Thursday, January 22, 2009
I'm good, but...
I am not fucking Hellen Keller! Another January, another registration, another batch of idiots who don't have their shit together. I worry I'm getting burned out. Anyway, it really hasn't been that bad, but I'm still kind of sick of the whole affair. When people come to see me and they want everything done for them, I want to fucking scream. It should be much calmer next week, but I have tons of paperwork to slog through, especially the VA work. However, the extra effort this week will save me tons of phone calls the first week of February.... I hope.... Anyway, I'll have a deeper blog post later tonight.
Saturday, January 03, 2009
Happy fucking New Year!
For those who expected me to wax poetic about about how my life has been changed because of the (most recent) nearly fatal accident and how I have a new outlook on life, you'll be waiting for another post. Instead, let's look ahead at a potentially shit year. I ask all fellow tenured faculty members to join me in snickering.
Wow, did '08 suck or what? For those who believe '09 will be better, I can only reply: keep dreaming. I'm waiting for the next shoe to drop, retail. Who knows how many store will close or chains will enter bankruptcy, but there will be some. I'm still waiting for Border's to close shop and make my depression complete, but the Mt. Kisco store was popping. I'm guessing Best Buy or Circuit City is next to go, and I wonder which car company goes down too.
Speaking of the car companies, I was reading on of my gloom and doom email newsletters, and one of them brought up an interesting point using the law of unintended consequences. While this phenomenon can be applied to almost anything, such as my swerving to avoid two squirrels ended up with me hanging upside-down and bleeding from my elbow, that really doesn't cover the breadth and scope of the principle. My car crash is much more a case of cause and effect. The missive was exploring the bailout of Chrysler back in 1979, and how that could be part of the reason the American automotive industry is in such dire straights today. American's love for cars is well-known, but Detroit was not building cars Americans needed or wanted. Nevertheless, Chrysler got it's loan guarantees, and paid back the bonds ahead of schedule. The bailout was praised as a major success, but was it? Let's try this point of view: if Chrysler was not saved, Ford and GM would have been forced to change their business practices top more closely mirror what Toyota and Honda were doing, such as building really reliable and efficient cars. (Some of that is in jest, but most is not...). Also, instead of 2 car companies ready for war, stronger because they needed to be, America had 3 weaker car companies ripe for the pounding by foreign manufactures. As such, the bailout was a failure of epic proportions.
One can argue that you could use the above law and apply it to all sorts of illogical conclusions, losing any sort of credibility. This example is fairly linear, so I cannot agree with that argument in this case, but I see the point. Moreover, one could speculate we would be in much worse shape had the feds not bailed out Chrysler. I can say for certain the bailout betrayed America's dedication to the free market, and that is never a good thing. Maintaining our principles in the face of adversity is difficult and painful. It can also be political suicide, which is why it happens so infrequently. I wonder what unforeseen consequences we'll be grappling with in 2010 and beyond. Instead of signing off with "More later," let me end by saying: BUY A FUCKING BOAT BEFORE IT IS TOO LATE!!!!!!!
Happy New Year everyone.
Wow, did '08 suck or what? For those who believe '09 will be better, I can only reply: keep dreaming. I'm waiting for the next shoe to drop, retail. Who knows how many store will close or chains will enter bankruptcy, but there will be some. I'm still waiting for Border's to close shop and make my depression complete, but the Mt. Kisco store was popping. I'm guessing Best Buy or Circuit City is next to go, and I wonder which car company goes down too.
Speaking of the car companies, I was reading on of my gloom and doom email newsletters, and one of them brought up an interesting point using the law of unintended consequences. While this phenomenon can be applied to almost anything, such as my swerving to avoid two squirrels ended up with me hanging upside-down and bleeding from my elbow, that really doesn't cover the breadth and scope of the principle. My car crash is much more a case of cause and effect. The missive was exploring the bailout of Chrysler back in 1979, and how that could be part of the reason the American automotive industry is in such dire straights today. American's love for cars is well-known, but Detroit was not building cars Americans needed or wanted. Nevertheless, Chrysler got it's loan guarantees, and paid back the bonds ahead of schedule. The bailout was praised as a major success, but was it? Let's try this point of view: if Chrysler was not saved, Ford and GM would have been forced to change their business practices top more closely mirror what Toyota and Honda were doing, such as building really reliable and efficient cars. (Some of that is in jest, but most is not...). Also, instead of 2 car companies ready for war, stronger because they needed to be, America had 3 weaker car companies ripe for the pounding by foreign manufactures. As such, the bailout was a failure of epic proportions.
One can argue that you could use the above law and apply it to all sorts of illogical conclusions, losing any sort of credibility. This example is fairly linear, so I cannot agree with that argument in this case, but I see the point. Moreover, one could speculate we would be in much worse shape had the feds not bailed out Chrysler. I can say for certain the bailout betrayed America's dedication to the free market, and that is never a good thing. Maintaining our principles in the face of adversity is difficult and painful. It can also be political suicide, which is why it happens so infrequently. I wonder what unforeseen consequences we'll be grappling with in 2010 and beyond. Instead of signing off with "More later," let me end by saying: BUY A FUCKING BOAT BEFORE IT IS TOO LATE!!!!!!!
Happy New Year everyone.
