iPads, cash, and the U.S. government

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On August 24, 2011

In Amusing (if only to me), I Hate Politics, News, Tech

I have absolutely no need for an iPad. Where it would fit between my iPhone and my MacBook Pro is a very small space indeed. However, being an Apple fanboy in general, I just read this article about the iPad’s total domination of the tablet market. One paragraph really stood out.

With its cash reserves—I’m sure [you’ve] seen the reports [that] indicate Apple has more cash than our own government and now we learn Apple is more valuable than the 32 biggest euro banks combined—Apple could outlast all of them without breaking a ledger page sweat.

Oh. No, I hadn’t seen those reports. Indeed, CNN says:

According to the latest statement from the U.S. Treasury, the government had an operating cash balance Wednesday of $73.8 billion. That’s still a lot of money, but it’s less than what Steve Jobs has lying around.

Tech juggernaut Apple had a whopping $76.2 billion in cash and marketable securities at the end of June, according to its last earnings report. Unlike the U.S. government, which is scrambling to avoid defaulting on its debt, Apple takes in more money than it spends.

…

“We don’t let the cash burn a hole in the pocket or make stupid acquisitions,” CEO Jobs said last fall. “We’d like to continue to keep our powder dry because we think there are one or more strategic opportunities in the future.”

Offering Uncle Sam a short-term loan is probably not one of them.

Probably not, indeed. But the imaginative CNN writer offered another possibility in the lede: “Maybe the cash-strapped U.S. government should start selling iPads.”

Sorry, that’s all wrong. That would be silly! The reverse is a much better idea: Maybe Apple should take over all the operations of the U.S. government. Apple couldn’t do much worse, could they? I have more faith in Steve Jobs than I do in Congress, the President, and the Supreme Court combined, and my wild guess is that a majority of Americans do, too.

Should I start a petition drive? (No. No, I shouldn’t.)

Hello WordCamp visitors

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On August 12, 2011

In Life, Tech

You may notice that I seldom post on this blog. Recently acquired fans have raved about the content, however, so perhaps I will be inspired to post more. Usually what happens at WordCamp is that I post a couple of live blogs and then let the site slowly wither throughout the year, until I start writing a really long comment on SFGate or something, after which I realize “this belongs on the blog!” and post it here.

Strangely or not, I do similar things to plants; plus points for consistency, I suppose.

Apparently more than 20,000 people make a living with WordPress, according to the (very general) presentation I’m in right now. Including this site, I have four WordPress sites in production that I built (and sometimes designed): the CLCV Education Fund, the Brainwash Drive-in Bike-in Walk-in Movie Festival (in Oakland September 3, 9, and 10!), the San Francisco Improv Festival (didn’t design but coded the theme — their opening night is next Thursday!), and the one you’re on right now.

Got any questions about design, or creating custom themes, or installing WordPress? Let me know.

Just now

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On July 20, 2011

In Amusing (if only to me), Fluff, Life, Unfinished Thoughts

Ten minutes ago, I woke up from a doze slipped into while reading and taking off my shoes. Both legs stretched out in front of me, I awoke with my right foot entirely asleep, as both feet rested on the seat of a folding chair. When I gingerly started lowering my feet to finish removing my shoes — I had gotten as far as untying the right one — I imagined with a mixture of horror and detached fascination (as I have numerous times in the past) that if I had put all my weight on my foot while it was in that state, I could have easily (if unintentionally) snapped my ankle in half.

I’m fine — actually, pretty great at the moment. Not much to share here, but thought I’d stop by after not having done so in more than three months. With only four blog entries in more than seven months this calendar year, it seems this site is headed for a slow extinction (the whimper kind, not the bang kind, apparently). But, we’ll see.

The art of getting bumped

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On April 6, 2011

In Amusing (if only to me), Culture, Fluff, News, Travel

Neat (via the New York Times):

[A]irlines continue to cut capacity in an effort to keep up with rising fuel prices, leaving fewer seats for passengers…. [T]here are some travelers who see the flight crunch as a lucrative opportunity. Among them is Ben Schlappig. The 20-year-old senior at the University of Florida said he earned “well over $10,000” in flight vouchers in the last three years by strategically booking flights that were likely to be oversold in the hopes of being bumped.

If you subscribe to the credo that there’s “nothing new under the sun,” then this is exactly the kind of pursuit you’d expect from young Americans who possess entrepreneurial spirit. There are many worse ways one could devise to maximize one’s benefit by exploiting some aspect of a system.

It’s refreshing to me to see a reversal in the trend of corporations destroying our society, even such an insignificant one. So, thank you, Mr. Schlappig, for doing the legwork. Perhaps others will gain from your pioneering ways.

You’ve gone and done it this time, Wisconsin Republicans.

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On March 9, 2011

In I Hate Politics, News, Wisconsin

Wisconsin Solidarity
Wow, Wisconsin Republicans, very slick. Your crap plan to kill collective bargaining (and a whole lot of other things about Wisconsin government) basically had the votes. But instead of waiting out the Dems who fled the state, you had to go and create a committee that met in violation of state open meeting laws.

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One guy’s initial thoughts: What conditions precipitate the shooting of Congresspeople?

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On January 9, 2011

In Culture, History, I Hate Politics, News

I started to post this as my status on Facebook, but it was getting long.

I hardly need to say that I’m sad and angry that people are shooting at Congressional representatives and judges and children. I’m certain that our country’s culture of violence and cavalier attitude towards human life has something to do with it. The media, which have conflated news and entertainment, and politicians (and by extension political parties), who are increasingly disconnected from reality, bear much responsibility for where we are today.

I’m not sure how we as a country and as a society are ever going to grow up. I’m not quite naïve enough to believe that violence can ever fully be eradicated, because it’s been with us for all of history. I am still idealistic enough, however, to think that working to stop it is worthwhile. I think that starts with thinking of the people around us not as enemies or competitors, but as our brothers and sisters, people who are in the same struggle to survive and thrive as we are.

It continues by recognizing that the people who set us against one another, who have created this climate, do it because they have something to gain at our expense. (From kumbaya to overly abstract, I know, I know.)

In these times, I can’t help but think of George Washington’s warning against political parties (emphasis mine, of course):

“The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge, natural to party dissension, which in different ages and countries has perpetrated the most horrid enormities, is itself a frightful despotism. But this leads at length to a more formal and permanent despotism. The disorders and miseries, which result, gradually incline the minds of men to seek security and repose in the absolute power of an individual; and sooner or later the chief of some prevailing faction, more able or more fortunate than his competitors, turns this disposition to the purposes of his own elevation, on the ruins of Public Liberty.

“Without looking forward to an extremity of this kind, (which nevertheless ought not to be entirely out of sight,) the common and continual mischiefs of the spirit of party are sufficient to make it the interest and duty of a wise people to discourage and restrain it.”

(Relevant portions are excerpted and explained in this only slightly dated column from Harper’s Magazine, and the full text is here).

I have to say that I favor the actions and tenets of one party over another. And I’m not saying they’re equally responsible for what happened yesterday — using obvious violent metaphors in political rhetoric is inexcusable. Both parties have to be part of the solution, though.

And I know there are good people in the media, and in politics (like this guy); I really don’t know what happens to them on the way to the top. Maybe most of the ones that make it to the top are the ones who are willing to do anything to get there.

Regardless, this is a point at which I would like to see our country’s “leaders” take some responsibility, admit their errors, and call for people to be calm. Unfortunately, I expect to be waiting for a while.

The main thing I’d like them to say, and the impression I want this essay to leave, is timeless: Let’s treat those around us the way we want to be treated. Not as enemies.

Bernie Sanders’ 8 hour, 35 minute speech

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On December 13, 2010

In Sometimes Politics is Okay

Senator Bernie Sanders (Ind-VT):

We cannot give tax breaks to the rich when we already have the most unequal distribution of income of any major country on Earth. The top 1 percent earns 23 percent of all income in America, more than the bottom 50 percent. They don’t need more tax breaks to be paid for by our kids and grandchildren.

Read the whole 124-page transcript here.

My thoughts on economic issues

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On December 12, 2010

In I Hate Politics, Life, News, Unfinished Thoughts

[This is a draft I saved on 12/12/10 that I was going to add evidence to, but I’m fine standing behind it as is. Others have done the work that supports my glib conclusions. This is the Internet, after all.]

Okay, so here are the things that are indisputable:

The gap between the rich and the poor is greater than ever. The difference in real pay between the McDonald’s clerk and the CEO is larger than it’s ever been.

My generation is the first in this country to be worse off than the one before.

So I laugh when people say taxing the rich isn’t necessary, or is punishing them, or is hurting the economy. How is taxing people with incomes of $250,000 hurting the economy? THEY ALREADY HAVE MONEY. They will continue to spend money and make money on the money they already have. They can absorb a much bigger tax hit, but apparently they’re rich enough to matter. Meanwhile, a huge number of working people living paycheck to paycheck (if lucky enough to get one) continue to suffer.

[Edit five years later: that particular cutoff strikes me as a bit simplistic, since the cost of living for even upper middle class people has gone up; I guess the solution would be, you know, move out of San Francisco or Manhattan.]

The rich are not being “punished” by having to pay higher rates of income taxes. They’re participating in the social contract our forefathers agreed to. They have been “punished” at much higher rates in the past but they’ve sold so many of us Americans on how tough it is to be rich.

The “government” is us — the people — or at least it’s supposed to be. Unfortunately the ones with money have bought and paid for it, so it’s US who don’t enjoy the same privileges our parents did. I know it’s not that simple. But it almost is.

I guess civilization ain’t quite as civilized as it used to be. I wish there were more guys like Bernie Sanders and Russ Feingold and Paul Wellstone (RIP).

A blog entry and an EP that are all over the place

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On December 12, 2010

In Music, Unfinished Thoughts

It frequently occurs to me to react to something I read online. That is not that interesting.

The interesting thing (at least to me) is that I almost always choose to submit a comment on the site that I’m reading, rather than linking to and reacting to the content on this blog. It might behoove me to reverse that. (I also tackled this topic two and a half years ago, to no avail.) Why should I add value to someone else’s site with my cogent, incisive, entertaining analysis? Why not promote myself right here? Why not express my thoughts here?

Speaking of which, it’s pretty obvious that I’m just thinking out loud here, so to speak (so to speak).

I was listening to “All Delighted People” from the EP of the same name by Sufjan Stevens, and I recognized the lyric he used: “…and the people bowed and prayed / to the neon gods they’d made.” I couldn’t immediately place it. Instead of making an attempt to recall what it was from, I took the lazy way out via the oracle Google. Of course, it’s from The Sound of Silence. When I looked up the song titles together, I found (on some random site) someone’s review of the EP, which was not all that complimentary but was at least (I thought) fair. Basically he said he wasn’t a huge fan and that he couldn’t really find a “through line” on the album.

My insight into the EP is this: When Sufjan played Oakland a month or two ago, he gave a really long monologue about what was going on in his head. The sense I got was that he was in a pretty bad place for a while, and these were songs he needed to record and be done with in order to move on to his next thing (The Age of Adz, a sprawling and ambitious project).

Music is an aesthetic pursuit and, as they say, “there’s no accounting for taste.” I used to think that that statement implied that the subject had bad taste. But now I realize it means that there’s no right or wrong when it comes to this stuff. A beancounter can’t quantify how good an album is. There are no audits in art. So we are all free to have our own opinions, and I like that we can talk about it.

As far as the EP itself, yes, it’s all over the place (much like this blog entry), but I love the way he’s defying conventions. As someone else said in the comments on the review, that’s the way new and original work is created. I am happy to be along for the ride.

Thoughts on a three-page ballot (photo illustration)

By

On November 2, 2010

In Amusing (if only to me), I Hate Politics, Photography

Commons Comic: original image from Flickr commons

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