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Jun 27 11

Comments on Nine Lies

by Nicholas Barnard

I wrote a reasonably long comment to Nine lies, an entry on Re-educate Seattle. I thought it was reasonably introspective and interesting in general, so I’m posting it here for all y’all.


I really think I was the kind of kid that would’ve flourished at a school like PSCS.

I was and still am the kind of person who will go digging through a topic because it interests me. Learning it and regurgitating it for a test is something I suck at. But regurgitating something that I loved to research? Yikes you can’t shut me up! I can tell you loads of information about the airline business, elaborate how the federal budget works, and where we borrow that money from, or explain the structure and operation of a variety of Internet protocols. (and I can hold my own with professionals in those fields.)

This isn’t to say I didn’t go to a good school, by standard academic measures it’s probably the first or second best school in Ohio. But it’s awfully competitive, that combined with poor time and task management skills really made it tough for me to succeed. In some ways I came out of there thinking I was mediocre. In the last ten years or so I’ve come to realize that, in the words of my precalc teacher that I’m “smart, but a bit lazy for her tastes.”. Realistically she was describing a symptom, not the cause. I was stressed, poor at managing my time and motivating myself. (An aside, in that class the lessons were taught discovery style, it wasn’t about conveying information, it was more about guiding you to discover what is known.)

I’m now tackling that time management problem, but it’s tough shaking out 20 years of bad habits.

If anything, today is more about cooperation than competition. Microsoft, Apple, Google, and Mozilla all work together to improve the web. No company makes a product all on their own. They’re always working with partners, vendors, governmental authorities, and oh yeah their customers.

I don’t want the guy who is at the top of their class working for me, I want the guy who did well, but also took the time out to help out his classmates, will go research and learn something because he’s interested in it, and who will spread the success around.

May 31 11

Ins and outs of the US Federal Debt in less than ten minutes

by Nicholas Barnard

Just over a month ago, I gave a Pecha-Kucha presentation at church titled “How to get a 14 trillion dollar line of credit, what the hell is a lockbox, and are we going broke? The ins and outs of the Federal Debt and Deficit”. This was inspired by, and was an updated version of my Borrowed Friday Night blog entry.

So, without further adieu: A review on my petcha-kucha’d view on the US Federal Debt a doo.

Slide1

So the amount of money the US Government is huge. I they borrowed it in pennies, it would be over 37 BILLION tons of pennies. That is if all those pennies were made after 1982, because the pennies made before then are 0.4 grams heavier than the ones made after that time.

Slide4

But what may surprise you is that the Federal Government has a Debt Limit. This basically is a function of the balance of the branches of government. Before modern times Congress would authorize the Executive branch to issue a specific amount of bonds for a specific purpose.

Slide5
This eventually became cumbersome, so Congress passed a law saying that the Executive branch could borrow up to $X million dollars for whatever reason.

Slide6

The debt limit is adjusted periodically, and generally the debt limit is only raised. In the data I’ve reviewed its been lowered a few times, but I surmise that is simply a function of a law expiring, because shortly thereafter the limit is raised again.

Slide7

Through much of the country’s history the debt limit remained reasonably stable, but in the past thirty years, the debt limit has increased incredibly.

Slide9

But a dollar today won’t buy the same amount as a dollar ten years ago (or even a year ago!) So it makes more sense to compare the debt limit versus the Gross Domestic Product, a measure of the annual economic output of the country. By this measure it was high right after World War II, but got much smaller and reached its smallest point in the 1970s, then went on a growth spirt.

Slide10

Again, if we look at this in the past 30 years, the debt limit has gone from about 30% of GDP to almost 100% of GDP. The only time this happened previously was a direct result of World War II.

Slide12

So where do we borrow all this money? The government loans itself about a third of it. I can hear you now, “Wait the government loans itself money?!?” Yup, up until about a year ago the Social Security Administration took in more money in taxes than they paid out in benefits.

Slide14

Whatever they didn’t send out as benefits, was put into a lockbox. Yup, as a result of Congress’s schanagians, the bonds go into an actual lockbox. But why not invest it in stocks? Well, if the government did that we’d have government owning a large amount of the American economy, and that’d be socialism, which is, ummmm… bad.

Slide15

So who loans the government money? The first source, is the American Public. The government sells bonds, a form of debt, to individuals, banks, insurance companies, and anyone else who wants to buy them.

Slide16

But the American public simply doesn’t have enough to loan the Federal Government. So about half of the money the federal government borrows is from overseas. About a quarter of the foreign debt is held by China, the next third is held by Japan, a sliver is held by the United Kingdom, and the remainder is held by a mix of countries. No I’m pretty sure the United Nations doesn’t hold any US Federal Debt.

Slide17

So its not cheap to borrow $14.26 trillion dollars. The Federal government spends about $400 Billion a year on interest, or about 7.4% of the Federal budget. About half of this interest goes to those foreign debt holders.

Slide19

So the question that should be asked is this level of borrowing sustainable? I honestly don’t think so. There are concerns about other country’s willingness to continue to lend money to us, but there is also the simple fact that we spend a significant amount of our annual budget simply to pay interest on that debt.


So how does this relate into class warfare?

This is simple to explain. Let us pretend that everyone for a moment is taxed at exactly the same rate, say 10%. If Jane makes $30,000 she’ll pay $3,000 of her income in taxes. If Joe makes $300,000 he’ll pay $30,000 of his income in taxes. But, Joe also decides to loan the government $30,000 of his income to the Federal government so he’ll get interest back, which will lower his effective taxes to say $25,000 or 8.3% of that back in interest. Jane on the other hand can’t loan even $1, let alone $3,000 or $30,000 to the Federal government, because she has to feed herself and her family. She will continue to pay 10% of her income in taxes, some of which goes to pay Joe.

Can someone please explain to me how this is fair?

To top it off, this also means that as we borrow more money, it gives some people ammunition to Starve the Beast, a.k.a reduce the size of the federal budget. While it is unclear where this will come from, recent history shows us that the most likely spot will come from the dismantling of the safety net. Also <tone type=”sarcasm”> known as folks that don’t matter, such as like young children without health care and the mentally ill.</tone>

Seriously though, this is where we’ve made cuts to the budget. Taking services that provide some shrivel of humanity to those who are barely able to get by as it is. That is immoral no matter what value system you personally hold.

Apr 18 11

Homeownership, Part Duex

by Nicholas Barnard

So I did a pretty poor job on my last entry of making my argument.

I’ve decided to take a look at the home I spent a bunch of time growing up in the Dayton Ohio area.

Lets take a peek at it, courtesy Google Street View:

Described In Text

So things to note:

  • The sidewalk in the front yard.
  • The house is pretty far set back from the street. About 50 feet from the street.
  • There is no space to socialize in front of the house. (e.g. there isn’t a porch or somewhere to sit.)
  • You can’t see it in this photo, but the road is about three car widths wide.

So lets compare this to the house of my mom’s divorce attorney. This house is in a much newer part of the development, probably about ten years newer. But it is less than a mile from my house above. Again, courtesy Google Street View:

Described In Text

  • No sidewalk in the front yard.
  • The house is even further set back from the street. About 100 feet from the street.
  • There is still no space to socialize in front of the house. Not that you could talk, you’d have to yell, since the next nearest front door is about 200 feet away!
  • The road is only two car widths wide, but it is completely unadorned. It is just a strip of asphalt.

One final picture. This one showing the lot sizes and shapes.

Described In Text

So I’ve done some drawing on this. The pink box to the right is my house off of Woodbluff, the pink box to the right is my mom’s lawyer’s house. The red line? Thats showing where the division from the older and newer development. The change in lot sizes is pretty damn dramatic. I lived here for probably a total of eight years, I rode my bike through both of these areas, and it still surprises me.

So I’d argue that this big change hasn’t really done much for the community. Hell, its even hard to have a community when you’ve got a huge piece of grass separating you from everyone. The owners of these houses probably paid more, and I’d argue got less! If you’re buying a home simply because of square footage, and not the community or lack thereof, why? Just like money having square footage of a house is important up to a point, but beyond that it doesn’t do much except show off the fact that you have square footage. If anything its a negative as it costs more to maintain and more to heat.

So, if I had to choose a house to live in instead of a nice condo or something along those lines, I’d like to live in on a street like this one in Seattle:

Described In Text

The houses:

  • Aren’t too big.
  • They’re pretty closely spaced, so you can easily talk with your neighbors.
  • There is a little bit of space to congregate up front
  • They’re close to the road, sparing a big field of grass that doesn’t get used.
  • Alas, there is no sidewalk.
  • The street width (which you can’t see) is just about two cars wide.

This housing development in Wedgwood in Seattle has a fair chance of developing actual community. Whereas, the neighborhood I lived in Dayton didn’t have as much of a chance and my mom’s lawyer’s house? Well its laughable to even consider the matter?

So this brings me back to the blog’s theme. Communities build resilience and allow for people to network, which further more allows them to eschew having to purchase as many things and push the cogs in the consumerist machine. This manifests itself in situations like when you need to use a pressure sprayer, you’re much more likely to be able to borrow it from someone in your community, the larger and more connected you are, instead of having to buy one for that single use.

By having resilient communities you’re able to do the same with less, lessening the effects of class-stratification, and mitigating the results of class warfare.

A strong community is more important than being wealthy, a community can provide the things that wealth does, and more.

Apr 7 11

Irrational Attraction to Homeownership

by Nicholas Barnard

It has been interesting watching the meltdown of the mortgage and housing markets from the sidelines. So the tax deductions, the mortgage driven financial meltdown, and all the associated social costs has given us a higher level of homeownership, right? Not according to Dwight Jaffe. “All of the money and all of the tax benefits and all of the Fannie and Freddie costs … have come to zero in terms of having any observable effects on our home ownership rates,” Jaffee says. “Our rates are the same as countries that have never put a penny of government resources into it.”

In fact owning a home reduces workforce mobility and people’s ability to pursue their careers and dreams. Not to mention that it can wipe out people’s financial planning when the market tanks.


So where did this fetish for owning a home come from? I’d argue that its been good marketing by many parties. The US Government has had a stake in increasing home ownership for at least seventy three years. Fannie Mae was founded in 1938 by the Roosevelt administration during the Great Depression. Sure Home Depot, Lowes, and Best Buy have had their hand in pushing homeownership over the past decade or so, but its the feds that have been pushing this. (Best Buy’s marketing doesn’t show that awesome home theatre system in an apartment, they show it in its own room in a house.)

Successive Presidents including Bush and Obama have done their part to promote and preserve homeownership. But Why? “The Dream of American Homeownership”? This is just a slogan. I’d argue that homeownership might be people’s way to claim a piece of the world as their own. My mother’s habit of remodeling and repainting houses is a testament to this. For some, including my mother, owning a home is a great way to claim a part of the world their own. But for everyone? I don’t think so. So why do we have this fixation with homeownership? Marketing. Anyone who watched television during the 2000s couldn’t have missed the plethora of ads for mortgages, or the flood of home focused television shows on TLC.

But marketing can’t drive us to go spend hundreds upon hundreds of thousands of dollars or can it? NoYes. I had a really interesting term in college where I was taking both a service marketing class, and a philosophy class on desire. Within the space of a week the marketing professor declared that marketing cannot create a desire that people do not have, and the philosophy professor declared that marketing can create desires out of thin air. I think the reality is down the middle. The marketer takes an unmet desire and co-opts it for their own ends. Lets say you have a desire to be comforted emotionally. A marketer can approach this in many ways. Häagen-Dazs for instance would emphasize that they’re a comfort food, whereas a Lazy-Boy would emphasize that their chairs make you feel protected and supported. Houses prey on the need for people to have control, stability, and other things while not delivering on these promises. Stability? Sure as far as having somewhere to live it satisfies this need, but it also pushes people to their financial limits in many cases, and can destabilize their finances if they need to move (for work or other reasons) and the housing market is down. As for control? You gain responsibility for a significant number of variable risks: roofs needing replaced, water heaters, furnaces, the list goes on and on.

I’ve watched the sizes of houses grow and grow. In 1975, the average house size was 1,645 square feet and the average family size was 2.88. By 2005, the average house size was 2,434 square feet and the average household size was 2.6 people. (Sources: Household Size, 2005 household size, 1975 household size.) So as the number of people living in together has declined the size of houses has increased. Why? Bigger houses are more profitable for builders.


So how does this relate to the class warfare that has been going on in our society? The housing market has functioned because there were buyers. This allowed buyers who were reasonably well off to sell their house when it was worth a large amount, and purchase another home with a large amount of equity, and to continue on “flipping” homes, even those which they lived in for a while. When the music stopped those at the bottom of the market were left with homes which were too large, overpriced, and for which they could no longer pay for.

The housing market was supported on the backs of the middle class and poor, but was most beneficial to the rich.

Apr 4 11

A New Direction

by Nicholas Barnard

Those who’ve followed this blog for a long time will know that its been a bit of a ghost town lately. Its also been a bit directionless.

My eJournal (as the Path to Enlightened Insanity via Defacted Musings was initially known) initially was as a spot to write about anything and everything going on in my life, from dating, to Lambda Union business, to my musings on Quantum Physics, to human resource policy statements, and some commentary on current events.

But this blog has been rudderless for quite some time without a theme or coherent purpose.

I’m making several changes:

  • I have realized that I have been practicing my faith’s commitment to Social Justice in a weak way. I have also been watching Class Warfare in our society for quite some time, and I know that I must write about it this, as Americans are loathe to talk about class.

    I am also mindful of this quote:

    One of the things that the prophet Muhammad taught us was that it is our duty to try to correct injustices in the world. If you see something wrong, change it with your hands. If you’re not able to, then speak out against it. If you’re not able to do that, then feel bad about it in your heart. But that is the weakest form of faith.

    Wherever possible the Muslim should try to take action. And not let an injustice go by without calling it what it is, and asking for change.

    The Unitarian Minister Peter Raible had a similar message when he said “In all our days, may we turn more to act than to word to declare our religion.” I realize that my act will still be words, but the goal is to coalesce people toward unified action.

  • The blog’s name has changed to “Path to Enlightened Insanity”. It highlights the many insanities of our society. Plus, its easier to say than Path to Enlightened Insanity via Defacted Musings.
  • I’ve moved the blog over to WordPress. It was on an insanely old version of MovableType that had been duct taped many times over. It was time to move the blog to a modern platform. WordPress has a robust commenting system, which will allow easier conversation.
  • I’ll be making a point to post at least twice a week, probably on Tuesdays and Thursdays.

As I move the blog into this new space, please let me know if you have any questions or suggestions.

Mar 26 11

Missed Expectations

by Nicholas Barnard

Setting then, missing customer’s expectations is the worst way to displease a customer. I’d argue that Starbucks is one of the better companies with having consistent expectations from store to store. However, they recently missed my expectations on a colossal scale. Below is my letter to them:


Hello,
I need to share how Starbucks set, then completely missed my expectations.
This email is about two stores E. Olive Way, 3281 and one of the Neighborhood Coffee Shops, Roy St Coffee and Tea.

On March 6th, 2011, I had a friend drop me off at Roy St Coffee and Tea. I’m a regular there, so I know that usually they’re open until 11 pm every day of the week. I got upto the door, and I noted that there was a sign on the door that said it was closed for a special event.

This was disappointing as I follow the Roy St Twitter feed, @RoyStCoffee, and would’ve expected any early closing, especially a planned one, would be listed on the twitter feed. I had previously seen early closings (such as holidays and the like) listed on the twitter feed, but the closure on March 6th wasn’t listed. (While I’m touching the topic, the @RoyStCoffee twitter feed has been dead Roy St needs to either commit to it or just declare failure and close it down.)

I was miffed at this, but I decided to take it in stride, and visit the E. Olive St store, which I haven’t been to since it was remodeled.

I arrived at the Olive St Store at around 9:15, and was settled in and sitting down at 9:30 or so. The service there was acceptable.

I had thought that the store was open until 11 pm that night, I was informed at 10:20 pm that the store was closing in 10 minutes. I had checked the store hours a few weeks before on the Starbucks iPhone app and this is what I noted, but even if I had checked that night it wouldn’t have mattered since the app shows the store closing at 11 pm. (Even today it shows the store closing at 11 pm on Sunday.)

Simply this pissed me off. I wanted to get some work done, and had just settled into a nice rhythm when I was kicked out of it because the store was closed. This was the second time that night that Starbucks had hindered me in my productivity that day due to their lack of information.

I’m very concerned that the store hours facility on the Starbucks App and website is almost useless as there doesn’t appear to be an established procedure to update this information. I’ve found multiple stores that have incorrect hours. This simply is unacceptable. If Starbucks is going to provide this data they should ensure that it is correct. There needs to be a procedure to update this information as store hours change. This is a failure either properly designing this system, communication about this system, or proper closure of this project by the project manager.

I hope that both of these issues will be rectified systemwide.

Best Regards,
Nicholas Barnard


I completely left out the list of problems that the the early closure caused me as I didn’t want to go into the minutia of the shit that annoyed me with having to piece together a good bus schedule, because part of that was my fault, although I would’ve planned better if I had known when they were closing..

Feb 7 11

Passions. (or my impressions upon my visit to Puget Sound Community School)

by Nicholas Barnard

On Wednesday, I visited Puget Sound Community School. It was a bit odd for me, because my fellow visitors were mostly prospective parents and students, whereas I was just curious. I’d like to adopt kids at some point, and PSCS will be on the plate as an option for their schooling, but at the moment I don’t feel like my life is stable enough to care for a kid. (Hell, I don’t think my life is quite stable enough to care for me, but thats a different story.) In hindsight, I also realize that I didn’t fully answer my questions because I visited the classes I was interested in, not the ones that might elucidate my knowledge of PSCS.


Some of the happiest people I’ve met have been ones that excel at and love doing jobs that many of us think of as grudge work. I’ve come across many people in this position in my life, but two of them stick out in my mind:

  • Sherita – She was (is?) a bus driver for TANK driving the 8 and 25. (The 25 was through-routed with the 8 and vice versa) I rode the 8 all the time as it took me home, and the 25 sometimes as it picked me up at school and took me right home. She first came to my attention because she had the most boisterous and fun announcements of where we were on the route. We’d have lots of little discussions, but it was always clear to me that she loved what she was doing. It was always a joy to get on her bus, versus some of the other drivers who we doing the job because it paid them.
  • An server at this Bob Evans whose name I forget. I ate there several times. (it was also on the 25/8 and it was near the spot where I got my hair cut..) The fact that she enjoyed her job was obvious; it wasn’t something that I had to spend time staring at her to divine. I remember asking her about it once, and she said something along the lines that this wasn’t her first choice, but she decided to enjoy it, and did.

When I think about things I’m passionate about many things pop into my head, but one long running one is playing handbells. I first played handbells in 1993. For many years it was simply a choir that I performed in. (Although, I remember one week when I was in handbells as a non-academic activity, as an academic performing choir, and we were playing handbells in music class as well. I was spending three out of seven periods a day playing handbells!)

When I was planning my senior year of high school there was a conflict between the Handbell Choir and AP Stats. I had always enjoyed math, and I made the decision to take Stats. I think this would’ve been a good decision if life was going well.

But, life wasn’t going well. I was dealing with the fall out from having had undiagnosed clinical depression for three years. In addition I accumulated enough baggage from being in the closet that I couldn’t and didn’t want to keep the closet door closed anymore. However, given the atmosphere of Southwest Ohio in the late 90s, I felt I had to keep the closet closed with all my might. Given everything that was going on in my life, I really didn’t give a shit about school. As a result, I got really good coasting my way though classes; I did enough work to get by and that was it.

Coasting through classes is something that partially works in normal classes, I also managed in honors classes, but I got killed in AP classes. I couldn’t get my head into AP Stats, and after realizing the futility attempting advanced level studies with a lack of motivation, I decided to drop AP Stats and take up handbells.

I still took the AP test and getting a 2 without a cram study session. I took a quantitative studies class (e.g. Stats taught by the political science department.) which was more or less a breeze, but after I transferred schools it ended up as one of the sixty or so elective credit hours I had, well in excess of what I needed.

Twelve years later, I’m still using what I learned in handbells, but I’ven’t touched stats in quite some time.


Its really amazing what you can learn when you want to learn something.

I knew nothing about Javascript when I started in on metro mobile but the whole thing is written in Javascript.

I spent twelve hours or so on a Friday night researching the federal debt which has given me a nice background on government debt in this country.

When I started playing in a handbell quartet I realized that I didn’t have the ability to look at a note and instantly tell what note it was, I put daily effort into flash cards to learn this, because it was something I needed to play in a handbell quartet. (Whereas when I was playing piano, it was like pulling teeth to get me to use flash cards.)

I also find that it is quite amazing what people can do when they’re going after something they love or are fascinated by. GPS has its roots in nerd heaven tinkering and geeking out over Sputnik. (The GPS story starts at 12:30.) They were just fiddling at first.


I want people doing what they’re passionate about. I despise that people “hate their job” although they keep working at it as if they have no choice. I find it disheartening that hordes of people went into Wall Street (including those who had studied something completely different) just because there was a bunch of money there. We spend so much time at our jobs, why not make it something that we enjoy even if we can’t make it something we’re passionate about?


PCSC is really about pulling kids passions at the forefront from a young age in high school, instead of them struggling to pursue them on the side or not at all. People do amazing things when they’re passionate about what they’re doing, and even moreso when they have a mentor (a boss, a teacher, a friend) who helps them move obstacles in their way, and pushes them onto greatness.

Dec 19 10

Artificial Abundance: Why I Don’t Like, “Like”

by Nicholas Barnard

So I’ve been moving my online world back to twitter, and realizing why I prefer it much better than Facebook. The main driver getting me back to twitter is that its more open than Facebook.

The one thing that I really prefer is twitter’s way for you to say that you like a tweet: you retweet it. The thing that is important about this is its a big gesture. Retweeting something says “I enjoyed this enough that I want everyone who reads my twitter feed to see it.” Its a much larger request of your audience than clicking the like button on Facebook.

It is easy to like something on Facebook, far too easy actually. Because there is no commitment or resources consumed by clicking the like button. When I retweet something, I’m taking a limited resource, my twitter feed and the attention of my reader and saying, “this is worth reading.” Newspapers and news websites don’t just publish the AP and Reuter’s feed, they select which articles they believe are worth their readers time. This is why despite the open availability of the AP and Reuter’s feed newspapers and editors have continued to be valuable resource on the internet.

Liking something on Facebook on the other hand is using an unlimited resource, and not forcing people to make an economic decision on the scarcity of their audience’s attention. I think clicking the like button would work much better if Facebook gave everyone say twenty free likes, and sold the ability to like something for a dollar per twenty items you could like. You’d be free to unlike something at anytime and replace it with another thing that you like, but you’d have to make that tradeoff.

Lets say that I clicked like on Facebook for every movie that I moderately enjoyed. It’d be meaningless since many movies that I moderately enjoyed aren’t ones that I would take my limited time to watch again, and I might not recommend that my friends watch. There are movies that I have (and will) watch again that are worth my time. By making like really easy to click it makes it pointless. I do realize that likes on Facebook aren’t just about what you suggest people should read, eat, or go see, but I’ve not seen any evidence that Facebook has harnessed this in the same way that say Netflix harnesses users ratings to suggest movies.

If someone clicks like on Facebook they haven’t expended significant amount of resources. If someone retweets something they’ve spent a slightly scarcer resource. If they copy and paste it and place it into an email, they’ve spent an even scarcer resource. If they print it out, and track you down in person, they’ve expended an exceptionally scarce resource! You know implicitly if someone puts the effort to find you in person to share something with you that they think its valuable and something that you should read.

Facebook as made likes exceptionally abundant which means they’re worthless. Scarcity is good and important.

Nov 30 10

Food Connection

by Nicholas Barnard

I’m a member of the Growing Washington CSA, and its been a good experience overall.

The past week was a bit rough. The food box that we should’ve gotten for the Monday before Thanksgiving never came, because the roads just weren’t safe. This Monday’s box came, and it was a little thinner than past weeks.

The farm manager had let us know the week of the huge amount of snow that “there will be fallout from this weather to be sure, though we won’t know the full effects of this storm until the snow melts later in the week. Expect options to be limited as we are receiving e-mails from all the farms in the area saying they all got hit hard too.”

I know weather is a pain when it comes to produce, I’ve dealt with all sorts of weather problems when I used to work for Chiquita, but we almost always got our produce through. Grapes, Melons, Pineapples, and Bananas all year round to our customers just like clockwork.


When I started with the CSA I had two goals:

  1. Eat more produce.
  2. Eat locally.

Mind you the weekly box that I get is a “size small” but sometimes its a bit like eating produce from a fire hose, and more of the items than I’d like go to creating high quality dirt, but thats part of using the box. I’ve gained some wonderful knowledge about myself and cooking. I love Kale, I think eggplant should be banned, and carrots are a great snack. I’ve made progress in cooking all of this stuff, and its great to put your hands on raw unprocessed produce.

But all of those things aren’t what I value most. Its the fact that I’ve got a connection back to the plants and the earth. Most of my normal life is spent practically disconnected from the earth. Sure, I see the weather, and put on an extra coat. There are nice little planted shrubs around my apartment. But those things are not really nature. I once listened to either Greg Nickels or
Ron Sims on the radio and he said that the biggest clear cut area in the State of Washington is the City of Seattle.

So the produce box that I didn’t get last week, as well as the thiner one that I received this week is the point. Its a larger manifestation of my meager connection to the earth and the greater world. Its a small connection, but its one that I cherish and celebrate.

May 9 10

GM Bankruptcy

by Nicholas Barnard

Another Entry that I’m cleaning out.. I may revisit this one and post an updated version later.

This was dated June 16, 2009 at 10:58 AM


So when I heard GM has filed for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy I was relieved.

Honestly, I’ve never been a fan of GM. I used to live in a GM town (the one where they used to make those gas guzzling SUVs), I’ve driven GM cars (both on rentals, and long term ownership), and I’ve had friends who worked for GM.

So if I’ve had so many ties to GM, why then was I relieved? Because the management of GM has finally been forced to face reality that their business model is broken, that they are no longer, nor will likely ever be again the market leader that they once were.

I watch companies like they’re people. (Yes, I know they are not people, but they’re made of and led by people, just a lot of them, which can lead to schizophrenic behavior at times if you consider the company to be one person.) GM has been like the older uncle who is old and stuck in his ways but he’s hurting himself, everyone in the family knows what he’s doing for himself isn’t good, but we can’t force him to change.

So let me dispel one quick myth: GM failed because of the credit crisis. Now I don’t doubt that the credit crisis was a contributing factor to its failure, but if someone is walking on the top of and a strong gust of wind blows them off…