Timbu::Musings

I really thought that someone, likely McCain was set to make political hay from the "bailout" plan. Looks like no one made any points here. Some weird things crept into the bailout plan. Rum rebates? Are pirates a voting bloc in this election?

Counting the "bailout" it looks like old "W" really ran up a big deficit during the last eight years. Why bother voting for the "small government" candidate anymore?

Distraction by Bruce Sterling

My review

rating: 5 of 5 stars
Set in the "distant" future where the U.S. is broke and our institutions like the congress is more broken than it is today - this book blends sci-fi with hacking and social engineering. Lots of good fun except the parts that seem depressing plausible.

View all my reviews.

Why bother explaining why Sarah Palin isn't qualified for the job when she does such an over the top job explaining it in her own words.

COURIC: Why isn't it better, Governor Palin, to spend $700 billion helping middle-class families who are struggling with health care, housing, gas and groceries; allow them to spend more and put more money into the economy instead of helping these big financial institutions that played a role in creating this mess?

PALIN: That's why I say I, like every American I'm speaking with, were ill about this position that we have been put in where it is the taxpayers looking to bail out. But ultimately, what the bailout does is help those who are concerned about the health-care reform that is needed to help shore up our economy, helping the—it's got to be all about job creation, too, shoring up our economy and putting it back on the right track. So health-care reform and reducing taxes and reining in spending has got to accompany tax reductions and tax relief for Americans. And trade, we've got to see trade as opportunity, not as a competitive, scary thing. But one in five jobs being created in the trade sector today, we've got to look at that as more opportunity. All those things under the umbrella of job creation. This bailout is a part of that.

I haven't seen the playbook myself, but I am betting this is the plan.

McCain will go to Washington and crack a few heads and get a bailout plan going. I think that when he went to the capitol he called in every chit he had and made sure the bill would flounder in the house. The real question is what did he have to promise to get the job done?

I know it's a conspiracy theory - sounds pretty crazy - we'll see if it looks plausible in a week.

The flip side it is nice to see the congress growing a little backbone and not rubber stamping every request. Too bad they are playing chicken with the world's economy.

While thinking about the current financial crisis I was reminded of a conversation with a friend about Bernie Ebbers, ex WorldCom CEO. We were debating about what might be an apropos punishment for someone who had swindled 11 billion dollars from investors and caused financial upheaval across the high tech industry. His answer was "He should be sold to the inmate with the most cigarettes." It's kind of a chilling thought.

When you look at the people who bear the brunt of these corporate collapses, even if we skate through this one economically, there are a lot of ordinary people who never had a choice in the matter who will be thrown out of work because of unrestrained greed and avarice.

I was looking at the server logs yesterday. If I didn't have a prohibition against publishing my own poetry I would try and use this list of words to create a series of awful haiku.

• music
• occurred
• biking
• bitstrips
• outskirts
• bruise
• vocation
• ugliest
• blogstorm
• bobber
• litigatious
• subordination
• is
• inittab
• millieu
• lust
• packer
• ayelet
• mpr
• outskirts
• tedious
• lifelist
• litigatious
• bitstrips
• bobber
• icio
• blogstorm
• grid css blogfodder
• bruise
• burlowski
• toro
• biking
• freeway
• vocation
• ugliest
• ldodds
• wouk
• gratification
• grid css blogfodder
• gratification
• stupidest
• stupidest
• hoppers
• ica
• weighed

Ampers&

Courtesy of typographunnies.

I finally saw "Dark Knight" in the Imax theater at the Minnesota Zoo. It ws well worth the trek down to Appley Valley to see the movie. I thought it was a great thriller. Amazingly it was not cartoonish and explored themes of good and evil in thought provoking ways. I loved the rethought prisoner's dillemna presented in the movie as well as how that "problem" resolved itself.

I recently went on my annual sailing fall trip. It was scheduled for last Sunday - Wednesday. Why did I end up back at the marina on Sunday night when I should have been sailing?

On Sunday afternoon after a gorgeous day of sailing, my rudder fell off the 34' Hunter I had chartered. I was sitting next to the helm and the helmsman said "We've lost our rudder." I calmly said it would come back, because it looked like we were weather clocking. I then blathered about possible putting a reef in since there was so much wind. Then, to get my attention, the helmsman pointed at the rudder floating in the water and said "no we lost the rudder." Seeing the rudder got my attention quickly.

The rudder floated away quite quickly. We were in 212' of water off the tip of Michigan Island. Luckily, there were no resultant leaks from the missing rudder. We laid a beam in the 6-8' swells that developed after the rudder left our possession. It took well over an hour for help to arrive. Luckily, the nearest lee shore was in Canada. Quite likely we had enough food to get there.

We were greeted with a very small, but powerful twin engine tow boat from the Marina. Towing felt a bit like slalom water skiing through the water - but without the fun. The tow line chafed and snapped once. We anchored which was a delightful respite despite the fact that we were exposed to the wind and now way too close too a lee shore for my comfort. The crew made a better makeshift bridle for towing from lines on board and we continued. After a hour or two so of 'crack the whip' towing at 3 knots the waves calmed. We rafted up together with the tow boat for the next 3+ hours back to the marina sans the slalom effect.

I suppose in retrospect we could have tried to sail, steering only with sails. I'm not sure if we could have kept a course, but it would have been smoother than lying a beam in the swells.

The marina replaced our boat with a newer and nicer vessel and we went back out in the morning. They did an amazing job with a hard tow. I really appreciate their willingness to put themselves on the line to rescue us and the boat.

All my crew did their jobs and kept their heads throughout. Luckily, no one got sick either.

So I broke a boat in two pieces but saved the larger piece :)