Dam It...An earthquake

Most of us consider an earthquake an 'act of God.' Even if we don't believe in any particular god. We believe that certain things are beyond the cause and effect of humans. But is it so???

There is now talk that a dam that created a reservoir in China may have caused or hastened the earthquake that left 80,000 people dead or missing in Sichuan Province. Seems all that weight of water less than a mile from a fault line could change the actual geological activity.

With a dam fifty stories tall you might really be able to change nature at its most basic. Which leads me to wonder if we can the a force for preventing or delaying seismic activity. But probably not. Our best efforts at intended consequences seem to always go off track.

See the story here in The New York Times.

The Destruction of the Rain Forest

Like global warming (and a cause of it) we assume that the rain forests are being decimated as we speak and that there is little we can do about it except shake our heads at big corporations (and individual indigenous people) destroying the forests to harvest things from it or to clear fields and raise crops.

I was surprised then to read in The New York Times that another trend might be partially or even completely reversing the downward spiral in the number of acres of this pristine wilderness.

Yes, as people leave the land and go try their hand at life in the city, their cultivated land is quickly turned into...rain forest. Naturally there is a debate about whether these new forest are really rain forests or 'caricatures' of same. Read the article for yourself here. But whatever is happening surely urbanization causing new acres of natural (or quasi natural) forest qualifies as an unintended consequence. Individuals leaving the land, of course, does not stop global corporations operating so that, as one 'expert' put it "every stick of timber is being cut in Congo is sent to China." But there is certainly more going on than the simple views bandied about outside JUC. Yeah, it's here where we find the 'hmmm' in every story that might seem black and white.

Women's Work

In this picture from the sixties you see a couple of my aunts in the center. One was a school teacher and one was a secretary or admin in a bank trust department. I had a couple of other aunts who were teachers, another secretary and one who was a non-com in the Navy. My mother finished her education to become a teacher after I went to school. By the time I graduated from college a few more things were open to women. I got a job as a computer programmer. I worked that job for two and a a half years and was never promoted. Still I didn't have to take a job as a teacher (fact is I washed out of the requisite ed. courses to get a certificate) and while I visited the Navy recruiter, a job offer for this computer job came along before I had to resort to that and I got free training there. The year was 1970. I bet my Aunt Mary (looking at the camera on the right above) was still wearing gloves to work. We both worked downtown and we'd meet for lunch sometimes. I was required to wear a dress or suit with skirt to work.

So why am I telling you this? What are the lurking unintended consequences? Well, in the depression of 2008/2009 (and beyond?) a funny thing has happened as people were laid off. The majority of laid off employees are men and women's percentage in the work force was already increasing. They work in many more fields today but many are nurses, teachers, etc. A trend is occurring that could make the proportion of women in the work force greater than fifty percent. The NY Times wrote about this phenomena. Of course, since women are still paid less, generally, this is a way to slash payrolls I suppose.

More women than men in the work force! But, where a couple has only a working wife, will he do the dishes and shrub the shower?

History shows us that men won't take it easily, though. When they returned from WWII, they just booted the women out of factories and construction. This time maybe some will retrain as nurses and teachers.

Crack Kids

Remember all the approbation? How crack-using moms were vilified and their kids taken away because they endangered them in the womb and how they were born addicted, those kids, with an uncertain and hopeless future? Yeah, turns out, writing about the subject in Tuesday's New York Times that they titled it "The Epidemic that Wasn't."

Turns out that if you were a baby boomer and your mom smoked and drank (and who wouldn't if you were a woman after WWII), it could be you were more abused in the womb. Yeah, crack cocaine? About the same as if your mom smoked cigarettes. She drank a little too much? Worse than that.

Lots of mothers-to-be are very kind to the developing pup these days, giving up caffeine, alcohol, druges, cigarettes for the duration and even for the nursing period.

[The picture? Stolen from an ebay trader trying to sell a hyper-realistic doll. Scary, I know.]

Who's Next?

We have a half Kenyan/half white American president who promised equality. So, of course, all the slices and dices of our great patchwork country are ready for their close-ups. Latinos. Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgendered. Women, women, women. Atheists and other non-Christians. (Not to lump Jews, Hindus, Muslims, etc. with atheists but also not to leave anyone out.) And the disabled. Governor Patterson of New York is blind and black, but he only got the top job because the white straight guy had a sexual activity dust-up. Everyone is ready to have their day. Lots of people took heart in Obama, but he is not them. He is not native Hawaiian, nor Japenese-, Chinese- or Vietnamese-American. He is straight. He is male. (Having a house full of females including the mother-in-law doesn't get points.) His ansestors weren't slaves. (That I know of.) He is not descended from the Sioux or Commanche. He is not a native Alaskan.

Everyone wants a turn, wants to be heard and be as important as everyone else. Most especially the probable majority...women.

You're a Doll

There have been a couple of dust-ups of late about dolls that maybe are trying to capitalize on the newsworthiness of some children. Here and here. Everyone is outraged! Especially Nancy Grace who is, as far as I can tell, now depending for her entire career on one dead kid. What I want to know, really, is where the Elián González and Jon Benet Ramsey dolls are? (OK, I'm not looking. I couldn't take it if there were dolls for this pair.) As for dolls for the Obama kids...well there was a Caroline Kennedy doll back in the day. Where was the outrage? Do you think it helped or hurt her in the pursuit of a Senate seat? (Read the great article from The New Yorker here. It even mentions the doll.)

[Apologies to the ebay trader from home JUC has stolen the image of the puzzled (?) baby doll head.]

Riding the Wave

I took Paste Magazine up on their offer to let me make an Obama poster for myself. I think I'll ride the wave of my vast popularity (yeah, right) to expound on two things that have been troubling me. They don't have much to do with one another. Or do they? We shall see.

OK, number one: does Obama still smoke? It's clear he did smoke cigarettes (he admitted as much). It's clear he tried to quit. Perhaps multiple times. And he appears to be chewing nicotine gum. (He was seen in his new armored Cadillac popping gum. I can't believe a president would chew gum except if he was trying to kick a habit.) So...he did smoke and maybe he still does. He isn't supposed to inside the White House. So probably he's chewing gum, wearing patches or he has well and truly kicked it. But what if he did still smoke? Well, no one is out to bail out big tobacco and couldn't he do that by introducing his generation to the joys of (even furtive) smoking all over again? Well, it would do my RAI stock some good. (As it is if they keep their dividend and the price stays where it is the yield is over 8%. Go on, buy some. Even if Barack doesn't keep smoking, you know the homeless guy on the corner with the cardboard sign will still have cigs as a high priority.) Smoking is an interesting unintended consequence spiral. I hate secondhand smoke. I was against a local smoking ordinance because I thought it was too onerous on the bar and restaurant owners, but, wowie, zowie, I love sending those guys out on the street to smoke while I eat, drink and listen to music in comfort! And, yes, I still own RAI. I would own defense stocks, too, but I don't happen to at the moment. (Except somewhere in my mutual funds, I bet I do.) I mean, no, I don't think we should blow people up but still, we do. Have to invest in something. Can't just stick to solar energy and hybrid cars and health food restaurants.

So, yeah, now that you are listening because of my super campaign poster...I've got another ax to grind in a somewhat similar vein. Where did the money go?

Really, you always wonder that when market value in the stock market disappears and all these companies are showing losses, don't you? It's worth thinking about. Some salient points:

• Let's say you had some stock. Last January you checked the price and updated your net worth accordingly. You didn't sell the stock. You just valued it. Let's say it was selling for $60 and you had 1000 shares. You are thinking: I have 60K there. I could sell it and buy a fancy car. But you didn't sell it. You held on to it. If it's worth, say $40 a share today, you 'lost' 20K, right? Well, not really. You, personally, never traded the stock at 60. Let's say you bought it back in the dog days of 2001 (although before the 9/11 meltdown) for an average price of $24. As it happens you are sitting on your original 24K plus an unrealized capital gain of 16K. Oh, and by the by, maybe you got $3.40 a share per year in dividends for those years since 2001. That's 23K. Where is that money? I don't know, dude. Did you buy a (cheap) car? A bunch of iPods, iPhones, iMacs, iThis, IThat and flat screens? The money doesn't really disappear. Although we might not have it. (And, to be fair, Uncle Sam got 15% of your qualified dividend. So the government got $3400 and you know they wasted it maybe paying Congressmen or something but still the money didn't really disappear.)
  
• Let's say you had a dollar. You gave it to a homeless guy. He bought some cigarettes. (Ch-ching. Dividends for my RAI stock.) But your dollar is gone. The homeless guy turned it into smoke. But still. The convenience store got it. And they used some of it to pay the middle man for the cigarettes and some to pay utilities and a little bit to pay the clerk, maybe. (Remember that "Simpsons" episode where Apu said to Homer, who did a brief stint as convenience store clerk, "You stole from me, you were lazy, late, indolent, etc....you were the best employeed I ever had." I'm paraphrasing, sue me. I'm also digressing.) Anyway, the money never disappears. It really doesn't. (Well there is that change rattling around in dranis, but really not so much.) So when the government prints more money to give it to banks, there is MORE MONEY. And eventually, sadly, money is worth less stuff.
• So, yeah, maybe you bought a house. For more than it was worth. And got an insane zero down loan with a rate that was low until it was high, high in a way that gives usury a bad name. You are sitting there in the fancy house and you are going to be bounced by the bank. Still you got to live there. And someone got that much money for the house. The bank gave it to them. And they have collected some money from you and they have the house. The money is still flying around somewhere. You don't have it, but then what money did you put up? Some low payments? Count it as rent, pack your stuff, get out.
• Now let's say you invested a million with Bernie Madoff. (Did he take amounts that small?) Anyway, your money is toast. But that's your money. The million is around somewhere. If you never took anything out, then Bernie gave it to someone else. Or the yacht company. Or he bought some jewelry over at Tiffany's or bought a chateau. Trust me, your money isn't gone. You'll just never see it again.

Now, do me a favor. Go scrounge throught the couch and your drawers for change. If you smoke, go buy a pack. If you don't, give it to a homeless guy. Get that money moving. It's all out there.

I may have more to say about this subject. But I had a glass of wine tonight (the winery gave money to pickers and bought a bottle and distributors and the restauarant and...you get the idea) and it's muddled my thoughts. But my thirteen bucks? It's out there somewhere!