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Showing posts from December, 2005

Last Year's Predictions

Last December I made a few prediction for the upcoming year. A few have come true (mp3 players in phones, the Knicks falling from 1st place to finish horribly, the stock market going up while the economy stayed stagnent, discovering nothing on Mars, etc.), while other have not (Chinese man on the moon, wireless cable tv, troop levels in Iraq, and google losing market share). I am still working on controlling the weather and time travel, and thus my ability to predict the future is still a bit off. Nevertheless, here are my predictions for 2006. 1) The Republicans majority in the House of Representatives with decline only from 29 to 16 (which would be a Republican victory considering a lame-duck President and his very low approval rate). The races with be among the dirtiest in history and will end up dividing the Republican party, creating problems in 2008. 2) The Dow Jones will end the year 12,571 (currently 10,798) after dipping to below 9,000 in the spring. The economy will cont

Workers of the MTA Unite

The New York City transit workers went on strike today for a variety of reasons, including higher wages and a better retirement plan. At one of the busiest travel and shopping weeks of the year, the union thought that having a strike now would give them the most leverage in negotiations (even though a strike is clearly against the law). Beyond the legal implications, I think the strike is immoral and non-productive (especially if it lasts longer then a day, which it might not), particularly from a utilitarian standpoint. It is also horrible public relations (for both the union, the city, and government officials (even politicians like Bloomberg and Pataki that are trying to stay out of it, which I believe is also not in the best interest of the city)). However, I believe that there is a much larger business/government theme that will become more prevalent over time, which is the concept of pensions. Pensions have played a very valuable role in society, allowing older citizens to m

Analogy

Say there is a classroom of five-year-old kids. And I'm pretty sure that three of the kids wants to kill me . However, I can't find which kids it is, so I take a kid with a bad reputation and decide that I should beat the hell out of him. The teacher objects, but I say that he is hiding a gun in his backpack and I promise that he does and show her a picture I took on my camera phone of a bulge in the kid’s bag. The teacher still objects saying that this kid might not even be one of the kids trying to kill me. Ignoring the teacher I try and beat up this little kid. Now I thought I would just kick his ass, but it turns out the kid keeps kicking and punching. I go out to the store and buy a bat , a paintball gun , and cattle pod (I pay with my credit card , even though I am already in debt and my own family could be use some of my attention and resources ). Anyway, I take all my weapons and I am still barely kicking the crap out of this kid (and I accidentally hurt some other kids

"This is a great deal, trust me"

Car Shopping Experience With the advent of winter, we decided that Grandma’s Cadillac wouldn’t be the best bad weather car, if fact it is horrible in poor conditions. Thus our search began for what would be my first new car. We wanted something with room, good safety rating, somewhat reliable, and good in bad weather. The car we had always talked about was the Hyundai Tucson, a small SUV that meets all our criteria and is very cheap. Maybe we should have gone with our first instincts and not bothers to experience the “shop around” process; however, that was not to be so. The more we looked the more we were overwhelmed with the choices that were out there. There are over 30 small SUVs, over 50 regular cars that would be acceptable, and dozens of random, yet interesting cars. For example, the Toyota Prius looked promising (great gas mileage, tax, rebate, very reliable; however, one little problem, my knees hit the steering wheel. Toyota spent billions researching a hybrid engine,

Uppppppppppppppp!

Again a huge lapse in my posts, and for that I apologize. Life continues as an unending set of changes and challenges. In the past month, I have started a new job at the Westchester Children’s Association , extended my time at IRC for another month (part-time) as a consultant, searched for and purchased a car (more on that process in another post), had numerous family events, and celebrated Molly’s six month birthday. Overall, I am mostly ok, although I feel too scattered to be really efficient. Hopefully, things will settle into place in 2006. Perhaps I will write a year in review at some point, although the very idea of trying to relate everything that has happened is a bit overwhelming. However, I wanted to write at least part of that now… I am a father. I am still coming to understand what means. All the other parents I talk to always say the same thing about their children, “I love my kids, although this is such a horrible age [no matter what age], but it’s the best thing in the w