A Real Threat to the Nation

No, this isn't about last night's debate (Sarah Palin scores major points for remaining upright and conscious, right? Oh ya, you betcha!). Nor is it about the financial "crisis". It's about how we just might be a nation of jerks. Tools. Pricks. You get the picture. Why else would Bow-Flex feature Brian Alvarez in its TV ads, other than as an mass appeal to our inner douchebag? If you've seen the ad, you know what I'm talking about. If not, lucky you! I could go on at length, but it wasn't hard to find another blogger who shares a very healthy, heart-warming hatred for Mr. Alvarez.

Brian Drain (aka Gordon Gekko Lives!)

This is the second time in the past few months I've seen this topic broached in our newspapers in the past year, but it seems more relevant now than it did back in February:

In his February 20 column, Steve Pearlstein of the Post railed against how the Finanical Industry operates at the top:

Wall Street's hypocrisy on this topic is nothing less than breathtaking. When times are good, its champions will claim that their brilliance and hard work account for the spectacular returns. But when markets turn and investors lose their shirts, these same brilliant managers are sent off with golden parachutes and invariably scooped up by rival firms that are only too willing to chalk up their mistakes to bad luck.

It would be bad enough if the consequences of this excessive pay were confined to Wall Street. Unfortunately, it has not worked out that way. For the prospect of earning untold wealth also has attracted an enormous amount of young talent that could have been more productively used in science, engineering, medicine, teaching, public service and businesses that generate genuine long-term value.

Is it not fair to ask whether the United States can remain the world's most prosperous and innovative economy when half of the seniors at the most prestigious colleges and universities now aspire to become "i-bankers" at Goldman Sachs?

Now Roger Cohen visits this same territory in his Wednesday column in the New York Times:

When I taught a journalism course at Princeton a couple of years ago, I was captivated by the bright, curious minds in my class. But when I asked students what they wanted to do, the overwhelming answer was: “Oh, I guess I’ll end up in i-banking.”

It was not that they loved investment banking, or thought their purring brains would be best deployed on Wall Street poring over a balance sheet, it was the money and the fact everyone else was doing it.

I called one of my former students, Bianca Bosker, who graduated this summer and has taken a job with The Monitor Group, a management consultancy firm (she’s also writing a book). I asked her about the mood among her peers.

“Well, I have several friends who took summer internships at Lehman that they expected to lead to full-time job, so this is a huge issue,” she said. “You can’t believe how intensely companies like Merrill would recruit at Ivy League schools. I mean, when I was a sophomore, if you could spell your name, you were guaranteed a job.”

But why do freshmen bursting to change the world morph into investment bankers?

“I guess the bottom line is the money. You could be going to grad school and paying for it, or earning six figures. And knowing nothing about money, you get to move hundreds of millions around! No wonder we’re in this mess: turns out the best and the brightest make the biggest and the worst.”

According to the Harvard Crimson, 39 percent of work-force-bound Harvard seniors this year are heading for consulting firms and financial sector companies (or were in June). That’s down from 47 percent — almost half the job-bound class — in 2007.

These numbers mirror a skewed culture. The best and the brightest should think again. Barack Obama put the issue this way at Wesleyan University in May: beware of the “poverty of ambition” in a culture of “the big house and the nice suits.”

39% of Harvard seniors going into the financial sector, down from 47%? I don't know what's more depressing, that some of the very best and brightest only want to make money, or that they're doing such a poor job of it. Sure, there's no guarantee that, had any of these people gone into medicine or engineering, they would have found a cure for cancer or developed a car that could be powered by mayonnaise. Who knows, maybe they'd be making weapons for our massive war machine (there's plenty of money there, too) or inventing less-weighty items. But I'd sure like our odds for a better world if they had chosen those careers. Too bad that it's just about the (obscene amounts of) money.

Black Hole of Sports

Unless you're a basketball fan, the Baltimore-Washington area has been tough going for area sports fans over the past five years. In football land, the Redskins still have an offensive name, a greedy and inept owner, and just got demolished yesterday. Up I-95, the Ravens offense just had their most productive week; they had a bye. On the college level, Maryland's injuries to its linemen indicate that its players may be taking health-maintenance advice from their coach. Navy just lost to a I-AA school (albeit one of the better I-AA football schools). Baseball is no prettier - the Nationals will get their new stadium next year but are still quite a way from contending. The AngelO's may be even farther away; I love the Oriole Bird, but a more appropriate (if not quite family-oriented) team mascot would be a guy in a business suit with his head planted permanently in his own ass. The only bright spots are in roundball, and that's due mainly to major and minor resurgences by the Hoyas and Terps, respectively, and the exploits of the oddest guy in the NBA, #0 for the Wizards (strange time when the Wizards are the area's best pro team, yes?). Oh yeah, I almost forgot D.C. United, but they've been pretty damn good for years and the vast majority of the sporting public hasn't noticed yet.

Contrast that with New England, where a new Evil Empire is rising. Epstein, Belichick, and Ainge are sending their well-compensated minions swarming into stadiums and arenas throughout the land, destroying, or planning to destroy (see: Celtics trades) everything in their path. Belichick even deployed his own personal Eye of Sauron in service of his dastardly plans, keeping an ever-watchful eye on enemy sidelines until the commissioner mercifully vanquished that threat. And then there are the fans - Red Sox caps are the new sporting gear du jour for fans in this area, replacing NYY caps: "So you're from Boston/New England?" "Nah, I grew up in Maryland, I couldn't even find Boston on a map! I just like the team". Fantastic! It's also difficult to account for all the local Pats fans that are now sporting their teams' gear, which had been mysteriously absent from public spaces for most of the 90's.

U.S. Fiber, Crippled Networks?

I know several people in the DC/Baltimore area who are in the Verizon FiOS service area, and have been hooked up with new fiber optic transmission of both digital TV and internet service starting at 5 Mbps for $40/month (up to 30 MBps for - holy shit! - $180/month). People are excited about this, because they can now ditch their despised Comcast cable, and also upgrade thier broadband speed, all the while saving some money. Now, we ditched Comcast years ago, and went with DirecTV's decent performance and solid customer service, and are also happy with our Verizon DSL, which is reliable if unspectacular. But FiOS would clearly be an upgrade, so I went online to try to nail down a schedule on when it may be coming to Baltimore City.

Well, I didn't find that schedule, but I did find plenty else. Over a year ago, I bitched about how France, among other places, had cheaper and better TV & internet service, by far, than we do in the states. Apparently, our broadband infrastructure itself is coming up short when compared with other developed countries. This page spells it all out, and spreads the blame around between the Baby Bells (Verizon, AT&T, etc.), mergers, FCC inaction and incompetence, and state governments afraid or unwilling to hold these corporations to their contracts. No surprise there, after all it's popular these days for governments to abdicate their utility and infrastructure resposibilities to corporations; look at red light cameras, privately operated toll roads, and the deregulated power grid. Then there's always cable "competition", and...oh hell it's Friday, I don't feel like dwelling on the same old bullshit politics, let's move on.

So what about the numbers behind Teletruth.org's accusations? $6.63 per Mbps (vs. $0.34 in Korea and $0.41 in Japan)? Going by the current FiOS price structure, at the cheapest monthly rate - assuming the maximum advertised 5 Mbps download speeds - that's $8/Mbps. Moving up to the $180/month 30 Mbps, the math is still easy - $6/Mbps. Not a pretty picture, and Verizon's fiber is still a better deal than AT&T's U-verse (formerly Lightspeed, both stupid names), which as far as I can tell only offers up to 6 Mbps. AT&T also bundles their price with the TV component, so it's difficult to figure out how much each Mbps costs, but it looks to be somewhat more expensive than FiOS.

How about the claim that the U.S. is 16th in broadband according to the ITU? Let's take a look at the current numbers, shall we? According to their growth rate metric, whatever the hell that means, we're actually ranked 13th in the world. But looking at the Network Index, the ITU measurement of fixed phone lines, mobile subscribers, and internet bandwidth per capita, the U.S. drops down to 23rd.

Is FiOS still a good thing? Sure, you take what you can get, and it's probably preferable to dealing with Comcast, Adelphia, or any of the regional cable fiefdoms. But it sure would be nice if we weren't being left in the dust by Asia, and to a lesser extent, Europe. The most frustrating aspect is that it seems like an infrastructure problem that could have been avoided, given better decision-making and some FCC backbone.

A Bad Week, plus This Week at the CCB

It was just one of those weeks. Sixty hours of work (and with my commute, it seemed like much longer), a $2900 plumbers' bill, and allergy season finally hit as well. Needless to say - evidently not - blogging wasn't a priority, it was barely an afterthought. This week has to be better though, and I've got a lot to catch up on. A preview of this week:

• new links! to two upcoming Baltimore events in creativity and engineering, and to the oddest and geekiest ipod accessory ever
• new sidebar! with links to the podcasts I listen to regularly
• music review! of songwriter extraordinaire & podcaster Jonathan Coulton
• peep jousting! photos, and possibly videos, of the newest Easter tradition in our family, started this past weekend by Amy & Jenny

An ambitious agenda, to be sure, but I think I can handle it - stay tuned!

The Very Definition....

...of the word schadenfreude. On Redick's and Williams' Senior Night, no less! Anyone who's interested in sending Roy Williams or Tyler Hansbrough a fruit basket, or maybe a nice selection of assorted cheeses, let me know, I'll chip in.

Haven't been posting much lately, mainly because I've been very busy at the office, and the last thing I want to do most nights is come home and cozy up to the mouse and keyboard some more. So here's a quick run-down since my last post:

Jenny and I saw Brokeback Mountain last weekend - it's the only Best Picture nominee we've seen this year, but all the same I'd be quite surprised if it didn't win. Before we went to see it, we hadn't been to the movies in about three months. Netflix is both a blessing and a curse, I suppose; we end up seeing so many great old films that we wouldn't otherwise see, but we miss out on some fantastic newer movies for a while, especially if we don't add them to the queue right after they're released to DVD. For example, we just saw Ray the other night. This year's Oscar nominees are somewhat rare for me, in that they're all movies that I'd like to see (eventually). Some years, not a one interests me in the least. Throw in films that didn't get the top nomination but got a lot of good press, like Walk The Line, Cinderella Man, The Constant Gardener, and A History of Violence, and it's certainly a "deep field" this year.

Get this - I received a letter this week from the MVA, stating that my license is in danger of being suspended because of some administrative action in Virginia, where I last lived almost six years ago. What a joke. So after 45 minutes on the phone with various mindless VA DMV bureaucrats (I know, redundancy), who gave me two wrong phone numbers for the insurance verification office, I was able to straighten it out. See, I had moved from Virginia in September 2000, and had all my MD licensing, registration, inspection, and titling done by December 2000. Virginia evidently tried to verify that I was an insured driver in October 2001, and then it took them four-plus years to take further action? Nevermind that it's a non-issue, that it's irrelevant whether I was insured in VA in 20001, because this is 2006. What, are they going to go back in time and suspend my non-existent 2001 VA license? Excuse my language, but what a bunch of fucking morons. It's too bad that I have to drive through that shitty state in order to get to the Carolina beaches or visit my sister in Charleston SC, because I'd much rather avoid it entirely. I did get it straightened out (I think), and they're supposed to mail me a letter that I then send to the MD MVA, which states that the matter has been resolved. But I'm unfortunately a bit dumber, having been forced to spend all that time on the phone with the idiot state employees in Richmond.

Evite Fatigue

First off, it seems that the colds that Jenny and I have aren't all that bad - it looks like they should be completely gone by the time we head off to London next week.

So many things to do until then, though, one of which is sending out invitations for our (2nd annual) New Year's party. Which means resorting to evite. I'm not a big fan of evite. I can't quite identify the source of this dislike, since evite is actually very functional. If it weren't, it wouldn't be synonymous with online invitations the way that Google is with web searches. Maybe it's the ads. Maybe it's the cute little invitation templates. Maybe it's the fact that I seem to go months without getting a single evite, then get seven in one week - that should make me feel loved and appreciated, but my irrational animosity towards evite takes over instead.

And there aren't really any alternatives. Meetup.com and upcoming.org look like crap (I won't even link to them, that's how crappy they look). Hey geniuses at Google, can we get a googlized version of evite sometime soon?

Until then, I'm stuck with evite. And so are you! If you're reading this, I apologize in advance - an evite is likely coming your way soon. If it's not, it means that (a) I know you won't be in the area around New Year's, (b) I don't know you, or (c) I don't like you. So it's nothing personal, except for (c).

Whole Week of Stuff, Windows Hatred, and More

I just typed up this long entry about my whole week, it was a great post that was all ready to go. So I hit the publish button, and Mozilla crashes. I lose it all. I love Windows machines. They are so fucking fabulous. I need to start saving up my pennies for a PowerBook, that way I can leave all this bullshit behind. Now of course this entry won't be nearly as good, because I'm all pissed off. Hey, if Google owns Blogger, why don't they have an autosave function like they do with Gmail? They do have a 'Recover Post' option, but I'm not sure when it should be used - it didn't work this time. Still, it all goes back to those asses at Microsoft.

Eight days since the last post, but there are reasons for that. Busy last weekend, busy this past week, and now at the start of this weekend, finally getting some breathing room. Let's see, last weekend we received a house guest in the form of my furry little brother Hobbes, my parents' cat, when they left from Baltimore on a Caribbean cruise. He's doing OK, hanging out with Maya and Marty, but the last few days he've definitely been restless. I think he's ready to go home. Halloween party as Liz and Jarriel's last Saturday, I'll have photos up next post. Sunday went to a craptastic DC United playoff game; the home team played about as badly as they possibly could, very disappointing. This week at work was crazy too, since Washington was hosting WEFTEC, the water industry's biggest annual conference/exhibition.

So here I am, a Friday night at home, blogging on the shitty laptop (Jenny/Moonflower is in MC so I can't use the desktop - no, for those not into WoW, I don't have the patience to explain that tonight, sorry). Actually, other than the technical problems, it's been a relaxing evening at home, certainly nothing wrong with that. I did get some painting done earlier, I'm trying to get the dining room finished this weekend. We'll see what happens.

The original, pre-crash post included a short review of The Satanic Verses, which I finished a few days ago on the train ride home. I'll save that for a future post, I just don't feel like re-creating it right now. One more post coming up tonight, Halloween costume pics. I'll be right back...

A Cookie is a Sometimes Food?!?

This may be old news to some of you, but I just heard about it this morning: apparently, Cookie Monster is cutting down on his cookie intake.

Sure, the chunk factor of kids in this country have been well-documented. But he's a piece of felt who likes cookies - no harm there, right? Maybe parents need to be a bit smarter if they believe that their kid is being unduly influenced by Cookie Monster's cravings for sugar and saturated fat (although with all the role models kids could choose these days, one would think that Cookie Monster would be the least of parents' worries). Buy lowfat cookies for your rotund child! Sure, they taste like sawdust, but they're still technically cookies. Kids are smart, smart enough to know better when their parent tries to pass celery off as a crunchy green cookie, but not smart enough to make sure there's real sugar and high fat content in that package of low-fat Oreos.

I appreciate what Sesame Street is trying to do, but let's hope they don't go too far. Oscar should still be a Grouch, not "Oscar the Occasionally Moody". Big Bird is still a BIG YELLOW BIRD! He's not "Bird, who is tall for his age". And Elmo is simply hyper and obnoxious, not overly enthusiastic.

62 Essential Vitamins and Minerals

That's what your average box of Grape Nuts cereal contains. Not only that, but 500% of your USDA RDA - that's Recommended Daily Allowance, for you non-label-readers out there. And what does it have in the taste department? I'm glad you asked!

Jenny (my lovely and talented wife) and I don't often disagree, believe it or not. But I can only hope for the best, and prepare for the nutritious, when she buys breakfast cereals without me. While it's true that I do enjoy the sugary cereals - I have always had a particular affinity for Lucky Charms - I don't need tons of sugar for breakfast. There's nothing wrong in my book with Special K, even the plain stuff without the fruit, or Cheerios, the classic stand-by. But breakfast is the first meal of the day, and I'd prefer not to experience character-building events so early in the morning. Grape Nuts might be fantastically healthy for me, it might be the single greatest source of fiber known to cereal, but it also tastes like mulch. Cheap mulch, not the premium mulch with cedar chips and stuff like that. Cedar chips would actually improve Grape Nuts. Maybe I should write to Post and suggest that - "Grape Nuts, now with cedar!" I've heard that cedar doesn't stay crunchy in milk though, so it's probably not as marketable.

I also never thought much of frosted mini-wheats - kind of bland, I always thought, even with the sugar. That tune changed in a hurry when I discovered the colon-cleansing joy of regular (non-frosted!) shredded wheat. Frosted mini-wheats are a fabulous concept by comparison! Scouring the kitchen for a pop-tart is never an ennobling task, but alas, it was all too necessary on that sad morning.

I'm not asking that pastel-colored marshmallows be added to every cereal, but could we perhaps find a happy medium? Honey-Nut Cheerios? Total, with raisins? Golden Grahams never killed anyone, at least not that I've heard.