Spree!

After a nearly 3 month drought, I found some Spree at a Speedway Gas.
I had to buy 3 rolls since who knows when I'd see it again.
Somehow one of my rolls disappeared at home, so I know everyone loves Spree!

Mortgage gone up? Call the Govt.

I have always had a thing for numbers, so I love the stock market. The last couple weeks have been brutal. Sometimes the best thing to do is walk away so you don't panic and do anything stupid. So I have stopped paying attention to the market which helps keep me focused on the long term and not get caught up in the short term.

But the only thing that can make a bad market worse is really bad politics. The market is tanking partly because of all these people that got stuck w/ super expensive houses with crazy ARM mortgages that have been going up for a while now. Not to mention the flippers who got stuck w/ 5 new condos in Miami that no one has ever lived in.

Several potliticians (Presidential Candidates) have suggested that the government step in and pay for a lot of these bad mortgages. I'm sure it is an easy position to take to gain public support and votes, but this is a terrible policy. There has to be risk w/ reward to prevent these things from happening. You can't allow companies to make a ton of money off of interest only loans, and then bail them out when, surprise, people can't afford to make payments when the loan adjusts. That will only create a bigger problem next time because people (both homebuyers and loan companies) will take more risk knowing that if it goes bad the government will come help.

This is like a kid going to a casino and having their parents say "call if you lose more than $1,000 and I'll come pay." How could you ever expect that kid to manage their money properly and know when to leave? If they are down $100, of course they will keep playing becasue they know their parents will fix it if they get into bigger trouble.

From an economic principle it is terrible, but also from an individual standpoint it is a bad deal for those of us who didn't get into this mess. Politicians have thrown out numbers a large as $200 billion to fix this. That is roughly $2,000 per household in taxes to pay for that. Why should we chip in $2,000 to pay for others mistakes? That means I would have been better off speculating in flipping. There is some chance I would have made a million and if I didn't someone else's taxes will help me out.

I would agree with spending tax money on this IFF (remember math proofs?) the government passes a law saying these ridiculous mortgages are illegal and make sure none of these companies can offer them again. If they say these people were victims of fraud and it was illegal then OK, but don't say it is OK to sell these silly loans and then pay them off when people get in trouble.

I really do feel bad for people who are trouble from an interest only loan or worse a negative amoritization loan, but they should be able to cut their losses and refinance into a 30 year fixed mortgage. And the fact is, if you cannot afford your house w/ a 30 year fixed mortgage, then you cannot afford to live there.

We need to be teaching personal finance in schools. Start w/ bank accounts and balancing a checkbook, work you way into credit cards, school loans, and mortgages.
Students need to learn that the job of any company is to maximize the profits it gets from you. And it doesn't matter if that includes you getting a school loan, buying a house or a car. Same w/ a casino, the job of each game is to make as much money as they can from you. And only through education can you tell what is a good bet vs a bad bet.

It will help students ask the right questions like:

"Why is the Gap telling me all the new clothes I bought last year are now out of style?"

"Why would a financial advisor tell me I need to sell all of my funds and let him pick the new ones?"

"Why do the realtors on House Hunters always ignore the comment and point out something great whenever someone says they don't like something."

No gnews is good gnews....

Reason #101 why I get all of my news online (special thanks to Amanda for finding this cinematic genius):

This would be great advice...except for the fact that it is terrible advice.

There is no one I know who appreciates the nuance of language more than my friend Kenny, so this blog is for him:

It has been almost 6 months since the last Vegas trip, long enough that I have recovered from the lack of sleep and am starting to look forward to the next trip.

So much so that I had to buy Hoyle Casino 2007 for my computer. Brief comment on the game, I had the 2000 version and loved it but the game play of this one is really slow. Waiting to get paid after a roll of craps takes longer than in an actual casino (true fact).

Anyways, the game came with a guide book that includes helpful hints on how to learn each casino game.

But, it also has a "Strategies" section which is a riot. I will write them below trying to recreate my best Kenny impression in text.

Roulette:

"It is however, a FACT that winning and losing often takes place in streaks. If you have a system and it's actually working for a period of time, stay in while it lasts, then get out AS SOON as it LOOKS like it's taking a turn for the worse."

Let it Ride (aka Ride or Die):

"Blind luck ASIDE, knowing whether to keep or recall bets is the key to sucess in Let it Ride. In this uncomplicated game, IN FACT, it's the only area in which strategy can make a difference."

Back to Basics

There was a great Modern Marvels on tonight about water. It had a good segment on the Bellagio water show:



Aside: Modern Marvels is now available for download on itunes. A coworker got an iphone and it is significantly more impressive than I thougtht (now if only that AAPL stock I just bought would go back up).

It reminded me of some things I have been thinking about since St Lucia. I really think most of the 21st century will be spent on getting the basics back in order (hopefully before any crisis). Access to water (I say just water because 1/2 the world doesn't have access to clean drinking water), power and food supplies etc.

Most of the 1900's and the industrial revolution solved most of these basic needs for us here in the US. The fact that Las Vegas exists and has drinking water is really amazing. Farmers became more productive, we had power plants built all over and managed to get water to the Bellagio water show. This allowed a great percentage of our population to diverge into other areas of work rather than the basics. Today, I personally produce zero food, zero water or power but trade my deodorant sticks for all my needs (effectively).

Growing up in New England, this would not have been allowed to occur during the age of the pilgrims, most had to bring in their share of the harvest and probably only a few doctors etc were exempt from this. But since 1900 we have "lost" or no longer needed 75% of the farming jobs due to advances in crop yields (the exact % is in Naked Economics).

As the population of the US in general and specifically the rest of the world has grown, we are eating up whatever buffer our technology has created. Today we have summer brown outs in California, and watering restrictions in dry parts of the country (only even numbered houses can water their lawns on certain days, Dale maybe you could start a carbon emission-like market for your 42 days w/o watering your lawn). I know the snow runoff west of the Rockies no longer produces enough drinking water to meet demand. And Modern Marvels showed the underground water table east of the Rockies (in the plains) is expected to be down to 20% the original capacity by 2020.

As of right now, I am not crazy worried about this (provided we start to get smart about these things) since our ability to diverge will allow us to use new technologies we may not have had. We may not have been able to look at solar power as much without the advances in silicon wafers and computer chips.

For the stock people, there is a good water index fund (PHO) that has everyhting from purification companies to sewer line manufacturing (just see the ripped up Glendale streets, a lot of us town need updates) etc it is up 33% since being introduced a couple years ago.

This I Believe...

NPR did a radio series (that is now a book) on famous people who write short essays that start with "This I believe..."

OK, I chose not to listen or buy the book, BUT I still like the concept and encourage others to write blogs about this.

I believe externally motivated people will never truly be happy in life because they will always sacrifice what they really want for what they think others want them to have (or do or be).

I believe this is one of the main reasons celebrities become total
disasters. At some point in life (usually before they even know who
they are) someone tells them they are special and everyone loves them.
Then they become some person that everyone loves. Overtime, they either
become unhappy with the person they have to pretend to be or lose their
15 mins of fame and are no longer loved by everyone (therefore losing their identity). Enter drugs and drag racing Lindsay Lohan.

I believe there are several distinct phases of life.
1. First you are very insecure with yourself.
2. The you slowly begin to define who you are.
3. Then and only then do you gain a real interest in having an impact on the world you live in.

The first phase occurs mostly in middle / high school. It is like the opposite of
Hungry Hungry Hippos, everyone is so insecure they do not want any
attention on them, so they deflect attention onto others.

The second phase occurs somewhere between college and 40 years old.
Somewhere in my mid 20's I became comfortable with getting more
enjoyment doing nerdy things than going to a bar on the weekend.

I think finding Rachel and getting married has put me into they third
phase. My life is so happy that I can start to look beyond my own
little world. I think that is why recently I have begun to have some
interest in economics, history and politics. It actually get ansy at times when I feel like I should be more productive towards whatever contributions I was meant to make, but I haven't figured them out yet.

This is all similar to when I started playing indoor soccer. At first when someone passed me the ball, all I remember seeing was my feet. Then slowly you begin to watch defenders and even predict where to pass it for your teammates.

I also believe Red Sox fans can finally move on with life after winning the world series.

I also believe Lucy sniffs my face to determine my emotional state.

Amazing TLC show

The Boy Who Sees Through Sound

TV-G

This program tells the story of Ben Underwood, a blind boy who has the most amazing self-taught ability to see with sound, but to reach his dazzling full potential he must face his own weaknesses; learn and grow.

Blind since age 3, Ben Underwood skateboards, shoots hoops and plays video games. How does he do it? Just like bats and dolphins

Ask people about Ben Underwood and you'll hear dozens of stories like this – about the amazing boy who doesn't seem to know he's blind. There's Ben zooming around on his skateboard outside his home in Sacramento; there he is playing kickball with his buddies. To see him speed down hallways and make sharp turns around corners is to observe a typical teen – except, that is, for the clicking. Completely blind since the age of 3, after retinal cancer claimed both his eyes (he now wears two prostheses), Ben has learned to perceive and locate objects by making a steady stream of sounds with his tongue, then listening for the echoes as they bounce off the surfaces around him. About as loud as the snapping of fingers, Ben's clicks tell him what's ahead: the echoes they produce can be soft (indicating metals), dense (wood) or sharp (glass). Judging by how loud or faint they are, Ben has learned to gauge distances.

The technique is called echolocation, and many species, most notably bats and dolphins, use it to get around. But a 14-year-old boy from Sacramento? While many blind people listen for echoes to some degree, Ben's ability to navigate in his sightless world is, say experts, extraordinary. "His skills are rare," says Dan Kish, a blind psychologist and leading teacher of echomobility among the blind. "Ben pushes the limits of human perception."

Kish has taught echolocation to scores of blind people as a supplement to more traditional methods, such as walking with a cane or a guide dog, but only a handful of people in the world use echolocation alone to get around, according to the American Foundation for the Blind. A big part of the reason Ben has succeeded is his mother, who made the decision long ago never to coddle her son. "I always told him, 'Your name is Benjamin Underwood, and you can do anything,' " says Aquanetta Gordon, 42, a utilities-company employee. "He can learn to fly an airplane if he wants to."

Ben plays basketball with his pals, rides horses at camp and dances with girls at school events. He excels at PlayStation games by memorizing the sounds that characters and movements make. "People ask me if I'm lonely," he says. "I'm not, because someone's always around or I've got my cell phone and I'm always talking to friends. Being blind is not that different from not being blind."

Ben was just 2 years old when doctors discovered his retinal cancer. Ben's first Braille teacher, Barbara Haase, believes the boy's ability to see during his first two years helped him develop "a sort of map of the physical world," she says. Growing up, Ben got help from his brothers Joe, now 23, and Derius, 19, and sister Tiffany, 18. (His father, Stephen, died in 2002.) "They taught him how to find the seams on his clothes so he puts them on right side out, stuff like that," says Aquanetta. "But they didn't overdo it."

Aquanetta sent Ben to mainstream schools, where professionals on staff gave him individual attention and taught him to overlook taunts from classmates who waved their hands in his face or snatched food off his tray. "The hardest thing for me to accept is rejection," says Ben, who starts ninth grade in the fall. "I can tell when someone rejects me in some way." At home his mother let him play with no restrictions. "If he fell, she would just say, 'Oh, he fell,' and he'd get up and try again," says his kindergarten teacher Ann Akiyama. "I've seen him run full speed into the edge of a big brick column and get back up. He was fearless."

Ben learned how to read Braille and walk with a cane, but when he was 3, he also began teaching himself echolocation, something he picked up by tossing objects and making clicking sounds to find them. His sense of hearing, teachers noticed, was exceptional. "One time a CD fell off his desk and I was reaching for it when he said, 'Nah, I got it,'" says Kalli Carvalho, his language arts instructor. "He went right to it. Didn't feel around. He just knew where it was because he heard where it hit." Haase took walks with Ben to help him practice locating objects. "I said, 'Okay, my car is the third car parked down the street. Tell me when we get there,' " she says. "As we pass the first vehicle, he says, 'There's the first car. Actually, a truck.' And it was a pickup. He could tell the difference."

Ben was 6 when he decided he wasn't going to use a cane – he calls it a stick – to get around. "You go to school and you're the only one with a stick, what's the first thing some kid's going to do? Break it in two," he says. "And then where are you? You're helpless." At times he was even able to come to the aid of people with normal sight. "I remember taking him to the park with my son, sister and my nieces, and it got dark," says Akiyama. "But Ben had figured out the park's layout, and he led the way out. He was in his element."

Still, Ben's zone of maximum comfort remains his family's three-bedroom stucco home – where he lives with his mom and brother Isaiah, 11 – and the quiet streets around it. Some professionals who work with Ben worry that his near-complete reliance on echolocation could hurt him when he finds himself in unfamiliar settings. Haase wishes he would use a cane to help him gauge, for instance, the depth of a hole. But Ben is sticking to his guns. "He's a rebellious traveler," says Kish, who despite teaching echolocation around the world still occasionally uses a cane. "Ben puts himself at risk."

Others believe Ben's remarkable abilities will make it easier for him to face new challenges and conquer new surroundings. "The world is not going to change for these kids; they need to adapt to it," says Ben's eye doctor James Ruben, a Kaiser Permanente ophthalmologist. "His mother understood that plenty of sighted people have miserable lives and plenty of unsighted people have happy lives."

Last month Ben widened his horizons even further. "The thing I'm most scared of is water," he says. "But if I had eyes, it's what I'd most like to see." So on June 25 he took a trip to San Diego's SeaWorld Adventure Park to swim with dolphins and hear how they use echolocation. Waist-deep in a saltwater pool, he immersed one ear as Sandy, a bottle-nosed dolphin, swam toward him. "Man," he said, "she clicks fast!" Ben spent 45 minutes playing with Sandy, touching her teeth and stroking her dorsal fin. Bob McMains, supervisor of SeaWorld's dolphin program, says that in his 23 years there, few people have listened so intently to the sounds the dolphins make. "He's got a gift with dolphins; he's truly unique," says McMains. "I told him, once he's 18 he's got a job here anytime."

McMains can get in line. Ben's world may be dark, but the most amazing surprises are just a click away. He might become a math teacher or a pro skateboarder – or, as his mother believes, just about anything. And wouldn't that make for a truly amazing Ben Underwood story? "I tell people I'm not blind," he says. "I just can't see."