I watched the Turner episode of Simon Schama’s Power of Art this weekend. I was dumbfounded to see the painting above won accolades from the London art world in 1840. That is Edwin Landseer’s “Laying Down the Law”. If you showed this to me without any explanation of what it was I would think it was a joke.

I don’t pretend to have any eye for art, and fully admit to my own ignorance, but looking at this all I can think is it’s the British equivalent of Dogs Playing Poker. I just don’t see what point Landseer could possibly be trying to make. That got me to look at the rest of his collection. Prior to that I would have guessed the obvious and said this painting poked fun at lawyers. Yet it seems all his paintings revolve around animals and he’s done a number of anthropomorphized animal paintings. Is he making fun of everyone with these paintings? It all just looks like kitsch to me. Landseer is the painter for little old ladies.

I’m so pumped about this I’m posting it. I get cable TV and Internet from Comcast. This month the price was nudged upwards again. Now that my bill broke the $150 mark I was reminded of all the things that enrage me about Comcast. I don’t get OnDemand like everyone else because I live in a 550 MHz ghetto and there’s no word of any upgrade work being done. Actually the rumor I did hear was that Comcast had no intention of upgrading my cable system. They were going to wait for the analog channel switchover to free up bandwidth instead of laying more cable. I still only have 9 HD channels but only 2 of them really count. One of them is HBO but I don’t pay for any premium channels so I don’t see this. Another is Fox Sports Net but this only shows Warriors games so it’s off the air pretty much all the time. That is such a waste of bandwidth. Five of the HD channels are available OTA for free. All I need is to buy a $30 in-door antenna and I could watch all of those. Actually if I did that I would be able to get an additional OTA HD channel that Comcast doesn’t provide.

I called in to Comcast to ask for any available deals. I did some homework first, picking out a new DSL provider for Internet and a cheaper DirectTV plan for TV. You can’t bargain if you don’t know what else is out there after all. I read online that it’s a mistake to straight up ask to be disconnected. If you do that you run a good chance of getting a CSR who will simply take down your cancellation date without any bargaining. So I opened up with “I received a mailer from DirectTV and I was thinking about switching. Do you have any deals available that I could sign up with instead?” There the negotiations began.

First we discussed the alternatives I was considering. The CSR then offered me the Comcast Triple Play – Cable, Internet and Phone for $100. That actually would have been an improvement for me but my knee-jerk reaction was to tell her I don’t have a phone. I gave it up months ago and switched to my cell phone. So then we talked about what I would do for Internet. She mentioned I already had a discount applied to my Internet service. That was news to me because I was already paying $43 for that. I ignored it though and mentioned the price I had from a DSL provider named Sonic. They offered 6 Mbits for $33. That led to another conversation about phone service.

To be honest I had no idea if I would be required to get phone service if I signed up with Sonic. That didn’t really matter though because the CSR made me a pretty sweet offer. She lowered my bill from $150 to $91 and she threw in Starz for 6 months. Now that’s an awesome deal. That’s less money than what I was paying when I first signed up in 2001. My last bill will be prorated and Starz should work immediately.

Before I got off the phone I made sure I gave her a good thank you. She must take a lot of abuse in that job because she stopped to thank me for that thank you. As soon as I got off the line I checked my TV. Not only did she give me Starz, but now I have HBO and the HBO HD channel! Remember when you’re on the phone with a CSR, politeness pays.

I had a vague idea of the existence of alternative money but it wasn’t until today that I really spent time reading about it. It all started with a passing mention of the Ron Paul Dollar in The Economist. This is a commemorative “coin” issued by Liberty Services (formerly NORFED) to praise Ron Paul’s anti-Federal Reserve stance and, although I haven’t seen it explicitly stated, his likely pro-commodity money opinion.

The Liberty Dollar people are using Ron Paul’s media presence to pump up awareness of their alternative currency. I’d call that plan a success, but what bothers me is the existence of an alternative currency. Why should one exist? Below are five reasons I’m copying from Liberty Services’s FAQ.

1. Because you want to protect the purchasing power of your money.
2. Because you want to profit from inflation.
3. Because you know the US dollar notes are debt based and depreciating.
4. Because you want to affect a real change in a peaceful and positive way.
5. Because you support the Constitutions of the United States and your State.

This sounds like lunacy. Allow me the pleasure of breaking this down for you.

1. If you’re afraid of inflation destroying the value of your money, you buy TIPS. TIPS are Treasury Inflation Protected Securities. These are a type of US government bond where your principle is adjusted according to the CPI, thereby protecting your investment from inflation.

2. There’s a better way to profit from rising inflation than buying Liberty Dollars. Yeah this currency is backed by a silver mine but as the FAQ says you’re paying a premium to support the overhead of running a currency. Why bother with that? Take your depreciating US dollars and buy silver bullion (or another precious metal). Then when you need money, exchange a portion of your silver for it. The silver is the real store of value. The Liberty Dollars are just a middleman, and a dubious middleman at that.

3. Fine. I know US dollars are depreciating. So I’ll spend them now on things that retain their value or appreciate. It’s called investing. It’s the thing everyone is supposed to be doing. Fools sit on their cash. You should be buying bonds, commodities, stocks, real estate. It’s like that Bible story about three servants who get a hand-out from their boss. The two who invested to grow their money were rewarded. The one who saved his money got nothing for it. I think he got fired actually.

4. This is the only reason I can see why anyone would buy a Liberty Dollar. If you want to try and thumb your nose at credit based currency, by all means spend your money on this. Don’t think you’re making a sound economic decision though. As I already said there are smarter ways of protecting yourself from inflation.

5. I bet this reason is nearest and dearest to the militiamen hiding out on the top of a mountain waiting for civilization to fall. Those people constantly cry about defending the Constitution but they’re the first to hope for the nation to collapse. Anyway, I find the logic behind this lacking. The Constitution makes no statements on monetary policy.

I find it really disheartening that people would want to turn back the clock and use commodity backed money again. There are so many negatives. The obvious one is that using a commodity standard for your money takes away the industrial or commercial applications of that commodity. Switching back to a gold or silver standard means those materials would become too valuable to use. They would stay locked away in vaults.

This presents another problem. For your commodity currency to exist you have to store an amount of the commodity that equals the money supply. M2, which includes cash, savings accounts, checking accounts, travelers checks, CDs under $100,000, and mutual funds, was reported on July 19th as $7.25 trillion. Collecting all the gold on Earth would not be enough to equal M2, let alone M3 which the Fed stopped bothering to report. M3 is probably around $10 trillion.

So switching to a commodity currency would shrink the money supply because there is not enough of any commodity to equal the value of all the money that’s out there today. A shrinking money supply is deflationary. The common person would make the mistake of thinking that’s a good thing because in a deflationary environment you see prices tumbling. You’re forgetting though that your wallet is also shrinking, and so is everyone else’s. There’s less money in the system. This will retard growth or even shrink the economy if it’s bad enough because companies will have a harder time getting money to expand. Entrepreneurs will have a harder time finding people to invest in them so fewer new companies will get started. That means higher unemployment and a stagnant economy. Japan has suffered with deflation for about fifteen years now. It is not an enviable situation.

After the dust settled a commodity currency would be less stable than the credit based currency we’re using today anyway. When have commodity prices been stable? The constant change in the value of gold or silver would constantly change the size of the money supply. Don’t tell me the government is fixing the price of a commodity. You can say a dollar equals one-thirty-fifth of an ounce of gold. When a new gold mine comes online and pumps tons of the metal into the marketplace it will effect the value of your money. If the government doesn’t revalue your dollars, a black market will emerge.

I can only guess an old fashioned commodity currency appeals to people who distrust the modern world. Go hoard your bullion fellas. Just don’t try to give me any of your cuckoo bananas money.

In The Economist there was a brief story on the troubles of Papua New Guinea. This large island nation is Asia’s disaster story. I would have called it a failed state but there really was never a state in the first place so nothing could have failed. In the last thirty years GDP has stagnated while the population continues to grow. The economy has not diversified beyond mining and plantations, and the average citizen scrapes by with subsistence farming little different from life a century ago.

The Economist seems to blame dodgy government for this situation. Politicians are content to dole out government money to their local districts to buy support. In our part of the world we would call it vote buying or patronage if you’re a fancy fellow, but when it comes to PNG we “don’t understand”.

I don’t want to focus on their corrupt society though. While reading about their government it occurred to me a parliamentary system is terrible for a place like PNG.

Voters in PNG mostly cast their ballots for local personalities. So another mixed-bag coalition, bolted together after fierce haggling, seems likely. It will be weeks before the country knows what sort of a government it has chosen.

The parliamentary system puts too much power into political parties which are weak, local and fractious in PNG. That country needs a system that diminishes parties and allows individuals to excel in office. I think PNG’s government would become a lot more stable if they adopted a system like the US. The election would be a simple matter of who wins or loses in a district. The winning representative would be sent off to the national legislature immediately. There wouldn’t be any post-election negotiations that can only serve to encourage corruption between parties.

It would make it a lot easier for representatives to work with each other. As I understand it, crossing party lines in a parliamentary government is politically dangerous. Political parties would still exist but they would lose their official position in government. Instead of two camps of government parties and opposition parties arguing back and forth, PNG’s legislature would have shifting political alliances among the representatives based on specific issues crossing party lines. I know it sounds more complicated but I think injecting that uncertainty into the legislature would do more to tone down corruption because it would make it horse-trading so much more complicated.

A politician, under a US-style system, would have to make individual deals among the dozens and dozens of fellow legislators to push their pet project through. Even though parties would still exist the number of them (33 according to Wikipedia) present in PNG would weaken their total power. As The Economist pointed out voters in PNG usually vote for local personalities. This gives the individual representative a lot of power over political parties because their office comes from their individual popularity in their district, not from the reputation of the party. If they get tossed out of their party another one will certainly try to sign them up, or even as an independent they can still get some things accomplished. This isn’t the case with the current party setup. A representative who is rejected from their party will find their power at home diminished because alone they won’t be bringing home any bacon. Their only option is to get into another party. That gives party bosses much more leverage.

Stability would be a good change for PNG. Diminishing the power of political parties would go a long towards that goal. Granted I don’t think this will ever happen. Parliamentary government seems to be entrenched in most of the world. Still though I think this idea would help.

I am a proud owner of a Mazda3. It’s the second car I’ve owned, but more importantly it’s the first new car I bought. It took me almost a year of on and off research to decide on this car. During the course of that research one thing that always bothered me was the difference between the Mazda3 and the Mazda6. You would assume the Mazda6 would be better yet I didn’t care for it at all. Forget the options because that could be a post on its own. Just compare the bodies.

I was drawn to the Mazda3 because of its shape. I felt like the car had bigger proportions than the Mazda6. The door handles seemed larger. The rear end seemed higher. I thought it was more angular. It just felt like a bigger car. The Mazda6 seemed too curvy and timid. It seemed kind of feminine actually. So I opted for the Mazda3.

However some spy shots of the next generation Mazda6 has hit the autoblogging world today. This new version has really changed my opinion of the car. Even though it’s mostly covered up you can still get a good idea of its body. This looks like a much more vigorous car. I think it’s those bigger headlights. Having them stretched back like that makes me think of speed.

Make sure you look at the interior. It’s quintessential Mazda modern. Those gauges seem huge. I thought the ones on my car were quite big but damn those are just massive. I wonder if it’s just an illusion from the angle we’re seeing them at. I kind of want to measure mine now. The center instrument panel is very impressive. Did Mazda move the display up? I think the center vents in my car are above the display. Ya know I really should remember that considering I’ve had my Mazda3 for over a year.

The new Mazda6 is expected to use the common 3.5 liter V6 from Ford, but there will also be a 4-cylinder version that gets 180 horsepower. Frickin’ awesome. Now all Mazda has to do is throw in a CVT and I’ll be in love.

This is as close as I can get to liveblogging since there’s no WIFI here and I don’t trust my laptop in direct sunlight either. So I’m sitting out with pad and pen in Costco’s picnic seating just jotting down my observations.

I started coming for lunch at Costco because I developed a craving for the pizza. Now maybe I have been away from New York City for too long, but damn is Costco pizza great. So last Saturday afternoon I drove down and ordered two slices along with a polish sausage and a bottomless fountain soda. That sounds like a lot but it cost less than $6. There are few places you can stuff yourself for so little money. I know for certain this place is a good deal because across the aisle from me was a Mexican family who bought a whole pizza pie to share for lunch. Mexicans know how to stretch a dollar. Seeing them there let me put my wallet at ease.

My Friday afternoon lunch today had a lot of guys I would bet are engineers. They were wearing polo shirts or short sleeve button down shirts. I don’t think there are a lot of industries where the employees dress quite like that. I bet Costco food appeals to those guys because of its cost efficiency. Like I already said, you can stuff yourself for little money.

Costco really has a wide variety of customers, but after sitting here watching the crowd I noticed there were a few standouts. I think the store is really popular with Asians. Looking around I thought about 50% of the people going in and out of the store were Asian. Most of the customers, across all races, were middle aged. I’m estimating two-thirds were 30 to 50 years old. I can’t explain Costco’s popularity among Asians but having so many middle aged people there makes sense. That’s the age when people have families and can benefit from bulk buying. The elderly don’t need to buy three gallons of orange juice at once. Besides they are probably too feeble to push the giant carts or load those bulk items into their cars.

With age comes the sad truth that most Costco shoppers are kinda ugly. No matter which way I turned I couldn’t escape that. That doesn’t mean you can’t find a few lookers in the bunch though. There was a very blonde woman with two very blonde children who came for some shopping. She was thin, lightly tanned and wore white nearly from head to toe. I bet her name was Bryn. Oh and I did spot an Asian woman so stunning I sat there slackjawed. She was with a man I hope was her father because he was too old and too shlubby for someone so beautiful.

Well my pepperoni pizza is finished and I’m down to the polish sausage. The crowd has really thinned out too. When I first came the line for whole pies was huge. Now no one is waiting for any. My eyes have finally adjusted to the sunlight too. When I first sat down I was nearly blind. Costco provides no covering out here so the sun reflects off of everything. I blinded myself with the aluminum foil wrapped over my pizza. I really wish Costco put a little more thought into this. I shouldn’t be surprised though because they don’t seem to do a good job of keeping the seats clean. It looks like they do nothing but hose down the seats in the morning. Before I started writing I had to flick away several onion bits to make room for my notepad.

The birds rule this place by the way. I’ve had to shoo some away twice. Right now I can count five of them surrounding me. I think I should finish this sausage and get out of here before they strike.

So why will I come back to a place that I know is dirty and is a playground for wild birds? Because the pizza is friggin’ great.

I had no idea things were so dire for VW in America. Sure their sales have been in decline but VW has reached the point where they are contemplating withdrawal from the US. I guess Ford and GM aren’t the only car companies getting hurt here. VW lost around a billion dollars in each of the last three years.

Why this harsh reversal of fortune? The comments at Autoblog seem to have read my mind – crappy quality and stupid high prices. Every time someone asks me my opinion about a Volkswagen I always try to steer them away. The cars aren’t worth the money. The base models have comparable prices but they’re so stripped down. After you add the options everyone wants you end up paying thousands more than the equivalent car elsewhere. A Jetta can cost $29,000. A Passat sedan approaches $35,000. Those are just ridiculous prices. As the Autobloggers helpfully pointed out VW dealers won’t stock, or even order for you, the stripped down models anyway.

I guess this cost problem is only fed by Volkswagen’s desire to move upmarket in the US. As I understand it Europeans highly prize VWs. There is a good amount of prestige attached to that brand. I think it’s like buying BMW or Infiniti here in America. That’s the direction Volkswagen wanted to move in, but Americans wouldn’t follow. We still think of VW as an economy car. Thus the disaster of the Phaeton. It’s likely you’ve never heard of that car because sales were abysmal. This was Volkswagen’s attempt to get the attention of Mercedes buyers. It was $80,000 of sumptuous driving that no one wanted. The VW brand does not have that kind of value.

I find it really funny that this company, who so carefully cultivates its image in its advertising, has so little understanding of it. They have forged an image of their buyers as youthful and struggling to establish themselves. Remember the “Da Da Da” ad from the late 90s? It had two 20-somethings who lack enough money that garbage seating would appeal to them. That has always been the Volkswagen customer. The VW is supposed to be the one thing you splurge on as you’re growing into adulthood. Yes you use furniture you found on the street. You share an apartment with three of your friends. Your credit cards are maxed. But your Volkswagen is your refuge. Volkswagen is blind to these people. That was the core VW buyer, but today those people are buying Civics, or godforbid even Scions, because they can’t afford a VW. Meanwhile people who have money don’t want a VW badge on their car. That still carries the impression of cheapness if not the reality. And these executives still haven’t learned. The Phaeton is scheduled to return to the US.

Lousy pricing is only half the story. You might still attract some people who can afford $30k to that quirky brand image. However a lot of these would-be buyers get scarred off by Volkswagen’s poor reputation for quality. Years ago VW was able to bring in buyers with talk about German engineering, but now the Internet has too many horror stories. It’s easy to pull up J.D. Power surveys or search for recurring problems on blogs and forums. The service center experience sucks hard as well. This year VW was ranked third from the bottom in the JD Power Customer Service Index Study. In 2006 they were ranked next to last. In 2005, third from the bottom.

At the start of this I was shocked Volkswagen might be leaving the US. After thinking about it I say good riddance. They charge too much for lousy cars. Why should anyone mourn them?

Awhile back I wrote about 198 Green Street. The owner of that building was in the process of a very bold residing. As with any project that dares to step outside of the norm it received some criticism, but not from me. I loved the new siding. The owner was nice enough to send me some pictures of the finished job.

The first picture I saw was too small for me to notice but that is a very handsome front door. When you click on the large image focus on that. It has a beautiful dark finish. It looks almost medieval, like it was salvaged from a castle. Oh and check out the cobbles in front. Fantastic! So often you see boring concrete there.

By the way take a peek at the front windows. I see some very bright orange walls just at the edges of the curtains. It seems the interior of this home could well be just as daring as the exterior.

There is one thing though that bothers me. I don’t like that wavy detail on the fence. I find it distracting. I would have chosen a straight rail so the fence would tastefully blend into the background. The slanted silver bar across the front should be the first thing you see. I feel like now it’s competing for attention with the building.

But hey that’s not a huge thing. All in all it’s still a great job and a big improvement to the neighborhood. I wish the rest of the landlords in Greenpoint would try to be half as creative as this guy. Whatever happened to pride in ownership?

Click for larger images

Here’s another example of why I don’t like unions. In Peru a teacher’s strike has turned into national left-wing protest. Three people have already died. Can you guess the cause of this nationwide turmoil? The Peruvian government passed a new law requiring teachers to take a proficiency test. If they repeatedly fail the test, they get fired. Does that shock you as much as it shocks me? Three people have died so teachers won’t have to justify they are fit for the job. This test isn’t even a one try deal. The BBC article clearly states teachers are only fired if they fail “repeatedly”. I don’t know if that means two or ten tries but I think anything more than one is generous.

Unions used to be necessary to ensure a safe and equitable workplace. These days they’re racketeers. They take their cut from their members, and if the management does anything they don’t like, the union puts the screws on them. In this case the unions have people believing their job belongs to them. The boss has no say in it. You will work there only as long as you want to. Competency be damned. This sort of entitlement is outrageous. You do not have a right to your job. Your employer has every right to test if you are capable of doing the work required. Since this protest has spread to other industries it seems this attitude is rife in Peru. The loser in the presidential race, Ollanta Humala, Hugo Chavez’s boy, has joined in the protests. Given Latin America’s track record I wonder if this will topple the Peruvian government.

Sadly I’m not up on my Peruvian political debates so I don’t know how this law was debated. I will bet though that President Garcia didn’t do squat to sell this law to the public. If he did, he did it real half-assed. He probably touted “reform” as necessary for Peru to grow. He’s right, but reform never won the support of the common man. He needs to seek out the support of parents. Garcia should tout how this law will weed out bad teachers. He should get out there surrounded by crowds of kids and simply repeat “It’s for the children”. There’s no better way to cloud people’s minds than to use kids as an excuse.

It used to be enough that they were grown without using pesticides, but now organic groceries are on their way to becoming the new kosher! MSNBC has brought to my attention the latest development in organic food gimmickry. To be Certified Organic the organic food must not come into contact with normal food. Somehow the slightest contact between them would transfer all the pesticides and the contaminants and the evil that’s grown in normal fruits and vegetables.

This is seriously ridiculous. I am utterly annoyed at the mother in the MSNBC article. “I need to know it’s natural and I’m not giving them chemicals,” she said. There’s just so much there that pisses me off. Chemicals are natural. People have gotten it in to their head that chemicals are this man-made evil. If you drink water, you’re drinking a chemical. And natural… what does she mean by that? Natural is just another buzzword everyone agrees is good, but no one really understands what it means. Did she buy processed boxed cereals or sugar-laden juices? Did she get her kids those handy-dandy Lunchables to take to school? I would absolutely love to pick apart the rest of her shopping cart.

Really though what happened to washing your food! If I’m wrong and it’s actually true that pesticides are being transferred in meaningful quantities, it shouldn’t matter because you should be washing your fruits and vegetables before eating them anyway. Take a few minutes to clean and you don’t have to worry about pesticides at all.

But that mother is the perfect market for organic food. She knows natural is good but doesn’t spend time actually thinking about what is natural, and she probably has enough disposable income that she wouldn’t question the higher price. This whole idea of strict segregation of organic food is a marvelous strategy to radicalize customers. They will take note of the new separation and that will get them to think of regular food as contaminated. Whereas before most organic shoppers might have seen normal food as inferior, now they will think of it as harmful.

I can’t wait to see the next step. Now the two foods won’t be allowed to touch. Later we’re going to hear that organic food can’t be within eyesight of regular food lest regular food’s evil toxic chemicals harsh your buzz. It’s coming.