Birthday Cake

I've long not been a fan of cake.  They're generally bland and lifeless for a desert with none of the charm of their 'pie' cousins.  A few times for my birthday however, my mom made me a German Chocolate cake, which is the greatest cake ever (at least among cakes which don't also have the word 'cheese' in front of it....unless it also has the words 'German Chocolate' in front of the word 'cheese' as well, anyway I digress....).  Ever since, my birthday cake of choice has been German Chocolate, by far.

However, in wishing my sister a happy birthday, I'm reminded that our mom would typically make some cherry flavored disaster of a cake for my sister's birthday (sorry mom, I'm not a fan of cake, and fruit flavored cake ranks even lower).  It was all the more traumatic since we just got done eating my wonderful birthday cake three days earlier.  I've wondered though, does my sister hunger for cherry flavored layer cake on her birthday like I pine for German Chocolate?  (Or maybe it was strawberry flavored?  For all the resemblance that it had to actual fruit, I think we can agree that it was, at the very least, "pink" flavored.)

I don't know, but for anyone who knows the current iteration of my sis, they would no doubt be entertained by the thought of her slurping down some sloppily made layer cake that had been made with shelf-stable packaged goods purchased at some place that doesn't have the words "Whole" or "Trader" in their name.  Happy Birthday Sis!

My sister in question is the one with the pony tails. When I redid this picture a couple times for Facebook, I never noticed that it was backwards until now (now corrected since the lettering on my brother's shirt (I think it's my brother and not me) can now be read).

PC Leadership

My current study material is, um, yes, "Fundamentals of Organizational Behavior".  Try sticking your teeth in that doughnut and not hitting the hole!  Anyway, being college material it is, of course, PC to a 'T'.  However this humdinger from the 12th edition of Organizational Behavior by Stephen P. Robbins and Timothy A. Judge can't go uncontested:

The terrorist attacks of September 11th brought home to millions of Muslims living in the United States the hurtful power of stereotypes.

What stereotypes? Like the one's where Muslims like to hijack planes and fly them into buildings? I think the thousands of people they killed and their families are well aware of the 'hurt' of that stereotype.  The issue with stereotypes is, alas, that they're mostly true.

The Lucas Bombers

Instapundit links to this article about the trouble George Lucas had in getting his movie made about the Tuskegee Airmen. It notes:

And still, over the course of 23 years, Lucas could not find a single one of the Hollywood studios that would be interested in the project. Did the studio gatekeepers deem the material not “marketable” enough? Lucas certainly seems to think the studios saw the African American cast as a liability.

Hollywood not being in to finding a way to shove another piece of PC drivel down the throats of America? The mind boggles at the possibility! However, the article also notes:

Maybe the movie is just plain awful...

Ahh there we go, so some studio math is in order:

"George Lucas" + "Not Star Wars" = "Crap that can't float on previous success"

Know Nothings

Not in the classic sense mind you, but in the literal sense.  Hot on the heels of passing a law of dubious constitutionality that allows for the military to round up U.S. citizens on U.S. soil and detain them indefinitely (basically because the bunch of pussies in our government can't bring themselves to shoot/hang the goons in Guantanamo), Congress is looking to put the smack down on the Internet.  This way when you disappear in the middle of the night, no one will be able to report it because any web site will be able to be taken down for any reason.  Quote from an opponent:

"I'm not very encouraged, quite frankly," said Paul Ferguson, senior threat researcher at Trend Micro, a cybersecurity vendor with concerns about the bills. "There's a lack of technical knowledge here in the legislative process."

That's being generous! Let me fix that quote up for you a bit:

"There's a lack of knowledge here in the legislative process."

If you haven't heard about SOPA, it may be because, as The Reg notes, the big media companies have been oddly silent, the same way a mob boss might be silent when his opponent is mysteriously murdered.

That is a Great Line

The fact that we are here today to debate raising America’s debt limit is a sign of leadership failure. It is a sign that the U.S. Government can’t pay its own bills. It is a sign that we now depend on ongoing financial assistance from foreign countries to finance our Government’s reckless fiscal policies. … Increasing America’s debt weakens us domestically and internationally. Leadership means that ‘the buck stops here. Instead, Washington is shifting the burden of bad choices today onto the backs of our children and grandchildren. America has a debt problem and a failure of leadership. Americans deserve better.


 -Barack Hussein Obama

No Takers

This is an interesting article that tries to set out the idea that the 'lost decades' in the Japanese economy are a lie.  The author writes:

I feel so strongly about all this that I have more than once over the years challenged the principal proponents of the "lost decades" story to a debate. I first tried in 1998; and then again in 2002. On each occasion there were no takers.

He appears to make a strong case, but a little scratching reveals that the reason no one will debate him is the same reason that no one will debate his former boss (Pres. Carter) about little green men.

He starts the debate with two questions, one about the size of the Japanese trade surplus and one about the value of the Yen versus the Dollar.  Unfortunately he measures the size of the trade surplus in dollars, somewhat over-inflating the value that he's trying to represent (to the extent that a trade surplus/deficit is a meaningful measure to begin with).  As for the value of the Yen versus the Dollar, he is able to snag a more shocking number by writing the article at a time when the Fed is aggressively debasing the Dollar (something which all Americans are aware).  However,  Wikipedia has the full story.  Although the dollar is certainly down from where it was in the early eighties, it's not completely out of it's trading "band" that it has followed for the last twenty years:

However let's face it, measuring one's economy against the U.S. is hardly tough work.  Several commentators have made the case that U.S. itself has had more than a lost decade since many economic measures are back to the late nineties.  The other chart that measures the Yen against a basket of currencies tells the tale even more explicitly:

Here we have the Yen trading in roughly the "band" that it has since the late eighties.  This means that oranges to oranges, the Yen has sunk versus real world purchasing power along with other fiat currencies.

The other evidence used by the author is that of his own personal experience.  This has the sound of a "no one I know voted for Nixon" kind of journalistic justification for one's views and really isn't evidence of any sort.  Better evidence would be what the Japanese economy would look like without their outsized government spending.  Just like the U.S., the Japanese government has spent more and more money to mask the true state of their economy.  The only reliable number I could find on the 'net was 7.4 percent, which would be a pretty big contraction if it was pulled (the article also mentions that the U.S. is at 10.3, which is something happy to consider as well).

Printing Coins

ZeroHedge notes that the Treasury is moving away from 'minting' dollar coins.  It seems that a large percentage of the coins have been landing back at the Treasury because no one wants/needs them.  The best suggestion I see around this is to mint dollar coins that actually carry some 'melt value' rather than a small, metal, inconvenient version of a dollar bill.

(What I'd heard, but am too lazy to verify, is that coins are, or at least can be, issued directly from the Treasury and so are a small, but competing money supply with the Federal Reserve notes that we all know and love. Counting into this is that every FRN is issued as debt (i.e., I get a car and the bank gets $20,000 in FRNs on the promise that I'll pay back $28,000 FRNs) whereas coins are actual American money free of the tyrannical hold of the banking class, for what that's worth (not much)).

Facebook

I can't take one more minute of pretending that I care about Facebook and people asking me if I'd read stuff on it that was posted months ago.  What's worse is the stuff that I post there is even more worthless than the stuff I post here, which boggles the mind!*  Anyway, I've nuked my account and don't care to be back on.

That is all.

*Like Facebook birthday greetings.  If you do not get a birthday card from me, that means that I forgot to send you something worthwhile, which is a general failing of mine.  However, if I post a Facebook birthday greeting, that means that I did remember to do something worthless, which is even worse in my mind.

Hoochyana

Mission successful!

I was able to brew up about seven gallons of hard pear cider in this last run:

This will get added to what I have left of my last batch of pear cider, the couple bottle of beers that I have left, and the two or so gallons of hard apple cider that I have bottled. It sounds like a lot, but myself and Dr. DrinkingBuddy had no issue knocking out a gallon and a half of the stuff in an afternoon (a Browns game may be a requirement for such copious driniking).

Pearl Harbor Day

Nothing makes me happier on Pearl Harbor day than to have my Japanese Uniqlo clock back on my blog!

A funny story on the radio this morning came from a sports announcer who told how moving it is to go to the Pearl Harbor memorial.  His story started out "First you get on a boat to go to the memorial, and you will be the only non-Japanese person in the boat...".

He was harsh about it, but I took it as further proof of the complete insanity of the whole affair.  No one can picture going to war with Japan now and at least as far as I can surmise, no one could picture going to war with them before the war (thus the complete surprise of Pearl Harbor).  In the current era anyone can picture unfortunate circumstances that would land the U.S. in a war with the likes of Russia or China, but getting attacked by Japan back then would, in the current day, be something along the lines of Brazil launching a surprise attach on Florida; a real "WTF!?" moment.