banana republic 2.0

Its been my thought for some time that our national economic, social, and military policy choices have increased the likelihood that we'll turn the USA into the world's biggest banana republic.   Certainly the current economic apocalypse might be a big step in that direction.  More on this topic, I'm sure.  For now, various outlets in the blogosphere have picked up this, I believe it originated with Barry Ritholtz.   Barry blogs at http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/

"In doing the research for the "Bailout Nation" book, I needed a way to put the dollar amounts into proper historical perspective. If we add in the Citi bailout, the total cost now exceeds $4.6165 trillion dollars.

People have a hard time conceptualizing very large numbers, so let’s give this some context. The current Credit Crisis bailout is now the largest outlay In American history.  Crunching the inflation adjusted numbers, we find the bailout has cost more than all of these big budget government expenditures – combined:

• Marshall Plan: Cost: $12.7 billion, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $115.3 billion
• Louisiana Purchase: Cost: $15 million, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $217 billion
• Race to the Moon: Cost: $36.4 billion, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $237 billion
• S&L Crisis: Cost: $153 billion, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $256 billion
• Korean War: Cost: $54 billion, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $454 billion
• The New Deal: Cost: $32 billion (Est), Inflation Adjusted Cost: $500 billion (Est)
• Invasion of Iraq: Cost: $551b, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $597 billion
• Vietnam War: Cost: $111 billion, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $698 billion
• NASA: Cost: $416.7 billion, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $851.2 billion

TOTAL: $3.92 trillion"

UPDATE: here is another accounting: http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/11/what_were_doing_--_and_spendin.php

wow - a new president-elect

I, for one, welcome our new overlords.

Watched Obama's victory speech upon winning the election.  Now the hard part begins, of course, but the historic nature of this election may give me an opportunity (for a time) to dial-back my customary cynicism - maybe we can make some needed progress.

It is about the future of course, and I hope this election opens the door to addressing problems in a forward-looking and effective way, not in ideological terms related to political or cultural wars of the past that seem to live on in the mental frames of most of our political leaders.   The world is changing, in many ways, and prescriptions based on the model of "pick your favorite previous decade" won't cut it.  We have to identify new approaches.

Anyway, most of the prediction markets and/or related polling site have been pretty accurate for some time.  Interestingly most news outlets seemed to consistenly position the race as closer than it really ever was.  

oops - funny McCain photo

 

from Yahoo! News

Snowblower

Our new snowblower:

predicting the 2008 presidential election

So, thanks to various corners of the blogosphere, I've found a few places that predict the election, including a couple using prediction market approaches.

Here are the 2008 Presidential quotes from the Iowa Electronic Markets.

Here is FiveThirtyEight.com.

Here is Intrade Prediction Markets.

Yahoo has its  Election 08 Political Dashboard.

UPDATE:  here are two more (thanks  Ned)

Electoral-vote.com

Election Projection.com

Mt Osceola (almost) hike

Last weekend we went to the White Mountains to hike, and chose Mt Osceola.  First, we drove up Friday and stayed at the Glynn House Victorian Inn in Ashland New Hampshire.  We had a great time - our hosts were gracious and friendly,  the inn is very well maintained, the rooms are clean and filled with amenities, evening wine was a treat, and the morning's breakfast was well-prepared and tasty.

Hiking Mt Osceola - East Peak - was a bit of a chore because we took the long path that visited the Greeley Ponds before taking us up the mountain.  It was a great day, we had a great hike, and caught a few more snapshots.

fisher cat

So this fella came right up to the house Sunday morning - in fact jumped on the deck and peered in through the window.   Hadn't seen him since the winter....


You have to look close....

Calibri and OpenOffice.org

Microsoft's Calibri font (proprietary, introduced in Vista and/or Office 2007)  has bugged me because Open Office doesn't have a good default fall-back for it.  Result is that documents are frequently un-readable.  (Makes one wonder if this was intentional - like the old rumor about "Windows isn't done until Lotus doesn't run...")

I finally found and settled on a good solution, for me anyway, described here http://www.oooninja.com/2008/02/metrical-equivalent-fonts-and-font.html, in particular, this recipe for font replacement:

"At the OpenOffice.org level, you can specify font replacement rules. That means whenever OpenOffice.org encounters font X, it will use font Y instead.

1. Open any OpenOffice.org application.
2. Click Tools > Options.
3. In the tree menu under OpenOffice.org, choose Fonts.
4. Check the box Apply replacement table.
5. Type the name of the Microsoft font in Font.
6. In Replace with, type the name of the non-Microsoft font.
7. Click the green checkmark.
8. Repeat steps 5-7 as needed"

 I replaced Calibri with Comic Sans MS and it works fine for my purposes.  Thanks so much to OpenOffice.org Ninja - you rock!

UPDATE - if you're sharing docs on Microsoft platforms, one of the office versions may be missing a font.  See: http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/powerpoint-help/fonts-that-ship-with-different-versions-of-office-HA010282644.aspx for help from Microsoft.

Here is a recipe if you are on Ubuntu:  http://askubuntu.com/questions/34077/libreoffice-missing-certain-microsoft-fonts

Monandnock Hike

Every year, and this year also.  We did the White Cross trail for a change.  Here are two snaps on the way up, across to one of the lesser peaks, and the path forward.

efficient, but fun

Like we said, who says great mileage can't be fun?  The CR-Z looks good...