Left-handed scissors

I bought a pair of left-handed scissors weeks ago, and just got around to using them a couple nights back.

Verdict: I don't know how to use left-handed scissors.

I'm so used to right-handed scissors, that I don't know how to cut with the blades reversed. When right-handed people cut with scissors (I assume), they look on the left side of the blades to see what they're doing -- closer to the middle of the cutter's body.

As a lefty, I also look on the left side of the blades, but that side is away from the center of the body when held in one's left hand. Which is slightly awkward, but you adapt, and things work out. (Except that statistically, left-handers die 9 years sooner than right-handers, probably for these sorts of reasons. Not that I'm bitter.*)

Left-handed scissors are designed so that you look on the right side of the blades -- a mirror image of right-handed cutting. But I'm still in the habit of looking on the left side of the blade, and so I've made some pretty awful cuts because I can't see what I'm doing. That's the opposite effect of what I wanted... perhaps to be expected from an opposite implement.


*Although I would like to point out that if any other group made up 10% of the population and had a physical distinction of biological origin that could potentially impair job function, they'd damn well get federal funding and "protected class" status.

Bailout, part 2

I am generally pro-avoidance of suffering. But here's the deal, "Main Street": your hands are dirty too. You bought shit you didn't need and charged it. I am usually in favor of soaking the rich. But nearly every middle class-and-up citizen made our current mess, and many of the poor ones too.

Seriously, HDTV? Was that invented for any reason other than to suck money out of pockets? Was mortal television insufficient?

There's a long list of ridiculous money holes at places like engadget.com. And people willingly, joyously, threw their cash down it.

The "bailout" that would save us would be national sackcloth and ashes. It would be healthy and sane for us to suffer some, to understand the consequences of our behavior.

But we won't do that. We're too silly, too fat and spoiled. What's happening now is a flailing after the last ditch. This will not solve anything. If we're fortunate, it might prolong it for a generation. It is not a solution.

People: Americans: Stop spending money on things you don't need. Save money instead. This is the only way out of our current problems. The economy is what we do. Do wise things.

Quote Marks

"Money can't buy you love, but love can bring you money."
-- Daniel James, CEO Three Rings
from an essay at Penny Arcade

Bailout solution

I figured out how to solve this credit liquidity thing. The treasury doesn't bail out investment banks directly. They bail out the debtors, putting money into the system from the bottom up.

First, the U.S. government pays off all student loans. That's about $45.6 billion, as derived from figures found here.

Next, we selectively pay people's credit card debt. Everybody with a credit score over, say, 700? Your debt is effectively gone.

I have no legal way to know how much money that is, but somewhere I read that $2.2 trillion in the U.S. was charged to credit cards in 2007. Using WAG figures, I'll say that only 75% of that was carried as a balance, and of that number, perhaps 20% is held by people with credit scores 700 or above. That's $330 billion.

Here's why this is great:

• Banks that made bad decisions face consequences for their bad decisions. No bailout.
• However, there IS liquidity now in the hands of lenders. Not the same lenders that were in action before, but please see point 1.
  
• Some of these student loan lenders can now get competitive commercial interest rates for their money rather than the federally mandated lower student interest rates.
  
• About 3 million young, bright, educated people, the people who were willing to take on debt so they could do better in the future, the kind of people you want to give flexibility -- basically, the top 3 million of the next generation -- suddenly have more options.
• The most responsible citizens (as measured by credit rating) are given similar boosts. Thus, people who are wiser with money are given more money to be wise with.
  

With these two groups relieved of significant debt, there's roughly $375 billion back in the system, in the hands of existing credit agencies, who already made the choice to loan money to reputable borrowers, and now have the ability to make further judicious loans to commercial concerns.

This also frees up millions of Americans to spend new money that would have been going to debt repayment. Some will go back into debt. Many, I think, will invest the newfound flexibility.

There are problems with this system. Mainly, it absolves the least risky debt in America, when the problem is with super-risky debt. The super-risky debt is still in the system, and will continue to drag. But maybe that's okay.

As always, Mr. Paulson, my email address is in the right sidebar, and my consulting fees are quite reasonable.

Mr. McCain, please proceed to Mississippi to attend tonight's debate.

Neologism: Capitaltruism

Remember last year when I tried to come up with a snappy portmanteau about putting good deeds and money-making together? Last night, just before bed, I checked that one off the list.

Capitaltruism (kap' - i - tal' - troo - izum) n. selfless concern for others offered within the structure of an economic system based on the private ownership of industry

Start using that in your conversations and New York Times articles, everybody. It's on me!

Mirror mugging

Ethan Ham is an artist in New York City. Apparently, you can make a living at that sort of thing.

While avoiding onerous work today, I found his Web site, and browsed through some pictures of his installations. Mirror is basically a monitor and a camera. However, instead of taking your picture and showing it to you, it takes your picture and shows you the picture in its memory that most closely matches the picture it took of you.

So this is all very interesting, etc.

What I want to show you is his Flickr page of all the pictures taken at one showing. It's a fascinating cross-section of people who, all differences aside, uniformly try to screw with the process, mugging for the camera in fun, silly ways.


* This picture is used entirely without permission, so if you're sad about that and are Ethan Ham , email me and I'll take it down.

Huey Lewis

I got pulled over for speeding today, and as I rooted in my glove compartment for my registration, I saw a cassette tape.

Tonight, driving to the grocery store, I pulled it out and put it in my car’s tape player. (My car was built when they still put cassette players in cars.) I thought it was a mixtape, but incorrectly cataloged within was Huey Lewis and The News, Fore (1986).

The audio quality of a 22-year-old tape in my car’s decade-old deck was predictably lacking. But I think I prefer it that way. Altered, muted, discernable, but distorted.

I’m trying to plumb what it is about Huey Lewis that appealed to me. I started listening because a girl I had a crush on liked the band. But my fandom has outlived my infatuation by a good 19 years to date.

Huey Lewis’s songs bear little resemblance to my history or inclination. In high school, I genuinely did not know that “Whole Lotta Lovin’” was about sex. I was slightly afraid of drugs and drinking alcohol. It is possible for me to be less rock ‘n’ roll, but to do so would require me to actively identify as something else—country or folk or classical or something. I’m as far from rock ‘n’ roll as ignorance and benign indifference can take me.

Even though Huey and I are pretty far apart, I don’t think I would have continued to like say, Duran Duran or Madonna if I had decided to listen to them because of a crush. I can't yet identify why that is. The music didn’t speak to any experience I had. I can’t even say the music is qualitatively “good,” although a few songs are hella catchy. It’s just that it’s mine.

Huey and the News still tour. They’re still a working band. According to Wikipedia, they have/had a plan to record a new album this year, and seemingly out of nowhere he did the theme song for Pineapple Express. Huey is well into his 50s—closer to 60, really—and the guy is still working.

Twenty years is an unprecedented amount of time for me to have artifacts. The idea that I have memories and feelings associated with an item 20 years old seems... singular. I have few intermittent moments with Huey between high school and now. It’s like it traveled through time.

Play through, Huey.

The taste for magic

Read this moderately involved essay about Christianity and fantasy and magic.

Why do we hanker for magic? That is a question that the large-C Catholic fantasy writer must squarely face, and the small-c catholic reader ought at any rate to find interesting. The practice of magic as such, whether effective or not, is explicitly forbidden by scripture and canon law, and even too strong a theoretical interest is rather frowned upon.

...the same problem faces every fantasy writer in a more or less Christian or post-Christian society, regardless of denomination; it is only that Catholic writers, if they take either their writing or their religion seriously, have less room to shirk the issue.

Just making sure

We went to the MoMA in New York this past weekend. The numbers on the signs around the building vary, but they're posted with artful regimentation. I wasn't sure if we were reaching the limit, but a quick headcount couldn't hurt.

Con-flicted

It burrs my historical loyalties to think it, but PAX sure does look like more fun than Gen Con.

There's definitely more money floating around PAX, but from here it also seems as though it has a sense of mystery and unexpectedness and, dare I say, fun, that GC lacks.

Maybe I'll go some day and compare.