Understatement

It's been a really long year.

For that matter, I can barely believe that it's been just over a month.

At any rate, long week ahead.  Need to do laundry, take a run and prepare for a funeral.

Update:  I came within a hair's breadth of my first seven minute mile.  Everyone jump to the thirteen second mark with me...

Random Thought for the Day

Cheeseburger without a bun: poor man's steak or rich man's meatloaf?

Whew!

I did it.  For the first time in I-don't-know how long, I just ran an honest-to-god eight-minute mile.  Outside, heat and humidity, up and down hills, no stopping, no skimping on time - the works.  And it feels great.

Yay me.

Blind Satellite Bloggage

We've been jumping back into recording pretty fervently within the last week and have decided to take a unique - and public - approach this time around.


Head on over to http://blindsatellite.blogspot.com/ to read (and hear) what it's all about.


 - E

E.T., Home Phone

My cellphone just rang with a promotional call from my cable company. They first tried so sell me expanded digital cable packages, which I politely turned down since I don't actually, you know, watch TV (the cable is just for internet access). The kind saleswoman then tried to sell me on their digital phone service, which I also turned down. When she asked about my existing land line company, I told her that I had none. Surprised, she asked how I was able to survive without a telephone.

"Well, you're talking to me on the phone now, aren't you?"

So a Guy Walks into a (Coffee) Bar...

After running errands last night, I decided to stop in at Starbucks for an evening treat. As I walked through the door, a couple of teenagers were playing the What-Can-We-Tell-About-A-Total-Stranger-At-First-Glance game. One turned to the other, nodded her head my way and, in a total failure to whisper, declared, "wealthy gomer."

I stopped, turned my head and replied, "people living with their parents."

The barista comp-ed my cappuccino.

A few months ago, this kind of comment would have destroyed me. Now, it gets me free coffee.

Crazy Ideas

The recent economic catastrophe can be summed up thusly: people respond to incentives. Much of the financial sector made bad long-term decisions because individuals were highly rewarded for thinking exclusively of the short-term.

The response from our leaders and media has been a typical outburst, decrying those individuals as greedy. Its a fruitless proposition. People respond to incentives, and I'd bet even money that most people would have made the same decisions. Rather than name-calling, I suggest we change the incentive structure. What follows are a few ideas off the top of my head.

For starters, we need to encourage a longer term personal view by executives. The current bonus structure rewards short-term thinking with huge bonuses at the expense of long-term corporate health. Look at AIG, Bear Stearns, Lehman, Citi, Enron, Worldcom...the list goes on.

What about creating a special class of stock or stock option that cannot be sold, traded or redeemed for, say, seven years? Then apply a progressive scale to compensation; cash bonuses or other immediate compensation gets taxed at a high rate, while the new long-term stock is taxed much lower. If the executive makes decisions to help the company prospers long term, he or she will be rewarded. Short-term decisions, on the other hand, become self-defeating.

On the larger scale, what if we made corporate taxes progressive? The last year has seen terrifying examples of the problems with ever larger corporations, compounding the problems of shortsightedness. What's more, politicians of both parties are always praising small businesses, calling them engine of innovation, the heart of the American economy, etc. So why not reward smaller businesses with slightly lower tax rates while discouraging bloated "too big to fail" mega-corporations with slightly higher ones?

I haven't researched these ideas, I'm just throwing out the first things that come to mind. But let's start coming up with solutions - new solutions, real solutions - rather than relying on dogma and ideology to maintain a failed status quo.