Sunday, November 28, 2010

GOOOOOOO DUCKS!

<---- This of course should be self-explanatory, with the Civil War coming up and all. The Ducks are undefeated and if they beat the Beavers (AND THEY CAN!) they go to the BCS championship. And Eternal Glory and all that. ;-)

I didn't watch/listen to the game Friday. When I do, they lose. Not worth the risk.

I spent the week with David and Lydia and her Amazing Expanding Belly. The twins are getting pretty big and she is getting tired of being pregnant. She's into week 33 though, and getting close. And except for the fact that at the moment they're presenting breech, everything's cool. We keep telling them to turn over...

Their @%^&$@ roommate finally started moving his crap out. He left about a month ago but didn't start getting his stuff out until Saturday. David showed me... oh.my.god. The walls are absolutely filthy. But we have to get it clean so the baby stuff can be moved in there. Big job ahead though.

Dinner was nice- James was up and Stephen came over (something about 'Mom Food') and after dinner we played Dominoes. Stephen is Evil at board games. That is all I'll say about that. :-P

Last week I went to the 12:01 showing of the new Harry Potter film, and Wednesday I took David and Lydia (probably the last time they get out before the babies are here). I thought it was really good. The scenes right at the beginning were powerful- I was in tears before the title board came up. And I sobbed through the ending. Harry burying Dobby was too much. I knew it was going to happen (who didn't?) but it was still hard.

People watching is great though- there was a group of kids who came as the Potter Puppet Pals, in costumes made of craft felt. They were really well done. There was the usual assortment of kids in school uniforms, a girl who wanted a picture of herself with me (several, actually) and at the last moment pulled up her sleeve to expose her Dark Mark- I jumped back and whipped out my wand before I realized what I was doing. The resulting picture was great- I wish I'd had the presence of mind to ask them to send me a copy! There was also a girl in black leather with a mound of black hair who ran through the halls screaming "I killed Sirius Black! I killed Sirius Black! EEEEHEHEHEHEHEHEHEEE!" just like Bellatrix. It was pretty cool. :-)

And the last film isn't out until July. ARRRGGGHHH!!!

Monday, November 8, 2010

A couple of notes on the economy-

I just read a very interesting blog post by David Friedman on the current economy and the differing approaches of the US and the UK (http://daviddfriedman.blogspot.com/2010/11/most-expensive-research-project-ever.html). I haven't decided how much I agree or disagree with, but I thought it would be interesting to post my remarks here:

An interesting observation. However, something I think we seem to be overlooking here (and which was not an issue during the Roosevelt Administration), is the vast increase in outsourcing. How does that affect (or not) the GDP? Also, the outsourcing and automation of many jobs that formerly supported a significant portion of the working population has changed not just the employment rate, but the nature of consumption. Why pay an American a decent wage when you can buy cheap crap from China? Something that I have noticed in the past decade is that we all want jobs that will support an upper middle income (or higher) lifestyle, but we don't want to pay the costs of goods and services that support the jobs that support that lifestyle. It becomes a downward spiral- the more we demand low prices, the more goods are imported and jobs are sent overseas. No jobs or lower-wage jobs increase the demand for lower prices of goods... I think it's the economic version of the saying "Everyone wants to get to heaven, but nobody wants to die".

Of course, I don't have any brilliant ideas for stopping that spiral, or reversing it. And it appears that no one in the Treasury Department or the Federal Reserve has any bright ideas either.