This past Saturday I went on a short day hike in Yosemite with my friend David. Drawing on past experiences, I decided to ensure that not only had I sufficient water, but comfortable means of carrying it. This attempt was not without some lessons of its own.
Every month, I look at my Amex statement and boggle at the ‘minimum payment’. With such leverage, someone could buy a house, fill it with furniture, park a Mercedes in the driveway, and take off for a few weeks’ vacation on the shores of Lake Como. Would it be a good idea? Only if you’re terminally ill and want to have fun.
Current trends in home loans seem just as foolish. People are encouraged to pay only the interest, nay, even less than that, while being assured that since the value of their property can only go up, it will be no problem for them to refinance or sell. Yet even with such generous payment plans, people are still stretched to the limits. If you doubt, look at the impact of gas prices. Someone who can’t afford a few hundred extra dollars a month to fill their vehicle is unlikely to be able to afford the few thousand extra dollars it would take to actually pay their mortgage once their loans reset.
Saturday was the White House Correspondents’ Dinner. According to the official AP story, the evening featured light-hearted banter with President Bush and his Doppelgänger, comedian Steve Bridges. If you read the New York Times version of events, that’s all that occurred.
It’s always a strangely disturbing feeling to see a disconnect between events and the reporting of them. When it comes to technical subjects, this to to be expected, as few reporters are selected for their technical acumen. When it comes to political events, there can be little doubt that the scrubbing of “undesirable elements” from news is not an accident of ignorance.
So, here’s what was left out. Stephen Colbert, featured entertainer for the evening and host of The Colbert Report, delivered a monologue of exceptional bite. (Favorite quote: “reality has a well-known liberal bias”.) Transcript here.
Soccer season is back, our first practice was last Thursday! I had to stop by a couple of stores to find shoes in the right size. Apparently the average soccer player wears a size 39, because that was the one size decently represented on the shelves. (You might think the opposite, but the shelves were quite well stocked. It wasn’t a case of a gaping hole where the 45s should have been.) I managed to find a single (1!) pair that fit; a pair of blue Adidas boots that cost far too much.
Now that I can log into soda again, I’ve been catching up on some of my favorite newsgroups. Presented here are some of the finer snippets, Ã la a non-numeric Harper’s Index:
I suspect he’s not working on cheap power for the people, so much as petaJoule buckets of sunshine for sale to other nations and groups, for eventual delivery to various locations in the US. –Mike Andrews
“Instant sunshine”–Shalon Wood
The “Ohnosecond” has been suggested for that moment of realisation that comes from firing off a recursive file-delete in the utterly wrong directory — though I’d rather like to suggest the “Sphinctosecond” to reflect that brief arse-tightening sensation which inevitably accompanies the realisation that Things Have Just Become Not What They Should Be And It’s Your Fault.–Tanuki