I Didn’t See That Coming

I’m in a coffee shop in enemy territory a college town.  College towns make me nervous.  Is socialism contagious?  Will I forget my science background and be found years later smoking dope in a cult of global warming fans who genuflect while recycling?  Will I pawn my truck for a recumbent bike?  Will my student loans, killed dead and buried, ressurect and hunt me down like a fiscal zombie?  On the other hand the wifi is faster than my usual rural habitat and the coffee is good.  (No credit cards accepted…who knew hippies would take a stand against ATM card fees?)

Just now an earnest, young, conservatively dressed, polite, college student asked if he could take the unused chair at my table; “Excuse me sir, may I borrow this chair.”  I replied without thinking about it “Of course, go right ahead.”  In my mind I was thinking ‘what a nice young fellow’.

Oh hell no!

1. Since when am I “sir”?  “Sir” is the name applied to me when a cop is about to issue  speeding ticket.  Shit!  I am so old!
2. Since when do I think things like “nice young fellow“?  Who uses “fellow”?  Have I morphed into an 80 year old grandma knitting in a rocking chair?  I’m not going into that dark night!  I may be a grouchy Curmudgeon hunkered over a laptop simultaneously crunching numbers (because science!) and gritting my teeth over news (because freedom!) but I am not “Sir”.   It is my job to stand tall and bellow “get off my lawn punk”.  The words nice young fellow should not cross my lips in a non ironic manner.  Shit!  I am so old!
3. On the other hand, the whole event is steeped in optimism for the future.  The nice fellow is studying what sounds like physics.  STEM baby!  ROI for college!  He’s accompanied by three young women (if I call ‘em hotties does that make me a dirty old man?) and none of them seem like airheads.  Four (in my eyes “kids”) who are calculating mass and momentum instead of racking up loans to be a psychology prof’s fluffer!  Go team brain!  He was polite and none of them are acting like hooligans.  The scruffiest bastard in the room is… me.  Awesome!  At least a few members of the next generation are gearing up to kick ass and take names!  I’d stand up and give them a bow but they’d probably think I was having a coronary and whisk me to the hospital.

Adaptive Curmudgeon (a.k.a. “Sir”)

The Possibility Of Ridiculous Outcomes: Part II

Once something has been done once, it can be done again.  This time in Valley Springs California.

“A region of oak-studded hills in California, where big-city dwellers come to get away from crime, was on lockdown Monday, two days after a mysterious intruder stabbed an 8-year-old girl to death.”

The Possibility Of Ridiculous Outcomes

Discussions about current events and how they’ll play out in the future tend to  blunder into the concept of “slippery slope“.  The counteracting idea is “relax, nobody is going to go crazy“.  I, being a cautious Curmudgeon, tend to place more emphasis on “slippery slope“.  I’m skeptical of arguments based on the rationality of people in groups.

The reason I don’t assume that trends will self modulate is because I’ve seen lunacy happen far too often.  Sometimes it’s funny.  Sometimes its tragic.  Sometimes it causes erratic outcomes never envisioned at the outset.  In most instances we’ve been promised at the beginning that things wouldn’t go overboard.  (I honestly think most people who say such things truly mean it.)

The key when you’re looking for a slippery slope is to consider (or experience) a long time frame. Over years or decades (or longer) that which is “impossible” slowly, gradually, incrementally, evolves into “possible” and sometimes “unremarkable“. Society would never make the whole trip at once but it can be led inch by inch virtually anywhere.  Here’s an example:

On April 20th 1999 two murderous raging assholes went on a rampage.  (You’ll note that I refuse to apply politically correct terms.  I won’t pretend that Harris and Klebold were disturbed youths, domestic terrorists, or shooters.  “Raging asshole” is, in my opinion, a superior descriptor.)

During the tragedy, which was entirely constrained within a single building, the school was placed in “lockdown“.  That day was the first time I’d heard the phrase “lockdown” applied outside of a prison.  Maybe I’m sheltered.  Maybe I was naive.  Regardless, I heard the word “lockdown” and my frame of reference was a prison.  Something like this; “Inmates in ‘Federal Bad Guy Prison’ rioted until the warden ordered a ‘lockdown‘ while guards restored order“.

I couldn’t make up my mind about it.  On the one hand I don’t like the idea of innocent children being “locked down“.  On the other hand, children are not adults.  When I was in school I was not free to leave.  Precocious kid that I was, I tested the concept by occasionally skipping school.  I didn’t always make it out of the building.  Having read the last sentence you won’t be surprised to know I sometimes found myself in detention which is just what it sounds like.  You are detained and not allowed to leave.  (I’m not trying to sound overwrought.  To the disappointment of my teachers, I never considered detention a big deal.)  My point is that you or I cannot legally detain an American without the force of law but a math teacher can do it to an eighth grader.

In the end I decided that “lockdown“, regardless of its efficacy against a shooter, wasn’t a bridge too far; provided it applied to minors within a school for a couple hours. However, I foresaw the “slippery slope” and was concerned.  If you can “lockdown” innocent children, what else can you do?  To whom can you do it?  For how long? On who’s authority?

Three weeks ago two raging assholes set off bombs.  During the manhunt the entire city of Boston was placed in “lockdown“.  The public more or less accepted this as reasonable.  The slippery slope of “lockdown” had taken its next logical (and disturbing) step.

Thirteen years, eleven months, and twenty-six days.  That’s how long it took.  “Lockdown” had drifted from “prisoners“, to “minors“, to “everyone in Boston“.  Comparing Columbine to Boston shows it expanded from “a school building” to “a metropolitan area” and from “a few hours” to “a full day“.

There couldn’t have been a better demonstration of “slippery slope“.  I didn’t make it up.  It’s not my paranoid imagination.  You got to watch it on TV just last month.  I’m not saying the folks at either Columbine or Boston were motivated by anything other than the best intentions.  Yet the first event which was mildly disturbing set the conditions for the next event which went much further.

The slippery slope hasn’t come to it’s end. If Bostonians had ignored the lockdown order  the idea would have run out of steam.  They didn’t so the next step will happen when the conditions are right.  (Actually I’m not really sure it was an “order”.  Nobody seemed concerned with defining the authority under which a local government imposed something very much like martial law. That too is a slippery slope.)

At any rate the “order” was not rejected.  It demonstrated that Americans can, will, and do accept the premise.  Shutting down the subway system apparently made perfect sense to them.  They accepted orders telling businesses to stay shut.  They willingly stayed indoors.  They did not protest or resist meddling in their affairs.

I’m not going to make dark predictions and dire warnings.  Folks going overboard in Boston is not cattle cars and concentration camps.  It is, however, a step in that direction.  Each time the “unthinkable” becomes “acceptable” we are diminished.  The next time someone says “we’re just going to do this, but just for this emergency so trust us” remember the thirteen years between Columbine and Boston.  Implementing a “lockdown” on a rural village in Kansas would have been inconceivable in 1970; it actually happened to a city of a half million in 2013.

The Columbine / Boston progression is why slippery slopes matter.

The Shafted: Paul Kevin Curtis (2013) and Richard Jewell (1996)

If forget my shopping list there’s no chance I’ll remember its contents.  However, I tend to remember the shafted.  In my eyes, the latter is more important.  Today I want to mention two of their number.

Lets start with Richard Jewell.  His story is covered quite nicely in Richard Jewell Cannot Accept Our Apology at Popehat.

Richard Jewell’s story played out in 1996.  The Olympics in 1996, like the Boston Marathon in 2013, was bombed.  Eric Robert Rudolph was the asshole who planted the bomb and he’s in jail now. (Sadly, he wasn’t drawn and quartered but jail will suffice).  Rudolph is convicted, guilty, and evil.  We know that now.  We didn’t know it then.

Richard Jewell was a earnest and slightly goofy mall cop who discovered the bomb, called it in, and got folks out of the way.  Everything he did was the right thing to do.  Law enforcement thought Jewell’s quick discovery of the bomb was “too convenient”, decided he must be the perpetrator, and (as is common) leaked their conjecture to the press.

Jewell was pilloried by the media, jailed and questioned by law enforcement, and generally treated by everyone as if he was bomber scum.  I still remember it.  Eventually level heads prevailed and Jewell was exonerated.

By then Jewell was a wreck.  By most accounts he was never quite the same until his death in 2007.  Tragic!

Suppose you did a heroic thing and found your life, honor, and reputation in shambles.  Would you recover?  Remember, Jewell heroically saved lives and they ran him through the meatgrinder.

……………………………………

Now lets talk about Paul Kevin Curtis.  Several days ago poisonous ricin was mailed to President Barack Obama, Mississippi Senator Roger Wicker, and Sadie Holland a judge in Mississippi.   Paul Kevin Curtis was accused, jailed, and questioned.

You might have heard about it?  It was shoehorned in the news between reports about Boston’s tragedy and their subsequent experiment with martial law (I’ll comment on that some other time).

Mr. Curtis sounds like a bit of a fruitcake.  He has a theory about medical malfeasance (which may or may not hold water) and he’s an Elvis impersonator to boot.  Much like Jewell, he’s an easy mark.

I’ll bet dollars to donuts you heard about the crazy Elvis impersonator with tinfoil hat theories who got all evil and terroristic.  One sure sign of his manifest evil was a quote taken from his Facebook page and plastered all over the Internet:

“To see a wrong and not expose it, is to become a silent partner in its continuance”

Apparently the ricin perpetrator used the quote too.  You could therefore presume Curtis is a poisoning monster and indeed the quote was formally mentioned as part of the charges against Curtis.  From my point of view it’s no more proof that Curtis is a bad guy than an indication he’s a deliberately moral fellow.  Ironic eh?

Here’s the part that is inconvenient.  Curtis didn’t do it.  Ricin isn’t the simple baking of evil cupcakes that journalists who failed chemistry make it out to be.  Eventually everyone agreed that Curtis could no more make Ricin than he could build a lunar capsule.  Shortly thereafter Everett Dutschke was arrested and charges against Curtis were dropped.

So tell me.  How many of you have heard news of Curtis’ vindication?  I found it buried on the web but I sure as heck didn’t see it widely broadcast.  Curtis is fortunate that he wasn’t pushed deeper down the rabbit hole like Jewell.  In a way, we are all fortunate too.

Let us pause a moment to honor Jewell and Curtis.  One a hero that got shafted mightily and one a bystander that was spared some (but not all) of Jewell’s fate.  Neither gentelman deserved to be shafted.

The Best ISP / Cable Ad Ever

This video is hilarious (NSFW language):

It reminded me of a post I wrote a couple of years ago: The Unbelievable Lightness Of Kicking Jackasses To The Curb.  It was about telephones because I won’t pay for cable, ever.  (Since I’ve never paid for cable I’ve never had to bitch about it.  Thus the cycle of cable suck self-perpetuates without me). Back to the subject of cell phones this is what I said:

“As far as I can tell everyone hates their phone company.  The only reason folks keep doing business with them is because people put up with obnoxious companies like they are the victims of Stockholm Syndrome.”

Stockhlom Syndrome explains a lot.  I stand by that assessment.

Hat tip to Never Yet Melted.

There Is No Monopoly On Stupid: Part III

Ok, I’ve been dithering through two posts to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that:

1. The Chevy Volt sucks so bad that even the craptacular Edsel (formerly considered the wheeled definition of unmitigated total automotive/financial disaster) was a resounding success by comparison.
2. At least one guy thinks the Volt is totally awesome and we’re all missing out by rejecting what he perceives as the best car going.

I felt pretty smug that I, Curmudgeon extraordinare, would never hold an opinion that simply wouldn’t budge given real world experience.  I pride myself on putting mind over wishful thinking.

Then one recent day the news reported that the DOW had cranked out a record high to close at 14,673.  “Holy shit” quoth the Curmudgeon, “I smell inflation afoot!“  It’s true, I was mightily displeased with that report.

I don’t see the DOW hitting nosebleed numbers as a necessarily good thing.  With a federal debt of $16,806,987,247,849.34 and the Fed printing money literally faster than any physical printing press could muster… I see gains in the DOW as losses in the green paper I keep (when I can) in my wallet. It’s like when your get a brutal stomach virus for a week and wind up standing on the scales marveling that you’ve lost 5 pounds. Yeah, it’s cool to lose weight but the bathroom scale is missing the part about you running a 101 fever and vomiting. Such is my paranoia about the economy.

But wait! If I, Curmudgeon that I am, think a rising DOW is a bad thing wouldn’t I be pleased with a sinking DOW? Actually I wasn’t. Back in 2008 when everyone lost their shit and pushed the DOW to 7,552.29 (November 20, 2008) I was livid.  “Are they insane?” I ranted in that fateful year, “Every building, factory, bulldozer, and forklift what was around last week is still here.“  I interpreted a DOW at 7,500 as proof positive that everyone had taken leave of their senses and we’re valuing stocks based on whatever the hell floated into their empty heads.

Which brings me to my conundrum.  When the DOW went down I interpreted it as a bad thing; a disconnect between the true value of assets and the securities we use to trade them.  When the DOW went up I interpreted it as a bad thing; a disconnect between the value of assets and the green slips of paper we use to monetize them.

There’s the rub.  I think were screwed when the DOW goes up and when the DOW goes down.  Thus my opinion is not affected by a metric that I observe everyday.  In effect, I’m just like the guy who thinks a Volt is just groovy despite ample evidence to the contrary.  He thinks his Volt is groovy.  I think were screwed.  Neither of us are responding to outside information.  (Or at least I am unwilling to accept the DOW as a rational valuation.)

Now is the time when I’m supposed to wrap it all up with some pithy comment that proves I’m intelligent and Hippie Mc.Volt is a moron.  I can’t do it.  He and I both have opinions that are resistant to outside information.  I haven’t figured out a clever way to either get with the rainbow people and love our new Obamaconomy or think my way past hating rising and falling stock prices simultaneously.

Ah well, perhaps a conundrum of human existence is being aware you’re thinking foolishly yet doing it anyway.

A.C.

P.S.  Regardless of the DOW, I’m definitely certain that the Volt is horse shit.  I’m bitter about that.  I’ve been waiting for a real electric car since the Carter administration and apparently it’s not coming.  (Side note, the armed flying drones of science fiction are now real and blowing people away right now.  How could a decent electric car and predictions of housekeeping robots have been eclipsed by the Terminator?)

There Is No Monopoly On Stupid; Part II

In my last post I referred to the Edsel.  The reason I brought up the Edsel is because the Edsel was a world class failure in car marketing the likes of which modern man has seldom seen.  Also a reader dropped me a comment leading to this: The Best Loved Car In The World.  I should warn you; it’s a link to an article in Mother Earth News by a fellow who thinks his Chevy Volt is the greatest idea since… everything.  Go ahead read it but be prepared to decontaminate granola from your keyboard when you’re done.  I’ll give the guy his due, he’s entitled to like his car.  More power to him.

For those of us back on Earth I decided to compare the Volt with the Edsel.  Why?  Because the Edsel and Volt were both heavily hyped, both were supposed to “turn around” an auto maker, and both were utter and complete financial disasters. Fortunately, both have been on the market a similar amount of time too.  I decided to investigate the following scientific question:

Hypothesis: The Edsel was the universal shorthand term for “catastrophic marketing disaster” for generations.  The Volt, being an electric car, massively subsidized, and hyped (by at least one lone hippie) as “The Best Loved Car In The World”, should be at least cool enough to beat Edsel.  Even I, the Curmudgeon, was willing to ponder that a real live electric car could beat the wheeled punchline of 1958.  Is it true?“

Study design, both cars were on the open market a similar number of years.  Now handy can you get?  That’s how I know God likes science!  Here goes:

• The Volt has been in production roughly three years.  It came out in 2010 (2011 model year).  It will (as far as I can tell) be continuously manufactured until the Peoples Republic of America stops making that shit.  For purposes of my uncontrolled scientific experiment the Volt right now it has been on the market nearly as long as the Edsel.

• The Edsel was in production for three years.  It was made in 1958, 1959, and 1960.  The ghost of Henry Ford probably exploded at the expense of cutting off production after such a short run.  I’ll give Ford Motor Company credit, they knew a disaster when it hit them in the balls and pulled the plug just about as fast as they could.  How many modern companies cling to a sinking idea for much longer?

Study metric #1, how many people were willing to buy either of these abominations?  Here goes:

• In three years there were 118,287 Edsels sold.  (According to Wikipedia: “Only 118,287 Edsels were built, including 7,440 produced in Ontario, Canada. By U.S. auto industry standards, these production figures were dismal, particularly when spread across a run of three model years.“)
• In the last three years there have been 49,161 Volts sold.  This includes European sales as an Opel Electra.  (Also from Wikipedia.)

Study metric #2, how much harm either did either car cause to innocent taxpayers?  Here goes:

• The Edsel was produced by a for profit company which lost it’s shirt and went home bruised and crying.  No taxpayers were harmed in the making of this film!
• The Volt has been subsidized so much you can see the haze of tax dollars dripping off its paint job; and that’s before you get a $7,500 tax credit when you buy it.  I’m pretty sure the government could air lift a Civic onto your lawn including a glovebox stuffed with cocaine and still do it cheaper than dragging consumer into a Volt.

Analysis, the Edsel dominates the Volt like a freight train hitting a hamster.  Here goes:

• The Edsel during it’s short, ridiculed, disastrous, money losing run outsold the Volt by 240%.
• The Edsel cost Ford dearly but it was entirely privately financed.  The Edsel cost taxpayers roughly $0. 

Results, it’s not even close.  From a market and financial point of view, the word “Volt” should be carved in stone tablets and preserved for all time as the worst business case in the history of the universe.

Further thoughts:

Of course, making fun of the Volt is shooting stupid fish in a small barrel using a nuclear bomb.  But what am I to make of the earnest fellow who honestly thinks “The Best Loved Car In The World” can be uttered in the same universe as “Volt”?

It occurs to me that for some folks there is nothing, nothing at all, no experience or evidence whatsoever, that could convince them that the Volt isn’t just groovy man.  For the guy who wrote the article, and possibly his target audience in Mother Earth News, it’s simply unquestionable.  If a Volt broke into his house and raped his cat, he’d still love it.  If Volts caused cancer, made your nuts fall off, and glued your sphincter permanently shut, he’d still love it.

Who could go so crazy?  Certainly none of us could have an opinion immune to evidence to the contrary?  Well stay tuned because I found my Curmudgeonly self slipping into such illogic.  Not about a car of course, that would be ridiculous.  Instead it was about the stock market.  Stay tuned.