's permit and hope to get the driver's license soon (I know, so embarassing to have to admit that I don't have a license at 25). Did my taxes (yeah) and am finishing up the financial aid application for grad school. I'm really nervous about grad school, don't quite know what I will do if I do not get into school.

Oh fuck...

2005-02-22T23:06:00.000-05:00

I think that is the only possible reaction to this story where they say: "The dollar also weighed on markets as the greenback suffered its biggest intraday fall against the euro since August. South Korea's central bank said on Monday it planned to diversify its reserves, the world's fourth largest, into a greater variety of currencies. The move by South Korea fueled speculation that other central banks would follow suit. Fears of a weaker dollar diminishes foreign investors' appetite for U.S. assets."

It is time for our lovely, dim-witted f-ing stupid president to get his ass in gear and address the FISCAL problems facing this country and stop wasting his time on Social Security. I mean, how can he waste time talking about budget problems in 2042 when some of our closest ALLIES are effectively telling us to go fuck ourselves if we do not get to not just cutting the deficit, but generating real surpluses.

Distraction...

2005-02-22T23:00:00.000-05:00

If you ever wanted to see a Turkey explode, you should check out tonight's episode of Distraction

2005-02-22T18:50:00.000-05:00

Ok, so I know that I am wierd. I just realized that this morning I didn't step out of the shower pissed off and annoyed about the way in which I left my previous job. Usually I have gotten ticked off in the shower, it is where I think and where I used to think about the day's issues that I would need to address at work. Well, this morning I debated with myself various issues in healthcare while I was showering. To reiterate, I know this is wierd, but it is a positive thing for me.

Future job prospects

2005-02-17T17:04:00.000-05:00

So I just spoke with a guy who is interested in hiring me, but I am very confused about what exactly the job is and how he envisions it working since he knows that I am applying to grad school (indeed, he wrote three recommendations for the process). Basically, my concern is about the definition of full-time and how that would work with me taking classes as well. If, in the ideal world, I could work for his company doing corporate training, which generally happens over the summer, then I think combining this job with grad school would work, but that is my concern.

Longer story:

This is the fellow who taught me corporate finance and his partners who taught me financial modeling and accounting. They work for investment banks and other financial institutions and ususally teach the new hires over the summer, so there is a big bolus of work through the summer and then a much lower level of work during the academic year. My concern is that I have no good feeling on what time commitment is required during the year. I want to do this job, but I am not sure if it will all work out.

Give me your thoughts, if you want

FDA panel meeting

2005-02-16T09:55:00.000-05:00

Anyone have a CNN pass to access their video service? They are streaming the FDA panel meeting over the next three days on Vioxx, Bextra, Celebrex and Aleve safety.

FYI-- NEJM has three early release articles on their safety:

Assholes

2005-02-15T20:58:00.000-05:00

Need I say more?

Welcome to the computing plug

2005-02-15T20:52:00.000-05:00

An interesting article in the Register discusses a new chip called the Cell. IBM, Sony and Toshiba made some announcements about it this week. This is the chip that will power the PlayStation 3, but if you go and read the article and then the analysis of the patent specification here you can clearly see that this is designed for Grid computing. Hopefully my brother or David will read this and offer their far more insightful comments, but, in their absence, I will offer my own. If this chip takes off, looks like we will be living in a world where the telephone jack is replaced with a computing jack connecting us to a network of Cell computers, including our PS3's (more on them below), where all of our stuff will be done. Not sure that I believe it, but interested on your comments.

PS3 will be a supercomputer
Given that the Cell has a rated performance of 256 GFLOPS (billion floating point operations per second) while the slowest supercomputer on the Top 500 list has a sustained maximum spead of 850.6 GFLOPS, so you would need three Cell CPUs to beat the 500th supercomputer on the list while the PlayStation 3 will use four such cpus for a theoretical top speed of 1024 GFLOPS, which would put it 366th on the list.

Republicans (some) looking at raising taxes....

2005-02-14T08:53:00.000-05:00

Washington Post has a great paragraph on Bush's budget, though the whole article is worth reading too.

With a fix to the AMT, deficits in a decade would likely reach $650 billion to $700 billion, said Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.). "The days of being everything to everybody are quickly coming to a close," he said, adding that a permanent extension of the Bush tax cuts would make it politically impossible to borrow the full cost of a Social Security fix. "We have to look at the deficit in a holistic way."

That sounds like an admission that taxes will have to go up in the near future once reality sets in. Funny thing about Republicans and taxes: the largest tax increases have been passed by Republicans. I guess they just have an unstable relationship with tax rates because they lack the stomach for the large spending cuts necessary to make the budget balance.

Medical malpractice movie

2005-02-13T19:39:00.000-05:00

Nice little video add here, though it is kind of sad

Ketchup

2005-02-13T15:28:00.000-05:00

gladwell dot com / The Ketchup Conundrum
Very cool article on ketchup and how we detect taste. I think it explains the differences between a great cook and a good cook (look at the end), because at the end of the day, we can all get Daniel Boloud's ingredients, but where he does us one better is how well he balances the flavors together (this is what my mom does too...)

So let me get this straight...

2005-02-13T14:55:00.000-05:00

JustOneMinute: Does Your Model Have HAIR?
...the math on privatization only makes sense if we assume that the rest of the world economy grows faster than the U.S. economy (not in itself a reasonable assertion, but...). So by some nifty slight of hand the folks interested in privatization can continue to assert poor U.S. economic growth and justify their bullish assumptions for stock market returns by assuming strong growth in foreign economies. To me, this doesn't necessarily make a compelling case for privatization because now their would be a small, insured retirement benefit paid for by the U.S. economy, but retirees would only be able to live comfortably by relying on the growth of foreign economies. Not my idea of a comfortable old age!!

A really succint explanation of the perils of free-markets in emerging markets

2005-02-13T10:39:00.000-05:00

Crooked Timber: Efficient markets (addendum)
I've often shared the view expressed by this writer, but rarely have I seen it so clearly expressed. The point he appears to be making vis-a-vis emerging markets is that the free movement of capital is driven by two factors: the merits of investing in a particular country and the U.S. interest rates (since that is where most of the fast money investors peg their thinking). Actually, he only argues about the impact of U.S. interest rates, but I would include the first of the two pieces as well because there is typically a rational basis for initially investing in an emerging market. The crux of the problem, however, is that the exit is not rational and that is what causes substantial harm to the emerging market economies.

The New York Times > New York Region > AIDS Report Brings Alarm, Not Surprise

2005-02-12T20:05:00.000-05:00

AIDS Report Brings Alarm, Not Surprise
I just wanted to be sure that all of my lovely friends in NYC saw the series of articles (4 at my last count) in the New York Times about this new strain of HIV. One of the articles asks that all New Yorkers go off and get HIV tests so please do so. I will get one here in Chicago as well. Too scary to really contemplate all that much. Can you imagine going from your virile normal self to a victim of AIDS-wasting in a matter of months? This process that normally takes years somehow took months and there is all of one drug that seems to be effective. Oh and the only drug that appears to work is the $20k/year Fuzeon that is itself an unpleasant beast requiring two injections every day with a complicated prep process.

Brings up another very strange point about HIV/AIDS... for all the talk among Republicans about the evils of homosexuality, there is a very significant state role in the purchase and distribution of treatments for HIV/AIDS. I used to have the statistics in front of me, but something like half of all HIV/AIDS drugs consumed in the U.S. are purchased through state assistance programs. Best part about these programs: they negotiate formularies and prices with the manufacturers so the price I quoted for Fuzeon above is not what is paid by most of the states that supply it. Another problem with Fuzeon is that it is rarely used alone, typically one will use Fuzeon in combination with 2-3 other anti-retrovirals that cost 10-20k/year on their own.

Anyways, long story short, please get tested!

Not entirely lazy today...

2005-02-11T18:49:00.000-05:00

Had a somewhat productive day today. I made some more changes to my personal statement and think that it is almost done, if any of you, my intrepid readers, would like to read the statement, drop me a line. Also went off and bought some butane for my culinary torch so that I can experiment with creme brulee tonight.

Otherwise, pretty tame. Found out that my movers are going to charge me an extra $200 because I am moving the stuff to Brooklyn, but, worse things have happened.

Making progress on getting back to NYC

2005-02-10T19:04:00.000-05:00

Ah, the feeling of having gotten storage space and a company to haul my shit from Chicago to New York. Hopefully this move wont be too bad, but I generally hate moving. Anyways, I'm trying to sell some of my bulkier stuff, but haven't gotten any takers yet.

Also have my first interview scheduled for once I get back to NYC. I'll be meeting with a training consultant that does training for investment bankers. Not necessarily something terribly long term, but it could be a very rewarding job over the summer. I guess the most important thing is still hoping to get into grad school (ideally Yale, I think) for next year.

I'll post some more about St. Martin in a bit, just feeling a little bit lazy.

More about St. Martin

2005-02-10T11:40:00.000-05:00

Okay, so the trip was wonderful, once I figured everything out.

I was staying at a hotel on Orient Beach, which is an amazingly beautiful beach. When I first got to the hotel I went down to the beach, had a nice evening walk and a drink at a local bar called Bikini Beach. Unfortunately, the nightlife that I had been led to believe would be there was not to be found, indeed, it sounds like there is no nightlife on Orient Beach, only daylife. That being said, the next day I enjoyed the daylife enormously.

I went down to the beach around 10AM and got a beach chair and umbrella at a place called La Playa, this is the bar just to the north of Bikini Beach. As a brief primer, Orient Beach is about two miles long with family oriented places on the north end and a nudist colony at the southern end; I was basically in the middle of the beach. Anyways, I spent the day just hanging out on the chair, wading around a bit in the water (not really swimming water, more wading water, just too many waves for that). Also enjoyed the french tradition of women going topless on the beaches, although most of them were quite old and nasty (this is also why I didn't take many pictures of the beach, didn't want to seem like a nasty kind of fellow).

Thursday was also the day I lost my new sunglasses! Damn it, but oh well. hopefully that is what mastercard is for :)

Late update/continuation:
So that was thursday, friday was basically the same, though then I began feeling a little blue. I was somewhat frustrated by the lack of anything to during the night that was not ridicuously expensive, but on Saturday I discovered the bus system and resolved to have a fun evening on the town. Man, having fun can be a lot of work.

I headed over to Marigot (the capital on the French side) and had a drink at a restaurant there called La Vie en Rose (just celebrated its 25th anniversary) and then walked down the street for dinner. I found a nice local restaurant that was serving half a spiny lobster with fresh water prawns, really quite nice. I also met a doctor from Penn State who was on vacation with his daughter and we chatted for a bit while I was having dinner. It is always interesting to travel alone because clearly he was struggling for some grown-up conversation (his daughter is 13), so he figured I would be as good a target as any to chat with.

Following my time in Marigot, I grabbed a cab out to Maho Bay, basically the main nightlife area, where I hung out at a local bar for a while, lost $50 in the casino when I discovered how hard it can be to count cards in blackjack, and basically waited for a club called Bliss to really get started. A little past midnight I headed over there and started downing back cokes (this is my secret as it gave me the energy to stay up all night) and I ended up meeting a pair of talk radio hostesses from Baltimore and I made plans to meet up with them on tuesday as well. Around 3am I headed back to the hotel and ended up staying up until around 5am as I waited for the cokes I drank to wear off. Oh, another strange thing is the frightening number of people offering cocaine, marijuana and ecstasy outside the clubs. This is supposedly after the cops did a major bust, but the rumor is that the current drug dealers are in cahoots with the local cops.

More later

Leaving Paradise

2005-02-09T09:11:00.000-05:00

Well, the great plan on blogging my vacation didn't pan out to well. Wanted to spend too much time on the beach and in the bars. Briefly, St. Martin was great, but I've got lots of little pieces of advice for those of you thinking about going there in the future.

Stay around Simpson Bay, that is where all the nightlife is and you can always bus it or drive to the better beaches on the French side but late night driving/cabbing is not to much fun
Bring lots of US dollars with you (for a cash based society there is a surprising lack of ATMs here.... damn cruiseships)
Don't forget to use usnscreen liberally on your first day (speaking from my own stupidity here)

Anyways, I will see you all shortly

The first 48 hours on St. Martin

2005-02-04T14:38:00.000-05:00

Big piece of advice--if you are planning on lying on the beach worshipping the sun, remember to reapply the damn sunscreen!!! My body is screaming in pain following my failure to follow that simple piece of advice, then again, as with all well-learned lessons, I am unlikely to forget this one.

Let's see, the beach is beautiful, but I feel like I arrived too early. Not as many single women as one might have hoped. But oh well. That was not a huge part of the goal.

As said, I will keep my remarks brief, but, what is up with CNN only doing like 20 minutes on the state of the union last night???? That was insane. And their discussion of social security was terrible, I mean, great so we learn that there is uncertainty about the Liar's claim about bankruptcy but why not tell their viewers hoe the Liar defines bankruptcy (i.e. benefits drop to 75% of the expected level, rather than the 50% decline expected under the Liar's plan).

Anyways, later shivering losers

Fly, fly away

2005-02-02T06:17:00.000-05:00

I'm heading off to the lovely Caribbean this morning so, very cheekily, I won't be posting that much over the next several days.

Hope that you all survive the Misstakes of the Union tonight.

I am now officially a whore again

2005-02-01T20:06:00.000-05:00

So, for some strange reason I have agreed to be a "planted" homeless person if I am in New York at the end of February. Why would I do this you ask? Good question: $100

I know, I know, I promised to stop that stuff once I left banking, but I am the one who is making no money in my lovely state of unemployment, so please, don't lecture me on that :)

Good morning... err.... evening

2005-02-01T19:48:00.000-05:00

Welcome to my blog, not sure how exciting this will be, especially as I will be in St. Martin for the next week (drinks have to have little umbrellas or I will send it back).

Hopefully this effort will work out better than the last time I tried a blog.

Oh, check out my friend's blog at subvic.blogspot.com... it is always a good fun read

Anyways, I suspect blogging will be a good way to tell you, my loyal reader, about my life as I tend to tell stories in disorganized one to three sentence fragments.

Oh, I apologize to Kafka for stealing the title of an excellent short story for this blog, but, oh well, he is long dead.