Free Tibet Flags

Turns out a bunch of the "Free Tibet" flags are made in China. This shouldn't be surprising, I guess, but it reminds how the market undercuts one's politics, even when the actual product being sold is a form of politics.

Heavy Metal Parking Lot

See the real thing here. Amazing!

I (heart) Cheese Pizza

After a full week of intense exercise and lots of vegetables, I ate a couple of slices of cheese pizza tonight. Twas so good that I decided to post this photo. That's it. Not too exciting, but...like I said, it twas tasty

Not a great day...

It was a tragic day at my house yesterday. My landlord (who lives downstairs from me) was standing outside when I got home last night, with this worried look on his face. I walked around the corner and saw his son (who is about my age) on the ground with paramedics all around him. I guess he overdosed on something, but I am not sure what. Anyhow, I stood there with Charlie and talked to him while his son died. It sucked pretty bad. It was so hard to see a parent realize that his kid was gone. Charlie is a hell of a guy, really kind, smart, honest, hard-working guy. I just felt so terrible for him and his wife.

On top of all that, it was deemed a "sudden death" so the Detectives had to come out, and the Coroner, and they had to leave him laying in the front yard for about three hours while they did their investigation.

Anyhow, Charlie's wife got home right at the end of it all, so I had to watch her go through the whole damn thing too. It was really rough. You just hate to see anybody have to face that. I finally went inside when I couldn't help out anymore, but I happened to look out the window right when they were kissing their son goodbye. Crap. What a nightmare.

It made me miss my family, and it made me hold Lynne pretty close last night.

Super Mario

Check out this video, how much time does this guy have on his hands? The Answer: More than me. Chapter deadlines have kept me from consuming much media lately. I hope to post more soon.

T

Welfare King

Dana Milbank at the Washington Post had an intriguing column this morning. He calculates that the $30 billion that we, the American taxpayers, spent on saving Bear Stearns could be seen as the ultimate welfare payment, a welfare payment justified by our desire to keep Bear/Stearns financial mess from spreading to other banks and throughout the rest of the economy. 'We save ourselves by saving Bear Stearns' - is what government officials have argued.

And so, as Milbank points out, we have offered up a HUGE loan guarantee, that effectively bails out those who made very poor business choices by investing in risky sub-prime mortgages. Of course, there are plenty of lower-middle class folks who also made poor choices - trying to buy their own home even when they weren't paid enough to afford to do so. And I am sure that these aspiring homeowners would really appreciate a similar deal. But it doesn't seem likely that their bailout is coming anytime soon. So much for owning your own home, I guess.

So we might ask ourselves, why does Bear Stearns get a bailout while Joe Smith down the street doesn't get jack shit? The answer you hear from most pundits and economists is that the entire American economy would go down in flames.

But, despite the 'sky is failing rhetoric', I remain unconvinced. Perhaps something had to be done, and perhaps we all would have suffered much more if J.P. Morgan wasn't given 30 billion in guarantees to buy those execs and stockholders out of their mess. But any fair and reasonable person might wonder... why is it that they get the help while the little guy gets the shaft?

Because the system is fucking rigged that's why. And there is nothing fair about it.

Alan Schwartz is the CEO of Bear Stearns. Arguably, he is the person most responsible for allowing the conditions which created the crisis for his company's meltdown. But will he be held responsible for his poor decisions? No! Well...maybe, at least partially. But will he suffer like those who lost their homes? Uh....no. And I guarantee you he won't come close to losing his shirt over it, mostly because the U.S. taxpayers bailed his ass out.

According to the Washington Post, Schwartz did miss out on his bonus for 2007, leaving him just the $141 million dollars he has been paid the past five years. Dana Milbank writes, "Things have become so bad that, the Wall Street Journal discovered, Schwartz has had to rent out his 7,850-square-foot home on the ninth green of a suburban New York golf course -- leaving the poor fellow with only his 17-room, seven-acre home in Greenwich, his condo in Colorado and the athletic center he built for Duke University."

So the point of this rant: Don't fool yourself in thinking that this political / economic system is "free" or "fair" or "democratic" in any way, because it isn't. Don't allow yourselves any such illusions: this government is run by the rich, for the rich, to serve the interests of the rich.

Enjoy your fucking mansion, Alan Schwartz. But watch out for your homeless neighbor down the street.

I'm not the only one that had big fun last night...

The image to the right might be a picture of Lynne's desk. Or so it smelled in her office today. We did end up having a few drinks last night, to modestly celebrate the 32nd anniversary of my birth. Check out Lynne's email to me this morning:

so get this. i got to my desk this morning and could not figure out what was smelling so bad in my cubicle. it wasn't the smoke on my jacket, or the grease in my hair that i was smelling. it smelled like poop. so i continued to work through the smell for the last 3 hours until finally i decided i had to track it down. turns out i had left my lunch on my desk yesterday after only eating half of it. and it was actually last week's lunch that i had never eaten, and included a container of kale that we'd probably cooked over a week ago now. i didn't eat the kale yesterday b/c i thought it might be funky. instead i let it sit on my desk for 24 hours. and that was the source of the poop smell. that, on top of getting to work and realizing that my backpack was unzipped as well as my fly, has made for quite a day so far. hangovers are a beauty aren't they?

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Lynne E. Gratz
PhD Candidate, Atmospheric Science
University of Michigan Air Quality Laboratory
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Its my birthday I can cry if I want to...

...or spend most of the day in the library working on my chapter. Kidding aside, I didn't feel much like making a fuss this year, so it worked out well to tack my celebration on to Dave Dobbie's defense, and Liz's final diss deadline. So tonight will be low-key. I aim to drink a beer or two, enjoy friends, and be home to bed early. What an old man I am.