Obama Drops Faster than Bush or Carter
[HT: Best of the Web Today]
Silicon Valley Jobless Quit Tech
SUNNYVALE, Calif. — Jobless workers in Silicon Valley are giving up on the region’s dominant technology industry and trying to switch to other fields, as the area’s unemployment rate spikes above the national and state average.
Silicon Valley’s unemployment rate — which was below California’s average and largely tracked the national average last year — has soared, surpassing the state average in May. By June, the area’s unadjusted unemployment rate was 11.8%, worse than California’s 11.6% and the national rate of 9.7%, according to the latest figures from California’s Employment Development Department.
Many of the jobless techies are targeting new gigs in the clean-energy or health-care industries . . . Some are shifting even further afield, looking for jobs in teaching or financial consulting. People are leaving tech as “more tech companies are offshoring and some are shrinking, plus people are burned out and tired from having been there and done that.”
Twitter: 2009-07-30
Income Tax Fact of the Day
IRS data shows that in 2007 — the most recent data available — the top 1 percent of taxpayers paid 40.4 percent of the total income taxes collected by the federal government. This is the highest percentage in modern history. By contrast, the top 1 percent paid 24.8 percent of the income tax burden in 1987, the year following the 1986 tax reform act.
Remarkably, the share of the tax burden borne by the top 1 percent now exceeds the share paid by the bottom 95 percent of taxpayers combined.
Stick a Fork In It
As reported in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition yesterday, the British-commissioned survey, which took its findings from 55 studies made in the past 50 years, claims that eating organic food “will make no important difference to a persons overall health.”
This will come as a blow to the idiots standing in line at Whole Foods to pay 10 dollars for a slice of cheese . . .
Twitter: 2009-07-29
I’m Killing It on Amazon
I’m explaining to my wife how being an Amazon.com associate works . . .
“If I mention a book on my web site, I link it to the book’s page on Amazon. Then if someone clicks through on the link and buys something, I get a small commission.”
She loves money-making enterprises. “How much do you make?” she asks excitedly.
“It’s around four percent, which usually amounts to around 5 or 10 bucks a year.”
“Oh,” she says, rapidly losing interest.
“But look,” I say, showing her my online associate report. “Last month, someone clicked through on one of my links and while they were on Amazon, they bought a very expensive camera lens and I got the commission on it: 18 dollars and 48 cents! We could dine out on burritos and beer with that kind of money!”
“That’s wonderful!” she says. “Can you print that out so I can keep it?”
“Your sarcasm is killing my appetite.”
Twitter: 2009-07-28
- A Lesson in Mystique: http://bit.ly/p0zCr #
- Called my boy to say Happy Birthday. It's not till tomorrow but he's in Australia, where it's already tomorrow. #
My Son Turned 16 Abroad
I called my son to wish him a Happy 16th Birthday. His birthday is actually tomorrow but he’s in Australia visiting his cousins for a couple of weeks and in Australia, it’s tomorrow already.
When I called, he was at a train station with his cousin Lizzie — well, I’ve always called her Lizzie but she’s 19 now and may prefer Liz. They were waiting for the train to go to Bondi Beach for the day.
Happy birthday kid. Miss you . . .
A Lesson in Mystique
Before I go, lemme give you a lesson in mystique. (Holds out a cigarette lighter in one hand and closes his other fist.) You can only have one. Which one do you want? As long as you can’t see what’s in this hand (shows closed fist), you’ll always want it more.
Unicorn Dust and Pixie Wings
Donald Marron points out that another one of those great cost-saving ideas in the healthcare debate (the Independent Medicare Advisory Council) has taken a hit:
CBO estimates that the proposed legislation would save a paltry $2 billion over the next ten years, less than 1/500 of the 10-year cost of health reform.
Damn that CBO! They keep killing all these great ideas with, like, analysis and numbers and all that stuff. Everything would work out just fine if only they would close their eyes, click their heels together three times, and say, “There is no policy like reform…there is no policy like reform….”
Trust
I tend to distrust power unchecked by competition. This makes me particularly suspicious of federal policies that take a strong role in directing private decisions. I am much more willing to have state and local governments exercise power in a variety of ways than for the federal government to undertake similar actions. I can more easily move to another state or town than to another nation. (I am not good with languages.)
Twitter: 2009-07-26
- Party host is serving 7&7s. I drink two. Nothing. "Make the next one a double." Nothing. Worst drink ever. #
- @penelopetrunk oh that is not true. see http://kicklikeagirlmovie.com in reply to penelopetrunk #
Buying Dog Food
At Trader Joe’s, buying a bag of Holistic Natural Canine Formula, whatever that is. The dog seems to like it.
The checker asks me, “Do you want a bag for the cat food?”
I say, “Yes, but it’s actually dog food.”
“Oh sorry,” he says. “I saw ‘canine’ and I guess I thought ‘feline.'”
“There’s a picture of a dog right on the bag,” I say.
Profiling??? PRO-filing?!??!
It took less than a day for the arrest of Henry Louis Gates to become racial lore. When one of America’s most prominent black intellectuals winds up in handcuffs, it’s not just another episode of profiling — it’s a signpost on the nation’s bumpy road to equality.
If this man can be taken away by police officers from the porch of his own home, what does it say about the treatment that average blacks can expect in 2009?
[In Jim Mora voice]: Profiling??? You kidding me? PRO-filing?!??!
“Profiling” implies an absence of facts or evidence. It means “I’m targeting you for suspicion simply because you’re black and therefore more likely to be engaged in criminal activity.”
That’s not what happened here.
A police officer responded to a 911 call reporting two black males breaking into a house. When he arrived, he found a black man in the house. You don’t have to be Dick Tracy to identify the man as a potential suspect.
The 58-year-old professor had returned from a trip to China last Thursday afternoon and found the front door of his Cambridge, Mass., home stuck shut. Gates entered the back door, forced open the front door with help from a car service driver, and was on the phone with the Harvard leasing company when a white police sergeant arrived.
Gates and the sergeant gave differing accounts of what happened next.
No they didn’t. Gates was uncooperative and he was arrested. Everyone agrees on that.
But for many people, that doesn’t matter. All they see is pure, naked racial profiling.
“Many people”? How many? And why wouldn’t it matter? Because a white cop can’t be trusted? I’m seeing racial profiling here, but not on the part of the cops.
Here’s Gates on his porch in a photo taken by one of his neighbors. He’s yelling something at a black officer, who’s ignoring him, while two white officers trying to calm him down.
What’s your badge number? You don’t know who you’re messing with! I’ll make a documentary about this!
I know lots of people who’ve had unpleasant run-ins with cops over the years, including arrests and beatings, but not because they’re black. In fact, all of them are white. The common denominator is that, like Gates, they all have attitude problems.
Cops have to deal with the situations that nobody else wants to deal with. They’re the agency of last resort. I’ve only called in the police twice in my life — once when the guy next door was shooting off a rifle in his driveway in the middle of the night, and once when a person went berserk in my home. Everything else I felt like I could handle myself.
I’ll tell you right now, if your neighbor is shooting off a rifle or someone’s going nuts at your house, don’t call me because I’m not coming over. Call the police.
I have no problem being deferential to cops. It makes sense to me that when your job is dealing with volatile, high-risk situations, you want to establish control and you don’t want to put up with a lot of nonsense.
I wonder how Gates would handle a similar situation. Probably the exact same way. Let’s say he’s teaching a class and one of the students is a disruptive wiseass. How long is he going to put up with that — the whole semester? My guess is he’s going to shut it down pretty quickly. Nobody likes a wiseass interfering with his ability to do his job.
President Obama weighs in: “I think it’s fair to say, number one, any of us would be pretty angry.”
Really? Why? I wouldn’t be angry. I’d be glad that someone was willing to stop by and investigate a report that someone was breaking into my house.
And when they got there and found someone in the house, I’d like them to check that person out thoroughly, even if it turns out to be me.
“It’s okay, officer,” I’d say. “It’s my house.” Of course, an intruder might say the same thing. What’s the cop supposed to do? Turn around and go back to the station? It’s all right, the guy said it was his house. No — get the guy out of the house and figure out who he is, even if it’s me.
Twitter: 2009-07-23
- RT @KathySierra: Don't learn PPT/Keynote, learn how the brain works. Learn storytelling. Study filmmaking. Apply learning theory. Inspire. #
- RT @OCWeekly: A very special OC Weekly farewell to Gidget the Taco Bell chihuahua http://tinyurl.com/n6k4mq #
- Thank God it's Friday! Wait — what? #
A Different Person
Our son’s flying to Australia for a couple weeks to visit his cousins . . .
I’m talking to people at LAX in a fake Australian accent. My Australian accent is not all that tight except on words with a long “a” sound, which I replace with a long “i” sound, e.g., “mate” becomes “mite.”
“Sorry, mite,” I say, as I roll a suitcase over a gentleman’s foot.
“Did you just say what I thought you said?” my son asks.
“When you travel,” I explain, “you can be a whole different person.”
We take the bags over to the baggage scanner. I know we don’t have to wait for them but since “wait” has a long “a” sound, I ask the woman, “Do I ‘ave to white?”
“No,” she says.
“Jus’ drope i’ oaf then?” I ask.
“Yes,” she says.
International Cuisine
We’re dropping our 15-year-old son off at LAX. He’s flying to Australia for a couple weeks to visit his cousins.
He’s explaining his theory of international cuisine, which is that there’s not going to be any Mexican food in Australia because there are no Mexicans in Australia. On the other hand, they probably have New Zealand food that those of us in the States have never heard about.
“That’s why it’s important to travel,” I say, “so you can learn about things like that. Or you could just stay home and watch the Travel Channel.”
California Fiscal Crisis
The median wage of a California state employee is $66,000 (source). The median wage among all Californians (including those state workers) is just over $36,000. The state employee can retire with a full pension in his or her late 40s or early 50s, which essentially means that the taxpayers have to pay for double the number of state workers that are required to provide current services. In addition to salaries that are much higher than private sector equivalents, the state employee has health care and other benefits that by themselves may exceed the total compensation of a full-time private sector employee. The reasonable question to ask is not “How did they run out of cash?” but “How was this ever supposed to work?”
Twitter: 2009-07-21
- We are to admit no more causes of natural things than such as are both true and sufficient to explain their appearances. — Isaac Newton #