A posting every day; an interesting idea every three months…
Here’s a Thanksgiving recipe from the Treasury Department:
Stuffed Turkey
- Large turkey
- Seven hundred-billion-dollar bills, crumpled
Place the crumpled bills inside the turkey. Roast until all that remains is a pile of ashes. Enjoy!
Source: October 13, 2008 New Yorker magazine cartoon by Roz Chast (not available on the Web in a usable resolution).
Full post, including commentsI decided that it was time to cut a few branches and trees here at my suburban tick farm. When I lived in an apartment, I spent a lot of time each night deciding whether to go to a concert, a lecture, or a museum. I no longer have to spend time making those decisions because I go to Home Depot every night. I left Alex in the car and went in to find the store nearly empty of customers, leaving plenty of helpful clerks. I explained my problem to one and said that I wanted to buy a handsaw. “We only have one,” she said. “You probably want a chainsaw.” I admitted that I wasn’t man enough to operate a chainsaw. “We have electric ones,” she offered. I responded that there weren’t any power outlets on the trees that I intended to assault. “How about this rechargeable Ryobi?” It was only $60, but it didn’t come with the 18V battery or charger, so I ended up having to buy a $300 Ryobi starter kit with some other tools.
At checkout, I produced my “I am stupid enough to pay $400 per year” card. The cashier was instructed to call American Express for authorization, the first time that has ever happened to me with this platinum card that I have held for about 8 years.
From Home Depot, I proceeded to the adjacent Natick Mall. Eager developers relatively recently finished some condos that are attached to the Mall via an indoor walkway. There are huge “condos for sale” signs all over them. The Mall was nearly deserted. I went to Crate and Barrel in order to get a sample of a some flatware to see if it would meet female approval (she had already picked this out from their Web site). It had been so long since they’d sold flatware that they couldn’t figure out how to open the locked cabinet.
Stores were glossy, prices were high, and what few people were there milled about without buying anything. It was reminiscent of Buenos Aires after Argentina’s currency collapse.
[Chain saw update: The rechargeable chainsaw worked out quite well for cutting down a tree approximately three inches in diameter. It is quiet enough that you don’t have to wear earplugs.]
Full post, including commentsNewspapers continue to dwell on the issue of race. Barack Obama, who identifies himself as black, managed to win the nomination of a party that represents approximately half of the American people. Nonetheless, journalists occupy column-inches with the theory that the other half of the American people are prejudiced against blacks.
Let’s try a thought-experiment.
Case 1: We ask an average American “Could a black man handle a demanding job?” My prediction is that the answer would be “It depends; I would have to meet the guy.”
Case 2: We ask an average American “Could a 72-year-old handle a demanding job?” Possible answers would include “72? Can the guy still drive himself? Can he get up and down the halls of his assisted living complex without using a walker? Are you nuts? Wouldn’t he have retired years ago?”
Companies try to avoid hiring anyone over 50. Why do we believe that the number of Americans who are prejudiced against blacks is anywhere near the number who are prejudiced against hiring workers born in 1936?
Full post, including commentsBarack Obama’s campaign has been damaged to some extent by quotes from his days as a community organizer. He sounded like a socialist back then. Would he act on these deeply held personal beliefs once he becomes president? If so, how would American business be able to grow as more tax dollars and resources were diverted to helping the poor, underprivileged, elderly, and unemployable?
Does it make sense to model the behavior of politicians as acting on deeply held personal beliefs? What if we look at them as responding to interest groups and individuals according to the power and wealth of those groups and individuals? The rewards to being responsive can be significant. Ronald Reagan significantly assisted Japanese exporters during his presidency and, upon leaving office, was rewarded with a $2 million payment for a nine-day speaking tour of Japan. Bill Clinton came to office as an upper middle class guy. He collected more than $100 million in personal wealth from his new chums upon leaving the Presidency. Suppose that Barack Obama arrives in the White House and reminds himself that he still has about 40 years to live, only 8 of which will be spent as President. Those 32 post-presidential years could be spent being celebrated by welfare recipients or as the guest of Fortune 500 CEOs. Those 32 post-presidential years could be spent living on a government pension or as billionaire.
What evidence is there that Obama is committed to any group or set of policies other than increased power and wealth for himself? He was elected to the Illinois State Senate in 1996. Had he been passionate about his constituents and their interests, he might have stayed in that job for 20 years. Instead he ran for U.S. Congress after just four years. He was elected to the U.S. Senate in 2004. He probably hadn’t found the restrooms in all of the office buildings by the time he decided to abandon his constituents and run for President.
John McCain, by contrast, is far more likely to attempt to damage the interests of the rich and powerful. He is already one of America’s wealthiest men. If he wants a private jet ride or an 11th house for occasional weekend use, he can write a check on his wife’s bank account. By the time he would leave office, McCain would be one of America’s oldest men. His statistical life expectancy would be 7 years. He would be unlikely to live long enough to appreciate a post-retirement gift from a constituency that he helped while in office.
My prediction that Obama will win stands, though I fear that my 5 percent margin of victory may be understated now that the Republicans have nominated a candidate who is 90 percent dead. My new prediction is that Obama will be the friendliest president ever to the rich and powerful and that Obama will be the richest person ever to have been president.
Full post, including commentsFrom my friend David, today’s Dilbert strip covers the question of how an American CEO can get out of the office with his $50 million “pay package”.
Full post, including commentsTomorrow is moving day, saying goodbye to Cambridge and hello to Lincoln, Massachusetts. Our new house requires a little history lesson. In the bad old days people dug down into the earth to make a basement foundation for a house. For hundreds if not thousands of years these primitive people stored roots, boxes, and other junk down in this basement while they lived in various floors built well above the ground level. Above the top floor they built an attic in which to store more junk. This attic became very handy in the 1970s when people looked for a place to put insulation, a whole-house fan, and other energy-saving devices.
Fortunately for mankind, in the 1960s a group of MIT and Harvard architecture geniuses came along and designed the Deck House kits. Why have a contractor assemble building materials and the local drunkards on-site to frame a house when the thing could be precision-cut in a factory? Storing carrots and boxes in your basement? Why not live in the basement instead? The typical Deck House, including the one we are moving into, is cut into a hillside so that part of the basement is walk-out level. Half of the living space is in this “first floor”, directly on top of a concrete slab.
How about an attic? Wasteful! Just make the living room ceiling the underside of the roof. The roof in this house is about 5 inches thick from the bottom of the living room ceiling to the top of the asphalt shingles. I’m hoping that there is some insulation in there, but am not confident. In any case, there is no way to add insulation without redesigning the roof to be about twice as thick. There is also no obvious place for a whole-house fan. Storage? Dump it all in the garage.
What happens when you live in your basement? It tends to be kind of damp. How about cranking up the central A/C to dehumidify it? The geniuses behind the original Deck House didn’t see the point in running ductwork. As there are no conventional floors or walls, it is not obvious how to run ducts after the fact.
I am now on a fanatical quest to dehumidify the basement, partly because I want to store some slides and negatives down there.
My first idea is to minimize the amount of moisture coming into the basement. A landscaping company is coming over to dig away a small portion of earth against the foundation and see if it is moist enough to warrant a “French drain” (pipe with holes in it).
I know that concrete breathes and am wondering if humidity is coming up through the slab, which was poured in 1968 as part of an outrageously expensive construction project ($38,000 to build 4000 square feet; thank God that the government assures us inflation is minimal or I would be upset by the insurance company’s estimate of $800,000 to rebuild the place today). I have instrumented the house with a Honeywell weather station from Costco (am now a true suburbanite). The Honeywell is saying that the humidity is about the same throughout the house, at least this evening. Without the heat being on, it is a dank 57 percent relative humidity upstairs and down. So we have some evidence that water vapor is NOT coming up through the slab. A civil engineer friend says that basements are damped simply because they are cooler than the rest of the house and the humidity mostly comes from the outside air. Nonetheless, I feel compelled to attempt to seal the slab.
The slab is currently covered by some glue, a porous carpet pad, and a medium-thick carpet. She who has the last word on home decor says “carpet is disgusting; I would pay as much as $10,000 to have the carpet replaced by hardwood.” I replied “So I guess we won’t do it, then, because the quote for engineered hardwood was $15,000.” It seems that we are doing it…
The standard way that flooring companies put down hardwood over a basement slab is… by not using hardwood. A solid chunk of wood tends to warp. The solution for potentially humid conditions is particle board or plywood topped with a thin wood veneer. It looks like regular hardwood, but is resistant to warping. The installation starts by taping down a closed-cell foam underlayment, which is more or less impermeable to water vapor, and then floating the floor on top of the foam. An engineer friend recommends 6 mil polyethylene sheeting underneath the foam, overlapped by at least one foot at the seams.
My question to the suburban heroes reading this is… Why not seal the slab with a chemical before putting down the sheeting and foam? If we don’t do it now we will not have another chance for 20 years.
Then the question becomes how to seal concrete. Drylok is the standard product, but I’m not sure what value it would be on a 40-year-old slab. I talked to a company down in Texas, where they should know something about humidity, called Enduroseal. They recommended
Anyone out there competent to evaluate this company’s claims or have personal experience with this stuff? Is what they are selling better than Drylok from Home Depot?
Stepping back the larger question is whether it makes sense to seal the concrete slab at all. It is dry to the touch and the carpet feels mostly cool rather than damp. There is a slight musty smell in the basement and slight mold growth on a couple of beams.
[This is outside the scope of the current blog posting, but the next planned step after the sealing and hardwood is to install some sort of central plumbed-in dehumidifier. There is a small utility room at the center of the basement. One idea is to put a standard HVAC air handler in this room. Run ducts up to the top floor and discharge air up there. Have the intakes in a couple of the rooms on the ground floor, thus forcing the air to circulate from top to bottom of the house. Honeywell and Lennox both make whole-house dehumidifiers that plug into air handlers. Run A/C in the summer and the dehumidifier in fall and spring. While we’re at it, add an air filter and a humidifier for December through March.]
Full post, including commentsPart of my planned move to suburbia includes shutting down 90 percent of my brain and spending the rest of my life watching 100 channels of HDTV from Verizon FiOS. The most logical place to sit and watch TV seems to be about 8.5′ back from a fireplace, above which is a nice flat brick wall that is part of the chimney. One additional constraint is that I want to use this TV for viewing/editing/critiquing digital photographs (much higher resolution than 1920×1080). A final constraint is that I don’t want to go too crazy with loudspeakers, so the TV should have at least the front channel speakers built in.
So… what size TV for an 8.5′ viewing distance?
Should it be plasma or LCD? Any particular brand?
What about mounting on a brick wall?
[Note: I don’t plan to use the fireplace underneath the TV, so no need to worry about heat damage.]
Full post, including commentsFile this one under “Cost of Paranoia”: Logan Airport shut down a runway for 20 minutes on Friday, delaying five flights, because a pilot saw a guy riding a bicycle along the perimeter road. It turned out to be an FAA employee. Full story: Boston Herald.
Full post, including commentsIt seems that my time as a yuppie, at least the “urban” part, is coming to an end. I’m moving to a suburban split-level Deck House next week. Here are some things that I’d like to be able to do…
In the 1970s this would have been accomplished with X10. What’s a more modern system that is likely to be around for 20 or 30 years? Ideally each light switch or thermostat would be IP-addressable and connect via powerline network or 802.11. Some of the lighting control systems that I’ve seen for sale cost $100 per switch, which would be enough to put in an 802.11 chip.
[A separate but related question might be “With energy so expensive and computers so cheap, how come these things aren’t standard in every new house?” One would think that every new American house would have a button by the front door marked “I am the last person to leave” and it would turn off all the lights and quiet down the HVAC system.]
Full post, including commentsThe S&P 500 crashed another 7.5 percent today, bringing U.S. stocks, adjusted for inflation, back to where they were in mid-1996. Investors are apparently not sold on the idea that managers of U.S. corporations are going to pay them a healthy share of profits. What would it take to restore investor confidence in the U.S. market? How about governance reform?
Right now the shareholders of a public company are at the mercy of management. Without an expensive proxy fight, the shareholders cannot nominate or vote for their own representatives on the Board of Directors. The CEO nominates a slate of golfing buddies to serve on the Board, while he or she will in turn serve on their boards. Lately it seems that the typical CEO’s golfing buddies have decided on very generous compensation for the CEO, often amount to a substantial share of the company’s profits. The golfing buddies have also decided that the public shareholders should be diluted by stock options granted to top executives and that the price on those options should be reset every time the company’s stock takes a dive (probably there is a lot of option price resetting going on right now! Wouldn’t want your CEO to lose incentive).
If current trends continue, the CEO and the rest of the executive team will eventually have salaries that consume 100 percent of a public company’s profits and they will collect half ownership of the company via stock options every few years. Who would want to invest in that? Not sophisticated investors, it turns out. Big universities such as Harvard and Yale have reduced their exposure to U.S. public companies down to about 15 percent. Instead of buying a forestry company and watching the managers steal the trees, they’ve chosen to own forests directly. Given the laziness of university administrators, it should have been a wake-up call to the SEC that something needed to change when Harvard preferred to run its own forests.
Corporations are supposed to operate for the benefit of shareholders. The only way that this can happen is if a majority of Directors are nominated by and selected by shareholders. It may have been the case that social mores in the 1950s constrained CEO-nominated Boards from paying their friend $50 million per year, but those mores are apparently gone and the present structure in which management regulates itself serves only to facilitate large-scale looting by management.
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