Immigration and Social Security I used to believe the common (mis)perception that Social Security was doomed from the start due to its "pay-as-you-go" nature. The argument being that since current earners are always paying current retirees, and since people are living longer and longer while having fewer and fewer children, it just stands to reason that eventually the burden of supporting too many retirees by too few workers will break the system.This argument suffers from three problems. First, and least important, extrapolating current trends is nearly always an error. Counter-acting forces usually crop up that bring the trend to an end, or even reverse it. In this case, there is most likely a maximum ratio of retirees to workers that would be very difficult to exceed.Of course, the limit of this ratio could still conceivably be high enough to break Social Security. The second problem is that the argument ignores productivity increases. As productivity increases, it means fewer workers can accomplish the same work, which essentially means the same overall wealth can, in fact, be generated by fewer and fewer workers. For this reason, Social Security could remain solvent indefinitely if productivity keeps pace with the ratio.The third problem with the argument, and its implicit conclusion that Social Security could work if only it had been set up as an individual retirement savings scheme, whereby each generation saves and invests money for its own retirement, is that whether the money is being drawn from current workers' incomes or from stock market pension plans, the value of that money can only be supported by the efforts of current workers. In other words, if the ratio gets too high for the workforce to keep up, then the value of the stock market either crashes, or loses ground to rampant inflation. Whether you're getting your money from income tax or from capital gains, you're dependent on the current workforce producing enough to support the entire population - workers and retirees alike. Individual savings accounts is no solution to the problem.Productivity increase is the only real solution to allowing people to retire in the future. And if productivity doesn't keep up, then retirees will be forced back out of retirement, either by hardship, or by salaries so high they can't refuse.But what's that have to do with immigration? IMO, it'd be ideal if there were no immigration quotas, and anyone who wanted to, could come to the US, work for a few years, and become a citizen. I see only two obstacles to that ideal: entitlement programs, whereby the working force supports non-workers, new immigrants included (think education, medicare, medicaid, social security, welfare, etc); and the basic ability of our economy to absorb new workers. If we allow infinite immigration but keep all our entitlement programs, it could become impossible to keep up with the costs, as people come here and go on welfare until they can find a job, send their kids to schools, and wind up in the emergency rooms without health insurance. One can limit the entitlements that green card holders are entitled to, but we seem to have already decided, as a society, that there are some entitlements we are unwilling to withhold.Of course, if the economy could absorb and employ infinite numbers of new workers each year, there'd be no problem, as everyone would have a job and the increase in the tax base and in the wealth produced would solve all the problems with the entitlements. But I know the economy can't do that, though I'm not sure what it can absorb, exactly.Even if everyone who comes doesn't immediately get a job, our system can support some number of jobless immigrants. If we had fewer entitlements, that number would be greater. And the more immigrants come that eventually find jobs, the greater would be our resources to fund the entitlement programs.Including Social Security.I hope my point is clear: limit immigration at your own future economic risk. I do feel allowing as much immigration as possible is a moral issue, in addition to being an economically beneficial one. I think there are entitlements we would be better off without - education could be greatly trimmed, welfare could be phased out I think (I'm ignoring all other wasteful gov spending, such as much of the military and corporate welfare as being irrelevant to the issue of immigration). And if doing so allows more poverty-stricken people to come to the US and find new lives, I think there's a good moral argument for doing so. But even though moral arguments are rarely persuasive, I'm not sure why the basic economic argument isn't.

I used to believe the common (mis)perception that Social Security was doomed from the start due to its "pay-as-you-go" nature. The argument being that since current earners are always paying current retirees, and since people are living longer and longer while having fewer and fewer children, it just stands to reason that eventually the burden of supporting too many retirees by too few workers will break the system.

This argument suffers from three problems. First, and least important, extrapolating current trends is nearly always an error. Counter-acting forces usually crop up that bring the trend to an end, or even reverse it. In this case, there is most likely a maximum ratio of retirees to workers that would be very difficult to exceed.

Of course, the limit of this ratio could still conceivably be high enough to break Social Security. The second problem is that the argument ignores productivity increases. As productivity increases, it means fewer workers can accomplish the same work, which essentially means the same overall wealth can, in fact, be generated by fewer and fewer workers. For this reason, Social Security could remain solvent indefinitely if productivity keeps pace with the ratio.

The third problem with the argument, and its implicit conclusion that Social Security could work if only it had been set up as an individual retirement savings scheme, whereby each generation saves and invests money for its own retirement, is that whether the money is being drawn from current workers' incomes or from stock market pension plans, the value of that money can only be supported by the efforts of current workers. In other words, if the ratio gets too high for the workforce to keep up, then the value of the stock market either crashes, or loses ground to rampant inflation. Whether you're getting your money from income tax or from capital gains, you're dependent on the current workforce producing enough to support the entire population - workers and retirees alike. Individual savings accounts is no solution to the problem.

Productivity increase is the only real solution to allowing people to retire in the future. And if productivity doesn't keep up, then retirees will be forced back out of retirement, either by hardship, or by salaries so high they can't refuse.

But what's that have to do with immigration? IMO, it'd be ideal if there were no immigration quotas, and anyone who wanted to, could come to the US, work for a few years, and become a citizen. I see only two obstacles to that ideal: entitlement programs, whereby the working force supports non-workers, new immigrants included (think education, medicare, medicaid, social security, welfare, etc); and the basic ability of our economy to absorb new workers.

If we allow infinite immigration but keep all our entitlement programs, it could become impossible to keep up with the costs, as people come here and go on welfare until they can find a job, send their kids to schools, and wind up in the emergency rooms without health insurance. One can limit the entitlements that green card holders are entitled to, but we seem to have already decided, as a society, that there are some entitlements we are unwilling to withhold.

Of course, if the economy could absorb and employ infinite numbers of new workers each year, there'd be no problem, as everyone would have a job and the increase in the tax base and in the wealth produced would solve all the problems with the entitlements. But I know the economy can't do that, though I'm not sure what it can absorb, exactly.

Even if everyone who comes doesn't immediately get a job, our system can support some number of jobless immigrants. If we had fewer entitlements, that number would be greater. And the more immigrants come that eventually find jobs, the greater would be our resources to fund the entitlement programs.

Including Social Security.

I hope my point is clear: limit immigration at your own future economic risk. I do feel allowing as much immigration as possible is a moral issue, in addition to being an economically beneficial one. I think there are entitlements we would be better off without - education could be greatly trimmed, welfare could be phased out I think (I'm ignoring all other wasteful gov spending, such as much of the military and corporate welfare as being irrelevant to the issue of immigration). And if doing so allows more poverty-stricken people to come to the US and find new lives, I think there's a good moral argument for doing so. But even though moral arguments are rarely persuasive, I'm not sure why the basic economic argument isn't.

Multiples of Minimum Wage I'm always pleased when I hear about a company with a policy that limits the top-salaried to some fixed multiplier of the lowest-salaried. Ben & Jerry's was that kind of company, and apparently, so is Whole Foods. I think it's a great idea for a company to do. Some will argue you'll block yourself from attracting the best talents with these limits on salaries, but I'd argue you'll be able to hire better quality workers in general (cause you'd be paying them more), they'll be happier and thus more productive, and you'll attract the right kind of top-brass. Meaning people who's ambitions include more than raping and pillaging all the way to their swiss bank account.Although it would never happen, I think it'd be great if publicly-held companies were restricted to this sort of structure. True, it represents a loss of freedom, but then again, these are publicly held companies, and for the advantages of raising money through stock-ownership, restricting the greed/corruption potential of upper management seems like a decent trade-off. Too often publicly-held companies are proving to be a deal between the top management and the shareholders and the workers are simply used to achieve an wealthy end for a few. That's why we have unions. This is better than unions though - no artificial work restraints, no union bosses and taxes and all the politics that go with it. And if you want to run your company differently, keep it private.

I'm always pleased when I hear about a company with a policy that limits the top-salaried to some fixed multiplier of the lowest-salaried. Ben & Jerry's was that kind of company, and apparently, so is Whole Foods. I think it's a great idea for a company to do. Some will argue you'll block yourself from attracting the best talents with these limits on salaries, but I'd argue you'll be able to hire better quality workers in general (cause you'd be paying them more), they'll be happier and thus more productive, and you'll attract the right kind of top-brass. Meaning people who's ambitions include more than raping and pillaging all the way to their swiss bank account.

Although it would never happen, I think it'd be great if publicly-held companies were restricted to this sort of structure. True, it represents a loss of freedom, but then again, these are publicly held companies, and for the advantages of raising money through stock-ownership, restricting the greed/corruption potential of upper management seems like a decent trade-off. Too often publicly-held companies are proving to be a deal between the top management and the shareholders and the workers are simply used to achieve an wealthy end for a few. That's why we have unions. This is better than unions though - no artificial work restraints, no union bosses and taxes and all the politics that go with it. And if you want to run your company differently, keep it private.

What To Do About Iraq Whoever gets elected in 2008 is basically screwed. This is a correlary of the idea that there is no near-term solution for the problem we find ourselves facing in Iraq. If a democrat wins in 2008 and pulls out, Iraq turns into terrorist haven heaven and the democrats look really bad - much worse than Bush does now. If a democrat wins and 2008 and "stays the course", then, as things get steadily worse and steadily more taxing to the budget, it only re-enforces the idea that democrats are the party without any ideas.My in-laws recently asked me what I'd do about Iraq now. I suggested there are two basic choices and that there have always been two basic choices - and they are one extreme or the other. Either withdraw completely and use the $200 billion (or $1 trillion - the long-term cost estimate, where long term is something like 5 years from now) to fund alternative energy sources (in preparation for the eventual disruption of the oil supply and/or being screwed over by emerging anti-west regimes) and anti-terrorism intelligence efforts; or go in whole hog and remake Iraq. Require all rebuilding contracts be filled by Iraqi-owned companies, get 1 million+ troops into Iraq to safeguard the rebuilders, and pour your Western/Liberal heart-and-soul and money into making Iraq a real democracy.Going the middle road, IMO, guarantees failure and still costs more than we can afford.Going all in also costs more than we can afford, and when this whole thing started, this was my primary reason for being against the war - we can't afford it and it will cost us dearly in economic terms. One of these days, we're going to hit a crisis point and we won't have any padding in our savings to deal with it - instead we've decided to rack up enormous debt during the good times. When the bad times come, we'll have nothing to fall back on. That is the basic reason why our high debt is bad - it's not because it's too high to manage, it's because we won't have any borrowing room when things turn bad. And things always turn bad.Going all in also has the downside that it would mostly likely fail too. So, you've spent more than you could afford and failed anyway. Not good. Does that mean complete withdrawal is our best choice? It may be our least bad choice - or perhaps least catastrophic is a better way to put it. Yes, withdrawal would turn Iraq into a warzone, where Iran, Syria and Al-queda might struggle for dominance. Iraq might become the new terrorist haven that Afghanistan was. The sudden cessation of American pressure would probably free up a lot of bad people to do bad things.But consider: we already need to protect the homeland - the whole "we're fighting them over there so we don't have to fight them over here" argument is bullshit: terrorists are more than capable of fighting everywhere. Additionally, by fighting them over there we're fighting them someplace where A) they can win and B) they gain momentum for their cause amongst the previously non-terrorists. Eventually that momentum will catch up to us as the increased number of al-queda recruits means increased attacks all over the globe, not just in Iraq. The war also serves as a distraction from efforts to protect the homeland. $200 billion goes toward body armor and vehicles and training the Iraqi army, etc - which is an opportunity cost with regard to what might have been accomplished with that money and manpower were it spent in intelligence (not to mention hurricane relief efforts).A sudden release of American presence and pressure would be like Glasnost for terrorists - suddenly allowed to run amok, they most certainly would do just that, and the resulting mayhem would rival the collapse of communism in Russia. However, to unreflectively believe that such a result must be avoided at all costs is irrational - obviously there are costs we should not be willing to pay. We are paying dearly in opportunity costs, and in the long-term we will pay dearly in terms of degrading security as terrorists gain in strength from this conflict. We could pay the latter cost up front by withdrawing, and mitigate the downsides by redirecting our money and manpower to better intelligence and homeland protection and energy self-sufficiency (or at least sufficiency from trusted parts of the world).It's a bitter pill to swallow, though. Not only is the danger involved in withdrawal very real, not only does it leave the Iraqi people in a terrible position on their own, it would even damage America's reputation a little bit further than it already is.But at least we'd survive relatively intact as a nation. As it is, when I say I believe we can't afford this war, I really mean we can't afford this war.

Whoever gets elected in 2008 is basically screwed. This is a correlary of the idea that there is no near-term solution for the problem we find ourselves facing in Iraq. If a democrat wins in 2008 and pulls out, Iraq turns into terrorist haven heaven and the democrats look really bad - much worse than Bush does now. If a democrat wins and 2008 and "stays the course", then, as things get steadily worse and steadily more taxing to the budget, it only re-enforces the idea that democrats are the party without any ideas.

My in-laws recently asked me what I'd do about Iraq now. I suggested there are two basic choices and that there have always been two basic choices - and they are one extreme or the other. Either withdraw completely and use the $200 billion (or $1 trillion - the long-term cost estimate, where long term is something like 5 years from now) to fund alternative energy sources (in preparation for the eventual disruption of the oil supply and/or being screwed over by emerging anti-west regimes) and anti-terrorism intelligence efforts; or go in whole hog and remake Iraq. Require all rebuilding contracts be filled by Iraqi-owned companies, get 1 million+ troops into Iraq to safeguard the rebuilders, and pour your Western/Liberal heart-and-soul and money into making Iraq a real democracy.

Going the middle road, IMO, guarantees failure and still costs more than we can afford.

Going all in also costs more than we can afford, and when this whole thing started, this was my primary reason for being against the war - we can't afford it and it will cost us dearly in economic terms. One of these days, we're going to hit a crisis point and we won't have any padding in our savings to deal with it - instead we've decided to rack up enormous debt during the good times. When the bad times come, we'll have nothing to fall back on. That is the basic reason why our high debt is bad - it's not because it's too high to manage, it's because we won't have any borrowing room when things turn bad. And things always turn bad.

Going all in also has the downside that it would mostly likely fail too. So, you've spent more than you could afford and failed anyway. Not good. Does that mean complete withdrawal is our best choice? It may be our least bad choice - or perhaps least catastrophic is a better way to put it. Yes, withdrawal would turn Iraq into a warzone, where Iran, Syria and Al-queda might struggle for dominance. Iraq might become the new terrorist haven that Afghanistan was. The sudden cessation of American pressure would probably free up a lot of bad people to do bad things.

But consider: we already need to protect the homeland - the whole "we're fighting them over there so we don't have to fight them over here" argument is bullshit: terrorists are more than capable of fighting everywhere. Additionally, by fighting them over there we're fighting them someplace where A) they can win and B) they gain momentum for their cause amongst the previously non-terrorists. Eventually that momentum will catch up to us as the increased number of al-queda recruits means increased attacks all over the globe, not just in Iraq.

The war also serves as a distraction from efforts to protect the homeland. $200 billion goes toward body armor and vehicles and training the Iraqi army, etc - which is an opportunity cost with regard to what might have been accomplished with that money and manpower were it spent in intelligence (not to mention hurricane relief efforts).

A sudden release of American presence and pressure would be like Glasnost for terrorists - suddenly allowed to run amok, they most certainly would do just that, and the resulting mayhem would rival the collapse of communism in Russia. However, to unreflectively believe that such a result must be avoided at all costs is irrational - obviously there are costs we should not be willing to pay. We are paying dearly in opportunity costs, and in the long-term we will pay dearly in terms of degrading security as terrorists gain in strength from this conflict. We could pay the latter cost up front by withdrawing, and mitigate the downsides by redirecting our money and manpower to better intelligence and homeland protection and energy self-sufficiency (or at least sufficiency from trusted parts of the world).

It's a bitter pill to swallow, though. Not only is the danger involved in withdrawal very real, not only does it leave the Iraqi people in a terrible position on their own, it would even damage America's reputation a little bit further than it already is.

But at least we'd survive relatively intact as a nation. As it is, when I say I believe we can't afford this war, I really mean we can't afford this war.

The Brilliant Unconscious Few people question the existence of the "unconscious mind" anymore. That part of us that solves problems while we're soaking in the steam of a hot shower; the part that issues forth whole complex ideas while we walk through the woods. The part that reveals our lies by making us rub our nose while we talk. But these demonstrations of a mind below the surface fly in the face of where the idea of the subconscious came from - that it's the sealed container of repressed desires, fears, animalistic urges. We seem to be of two minds about our unconscious - on the one hand it's stupid, brutal, childish, utterly sexual and depraved, and full of thoughts we dare not have, and on the other, it's brilliant, solving our toughest most complex problems while we suntan, and the source of ideas we wish we could tap into more readily. So which is the real unconscious?Of course, it could be both, but even that suggests we don't have wretched thoughts and fantasies in our normal thoughts (or am I the only one incapable of repressing them all successfully?), that sexual thoughts don't dominate our wakeful minds, etc. So, maybe the unconscious is really just more of the same, a seamless extension of what our supposedly conscious mind is?What is an unconscious mind anyway? Something that thinks without self-awareness? I think therefore ... nothing. Just content to think and think and think without any I whatsoever? Thinking without being. To think without self-awareness seems a lot like what a computer does, really. If there's a big part of our minds cranking away solving our problems without either our awareness nor its own doesn't that make for a strange division between "us" and "it"? If "it" is unreflective thinking that goes on whether we will it or not, what is the "us"? Maybe we are just focused attention. Our working mind is large, thinking many thoughts all the time, but our ability to focus attention is small and narrow, so from our perspective, the conscious mind is small and there appears to be a large unconscious beneath it, but really, the unconscious is all around, and we are only able to perceive it through a kind of tunnel vision. It moves and ideas spring up from nowhere. The tunnel moves, and we feel we are exercising free will and directed thought. But maybe in reality, our directed thought is very small indeed, and limited to changing the focus of our attention.But then, it sure feels as though focusing attention on something affects our ability to reason about it. After all, we can all drive a car without even being aware of what we are doing - but how often do we find ourselves driving off to work when we snap out of our reverie and remember we were trying to go somewhere else? So attention is either capable of some feats the whole mind-thing can't do, or else attention provides something that let's the mind do something it normally can't on its own.Not that any of this is new, but I don't think it's the normal way we think about ourselves. The normal way seems to be to consider "I" to be a conscious mind, saddles with an unconscious mind "below" it, and running a body that (most of the time) does our bidding. What if instead we thought of ourselves as a mind machine that solves problems like a computer (though vastly complex, flexible, and reprogrammable) and an attention director, able to view the mind computer through tiny windows and maybe focus some extra computing power on certain things? How would that change how we lived?Well, I don't know, it just seemed sensible to ask the question at that point in my ramblings. Maybe we'd consider increasing our powers of attention as important to our ongoing efforts at self-improvement as more "purposeful" learning. And maybe that's what meditation is? Working on powers of attention. Learning to pay attention to things we rarely do. Learning to not get caught up paying attention to everything that passes by the narrow window. Maybe even learning to increase the size of that window. I don't know, I didn't start out this blog intending to talk about meditation - but guess maybe my subconsious did.

Few people question the existence of the "unconscious mind" anymore. That part of us that solves problems while we're soaking in the steam of a hot shower; the part that issues forth whole complex ideas while we walk through the woods. The part that reveals our lies by making us rub our nose while we talk.

But these demonstrations of a mind below the surface fly in the face of where the idea of the subconscious came from - that it's the sealed container of repressed desires, fears, animalistic urges. We seem to be of two minds about our unconscious - on the one hand it's stupid, brutal, childish, utterly sexual and depraved, and full of thoughts we dare not have, and on the other, it's brilliant, solving our toughest most complex problems while we suntan, and the source of ideas we wish we could tap into more readily. So which is the real unconscious?

Of course, it could be both, but even that suggests we don't have wretched thoughts and fantasies in our normal thoughts (or am I the only one incapable of repressing them all successfully?), that sexual thoughts don't dominate our wakeful minds, etc. So, maybe the unconscious is really just more of the same, a seamless extension of what our supposedly conscious mind is?

What is an unconscious mind anyway? Something that thinks without self-awareness? I think therefore ... nothing. Just content to think and think and think without any I whatsoever? Thinking without being. To think without self-awareness seems a lot like what a computer does, really. If there's a big part of our minds cranking away solving our problems without either our awareness nor its own doesn't that make for a strange division between "us" and "it"?

If "it" is unreflective thinking that goes on whether we will it or not, what is the "us"? Maybe we are just focused attention. Our working mind is large, thinking many thoughts all the time, but our ability to focus attention is small and narrow, so from our perspective, the conscious mind is small and there appears to be a large unconscious beneath it, but really, the unconscious is all around, and we are only able to perceive it through a kind of tunnel vision. It moves and ideas spring up from nowhere. The tunnel moves, and we feel we are exercising free will and directed thought. But maybe in reality, our directed thought is very small indeed, and limited to changing the focus of our attention.

But then, it sure feels as though focusing attention on something affects our ability to reason about it. After all, we can all drive a car without even being aware of what we are doing - but how often do we find ourselves driving off to work when we snap out of our reverie and remember we were trying to go somewhere else? So attention is either capable of some feats the whole mind-thing can't do, or else attention provides something that let's the mind do something it normally can't on its own.

Not that any of this is new, but I don't think it's the normal way we think about ourselves. The normal way seems to be to consider "I" to be a conscious mind, saddles with an unconscious mind "below" it, and running a body that (most of the time) does our bidding. What if instead we thought of ourselves as a mind machine that solves problems like a computer (though vastly complex, flexible, and reprogrammable) and an attention director, able to view the mind computer through tiny windows and maybe focus some extra computing power on certain things? How would that change how we lived?

Well, I don't know, it just seemed sensible to ask the question at that point in my ramblings. Maybe we'd consider increasing our powers of attention as important to our ongoing efforts at self-improvement as more "purposeful" learning. And maybe that's what meditation is? Working on powers of attention. Learning to pay attention to things we rarely do. Learning to not get caught up paying attention to everything that passes by the narrow window. Maybe even learning to increase the size of that window. I don't know, I didn't start out this blog intending to talk about meditation - but guess maybe my subconsious did.

Jaime Says: ;,,,,,,,,,,k kllq, ccoo , ..-p..4plllllllllmlr],43\t;88888vfyDVFzvxf44rr mmmmmmmmmmmmm j-0 `R456559LL.34449978AB888V4c44./p` 0jvvf 6f6k7h 8 uhjbhhbgjn

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Jaime eats it! Jaime has started eating real food, and he's absolutely adorable doing it. So far he has tried sweet potato (not yam) and banana. Kind of indifferent to the sweet potato, but he's nuts for banana. He concentrates so hard on the spoon when you hold it in front of him, but he doesn't open his mouth until he grabs the spoon and your arms with his hands and then shoves it towards his face with reckless abandon. More than anything else, these feedings make me wish I had a digital video recorder. The boy loves to eat.Work's been a bit of a bummer lately as my laptop is misbehaving. Last friday, I lost the boot sector on the hard-drive, and I had to use a ubuntu live cd to access the contents and save them to an external hard disk (couldn't get the network working). Then I re-installed Mandrake and managed to recover everything (my /home dir is a separate partition and wow did that make things a snap). I wish the /var dir had likewise been a separate partition for the database I had - I had to spend most of Friday and Monday recovering Firebird and the databases.And then, starting yesterday, the laptop was back to its old tricks of freezing up several times a day. With the hard-drive superblock failure and these continuing problems even after reinstalling the OS, we're fairly confident there are hardware problems, so I am sending it back to our IT guy to get a more thorough checkout and maybe send it back to Dell for service. Which means I'll be without the laptop for a fairly long time. I've decided to bring my home computer in and use that since it's very fast and not being used - I haven't turned it on in well over a month.I'm reading the book Lost Mountain currently, an incredibly despressing account of the process of mountaintop removal in the Appalachian mountains and the damage it causes. It is things like this that just make me shake my head when people talk about how much coal there is in the US as a possible substitute for oil in the future. How much environmental degredation is acceptable to maintain our lifestyles? I'm afraid there is no limit. I think it is the first book I've read whose real-world assertions I can actually go and verify.

Jaime has started eating real food, and he's absolutely adorable doing it. So far he has tried sweet potato (not yam) and banana. Kind of indifferent to the sweet potato, but he's nuts for banana. He concentrates so hard on the spoon when you hold it in front of him, but he doesn't open his mouth until he grabs the spoon and your arms with his hands and then shoves it towards his face with reckless abandon. More than anything else, these feedings make me wish I had a digital video recorder. The boy loves to eat.

Work's been a bit of a bummer lately as my laptop is misbehaving. Last friday, I lost the boot sector on the hard-drive, and I had to use a ubuntu live cd to access the contents and save them to an external hard disk (couldn't get the network working). Then I re-installed Mandrake and managed to recover everything (my /home dir is a separate partition and wow did that make things a snap). I wish the /var dir had likewise been a separate partition for the database I had - I had to spend most of Friday and Monday recovering Firebird and the databases.

And then, starting yesterday, the laptop was back to its old tricks of freezing up several times a day. With the hard-drive superblock failure and these continuing problems even after reinstalling the OS, we're fairly confident there are hardware problems, so I am sending it back to our IT guy to get a more thorough checkout and maybe send it back to Dell for service. Which means I'll be without the laptop for a fairly long time. I've decided to bring my home computer in and use that since it's very fast and not being used - I haven't turned it on in well over a month.

I'm reading the book Lost Mountain currently, an incredibly despressing account of the process of mountaintop removal in the Appalachian mountains and the damage it causes. It is things like this that just make me shake my head when people talk about how much coal there is in the US as a possible substitute for oil in the future. How much environmental degredation is acceptable to maintain our lifestyles? I'm afraid there is no limit. I think it is the first book I've read whose real-world assertions I can actually go and verify.

Painting Paradise I've taken up painting. Y'know, artistic painting. Yeah, like Rembrandt. Sort of. Well, ok, I don't really think of it as art. More craft or hobby. After work, I go home, play with my son till he falls asleep, and then I get ou my easel and canvas and acrylic paints and start painting - very therapeutic and fun. And, I happen to be liking the results, which is very surprising for me - I'm usually my worst critic. But, it seems with painting, my attitude is "I can't draw, I can't paint, I have a terrible sense of color and aesthetics and visual design, so therefore anything I paint is going to suck in most people's opinion, right?" Right, so I don't care that it's terrible - I like it the same way a tone deaf person likes his own singing and to hell with the rest of you.I get to turn my inner critic off because he's no more qualified to judge than my inner artist.The paints are great fun to play with, though I wish I could use oil because I've noticed my oil pen just covers completely whatever I draw over with it, whereas the acrylics let some of whatever's underneath show through - sometimes requiring 3-4 coats to be completely opaque. But, oil would interfere with the nice easy relaxing nature of the activity - what with the turpentine and smell and all. Fortunately, I've found not all acrylics are equal - some are thicker and more opaque (and more expensive) than others. I'm hopeful that just buying better quality paints will improve the experience.I made a couple of quick "paintings" for Jaime when he was born. Actually, they are just made with sketch paper and permanent marker, but it gives an idea of my "art" :-)

I've taken up painting. Y'know, artistic painting. Yeah, like Rembrandt. Sort of. Well, ok, I don't really think of it as art. More craft or hobby. After work, I go home, play with my son till he falls asleep, and then I get ou my easel and canvas and acrylic paints and start painting - very therapeutic and fun. And, I happen to be liking the results, which is very surprising for me - I'm usually my worst critic. But, it seems with painting, my attitude is "I can't draw, I can't paint, I have a terrible sense of color and aesthetics and visual design, so therefore anything I paint is going to suck in most people's opinion, right?" Right, so I don't care that it's terrible - I like it the same way a tone deaf person likes his own singing and to hell with the rest of you.

I get to turn my inner critic off because he's no more qualified to judge than my inner artist.

The paints are great fun to play with, though I wish I could use oil because I've noticed my oil pen just covers completely whatever I draw over with it, whereas the acrylics let some of whatever's underneath show through - sometimes requiring 3-4 coats to be completely opaque. But, oil would interfere with the nice easy relaxing nature of the activity - what with the turpentine and smell and all. Fortunately, I've found not all acrylics are equal - some are thicker and more opaque (and more expensive) than others. I'm hopeful that just buying better quality paints will improve the experience.

I made a couple of quick "paintings" for Jaime when he was born. Actually, they are just made with sketch paper and permanent marker, but it gives an idea of my "art" :-)