phik

SIR — Your article gets one thing right: this is capitalism at its worst, and it must not go forward.

Every prospectus for GSE debt for 30 years has included huge bold text on the cover making unambiguous its lack of government backing.

To bail out speculators and foreign governments — who collected billions courtesy of higher yields over Treasuries — at US taxpayer expense is not merely morally bankrupt, but treason.

Bailout or collapse are not the only choices. Sell the assets via receivership, like any other bankrupt company, and wind them down. If you believe your own rhetoric about asset values, the bondholders lose only a few percent. Either way, the responsible parties wear the loss.

Finally, the notion that this action reduces mortgage costs seems optimistic at best. More likely is that government borrowing costs rise, as the bond market punishes the US government for its profligacy. The spread may narrow, but nobody gets a cheaper mortgage.

Phil Schwan
Perth, Australia

It may be the Democrats’ hypothetical message, but what about their actions?

bankers first, bailing out Fanny and Freddie, refusing to prosecute the fraud

war first, happy to go along with the Iraq adventure; keen for another in Georgia

debt first, selling out the next generation

inflation first, a tax that hits the poorest hardest

government first, even — perhaps especially — when it’s unconstitutional

To be clear: I’m no Republican apologist, and the last 20 years of GOP efforts have been one disaster after another.

But let’s stop pretending that the Democrats are any better, that there will be any kind of meaningful “change”. They just pick slightly different winners and losers:

Neither party stands for freedom; personal, social, or economic.

Neither party wants peace; both permit Iraq to go on. Both are eager for more war, be it in Afghanistan, North Korea, Iran, Syria, Georgia, Darfur, …

Neither party is economically responsible. They spend. They inflate the currency. They strangle any American business not large enough to buy favour. They bail out their friends.

Neither party upholds the constitution, in which the executive answers to Congress or the people. In which 50 states are allowed to compete for the best solutions.

In every way that matters, they are virtually identical.

In preparation for the Maritime Canada leg of my whirlwind six-stop tour of North America this July, the Moncton Hosting Committee advance team conducted reconnaissance of Little Louis’ in Moncton’s beautiful industrial district. It met their high standards for outstanding achievement in the field of excellence, and a booking was made.

Given that our visit was during the peak of Moncton’s three-week barbecuing season, we had literally the entire restaurant to ourselves. Three nine-course tastings were quickly begun and, not surprisingly lest the staff actually outnumber the patrons, our maître d’ Frank played the triple role of sommelier and captain. We let Frank choose the wines for each course. This was not wise; it was brilliant, bordering on genius.

Nine, however, quickly became ten. Oyster fever gripped me in its slimy claws near the end of the fish courses, and Frank was only too keen to remedy this gross nutritional deficiency before we made our way into the succulent and varied land meats. He brought each of us two exquisite natural oysters, paired with another of his dizzying array of wines. Deb’s very first oysters will also be her least expensive; the bonus course was on the house.

Overall, we were able to suggest relatively few improvements to each other on the drive home. Frank, and the waiter whose name I’ve forgotten, were welcoming, jovial, and entirely non-pretentious. When the worst criticism you can level is that the black truffle was really kind of overpowered by the foie gras in the fifth course or the surf and turf included a little too much steak for that point in the meal, well, the kitchen did OK too. Those five hours were packed with flavour.

Not to be outdone, the Mountain View Subcommittee of the California Organizing Board took it upon themselves to schedule an outing to Chez TJ, the restaurant with the awful name that was nonetheless recently awarded its second Michelin star (and thus armed with a more impressive résumé, the entire kitchen staff immediately departed for greener pastures; green with money). Eating at both restaurants within ten days made for an interesting comparison.

The meal at TJ was technically sound but, contrary to expectations, the experience was inferior to Little Louis’ in basically every way. The staff were comparatively lifeless, with no obvious leader or coherence; so many faces coming and going, we never really established a relationship with anyone. The wines were good, but not particularly well-paired with the food. Service felt a little rushed, and indeed they were almost certain to have another seating after ours. It was a good meal, but it was not worthy of their superlative prices.

Maybe we got them on a bad night, or maybe, even nine months later, it still hasn’t recovered from losing so many staff. Either way, it’s not a two-star restaurant in my book.

On the other hand, if Michelin’s travel guide ever expands to Canada, you can expect to find at least one star taking up residency at Little Louis’. If you’re even in the vague vicinity of Moncton, ask for Frank by name and accept no substitutions. Make sure you get an oyster.

This article in Money invites you to “Put today’s economic peril in perspective.” What a good idea:

Before you panic over today’s headlines, and how far stocks could fall, consider the relative health of today’s economy.

In the early 1970s, economic output was falling. But today, despite the sluggishness, GDP is still inching ahead.

In the early 1980s, unemployment hit 10.8%. Today, the rate is 5.5%, or about half that.

Inflation topped 12% in the 1970s and 14% in the early 1980s. Today, it’s at 4%.

What the article does not mention, of course, is that since the 1970s the official government numbers have become steadily less honest; just as SAT scores were manipulated to appear better, so too have GDP, unemployment, and inflation. What would that perspective be if we used the same methodologies, compared apples to apples?

Economist John Williams does precisely that, at shadowstats.com. It is particularly interesting to contrast the above with his recalculations:

In the early 1970s, economic output was falling. But today, despite the sluggishness, GDP is still inching ahead.

In the early 1980s, unemployment hit 10.8%. Today, the rate is 5.5%, or about half that.

Here, even the official Bureau of Labor Statistics will admit the awful truth when you look at U-6 — that’s the number that includes not just the “officially unemployed,” but also people who have stopped trying, or work part-time because they can’t find full-time work.

Inflation topped 12% in the 1970s and 14% in the early 1980s. Today, it’s at 4%.

You don’t have to be an economist to know which of those numbers ring more true.

[Update: Harper's did a similar story a couple months ago, excerpted here.]

For the last three months I’ve been borrowing Deb’s Cybook, and I’ve had the opportunity this month to play with a Kindle. I think I’ve finally had enough experience to compare the two.

First, I will be unambiguous: this kind of device is a permanent part of my life. Exactly like John, I thought I’d ultimately be unwilling to part with the physical book experience. I miss (a little bit) the sound and feel of turning pages, but on the whole I discovered exactly what he did: it’s not so much that I love books, rather I love to read.

I do not miss having to hold a five-pound book when I’m laying in bed.

Second, I’m finding that I read more. When I finish a book, there are always a few dozen waiting for me, wherever I am. I can read more than one at a time, so there’s never the problem of not being in the mood for whichever I have on hand.

When it comes to travel, it’s a no-brainer — 5×7″ and 6 oz. holds my entire library. No more avoiding The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich just because I don’t want to haul 1,200 pages around.

I do not miss having three books crammed into my laptop bag, giving me scoliosis.

Finally, I have the unique… challenge? of living in Australia, where books were way more expensive to begin with, but are extra special stupid until they catch up to the reality of the weak US dollar. Not to mention that I don’t want to accumulate a physical library that I must someday dispose of, or crate across the ocean.

With that behind us, a brief comparison of the two devices awaits.

They have identical 8″ e-Ink displays. They both offer variable font sizes (though Kindle’s smallest is not quite small enough for Vlad’s tastes), and support pretty much the same file formats. Both take the same amount of time to turn a page, which is mostly a function of the display.

Cybook pros and cons:

• + charges from USB. This is big.

• + marginally smaller, thinner, and lighter than Kindle

• + easy to add TrueType fonts, though I’m told there may be a hack for Kindle

• + excellent battery life — I get 3-4 weeks of heavy usage per charge

• I dislike the colour of the brown leather cover, but I tolerate it because I dislike scratches even more. One-handed operation is more difficult (but not impossible) without it.

• no wireless book delivery, but USB works fine

• no keyboard (or: no space lost to the keyboard); your outlook on life dictates whether this is a pro or con

• - it lacks the Kindle’s explicit stand-by mode. You can disable automatic shutoff at the cost of some battery life, but I’m not sure how much. [Update: the battery only lasts about a day if it's always on, so that's a non-starter.]

• - from a cold start, it takes 20 seconds to boot, which is about twice as long as Kindle. This is only mildly annoying in practice.

• - very occasionally it drops a keypress (yes, even with the new firmware)

• - it has a generally pretty clunky UI:

  • there are no left-handed buttons
  • there’s no way to see which page # you’re on, so jumping around in the book is hard
  • the Library interface is just a flat list, so it gets progressively worse as you have more books in it
  • it requires way too many button presses to use bookmarks
  • very poor use of the few hardware buttons, which can’t be remapped. Three of the six buttons are dedicated to the music player, functionality I don’t even think it should have.

• - Bookeen violates the GPL on at least one piece of software

On the Kindle side of the ledger:

• + direct wireless delivery of books (in the US)

• + a “standby” mode that makes it basically instant-on, but offers only about a week of battery life

• + some very nice user interface elements, including the alien-technology scrollbar

• + a full keyboard, which allows full text search of your library

• + built-in dictionary and (in the US) Wikipedia search via wireless

• + big, easy-to-press buttons for left- and right-handed use

• some complain that those buttons are in fact too easy-to-press, though that does not seem to be universal

• you can take notes, if that’s your thing

• if you crave DRM, you can buy from the Kindle store

• - no USB charging. There’s an adapter, but it’s yet another cable to pack.

• - no built-in sans-serif font (maybe that only bothers me)

I could recommend the Cybook if it weren’t for the licensing issue. There seems to be no doubt that the device runs Linux (and presumably other GPL-licensed software). According to other customers, Bookeen’s response is that a non-disclosure agreement with the manufacturer precludes the release of code. In that case, they shouldn’t be selling it.

Most of its other negatives could be resolved by a solid firmware update, so there is some small hope for the future.

The Kindle looks perfectly serviceable, though I lump the Kindle store in with the iTunes music store. On the one hand, Amazon are aggressively pushing down the price of books, particularly eBooks (which many publishers price higher than the paper edition). On the other hand, it’s another DRM-based business model that I’d rather not support. Fortunately, Kindle (Mobipocket) books are trivial to decrypt if you believe in exercising any of your fair-use rights.

Some people really want the functionality offered by the keyboard — direct purchase from the Kindle Store; note-taking; full-text searching — and others prefer the smallest possible device. I want the search, but I find myself rarely missing it in practice.

I think the next generation of these devices will resolve a lot of my complaints, but they are already at the point that, if you enjoy reading, I recommend you buy one today. It is one of very few devices that has truly improved my life.

Read this outstanding editorial from Salon about Obama’s flip-flop into supporting the horrendous FISA “compromise” to legalize Bush’s warrantless wiretapping and provide telecomm immunity.

This after he pledged not only to vote against the bill, but “support a filibuster of any bill that includes retroactive immunity for telecommunications companies.”

Which is a shame, because it’s another instance of Obama’s position on an issue being both anti-liberty and indistinguishable from that of George Bush or John McCain. And the sudden rush of his supporters to justify his decision is sad, even if predictable:

…because the Only Thing That Matters is that Barack Obama be put in the Oval Office, and we must do anything and everything — including remain silent when he embraces a full-scale assault on the Fourth Amendment and the rule of law — because every goal is now subordinate to electing Barack Obama our new Leader.

Some hope that enough phone calls will get him to return to his commitment, and maybe they’re right.

It’s obviously more about polling than principle.

I have always had mixed feelings about the terrible way that Apple treats their iPhone customers. Full-price locked devices; an exclusive agreement with an awful carrier that requires a multi-year contract; a completely closed platform. On the other hand, it was the most pleasant-to-use mobile phone I’ve ever owned, the devices became trivially unlockable, and thus AT&T avoidable.

By buying the hardware but avoiding AT&T (and the juicy subscriber revenue that gets passed along to Apple), I reasoned, I can reward them for making a good device, but punish them for the attempted lock-in. I could sleep at night.

And since I no longer live in a country with third-world mobile phone infrastructure — the United States — I have been eagerly and vocally anticipating the launch of the 3G iPhone since December.

Until, that is, the actual launch.

Last week’s keynote was, sadly, the most content-free Apple presentation I’ve ever seen:

• they mentioned the new operating system update only in passing, which leads me to believe that it will be forgettably incremental.

  Of course, they’ll still charge me the same incremental $80…

• they spent a disproportionate amount of time announcing enterprise calendar/mail syncing that catches up with what Microsoft and RIM had ten years ago — and Apple has the balls to charge $100pa for it.

  A survey of my friends indicates that 100% of them would like that functionality, but that 0% of them think it’s good value, or plan to pay.

  Especially Blackberry users, accustomed to getting this for free (or at any rate, silently built into the cost of their mobile plan)

• they spent almost an hour going through a seemingly endless litany of snoozer third-party applications en route to the iPhone. Two people in the audience were rushed to UCSF Medical Center with critical, boredom-related injuries.

  Like the Simpsons episodes that feature 30-second audio loops, this was transparent code for “we have absolutely nothing to announce, not even an iMac refresh, so we’re filling time with this garbage. Please short our stock.”

• instead of giving developers what they asked for — the ability to run background apps on the iPhone — they gave them another Apple lock-in, a service that stores and forwards data packets.

All of it underscored by the fact that Steve was off-stage most of the time, and I don’t blame him. I wouldn’t want to be the public face of that detritus either. There are also rumours about his cancer, but he was there; even if true, I don’t really think that was the issue.

If it weren’t for the announcement of the 3G iPhone, available in something like 70 countries, it would have been a total flop. There would have been riots at the Moscone Center.

But even that announcement comes with hidden poisonous spikes, already oozing thick venom. They’ve scrapped their old revenue-sharing plan with AT&T (though not the exclusivity) in favour of the traditional subsidized-phone model with which carriers are familiar — almost certainly the key to the new worldwide distribution.

In doing so, they’ve apparently decided not to sell unsubsidized phones at all. You won’t be able to buy an iPhone online. They won’t let you walk out of an Apple or AT&T store until you’ve activated iPhone — ie, signed a contract, and agreed to their ridiculous Terms, which you’d violate by unlocking your phone or installing unsupported third-party software. Things people actually want to do with their expensive hardware.

One analyst estimates that as many as thirty percent of first-gen iPhones were unlocked just to avoid using AT&T. Countless more were jailbroken to install third-party software.

So it was a year of retrenched Apple lock-in from start to finish, from the data “service”, to new iPhone distribution terms, the closed developer tools, and “only if Apple approves” iPhone software platform.

It’s such a disaster that I probably won’t get a 3G iPhone after all, despite my longing. We’ll see what the terms are like in Australia, where Optus and Vodafone are selling it. But I think I’m finished supporting this deplorable business model, just as I no longer buy music from the money vacuum.

My butt hurts, and I am mildly sunburned, but the West Indies know how to host a Test match.

The first two days went at a torrid pace, on a real bowler’s pitch, with Australia starting their second innings not long after tea on day two.

Katich made a brilliant 157, but dropped two sitters

Nobody, including myself, gave the West Indies a chance, particularly after Australia declared at lunch on day four, setting a total of 475 to chase in the final innings.

West Indies captain Chris Gayle, praying to God for 475 runs

They did surprisingly well — setting a new fourth-innings runs record for Kensington Oval — but nevertheless fell 87 short, for a fairly convincing Australian victory.

Except for day five, when prices were slashed, schoolchildren let in free, and the West Indies looked to have a tiny sliver of a hope of an outside chance of victory, the ground was cavernous and largely empty.

It was before lunch on this fifth day that the entire island lost power, which I discovered only because the radio commentary had ceased. The oval was restored (presumably via local generators) within about ten minutes; our villa was still dark and warm when we returned four hours later.

It’s hard to compete with the Perth Test against India in January, but it was certainly among the most exciting Tests I’ve ever witnessed. I’m sad it’s over.

(Complete photoset)

From the May 29 Toronto Star “Today in Pictures,” including this 100% not-made-up actual caption:

Frat Boys Meet

U.S. President George W. Bush and graduate Theodore Shiveley … bump chests at the United States Air Force Academy graduation ceremony.

<shaver> that is a top-line resume item for that guy
<shaver> Objective: to again do anything as cool as chest-bumping POTUS at my graduation

[Props to beltzner]