Category — Economics

Just saw this and thought it was not only funny, but largely true… 

An Experiment

Start with a cage containing five apes.

In the cage, hang a banana on a string and put stairs under it. Before long, an ape will go to the stairs and start to climb towards the banana. As soon as he touches the stairs, spray all of the apes with cold water.

After a while, another ape makes an attempt with the same result - all the apes are sprayed with cold water. This continues through several more attempts. Pretty soon, when another ape tries to climb the stairs, the other apes all try to prevent it.

Now, turn off the cold water. Remove one ape from the cage and replace it with a new one. The new ape sees the banana and wants to climb the stairs. To his horror, all of the other apes attack him. After another attempt and attack, he knows that if he tries to climb the stairs, he will be assaulted.

Next, remove another of the original five apes and replace it with a new one. The newcomer goes to the stairs and is attacked. The previous newcomer takes part in the punishment with enthusiasm. Again, replace a third original ape with a new one. The new one makes it to the stairs and is attacked as well. Two of the four apes that beat him have no idea why they were not permitted to climb the stairs, or why they are participating in the beating of the newest ape.

After replacing the fourth and fifth original apes, all the apes, which have been sprayed with cold water, have been replaced.

Nevertheless, no ape ever again approaches the stairs. Why not?

“Because that’s the way they’ve always done it, and that’s the way it’s always been around here.”

And that’s how corporate policies begin.

Funny, Corporate Policies

Despite initially vowing to take public funds if McCain did, Obama is the first presidential candidate since the campaign finance reforms of the 1970s to accept private donations during the general election.

His tactic turned this election into the single most expensive presidential race ever, with over a billion dollars being spent.  That’s a first for our country.

The AP reports that Mr. Obama spent nearly $720 million dollars of the $750 million he raised for his campaign.  While McCain was limited to spending only $84 million from September on (because he accepted public funds), Obama spent $315 million during the same period.  By the end of the race, he was outspending McCain at a rate of 4 to 1.

Lets put this into perspective a bit: the combined total of George W. Bush AND John Kerry’s bill for both the primary and general election back in 2004 was only $653 million, including federal public financing money.

Yes, that’s right, Obama spent more on this election than the combined total of the candidates for the last presidential election.  And, of equal significance, his total spend was well over twice that of McCain’s reported $293 million.

I wonder what would have happened if Obama had done as he had vowed and taken the public funds?  Never before in history has a presidential candidate outspent his opponent by such an overwhelming margin.

Amazing that most people continue to say that its “Fatcat Republicans” who have all the money.  Overspending doesn’t stop at just the presidential election either.  Over the last decade, the most expensive senate campaigns of each cycle, save one (Elizabeth Dole in 2002), have been waged by Democrats.

I think it is officially time the term Fatcat was changed to something more appropriate: FatCRAT.

Congratulations MTV Generation - you’ve got your man as President.  One question though - don’t you think he should have kept his word and spent half as much money campaigning and used the other $325 million supporting some of those causes ya’ll care so much about?  He STILL would have outspent McCain by nearly 10%.

Honestly though, I really would have thought that much cash would have bought more than an 8.5% margin in the results.

Oh well, at least France likes us again.

Obama, 2008 Election, Campaign Finance

We’ve had two Compassion International kids for over a decade, and the experience has been fantastic.  They are a great group with a real heart for children.  Their work makes a material difference in the lives of the kids.

My cute CI Kids.

I love my 2 kids!  Uwimana is from Rwanda and a sweet, sweet girl.  She has struggled in school and hardship at home, but has come a long way from when we first sponsored her.   Helio is a handsome boy from Brazil who loves soccer and art.  He lives with his Grandmother and every letter from him comes with a beautiful picture.

Emily thinks of them as being a sort of brother and sister and sometimes plays with their pictures, making them talk as if they were really with her.  She mentions them often enough to let us know that their lives and struggles have had an effect on her, even at 4.

For a few bucks a month, its a great way to make a personal difference in the lives of people who really need it.

Compassion International

You may remember me mentioning AB 2270, a bill that was passed by California legislators that would have allowed the government to confiscate a private citizen’s water softener if a non-elected board decided that local salinity was too high or harmful to the environment.

Well, fortunately our Governator thought that this was pretty stupid too.  He vetoed it, saying that the bill would “create a system that could unduly limit choices for consumers and small water systems, with potentially little positive impact given the relatively limited contribution of water softeners to our salinity problems.”   Find out a bit more at the Water Quality Association.

Score:

Common Sense: 1
California Legislators: 347828

Exactly why do I live in Kaliforniastan?

California Bill AB2270, Water Softener Ban

Auto lust is in the air, and it seems to be spreading.

Could this car get me to buy American again?  Just maybe.  Its a technophile’s playground.

Now, don’t get on my case about NOT buying American.  These days, my US assembled ULEV Honda is more of an American car than your average Mexican built Chrysler.  And, I’ve more than paid my dues with my other car, a 10 year old Cadillac SLS.  Its the second Caddy I’ve owned, after the first one died on me in roughly a year.  Never again!  Should have thought of that before getting my current one!  Ha!

The biggest question with the Lincoln is, will I fit in it?  Well, OK - that’s probably second to will I ever be a non-cheapo and actually buy it?  Probably not.

*SIGH*  Being fiscally responsible really sucks.

Lincoln MKS, Techno Car

I won’t take a bunch of time telling you what Google Chrome is about.  Rather, I’ll give you a quick bullet list of neat features and let you go out on your own and get the details.

• Its fast.  VERY fast.
• It has crash control - one tab won’t crash the whole thing.
• Tabs can be ripped off to their own window or merged back into the bar.
• Incognito mode - a “no record” type of web browsing, which is great for accessing sensitive or confidential information on shared resources (think web banking at work, web mail at a conference, accessing your company’s CRM system at one of those public PC’s at an airport, etc.)
• Application shortcuts to make web apps feel more like desktop apps
• A minimal interface so that the content is the focus, not the browser
• and more.

Its still a beta version and has a few issues - for instance, while writing this post, the entire browser crashed, not just one tab.  So much for crash control! To be fair, it wasn’t my web app that crashed. It was the browser itself - so, crash control on tabs wasn’t supposed to solve that kind of thing.  Again, its a beta.  As such, it is very promising.

My overall feeling about it - WOW, is that fast.  Every page seems to load 20-50% faster anecdotally than anything in FF or IE, and the minimal interface is really nice (a bit similar to full screen tabbed browsing, but that’s OK).

I have a few concerns too:

• How long will they actually continue developing it?
• Spell checking doesn’t seem to be integrated yet - I LOVE integrated spell check in FF
• There is no plug-in mechanism yet (AFAIK…)
• Will this derail Google’s long time support of FF?  They did just renew their commitment to it, but is another browser really necessary?  I love FF and wish they would have simply worked with that initiative to improve FF to be everything that they wanted to achieve with Chrome.
• Google has its own agenda (ad revenue), and sometimes things seem out of touch with that goal.  With FF as a non-affiliated browser, why the need for Chrome?  They give some answers, but none that ring true enough to warrant a separate branch from FF, in my opinion.  It makes me wonder what evil plans they have lurking in the wings.  To be certain, Google has long been the Jedi to Microsoft’s Sith, but (in my best Yoda voice) - “The Chosen One, Google may be. Still, too clouded its future is.”  Google has been trying to become a viable and complete computing platform, hoping to drive Microsoft out of its stranglehold on PC computing.  But, once it is successful, what evil things will it start to commit? Some would say the evil has already started…  To borrow a line from The Dark Knight - will they be the hero long enough to see themselves become the villain?

Only time will tell.

But, if they clean up a few of the gaps that currently exist as compared to FireFox, Chrome may actually be an extremely viable third option.  After all, its from Google.  They usually don’t make things that suck.

Chrome, Google, Google Chrome