Author: Jon

Those who forget history . . .

Ford Posts Record Loss of $12.7 Billion – washingtonpost.com

The company’s strategy is built around catering to those new consumer demands and also shifting its assembly lines to use fewer unique engine and transmission combinations and more common “platforms.”

Is it any wonder that Ford sucks?  Henry Ford is nearly synonymous with “assembly line”, and yet Ford Motor Company can’t manage to reuse components and processes?  If there is a heaven, I’ll bet Henry Ford spends all his time up there jumping up and down and screaming at Ford MoCo executives for being so stupid.  They’ve taken the number two automobile company in the country and flushed it down the toilet because they forgot about the stuff that their founder figured out a hundred years ago.  They’re behind Toyota now worldwide, and will likely fall behind them in North America, too.

Can you imagine losing 12.7 billion dollars?  Can you imagine even looking at $12.7 billion?  Seriously, no one above middle management there should be taking a salary until the company breaks even.

Best Indian food ever

Haandi Fine Indian Cuisine

Who knew the best Indian food I’ve ever had would be from a strip mall in Falls Church?  We took my grandmother last night as a Christmas present.  She’s very hard to shop for – she pretty much has everything she’ll ever need.  So we figured food and company would be better than things she doesn’t really have much use for.  And the food was worth the slight wrong turn I took in getting from her house to the restaurant.

Anyway, I highly recommend the place.  They have a location in Bethesda, too, though I’ve never been.

Spammers need to die

I’ve had an Akismet spam filter on the comments here since right after I started the site last August.  It’s caught about 1500 spam comments in that time.  However, 600 of them are from the last three days, all with the same text in the comment.  It’s driving me insane.  A couple of them have even gotten through into my comment moderation queue.  Akismet has been great, but these people are relentless.  And I don’t get it – they have the same misspelling in each of the comments.  I don’t know why they misspell words.  Surely they must know that it tips off spam filters because all spammers seem to do it.  And I know many of them may not be native English speakers, but not using a spell checker seems strange.

Anyway, I hope all spammers get to spend eternity in a special hell where they must constantly read advertisements every time they try to do anything.  The ads can only be for mortgage refinancing, viagra, phone sex, and fake designer handbags.

Check out KZoo

100 ‘best communities’ for youths named – USATODAY.com

Kalamazoo, Michigan, my wife’s home town, was named on the 2007 list of “best communities for youths” by America’s Promise Alliance.  This is probably largely due to the Kalamazoo Promise – some wealthy person donated money to pay for Kalamazoo public school students to go to Michigan state schools free – if you go to public school in Kalamazoo, prorated for the number of years, you get free college if you stay in-state.  It’s pretty cool, and it’s raised property values inside the city limits.

I found that article looking for this one, which I saw on the front page while I was in line for coffee at Caribou.  Just as the wife and I are pretty close to putting a bid in on a condo in a “transitional” neighborhood of D.C., I see that crime rates are threatening the revitalization of many cities.  The article doesn’t mention D.C., focusing more on smaller cities that don’t have the money and the history of D.C. – Louisville, Milwaukee, Trenton.  Still.  Maybe my VA-based realtor (Who’s made because we’re buying in the city where she’s not licensed) is right that we’re going to be beaten and mugged three or four times a day in D.C..

One of the most important parts of the article is that “perception is reality” – when you’re talking about property values, it doesn’t matter what the real crime rate is.  It matters what people think the crime rate is.  Certainly the actual crime rate matters to those who live there, but attracting new people (and new money) requires that you appear to be safe.

I’ve always wondered, though – where do they expect people to go when the value of the neighborhood shoots up around them?  Certainly some will be able to take advantage of the rise in the value of their home.  But what if you rent?  What if you don’t want to go but suddenly your property tax triples?  I’m all for revitalizing cities, and I know that many new developments set aside (maybe they have to?  Not sure) some space for low-income residents.  But I’m not sure that’s enough.

And if some of the revitalization money comes from the government, I think we have a responsibility to make sure that what we’re doing is enough.

Duck Conspiracy?

Those who know me will no doubt be aware of my feeling that Condi Rice looks like a duck. I think it’s unfortunate – it can’t have been easy for her to have grown up looking like a duck. Kids are merciless. But she seems to have gotten past it, and that’s really an accomplishment that we can all be proud of.

I watched about three minutes of the state of the union last night. That’s about as much as I can stand.  But I noticed something. Nancy Pelosi was sitting behind the President, and SHE LOOKS LIKE A DUCK, TOO! Not only that, but if you look at her haircut, she seems to be actively cultivating the image.

There are a few things that could be going on here. It could be a coincidence that two of the most powerful women in America both look like ducks. I choose not to accept that, because it’s boring. It could be that Pelosi, knowing that her extreme liberalism (And probably her gender) will turn many conservatives away.  So she is trying to emulate one of their own to win favor. This sounds like a reasonable thing for her to do, except that as far as I can tell, she has absolutely no use for conservatives at all, so it may not be that likely.  Perhaps the most interesting possibility is that, some years ago, a poll was conducted that, due to rounding error, determined that what the American people really look for in a strong female politicians is a striking resemblance to a duck.  Hillary, this might be something you want to consider.

I don’t know which of these scenarios is the correct one.  Someday, perhaps I’ll find out.  Perhaps the world will find out.  Hopefully before it’s too late.

Were mad, and were not going to take it. Well, maybe we will.

Bush faces angry, dissatisfied electorate in speech – CNN.com

Two-thirds of respondents say that Bush has done something to make them angry — a figure that has grown six points since last year and 16 points since Bush’s State of the Union in 2004.

I’ve kind of gotten away from talking about politics here for a couple of reasons.  One, the letdown after the election – after focusing on politics so much leading up to the election, I was kind of burned out.  I know, really rough for me.  The second was that I was afraid that the constant beating my head against a wall was going to cause permanent damage.

In any event, I should get back into politics.  Just because it’s not making news now like it was in October doesn’t mean that nothing important is going on.

SNOW!!!!

As usual, the DC Metro area has officially flipped out because we got a little snow yesterday.  I’m the only one at work.  There are usually at least two people here by 6AM.  It’s a good thing I remembered my password to turn off the alarm.  Last time I had to open, I set it off and had to call Honeywell to reassure them that nothing horrible was happening.

It’s funny – I’ve heard two phones ring this morning, both belonging to people who are NEVER here this early.  One was my boss’ phone, and someone might be telling him that the scary wet roads are keeping them at home.  The roads were much worse last night.  The last mile before our place was a sheet of ice at about 4:30PM.  But this morning, the roads were just wet and a little slushy.  I had no trouble getting to work.

Dinner at Wasabi

Last night, the wife took me to a TasteDC event at Wasabi in DC.  It was a Christmas present, and I recommend the restaurant whole-heartedly.  It’s a kaiten-zushi restaurant, which means they have a conveyor belt coming from the kitchen, and you take what you want as it passes by.  This type of restaurant is very popular in Japan, and getting there in London, too.  This is DC’s first one.

The food was great.  And, because it was sponsored by TasteDC, they explained a little bit about the sake and the sushi that they served.  They also made it a little bit like a summer camp orientation day, but that was okay.

If you go there, try the green tea mousse.  I’ve had green tea ice cream before, and I don’t love it, but this was great.  All the sushi they served was great.  The wife especially liked the nigiri.

The owner of the restaurant looks like some minor movie or tv star that we can’t place, but that you’ll probably recognize.  I think he played a principal in some cheesy comedy (Like Saved by the Bell, but it wasn’t that guy).  I wish IMDB had a search by facial description.

Looking at houses today

We’re finally going out looking at new places today.  We’ve decided to see if we can keep the place I own now, rent it out, and still manage to buy a new place.  If it works, it will be great, because eventually we’ll have rental income from this place, and it will always be sort of a savings account.  And if it turns out we can’t afford it (We can’t rent it right now for the amount of the mortgage), we can sell as investors rather than residents, and the taxes work out much more nicely.

So, anyone looking to rent a lovely two-bedroom condo, conveniently located in beautiful Falls Church, Virginia?  Near Metro, 66, 495, Tyson’s Corner . . .  We’ll probably be advertising on Craigslist soon.

You! Go take an econ class, right now.

Techdirt: Infinity Is Your Friend In Economics

So the trick to embracing infinite goods isn’t in limiting the infinite nature of them, but in rethinking how you view them.

I’ve said many times to anyone who will listen that no one should graduate college without an economics class. I took Principles of Econ as a freshman (And got one of only two or three A’s for the semester, despite being one of only a few underclassmen), and it changed the way I thought about things. Just understanding a supply and demand curve, even a basic understanding, can allow you to look at things differently.

I wonder what would have happened if I had graduated as an economics major. I started off that way, then, through some sort of entrance test mixup that placed me in Calc I after two years of Calc in high school (I think maybe I was asleep for the test? I don’t know) and the subsequent working it out with a math professor, I became convinced that Math-Econ was the way to go. I managed two Econ classes before I dropped the major. It wasn’t the material, it was just that the class was so boring. There was no discussion. We just sat and took notes and then took tests. I wanted to shoot myself.

Anyway, this is sort of relevant to the link at the top. Business flips out when there is no scarcity – when supply really is infinite. This makes sense, because an infinite supply means you should be selling it for nothing. Obviously you aren’t going to make any money that way. But this article points out that markets do not exist in a vacuum. A free good can be used in other goods or used in relation to other goods, and money can be made.

It’s all about, as Techdirt says, continuous innovation. You can’t ride one great idea forever. Sooner or later, someone will do it better and cheaper. And when your old business model is obsolete, because the good you were selling is now infinite, or whatever else might happen, you can’t run to the government and ask them to make competing with you illegal. You have to think about the next step. There’s almost always value to be added.

Edited to add:

BoingBoing has a post about inflation in virtual worlds that seems appropriate here, too. I actually didn’t read the linked article, but it’s probably interesting and relevant.