this is what paul krugman, uber liberal columnist for the new york times, wrote in his column titled our so-called boom:

it was a merry Christmas for Sharper Image and Neiman Marcus, which reported big sales increases over last year's holiday season. It was considerably less cheery at Wal-Mart and other low-priced chains. We don't know the final sales figures yet, but it's clear that high-end stores did very well, while stores catering to middle- and low-income families achieved only modest gains.

Based on these reports, you may be tempted to speculate that the economic recovery is an exclusive party, and most people weren't invited. You'd be right. (more)

don't you just love krugman for always being on bush's ass? someone's gotta sweep the floors once in awhile.

i saw the cooler (a movie) yesterday.

probably the best performance in the cooler goes to alec baldwin, a gruff, no-nonsense, old-time business sort of guy. baldwin's character had guts and panache. i liked him, though i don't think i was supposed to.

the characters played by wm. h. macy and maria bello seem to just stumble through their parts. they seem to not want to be liked. if macy would play something else but the reluctant loser, perhaps i could give him some slack.

i guess the vegas thing isn't my cup of tea, and i really wanted to like the movie. it just didn't do it for me. the hurdle--changing from bad to good luck--just didn't seem a high enough hurdle in real life, though the story made it seem like it was as high as the clouds.

not a bad movie, and i'm glad i saw it for $6.75 at the matinee showing. still, the cooler is nothing for me to write home about.

21 grams is a gr8t movie. penn, watts & del turro all performed well. the story was good & the pace was fine. see it, but if u r sensitive 2 grief, u may not.

i'm waiting to see the cooler, a movie starring william h macy. the setting will be in vegas, where macy is working to cool those 2 lucky 4 the house.

There was a Christmas miracle this morning, according to San Diego Police.

A 19-year-old Navy sailor, who is stationed on the aircraft carrier USS Stennis, is in critical condition at a nearby hospital after she drove her car off an exit ramp and fell 50 feet to a park below, where some homeless people resecued her from her burning car.

The accident happened around 3:00 A.M. Upon impact, the woman's car rolled and caught fire.

The park, which is about one mile west of where I live, is home to many people. These people sleep under the overpasses and ramps.

The woman's life was saved by the homeless people, according to police. (more)

Merry Christmas


from The Chicago Tribune

What Mad Cow Disease

BSE, or mad cow disease, and the probable cause of the fatal human disease vCJD, wasn't even thought of when Marcus and I walked into San Diego's Turf Club. Turf Club is an okay enough establishment for grill-it-yourself steaks and a vibrant Manhattan.

As I consider last night's Turf Club dining decision, still in bed under blanket of an unusually overcast and rainy San Diego morning, I wonder why I didn't think mad cow. Perhaps it was the three Amstel Lights at Sparky's that may have excused any thought of that peculiar bovine affliction. Nah.

The cocktails at Turf Club are just too good to pass, and my focus was on consuming Manhattans and obviously not on the ribeye's connection to a certain condemned Holstein in Washington state. Couldn't that be one sign of alcoholism?

Pragmatism, a movement or school of philosophy founded by C. S. Peirce and William James, is based on the testing of truths with the practical consequences of its outcome. Or as I like to define it: we don't know what we don't know, and what we do know is very small compared to what we don't know.

An example: the sun rises in the east is what we know. An example of what we don't know is: eventually the sun will not rise in the east, which begs the one word question When?

Christmas is the day when Christians celebrate the birth of Jesus. It's also the time of the year with which the contemplation of Peace, Joy, Love and Life are seeded into our collectiveness to be cultivated to last throughout the year, until next Christmas.

What we collectively appear to know, however, is that Christmas Season is the time in which we drop colorful plastic cards on counters and throw-up piles of personal debt to which the means of repayment is the annual "rob from Peter to pay Paul."

We don't seem to know, or collectively we've forgotten, that Christmas time gift giving was developed sometime during the 1800's. In case one doesn't know, that would be over 1800 years after Jesus was born.

This blog is in no way advocating that gift giving should be halted because it is bad, in fact gift giving is good. What's being advocated in this space is that the contemplation of Peace, Joy, Love and Life not be forgotten in the rush of the season.

I wish you Peace. I wish you Joy. I wish you Love. I wish you Life. Merry Christmas.

Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE)

BSE or "Mad Cow Disease" is a progressive, fatal disease of the nervous system of cattle. It is what is known as a transmissible spongiform encephalopathy (TSE). Although the exact cause of BSE is unknown, it is associated with the presence of an abnormal protein called a prion. There is no treatment or vaccine currently available for the disease. (read more)

A cow with BSE will have a difficult time standing by its own power. In a case a cow cannot stand, they are labled a "downer animal."

A downer or non-ambulatory animal is an animal that is not able to stand up anymore. An animal may become non-ambulatory because of a disease or injury on the farm, during transport, or at market. Usually, each animal must enter the slaughterhouse on its own to prove its healthy condition; however, when a downer animal is presented, proper and humane handling techniques are required to move these animals. Non-ambulatory and disabled livestock are an economic liability and every effort should be made to prevent their occurrence.

Wow. Linus Torvalds, the Finn who invented the open source operating system Linux, is being sued. Not by Microsoft, but by SCO Group of Lindon, Utah.

SCO asserts that Torvalds, in his attempt to create Linux, copied some of UNIX's code, which SCO owns the license.

To further drag the open source world a little more to Microsoft's world, Novell, also a software company, is suing SCO for copyright infringement.

Here's the whole story, and another article for good measure, from The New York Times.

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iTunes commentary from a self-proclaimed "Windows guy."

What's happening with the new Beetle
and other cars that were once "hot?"



Look back to the PT Cruiser for 2000 or VW's newly redesigned Bettle for 1998 and then you wonder what's happened to all the momentum and buzz for these vehicles. Apparently all cars eventually meet the fate of wearing-out their buzz. It appears that wearout period is faster now then in the past.

Have cars become clothes, fashionable enough for one season but not the next? Most likely. A car is only as good to a car company as how well it sells. It's not as easy to sell wool plaid this Fall as it was in 1997. Like clothes designers, car engineers have to get back to the drawing board regularly. With the tastes of consumers so affected season to season, car makers have fallen victim to their success.

Here's an article in the NY Times on this very subject.

Thanks to Dfactor for showing me the way to great rock and roll as per Sire Records.

In Great Britian, the government warned doctors today that perscribing the antidepressants Paxil (GlaxoSmithKline), Zoloft (Pfizer), Effexor (Wyeth), Celexa, Lexapro (both from Forest Laboratories Inc.), and Luvox (Solvay) may not be in the best health interest of citizens under the age of 18.

The New York Times reported that the British Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency believed the drugs' "effectiveness in treating depression in children has not been sufficiently demonstrated, and some drugs have been linked with suicidal thoughts and self-harm in children and adolescents."

Earlier this year the F.D.A. warned physicians not to perscribe Paxil to depressed children in this country until the completion of their evaluation on the popular pill that's used to treat depression.

A 1995 interview with Noam Chomsky on the subjects of NAFTA, GATT and the Mexican bailout.

The bottom isn't about to fall out of NAFTA; it's too important for the US corporations. The hidden story is of rich [North] Americans' highly speculative and highly risky investment in Mexico. The trick of capitalism is supposed to be that investments are risk free, so that if you get into trouble the public bails you out. That is what is called freedom. --Noam Chomsky 1995

Associated Press

Paul Simon, the former Senator from Illinois, died today, a day after heart surgery.

Simon was a liberal's liberal who ran for president once.

Rest in peace, Mr. Simon.

Thanks to Ms. Caroline Horist for this...


Pictured here is an ad from a Chinese magazine for Suntory Crest. Suntory is the whiskey featured in the movie Lost In Translation and consumed in large quantity by Bill Murray's character Bob Harris.

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Today's my last day in Chicago. (My American Air flight takes-off from ORD at 4:30 P.M. and arrives in San Diego at 7:00 P.M.)

What have I learned? Sewer salmon is now colon coho and a week of not working-out will no doubt make the first mile a bit rough.

Pilsen restaurants Nuevo Leon and its guisado de res is as good as I remember. The Steak n Egger isn't as good as I thought, but the atmosphere is still tops.

Chicago's drivers are a lot more attached to their car's horn then I remember and the driving style is a lot more aggressive then I remember.

For non-smokers, Chicago bars can be very difficult to endure.

The architecture of the city is unmatched.

The Millineum Park is still under construction.

Marketing, as I understand it and the way it was taught at my college, is the art of transforming a want into a need.

Apparently many Americans feel a higher need to spend on items once taught to be household luxuries. Like a second car. This list of essential household purchases, called "personal consumption expenditures" by the U.S. Commerce Department, is getting larger each year. Even through the latest recession, which started at the end of 2000.

Americans are willing to go into credit card debt to keep up with their torrid pace of consumption. This dynamic will only continue, so says history.

Amercians, armed with cash from the refinancing of their homes, are on a spending spree, even if paychecks aren't coming in.

Marketing is what keeps the economy spending. Marketing is how the economy will continue to grow, or keep spending, in the future. Marketing is the true "ultimate driving machine."