I was out for dinner the other day and who do I see next to me but a man that looks like a combination of Hitler and Don Draper. He had Don Draper’s head shape and hair style and a really weird mustache that was thick in the middle and very sparse on the sides. This made it look like a Hitler mustache. A Hitler mustache is not a good look for Don Draper. He was pretty creepy looking. It looked like he was on a date too. I can only assume that he killed her.
Monthly Archives: January 2013
Movie Review: Gangster Squad
Ratings for reviews will appear above the fold, while the review itself will appear below the fold to avoid spoilers for anyone that wants to go into it with a blank slate.
Jean-Paul’s rating: 1/5 stars
Josh Brolin has the kind of look that is made for a hard-boiled detective story. It’s a shame that, instead, he’s in “Gangster Squad”.
From DS9 To Buffy
Continuing my quest to watch TV shows from the 90s that I missed, I am now watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer. So far, it’s a little campy but fun. Thankfully, they discontinued the incredibly annoying Buffy fighting action sounds. Sarah Michelle Geller could not pull them off at all.
At episode five or so, the principal of Sunnydale High School gets eaten by a pack of teenager-hyenas. These things happen. Who, to my surprise, shows up as principal number two? Armin Shimerman! Better known as Quark from Deep Space Nine. Seeing him in two different TV shows back to back made me look up his profile on IMDB. Dude’s been in everything! I’ve never really recognized him as an individual, though. He has a very distinct voice and mannerisms, but apparently not memorable voice or mannerisms.
He does a lot of voices for video games as well. You dorks may remember him as Andrew Ryan from the Bioshock series. He also voiced characters in the Mass Effect series, Starcraft II, Star Wars: The Old Republic, and God of War II just to name a few.
Now that I know who he is, I’m probably going to see him popping up all over the place. Kind of like when you buy a new car and suddenly you realize that everyone seems to have the same car as you.
The Platinum Coin Vortex Continues
As I spend the day reading about all the foofaraw surrounding the possibility of minting a $1 trillion platinum coin, there are certain things that I don’t expect to see. High atop that list would be a limerick homage to the platinum coin. That is just one of many poems on a blog that is dedicated to mixing the dismal art of economics with poetry. Limericks Économiques, making economics just a little more tolerable.
Cool Video Of The Day
Witness Apollo Robbins in action. He is considered one of the best pickpockets in the world. It looks like he uses his arts for good instead of evil, but I’m not sure we’d ever be able to tell.
I Love The Whole Platinum Coin Debate
We are, once again, quickly running up to the debt ceiling. And Republicans are, once again, holding the economy hostage by demanding draconian economic cuts in order to raise the debt ceiling. It’s like deja vu all over again.
An interesting, though inelegant, solution to this problem is for President Obama to authorize the minting of a $1 trillion platinum coin and have the Federal Reserve buy it. This is because there is a law that authorizes the President to mint only platinum coins in any denomination he so desires.
The debate for and against it is absolutely fascinating. Some say that it is illegal. They are clearly wrong. Some say that it’s immoral. They have a better argument, but it’s certainly less immoral than defaulting on the debt in an attempt to score political points. Some say it’s a bad idea, which it is, but see the prior sentence for why it’s less bad than the alternative. Some say that it goes against the spirit of the law. They are almost certainly right. The platinum coin law was almost assuredly meant for seigniorage and not for increasing the debt limit.
Which brings us to the fascinating topic of seigniorage. Take a look at that $1 bill in your pocket. How much is it worth? Most people will say $10. They are only partially correct. It’s actually worth about 3 cents in materials and labor. The Federal Government just makes a promise that that 3 cent item will always be worth $1. Coins work the same way. The Federal Government will mint a $1 coin commemorative coin that costs them pennies and sell it for $1. They then pocket the difference since the coin will, in all likelihood stay out of circulation. The Federal Government makes around $25 billion a year this way. So if Obama goes the $1 trillion commemorative coin route, it will probably show on the books as a $1 trillion seigniorage profit. Strange days indeed.
The Federal Reserve Made A Record Profit in 2012
The Federal Reserve is an incredibly complicated pseudo-business/pseudo-governmental entity. Whenever you have a complicated entity that very few people can understand, you have simplistic views of the entity that dominate. Many Republicans and Libertarians will have you believe that the Federal Reserve is the epitome of all that is evil about the Federal Government. They would like governmental economics to behave exactly like familial economics does. They would like money to be backed by something tangible like gold. This is magical thinking. Gold backed securities may work fine in normal economic conditions, but they also hamstring efforts to fix economic issues in non-normal economic conditions. And we are almost always in non-normal economic conditions.
Take, for instance, the tripling of the monetary base that has occurred in the last decade. Under normal economic conditions, this would prove disastrous to the economy. Under current economic conditions, when we are in a liquidity trap, inflation barely rears its head at all. Another benefit to the printing of all that money? The Federal Reserve made a record profit in 2012! They made over $91 billion. Even better, most of that profit, $89 billion, went right back to the Federal Government! All that money that is being printed is being put to use and making us a giant profit.
Given, that $89 billion only represents one month of money that will be printed in the coming year, but it is things like this that often go over the heads of anti-Fed agitators. That money that is being printed will continue to be put to use and will continue to make us money as long as the Fed continues to buy the debt.
Don’t worry if this doesn’t make sense to you. I only marginally understand all the intricacies of how this works. Maybe this will help. Say the Federal Government pays you $100,000 to perform work. You may think that the Federal Government would then be out $100,000. You would be wrong. You are taxed on that $100,000. Let’s say your tax rate is 20%. That means that you’re really only getting $80,000. So the Federal Government gives you money and almost immediately takes some of it back it back. That is the gist of the relationship between the Federal Reserve and the Federal Government right now.
This is also why infrastructure spending is such a no-brainer. It requires hiring a lot of workers and a good percentage of that money the Federal Government gives to those workers comes right back to the government! All that and it improves conditions to grow the economy!
Oh, Poo
This is certainly interesting. You can send a company a fecal sample (you can also to oral or skin samples for those of you that are scatologically squeamish) and they will tell you what your gut flora is composed of and how it compares to everyone else who participates. Not only that, but you will help them understand how dietary and lifestyle choices affect gut flora. That is pretty cool.
If anyone that knows me is interested in participating, let me know. The more you order, the less it costs. I’ll order the kits and you can pay me. Then we can brag about who has the best shit. It’ll be fun. And remember, it’s for science!
The Law Of Least Harm/Most Good
A friend, when commenting on my new-found vegetarianism, asked me half jokingly, half snarkily when I’m going to stop buying clothes that are made in sweatshops and when I’m going to stop buying vegetables picked by cheap immigrant labor. He has a point.
The problem is, you can’t step outside your home without causing harm to someone or something. Heck, you probably couldn’t touch anything in your house without causing harm to someone or something. Those appliances don’t build themselves and they ain’t built in America by well treated employees.
What’s a globally conscience individual supposed to do? You try to follow the law of least harm/most good.
This makes things like becoming a vegetarian an easy choice. Meat production in the United States can be said to follow the law of most harm/least good. Meat provides you with nothing that you can’t find somewhere else so there absolutely no necessity in eating meat. That, by itself, isn’t enough to say that you shouldn’t eat meat, but in order to justify eating that meat, it better be a fairly humane process. And it is not. Wow, is it not. The law of least harm/most good is easy to follow in this case.
Then there are things like tomatoes. To eat tomatoes or not to eat tomatoes? That is the question. It is issues like whether to eat tomatoes or not where it becomes difficult to tell which side to fall on. Tomato farming has some of the most unfair labor practices in the United States. Tomato picking is done exclusively by immigrants who are easily taken advantage of because of their illegal status. At the same time, though, these are jobs that the people might not otherwise have. What little money is made often gets sent home to families that desperately need it. Not eating tomatoes would mean a loss of jobs for those immigrants and a loss of those jobs could be deadly to their families. Good is being done despite evil intentions. That makes an issue like this prime for vigorous activism to push for better conditions and better wages for the pickers while at the same time continuing to eat tomatoes.
Speaking of activism, if you want to follow the law of least harm/most good you should be volunteering. It doesn’t matter for what. No, you are not too busy. No, it doesn’t take a lot of time to make a difference. Under 30% of adults above the age of 16 currently volunteer. That’s around 60 million people. Those volunteers average 51 hours a year volunteering. That’s 3 billion volunteer hours a year. Imagine if all 200 million people over the age of 16 gave just 40 hours a year ( under 4 hours a month!) to volunteering. That would be 8 billion volunteer hours a year. Think of the good that could be done with that. All it takes is one simple step. Call an organization whose cause you agree with and offer to volunteer.
It is easy to fall into the trap of thinking that you are only one person and one person can’t make a difference. It’s true, you are just one person and it’s true, you might not make a difference, but it is guaranteed that you won’t make a difference if you do nothing. You will be amazed at what just a little bit of effort following the law of least harm/most good can accomplish.
Book Review: Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran Foer
Ratings for reviews will appear above the fold, while the review itself will appear below the fold to avoid spoilers for anyone that wants to go into it with a blank slate.
Jean-Paul’s rating: 3/5 stars
Warning: The contents of this book may be hazardous to your very comfortable eating habits.