Who’d thunk it?

Three cats and a truckload of stuff later...

Mother nature cooperated by providing us with the first taste of spring today. R's friend had sent two of his friends along to help out with the move (he has a barbershop and Saturday is his busy day). Both of the guys were Southsiders who had lived in the neighborhood since the late 60's. They had a different view of the gentrification of Williamsburg than most.

Have two years gone by already? At times it seems longer, at times it seems shorter - I can’t believe it. Two years of my inanities out there for the world to see.

I don’t feel any closer to where I want to be either - that’s bad.

It’s coming, it’s coming...



Need I say more?

The perils of sleep deprivation.

So, I’ve been working nights over the last few weeks. This is not something bad, I actually enjoy this a bit. Working an exclusively night shift is a bit better than working those day shifts than extend into a night shift - the ones where you are in the office by 10am and out very, very late.

Night shift means some days you are around when the sun comes up and sometimes you are out before midnight, the point is working that night shift means a day rarely goes longer than 13 hours and 13 hours is usually the exception.

Night shift also means I drive into the city which can or can’t be enjoyable depending upon traffic conditions but, coming home is generally blissful and quick. Nobody is on the road at the end of your day and actually I find it takes me significantly less time to commute home than it would during normal hours - normal rush hour commute time being somewhere between an hour and fifteen to an hour and forty five minutes versus about forty minutes door to door.

The day turns into a quieter experience overall, there aren’t office politics on night shifts generally, most people aren’t around for the entirety of the shift and generally it’s just a matter of going into the office and getting your work done.

I have to admit there’s something about “the quiet” aspect of the night shift that I enjoy. The city is more peaceful and serene too. New York is truly one of the most beautiful places you could imagine, especially late at night when a calm descends on her. The lights in the buildings are gorgeous, the streets serene, there’s just a different aspect to the city when you’re not trying to play dodge with all the other people to get where you need to be.

But, there are drawbacks...

Working night shift, your sleep cycle is never really regular. What I mean to say, at least for me, is that I find myself either wide awake or absolutely exhausted at the oddest hours. If a day goes exceptionally long, I’ll try to cram in some of life’s more mundane chores (laundry, post office, etc...) at the end of the day - morning to the rest of the world and wind up getting to sleep around 11 or noon only to wake up a few hours later to go back in.

Other times I’ll just get home and sleep through most of the morning waking up sometime early in the afternoon and slowly getting myself together to get ready for the ‘day.’

Certainly though, one is on a completely different schedule than the majority of the planet and that’s where the problem as well as the charm of things lie. Days off are relegated to returning to a more normal sleep pattern or at least catching up on sleep to the point of not walking around feeling like a walking zombie.

So, if anyone wonders, it’s not a slight of any kind, I’m just in a constant state of adjustment which should be ending soon.

Speaking of time

There apparently is some kind of glitch in the blogger app where the clock with posting times doesn’t seem to be updating to the current time. Consequently, if I leave the browser up and running (although long since logged off) the time remains the same and there a bunch of entries seemingly made in a short spurt (which couldn’t be further from the truth).

What time is it?

The other day I started writing a postcard to an old friend. This is a friend of mine who I met in 1974! Geeeezuuuzzzz! That’s over 30 years ago now!

So, I started writing this card and I was wondering about the nature of time. Not knowing how all those years could pass by seemingly so quickly, I was just aimlessly speculating with this person about whether or not time could be considered in something other than the abstract. There’s all this terminology which makes reference to time as something more concrete than the reality of this shapeless, formless principle which rules our lives.

It’s one of the things rolling around in my head, I’ve always gone up to people older than myself and asked them how they perceive the passage of time and it’s interesting how rapidly the days get progressively the older one gets. When you’re a child and have logged so few hours to measure your life against, each new day is a gigantic marker, months are an eternity and the years, eons.

Now, middle aged, the days pass by like signposts along a highway at 50 miles per hour. I can only imagine how the EYOC perceives these things.

So, the other night I happened to be in the car driving home and I heard this show. - [real player required]

Einstein’s Theory of Relativity may have implications on the concept of choice. Namely, that there is none. Do we choose what movie to see tonight? No. (It’s already been chosen, some say.) Do we choose to wiggle our finger? No. (Already wiggled.) This hour of Radio Lab features conversations with scientists and an entire cast of characters who are all waging battle against time – or at least the common sense view of time. We’ll visit a particle accelerator where scientists recreate the moment just after the beginning of time… and also a Dublin artist whose life is a 19 century time-experiment. We end in the Mojave desert, where geologic time flows like a frozen hourglass.

It was an amazing bit of synchronicity and a very enjoyable listen if you have (of course) the time.

The Road Less Traveled...

Every once in awhile, I’ll just hit the next blog button to see where I wind up. This time, it was the blog of some fifteen year old out in California (I think). Talk about your alien worlds, I really felt like a stranger in a strange land looking through that one. It linked to the blogs of other teenage girls where I found this gem:

He’s a bastard!
He sux!
Why must he always do things that agitate people?!
The way he expresses himself makes me angrier!
The way he looks at people, the way he talks
You can slap across his bloody face and curse his cock!
Today’s P.E.,
I yelled and swore at him
Son of a bitch!
Out of mid, out of sight!
Fuck off! si liuyang! KNNCB!

Which actually had me laughing a good deal.

I imagine I’ve officially moved into the “crotchety phase” of life as I find it hard to put stock in the musings of someone who probably can’t remember a president before Bill Clinton. Then again, it’s not that far off from the people who are going to be in the graduating class of ’05.

How scary.

The Soviet Union is ancient history. There was never a time when there wasn’t an internet or cell phones. Lord, the next thing you know I’ll be like that Dana Carvey character - “In my day...”

Grumpy Old Man: I’m old and I’m not happy. Everything today is improved and I don’t like it. I hate it! In my day we didn’t have hair dryers. If you wanted to blow dry your hair you stood outside during a hurricane. Your hair was dry but you had a sharp piece of wood driven clear through your skull and that’s the way it was and you liked it! You loved it. Whoopee, I'm a human head-kabob. We didn't have Manoxidol and Hair Wings, in my day if your hair started falling out when you were 16 by 19 you were a bald freak. There was nothing you could do about it. Children would spit at you and nobody would mate with you so you couldn’t pass on your disgusting baldness genes. You were a public menace, a crome dome by age 20 and that’s the way it was and we liked it! We loved it. Hallelujiah look at me, I’m a bald freak oh happy day! Not like today, everybody feeling good about themselves. I hate it! In my day we didn’t have these thin laytex condoms. So you could enjoy sexual pleasure. In my day there was only one kind of condom. You took a rabbit skin and wrapped around your privates and tied it off with a bungee cord and you couldn't feel nothing! And half the time you didn't even know your partner was there. And we used the same one over and over again! ’Cause we were ignorant morons! Just a bunch of hairless, head-kabobs standing around with rabbit skins on our dinks and that's the way we liked it!

Everytime I think about stuff like this, I can’t say I have the desire to turn back the clock and be fifteen again but, I wouldn’t mind being in my thirties once more. Einstein should have had some kind of theorum about the passage of time as one gets older because time certainly seems to go by faster and faster.

The kids doing time in Iraq now (the ones in their twenties anyway), were born during Reagan’s second term - that’s a really scary thought.

Didn’t I hear this on a Cheech and Chong album once...

The 17-year-old Coeur d'Alene High School student was upset after a prank in which the other student put peanut butter in his cheese sandwich days before. He told a school resource officer that, “he hated peanut butter and it made him more mad than he could explain,”

“I myself have great problems with screwing together such furniture.”



Swedish home furnishings giant IKEA is guilty of sex discrimination by showing only men putting together furniture in its instruction manuals, Norway’s prime minister says.

In Geek News...



Just a some cool stuff about Mount Saint Helens and a great site with info from the USGS.

So, the other day I had this image spring to mind of a poltical cartoon. In it, Junior our fearless leader would be playing Risk having already captured Iraq and Afghanistan and preparing to attack Iran and Syria.

I alluded to the changing face of a neighborhood and the implications it could have nationwide so, here’s a nugget for thought.

I’ve been working down in the Wall Street area these days which has been very much the treat since I was never really a big haunter of the downtown neighborhood and so the experience has been one of exploration and discovery as I become familiar with the environs.

It has changed greatly though since the days when I rode the yellow beast. Time was, I could drive my car right up Broad Street past the NYSE building and Federal Hall. Not anymore, since September 11th the area around the Exchange has been marked by heightened security, with those obstacles blocking any vehicular traffic, bomb sniffing dogs, pick up trucks parked at angles to prevent someone from driving right up in front of the building, plenty of guards and police too.

So, all these steps and precautions have been taken - all at great expense but, to protect what? A future museum?

If you hear a ticking sound, it’s the days of NYSE’s trading floor counting down because those days are numbered. Those days of men dressed in sharp, crisp and expensive suits, making their way to the southern tip of Manhattan Island to move billions of dollars and live a lavish lifestyle are coming to a rapid end.

Your first thought might be that the planes hitting the towers on September 11th somehow succeeded in their work but, the truth is the groundwork was laid long before that fateful day, if anything the planes flying into the WTC only hastened the process.

This is testimony by Laura S. Unger, Commissioner, U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission Concerning the Effect of Technology on the Capital Markets:

Technology has changed the world faster than many of us could have imagined, and continues to change it at a pace that is both exciting and daunting. More and more information is available to us everyday. Nowhere can the effect of technological change be seen any clearer than in the securities markets...

...In a way, the Internet is the wild card that makes it difficult to predict what the securities market will look like five or ten years from now. By some estimates, 21 million people will have online accounts by the year 2003.[1] According to a study published in February 1999, the key economic factors that will have a large impact on the growth of electronic commerce will be ease and cost of access, convenience, and the appeal of mass customization.[2] Financial services is one of the top five categories of business-to-consumer electronic commerce today.[3]

The Internet is dramatically transforming how individual investors participate in the market by providing them with more timely and high-quality information. In this respect, it furthers one of the most fundamental principles of securities regulation — transparency.

Currently, about 147 million people use the Internet worldwide. Approximately 77 million of these users are in the United States. One source estimates that 21 percent of all domestic households have Internet access.[4] Predictions are that there will be 300 million users worldwide by the end of the year 2000, and 720 million by the end of 2005.[5]

Now, this is over five years ago!

So, when I look from the office I’m in at the surrounding buildings, I imagine I shouldn’t be surprised to find instead of looking out at harried financial workers working late and putting in long hours, I’m looking across into the living room of someone who has moved into a formal commercial building converted into a luxury rental.

Then there’s this testimony in Congress from 2002:

There is a quiet revolution starting in the U.S. Listed marketplace. Investors and traders who have become disenchanted with current market structure are moving beyond the experimentation phase. They are starting to employ ATSs like the ones represented here today. The value proposition is clear. Execution that is electronically matched without human intermediation takes one middleman and the resulting economic impact of that middleman out of the equation. What makes that possible today? I would submit to you that advanced technology, industry protocols, and high-speed networks support this type of healthy competition without the resultant risk of fragmentation.

This quiet revolution combined with the decimalization of stocks, the consolidation of the New York Stock Exchange specialist units, the requirement to submit quality of execution data for the public record, and the extended bear market in the U.S. Equity markets is in the process of causing profound change to the security industry.

Or how about this:

...But many planners see a domino effect that could intensify patterns of sprawl - just at a time when urban areas were making a modest comeback. Backup facilities and satellite offices need a labor force nearby, as well as infrastructure and commercial development. Westchester officials already are saying the NYSE facility would trigger growth. Some Fidelity employees now working in Boston have moved to the suburbs in anticipation of needing to be at regional sites in Smithfield, R.I., or Merrimack, N.H., one executive said.

While real estate specialists see no conclusive evidence of a wholesale exodus to the suburbs, security concerns and soaring insurance premiums for urban properties have become reasons for businesses to quit the city. Some government agencies are already headed in that direction, as in the case of the Office of Homeland Security, mulling headquarters in rural Virginia rather than Washington D.C.

“We're going to look back 20 years from now and ask how this happened,” said Harvard law professor David J. Barron, who believes that such symbolic moves, as well as legal and policy frameworks, dictate development patterns. “We built the [interstate] highways for defense, and the next thing you know we had a whole way of living that no one ever necessarily chose.”

Now, let’s put it in other terms - New York City’s history has been built around commerce, first because of its geographic location as a port it being a portal for the movement of goods from this country out into the world. Over the last fifty years, New York as a port has diminished in importance as carriers have chosen to use other ports for larger ships and shipping itself has undergone a transformation (I believe Virginia has the busiest port now on the East Coast and Newark has taken the rest of New York‘s freight traffic). This is an industry that’s gone from the city now (ever hear of On The Waterfront?).

Financial services were a sector where the city relied on a lot of revenue - taxes, jobs and the ancillary benefits resultant from having the industry located in and around Wall Street.

What happens though, when trading becomes electronic and decentralized? What replaces that industry and those jobs. What does it mean for New York and the nation?

The merger announced May 3 combining the Deutsche Börse Frankfurt (Frankfurt Stock Exchange) and the London Stock Exchange (LSE) will create the biggest stock exchange in Europe. The new entity, to be named International Exchange (iX), will be the fourth largest stock exchange in the world following the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), Nasdaq and Tokyo.

Most commentators see the Frankurt-London link-up as being a “first step towards a global stock exchange” which might well result in a unified pan-European stock market within the next two years. The British newspaper the Guardian writes: “A single global stock market is now one step closer to reality.”

But this increasing concentration is also intensifying rivalries within Europe and between Europe and the United States. In the same report quoted above the Guardian warns: “The merger of the London Stock Exchange and Frankfurt’s Deutsche Börse might be a blow to the former.” However, it then goes on to say: “but that's no reason to stand in the way of globalization.” Other commentaries place more emphasis on the emergence of a European rival to counter market domination by the NYSE.

Yes, it’s a changing world we live but, it’s always better to try and anticipate the change rather than get swept up by it.

The Yuan and you...

Critics of China’s foreign exchange restrictions say that the yuan’s peg to the dollar undervalues the currency by as much as 40 percent, making Chinese exports artificially cheap and giving its manufacturers an unfair advantage.

China has promised to eventually allow the yuan to trade freely, but has not said when. It contends that the country's economy and its fragile financial system require a stable currency.

All right, so I hinted at wanting to talk about the Yuan so, maybe tonight I’ll finally get around to it. If you don’t know, the Yuan is the currency of China (like the dollar here). Over the last ten years, as China has experienced this big growth spurt we all keep hearing about, the Chinese government has been keeping things going by not tying the value of the Yuan to any of the world’s other currencies. Things are cheaper in China because, the Chinese government says they’re cheaper!

Let that roll over in your mind for a second.

Okay, let’s say for example the feds suddenly decided to make a dollar worth a dime (a ten worth a dollar, a hundred worth a ten) everything would suddenly get cheaper over night - of course, your wages would go down as well and relatively speaking you’d still be in the same fix but, I think you get the drift.

Now, another thing that happened, is our currency is off the gold standard. However, since World War Two ended, the dollar has been the “imperial currency” of the world which helps things along of course and makes the rest of the world have a vested interest in our economy. Everybody trades with everyone else and the dollar is being used as the common yardstick for everyone in determining the value of goods. Being the country issuing the currency the world uses for this is a good thing.

Under the Bretton Woods system, central banks of countries other than the US were given the task of maintaining fixed exchange rates between their currencies and the dollar. They did this by intervening in foreign exchange markets. If a country’s currency was too high relative to the dollar, its central bank would sell its currency in exchange for dollars, driving down the value of its currency. Conversely, if the value of a country's money was too low, the country would buy its own currency, thereby driving up the price.

The dollar became the world's reserve currency. Yet there were limits placed upon each country and especially the US. Each country had to police its own reserves and currency or be forced to revalue. And the US was constrained because the dollar was fully convertible into gold. This changed in 1971 when Nixon closed the gold window.

But, what if that we‘re to change?

What would the impact on the economy of our country be particularly in an era where the federal government keeps “borrowing against the future,” driving up bigger deficits.

Let’s just say, it wouldn’t be pretty.

That sinking dollar... President Bush continued to wend his way through Europe today. At Weisbaden Army Airfield in Germany he told U.S. troops who’d served in Iraq that America stands with them. He's on what many see as a fence-mending trip to ease tensions over the Iraq war. But Marketplace commentator Robert Reich argues the real action is taking place in another part of the globe entirely.

Well, I’m a layman when it comes to these things but, I had heard some rumblings along these lines and then the other night a few weeks back, I caught a Robert Reich piece on NPR’s marketplace and Reich certainly explains the situation much more eloquently than I ever could so, why don’t you give a listen for yourself and make come to your own conclusions about the implications.

It’s been a busy week which just managed to rocket by - unfortunately it’s times like these when getting around to writing something suffers. So, tonight I’ll provide teasers to just what is on the radar these days...

I’m looking around for information currently on the Yuan after hearing an alarming piece on the radio the other day. Just something I want to bring to your attention dear readers. Then, there was the commentary I was going to make on an ad I saw just prior to a movie the other day and how it encapsulated everything that was wrong about the attitudes many people take towards driving and their cars. Lastly, I wanted to comment on something more local, something which has to do with a neighborhoods’ transformation here in New York and how the transformation of several very small blocks in the city could have implications nationwide.

Another good article about Jef Raskin:

Whenever you point and click and drag an icon around on a computer screen, you are doing so thanks to Jef Raskin, a pioneering computer engineer and father of the Macintosh computer. He died over the weekend, at 61, of pancreatic cancer.

Contrary to Silicon Valley lore it was Raskin and not Apple Computer (nasdaq: AAPL - news - people ) Chief Executive Steve Jobs who discovered and saw the marketability of technologies that would kick start the PC revolution.

and an interesting article written by the man himself:

Microsoft Word requires at least 30% more keystrokes and 100% more mouse moves to accomplish certain editing tasks than would an optimal word processor. Decreasing physical work not only saves time but also decreases incidents of repetitive stress injury. Good design can eliminate many of the steps that are most damaging to nerves and tendons.

On the radar:



Plot: Frank Miller wrote the graphic novel series that inspired the film. The film will comprise three intertwining vignettes revolving around a dark set of characters who call the fictional corrupt town home. In 'The Hard Goodbye', the brutish ugly Marv awakens to find his beautiful Goldie has been murdered quietly during the night and sets out to take down those responsible. In 'That Yellow Bastard', police officer Hartigan has only one hour left before his shield is finally put to rest, but when he learns of a young girl out there helpless in the hands of a drooling lunatic - he knows he'll go out with a bang. Finally, in 'The Big Fat Kill' the life of an eccentric artist/ex-marine takes a number of bizarre turns after he prevents a beautiful woman from committing suicide.

Saw the previews for Be Cool, the follow up to Get Shorty which looks like it has great suck potential (even with the A-list cast). I get nervous when I see John Travolta and Uma Thurman trying to recapture the magic of their dance scene from Pulp Fiction.

If you live in the five boroughs and you own a car, I give you this gift. Which I came across last night while trying to find out if Alternate Side of the Street Parking would be canceled today.

Something for you to idle away the time with when you find yourself bored, an online picture puzzle.

In Geek News...




Jef Raskin, Expert Who Created Apple's Groundbreaking Macintosh Computer, Dies at 61

“His role on the Macintosh was the initiator of the project, so it wouldn't be here if it weren't for him,” said Andy Hertzfeld, an early Mac team member.

Raskin, who worked as a computer science professor before joining Apple, was well aware of the research being done in computer interfaces at Xerox’s Palo Alto Research Center. He worked to bring it to the attention of Apple executives.

Just a quick mention...



from Roger Ebert:
Countless college graduates enter this dream world every year, without reflecting (a) that there are many fewer positions at the top than at the bottom, and (b) that therefore, if the corporations are still hiring at the bottom, it is because there are fatalities at the top. You can always get someone younger and cheaper to do the job of the older and more experienced.

There's one scene in the movie that works well even though it's less than convincing. The conglomerator Teddy K jets in for a meeting with the staff, at which he recites various corporate platitudes to an adoring audience (one of the keys to success in business is the ability to endure the gaseous inanities of Management-Speak as if they meant anything). Then Dan stands up and, with everything to lose, explains clearly and mercilessly just why Teddy K is full of it. Whenever anyone speaks the plain truth on such an occasion, there is a palpable shock; how can such enterprises survive realism? Consider the soldier who asked Donald Rumsfeld, please, sir, may we have some more armor?

Saw the movie today and I have to admit it was just a plain, very enjoyable, decent comedy. A lot of fun to watch. I can’t imagine why a relatively good movie is so hard to make, If you get a chance it’s worth catching.

Alright, enough of the snow already...

Please!