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Author: Scott (Page 93 of 104)

Day 30: financial crisis

March 13, 2009 / / 0 Comments

I just watched last night’s Daily Show episode, where Jon Stewart takes it pretty badly to Jim Cramer (who was to me, until very recently, just that crazy guy on that one CNBC show).  But the entire episode felt like relief – like Jon Stewart was venting for all of us who don’t understand why we as taxpayers are being stuck with these huge bills for a crisis that we didn’t create.

Or did we?  We recently took out what I consider to be a very reasonable mortgage and Wells Fargo (our bank and mortgage lender) did a pretty exhaustive check of our financial standing.

But, if several years ago, a bank had come to us and told us we could get into a house we really liked with a bad loan, would we have known it was a bad loan?  I’m sure there are people who game the system, but I’d suspect that the majority of average Americans wouldn’t understand that a particular mortgage is unrealistic until it’s too late.

Regardless, the damage is done, and something has to happen.  The American banking system is too important to fail so either the government has to pump a lot of money into the system to keep them afloat or house prices will have to make a dramatic and sudden rebound.  Or the government will keep stuffing smaller amounts of money into the system until housing prices rebound.  Assuming they ever reach the levels before the crisis within a reasonable amount of time, which is not a small assumption.

I’ll stop here, because I don’t want to seem like an expert on what’s going on, but I’d urge anybody who has a few hours and wants to understand what’s going on to check out these three This American Life episodes, which do a great job of spelling out the causes and consequences of the crisis in a way that didn’t require any economics classes:

You can listen to all of them for free online and I felt a lot better afterwards, knowing that I at least can understand the basics of one of the largest and scariest things to ever happen to our world in my lifetime.  This financial crisis is a bit like diabetes; it’s not something that affects my day-to-day life yet, but I know that any day I could wake up and find that things are no longer fine.

If I got diabetes and lost my house and job?  That’d be the worst.

Day 29: jafar?

March 12, 2009 / / 0 Comments

I went into our game and movie library at work just before lunch and The Return of Jafar was playing on the TV.  It reminded me of a moment of completely unexpected elation that I experienced many summers ago.

It was 2000 and I was at the Pennsylvania Governor’s School for the Sciences (which, sadly, had its funding cut this year due to the economy) and was starting to come out of my shell.

As is often the case with summer programs, our TAs/RAs arranged for various activities each night to keep us occupied.  One such event was The Newly Roommated Game, which was a knockoff of the Newlywed Game that used to be on TV.  My roommate was Richard (I’m pretty sure – I actually had to look his name up on Facebook to get it right) and we decided that it’d be fun to be a part of this.

Most of the questions were relatively similar to the actual Newlywed Game, such as, “What’s your roommate’s favorite ice cream flavor?”  Some were observational, like, “Does your roommate wear glasses or contacts?”

One question was: “If your roommate was a Disney villain, what villain would he or she be?”  I was asked this about Richard and I didn’t know what he would say.  I wrote down Jafar because it was the first villain that came to mind when I envisioned Richard with an evil grin on his face.  Sure, Jafar.

In retrospect, there aren’t all that many male Disney villains.  Gaston?  Those gypsies from Pinnochio?  Scar?  I mean, come on.  Scar’s a lion.

So, really, Jafar was probably, percentage-wise, the best pick.  It was likely to be the first male villain to pop into Richard’s head.  But I wasn’t thinking like that back then.  I was thinking about how Richard had an air of Agrabah about him, how he’d look pretty dashing with a cape about him, and how he probably hated street urchins.

So when our turn came and Richard, after a half second, blurted out, “Jafar?” as an answer, I proudly turned my written answer around with such excitement that I almost got lightheaded for a moment.

Needless to say, we crushed the competition and handily won The Newly Roommated Game, although I don’t remember if there was any actual award for winning.  For me, that singular moment of perfection was reward enough.

Day 28: things that i wish happened as much in real life as they do in the movies

March 11, 2009 / / 0 Comments
  • High school ugly duckling getting made over because of a bet, only to have the initially arrogant and somewhat insensitive bet-maker eventually fall in love with them
  • Precocious children reuniting their ambivalent but divorced parents through non-offensive trickery and adorably poignant expressions of love
  • People with very little law training but big hearts making stirring courtroom addresses that end in standing ovations and everyone hugging
  • Some sort of deity or angel appearing to those in desperate need or with a selfless wish and guiding them into being a central catalyst for seeing their change come about
  • Batman dispensing dark justice at night, with the role having been fulfilled by multiple actors through our history
  • Time slowing down in situations of great adrenaline or stress
  • Sports teams with no realistic chance at the beginning of a season somehow managing to win the championship in the season when their beloved coach/star/manager is retiring or dying
  • All large-scale bank or casino robberies being well-planned by a relatively large group of witty friends, each with their own specialties and – in the grand view – somehow justified
  • Dogs sensing an evil person’s intentions and barking only at villains
  • Everyone having really nice skin
  • Jaded individuals with cynical views on the world being reformed and turned optimistic simply by staying for a short time in an environment that is the polar opposite of what they are used to
  • Toys coming to life when not being watched
  • Ian McKellan being a benevolent wizard

Day 27: random thoughts before a meeting

March 10, 2009 / / 0 Comments

I got double-cooked pork from the Chinese place across the street today because I had checks to deposit.  I’m not sure how double-cooked pork is prepared, precisely, but I like the idea of it because it leads me to believe that the cooks spend twice as much time on my meal because it has to be cooked, and then cooked again.  What a deal!

I watched the Woody Allen film Vicky Christina Barcelona last night and looked on IMDB to see who the narrator in the film was.  It’s Christopher Evan Welch, who I had never heard of.  But, Mr. Welch was the voice behind Tails in the 1993 TV show “The Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog” so that’s something.

I think I’ve gotten over Scarlett Johansson.  I’m not sure what happened, but I used to think she was really hot and now she just doesn’t really do it for me.  I still think she’s a good actress.

A great way to waste time is to find a movie that you don’t feel too passionately about and read some message board posts about it on IMDB.  For example, take jjjj’s initial assertion that Voiceover narration = lazy filmmaking and follow it down the sordid path of 77 replies.  (The thread is still active, so it may be more than 77 now.)

You should pick a movie that you don’t feel too passionately about though, because you don’t want to be the person who actually posts to IMDB message boards.  Do you?

While going to IMDB, I’m reminded of the little things that make Google Chrome a really slick browser.  I like being able to type “imdb<tab>” and be rewarded with the ability to search IMDB directly from my location bar.

The statuette I have on my desk of a young me is about the same height as two soda cans stacked on top of each other.  A little taller, maybe.

Neither is as tall as my Outstanding Student Award for Excellence in Mathematics from the Mathematics Council of Western Pennsylvania.  I wonder what life would be like if I was on the Mathematics Council of Western Pennsylvania.

I certainly wouldn’t be going to a meeting now where I talked about how to create the best experience for new players when they first fire up Sims 3.  I’d probably be solving differential equations or joking about Fermat’s last theorem.  More than I do.  Just, you know, in my free time.

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