Starting Over

Yeah, I've been gone for a while (if you call almost three months 'a while'). I'll probably explain things at some point soon.

I think I'll start posting again, but a word of warning ... I think I'll probably get more political than I've been in the past, I'm in Arizona and there's an election going on and, as usual, I'm am dumbfounded by the politicians.

A Little Bit of Knowledge Is a Dangerous Thing

This an old saying, and a good rule to be aware of. It is doubly true when it is a little bit of knowledge of a foreign language.

Today I got myself into a bind by thinking I know Spanish better than I do. I won't explain the whole thing because it's too long and involved (and mostly because to do so would be too embarrassing). Just trust me when I say that you should never say 'Si' unless you understand all of what has just been said to you.

You'd think I would have figured that out many years ago, wouldn't you?

I'm lucky if I catch about every third word, because I'm trying to listen and translate simultaneously.

My Favorite Conspiracy

If you hang out on expat forums, as I do, you will come across a lot of nice people. I frequent these forums because they're often an entertaining waste of time, but also because they can be helpful. If you want to know which store in Quito carries American peanut butter (answer: apparently none), there's no better place to find out.

As I said, most of the folks are both normal and pleasant. However, both here in Ecuador and in my former place of exile, the Philippines, I have noted that there seems to be an unusually high proportion of conspiracy buffs in the expat communities. After a bit of thought, I concluded that this isn't particularly surprising since expats are not a random cross-section of their home countries – obviously, people who choose to leave their country differ from those who choose to stay put, and one of those ways might be a tendency to believe that they are out to get us.

Who 'they' are is not always clear. The conspiracies seem to emanate from both the left and right of the US political spectrum, with a fair number of the believers having political leanings that are rather inscrutable.

Some of the theories are very entertaining. My favorite is that the government is trying to trigger a humungous earthquake on the New Madrid Fault in order to create a big inland sea where the Mississippi River currently resides. Why this is being done is unclear, but apparently the Illuminati is involved. Here's a video about it on YouTube, which tells us that it's being done through fracking.

Others say the plan involves HAARP, which is a popular source of conspiracy theories according to Wikipedia.

Random Thoughts on Ecuador's Oil Boom

Commodity-driven economies, history tells us, can be counted on to go through boom and bust cycles. The politicians who are lucky enough to ride the boom are, not surprisingly, very popular. The bust, of course, is less fun.

Ecuador had two such cycles in the twentieth century -- the cacao boom in the early 1900s, and the banana boom in the middle of the century. In both cases, the bust brought on periods of instability (there were military coups in the twenties and seventies).

Currently, the country is enjoying the oil boom, but there are signs that it may be nearing an end. Will that mean a bust sometime soon, and what consequences might a bust have? We'll just have to see, but Ecuador should prepare for problems if oil prices drop, and I doubt if Rafael Correa's favorability ratings will stay where they are.

Watch out, Chicago. You're Getting Set up to Be Screwed Again

The Cubs' owner is asked about the Atlanta Braves' planned move to the suburbs:

Ricketts said the Cubs have been trying to avoid such an issue. 

"We've been approached by several suburban sites and alternatives to move the Cubs to a new ballpark," Ricketts said, "and although I haven't studied it thoroughly, I imagine that's probably an attractive proposition for us. 

"But we've made it our priority to try to stay where we're at because of what it does mean to the neighbors and what it does mean to the city, both economically and just from the standpoint of quality of life in general."

Note that Rickett never says flatly that the Cubs will stay put (though such a promise would be worthless anyway), he only says they will try.

Would the Cubs actually move out of Wrigley? Probably not, but the threat is ho doubt good enough to extort a few hundred million out of the taxpayers. Rahm Emmanuel is a leading practitioner of crony capitalism, and there's plenty of precedent (e,g., Daley's Soldier Field sweetheart deal for the Bears).

On a side note: It's interesting that Cubs attendance has dropped more than 20% in the past few years. Maybe Cubs fans are wising up. One reason I could never stand the Cubs is that their fans (at Wrigley) are mostly a bunch of drunken boors who know nothing about baseball – they go to the games as an excuse to get drunk and be seen doing something cool.

(Apologies to my Cub fan friends, who are exceptions to that rule).

If You Disagree with Me You're Not Just Wrong ...

... you are "immoral, unethical and despicable."

Well no, I don't actually think that way, but Al Gore does. He said in a recent speech in Hawaii that anybody who doesn't believe in global warming is, to repeat, "immoral, unethical and despicable."

The 'immoral' part is particularly interesting, I think, as it is the sort of language and thinking one normally associates with religion. Global warming has become a religion for its adherents, and they seem to speak and act more and more in ways emulating religious fanatics.

Public Education in the USA

In Los Angeles, a science teacher was suspended for teaching science.

A popular Los Angeles high school science teacher has been suspended after students turned in projects that appeared dangerous to administrators, spurring a campaign calling for his return to the classroom. 

Students and parents have rallied around Greg Schiller after his suspension in February from the downtown Cortines School of Visual & Performing Arts. Supporters have organized a rally on his behalf at the campus for Thursday, gathered hundreds of signatures on a petition calling for his reinstatement and set up a social media page.
Schiller was ordered to report daily to a district administrative office pending an investigation after two students turned in science-fair projects that were designed to shoot small projectiles. 

One project used compressed air to propel a small object but it was not connected to a source of air pressure, so it could not have been fired. (In 2012, President Obama tried out a more powerful air-pressure device at a White House Science Fair that could launch a marshmallow 175 feet.) 

Another project used the power from an AA battery to charge a tube surrounded by a coil. When the ninth-grader proposed it, Schiller told him to be more scientific, to construct and test different coils and to draw graphs and conduct additional analysis, said his parents, who also are Los Angeles teachers. 

A school employee saw the air-pressure project and raised concerns about what looked to her like a weapon, according to the teachers union and supporters. Schiller, who said he never saw the completed projects except in photos, was summoned and sent home. 

Both projects were confiscated as "evidence," said Susan Ferguson, whose son did the coil project.

This reminds me of the recent case in New York where a Spanish teacher was (alledgedly) not just suspended but fired for teaching Spanish. She used the word 'negro', which of course means 'black' in Spanish and would seem to be a word worth knowing to someone who wants to speak Spanish. But one of her students said the word was offensive, and God forbid a student should be offended, so the teacher was fired.

Soccer in Ecuador

Next time I'm sitting on the
other side.

I attended my first Ecuadorian soccer game yesterday. It was an interesting experience. Do I have to begin calling it football now – or futbol?

The game was Universidad Catolica versus Deportivo Quito (Catolica won, 1-0). It was a good game, though not of the highest quality – about as good as an MLS game (the best Ecuadorian players, of course, go to other countries, where they can make more money).

I certainly can't argue with the price, though – general admission was five bucks. Still, next time I'll pay a little more to get a seat on the other side – the cheap seats are looking right into the afternoon sun. The other side is covered and faces away from the sun. The shade doesn't mean that much -- it wasn't hot -- but it was very difficult to see well, even wearing sunglasses.

Put down that
#$%@ umbrella!

Lots of people had umbrellas. I was sitting in the Deportivo Quito boosters section, and lots of them had blue or red (the team colors) umbrellas. Very colorful, but I'd hate to be sitting behind somebody holding one.

This was a Deportivo Quito home game, though Catolica uses the same stadium -- three Quito teams share the stadium. Another Quito team (the rich kids, I guess) has its own stadium. Can you imagine US teams sharing a stadium? Perish the thought -- much better that the taxpayers spend several hundred million to build us our own stadium (and, of course, lease it to us for a dollar a year). US sports is rife with crony capitalism.

Lots of security. There were
another bunch of cops right
behind me on the concourse. 

Universidad Catolica, despite the name, is a professional team. In fact, three of the twelve teams at the top level (Primera A) have 'Universidad' in their name (the others are from Universidad de Quito and Universidad de Loja). Apparently Ecuador has done what the US should do – acknowledge that top-level college teams are actually professionals.

We've all heard stories, of course, about Latin American soccer fans rioting. They apparently take that possibility pretty seriously here. There were a solid line of cops protecting the field, and all fans are thoroughly frisked – twice – before entering the stadium. In any case, the game was quite peaceful, and a good time was had by all. Or at least by me (I probably shouldn't speak for the Deportivo Quito fans).

I Think That's What They Call a Duty-Hug

Look at the expression on Obama's face as he hugs Kathleen Sibelius.

It Takes One to Know One

Donald Trump: 

“All talk, it’s all bullshit.”

A Step in the Right Direction

The National Transportation Safety Board is fining General Motors $7,000 per day for GM's failure to respond to the NTSB's demand for information about GM's cover-up of their safety problems.

This is a great idea. At seven grand a day, US taxpayers will have their bailout money repaid in only about four millenia. Better than I thought it was going to be.

A note on the math: $7000 x 365.25 days = $2,556,750/year x 4000 years = $10,227,000,000.

That isn't quite all of what's owed, but it's close.

More seriously: It's way past time to put an end to crony capitalism (by both parties).

Good Thing They Canceled the Deadline, Huh?

CNN captured this screenshot this morning.

Chick-fil-A Sells More Chicken Than KFC

Not to revive last year's controversy, but it is interesting to note that Chick-fil-A has passed up KFC as the #1 chicken place in the US.

The days when fried chicken was synonymous with a certain white-haired southern gentleman are over, at least in the U.S. A new champion has claimed KFC’s long-held chicken crown: Chick-fil-A. 

The change atop the leaderboard appears undisputed: Yum! Brands ... which owns KFC and has for years prided itself as “the leader in the U.S. chicken [quick-service restaurant] segment,” removed that very phrase from the company’s most recent annual report. 

I wonder if CfA was helped by the controversy – I heard a few people say that they gave the chain a try as a result of it and were pleasantly surprised by the quality of the food. (I've never eaten there, so I'm in no position to rate the food). Apparently, though, CfA has been gaining for several years.

I'm sure KFC is still well ahead worldwide – there had a bunch of stores in the Philippines and they're all over the place here in Quito. CfA, meanwhile, has yet to cover the US.

Something I Didn't Know about Arizona

I never knew that the Vatican Observatory is in my home state.

Actually, the official headquarters of the Observatory is approximately where one would expect it – not quite in Vatican City, but nearby, at the Pope's summer residence, Castel Gandolfo. But all the heavy lifting is done in Arizona. The operational headquarters is at the University of Arizona (presumably, few of the observatory officials, mostly Jesuits, were among the drunks rioting in Tucson last night because the Wildcats lost a basketball game), while their telescope is atop Mount Graham just outside Safford.

Great Moments in the Annals of BS

I am a fan of good bullshit. There are few things I enjoy more than, for example, hearing a garbageman being described as a sanitation engineer.

As a fan, therefore, I want to offer homage to Gwyneth Paltrow. Though I've never seen any of her movies, she is well-enough known that even I have heard of her, and her recent addition to the world's supply of great BS will therefore no doubt bring forth additional gems, as her fans try to emulate her.

I refer, of course, to Ms. Paltrow referring to her divorce as a 'conscious uncoupling'.

What, you might ask, is conscious uncoupling? The point of good BS, I remind you, is that it doesn't have to mean a damned thing. In fact, it's better if it doesn't, since if it meant something it might lead to the bullshitter actually being held accountable for the meaning.

If you want to wallow a bit in obfuscation, however, there are entire websites dedicated to conscious uncoupling, according to Google. Here's a not particularly sympathetic article on the subject:

Paltrow helpfully followed up her initial announcement by posting a 2,000-word treatise on conscious uncoupling from Habib Sadeghi and Sherry Sami, a married couple living in Los Angeles. (Dr. Sadeghi is an osteopathic doctor who runs an “integrative health center” called “Be Hive of Healing,” pun presumably intended, and whose book Within: A Spiritual Awakening to Love and Weight Loss contains a foreword written by Paltrow. His wife is a dentist.) 

Sadeghi and Sami begin by explaining that given rapidly accelerating life expectancy, these days it’s unrealistic to expect that we’ll be able to stick it out until death do us part, which suggests we “ought to redefine the construct” of marriage. 

“Our biology and psychology aren’t set up to be with one person for four, five, or six decades,” they write. So there’s the science. Now for some New Agey jargon: “Life is a spiritual exercise in evolving from an exoskeleton for support and survival to an endoskeleton,” they write in a section entitled, “Intimacy & Insects.” They mean by this, basically, that you have to look within yourself for support and strength and healing, not to others, or, one can infer, to any kind of external deity. 

Finally, they get to the part about how to uncouple consciously and “avoid the drama of divorce.” You shouldn’t think about it in terms of your marriage having failed, because (a) as we learned, the expectation that it would last was based on an outdated construct, and (b) this is actually going to be a positive experience if you just let go of old notions and approach it in terms of building up your partner’s spiritual endoskeleton. “To change the concept of divorce, we need to release the belief structures we have around marriage that create rigidity in our thought process,” they write. The “belief structure” that marriage should be for life “is too much pressure for anyone.” 

Conscious uncoupling will bring “wholeness to the spirits of both people who choose to recognize each other as their teachers.” What’s more, conscious uncoupling “prevents families from being broken by divorce and creates expanded families that continue to function in a healthy way outside of traditional marriage.” 

They conclude that by “choosing to handle your uncoupling in a conscious way . . . you’ll see that although it looks like everything is coming apart; it’s actually all coming back together.”

To which I can only add, “Bravo – a truly marvelous piece of bullshit.”

The Commercial Side of a Political Crisis

A Russian supermarket chain is selling its stores in the Ukraine.

It's a pretty small deal (they had only twelve stores in the country, and the price is estimated to be in the $5-10mil range).

X5, Russia's second-biggest retailer and part of billionaire Mikhail Fridman's Alfa Group, is selling its Ukrainian stores to local privately owned supermarket chain Varus, a spokeswoman for the Ukrainian company said on Wednesday. 

She gave no details, but Ukrainian newspaper Capital reported earlier that the deal could be worth around $5-10 million. It had been in the works since October, but the crisis over Crimea may have quickened the pace of talks.

Although the deal was in the works for several months, I can't help wondering how much the price dropped in the last few weeks.

Our Government at (Not) Work

Allow me to rant a bit on one of my recurrent topics – governmental incompetence (US government, in this case). On Jan 27, I applied for a new passport at the US consulate. While I was doing so, I also applied for a passport card (a wallet-sized card that can substitute for a passport in certain circumstances, and can serve as a good form of ID). When I paid, I was told the passport would be ready in about a week and the card in about a month, and that I would receive an email.

Sure enough, an email arrived on Feb 4, telling me that the passport was ready, and that I should allow another 15 to 20 working days for the card. Since I wasn't in a hurry for the passport, and didn't want two long cab rides to the consulate, I waited almost six additional weeks instead of three or four; today I went to the consulate and got my passport – and was told that the passport card is not ready.

It takes SEVEN WEEKS to print a @#$% card!?!? Or, to be more precise: to NOT print a card. No private business could survive with that level of customer disservice.

And while we're on the topic of governmental incompetence (international, this time), I think the Malaysians are setting a new standard.

May God Save Venezuela ...

... Jimmy Carter's on his way.

Excising a Cancer from MLS

Great news that MLS has bought out the ownership of Chivas USA. They will take over running the team until new owners can be found.

The former owners were committed racists (and committed incompetents) who were an embarrassment to the league. The team was composed almost exclusively of players who were Mexican or of Mexican ancestry, they ran the franchise as a farm team for Chivas de Guadalajara, and they apparently tried to purge non-Mexican office employees. Numerous lawsuits resulted.

Getting rid of such people is a great step forward for MLS.

Why Would People Stay in Places Like NY and IL?

Climate probably has something to do with the migration patterns shown here ... but I don't think it's totally coincidental that Texas passed up New York a decade or so ago, and Florida will pass it this year -- and both have no personal income taxes.

On the contrary side, it's not all that simple. When I was being recruited for a job in Texas in 1988, one of the big selling points they used was the 'no income tax' bit. It wasn't a major factor in the decision to move, but it definitely sounded good. Then we got there and I found out that our property taxes in Austin, for a house of the same value, were roughly double what they had been in Phoenix.