I’m not going to comment on the individual aspects of this. The situation speaks for itself there. We’re all fundamentally broken and there is plenty of judgment for us all if we choose to look there.

However, we can comment on the implications for the Republican party.

I think at this point that the Republican strategy of bumper sticker politics has completely and utterly failed. You can’t say “strong on defense”, “fiscally conservative”, “small government”, “pro-family”, “free market” etc. etc. etc. and then do the complete opposite and expect for people to take you seriously at all, much less vote for you.

(And what difference does it make? You aren’t who you say who you are once elected anyway.)

The political results of this are now clear, and the jig is up. President Obama is very weak on the Federal budget deficit. However Republicans can’t do a thing to capitalize on this because…well, they voted for some of the worst deficits ever. They should be able to go into next years Congressional elections strong, but nobody will believe them.

There are plenty more examples of this, but this is the most recent, obvious, and tragic.

Meanwhile with a parade of social scandals, “family values” sounds more like the punchline of a joke than any real belief.

The Republican Party is basically done. They’ve played the buzzword bumper sticker game for too long. The only hope is if they can maintain some sort of electoral toehold for long enough to prove themselves vote-worthy. And by proving themselves I mean doing as they say.

As of the last week or two the clock went back to zero on that one.

“The Internet is a big distraction,” Mr. Bradbury barked from his perch in his house in Los Angeles
…
“It’s distracting,” he continued. “It’s meaningless; it’s not real. It’s in the air somewhere.”

Funny thing is, you’d think the man who wrote Fahrenheit 451 would be more perceptive about the medium. Some true dangers of digital technology are apparent when you place his fiction in a technically advanced world. Tech has the potential to do far more harm to content than a “fireman”.

If you really press the overlords of the RIAA, MPAA, authors/publishers guilds, etc. They will say that even if you own a book, you don’t own the content. They’ve licensed the content to you and it still belongs to them. The fact that you can resell a book, DVD, CD, video game, etc. is highly offensive to many of those folks. There have been efforts to prevent such sales.

In a perfect world, they want you to subscribe to the content. They want to control how you use it.

So now that digital technology is available, things are drifting toward a world where even when you buy content, you don’t possess it. And even if it’s not intentional, this can have bad consequences.

So imagine a world 100 years or so down the line where you don’t actually own the content, it’s in digital form on a hard drive somewhere. At that point it might not even be in your house or in your possession.

Instead of a fireman coming to your house to burn books, the book might just be arbitrarily deleted somewhere. Or maybe just altered?

Without a physical newspaper, how can you look at a past news article and be sure what actually happened? What if some of the classic works were altered? What if the role of a fireman changed overnight?

Anyway, sittin’ at the beach and read this and got to thinking. Digital tech is great, but in the future it might lead to an oppressive abstraction of content.

But the wise observer might ask, if I have 1600 friends, why am I so lonely? Shouldn’t at least one of those 1600 friends be available when I need help painting my living room?

My continued question is “Why is this unique to new technology”? Were we any *more* connected with the “old” technology? Of course not. But the old tech is now part of our daily lives–necessary even–so that’s ok.

So we continue to see criticism of new tech fueled by the shortcomings of old tech. The crux of this fallacy can be seen in this assertion by Tim:

A trend we see today through today’s digital technology is the exaltation of this kind of knowledge, cold facts, at the expense of more intimate knowledge.

I would argue that this is not only wrong….it’s completely wrong. Opposite wrong. My whole career has been possible because the opposite is actually true.

The real trend today has nothing to do with knowledge. The printing press, television brought knowledge. The wires of the Internet brought knowledge. The real trend today has to do with the connection and intimate knowledge gained by networks that are bigger than just the wires.

If you’ve watched the web since the beginning, you can see this play out over and over. Each site and tech is more and more successful, and it’s success is directly attributable to it’s ability to network people together not with facts but with communication. And increased communication opens up the prospect of closer relationships. It doesn’t guarantee it, but it makes it possible.

People involved in security will observe that the current security environment is severely degraded because of the criminal communities created by today’s technology. You’re not just facing lone hackers. You’re facing large networks of people focused on illicit gain. These people didn’t get together via “cold facts”.

Facebook didn’t become so popular because college and HS students were craving cold, impersonal connections. They flocked there because it enhanced their ‘real world’ connections. And us old folks have figured out that the new technology does this in a way that fixes the damage done by old technology.

Challies and others are still trying to associate the pitfalls of older, industrial/mass based one-to-many communication technologies with new technologies. This is a huge error.

The difference is that old tech couldn’t be used to build relationships. The new stuff can with minimal effort. It’s time to recognize this and start seeing how it can actually reverse the problems of the old world.

In particular, here is the best part:

Twitter has changed my prayer life. More than any development in years, Twitter helps me to know what is going on in the lives of many friends and people far beyond. I have known how to pray in many specific ways. I have rejoiced with friends and have grieved with others. Priceless.

This to me is the key benefit of Twitter/Facebook/etc. It really does facilitate human communication and this is good for the life of a Christian. It’s why I have no problem spending time on it.

I would argue further that social networking is much, much better than the things we tacitly approve everyday that have absolutely destroyed the heart of human community: The automobile+Interstate. Television. The increasing political correctness of the workplace. The physical layout of our new neighborhoods. Strip malls and huge parking lots.

The vast majority of our Industrialized creations are and have been resulting in human isolation. Even many church constructs, which reflect the age in which they exist, have created isolation.

(It’s amazing to me that people will talk about “wasting time on the internet” then spend hours in front of a TV…Or spend an hour on a commute to work… Or sit at a stoplight without lamenting that each breath is a precious gift wasted staring at a suspended lightbulb.

It’s amazing that the same folks who don’t know their neighbors will caution against being good “stewards of time” and “honoring God with our resources” by not spending too much time communicating on the ‘net. But I digress.)

…meanwhile back at the ranch.

Isolation is not how we were designed by God. (And if you’re an atheist/evolutionist, you can at least stipulate that we didn’t evolve this way). We were designed to be tribal and communicative in nature. The internet facilitates this.

Of course, that’s the part about repairing our situation. There are also the newer capabilities that are offered by smartphones and a whole lotta networking. This is the “should we Twitter in church” question.

Mohler stops short of approving these:

I do not believe that Twitter belongs in worship, but it does belong among the people of God. Tweet before and after a service of worship. Every once in a while, take a break.

I think there are valid things to explore in this area, but this is not really a big issue.

So this is very encouraging. Southern Baptists take note.

My answer? Well, I’m not an insider but I have observed this world for awhile now.

I think the CCM of old died about the same time the secular music world died. It was a world of Christian music that lived in parallel (and with similar if not identical mechanisms) as the secular music world. But it’s not really their fault…there wasn’t any other place for it to exist.

Now there is a environment friendly to ‘new’ Christian music…one where it should have existed to begin with. The people of the church.

7-10 years ago I would call churches about coming to their church to play, and it was a new and different thing to have a group come in and play music. Now many churches have bands and expanding approaches to music and they’re much less interested in outsiders coming in. It’s not that they’re uninterested. They’ve kind of broken out of the traditional cultural mode and are doing so themselves. Or they’re a new church and they’re starting it that way.

The big problem I see is that ‘new’ Christian music is still maintaining the pop/Nashville sensibilities sourced in the old CCM environments. Which is to say very safe and very limited and very cookie cutter (in most cases). It’s going to get old sooner or later, especially in places that have chunked all traditional music in favor of new music.

It’s going to be interesting to watch where the next thing develops, and when/how it’s adopted by the church. Ultimately the goal should be that there is no “next thing”. That’s the way the old CCM thought, and while there are still large chunks of the old machinery turning out hits…it’s a losing strategy because the recording industry is not a Biblical model of ministry.

Instead, it should all be about what scripture teaches us about music and the style should ebb and flow around that.

Anyone who spends any time in I.T. (or, I guess…mars landers, aviation, operating rooms, etc…..anything technical or where the failure of a system is ‘bad’) is familiar with redundancy. Redundancy is basically running multiple things so that if one thing fails the other things will still be working.

You can achieve high levels of redundancy these days….and all for lower and lower prices. But it’s no magic bullet. Even in the most redundant environment, failure is always an option….and much more of an option than people think.

There are several problems.

The first is recognition of a failure. When has a failure actually occurred? This is a remarkably difficult problem. It’s easy to know when the power is out. But how do you know when a web server is down? An error message? A long response time? it’s not as easy as you’d think.

Another problem is functional failure. How do you know that the same condition that whacked the first system won’t turn around and whack the second system? You can put two servers on two seperate sides of the globe, and one bug will bring them both down.

Anyway, just a thought after this mornings festivities. Redundancy is good, but it must be understood in proper context.

Should We Use Twitter During Church?

John Piper’s take.

An article from Christianity today.

To me, this is pretty simple. Twittering is sometimes like talking, and sometimes like taking notes. You can tell if twittering is appropriate if it’s appropriate in any of these two categories.

Appropriate during worship? Reading of scripture? Singing? Would you talk or take notes? No.

(Although I will say I have seen public exclamations on Twitter and Facebook that are worship.)

Appropriate during the sermon? Well sorta. Just depends. Some people think twittering distracts you, but you could make the same argument about jotting down notes. Are tweets for an audience? Again…sorta. But some people would twitter for 10,000 or 0 and do it the same way. There is no one reason for twitter to exist.

Some churches are creating boards that post tweets up during the sermon. This creates an open air discussion more akin to sunday school…or even the way the Temples of old worked. If that’s the intent of the forum, then sure. Twitter away.

Whatever the case, we have to remember that our industrial age idea of church…where the rank and file (workers) come in and sit down (factory) and hear a presentation from a leader (manager)…contains elements of Biblical design but has alot of cultural construct to it. There’s nothing bad about this aspect, but in determining what is appropriate we have to put the construct in perspective.

We also have to remember that if we Tweet a Bible verse or a chunk of the sermon, that may be all some people read of the Bible or hear of a sermon all day.

But in regard to the behavior on the show, I’m actually surprised that the whole thing lasted so long.

I read a book (I thought it was Freakonomics, but I think it’s something else…have to dig it up) that talked about predicting divorce based on the tone of how the people talked with each other. In a nutshell, if people have contempt for each other…they’re probably going to end up divorced.

You can tell if peopls have contempt for each other by how they talk to each other. You can’t use the words they choose, because there’s so much more to communication than that. Saying “I love you so much” can be said sweetly, and it can be said with contempt. Their point was that if the discussion indicated contempt….it was game over for that marriage in a couple years.

(Note that this is a bit different from the “lift your spouse up” advice. You can talk down, make fun of your spouse (both by yourselves and in front of people) in a way that causes damage. This situation is obvious and bad. But in this case the language is more of a gauge to see what’s going on. What do they actually think?)

Anyway, from day one of their show, Jon and Kate’s discussions with each other were dripping with contempt. Even the good natured discussions had veiled contempt. I commented on that to my wife so she can vouch that it’s not just something I’m making up after the fact.

So yeah, if you don’t like each other….chances are you’re eventually gonna scrap. And this fighting may or may not lead to a terminal situation. In the case of the Jon and Kate show, they needed each other more than they didn’t like each other. When the Benjamin’s started rollin’ in they didn’t need each other anymore…poof.

If there is any cause/effect that occurred because of the TV show, it’s that the show brought out that contempt in concentrated form, and provided the means for them to replace each other.

Is there still hope? They are apparently people of Faith, so of course. But they are going to have to choose it, then work to remove the contempt and self-centeredness. They are going to have to mentally choose to love each other.

(BTW, here’s a handy divorce calculator. Shelley and I only have a 3-6% chance of getting divorced. Yay!)

A little technical background. Unless you’ve worked in programming or security, you may be unfamiliar with hashes. Hashes are mathematical fingerprints that sum up a collection of characters to a unique value. For example, John 3:16:

John 3:16 For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.

has an MD5 hash of: 608c0faeca4a9459670c431d4bf9e824

Effectively no other passage or collection of words and letters will result in the same MD5 hash. So, let’s say I messed with John 3:16

John 3:16 For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever is a real good person not perish but have eternal life.

Which results in the MD5: 071bb684802e215ef7ddca0165f1cda7

So without even reading the passage, you could know there’s a problem by just comparing the hashes. This is especially useful for large chunks of data. For example, the entire chapter of John 3 has a hash of: b369c7eac65c3e782030ec5f93d43d30

If I said, “here, use this Bible” you could theoretically verify it by creating an MD5 hash of the contents and compare it with the MD5 hash of a known, good Bible.

My point in all this is to say that you can easily test the validity of any belief or interpretation by looking at what they leave out or ignore. It’s easy to “prooftext” and come up with all sorts of things with one little chunk of the Bible. But that type of study isn’t valid. The hash of a prooftext isn’t the same as the hash of the entire Bible.

This is my problem with some of the Systematic Theology texts out there. They’re great references for interpretation and the standard take on things, but if you look in the index there are huge chunks of the Bible missing. They are useful for study, but they don’t hash to the same value as the Bible.

The same is true for some Christian books, but I think everyone knows what they’re looking at. Systematic Theology has a different intent.

As we journeyed through the various denominations and non-denominations, I saw verses that I had rarely seen before outside my own readings. Sure, they were touched on in linear and verse by verse study, but it seemed that certain sections were focused on even then.

So I’ve learned that growing up Baptist gives a great foundation in sound Theology, but there is definitely a focus on certain chunks of the Bible. I’ve subsequently seen that other denominations have other angles and favorites.

I remember playing at a small country church who, when my grandfather asked what they believe, replied “we believe everything from Genesis to Revelation.” This was a quaint and somewhat humorous response. But in retrospect it was pretty profound.

Ironically, at one point right after it bought PayPal, eBay had the leading actors of most of this entertainment revolution sitting in its offices. Chad Hurley and Steve Chen of YouTube fame, Peter Thiel (Facebook), Jeremy Stoppelman (Yelp), Max Levchin (Slide), David Sacks (Geni and Yammer), Reid Hoffman (LinkedIn, board member of Zynga) and others [...] were all too alienated by eBay’s bureaucratic and political MBA culture. So we decided to create our own fun elsewhere instead.

Even when they’re quiet I steal a glance in the rearview mirror and watch their little faces gazing out into that big world. It’s fun to wonder what they’re thinking about, and even more fun to ask them about it.

Then when I drop them off I hear them greeting and talking to their friends and teachers. I especially get a kick out of all my daughter’s friends making a point to say “hey Canon!” He’s going to have some advantages I didn’t think about!

So it’s a bit sad to close this small chapter. We have one more year of the current set up, then Melodi will be going somewhere for 6th grade(!) and we’ll have some decisions to make for Canon too.

The fascinating thing to me about these little folks is that I would like them even if they weren’t my kids. They’re our children but they’re also turning into great people. My wife always mentions this proverb that “we’ll know our kids longer as adults than as children”. That’s a great thought.

As parents, we’ve been given an incredible (literally) role in the lives of the people we are raising. We should never take that for granted.

More interesting stuff from Anne regarding Facebook, Twitter, and in the general online experience. I like Anne’s site because we both seem to have spent alot of time thinking through entirely different things about the same subject.

She is processing what these online communities mean and how they intersect with the Gospel and our ‘mission’ here in this life. I’ve already spent alot of time over the years thinking about this, as I was on BBS’ talking about such things back in the mid 80’s (over 300, then 1200 baud!).

But before going into the positives, here is my take on some of these communities at their worst:

LinkedIn = NameDroppedIn
Facebook = IamCoolerthanYouBook
MySpace = IWillRebelAgainstMyParentsWithHorrendousHTMLSpace
Frienster = GoodGriefGoAwayster
Craigslist = SubpoenaMyISPList

All that being implied I still hold that the online communities (most notably Facebook), while the subject of much scorn, are actually healing a large chunk of damage done to the human condition by the industrial age. The industrial age was great. But it had some significant disadvantages for the Gospel. For example….

• Ever notice how many protestant churches resemble a factory in organization and behavior?
• Have you ever gone to the mall or a grocery store and not talked to a single person for hours?
• When was the last time you wrote a letter?
• How many times in your life have you moved away never to see people again?
• Do you really know your neighbors?

These are examples of the way we have distored things. All of these things interfere with the Gospel because they are the practical application of industrial organization on our fallen nature. I see the social networking world busting up many of these artifacts daily. This is a good thing.

What’s really amusing is to see the more conservative among us (I won’t link to them) fighting this phenomenon. To some of our brothers and sisters, the industrial age manifestations have become one with Christianity. Thus, anything departing from previous societal and cultural norms are anti-Christian and somehow opposed to the Gospel. Keep an eye out for these, you’ll see them in the obvious places…and not so obvious places.

So in general, I think social networking is a good thing. Yes, it can become an idol….yes, it can be a vehicle for negative things. But for the most part I think it’s fixing many broken things.

Here’s one. Fannie Mae needs 19 billion. They get this by selling stock to the gubmint, who then mints gubs (aka borrowing) and gives them the money.

To put this in perspective, the entire budget for NASA was 18.7 billion–a sum under careful review. Well, as careful as can be expected of a federal agency with private contracts in alot of congressional districts.

So on one hand, there is ‘careful’ review of the space program budget. On the other there is another massive gob of money going cover even more massive losses at Fannie Mae.

And lest some snake oil congressman try to tell you that taxpayers will recoup this ‘investment’:

Fannie Mae’s decision to tap an additional $19 billion in aid will raise its annual dividend payments to the Treasury to $3.5 billion from $1.6 billion. The company said its commitment to pay those dividends, the likelihood of seeking more aid and the deteriorating housing market creates “significant uncertainty as to our long-term financial sustainability.”

They’re basically saying that this huge bazillion dollar company is bankrupt. As in terminally. The amount of debt is too large to functionally pay it back. Fannie Mae is insolvent and as a taxpayer you’re “investing” more in this one payment than an entire year of NASA.

By the way the capacity for minting gubs is getting more and more suspect. The last treasury auction was weak. A few of those and it will be clear that Federal borrowing (and hence, borrowing in general) will become more and more expensive. The more expensive it gets, the less money it can borrow. Then the gravy train stops and we’re all in trouble.

Have a nice day!

However, I read this story today and suddenly realized that we’re rapidly approaching the former Soviet Union in terms of how our economy runs. No, we’re not going to be goosestepping anytime soon, but the sheer amount of resources being pumped into the economy are making me think we could definitely have a soviet style result….with an American flavor, of course.

It seems our government has an idea for every industry.

The Banking industry needs to function a certain way (particularly in regard to auto loans an mortgages). The Automotive industry should exist in a certain way. Now journalism and newspapers should exist in a certain way.

Energy should be produced and used in a certain way. Crops and farms should function in a certain way through subsidies. Telecom and communications should happen a certain way.

Pay attention. Notice how almost all communication from our government now contains a presumption about how our economy should run.

From wikipedia:

A planned economy or directed economy [...] is an economic system in which the central government makes all decisions on the production and consumption of goods and services

And in terms of government spending, if you google around a bit you see that all government spending (as a percantage of GDP) is easily approaching 50%. You may laugh at the “we’re becoming soviet” idea, but it’s true. How long can this increase in the economic role of government continue? It won’t be long before we find ourselves in a 100% true irreversible command/directed economy. It may already be too late.

When did this happen? When did we start looking to government to ensure that everything happened the way we thought it should? When did we start thinking that a massive, government run economy is a-ok if it has a cool eagle perched on it instead of a soviet bear?

(The eagle is pretty cool though, picture it making that echoing screach sound….awesome!)

And in the circles are frozen
The eddies, the orbits
The soil and the bedrock
All eternal century’s dozen

These are the trails in motion
the subtle movements and artifacts
arcing through fate

While birds fly far above
Moving like ink
In the sketched formation
The image and purpose of love

But in typical Shelley fashion it has it’s own set of special qwirks. In her case it’s a sensitivity and/or allergy to wheat and gluten.

She went to bed early tonight because she’s having a flare up of this condition. Which basically means she just feels crappy, has no energy, has a slight fever, and has to stay in bed until it clears up.

I know I’m not the one who has to deal directly with this ailment, so I can’t really speak for her….and it sounds easy to say this. But when things like this happen, I really feel blessed.

A few weeks ago, a buddy of mine lost his wife (33 years old) unexpectedly to illness. Last year I heard of another old high school era friend who lost his wife. Almost 2 years ago a guy my age at work lost his wife to cancer. Just a few weeks ago one of Shelley’s friends was diagnosed with breast cancer. Fortunately they caught it in plenty of time.

All this is to say that I am so incredibly blessed to still have my best friend, wife, love of my life, and mother to my kids still here. An immune disorder is no fun. But I can do my best to make up for that. You can’t make up for “no longer with us”.

So when we have to drop some extra money at Whole Foods for gluten free cookies, or when we have to go out of our way to the hippie organic store, or when the copays add up to a car payment, or when I have to help out with something or change plans unexpectedly and it’s not ‘convenient’. I’m completely ok with it. In fact, I do it gladly.

It’s an incredible privilege that is no longer possible for some other guys I know.

Some people see us on facebook, or our blog, office pictures, etc. and seem to understand. For others, I can tell they think we’re being childish or cutesy or something over the top. You know, I really just don’t have time to care.

Every day is a miracle directly from God. Every breath is like a million bucks. There are some people who’d pay that just to be able to walk around for a day. I’m going to celebrate that and be thankful in any way I can….

In Christ, we have victory over death and an eternal hope that can’t be conquered. But we also have an abundant life…a unique life that he created for us. This life is full of relationships and blessings that we barely recognize.

Take a good look around you. You’re living in a story that’s better than any feature film.

And I know who my Bond girl is!

Obama’s approval rating high, but will it last?

It will last as long as the government can borrow.

Once ambivalent about faith, Roose now prays to God regularly — for his own well-being and on behalf of others. He said he owns several translations of the Bible and has recently been rereading meditations from the letters of John on using love and compassion to solve cultural conflicts.

It’s a start….

Isa.55.10 For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven and do not return there but water the earth, making it bring forth and sprout, giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater, 11 so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and shall succeed in the thing for which I sent it.

Even back in college when we were reading his material, we noticed this. The Jekyll/Hyde routine was fun to observe.

His recent post on his blog definitely leans toward the talking point side. And it contains what I think is the biggest myth about our current financial mess:

When it comes to the national debt, as I’ve said before, the relevant statistic is the ratio of debt to the gross domestic product. The only sure way to bring that debt down and make it manageable in future years is to get the economy growing again — which requires that, in the short term, the government spend a lot of money (because consumers and businesses won’t).

One thing we should all be learning in this crisis is that the people who know what’s going on actually don’t. The complete failure in assessing financial condition is one of the key points that got us where we’re at. And this ratio of debt to the gross domestic product is completely and utterly irrelevant. There are several reasons, but lets look at the practical one.

When you go to a bank to borrow money, and they ask you how much you make…do you reply with the total profit of the company you work for? No, that’s silly. The money isn’t yours. Only the amount they pay you is yours.

The concept of Federal debt as a percentage of GDP should be equally as laughable. The federal government doesn’t own the country (although this should give some insight into the underlying philosophy here). Even if it did, it’s impossible for the entire GDP (or even most of it) to be taxed. So this figure is just not relevant.

When you’re getting a loan, only the money the company pays you is considered when you qualify for a loan. It’s called debt to income ratio. If we’re to realistically look at the federal government and it’s ability to pay off debt, we have to look at it’s actual income. It’s tax receipts.

The government took in roughly 2.5 trillion in taxes last year. We’re currently a little more than 11 trillion in debt (and we’re about to add another 2 trillion). These numbers aren’t looking good, folks. Anyone who thinks we’ll ever pay this off is crazy. And folks like China are not crazy. This jig will be up sooner or later when the “banks” of the world do the math and refuse to lend the U.S. any more money..

Going back to the analogy, imagine you walk in and say “Well the company I work for made 15 million dollars last year.” How much do I qualify for? Then the bank gave you a loan based on that 15 million figure. You’d have a nice house, but you’d be in a heap of trouble because you could never pay it back.

And the people who lend you money would be in a heap of trouble because you’d never pay it back. This sounds an awful lot like the housing crisis.

In other words, we did it once with housing….and if we use debt as a percentage of GDP as Reich suggests, we’re going to do it again with our entire government.

Mike
1986 Pontiac Grand Prix, black (flipped it downtown in my madrigal outfit)
1987 Pontiac Fiero, gold (run off the road by drunk driver. Tim was with me.)
1988 Pontiac Fiero, black (one of my favorite cars. It lived to a ripe old age, Tim inherited it)
198? Pontiac Bonneville, red (needed a bigger car. Inherited this from mom. Saved me from a couple tickets.)
1994 Saturn SL1, gold (birthday present, traded it in)
1990 Mazda Miata, blue (our first car Shelley and I bought together)
1990 Corvette, red (oh man….)
2000 Saturn SW2, (what happened?!?!?)
2003 Mazda Miata, silver (technically it’s both of ours)

Shelley
1972 BMW, light blue (she had this car when we dated. She was not a fan!)
1989 Chrysler LeBaron, red (we drove around in this alot.)
1993 Mercedes 190, white (a cool car)
1992 Saturn SL2, green (stick shift. My parents gave it to us as a wedding gift)
1997 Saturn SC2, green (sporty little car, sold because a car seat barely fit)
1990 Volvo Wagon 745, red (turbo. The momma car.)
2003 Saturn LW300, white (Lemon. such a disappointment…)
2003 Ford Expedition, black (great car. drank gas.)
2004 Mercury Mountaineer, black (another great car)

Frosty the awesome
was a robot who could fly
with two robot arms and a bullet nose
punch the ground and make a hole

We’ll work on the next chunk tomorrow!

If you look back throughout our history, the answer is very clear, although it wasn’t always clear at the time. We now know that for the last 10-15 years our economic engine has not been an industry.

For that time period, our economic engine has been debt. Mortgages. Government debt. Private debt. And on top of that rested a huge soup of derivatives and financial trickery that greatly increased available debt. Our industry was borrowing….high tech borrowing.

Now that this engine has ground to it’s inevitable halt, we find ourselves collectively looking around wondering how the world is supposed to work. The government seems to think that the solution is to re-invigorate the debt machine. United we stand….One Nation Under a Plan to Get Credit Flowing Again.

All the efforts to resurrect the debt god have failed so far because they are based on flawed assumptions. Banks aren’t scared to lend. People can find mortgages and car loans. The problem for our imaginary economy is that people aren’t stupid anymore. They’re either unemployed or rethinking the whole debt thing.

So finally the Federal government–full of folks from the very industry that got us in this mess–is stepping in to borrow for us. Scratch that…they’re making us borrow by using the full faith and credit of our future tax receipts. In short, the same people who got us in this mess are now at the helm of the government. As expected, they are perpetuating the very habits that got us in this mess, only on a massive scale and in ways that can destroy the country.

Over the last couple weeks, the government has made even more commitments to borrow for us–to the point where they are creating money to do it. It is huge. It’s massive. It’s turning fundamentals upside down. But very few people seem to even care anymore since the word “trillion” is common now.

Yet you’ll still hear people say “when the economy recovers….” I have to ask…how? What will be the engine of this recovery? What industry could possibly be productive enough to swim against the tsunami of debt we’re creating?

When has our country ever had this much debt with so little to show for it?

I thought I’d add a couple tidbits to Eugene’s very insightful analysis of databases.

First, a good technology solution solves many problems. All over the world folks are reading entry level programming books, and striking out to make their fortune in writing applications. Many of these people are successful.

Unfortunately, many of the mistakes early on in the life of a product are never solved. And some of the things that were not mistakes are not updated to keep up with the application. And sometimes the solution is too successful and the company grows too quickly. Other times the company gets so drunk with success they siphon of the cash and don’t invest in the product.

When software goes bad, people find a way to get the job done. This leads to the data cliques Eugene mentions. It’s also a reason the data is not reliable.

Good software will eliminate outright many of the problems Eugene mentions.

Second, Good software doesn’t require alot of training. The web is a huge example of this. The most successful sites are those that are easy to use. Ease of use almost always gets whacked in demos. It may be easy to find the buttons, and the page may look pretty, but how easy is it to write a report? How easy is it to find data?

Craigslist is the ugliest website out there, but it’s popular because it works and it’s easy.

Lastly…again, what’s underneath the hood matters. For the aforementioned reasons and others, the world is rife with bad software solutions. Some of them look great, but under the hood they’re terrible.

Many decision makers think the nuts, bolts, bits, and bytes of a computer system aren’t their concern. But inflexibility, poor database layout, difficulty in use, bugginess, bad architecture, and all sorts of other problems are a direct result of the underlying technology.

Listen to your tech people. Or hire a technical consultant. If you’re about to spend huge bucks (and untold bucks in hidden human costs) on software, getting an independent 3rd party opinion is worth it.

Lastly, software has a profound impact on the culture of your organization. My wife and I are always laughing at older movies (as in 20 or so years ago) where people don’t have computers on their desk. These days, everyone has a computer, and chances are they’re staring at it all day.

Here’s the trick though, they aren’t staring. They’re working. And software is affecting everything they do. There’s plenty more to be written on this, but that’s a whole other post.

Anyway, I’m really enjoying the Communicorps blog. Check it out, and add it to your RSS reader if you’re one of the cool kids.

Good luck. That’s the problem with bailing things out instead of letting them fail. Why not pay people bonuses? Because it’s “not right”?

In a normal market system these bonuses wouldn’t be paid because the company would be bankrupt. But when you just kind of pump cash into them….well did anyone expect anything different?

The source of all of this is that things were allowed to get too big. It’s pretty well established that free markets, as good as they are, lead to monopolies and monster trusts, etc. There is absolutely no good reason to have a huge Trillion + monster like AIG.

But because there is something that big, the mismanagement becomes all of our problem. The free market can’t provide a trillion dollar competitor to come in and clean up an AIG failure. So we’re stuck in a nowhereville of economic theory where we write checks and get confusing and maddening results.

If there’s anything we should learn from all this, it’s that huge merged, conglomerated monsters distort (and possibly destroy) the free market. Alot of regulation can be eliminated just by keeping everything at a normal size and ensuring markets have plenty of competitors.

First, “is facebook community?” And maybe next will be “is facebook a waste of time?”

This first question came from a trendy source (and I use that term in the positive tense). Anne’s conclusion was generally no.

My conclusion? The question does not make sense.

That’s like asking “is a city block community?” or “is the telephone community?”. These are collections of technologies that are tools….how can they be community?

Let’s look at the definition(s) of community.

1: a unified body of individuals:
b: the people with common interests living in a particular area
c: an interacting population of various kinds of individuals (as species) in a common location
d: a group of people with a common characteristic or interest living together within a larger society
g: a body of persons of common and especially professional interests scattered through a larger society
3: c: social activity

Is Facebook itself a community? Again…no. Doesn’t make sense.

Can community exist on Facebook? Definitely! And in my opinion, community can exist far more effectively than in these dysfunctional towns, cities, and (I dare say) churches we have created.

Think about it. When was the last time you knew that someone in your neighborhood lost a loved one? Do you know who their pets are? Do you know their favorite music? Do you know what they did this week? Have you reached out to say hi? Have you seen pictures of their recent vacation or kid’s band concert?

Now for something scary. When was the last time you knew things like this about people in your church?

Can you really apply the Webster definition of “community” to things we normally refer to as such?

I can safely say I’ve grown closer to people through facebook. That happens in community. It seems like what we call “the real world” usually tries to do the oppoosite. Think very hard about that.

Nobody really stops to ask if our neighborhood, town, church or city is a community. Of course it is…because it…just is. But I think if you look at it, it’s really not. Facebook facilitates far more communication than other parts of our industrial and post-industrial lives. And thus, my answer is:

Facebook is not community. But facebook facilitates community, and it does so far more effectively than almost anything else we have these days.

A picture of you in college. You are holding a “beverage” and pumping your fist in the air. Your eyes are kind of blankly staring off camera.

Or,

A huge company that has a database of everything you’ve ever bought…your browsing habits…your viewing habits….your income….every demographic tidbit…..and all of this info about your family members too. This company makes this available for a few dollars, or swaps it and trades it like Star Wars cards.

I don’t know about you, but I’d choose “huge company”. Yet I’m always amused when I hear people say they don’t want to be on facebook (or similar) for privacy reasons. Guess, what? You ain’t got no privacy. (ignore the logic of that double negative. It’s just there for effect.)

A friend of mine started a marketing company for financial institutions, and interfaced with one of these “huge companies”. He was amazed at what information was available. Everything about you and your family (and much more than you could possibly think) is catalogued, databased, warehoused, and indexed.

Do you have a discount card on your keychain? Several? All of your purchasing information is cross referenced and consolodated into these marketing databases.

This information is available for sale to anyone who wants it (including the government). And they can use it for whatever they want.

Cablevision matches households to demographic data to divide its customers, using the data-collection company Experian.

Have you ever applied for a mortgage or car loan? Yes, it’s that Experian. That same company is going to provide information to cable companies to customize advertising. Just for you!

None of this is illegal, so who knows what all is happening behind closed doors of big buildings?

So next time you’re worried about “online privacy”, get over it. For a few bucks anyone can know more about you than a lifetime of facebook statuses and youthful pictures can convey.

So the last two large computer purchases have been Apple laptops. I even used an iMac as my main computer at work for a few months. And we have 2 iPhones and about 6 iPods.

I loved my iBook. It’s still in use by my mother-in-law.

My Macbook has been a different story. The hard drive crashed. The CD/DVD drive has slowly degraded until it stopped working entirely. The rubber feet came off. The keyboard stopped working and it was only some pleading by my wife at the Apple store that got it replaced. This all occurred in less than 2 years of very stationary use. It gets ridiculously hot. Discussions with other Macbook users have revealed some similar situations.

So in my opinion, OS X is completely superior to Windows. But Apple laptop hardware is currently junk.

So it was time to get my wife a new laptop. It needs to be small and reliable and easy to use. She loved her 12 inch powerbook but Apple does not make such a machine anymore. The closest thing is a Macbook air…but that’s $1700 bucks.

Enter the Asus Eee. It’s small, light, cheap ($350). It has 1 gig of ram, a 160 gig HD, a nice screen, a camera….it’s basically a small non-Apple Macbook. And for the money I can get 4 of these for the cost of one apple laptop.

The disadvantage? Windows. Ugh. But hey…I’ve made this stuff work before. In fact, I use it all day long.

So far I’m very very impressed. We’ll see how it holds up.

When it comes to computers and related equipment, too many companies have had to learn the hard way that taking refuge in the “high end” doesn’t work long term. With the economy taking a hit, Apple’s expensive but oh-so-cool machines may become odd man out. They certainly did for me.

The other thing is that Apple doesn’t seem to have plans for a netbook like the Eee. Even if they do, they’re already too late.

Alabama’s prepaid tuition fund has tumbled. When our daughter was born, this thing was kind of the rage among new parents. “By the time your child is 18, college tuition will average $492,000!!! Or you can pay the low rates now and the state of Alabama will take care of everything!” We chose not to participate. I’m kind of glad we didn’t! Depending on what happens, this fund might not be able to follow through on their promises.

BTW, now that our economy is tanking…now would be an excellent time to work on the “university of the future”. It should be a fully accredited system that utilizes all the high tech we’ve been generating for the last 20 years. It’s silly to have the cost of college education keep going crazy when the technology is there to make it cheaper.

And here’s another scary thing. Pension funds are up to 1 Trillion short. That’s a trillion dollars out there that people are counting on. Are we going to let those folks starve in the streets due to irresponsibility of our leaders? No way…we’ll cry out to Abba Government and their magic chinese debt box. What’s another trillion?

And here’s the obligatory will baby boomers be able to retire article.

We don’t live in the garden of eden anymore. We can’t base an economy on debt and simultaneously save for everyone’s perfect retirement. Even though we seem dedicated to ignoring the economic principles we learned in 10th grade social studies, we cannot deny they exist.

Case in point: Amazon’s new kindle reader was supposed to have the ability to read e-books to you. This would be pretty handy if you’re blind. Or maybe you just wanted to listen to the next chapter in your car?

Nope! Content owners say this violates copyright. They want you to buy the audio book.

And nobody out-innovates the United States right? I mean we’re always told that innovation is as ‘merican as apple pie. But did you know that people in Europe can sign up for a service that lets them stream just about any song ever recorded…in most cases for free?

You won’t hear about things like that in the U.S. because in the U.S. big media companies practically own Congress. Content production corporations have far more rights here.

Back in the day, when mp3 players were first starting to appear, content producers sued to stop their manufacture. Fortunately sanity prevailed, otherwise mp3 players would be illegal. Remember, just because they lost doesn’t mean they don’t secretly still think it should be illegal.

So always look with skepticism when creativity and innovation are mentioned as reasons for strong copyright. Of course people should be allowed to profit from their creations. But copyright was always intended as a temporary monopoly to allow this. Not the long term, all encompassing control that media companies think their entitled to these days.

Fannie Mae is already out of money from their first bailout.

AIG will soon be taken over by the goverment.

GM will be siphoning off more money from the government.

(I know….Fed vs. Treasury vs. Government. It all comes from the same place eventually.)

Meanwhile, big banks need more cash. And the normal Federal lack of discipline has kicked into high gear. Every few minutes they’re talking about more debt. Massively more debt.

Meanmeanwhile…there is nothing being said about any economic engine that will pay this debt off. It’s just ethereal “stimulus” that is supposed to magically create an economy. When all the pork is spent, what will be left?

5 syllables: un-sus-tain-a-ble. This can’t go on forever, and it shows no sign of stopping. When everything tips over it will be sudden and drastic.

I love this little gem:

“I think we need to hear some optimistic talk from our leaders and soon.”
-Ron Kiddoo, chief investment officer at Cozad Asset Management

I love it not because of what it implies…which is bad news. I love it because it matches several patterns I’ve seen in my (now 15) years of corporate life. Thus making the quantification very easy.

The only time I’ve ever heard the equivalent is from companies that are failing. Especially during the dot-com era. And if we think a press release will turn this around, our economy is failing.

This whole notion that we just need some good news to turn things around points to the core problem of our political system, economy, and society in general. We think perception is reality. But perception is not reality. Reality is reality and it is colliding with the la-la land that is the U.S.A.

You can’t get something for nothing from the government. You can’t borrow for consumption forever. Natural resources are limited. Stocks are not a magical money box that always goes up in value. You can’t just consolodate the world and have it work efficiently.

I think we’re going to learn alot of things over the next few years.

Today’s other major wobble: AIG lost 60 billion dollars. The largest corporate loss in US history. And guess who’s going to pay for it? The Federal government.

There’s a word for this: Unsustainable.

Like in Ghostbusters, all these numbers point to a big twinkie on the horizon. What that twinkie will be…I have no clue. But the world is quickly changing and sooner or later something is going to snap.

It’s hard enough to illustrate this when you’re talking with people….so the blunt instruments of the ‘net (email, comments, message boards, etc) are nearly hopeless for any rational discourse on the matter. Thus, I love to find examples where the culture drifts into doctrine so explicitly. So here are a few.

First you have this article about a very operatic version of “How great thou art”. The author of this site is a rhetorical genius at blending western/industrial culture and doctrine. Which is to say that 50% of the content is dead-on right, but the other 50% is either sourced in culture or simply using rhetorical tricks to attack things.

But with regard to the video clip, other than musical style and genre, much of the prior criticisms of contemporary music (focus on the singer, etc) could easily be illustrated in this video. Don’t get me wrong. I love hymns, I think this a great song, and it’s done very well, and very likely for the right reasons. But you do something different and suddenly it’s “bad”, “circus church” etc. (and all churches are the same) The same critical eye is never applied to something culturally ‘friendly’.

Then there’s discussion over on this blog about the use of “I”. As in praise songs sung corporately should say “we”, not I. Which I find pretty crazy. Have you ever looked at the lyrics to our great hyms?

For example, let’s use the one in the clip as mentioned above:

O Lord my God, When I in awesome wonder,
Consider all the worlds Thy Hands have made;
I see the stars, I hear the rolling thunder,
Thy power throughout the universe displayed.

Could there be anything more “me and God” than that hymn? But how many times has this hymn been sung in corporate worship? And did anyone ever once complain that it was wrong to say “I”?

So here you have two very conservative viewpoints…but they are technically opposed, thus illustrating that 99% of the discussion of Church music really has nothing to do with Biblical doctrine. It’s all gets to be just a bunch of opinion and culture and everyone trying to get their way.

And it’s not just them. There are a bunch at risk.

And did you know the 90’s had a “doughnut heyday”?

It’s gonna happen folks. The Federal government will either go bankrupt, or print money to pay debts.

The reason? We want to live beyond our means. We want government to be our god and meet all of our needs.

We have no means because there is nothing left to drive this economy. The abstract concept of a “service economy” is being put to the test. Our last real manufacturing sector is being foreclosed into the stone age. The only construction I see around here is dollar menu fast food joints and drug stores (thanks to the remaining promise of trillions in Federally funded prescriptions). Slowly but surely the only viable industries are things where the FG is footing the bill.

That’s not an economy.

We’re all sitting idly by while the FG spends unthinkable sums into a nation that has very little economic infrastructure to fund a payback.

Just watch. The FG will have it’s debt downgraded. People will stop lending to the FG. Then things start to unravel.

This is an extension from a conversation on Facebook, in which the general principle of “give the guy a chance” was proffered. While I would normally think this is a good idea, with Obama’s presidency, I don’t think this applies.

This is not a ‘black box’ experiment where we try one abstract solution, then we try another abstract solution and see what works better. It’s not like we just vote red or blue then check back in a couple years and see what’s up. In fact, it’s this mentality that got us here in the first place…and it’s this mentality that will in very short order threaten the very existence of the Republic. (It sounds alot more intellectual to say “the Republic” by the way)

The “stimulus” bill that Obama is pushing is a massive piece of policy. This policy has a huge price tag…between 7500-10,000 per family….and that’s before you even consider the debt implications.

Further, the situation we’re in is very serious, and it’s unevaluated….massive decisions like this that got us here. Yet the very people who championed change are now using the behavior of prior administrations as excuse for continuation of the errors.

I think if “change” is really what this is all about, then perhaps this rush to charge up the federal credit card is one thing we should start with.

Since when did 713 billion in debt become a Republican ‘alternative’? This is kind of like in the early 90’s when the Alternative section got bigger than the rock/pop section, and then quietly merged into Alt/Rock. I feel like one of those goth kids making the old speech about “selling out”……”man”.

There really is starting to be less and less difference between the R’s and D’s. And what differences there are seem to be Democrat cliche’s…completely controlled by their rhetoric. The Republican party is dead, and it’s wondering around like a zombie….except a cute zombie that can’t do anything. Like maybe an undead kitten.

Braaains….meeeeeooow….tax cuts…. They fight and hiss and threaten, but at the end of the day the disagreements are only their reflection in the mirror.

But the one thing we can all agree on–the common ground that makes us all sit around the political campfire and say “it only takes a spark”–is massive, massive debt. It’s what Republicans do to try to be the cool kids. It’s what Democrats do to be called populist. It’s what will ultimately destroy the government, and it’s what Americans seem to love. The government is DOING SOMETHING for cryin’ out loud!!!

Welcome to two party government, but the rule of one philosophy.

It’s too late for you, Republicans. You died a long time ago when you stopped being Republicans.

Meanwhile, Democrats play the populist fiddle while Rome Burns. Any criticism of this meets the partisan response of “well the Republicans did it with Iraq”, etc. It’s like starting a drug habit because you saw someone take meth on “intervention”.

So Americans, flying high on the abstract political concept of “Change”, have finally and completely lost touch with reality. Does anyone even grasp the concept of where all this spending is going? Does anyone see where the trendlines are headed? Are we really so caught up finding a parking place at Walmart that we don’t see what’s happening?

Soon it will be too late for Democrats too. And that will leave a very confused, very angry, and very broke electorate.

I’ve always thought the 2 party system was a good thing. But now that we have no philosophy, and no collective idea of who we are or what we’re doing, it’s devolved into a gang war where the only value is “we’re not them”.

The golden calf that is the Federal Credit card is not going to answer our cries one day. Who are we going to vote for then?

It’s a clearly defined, economically sound strategy that is targeted like a laser beam on the specific problems in our economy. Um…yeah.

It’s really just a huge ball o’ money. Pork barrel spending, to be cliche about it. I mean seriously. It’s just a huge chunk of money charged to the credit card in the name of “stimulus”. We tried that, and it worked for a couple months. Then it came crashing down again.

How hard will the economy crash when this last binge is over? And what’s going to happen when the bill comes due?

The Republican Congress had no discipline and overspent, but at least there was some philosophical belief with which to call them hypocrites. This is just Democrat spending run amok. All semblance of fiscal discipline is completely gone.

Obama is using his mandate for this? There’s going to be change, alright. But not the kind everyone thinks.

Again, it’s clear that this money will never be paid back. This is mass suicide of the ever-wobbling Keynesian cult known as the US economy. We’re headed for outright bankruptcy of the Federal Government.

The Federal Gubmint is keeping things running because they have the ability to make commitments on our behalf. They can borrow more than any entity in history because of us and our children. They don’t have to pay it off. The people do. It’s the value of the people that makes this lack of discipline possible. It’s a big fat credit card and the FG is using it to the fullest.

The states are now 300 Billion short o’ cash. And the problem is not so much that they are short of cash , but that this is a permanent condition based on overcommitments.

States have some ability to tap into a lack of discipline. But their lack of discipline has now run into reality. How long do you think before they tap that big Federal Credit card? The state bailout is coming.

BTW, from the posts yesterday talking about California’s leadership in environmental issues…they’re leading this sad march too. When people can’t get refunds or benefits and Cali shuts down, bailout talk will become the centerpiece.

Get ready. The FG will go bankrupt or start printing money. It’s just a matter of time.

Which sounds brilliant. Let’s get off this foreign oil! You car companies better get off your tails and do something about this! Hello? Car companies? You ok?

Oh yeah, many of the car companies are dead, zombified wrecks. Dead companies don’t tend to innovate.

Plus, California is set for a swift decline as well for a variety of reasons.

So if you’re a dead car maker, and you can’t make new cars for California, and California isn’t all that great a market anyway, what are you gonna do? Probably not sell cars in California.

In fact, if you want to ensure cheap cars in your state, you should do everything you can to lower standards.

Don’t get me wrong, I like it when states do things vs. the Federal Gubmint. But this is going to have a bazillion unintended consequences.

Circuit City fell victim to one of the primary fallacies in dealing with technology. They were, after all, a company primarily involved in tech even if it was selling tech for retail.

This fallacy is that technology is about nuts and bolts–circuits and gadgets and “sizzle” and coolness. The truth is that technology is always about people.

CC decided about 2 years ago to lay off all their knowledgeable people so that they could hire cheaper people. Anyone who regularly shopped there saw what a bad move this was. Circuit City immediately became a somewhat disorganized wasteland of products very few people employees really knew about. The whole atmosphere had a entry level feel to it.

When they big one hit, they needed the people to make the sales happen. The cheaper people couldn’t hack it. Bye bye Circuit City.

Anyway, DRM is a silly strategy that only hurts the people who buy music. It doesn’t stop piracy. It breaks. It can make all your songs not work if the parent company goes out of business.

So this is great news. Too bad they want to charge 30 cents per song to upgrade the existing library.

Some of this retail space is already kind of hopeless, as the economic damage to the surrounding area is already too severe to easily recover. But this is an interesting article on what’s happening with malls and housing.

Imagine if a shopping mall had a few hundred residences attached to it. Now imagine a school, basic care hospital, police, groceries, and everything needed for daily life residing in the mall. I would love such an arrangement. I hate that my kids can’t walk or ride their bikes anywhere like I could at their age.

I would imagine the capital required to do some of this would be alot less than building the equivalent in standalone housing…or a new mall. It seems like it needs vision and some work at city hall (zoning, etc). But it probably will continue to be an “exclusive” condo-living type situation for the foreseeable future.