For Your Holiday Viewing Pleasure

Pictures of Swedish Dance Bands of the 70's

All TV Series Must End (Warning: Yo Gabba Goes Geek)

I had a rough day yesterday, TV wise. I finished off the last episode of Veronica Mars at the gym in the morning. This turned out to be a fantastic show that critics absolutely loved but went the way of Arrested Development, etc. (Except I can’t complain because I never watched it when it was initially on TV either.) I strongly recommend this series.

Then I watched the series finale of the Shield- absolutely amazing. Talk about staying true to the characters, theme, and entire premise of the show. The Wire is the best show of all time because it was true to life and true to the characters, but the Shield really vaulted itself up the list into the coveted YGG top 10 with that finale. It was like the creators knew from episode 1 where this would end. I recall the heinous act our protagonist Vic Mackey commits in episode 1 and thinking, this show has to be a mini-series because it can’t go on. Instead, it carried this story through, and the consequences of this act hit home hard in the finale. The show had a few lurches and a digressions, but overall, there was a strong central arc. I loved this show, especially because of the ending.

IMHO, the importance of a perfect ending to a show’s legacy cannot be understated. Sopranos was a top 10 show, but it meandered too long and then told the viewers to fuck off for complaining and as punishment, wouldn’t even end the show . Artistic? perhaps. Good? Hell, no. Battlestar Galactica may make it; the first two seasons clearly merit classic status, but the ending so far is spotty. Here’s hoping for a good conclusion. Ditto with Deadwood. Six Feet Under was pretty weak by the end, but its ending was very strong, vaulting it into the top 25.

Even worse than a bad ending is the lack of an ending. All shows end (except ER, apparently, or maybe it did, I don’t know), but if you don’t know where it is going to end, the show will eventually suck (see, ER). Lost was heading down this path and the creators wisely gave an ultimatum to the network and said, we need a date certain to tie this up, and the network agreed. Lost is back on track. We’ll see how they end it, but chances are it will finish in the much coveted YGG top 10. Heroes had an outside shot after season 1, but they got so greedy to spin off series and characters, that it is now comically bad (pun intended). Clearly, to be a great TV show, you need an ending in sight and you need the entire series to move toward that ending, maybe not directly, but in some manner. Sticking with the comic theme, it’s the difference between Watchmen and Spiderman. One is a classic that sticks with you, the other is popular and may have some neat storylines between the 800 comics and 20 movies and TV shows, but it is not a classic.

Moral of the story is to have an ending in sight and aim the entire series toward it. Otherwise, the cracks will eventually show. The BBC caught onto this pretty early on, and now the US viewers (if not the networks) are following suit. BBC’s Life on Mars was a pretty good show with an absolutely amazing ending- goes to top 10. Had that show dragged on for three extra seasons and then ended like that, it would have been miserable. (Tellingly, that is probably what the US network hopes to do with its remake.)

Tying up the Veronica Mars reference with a slight digression, there is apparently a huge fandom out there crying for a movie, and it may happen. Season 3 ended without the creators not knowing if there would be a season 4, but it also ended pretty damn well. The show was about “noir in high school” (and then college in season 3), and the ending was pure noir. I’d like to give the creators a shot at tying everything up neatly, but given the themes and character, I’m not sure it didn’t end pretty damn well. (Firefly is a good analogy, it was a very good show, but its lack of conclusion due to early cancellation hurt it. The movie tied up a lot of loose ends.) I'm not a big fan of ending a show with a movie. X-Files was pretty weak (although I wasn't a big fan of the show either. I'll give Sex and the City some props for doing what it did, but again, not a big fan of the show or movie.)

Without further ado, the YGG Top 10 One Hour Dramas…obviously slanted to modern TV because TV is simply better today. Also subject to revision since I’m doing this off the top of my head while at work. Asterisks mean the series has not ended, and thus, could move up or down.

1. Wire
2. Battlestar Galactica*
3. Buffy the Vampire Slayer
4. The Shield
5. Veronica Mars
6. Lost
7. Dexter*/Sopranos (tie)
8. Rescue Me*
9. Deadwood*
10. Rome/Life on Mars (BBC version) (tie)

Free Market Utopia

The conventional wisdom on KP seems to be that individuals are better suited to efficiently allocate their wealth than the Federal Government.  I submit that if you goal is to maximize individual utility, KP is right.  If, however, your goals are to help the economy to regain its feet and to foster long-term economic growth, then KP is wrong. 

Maximizing Individual Utility

If there is one thing that Americans do particularly well, it's doing stuff that is going to make them feel good.  Americans are self interested machines, both rapacious and ruthlessly efficient.  We see that in the Country's spending trends.  For example, as the US's coffee pallet has become more refined, our need for fine coffee outlets has increased dramatically.  As a result, we have channeled our dollars and focused our spending to facilitate the creation of a vast, private coffee delivery infrastructure never thought possible in this country.  Our Starbucks-to-consumer ratio that is the envy of the java swilling world. 

Similarly, many Americans are exceptionally good at making money.  Eschewing such antiquated asset valuation models like the CAPM, our brave equity warriors learned that intrinsic asset value is much less important that perceived value.  Of course, the obviously excessive P/E rations of the .com era served to stem some of the irrational exuberance inherent to the greater fool model.  Thus, traders came to rely upon delicate, intricate, and sophisticated computer models put together by some of the best quants money could buy.  The realities of stated income loans, interest-only ARMs, and refinance opportunities without end took a back seat to the highly crafted superior wisdom bestowed upon the few by their eight flat panel monitor arrays: these were worth something and there was money to be made. 

But even those Americans who may not be financial wizards know how to make for a happy holiday.  Both parents and their kids can recite from memory the relative merits of newest generation of ipod nanos when compared to say, the Zune or even the Touch.  Both are probably aware of the new "it" toy, i.e. that toy which is most calculated to bring delight to the kids and make them the envy of their classmates.  Never mind if the kid's 529 hasn't seen a contribution in 18 months.  Never mind if you have to finance the purchase.  It's the holidays: a time during which we are all entitled to a little joy.

Okay, you get the point.  The truth is that people aren't even good at maximizing their own individual long term utility.  If behavioral economics has shown us anything, it's that people will usually take the quick payoff at the expense of greater reward in the future.  CEOs do it.  Traders do it. Everyone does it.  Compounding the issue is that people, at times, don't even know what will make them happy.  They underestimate the utility of future rewards and over estimate the pain of certain trade offs.  Sometimes, it's not their fault - they lack sufficient information about their consequences of their choices. 

The Truth

And here is ugly truth for all of those libertarians who want to live in a country of hundreds of millions: people make bad decisions and do it often.  Efficient market theories assume perfect information and rational actors.  Neither exist nor will they ever exist.  Dreams of unfettered markets self-regulation are as unrealistic and as Utopian as anything dreamt up by the left.

Case in point: civil suits.  Civil litigation is the ultimate in open market, government-free regulation.  Someone rips you off or sells you a bum steer - don't go to government for help!  Rather, settle the matter one-on-one, citizen-to-citizen before a neutral with a jury of your rational-acting, efficiently resource-allocating peers.  Worried that some new food additive might cause cancer?  Why wait for the government to waste millions of taxpayer dollars or burden industry with even more regulations when you can rely upon private individuals using private funds to research the issue and arrive at an answer?  Do you think private corporations have a duty to make their products safer with newfangled improvements like seat belts?  Why wait for government to decide the issue when you can quickly create an economic incentive for companies to behave responsively.

The truth is that every single one of KP's so called free market proponents would love nothing more than use more government regulation to reign in the US plaintiffs' bar.  They would love to rip apart privately-negotiated contingency fee agreements and to prevent average Americans from playing their role in the resolution of private disputes.  Somehow the very same people that libertarians believe should make their own decisions about savings, retirement, insurance, and capital investment become blithering idiots once they step into the jury box.

Even with government assistance, the markets failed to allocate sufficient investment in infrastructure and growth to tackle issues such as energy independence, math & science education, and basic road maintenance.  Take energy independence for example.  The markets failed us in the 1970's.  After the embargo and after the Reagan administration took Jimmy Carter's solar panels off the White House's roof, the private failed to allocate sufficient resources to prevent future shocks.  Even after 9/11, SUV sales continued to rise in the US.  Neither the public nor US industry were committed to doing what needed to be done in order to properly tackle the issues. 

I will acknowledge that a number of externatilites may distort the energy markets, so it's not a "pure" example.  But we have one example of a regulation-free market: CDSs.  The government was actually prohibited from regulating this market.  Look where that got us.

Freakonomics does Ron Paul

If Ron Paul is still a bit of a mystery to you or just seems too wacky, check out this interview with the NYT Web column, Freakonomics.

Tin Foil, Part Deux

Traders are big on conspiracies. We are endlessly shuffling rumors about who is doing what and why, with the recent financial turmoil and fickle bailout process (AIG saved, Lehman dead) giving us ample red meat on which to chew.

So one of my fellow traders suggested I look at this video about the Kennedy assassination and a link to the Bush family. Ridiculous? Seemed so, but this is a very well-documented video, and it makes some pretty compelling arguments. In any case, it strikes me as something KP could sink its collective teeth into.

Like Loose Change, which was mentioned in GBB's Mark Cuban article, I assume there are strong rebuttals to some of the arguments in the video, but I haven't seen them yet.

Regardless, it does makes for some thought-provoking watching.

Wow, a media organization doing actual journalism!

I missed the first episode of the IFC media project, but as a frequent trasher of the MSM, I am hoping to catch the rest of the series. It's nice to see at least one news organization doing its job.

Financial news organisation Bloomberg has requested the details of who the US
Federal Reserve is lending its trillion dollar bailout cash to under the Freedom
of Information Act, as well as suing the Fed in a bid to force disclosure.

Anyone who still thinks the U.S. government is a champion of the people and is stalwartly striving to better their situation is absolutely deluding themselves. One might argue the Obama administration will act differently, but with many of the same actors taking starring roles, I don't believe it. The looters might have different names, but they will be looters just the same.

To those impressed with my stylish tin foil hat, may I recommend the film Zeitgeist as a good starting point. Some of its suggestions are outlandish and really fringe, but the stuff about banking has a solid basis.

Where's the change?

I thought Obama's whole raison d'etre was bringing change to Washington. So what's with the crew of ex-Clinton cabinet members parading into his administration?

Lawrence Summers is my favorite. For as much as Obama bashed Wall Street, to bring in Summers is a bit breathtaking. He currently is an advisor for a major hedge fund and was one of the architects of the current mess, thwarting the few reasonable attempts that were made to reform some of the most dangerous markets.

I had this vision of Obama bringing in a whole bunch of new faces, but apparently my few days of optimism got the better of my normal cynical, but apparently more accurate, judgement.

Update: An echo of my thoughts here.

Tin Foil Moment

As you guys know, I am rather fond of making wacky and worrisome predictions, so I am going to put on my tin foil hat for a moment to make a prediction for next year.

I am sure you all recall Biden's speech where he mentions a challenging moment that Obama will face early in his term. Fully cognizant that this is an otherwise low probability event, and as such, I am probably making a fool of myself, I am putting it on the record now that I think it will be a major currency crisis involving a collapse in the dollar and/or a collapse in the price of Treasuries. It will be signficant enough to put the survival of the dollar as a reserve currency in doubt and will create severe dislocations throughout the economy, including likely shortages of some goods.

I'll further posit that the government will use the crisis to scare Americans into an otherwise unwise set of policies, like the Patriot Act following 9/11. But considering that pretty much every crisis of the last decade has been greeted with idiotic policies, if an event occurs, foolish legislation seems certain to follow.

Second-Order Economic Effects

One thing I find so disconcerting in most economic discussions taking place right now is the lack of consideration for the second-order effects of policies. Almost every government policy that effects economic policy has some unintended consequence that creates new economic distortions which then create new problems which are then inevitably treated with a new distortive policy, and so if goes.

To that end, it was nice to see an article that discusses one of those distortions.

The truth is that most economic behavior can be distilled to three principles. One, people generally act in their perceived self-interest. Two, people respond to incentives. Three, people are smart enough to apply some level of game theory to the first two principles. That third principle is the source of second-order effects, and it is remarkable how little the third principle is given consideration when policy makers form policy.

Unfortunately, Keynesian thinking has become so ingrained in the government and the media tha the first reaction to any problem is to assume reflexively that a new government policy is needed to combat that problem. Often this policy comes in the form of some new regulation, but while it might feel emotionally satisfying to think that there is an office full of wizened gurus somewhere able to create perfect policy, it is impossible. Not just improbable, but impossible, as any distortive policy will have distortive second-order effects. Of course, even if it was possible, there's not much evidence the government is run by wizened gurus.

Cautious Optimism

I was shocked that Waxman's power play worked, and I feel about it somewhat the same way I feel about Obama winning (minus the history, eloquence, and warm fuzzies associated with Obama). On paper, this should be a good thing; there is no question we needed change, and the last thing we need is someone cozy with Detroit running the House Energy Commission. Still, is Waxman a bit too far left? He is pals with Pelosi, which doesn't give me comfort. Those who know YGG know that I am partial to Green, so if we are going to veer left, I prefer it in this arena. However, I think there is a tremendous opportunity to productively couple the green agenda with good old American capitalism, and I'm not sure Mr. Waxman and Ms. Pelosi are the best fit for that.

Bioethics

An article from the NY Times talks about the potential to regenerate the wooly mammoth with DNA from museum pieces and some pretty hopped-up sequencing machines and techniques. It also makes brief mention of the possibility of bringing back Neanderthal.

First, I'd like a KP reality check here. Some of us are in a better position to answer the question as to whether this is even remotely possible. Please do.

Second, I am not sure how I feel about the Neanderthal idea. On the one hand, it'd be pretty cool just to be able to do it. The issue then becomes ethical/moral. Would Neanderthals be considered people? What rights would they have? I know this sounds terrible but.. could we...ahem... make use of them? If they are considered people, I guess that knocks out some of the potential...er...uses, but if they are not people, just think about it. Maybe a little scary.

Anyway, let's not get ahead of ourselves. Can it be done? If so, should it? Discuss.

Flashback

For a bit of nostalgia. Restless knows not how to embed video without having the actual file.

Update...

The Big 3 Auto Makers and Innovation

Mish has a typically good and fiery rant, but I found the most interesting part of it to be the video below...

Watch the video here

It's only three minutes. Not only is it a pretty cool video, but it proves that companies like Ford can be incredibly innovative. Just not on American soil.

A bankruptcy of these companies would be a blessing. Although it would wipe out shareholders and create enormous pain for the U.S. government through the PBGC, the restructured company would have the chance to innovate again. Maybe even in America. Any bailout will just prolong the pain - it is basically a transfer of money from taxpayers to UAW workers and pensioners. One could argue that the government should be helping out these parties, but if you insisted on the POV, it would frankly be better to just write workers a check, rather than flush the money through the existing wealth-destroying engines that are the Big 3.

Et tu, Cubes?

Perhaps I've let my Mavs fandom bias me, but I've always felt Mark Cuban was a decent, honorable "Joe Six Pack" kind of guy who happened to be a billionaire. His blog was regularly, refreshingly honest. How many fans wouldn't love to know their owner's thoughts and views? And how many can say they have exchanged multiple e-mails with their team's owner. So with that background, I'm a bit disappointed, but I'm not necessarily shocked or upset, by the latest.

If the allegations are true, he must have known that what he was doing was illegal. Still, I'm not overly upset. Its an interesting scenario in which the company may have shared the info in order to entrap him from selling his stocks, likely knowing Cuban wouldn't be down with the PIPE but also likely knowing he couldn't sell his massive share of their company once they told him. I'm also not shocked because no one has ever accused Cuban of stoicism and calmness, so I could see a scenario where he got so pissed about the "entrapment," or alternatively, the stupidity of the plan to approach him, that he said, "Screw it. Sell." Well, them's the breaks, and now he has to pay the PIPEr. The question is whether he should face criminal charges like Martha or just pay the heavy civil penalty. I've always hated the NBA's stupid, self interested rules protecting incompetent refs which make every game essentially a crapshoot, and I've loved Cuban's attempts to tear these down....a losing battle except from a PR stance. But the SEC is a different story, and this appears to be a losing battle from a PR stance too. The SEC's rules are there for a reason, so if the allegations are true, I'm disappointed in my man. I think he should come clean and pay the heavy penalty, but it doesn't seem prison time is warranted without a cover up ala Martha.

The ones who will truly be hurt are Cubbies fans who now may lose out on a dynamic, fan based, winning is everything owner. MLB prefers its white collar criminals to be stodgier, and this will be the excuse for Selig to neg Cuban's offer.

KO with a Special Comment for GammaBoy

A play in one act, courtesy of McSweeney's:

FIRE:
THE NEXT
SHARP STICK?

A Conversation
Among Cavemen.

BY JOHN HODGMAN

- - - -

John Hodgman, who has been a McSweeney's friend and contributor since our first issue, is on tour now for his new book, More Information Than You Require. Today, in celebration of the book, we're running the second thing he wrote for us, "Fire: The Next Sharp Stick?," which appeared in McSweeney's Issue 2. John will be at the Echoplex in Los Angeles tonight, along with troubadours John Roderick (of the Long Winters) and Jonathan Coulton (of Massachusetts).

- - - -

Setting: The offices of Ten Men Who Help Each Other But Are Not Brothers, a firm located near the River That's Not as Wide as the Really Wide River.

(ONE WHO HELPS THE HAIRY ONE is seated, going over some notes. Enter MAKER OF FIRE.)

ONE: (Standing.) Hey, it's good to see you. Thanks for coming by.

MAKER: Thank you, One Who Helps the Hairy One. I'm sorry I'm late. Somehow I ended up by the Really Wide River.

ONE: Really? When we met by the Sticky Tree, I thought I said near the River That's Not as Wide as the Really Wide River.

MAKER: That is what you said. I must have gotten turned around at the Sharp Shells.

ONE: Oh, yeah. That happens a lot.

MAKER: I must have just spaced.

ONE: No harm done. Do you want a Stick That Tastes Good to Gnaw On?

MAKER: No, thanks. I just had one. I'm a bear if I don't have one before Hot Part of the Day.

ONE: (Doesn't understand, a little afraid.) Excuse me?

MAKER: (Laughs.) Sorry. Sorry. I'm not actually a bear. I just mean that I'm like a bear if I don't have a Stick That Tastes Good.

ONE: You pretend to be a bear?

MAKER: No. I feel like a bear feels when he wakes up. You know, grumpy, impatient.

ONE: Do you become a bear when you say it?

MAKER: No. I just say it.

ONE: (Still doesn't understand.) Oh. OK. I see. Well, in a way, that's exactly why I asked you to come down here. As you know, Ten Men Who Help Each Other But Are Not Brothers is a very old and established firm.

MAKER: I do know.

ONE: I mean, for me, it's a real honor to be associated with the Hairy One and to be his helper. The Hairy One's a visionary, you know. But he's—how do I say it? He's older than the Old One, and, as a result, I think that Ten Men needs to think about its future and think about how it can stay competitive in changing times.

MAKER: Naturally, I agree.

ONE: When we met by the Sticky Tree, I immediately thought, Here's a guy who's ahead of the curve. Here's a guy who maybe can help Ten Men make the transition into That Day That Isn't This Day but Also Isn't the Day Before or the Day Before That.

MAKER: At the Shallow Pond With a Terrible Odor, we call it "tomorrow."

ONE: Really? "Tomorrow"? Very clever. But the point is, we were talking about fire, and it seemed to me after we spoke that this could be just the thing to carry Ten Men into "tomorrow."

MAKER: Well, there's no question that fire has a lot to offer any firm, Ten Men included, and I'm happy to show you why. But I think you need to think seriously about what your fire needs are. The truth is, this technology is so revolutionary that I think the real question won't be whether fire is right for Ten Men but whether Ten Men is ready for fire.

ONE: (Nodding seriously.) True. True. Well, what I have planned is pretty informal, just a meeting of the minds, so to speak. I've asked the Hairy One to sit in on this meeting, since he'll have to approve anything that might happen Not Now but Another Time. You may have to take it a little slow with him—he's a bit of a Neanderthal when it comes to this sort of thing, if you know what I mean.

MAKER: HA HA HA HA HA HA!

ONE: HA HA HA HA HA HA!

(Enter the HAIRY ONE, carrying a sharp stick. ONE immediately stops laughing and falls to the floor completely prostrate, arms and legs spread, face down. MAKER smirks and does not move.)

ONE: (Speaking into the floor.) Oh, hey, Hairy One, how are you? Thanks for coming by.

HAIRY ONE: (Grunts to MAKER.) Where are the Sticks That Taste Good?

MAKER: I think they're over there.

(HAIRY ONE crosses to side table to get a stick and begins gnawing it.)

ONE: (Starting to raise himself.) I just gathered them, Hairy One, so they're fresh. (Pauses. Looks to MAKER.) You know me: I'm a bear if I don't have one before the Time You Tell Us When We Can Eat.

HAIRY ONE: (Stick drops from mouth in fear.) BEAR! BEAR! (Raises sharp stick and crosses to begin hitting ONE with it.)

ONE: No! Not bear! Not bear!

MAKER: It's just a saying.

ONE: It's just a saying!

(HAIRY ONE stops his attack and stares at both of them suspiciously.)

ONE: (Rising, then sitting down.) I'm not a bear.

MAKER: It's just something that he said.

HAIRY ONE: (Completely indifferent.) Whatever. (Retrieves stick and sits down at head of table.)

ONE: Hairy One, Maker of Fire. Maker of Fire, the Hairy One.

MAKER: My pleasure, Hairy One. I've followed your work with Ten Men for a long time. It's a remarkable firm.

HAIRY ONE: So you're the one with the fire?

MAKER: Yes.

HAIRY ONE: Is it here?

MAKER: Well, no.

HAIRY ONE: Where is it?

MAKER: Well, in a sense, Hairy One, fire is everywhere. Rather than being an object, say, like your sharp stick, it's really a process, so it can't really be said to exist anywhere. In a sense, fire exists in its own imaginary, virtual space, where we can only talk about what is not fire and what might become fire.

HAIRY ONE: Whoa whoa whoa! English, please!

ONE: I think that what the Maker of Fire is trying to say is that—and let me know if I have it right—while I may have one fire, and you may have another fire in another place, and the One Who Helps the Hairy One may be planning to make a fire, the truth is that it's all fire. It's all the same thing. It's all fire.

MAKER: That's true, in a rudimentary sense, but for our purposes it'll do fine.

ONE: What's great about fire, Hairy One, is that it combines many things in one. Light, heat, pain—all in one. It's all those things. It's multi-thing.

HAIRY ONE: I thought you said it was all the same thing.

ONE: It is!

HAIRY ONE: But now you say it's multi-thing?

(ONE is confused, looks to MAKER OF FIRE.)

MAKER: It is and it isn't. It depends on how you define "thing."

HAIRY ONE: And where does the bear come in?

MAKER: It doesn't.

ONE: That was just something I said.

HAIRY ONE: I get that, OK? I just wanted to know if a bear was involved in fire or not.

MAKER: It isn't.

HAIRY ONE: Good.

MAKER: See, the thing about fire is that it's totally interactive. Fire isn't a bear, but if you put fire on a bear, then the bear becomes fire. It's completely responsive to your needs at a given time, reacting specifically to your fuel input and usage paradigm ...

HAIRY ONE: OK, stop right there. Here's the thing. I've heard a lot about this fire already. Everyone is saying how shiny it is and how flickery it is. But you have to agree that that's very specialized. I know you folks at the Shallow Pond With a Terrible Odor are making a whole big deal about this, but we here by the River That's Not as Wide as the Really Wide River, well, we're simple folk. We want to know: what can it do for us? And the thing is, until people really figure out how fire can be used, I just can't see it becoming a staple of everyday life.

ONE: If I can just jump in here for a moment, Hairy One, think of it like the sharp stick. You know, many, many, many nights ago, everyone was using a blunt stick for clubbing and for poking at things we had no name for. We didn't even call it "blunt stick" back then. We just called it "stick."

MAKER: Exactly.

ONE: And then someone came along and said, Hey, let's take this rock and push it on the stick and remove parts of the stick at one end until it's different than it was before. Everyone called this someone Crazy One, until Crazy One took the sharp stick and put it in the Loud One's eye.

HAIRY ONE: Someone didn't do that. I did.

ONE: That's what I'm saying. Once we had the sharp stick, the Loud One became One Eye, and the Crazy One became the Big Hairy One.

HAIRY ONE: I'm the Big Hairy One.

ONE: That's what I'm saying. You don't want to be the One Who Didn't Like Fire. Fire is the sharp stick of ... of ... tomorrow.

HAIRY ONE: What's "tomorrow"?

MAKER: Well, that's not entirely a correct analogy, since fire can't really be compared to anything that isn't fire, but ...

HAIRY ONE: (To ONE.) OK, but I think you're both overlooking an important thing: fire is very, very scary. Even when sharp stick got big, there were a lot of people still using blunt stick because they knew what blunt stick could do. People still love their blunt sticks, and it is many, many days and nights later. So I can't see how this fire thing is going to work until people have a reason not to be scared.

MAKER: Well, before we go on, we all have to accept that not everything is going to appeal to Johnny Blunt Stick.

HAIRY ONE: OK, but let me tell you that it's Johnny Blunt Sticks that made Ten Men one of the top firms by the River That's Not as Wide as the Really Wide River. Johnny Blunt Sticks like me.

MAKER: Look, I didn't mean to offend anyone. Listen, I have to use the dung heap. Why don't I step out for a moment and you two can decide how you want this meeting to go. OK?

HAIRY ONE: No offense, no offense. We'll be here.

(MAKER exits.)

ONE: I'm sure he didn't mean to suggest that ...

HAIRY ONE: I don't care about that. I know how they are by the Shallow Pond. You know I've met him before?

ONE: You have?

HAIRY ONE: Sure. Many, many, many, many nights ago on a business trip. I was over by the Shallow Pond, and all the Shallow Ponders were laughing at him. You know what they used to call him? I mean, before all this "Maker of Fire" bullshit?

ONE: What?

HAIRY ONE: They used to call him the One Who Knocks Two Rocks Together Over Dry, Dead Plants.

ONE: Oh, man, really?

HAIRY ONE: He's a complete lunatic. Not just not like us—not like anybody.

ONE: But what about fire?

HAIRY ONE: Oh, he may have fire, but "Maker of Fire"? He's an idiot. Where did you meet him?

ONE: Over by the Sticky Tree. He wanted to know if Ten Men would want to give him some food and then he would give us some fire.

HAIRY ONE: He what?!

ONE: He called it "barter."

HAIRY ONE: Well, I call it bullshit. He's obviously deranged. I thought he was here to invite us to go to the Shallow Pond and kill everyone and take fire.

ONE: No, he wants to "trade."

HAIRY ONE: Now I just feel sorry for him.

(Re-enter MAKER OF FIRE.)

MAKER: Well, have you thought it over?

HAIRY ONE: Maker of Fire, you do us great honor by traveling so far to visit us two men of the Ten Men Who Help Each Other But Are Not Brothers. But until I get a sense of how fire could ever be useful I'm afraid we're just going to have to muddle along without it.

MAKER: I understand. Not all are fire-ready.

HAIRY ONE: And I'm sorry about the Johnny Blunt Stick business. Please, come over here and join hands.

(MAKER goes to join hands. The HAIRY ONE stabs him with the stick, and then beats him until he is dead.)

ONE: What are you doing?

HAIRY ONE: There, he's out of his misery, poor fellow. Now go through his skins and his magic bag.

ONE: What? Why?

HAIRY ONE: We're looking for fire, my helper! We're looking for fire!

ONE: Oh, you truly are the Wise and Big Hairy One!

FINIS

The Color of Rage

I know no one in the old KP is a fan of right-wing racism, but I think Michelle Cottle puts some of their bile in context.  I'm willing to bet that some of these folks are former Democrats. 

Not Fair

You know what's not fair?

Alec Baldwin used one of my favorite phrases on 30 Rock last night: "objectively awesome."

Now people will think I'm quoting him when it's really the opposite.  I own that phrase!

Developing the Sensible Party's founding principles

HBS's Michael Porter had an excellent piece in BusinessWeek a couple of weeks ago discussing the need for strategic planning to guide our government's economic decision making. Yes. A thousand times yes.

Instead of taking a position on a laundry list of issues, the Sensible Party needs to take a holistic, strategic view as a starting point. What should our economic strategy be? And besides economic issues, what else is important to us?

New York Times website: July 4, 2009

It's pretty amazing what these guys pulled together. Looks exactly like the real thing.