Jim Rogers, Adventure Capitalist

I am currently reading Adventure Capitalist, by Jim Rogers, a favorite investment guru of mine. Traveling around the world in a modified Benz in 2003, Jim Rogers describes his journey through the lens of someone seeking environments conducive to free exchange. In other words, the more free a location is of government and/or military coercion, the more desirable it is as a potential investment opportunity. His perceptions on cultures and governments are eye-opening.

...and I am only sixty or so pages into it.

So far, they have entirely covered Europe. They have spent time listening to the Grateful Dead while cruising down one of the world’s best highways in Turkey -- an American made artifact from the Cold War. They have had dinner with American ex-pats in Central Asia -- men incapable of making it on Wall Street during the booming nineties who now have cushy government jobs touting the world about "American capitalism”. From there, they went on to deal with the uninviting mafia-type culture of the “new” Russia and viewed the repercussions of seventy years of Soviet central planning. The ecological disaster that once was the Aral Sea may take another seven thousand to heal. Once a source of an eighth of all fish in the Soviet Union, it now supports no life, drained dry by Soviet-built dams. Jim also describes being the first human being to drive across China three times. (Rogers wrote about an earlier travel in another book Investment Biker.) The incredible changes that have occurred in the short time between his trips are astonishing.

The interesting thing about travel is that our preconceived notions are almost always different than our perceptions once we have actually been there. Unlike most travelogues, I have found his perceptions of Asia to be very similar to those I have from my trips there, so I look forward to his views on the rest of the world.

Like I said, I have just begun this great read. If you like adventure, travel and a unique perspective, this is great stuff. I am guessing I will be elaborating on it more in the future.

One Trillion Dollars (Times Fourteen)

Yes, I talk about debt too much. Maybe I am obsessed -- after all, I do have a widget displaying our national debt on this very page -- but eventually, a day will come when even our government will no longer be able to ignore it.

According to this from the BBC, a presidential panel set up to help trim the US budget deficit is finally calling for steep spending cuts and tax rises. Unlikely to happen of course, but at least the elephant in the room is no longer being ignored.

The article shares a great quote from Honeywell CEO Dave Cote's US Chamber of Commerce speech last month. Here is an extended version:

And how much is a trillion dollars? How do we put that into perspective? We work with millions and billions... but how to explain a trillion dollars to someone and how much that is? This is the best way I have found to get across the enormity of a trillion dollars. If you had spent a million dollars a day, every day, since Jesus Christ was born 2010 years ago, you would still not have spent a trillion dollars. And by 2021, that will be our annual interest bill alone!

There are only three ways to get out of debt: 1) Do the right thing and pay it back; 2) Be ethical, admit you are over-extended, default and declare bankruptcy, or 3) Cheat your debt holders, counterfeit currency and pay back your debts in worthless notes.

Only two of the above choices are ethical and legal, but which one do you think our government will choose?

Thoughts on Bill Gates and His Money

I am an Apple guy, but even I can recognize Bill Gates’ real contribution to society. He, along with others, took a technology only affordable to the richest of companies and helped make it accessible to ordinary individuals. The world’s obsession with the wealth Bill Gates has accumulated from this is even more interesting than his actual story. Not that his story is boring. (In fact, if you have Netflix, check out Triumph of the Nerds, a dated, but fascinating three part 1996 PBS series that chronicles the start of the personal computer business.) But more importantly, how we view his wealth says as much about ourselves as it does him.

First, there is the question of whether he deserves it. The genius of Bill Gates is that he started a multi-multi-billion dollar company based off a software he didn’t even create. He purchased it for around $75,000. What made Bill Gates was his vision, taking the creation of others and repackaging and re-purposing it to fill a need, albeit a far greater need than even he envisioned. Ideas are what create wealth, but even ideas are only ideas until they are actually implemented. The man who created that software had no idea how big his creation could possibly be. Fortunately, Bill Gates did. Therefore, his wealth is proportional to the things he created, the foundation of an entire industry.

The second thing I find interesting about his wealth is how everyone seems to have an opinion about it. When average Americans look at someone who is better off than themselves they seem quick to talk about economic “fairness”. But the fact that Bill Gates has more money than any one man could ever possibly need does not give anyone the right to think they should have access to it or any kind of authority in redistributing it.

I am reminded of a conversation I once had with my Chinese friend Vincent, who questioned American “greed”. When the average Chinese gets by fine with an annual income of around $3,000, why would any American need to make more than $30,000 a year? After all, he mused, any more than that just means you are filthy stinking rich. It is all a matter of perspective, I guess. Either way, Vincent or anyone else has no more right to my “excess income” any more than I or anyone else has to Bill Gates’.

We spend too much time worrying about what other people have. In fact, it makes us miss the forest for the trees. As Economist Donald J. Boudreaux has aptly pointed out, if a time traveler from the 1700’s were to visit the Gates’ household today, he would marvel at the same things you and I share in common with Gates:

...a good guess is that the features of Gates's life that would make the deepest impression are that he and his family never worry about starving to death; that they bathe daily; that they have several changes of clean clothes; that they have clean and healthy teeth; that diseases such as smallpox, polio, diphtheria, tuberculosis, tetanus, and pertussis present no substantial risks; that Melinda Gates’s chances of dying during childbirth are about one-sixtieth what they would have been in 1700; that each child born to the Gateses is about 40 times more likely than a pre-industrial child to survive infancy; that the Gateses have a household refrigerator and freezer (not to mention microwave oven, dishwasher, and radios and televisions); that the Gateses’s work week is only five days and that the family takes several weeks of vacation each year; that each of the Gates children will receive more than a decade of formal schooling; that the Gateses routinely travel through the air to distant lands in a matter of hours; that they effortlessly converse with people miles or oceans away; that they frequently enjoy the world’s greatest actors’ and actresses’ stunning performances; that the Gateses can, whenever and wherever they please, listen to a Beethoven piano sonata, a Puccini opera, or a Frank Sinatra ballad.

In short, what would likely most impress a visitor from the past about Bill Gates’s life are precisely those modern advantages that are not unique to Bill Gates–advantages now enjoyed by nearly all Americans.

Again, how we view wealth is all a matter of perspective.

Now having said that, like everyone else, I also have an opinion about how he should spend his wealth. I would never seriously question the merits of The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation -- because, as I pointed out, it is their money to do with as they wish. On the other hand, while many people look on with admiration at their great philanthropy, I do have to wonder, is this the best application of their wealth?

Bill Gates is one of the greatest capitalists that has ever lived. He helped create a product that didn’t exist a generation ago, one that many today could not imagine living without. In doing so, he has played a large part in the creation of millions of jobs, made hundreds of thousands of people wealthy, and increased the production of our entire society. No matter how many billions he may give away in his lifetime, this will always be his greatest contribution. The most philanthropic thing Bill Gates could do with his wealth would be to continue doing what he does best by staying in the business world and creating more wealth.

From Shanghai to Karlstad (Minnesota, that is)

While visiting Shanghai a few years ago, I had a conversation with a Chinese tour guide. He asked me what I did for a living and I explained how I touched up pictures all day that went into magazines. He didn’t quite get it until we happened to drive by the Ritz Carlton. Then I proudly explained how my name was in every room of that hotel, more precisely, in the publishing credits at the front of every Ritz Carlton in-room magazine. We had a good chuckle about how I am almost famous.

Playing in Photoshop is a wonderful way to make a living. But processing thoughts and writing them down is my mental release. It is not the act of writing I like. After all, my spelling sucks, my grammar sucks, and my sentence structure often makes no sense. It is the process of condensing my thoughts into words that I love. I do pictures for a living, but writing is my hobby. That is why I do this blog. Although few people read it, that is not the point. Writing is an exercise to give voice to those crazy thoughts that occasionally wake me up at three in the morning. They say people who don’t dream will eventually go crazy, that dreams are a way for our minds to purge all the nonsense swimming around in our brains. Well, I guess that is how writing thoughts into words works for me. It keeps me from going crazy.

So last week when my brother Bubba felt it worthy to use my post-election blog post in his weekly newspaper column, it reminded me of my conversation with my driver in Shanghai. I may have my name in the publishing credits of every in-room magazine in every Ritz Carlton in every major city on this planet, but seeing my words in a small weekly newspaper in northern Minnesota was every bit as thrilling. Thanks Bubba.

What Voters Want Voters Never Get

There was a somewhat insightful opinion post on the Baltimore Sun site after the election that I gleaned from a friend on Facebook. In it, the author accurately points out the unrealistic expectations of what we expect our government to provide us.

An excerpt:

After devoting long minutes to careful analysis of Tuesday night's election returns, I now know what Americans want:

We want roads and bridges that are always in good condition but do not require tax money for upkeep.

We want world class schools with teachers who are so dedicated that they will work for minimum wage. (Note: the best one should be in my neighborhood)

We want 60-inch plasma TVs that cost $200 and are produced by workers in Ohio making at least $30 per hour.

We want our military to win every war, every heart and every mind, everywhere, at no cost in lives or money.

He then goes on to site another half dozen or so similar points. Curiously, there is an obvious topic missing: healthcare. No where does he mention something about how we want world-class healthcare and we want it for free. Ask an American how much he spent on his flat screen and he will gladly brag about it. Yet that same soul will complain to no end if he has to spend a dime of his own money on his own well-being.

...but I digress.

I give kudos to the author for recognizing how out of whack our expectations are of what government can "provide". Yet he seems to ignore the possibility that maybe government shouldn't be providing any of these things.

Americans have lost the realization that our government was not created to "provide" for us. It was created to protect us so that we may actively pursue providing for ourselves. Instead, we have been conditioned to believe that our right to vote gives us license to steal from each other, ignoring that no matter how just we see the cause we vote for, stealing is still stealing. We take turns at the government trough, thinking that a 51% majority gives us the right to steal from the other 49%. We look to government to "provide" us all our wants and needs, then get mad at "the other side" when they do the same thing.

It brings to mind the old quote,

"Democracy is nothing more than two wolves and a sheep deciding what to have for dinner."

And although I can agree with Mr. Nachlas when he says:

Personally, I want leaders who will tell us frankly that all these things are not possible, that the blessings of infrastructure and education given us by our fathers are wearing out.[...]I want leaders who will tell the truth: that there is no free lunch.

I have to respectfully disagree when he says:

I want thinkers who can paint a picture of a greater America that could exist in 50 or 100 years, and then unite us with a roadmap to get there. I want America to have a shared vision and an understanding that we all benefit when we all contribute, and that we all suffer when we demand only for ourselves.

The simplistic notion that we can elect "thinkers" who can plan our future is exactly what got us here in the first place.

Let's do a quick thought exercise. Think back one hundred years -- no let's just do fifty -- say 1960. What "thinker" could have painted the world we live in now? I cannot even begin to touch on the millions of social changes, innovations and conflicts that have complicated our world since 1960. Who then would have accurately envisioned the wars in Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, the attacks of 9/11 and how that completely changed our world view, the rise of the personal computer, smart phones, the Internet, Google, Intel chips, flat screen TVs, Oprah? No one.

Our world is too complicated to be centrally planned. When we expect our government to "deliver all these things", we can only expect -- no, do I dare say -- we only deserve what we get.

When we expect the government to "provide" for us, we get stupid things like governments declaring Happy Meals are illegal. Then we are surprised when our elected officials think they have the right to decide who can marry who, or what consenting adults can do, or what plants people can cultivate. Indeed, the list of their involvement in our lives becomes endless. And we give it to them every time we vote for them to "provide" for us. As Americans we used to be productive, innovative, independent. Now we have become a nation of leeches taking turns sucking off the government teet.

Again, I end with a quote from the great French "thinker" Frederic Bastiat:

"Men naturally rebel against the injustice of which they are victims. Thus, when plunder is organized by law for the profit of those who make the law, all the plundered classes try somehow to enter -- by peaceful or revolutionary means -- into the making of laws. According to their degree of enlightenment, these plundered classes may propose one of two entirely different purposes when they attempt to attain political power: Either they may wish to stop lawful plunder, or they may wish to share in it."

We have obviously chosen to share in it.

I want America to have a shared vision and an understanding that we all benefit when we all take responsibility for ourselves and stop trying to use the voting box as a way to enrich ourselves. We need to stop participating in legal plunder. Until then, we all suffer when one side wins an election -- and it doesn't matter which side that is.

The BCS vs A Playoff System

This has been a crazy year for college football. According to a great blog by ESPN’s Ivan Maisel, since the inception of the BCS in 1998 only twelve teams have played in the twelve BCS Championship games. Of those twelve games, four SEC teams have gone undefeated, winning half of them.

Oh, how things have changed. As of today, none of those teams are in the top five. According to Maisel, it ain’t looking good for the traditional power houses. “In the era of the BCS Championship Game, only three teams have climbed from outside the top five 10 weeks into the season and into the final game. All three are SEC teams -- No. 8 Florida in 2008, No. 7 Florida in 2006 and No. 9 LSU in 2003 -- and all three won the championship.”

With only one SEC team in the top 10 (#10 LSU), it looks like things are going to wrap up differently this year. Is the world really ready for a Championship game potentially containing the Horned Frogs, the Utes, or the Broncos?

I can already hear the annual lament starting: when will the BCS be scrapped and a playoff system installed? I am with them. The BCS bowl sites could still be used for the final rounds, eliminating their financial worries. And teams that don’t make the playoffs could still play in traditional bowl games. With a sixteen team, five week playoff system, the season would still be virtually the same length, ending somewhere in mid January. And, most importantly, the Championship would be decided on the field, not by computer or some voter’s whim.

It would be more exciting, more revenue generating, and down-right logical. Oops. Logical. That’s why it will never happen...

A View of the World Via The Window of Africa

How we view the world --and all things in general -- is often inaccurate, distorted, biases and/or, at the very least, incomplete.

Here is a great example. Although I can't vouch for the accuracy of this graphic, it does a nice job of exposing our tendency toward what the creator defines as "immappancy."

As someone with a social science degree, I am a bit ashamed to admit that I would have visualized the US as larger than shown here.

The Parking Lot

Okay, I have to admit, I am somewhat of a bigot -- at least when it comes to fat people and parking lots. I have this thing about going to places with big parking lots. I detest sitting in my car waiting for people to back out, or dilly-dally as they move their carts, or cringe as they park in the middle of the road, waiting ten minutes for some slow poke to get in their car so they can take their spot.

This is why I park in the first available spot. I don’t care if it’s a half a mile away from the store. I don’t care if it’s over one hundred degrees outside. I park as far away from the entrance as possible.

Besides, the closer you park, the fatter you are. I am not making this up. The next time you are sitting in your car at the store, just watch for yourself. It is an amazing phenomenon. And I always wonder, do these people even realize this? Ironic, isn’t it? The people who are the most in need of a little extra exercise tend to be the ones that drive around for a half an hour so they can park six spots closer to the front door.

Look, I can in no way be considered thin, but just on this observation alone, I am walking the length of the parking lot.

Only in LA

Okay. Do I have this right? The future ownership fate of the Los Angeles Dodgers is presently at stake in a high profile divorce case. The owner’s ex is trying to lay claim to the team even though she signed a prenuptial agreement.

Her defense? She didn’t read it.

Actually, that may be over-simplifying it. But this blog, dodgerdivorce.com, gives the day-by-day court proceedings if you want a more in-depth analysis. Fun stuff if you like dirty laundry and wallowing in other people’s misery.

By the way, can you guess the ex’s previous profession? You know, the one that is using ignorance as her defense against a signed prenup? Yes, she was a lawyer.

Only in LA...

My Friend's View on 1070

I am occasionally asked about my opinion on 1070, Arizona's controversial immigration law. In fact, I have been in a few "discussions" on Facebook about it. It is a subject that doesn't work too well in that format, though. One or two lines isn't enough to explain it very well. Explaining my position takes some time and length and I just haven't gotten around to it yet.

Before I do, I thought I would share this from a friend. Although his history is quite different (and more interesting than my homogeneous rural upbringing), outside of the conflict he feels on the subject, much of his reasoning falls in line with mine.

Hopefully, I will get around to writing my thoughts on the matter soon. In the meantime, take this wonderful perspective into account:

I've been digging with a tiny shovel lately. After the national events of the last 10 years I've rolled back quite a bit: too stressful. I have generally been avoiding political discourse on facebook as working in the public sector, I am concerned that it could cause me some professional heartburn at some point.

Honestly, I have not read the bill, but my S.O. has and I trust her interpretation.

This is probably going to bounce around a bit so bear with me.

Some background: I'm a Phoenix native. I did not realize it at the time but I grew up in a lower income neighborhood (there were worse) and went to a fully integrated inner-city high school.

In my youth, I was aware of illegals, generally known as "wetbacks" even though there is no river on the border. I don't think there were any at my grade school. The "Chicanos" or Mexican Americans or whatever they were called then (I called them Robbie or Pablo or whatever) got really mad if they got called wetback, because they were from HERE. Of course some of my Anglo friends called them that because they didn't like people that weren't Anglo. (Interesting side note: Anglos and Hispanics all called Joe at Joe's market a chink)

Once I got into high school, there were probably some illegals in the mix, but the only ones I knowledgably ever came into were the dishwashers at Bill Johnson’s Big Apple where I bussed tables for a short time. They taught a few of us some choice words in Spanish usually by calling us it. The Anglo and Black staff would occasionally yell “la migra” just for fun and watch them all run out the door opposite where the yelling was coming from.

The high school was a bit tumultuous, usually along racial lines, and I was a victim of racial attacks on several occasions, and I had some friends at a neighboring, more Anglo school that precipitated violence in the other direction.

A few years after high school, I went into the construction trades, specifically, painting. On the job sites, only 2 trades had illegals, landscapers, and plasterers (but usually only the stucco plasterers on the housing tracts).

Jumping now to present day:
I live in the neighborhood where Pruitt’s Furniture is. About 5 years ago, along Thomas road near the Home Depot was “day laborer central” on any given morning there would be 200+ day laborers in front of the Home Depot, and probably several hundred more along Thomas between 40th and 32nd street. Sheriff Joe started some round ups, some left. [My S.O. was] at ASU working on her bachelor’s then her master’s degrees. We went to a few city zoning/planning meetings one of which some executives from Home Depot were there, wanting to put in a “new mini-urban Depot at the old Toys-r-us location at 7th and Camelback. The conversation quickly turned to “not if it becomes like your 36th and Thomas store.” The reply was “we are aware we have a problem there.” A time later the signs went up, some of the laborers left, some just moved over by the Wal-Mart, some moved up the street to the 7-11.

Now, where does this put me? Conflicted. I’ve lived around immigrants of one generation or another all my life; I’ve been around racism all my life. Immigrants I can live with, most of the time. Racism I have no stomach for.

Now, as I previously discussed, there is no way that hundreds of humans can get together in those numbers for any length of time, before problems arise, whether it be just litter or if it escalates to violence. Additionally, it was quite obvious that there was not enough work for the amount of people looking for it, and this was before the housing bubble burst.

Meanwhile, the illegal immigrants come in via traffickers that seem to be expensive and abusive, preying on their fellow humans. Those traffickers more than likely have colleagues that also traffic drugs. I’ve lived here all my life and I know, without a doubt, that lots of drugs come through Phoenix from Mexico. Then there is that boogeyman “terrorist” that could come through a border like a sieve.

I’m conflicted about this bill because I am certain it has it’s roots in racism, but parts of it go after “those traffickers.” I’m conflicted, because if I support it, I can see myself getting lumped in with racists.

There’s the emotion, now some practicality:

Is this enforceable? Do our local law enforcement departments actually have the resources to follow through with the requirements? I doubt it.

Will this actually save money on the bilked medical bills etc. vs. the lawsuits that are sure to result? I doubt it.

Will this actually change anything? I doubt it. It certainly won’t get any incumbents out of office in November that supported it, nor, in other districts remove those against it.

Part of me thinks something needs to change, and I would rather it not be my cushy environment. I would like to see “those traffickers” go away. I would like immigrants to come in, but in smaller numbers, and so we know whom they are and that they want to work, raise families, and be grateful for the opportunity and not to sell our kids cocaine and heroin.

Most of the time though, this bill feels like being given a piece of notebook paper to cure the flu I might have. Sure, I might be able to blow my nose with it, but not very well, and it certainly is no cure.

For many, this bill seems to be a distraction to what the problems actually are. Californians seem to be loudly screaming “that’s racist” while they have some pretty heavy security on their southern border. My recent trip through California took us past 4 Home Depots where there were zero day laborers at any of them. Methinks they want those illegals to stay, or at least be filtered through AZ. None of those boycott leaders that I heard invited them into their community, nor petitioned the feds to send their border security resources to Arizona. I find that just damn hypocritical.

For others, the best thing to come out of this is open discussion of the real issues. The legal immigrants that I work with tell me that the process to become citizens is a 10-year process, and full of hoops to jump through. That seems excessive to me. One of them shared a story about their dad loosing or misplacing his green card. It took him 6 months to get a replacement. These things need to be streamlined.
Other items:
Corrupt Mexican government, still
Failed war on drugs, still

Here are some steps that might start to fix things:
Raise the quota for immigrants from Mexico.
Cut the wait for citizenship red tape.
Start looking at Mexicans living in heavy drug cartel violence areas as refugees.
Legalize pot, not decriminalize, legalize, regulate and tax.
As far as the corrupt Mexican government, I’m not sure where to begin there, but pulling a tooth or 2 out of the cartels might be a good place to start.

History Repeats

First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out --
Because I was not a Socialist.

Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out --
Because I was not a Trade Unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out --
Because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me -- and there was no one left to speak for me.

-Martin Niemöller (Germany circa 1940)


First they came for the illegal immigrants, and I did not speak out --
Because I was not an illegal immigrant.

Then they came for the Hispanics, and I did not speak out --
Because I was not a Hispanic.

Then they came for those with foreign accents, and I did not speak out --
Because I had no foreign accent.

Then they came for me -- and there was no one left to speak for me.

-Dane Nordine (Arizona circa 2010)

Off To The Next Bubble

Sorry for the doom and gloom, but I have lost patience with those seeking hope and those regurgitating rah-rah political platitudes about re-surging American greatness. I over hear conversations all the time about how our economy seems to have turned the corner. Things are getting better. Perception is reality, after all. If we wish it hard enough, maybe it will be true. In all things, we believe what we want to believe, what is convenient, what suits us best. Confirmation bias makes us instantly recognize those things that confirm our beliefs and subconsciously ignore those that contradict. So goes the economy.

The improvements in our economy remain nothing more than mis-perceptions because we ignore these simple truths: our economy is based on debt rather than equity; we concentrate too much on spending rather than producing anything of value; and, we ignore that real value is created from intelligent labor, not a printing press.

It is becoming obvious we have learned nothing from our past bubbles because we ignore how they came about in the first place. Therefore, we are destined to repeat them.

We want things to get better. Unfortunately, we spend so much time trying to convince ourselves that things are better without recognizing the errors that got us here in the first place. Rather than fix anything, we would rather create another bubble -- this time in the US Dollar -- and rebuild our economy on more false premises, rife with new forms of malinvestments. I greatly fear this new bubble will dwarf our preceding tech bubble and housing debacle.

As a country and a society, we have a choice to make: we can take our current path and delude ourselves that it is possible to borrow our way to prosperity, or, we can take the more difficult path and recognize that we must roll up our sleeves, spend less, pay off debt, save more, and use our labor to produce things of actual value.

It scares me that some of the smartest are betting against our ability to make the right choice. As Nassim Taleb put it recently in an interview with the guardian.co.uk: “I also have an exit strategy that others don’t: I make bets against US Treasury bonds. People lecture Greece about debt, but the Greeks are not in debt in comparison with America; in America debt is uncontrollable.”

Unless we are willing to recognize that our love affair with debt is creating our next bubble, we, as Americans, may have seen our better days.

The Whigs -- Black Lotus

Well, I am real excited to be off to see the Whigs (with the Hold Steady) in Santa Fe this week, so I put together this cheesy video as part of my self-training in Adobe After Effects. It is pretty stripped down and basic, but I gotta' start somewhere. I figure I will redo it as I advance.

Fun stuff. I obviously have a lot to learn, though...

Happy Fourth of July.

Is Digital As Green As We Think?

This article that Nicole put together for our company’s intranet gives a great example of how we often assume something to be true without giving it a second thought:

“Please consider the environment before printing this e-mail.”
“Sign up for paperless billing, help the environment and save trees.”

In the ongoing quest to be green, these types of phrases are seen daily. And as a publisher of various print publications, McMurry deals with clients everyday looking to go digital, not just to save money, but to improve their image with the community as an environmentally conscientious organization.

However, a recent article on MediaShift, a PBS website dedicated to the “digital media revolution” shows a very different point of view on the paperless topic and asks the question, “is it possible that digital media could be more destructive to the environment and a greater threat to trees, bees, rivers and forests in the United States than paper-making or printing?”

Before screaming out an emphatic, “No way!” the article is definitely worth a read. The author, Don Carli, is not out to deter the reader from using digital media as may first be suspected or assumed. What he is suggesting is that consumers should be more aware and informed about the energy sources for both digital and print, rather than making assumptions and uneducated decisions.

The article goes on to show how the energy used by digital media technologies can be as destructive in its creation as cutting down trees for paper. In the article, Carli points out that in the U.S. alone, electricity consumption by data centers has doubled from 2000 to 2006 and will likely double again by 2011. With coal mining and coal-fired power plants still being a major source of electrical power in the U.S., digital media and its ever-increasing use of that electrical power are thus, substantial contributors to deforestation, loss of wildlife and pollution in the U.S.

In fact, while print media has been in the spotlight for “killing trees” for years, leading printer and paper manufacturers to initiate sustainable forestry, renewable energy projects and environmental performance certification, digital media and the energy consumed to manufacture and use it has gone virtually unchecked.

So, check out the article and become more informed about what going paperless and using digital products more frequently may mean for the environment.

Story submitted by McMurry Senior Production Manager Nicole Dean.

Netflix: Run Fast and Stay Focused

A year ago, my household decided to eliminate cable television.

There were several reasons for this: One, if we kept it, we would feel obligated to watch it or else we would feel like we were wasting money. Two, eliminating it would remove clutter and unnecessary noise, allowing us to read more. Three, although we would miss access to certain channels, we wouldn’t miss 95%+ of them. Four, we decided to explore experiencing life more. TV is an opiate. It’s influence needed to be reduced. Five, much of what is on -- news, dark-themed shows, political talking heads, etcetera -- has negative psychological effects and little positive return. And six, it would save us some money.

It wasn’t easy. Although we can obviously still get the local channels, we miss the plethora of college football on Saturdays and the total baseball coverage during the summer. Luckily, we have some great sports bars within walking distance of our house and not having cable creates a great excuse to visit them. (Of course, that eliminates cost savings as one of our goals.)

The elimination of cable doesn’t mean we gave up on TV as an entertainment medium. With Internet, we still have access to things like Hulu and programing direct from networks’ sites. We also have Netflix.

Oh, the beauty of Netflix. Although they claim to be a secondary source for entertainment, we are finding they have become our primary source. While we constantly have the dvd-by-mail thing going on, we have found there is more than enough instant access to streaming content, all for the same nine dollar a month fee.

They are big and are only getting bigger. Check out this incredible breakdown of how Netflix sees their business model evolving. They have totally wiped out Blockbuster -- and, contrary to their claim of not wanting to become the primary source provider -- may end up being just that for people like us who don’t feel the need to be plugged into the ‘great opiate’.

At some point, we found it redundant to have cell phones AND a home phone. The home phone went away. In the same way, we have now accidentally stumbled upon the unnecessary duplication of our entertainment suppliers. By avoiding the pay-per-view model and ad supported content, we have discovered Netflix’s simple low-cost strategy fits our needs just fine.

Bye-bye cable, hello Netflix.

Protecting Cyberspace

Freedom sucks. Let’s get rid of it.

...and let’s start with the Internet.

According to an article on the PC Magazine website this week, The Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee unanimously approved the Protecting Cyberspace as a National Asset Act of 2010 (S. 3480) which now moves to the Senate floor for a full vote. The article states: “The bill is an over-arching cyber-security measure, which would, among other things, create an office of cyberspace policy within the White House, which would be led by a Senate-appointed director. It would also create a new center within the Homeland Security Department, which would implement cyber-security policies.”

Hooray! A Cybersace Czar! Now we are safe! (BTW - How many Czars do we have now? Isn’t it ironic that “Czar” is synonymous with totalitarian authority borrowed from our Russian comrades, and that we now have more “Czars” in our government today than the Russians ever did in their entire history?) Only the government would come up with the idea of a top-down authority figure to oversee a system that beautifully evolved around no centralized structure.

The Homeland Security put out their own propaganda combating the notion that this bill would give the President a “kill switch”, going so far as claiming: “Rather than granting a “kill switch,” S. 3480 would make it far less likely for a President to use the broad authority he already has in current law to take over communications networks.”

Really? They are claiming this bill would “restrict” the President’s authority? That would be a first. The President already has "broad authority...in current law"? Why create a bill then?

And what in the world would ever give them the idea that government bureaucrats could administer directions in an emergency better than the private sector that actually created those systems?

In fact, in the previously mentioned propaganda piece, the government even admits: “For too long, the federal government has failed to adequately account for security when procuring information technology products and services. S. 3480 would require the government to develop a strategy to consider security risks in information technology procurements. It would be similar to efforts already under way at the Departments of Defense and Homeland Security.”

The bill would “would require the government to develop a strategy to consider security risks”? They haven’t already been doing that?

They openly admit they have been inept at securing their own systems and their solution to that is to have more control over security in the private sector?

Look, risks do exist. That is the inherent “problem” with freedom. Unfortunately, as usual, our government uses fear to create yet another all-encompassing knee-jerk reaction that does more to destroy the very liberties it claims to protect.

Government already has the authority to protect assets already under it’s own control. Maybe it should work on taking care of them first before it starts giving itself any more authority.

Protect the power grid. Protect federal sites. But hands off the private sector in the name of protecting us. Protecting the free flow of information by controlling it is not freedom.

Venture Capitalism Made Easy

Once in awhile, I like to follow up on the Kiva project I have been working on since 2007. The non-profit site Kiva.org has made it easy for me to fund entrepreneurs from around the world, twenty-five dollars at a time.

I loan them money. They pay me back. I re-invest it to others.


I am currently on pace to fund my 70th venture by the end of this year. Although this really is charity considering I don’t get any interest in return for my backing, I do have the option of pulling my funds out rather than reinvesting them. I don’t see myself ever doing that, though.

Yes, I may be a dirty rotten capitalist pig, but it is just too much fun seeing the poorest people in this world pulling themselves up by their own hard labor. It is even more fun knowing I am playing some small role in it.

For more info on how you can help change the world one person at a time, go to Kiva.org.

Monsters of Folk

A week or two ago, I asked a friend when I could expect to see another My Morning Jacket album. She said it will be awhile since the lead singer Jim James is busy with his other project, Monsters of Folk.

After giving their album a listen, Wow!, what a project it is. Although there is “folk” in their name, iTunes classifies it as “country” and allmusic.com claims it is “squarely in the “classic rock” camp.” In other words, there is some cross-over likability here.

I will have a tough time picking just one song of this solid album for my year-end favorites mix come December .“Whole Lotta Losin” comes on like a Traveling Wilburys mover. “Sandman, The Brakeman And Me” is a bit slower, but down-right perfect. With the production and James on lead vocals, “Losin Yo Head” has a MMJ feel to it -- just what I have been missing. “The Right Place” has the country-twinge of 70’s rock. And “His Master’s Voice” reminds me why I was so captivated by the power of simplicity captured on The Cowboy Junkies’ breakthrough album The Trinity Sessions so many years ago.

Most of the stuff I like and listen to does not have the wide appeal this does. In other words, get it. You won’t be disappointed.

Henry Hazlitt's Economics In One Lesson

The lesson of Henry Hazlitt’s book Economics in One Lesson: The Shortest and Surest Way to Understand Basic Economics is based on the premise of unintended consequences, or more precisely, that “The art of economics consists in looking not merely at the immediate but at the longer effects of any act or policy; it consists in tracing the consequences of that policy not merely for one group but for all groups.” In other words, economic policies are driven by a desire to “help” one group while ignoring the effects those actions have on all other groups.

The first chapter explains the lesson. The remaining chapters apply them to potential policies.

In this age of economic uncertainty, this 60-plus year old book remains relevant. Take, for instance, this snippet. It is impossible to do so without thinking about the trillions of tax dollars our government has dumped into poorly run businesses like GM and AIG and squandered "stimulating" industries in general:

“It follows that it is just as essential for the health of a dynamic economy that dying industries should be allowed to die as that growing industries should be allowed to grow. For the dying industries absorb labor and capital that should be released for the growing industries. It is only the much vilified price system that solves the enormously complicated problem of deciding precisely how much of tens of thousands of different commodities and services should be produced in relation to each other. These otherwise bewildering equations are solved quasi-automatically by the system of prices, profits and costs. They are solved by this system incomparably better than any group of bureaucrats could solve them. For they are solved by a system under which each consumer makes his own demand and casts a fresh vote, or a dozen fresh votes, every day; whereas bureaucrats would try to solve it by having made for the consumers, not what the consumers themselves wanted, but what the bureaucrats decided was good for them.”

This book is short -- only a couple of hundred pages -- and simple to understand. It should be required ready for every high school student. Nix that. It should be required reading for every American. In fact, the world would be a better place if every politician read this book before ever considering any legislation, economic or otherwise.

The Classical Liberal

One of the greatest tectonic shifts in my thinking occurred several years ago with the discovery of Nassim Nicholas Taleb ’s book The Black Swan. Indeed, it was actually one of the first things I posted about in this nearly three year old blog.

There were so many take-aways from the book, that it is impossible to list them all here. In fact, if you are interested in researching it, I recommend purchasing the audio version so you can continually revisit it. I am constantly reviewing it and pick up something new from it every time that I do.

One of Taleb’s greatest insights is the recognition that people tend to believe in what is convenient, not what is necessarily true. We adopt things that confirm our biases and ignore those that contradict them. People believe what they want to be true, trivializing and ignoring every fact that does not fit that paradigm. As humans, we have an incredible capacity to deceive ourselves. It is how we comfort ourselves from the very random and scary world in which we live. Likewise, we tend to argue to be right, not to discover truth.

Recognizing this has changed my entire world view. It has opened me up to constant change. I now recognize that I know much less than I think I do. It is very humbling. The evolution of my political beliefs are a great example.

Political labels are dangerous. Everyone tends to have a different definition for them. But by my own definitions, over the years I have gone from a hard-core left of left liberal (while in a political argument with my father during my college days, he once called me a “communist”), to a mainstream Democrat, to a paleo-conservative independent, to a Libertarian. But that is not where it ends. Last week, I recognized another evolution in my thinking.

Several months ago I ran into John Papola’s “Fear The Boom And Bust”, a rap video about John Maynard Keynes and F. A. Hayek, two of the great economists of the 20th century. Recognizing I had the same admiration for Hayek and Austrian Economics as Papola, so I started reading his blog, But What The Hell Do I Know...

I immediately recognized we have a similar thought process. (I may be a bit more light-hearted, though. I doubt you will ever find music reviews, guest blogs or favorite recipes on his blog.) As Papola states: “I’m blogging as a way to work out my thoughts and hopefully get useful criticism that will help me be a better thinker and a more open person. Much of my reading and writing is about economics, but I ultimately believe that ethics are the core of any social discussion. So this really is a philosophic and educational exercise.”

That brings me back to Taleb and my search for truth. Because I like to “engage” in discussion rather than “argue” politics, I am adopting Papola’s political “label”. Although I remain a registered Libertarian, I would now call myself a Classical Liberal. As Papola states: “I generally prefer “Classical Liberal” as a label since it provokes questions and lacks the baggage of “conservative” or even “libertarian” in some ways.... for now. I’m open to change as I learn and grow. I simply ask that you, the reader, not ascribe to me any ideas that I haven’t put out there directly. Guilt by association is lame hackery.”

So as I also continue to “work out my thoughts” on this blog, remember, if we are discussing politics, I am not here to “argue”. Engage me, but be prepared to carry out your thoughts to their logical conclusions. Also be prepared to recognize that the way you want the world to be may not be the way the world really works. I am here to learn and discover through inquiry and skepticism what truths I can stumble upon. In doing so, I am prepared to be wrong. I hope you are, too.

The Health Food Project

This week I had this fun project to assemble. One of my Art Directors needed an image with assorted fruit and vegetables for an article on eating healthy. After gathering assorted stock images, here were her instructions:

• Take out apple or apples to the left.
• Add peaches to replace apples. If some apples stay, and you just change their texture, I’ve provided you with an image of the top of a peach.
• Add to background on left (textured wood background).
• Add to carrot stalks. I’ve added a couple carrot images to the folder if that’s helpful.
• Add green beans. Please play with images to make them appear as natural as possible.
• Take out ultrasound image.

Here was the results:

Pancetta Stuffed Peppers

My girlfriend gave me a Pampered Chef 7” Santoku knife for my birthday, so I asked her to pick something for me to cook so I could do some chopping. She knows I like stuffed peppers, so she searched for some recipes online to “guide” me and I re-engineered them to come up with my own variation. Since it turned out better than most of my experiments, I figured I would share it here:

INGREDIENTS:
1/3 cup jasmine rice
2 tablespoons olive oil
1/4 cup minced carrots
1/4 cup celery
3 bell peppers (in my case: two green, one red)
1/4 pound ground beef
1/3 pound pancetta
3/4 cups marinara sauce (I include my home-made version here)
1/8 cup red wine
1/4 teaspoon red pepper flakes
1/4 cup whole milk
1/4 cup grated Parmesan cheese
3 slices American cheese

DIRECTIONS:
1. Prepare marinara sauce: Saute a quarter cup chopped onion and one large chopped clove of garlic. Add one cup of fresh peeled tomatoes slightly pureed, one quarter cup of fresh chopped basil, a pinch of parsley and simmer until it reduces down to a relatively thick sauce, about twenty minutes.
2. Cook rice. I use a rice cooker so I don’t have to baby sit it.
3. Then, get started on your stuffing mixture: Heat 1 tablespoon of oil in a large skillet over medium high heat. Saute carrots and celery. Add pancetta, then ground beef, cook until browned and crumbled; drain off any excess liquid, and return to heat. Add marinara sauce, wine, and red pepper flakes. Stir in rice. Add cream and half of the Parmesan cheese. Simmer a few minutes more, allowing for most of the liquid to reduce.
4. Preheat oven to 375 degrees F.
5. Par boil Peppers for two minutes. Remove and rinse in cool water to stop them from over-cooking. Place peppers in a shallow baking dish, and fill with stuffing mix.
6. Bake, uncovered, for 30 minutes in the preheated oven. Remove from oven at about 25 minutes and cover peppers with American cheese, sprinkling remaining Parmesan on top. Bake five more minutes or until cheese starts to brown.
7. Serve hot, preferably with a couple of cold Sierra Pale Ales.

Next time I think I will use Brother Jim’s suggestion and try grilling them...

Lies and American History

I love books that not only expand what I know but also challenge what I believe. Lies My Teacher Told Me does just that. I suspect my political and economical views differ greatly with the author’s, but in this great book, James W. Loewen presents a case against the textbooks currently used in our high schools that goes far beyond ideology.

As I discuss in this blog frequently, people tend to believe in what is convenient, not what is true. Well, as someone formally trained as a high school history teacher, I have to admit it seems we also teach that way as well.

Our collective-minded education system presents American history to our children as a mindless series of over-simplified white-washed myths conveniently excluding any information that seemingly denigrates or contradicts the larger-than-life propaganda that textbooks tend to perpetuate.

Amongst many other valid observations, Loewen explains that by presenting American history as a series of endlessly boring preordained facts, students don’t see the conflict of ideas, the evolution of thought or the alternatives that could have come into being.

For instance, one example the author uses is the treatment of Columbus. Columbus did not “discover” America. Obviously, Native Americans were here first, but evidence also points to the likelihood that Asians, Norse, Phoenicians and even West Africans set foot in the Western Hemisphere long before Columbus arrived. The author goes beyond pointing out the obvious ethnocentric influence of our education system. The notion that the “winners” write the history, after all, is nothing new.

Also contrary to popular myth, Columbus was not an altruist voyager looking to discover new worlds for the betterment of mankind. He was driven by the same thing we all are. He sought greater wealth. His search for gold made him an intolerant racist tyrant and he used his religious piety to justify raping, murdering and enslaving thousands of Native Americans.

The author points out that these facts do not condemn Columbus in their own-right. He was not the “original” slave-trader, after all. What complicates the story is that Native American and African cultures were already dealing in slaves themselves. Like all of us, Columbus was a product of the times he lived in. Rather than hero-ize him or vilify him, he should be presented with all the facts, allowing student to see him for who he really was, accomplishments, warts and all. Students -- and you and I -- should be allowed to make and discuss our own conclusions.

This is the whole point. History is complicated. It is not as clean and politically correct as our indoctrination machines would like it to be. While simplifying it and “cleaning” it up may be easier than dealing with it honestly, unfortunately, for most high school students this also makes it instinctively untrustworthy and unchallenging as well.

My main qualm with the book is it’s sub-title: “Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong”. While the premise of the book is right on, the book contains “examples” of inaccuracies. “Everything” would require an encyclopedia-sized collection of volumes in order to even begin scratching the surface. And although some readers may have problems with the author’s obvious liberal-bent, the facts he presents are undeniably eye-opening and discussion-worthy regardless of one’s own perspective.

This book provides a great starting point for a discussion of what and how we teach and learn American history.

What I Do For A Living

Libertarians and Oil Spills

I received a note from my friend Hanad today: "I'm curious, what would the libertarian solution to the BP oil spill be? Trying to figure out how problems like this would be solved."

My response:

It is a very fair question. Here is the “short” answer.

The easiest way to "figure out" the libertarian response to any question is by starting with a couple of the core tenants of libertarianism: 1.) personal responsibility, which includes the acceptance of the concepts of self-ownership and personal property rights and, 2.) the concept that government’s sole purpose is to protect the individual rights and properties of it’s citizens (notice I did not say “organizations” or “groups” -- which is whom the Republicans and Democrats represent -- but I digress...).

Considering these concepts, let us apply them to the facts. The owner of the oil rig, Transocean and BP, who leases it, are responsible for all damage that their actions have caused. So what is the libertarian position on this? Simply put, anyone who can prove that they or their property has been harmed should be compensated by the perpetrators.

Will that happen? No.

Why? Because our government is going to “protect” Transocean and BP.

According to the New York Times, the companies will have to compensate people and businesses for things like property damage and lost business revenue, but that there is a law that currently caps BP’s liability to $75 million and Transocean’s liability to about $65 million.

Why do such caps exist? Essentially, according to the LA Times, government is artificially “stimulating” oil company off-shore drilling by “protecting” them from such damage claims. “Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky said caps could be an important incentive to keep the private sector exploring for energy resources.”

But what does this government “stimulating” and “protecting” really do? It creates a moral hazard much like what just occured in the mortgage industry when government stimulated and protected that industry with artificial liability limits.

As a blog on the Libertarian Party site states:

“These kinds of artificial liability limits distort the markets, and basically create “moral hazard” by encouraging companies to act in riskier ways than they would otherwise. If BP’s well causes damage to property, then BP should be fully liable for all of the damage. It is BP’s responsibility to “make whole” whoever gets damaged.

If Congress hadn’t limited BP’s liability, it’s likely that BP would have acted differently. Knowing that a spill could cost them billions, BP might have demanded additional safeguards for their well, or tested their safeguards more thoroughly. These choices would have been expensive, but they might have prevented the huge costs that the spill area is now facing.

BP has said that it will pay all “legitimate claims,” even if they go past the liability limit. The problem is that when it comes to property damage, a court should decide what “legitimate claims” are, not the offending company!”

In my view -- and I think this may also be the general libertarian view -- if Transocean’s and BP’s actions caused the damage, they should be held liable, even if it means they are sued out of existence. Ironically, all the Republicans and Democrats can argue about is how much Transocean and BP should dole out in damages, rather than concentrate on the real issue, making whole those common citizen's that have actually been harmed.

On the other hand, let’s consider what would happen if that rig had been “government owned”. How likely would it be that anyone would be able to successfully seek damages if that where the case? Since government's tend to act outside the law, I would argue that no one would have been made whole...or worse yet, they would have been made whole with my money.

Now, an even more interesting question to me is this: Who owns the oceans? Or the moon, for that matter? I tend to lean toward John Lockes’ views on this one, but it sure makes for an interesting thought experiment.

Laurie Anderson is a Virus

...or, at least she is as resilient as one. This video from Laurie Anderson is over twenty-five years old, but her new album Homeland, is due out June 22nd.

New Tools To Help Me Blog More Often

I have blog post ideas. The problem is, I tend to forget them before I have a chance to sit down to write about them. Evernote.com to the rescue. Evernote is a free site that “gathers” your notes, documents, screen captures, pictures, audio files, web clips, online receipts, etc. You can access this service from most any device, making it very handy to compile something while it is freshly in front of you. Then, when you need to reference your ideas, there you be. I just signed up today, so only time will tell how much I use it. I will let you know.

I have blog post ideas. The problem is, I can’t write as fast as I think. MacSpeech Scribe to the rescue. Scribe is a Mac-centric software which allows you to create text documents directly from spoken-word audio files, thus fore-going the arduous task of trying to recapture your thoughts after-the-fact. Besides, I type like a forth grader, which means I usually lose my train of thought long before I make it past the first sentence. Now this software costs about $150 bucks, so I will need to contemplate it’s purchase for awhile, but I will be real surprised if I don’t talk myself into it.

Well, there you have it. Blogging made easier. We will see how it all works out...

Becoming Indispensable

Managers are very important. They tell people what to do (they are babysitters), and they tell people what they want/need to hear (they are politicians).

Business structures built on the manager-run environment are becoming antiquated. Top-down business structures are too slow and anti-dynamic to run efficiently in today’s rapidly changing world. When the economy was based on factories, this was okay. Companies run by baby-sitters and politicians worked in an environment were workers were replaceable, compliant, docile cogs. Now that those jobs have been commoditized and moved into more efficient offshore work places, the modern American company must change or become irrelevant.

Seth Godin makes this point in his latest book, Linchpin. People need to make a choice: try to remain “a faceless cog in the machinery of capitalism” -- the old “factory” mentality, or become a “linchpin”, an emotionally invested owner of “their own means of production, who can make a difference, lead us, and connect us.”

To bring value to American business, today’s worker must become their own leader.

As Godin so aptly puts, “we have gone from two teams (management and labor) to a third team, the linchpins...The death of the factory means that the entire system we have built our lives around is now upside down.”

Nowhere is this more evident than in the field of education. For decades, we have been teaching people to be followers -- cogs in the “old” system. That must change. We need to teach people to become leaders -- people capable of acting independently of “babysitters” and “politicians”.

As Godin puts it, we are teaching kids to: “fit in, follow instructions, use #2 pencils, take good notes, show up every day, cram for tests and don’t miss deadlines, have good handwriting, punctuate, buy the things the other kids are buying, don’t ask questions, don’t challenge authority, do the minimum required so you’ll have time to work on another subject, get into college, have a good resume, don’t fail, don’t say anything that might embarrass you, be passably good at sports, or perhaps extremely good at being a quarterback, participate in a large number of extracurricular activities, be a generalist, try not to have other kids talk about you, once you learn a topic, move on[ ]...Are we building the sort of people our society needs?”

And according to Godin, what they should teach in school: “Only two things: 1. Solve interesting problems, 2. Lead.”

As always, Godin has written another book worth reading.

Bad Government Policy? Follow The Money

Money is influence and nowhere is that more true than in politics. In fact, if you want to see where bad policy decisions reign supreme, look no further than this list of influence peddlers. When you can’t compete fairly in the market, buy “regulation” to protect your interests. According to opensecrets.org, the top ten largest lobby groups of the past ten years were:

AT&T Inc
American Fedn of State, County & Municipal Employees
National Assn of Realtors
Intl Brotherhood of Electrical Workers
American Assn for Justice
Goldman Sachs
National Education Assn
Laborers Union
Service Employees International Union
Teamsters Union

Check here for the whole list: www.opensecrets.org

There are some other interesting facts to show up on this list.

One, anyone who tells you that unions have no influence anymore need to see this list. The money says otherwise. Six of the top ten lobby groups are government and private unions. We are turning into Greece.

Two, contrary to popular myth, the political porkers feeding off this cash tend to be Democrats, not “big money” Republicans. The Republicans are virtually split with Democrats on getting cash from AT&T and the National Assn of Realtors, but there isn't a clear pro-Republican lobby group until number 15 on the list, The American Medical Assn.

Now, to be fair, I distrust Republicans every bit as much as Democrats, so we should be every bit as worried about the communication, housing and medical industries as we are about the education and labor sectors. After all, pigs are pigs regardless of what political party trough they feed from.

Third, I find it surprising Goldman Sachs is way down at number six on the list. I guess they don’t have to buy government policy when so many of their former employees are now government hacks. Why buy what you already own?

Too Small To Do A National TV Ad Campaign?

Think again. Google continues to change our world, now by allowing anyone to buy national TV advertising. I grabbed this fascinating Slate video from a post by one of my Facebook friends:

iPad, uPad, we-allPad

Well, I had the privilege of spending the weekend with the Apple iPad. We have a loaner program going on at work, allowing employees to spend some time with the new gadget. Most of the reviews have been pretty good.

I also found it a very enjoyable way to consume content, especially books and magazines.

I do have issues, though. I don’t think it is something I would take to the beach with me or generally want to keep track of when traveling. And after being on a computer for ten hours a day at work, I find my eyes need a break from screen fatigue. So I don’t currently have a dire need for such a device.

I have other misgivings as well. Many of the things I like about the internet are Flash-based and the iPad does not support Flash. Apple may have good reasons for this, but that does not change the fact that Flash is every where. For instance, I went to Hulu.com to check out some movies, but no-could-do since their site is Flash-based.

I also find the whole App Store concept some-what annoying. I went to my Pandora page, but couldn’t use it on the iPad until I loaded the “App” for it. Since this iPad was not mine, I could not do so. Why do we need apps for things that we can easily link to directly through the host’s website? This seems to be more about marketing "apps" on Apple’s part than something built for consumer efficiency-of-use and convenience. (But that just might be me ...and besides, I am all for marketing. That is how I make my living.)

Also, $500? Really? Look, I am an Apple fanboy. I love all things Apple and I expect to pay a premium. But with all the current limitations, no killer app, and first edition sticker price, I will be waiting. Honestly, I find it amazing that over one million of these things have already been sold. I, for one, probably won’t get one until it’s price is way less than half of what it is now, or until it finds a killer app that makes it indispensable. Although I have owned over a dozen Apple products over the last two decades, this one is pretty low on my radar right now. Maybe in a couple of years...

Really my problem may be what I didn’t take home with me this weekend. I left my laptop with the IT guys so they could load the Adobe CS5 Master Suite. The Master Suite contains Adobe Photoshop® CS5 Extended, Illustrator® CS5, InDesign® CS5, Acrobat® 9 Pro, Flash® Catalyst™ CS5, Flash Professional CS5, Flash Builder™ 4, Dreamweaver® CS5, Fireworks® CS5, Contribute® CS5, Adobe Premiere® Pro CS5 (with Adobe OnLocation™ CS5 and Encore® CS5), After Effects® CS5, Soundbooth® CS5, and more. Now those are some killer apps...

I just hope Apple and Adobe can kiss and make up. I would hate to see more of their hardware and software become less compatible.

Bachman Turner Overkill?

Okay, so maybe you haven’t been waiting twenty years for this, but never-the-less, they are back.

Overdriveless, Randy Bachman and Fred Turner are making their return.

Honestly, on first thought, I sometimes wish some of these old guys would just go away, but after listening to a free download of “Rock and Roll Is The Only Way Out,” a song off their upcoming album, I am not really sure what to make of it.

Great stuff? Not.

Fun? Well, yes, actually it kind of is.

I have to admit by thirty seconds into this thing, I couldn’t help but grin. Although, it is the same old predictable sound, there is no doubt they do sound “just like kids when school gets out.”

The upcoming album is due out in September 2010, but some tour dates come first. In fact, according to their website: “Bachman & Turner will be kicking off their world debut in June 2010 at the Sweden Rock Festival alongside some of their contemporaries including Aerosmith, Guns n’ Roses and Billy Idol.”

Debt Is Slavery, Part XXIV

In his book, The Black Swan, Nassim Nicholas Taleb tells the story of the turkey.

The turkey lives every day believing the world is as he sees it. Every day, the turkey wakes up and is greeted by a benevolent leader who graciously cares for him, houses him and feeds him. The benevolent leader goes out of his way to make sure this turkey’s every need is met. Now from the turkey’s perspective, this has been reality for his entire existence. So why would the turkey ever think tomorrow would be any different? But unbeknown to the turkey, tomorrow is Thanksgiving.

I can’t help but believe this is how most Americans -- members of the greatest debtor nation in the history of the world -- view debt. And the worst perpetrators of this line of thought is our very government.

I know that about every twenty posts or so, I harp on this idea that debt is slavery, but I see people so blindly excepting debt as “normal” that it disturbs me.

Although I disagree with Stefan Molyneux on many things, his video from Freedomain Radio puts our national debt into an interesting perspective:

The Hold Steady - Heaven Is Whenever

The new Hold Steady album came out today. On my third listen already.

For a band that likes to call Brooklyn home, they sure do like to sing about hangin’ in Minnesota. In fact, on this one, they start right outta’ the gate on the opening track, The Sweet Part Of The City:

Back when we were living up on Hennepin, she kept threatening to turn us in. At night she mostly liked us... We were living in the sweet part of the city. The parts with the bars and restaurants.

And later on We Can Get Together there is:

She said Hüsker Dü got huge, but they started in St. Paul. Do you remember “Makes No Sense At All”?

Besides making me a little homesick for Minnesota, The Hold Steady are one of the few bands that get my off my butt and out to see live music. The other band capable of doing that is The Whigs, who my girlfriend and I jammed to last month in Scottsdale. I had a chance to chat with Whig’s lead singer Parker Gispert at that show. When I told him about of having met The Hold Steady’s lead singer Craig Finn at a show a couple of years ago, Parker replied the two bands were planning on touring together for awhile this summer.

When I got home, I checked out the tour schedule. No Arizona dates.

I wonder if my girlfriend could be talked into road-trippin’ to Denver and/or Santa Fe the second week in July?

Steve Jobs On Apple's Dissing of Adobe's Flash

I am an Apple fanboy. I am also an Adobe fanboy. Ever since I left my Scitex Workstation behind a decade and a half ago, I have lived in a world where Apple and Adobe seemed like twins. Adobe’s software has always been an elegant fit to Apple’s hardware.

The beautiful world of technology is always evolving in unpredictable ways. Change is painful. Growth is painful. And sometimes it can cause a riff or two.

While many people have thought it was only a matter of time before Apple touch-screen products like the iPad would become Adobe Flash friendly, that time now appears unlikely to ever arrive. Here is a very open response Steve Jobs posted on the Apple website, stating six reasons their touch-screen products will never be Flash-friendly: Thoughts on Flash by Steve Jobs.

He starts with: “Apple has a long relationship with Adobe. In fact, we met Adobe’s founders when they were in their proverbial garage.” And ends with: “Perhaps Adobe should focus more on creating great HTML5 tools for the future, and less on criticizing Apple for leaving the past behind.”

Regardless of what you know or how you feel about the technology in question, it is all the stuff in-between that makes this is a fascinating read. Love him or hate him, the diatribe is an intimate insight into the mind of one of technologies’ greatest entrepreneurs.

The Three Modes of Exchange -- Part Two

In a previous post, I talked about the two ways to voluntarily part with your property, charitable giving and free-trade. In this post, I am going to explore the more common method: theft.

No matter how “justifiable” the need or cause, taking something from someone else against their will is wrong. It is theft.

In fact, government, by it’s nature is an organization whose very existence is wholly sustained by involuntary coercion. Government produces nothing. It can only take and redistribute resources. For instance, no government has ever “produced jobs”.

The only job a government can “create” comes into existence by taking resources from it’s citizens and redistributing them (inefficiently) to other sources. Redistribution is not the same as creation. In fact, this by it’s very nature implies that something else had to be sacrificed in order to bring it into being. In economics, this is known as opportunity cost.

Now let’s examine how government “pays” for what it “creates”: taxation.

Taxation is theft. This is the most obvious form of involuntary coercion. Don’t believe me? Don’t pay your taxes and let’s see what happens to you.

Now some people would say taxes are a good thing. After all, they pay for schools and roads and libraries and parks. I frequently even hear people say, “I am glad to pay taxes for such things.” Good for you. That does not change the fact that this form of exchange is involuntary.

We often get sidetracked with “what” government is spending our money on. Maybe a new light rail system is a good thing, maybe it is not. It doesn’t matter. The real question should be, “who decides?” Your money and/or property is taken from you involuntarily to pay for whatever program is the latest whim.

Which brings me to the “rule of mobs”.

If my neighbor has something I want, I would never think of just walking over to his house and taking it. For some reason though, we find it okay to do so in other ways. For instance, let’s consider someone who doesn’t want to pay for their own healthcare. They can convince a “majority” to vote for it, thus passing legislation requiring you to pay for it.

Just because the majority wants your property to pay for “their” just cause does not change the fact that the action they are committing is theft.

We now live in a society where the mob rules. If the mob wants to send your sons and daughters to Iraq, the mob does so. If the mob wants to make you pay for it’s pet projects, the mob makes it so. In this kind of society, you have no property rights. Your property belongs to whoever is in the majority.

Ultimately, a truly free society can only exist where everyone respects the rights of every individual, where a person is seen as responsible for themselves and where their personal property is respected. A society where coercive force is randomly accepted is neither free nor just.

Do we want a society ruled by the whims of whatever group is in the majority? Or do we want a society that recognizes -- regardless of what group is in the majority -- all men are created equal, that they are all endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights? Ownership of oneself and one’s own property is at the core of protecting the rights of all.