Samuelson and economics

My brother attended a prestigious Eastern college in the sixties. One course that impressed him was Economics 101 taught by Paul Samuelson. At the dining room table (it must have been Sunday dinner) my brother explained to my father, an accountant, how inflation was good for the economy, according to his professor. Apparently, wages went up, prices went up, and everyone was better off. This must have ticked off my father because he slammed his hand on the table and said, "Yes, but that's creating a false economy".

Paul Samuelson died yesterday. He is most remembered for his textbook, read by Freshman economy students for decades. Students liked using the book. They knew they could always sell it come next year to the next batch of Freshman.

MacDonald's coffee

I've been meaning to try the new MacDonald's coffee and so this morning, with money in my pocket, I drove to the closest MacDonald's. It was crowded and there was a line. Some of the regulars were there, the older men that congregate at MacDonald's in the morning and make a social occasion out of the deal.

There was one man who kept hitting himself on the chest and going, "86!". One of the old timers responded with "Is that your golf score or your cholesterol?"Ha ha ha's were heard from the crew.

I often wonder if a shy person like myself will turn into a garrulous old character when I start collecting Social Security. When you are an old guy you can tell everyone at MacDonald's your age and you can pinch teenage girls in the rump. What would be annoying or even illegal for the young becomes "cute" when you are old. It must be fun. Bring on the Lipitor.

Incidentally, the coffee wasn't bad. MacDonald's coffee used to be terrible. Now it tastes like diner coffee. Definitely an improvement.

Thank you Tiger for helping us this holiday season

One of the problems we all have at Christmas parties, dinners, and the like is that lag in conversation. You're sitting next to Aunt Maureen or your friend's Uncle Malcolm and there is that moment where you are struggling for something to say. You already told them what you do for a living and it would be impolite to ask them how they pay their own bills. However, this season, thanks to Tiger Woods, that problem has been solved.

"So, do you think she hit him with those golf clubs or not?"

"I wonder how much booze she had in her when she started chasing him up the street?"

"So I see Tiger Woods was doing more swinging than on the course!"

And for the rest of the afternoon, you have the pleasant give and take of witty repartee, jokes, opinions, and happy fun filled laughter. Thank you Tiger and may you have a happy new year.

Sarah Palin

Liberals, environmentalists, intellectuals, and public employees often scorn Sarah Palin. However, real political activists from the left are terrified of her. They know that deep inside the heartland of America people are more like Sarah Palin than Nancy Pelosi or Obama.

If you sit down with people in the suburbs or small towns of America you will find she is admired by people. She has gumption. She is the lady who sits at the Board of Education meeting and shouts, " I don't care about all this nonsense about T1 lines and shared connections, I just want to know why the Internet is so slow!" Then she gets elected to be head of the Board of Education and terrifies school teachers for a couple of years till she runs for mayor or later, governor.

She is the true America. The America of NASCAR, tailgating, Sunday school for adults, dessert parties and singing Christmas trees. You haven't lived till you've seen a singing Christmas tree.

Lady Gaga

It all happened so fast. I've been exposed in a week to the most important cultural icon of the aughts (the 2000-2009 decade). It started last Wednesday when they discussed her on the Slate Cultural Gabfest. Then over the weekend I saw snippets of her on the American Music Awards excerpts. Monday night I saw an hour special on her on cable. An interview followed by some of her videos. Then I went to her website and read about her on Wikipedia. Yahoo offered up 5 videos. Today I saw Newsweek magazine and read that she was not really artistic just because she mentions Marcel Du Champ and Andy Warhol in interviews. Even Sarah Palin knows those names.

Of course she will lose her bohemian Lower East Side creds now that she is famous. She is probably passe among the hip 20's crowd just as the baby boomers are discovering her. She is the obvious post modernist version of Madonna (Italian American woman, sexual outfits) especially Madonna's Sex Vogue period. However, to me, she is closer to being Cher. She does disco like Cher and does those modulated vocals like Cher did in "Do You Believe". She is dressed sort of like Cher did in her tv show in the late 60's early seventies. However in a Marat Sade sort of way. She is a little more M than S methinks. Her latest hair style looks like her hair was cut with a lawn mower. She is the star for our times.

The fifties was the decade of Marilyn Monroe and Elvis Presley. The 60's was Kennedy and the Beatles. The 90's was Madonna and Clinton. The aughts are Obama and Lady Gaga. A decade defined.

How we spend our days

How we spend our days. This is a report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics for 2008. To this typical day I would like to add the following:

Processing Microsoft updates: 25 minutes

Processing Virus protection updates: 15 minutes

Processing I tunes updates: 10 minutes ( 60 minutes a week divided by 6)

Cleaning my hard drive: 15 minutes

Defragging my hard drive: 15 minutes.

One extra hour of every day of my life is spent doing these activities. I want to check my email; but first I must perform an update to my operating system. I want to download one of my favorite pods. But first I must update I tunes. Then at the end of the day there is disc cleanup and defragmenting. Now does this time come out of my sleep time, my eating time or my work time? I guess it comes out of the time I would otherwise spend on sports.

Dreams from my Father

I have just finished Dreams from my father by Barack Obama. Being cheap, I borrowed it as a library book and after some searching, managed to procure a paperback, taped on both front and back covers. A bildungsroman of an individual who has a racially mixed background who looks for his African ancestors and discovered and in fact met some of them. He also played basketball and did some politicking in Chicago with American born African Americans. Like many people of mixed ancestry, he got to see the strengths as well as the disappointments of his peoples. A dilettante of people but not a true member of any group. The description of his life in Indonesia is also interesting and describes some of his childhood.

If he was an obscure senator in Illinois, this book might have become the darling of the academics and been assigned in high schools and colleges nationwide but because he is now our president, he can't be assigned without it looking overly political. It is a good book. Someone who wrote a decent book is now our president. That's really scary. Americans prefer B students who are well liked for their presidents.