At last, the Tesla

Rico says it's been a long wait but, according to Ken Bensinger in the Los Angeles Times, the Tesla is finally here:

The next American car factory could be in the Southland. Amid the auto industry's worst decline in decades, Tesla Motors Inc. said Thursday that it would build its all-electric sedan in Southern California, a possible boon to the sagging local economy. Elon Musk, chairman and chief executive of the San Carlos, Calif., start-up, made the announcement as he unveiled the prototype of its new vehicle. The $57,400 Model S gets up to 160 miles on a single charge. Another version of the sleek four-door will get up to 300 miles.
Tesla currently makes the $109,000 all-electric two-seat Roadster, only about 300 of which have been delivered to date. By contrast, Tesla hopes to build 20,000 of the sedans per year by mid-2012.
Musk, who co-founded PayPal and is also CEO of Hawthorne-based rocket-ship maker SpaceX, declined to name the city that would get the plant, which could bring hundreds of jobs when production begins in the third quarter of 2011. "We have a term sheet on a location," Musk said at the event. "But we can't divulge it until the contract is finalized."
If Tesla builds the car factory, it would be the first in Southern California since General Motors Corp. closed its Van Nuys Camaro and Firebird plant in 1992. Currently, the only car factory in the Golden State is a joint venture run by GM and Toyota in Fremont, where the Pontiac Vibe and Toyota Matrix are built.
Tesla has a history of not closing similar deals. The carmaker had originally planned to build the Model S plant in New Mexico, as Governor Bill Richardson had promised it tax credits and other incentives as well as a commitment to buy a hundred vehicles. But Tesla, wooed by California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, said in September that it would instead build the factory in San Jose, where it would receive tax credits and a free ten-year-lease on a city-owned lot.
Though Tesla now says it's setting up shop in Southern California, San Jose still hopes keep some business from the Silicon Valley company, Mayor Chuck Reed said. He said that Tesla still might put its research-and-development division and headquarters in San Jose, which would allow the city to hang on to about five hundred out of what he estimated were a thousand potential jobs. "The plan was to do everything in one location," Reed said. "But that plan fell apart when the credit markets collapsed."
With private fundraising options essentially frozen (Tesla was recently unable to complete a $100-million round of venture funding) it has turned to low-cost federal loans as its best alternative. The company has applied for $400 million in government loans, which it says it needs to get the plant off the ground and the Model S fully developed. But because the competitive federal programs favor projects situated on previously used industrial sites (so-called brownfields) rather than new construction, Musk said it would be in the company's best interest to find such a location.
"We did a review, and we just don't have a 500,000-square-foot empty building with 24-foot ceilings," said Reed, pointing out that Southern California, with its glut of abandoned aircraft factories, is rife with such spaces.
For his part, Schwarzenegger, who owns a Tesla Roadster, still supported Tesla despite the move south, spokesman Aaron McClear said. "He is thrilled that they are going to be doing business and creating jobs here in California," McClear said.
If all goes according to plan, the Model S will reach customers in the final months of 2011. The starting price is for a version with a battery capable of a 160-mile range and a 45-minute recharge time. It will also come with the option of a 230-mile battery or a 300-mile battery. Tesla has not yet released pricing on those.
Musk took pains to point out that the car would be eligible for a $7,500 federal tax credit for electric vehicles, reducing the net price to $49,900, and that its operating cost would be low because it runs on electricity rather than gasoline.
Tesla is competing with several other companies to deliver the first mass-produced electric or plug-in electric sedan to consumers. GM plans to begin selling its plug-in hybrid Volt in late 2010, and Fisker Automotive Inc. of Irvine said it would hand over the keys to its $87,900 Karma sedan, to be built in Finland, early next year.
Tesla is currently accepting $5,000 deposits on the Model S; it has nearly 1,000 people on the waiting list for its Roadster model, built in England.

Rico says if he could drive, let alone afford one, he'd get it...

Not Al Gore, Irena Sendler

Courtesy of my friend Kevin, this:

A 98 year-old lady named Irena recently died. During World War Two, Irena, a German, got permission to work in the Warsaw ghetto, as a plumbing & sewer specialist. She had an ulterior motive, as she knew the Nazi's plans for the Jews.
Irena smuggled infants out in the bottom of the tool box and (for larger kids) in the back of her truck in a burlap sack. She also had a dog in the back that she trained to bark when the Nazi soldiers let her in and out of the ghetto. The soldiers, of course, wanted nothing to do with the dog and the barking covered the kids' noises. During this period, she managed to smuggle out and save 2500 kids. She was caught; the Nazis broke both her legs, arms and beat her severely. Irena kept a record of the names of all the kids she smuggled out and kept them in a glass jar, buried under a tree in her back yard. After the war, she tried to locate any parents that may have survived it and reunited the family. Most, of course, had been gassed. Those kids she helped got placed into foster family homes or adopted.
Last year, Irena was up for the Nobel Peace Prize. She was not selected.
Some guy named Al Gore won, for a slide show on global warming.

Rico says that's the way of the world: it's not what you do, it's who you know...

Civil War for the day

Just one letter off

Rico says that, given its imminent demise, there's more than one similarity between the rapper previously known as Biggie Smalls and the big insurance company soon to be known as The Notorious AIG...

Go vote, while you still can

Rico says in the 'duh' category, this question from USA Today. Go here and vote.

Rule One: Do not fuck with the Israelis

The New York Times has an article by Michael Gordon and Jeffery Gettlemen about the Israeli strike in the Sudan:

Israeli warplanes bombed a convoy of trucks in Sudan in January that was believed to be carrying arms to be smuggled into Gaza, according to American officials. Israeli officials refused to confirm or deny the attack, but intelligence analysts noted that the strike was consistent with other measures Israel had taken to secure its borders.
American officials said the airstrike took place as Israel sought to stop the flow of weapons to Gaza during the weeks it was fighting a war with Hamas there. Two American officials who are privy to classified intelligence assessments said that Iran had been involved in the effort to smuggle weapons to Gaza. They also noted that there had been intelligence reports that an operative with Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps had gone to Sudan to coordinate the effort. But one former official said that the exact provenance of the arms that were being smuggled via Sudan was unclear.
Although the airstrike was carried out two months ago, it was not publicized until Sudanese officials said Thursday that a convoy of trucks in the remote eastern part of Sudan was bombed by what they called 'American' fighters killing dozens. The strikes were first reported on several internet-based news sites.
The area where the Sudanese said the attack occurred, near Port Sudan on the Red Sea, is an isolated patch of eastern Sudan near the Egyptian border and a notorious smuggling route, populated mostly by nomads and known as one of the poorest, least developed parts of a very poor, underdeveloped country. The Sudanese said the reports emerged now because it took time to fully investigate the strike. But an accusation from one government official that the attack was an American act of genocide raised the possibility that the Sudanese were lashing out because the International Criminal Court had issued a warrant for the arrest of their president, Omar Hassan al-Bashir, on war-crimes charges in the conflict in Darfur.
The official, Rabie Atti, a government spokesman, also gave a death toll in the attack that was higher than the 39 reported in other secondhand accounts. Mr. Rabie said by telephone from Khartoum, the capital, that “more than one hundred people” had been killed in the air raid. He said the trucks that were bombed were not carrying weapons. “I’ve heard this allegation, but it’s not true,” he said. “It was a genocide, committed by US forces.” When asked how he knew the forces were American, Mr. Rabie said: “We don’t differentiate between the US and Israel. They are all one.”
Vince Crawley, a spokesman for the United States Africa Command, said American forces had not bombed Sudan. “The US military has not conducted any airstrikes, fired any missiles, or undertaken any combat operations in or around Sudan since October 2008, when U.S. Africa Command formally became responsible for military action in Africa,” he said.
The American officials who described the Israeli role declined to be identified because they were discussing classified information and were not authorized to speak for the Obama administration. One American military official said the January strike was one of a series of Israeli attacks against arms shipments bound for Gaza.
The Israeli prime minister, Ehud Olmert, did not comment specifically on the reported bombing. But he said in a speech on Thursday in Israel that when it came to security, “we operate wherever it is possible to harm terror infrastructure, near and far.” Shlomo Brom, a retired general at the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv, said it would be “very logical” to assume that Israel would have wanted to bomb a weapons convoy in Sudan. “It fits exactly with the pattern of how Israel operates,” he said.
Israeli officials say that most of the weapons smuggled to Gaza flow through a labyrinth of tunnels running beneath the Egypt-Gaza border. Israel has blamed Iran for supplying many of these weapons, especially the rockets that Hamas has fired at Israeli civilians. Israeli military analysts said that eastern Sudan could have been a little-watched backdoor for Iranian weapons to reach Gaza.
Hossam Zaki, a spokesman for the Egyptian Foreign Ministry, said: “How do we know these are weapons to be smuggled and destined to go to Gaza through Egypt? These are only intelligence reports.” Asked if he had information about the strikes at the time the Sudanese said they had happened, he said, “We had our intelligence as well,” and refused to elaborate further.
Israel is no stranger to daring military operations when it concludes its security is threatened. It has a history of attacking enemies far from its territory. Israeli Air Force planes destroyed the Osirak nuclear reactor in Iraq in 1981, and in 2007 they destroyed a site in Syria that Israeli and American intelligence analysts said was a partly constructed nuclear reactor. Israel never officially acknowledged that it was responsible for the Syrian strike.
Mr. Rabie, the Sudanese spokesman, implied that his government might have more to say on the episode. He said the government waited two months to go public because “we were doing investigations. We want to follow the case,” he said. “And the government is still collecting information.”

Rico asks can you say Entebbe? If the Iranians are supplying serious arms to the Palestinians through the Sudan, they better watch their ass. If Israel can find their boats (can you say US satellite imagery?), they're toast. But, given the hundreds of miles between the Sudanese border with Egypt and the Egyptian border with Gaza, you'd think the Egyptians were in on this deal somehow.
Rico says that that will piss off the Israelis, big time...
More on the story:
The Haaretz news service has some additional information:

Israel has carried out three air strikes since January against what was believed to be Iranian arms shipments passing through Sudan on their way to Gaza. Earlier this week Sudanese officials confirmed that in January, in the wake Israel's assault on Hamas-ruled Gaza, unidentified aircraft attacked a convoy of seventeen trucks heading north through eastern Sudan. CBS News reported that the Israeli Air Force was apparently behind the attack. A US official confirmed to ABC that there were actually three attacks in total. This information matches reports from Sudanese officials of two strikes on truck convoys on 27 January 27 and 11 February, and the sinking of a suspected arms ship in the Red Sea. According to the report, thirty-nine people riding in the seventeen-truck convoy were killed, while a number of civilians in the area were injured.
Israeli officials declined to confirm or deny whether Israel had been involved in an air strike in Sudan. However, outgoing Prime Minister Ehud Olmert hinted on Thursday at Israel's suspected role in the reported air-strike. "We operate everywhere where we can hit terror infrastructure - in close places, in places further away, everywhere where we can hit terror infrastructure, we hit them and we hit them in a way that increases deterrence," said Olmert, speaking at a conference in Herzliya. "It was true in the north in a series of incidents and it was true in the south, in a series of incidents," he added. "There is no point in going into detail, and everybody can use their imagination. Those who need to know, know. And those who need to know, know that there is no place where Israel cannot operate. There is no such place."

Rico says he warned them...

Keeping the dog happy

Courtesy of my friend Kevin, this creative use of engineering. (Cats, of which Rico has two, wouldn't do this. Dogs, of which he's had several, would, endlessly. Which is smarter? Rico says he wisely refuses to speculate...)

Try not laughing

Courtesy of my friend Tex, this video asks the question:
"Why is a child's laugh so infectious?"

Eject, eject, eject!

Courtesy of my friend Dave Kitterman, this scary little video:

Were that it were true

Courtesy of my friend Rob in Holland, some more splendid commercials from that Dutch insurance company:

Not on your life

Rico says never go to the emergency room unless you have a real emergency. (Bleeding heavily from a gunshot, whatever.) We went last night to Jefferson in downtown Philly about seven because the docs said "oh, just go to the emergency room and have them reset your shunts". That's because Rico has been getting 'something' (hard to describe, but the word Rico uses about himself is 'stupider') over the last few weeks, and all we could ascribe it to was the misadjustment of the brain drains (the shunts) in his head; they got moved by the last MRI he had, and we figured that wasn't helping.
Well, an urban emergency room on any given night is a horrible place, and Jeff's was no exception. First of all, everybody's sick, and some of them are actually unwell, too... (Yes, crazy people go to emergency rooms, too, just like the rest of us.) Most of them are poor (which, in Philadelphia, means most of them are black), and some of them are strange. (The seemingly well-dressed gentleman, for instance, whom Rico thought was well-off until he looked closely and noticed that the man had no socks, no shirt under his suit jacket, and his shoes were unpolished and untied.)
We didn't see anyone for quite awhile (we're talking hours here), and then it was a progression of mystery doctors and tough-but-lovable nurses (just like in the movies) who proceeded to stick Rico with various things. Finally, in the late and then wee hours, Rico got a CAT scan (much better than an MRI) and some x-rays of his shunts.
The diagnosis, delivered by a doctor who was born in 1980, named Rohan, from India (and, yes, he'd read The Lord of the Rings) at oh-dark-thirty: Don't do anything.
A thrilling end to a wonderful evening.
So we didn't. We finally convinced the nurse to take out the intravenous tap, but then came all the arguments over what paperwork they had to perform before we could officially leave. We finally went 'out front' to wait, and just kept going. That's known, as we were told, as 'eloping', so now it's official: Chris and I have eloped. We're just not getting married...

Civil War for the day

Rico says who better to gain knowledge from than Stonewall Jackson? The book is published by Cumberland House and available through Amazon.

Adam and Eve, sort of

Courtesy of the Bayou Renaissance Man, this classic Dutch commercial:

Hapless

Why Iraq isn't going so well...

Congressional privilege

Courtesy of my friend Bill Calloway, this splendid rant about Nancy Pelosi and her travel problems:

Nancy Pelosi wasn't happy with the small private jet that comes with the Speaker's job... no, Madame Pelosi was aggravated that this little jet had to stop to refuel, so she ordered up a big fat two-hundred-seat jet that could get her back to California without stopping! Since she only works three days a week, this gas-guzzling jet gets fueled and she flies home to California. Cost to the taxpayers: about $60,000 one way!
Unfortunately we have to pay to bring her back on Monday night, too. Cost to us, another $60,000.
That is $480,000 per month and an annual cost to the taxpayers of $5,760,000! No wonder she complains about the cost of this war... it might cramp her style, and she is stylin', on my back and yours.
I think of the military families in this country doing without, and this woman, who heads up the most do-nothing Congress in the history of this country, keeps fueling that jet while doing nothing. Madame Pelosi wants you and me to conserve our carbon footprint. She wants us to buy smaller cars, and Obama wants us to get a bicycle pump and air up our tires. These people are nuts. Keep in mind the figures above do not include cost of plane or crew, just fuel! One wonders what her total package cost us? And she wants to tax our IRAs & 401Ks!

Civil War for the day

Gotta love it

Rico asks how can you not love a cartoon in which this is the response to the question How are you going to justify that gas-guzzler to Al Gore?

About time, gringo

The New York Times has an article by Ginger Thompson about the problems on the border:

The Obama administration said Tuesday that it would move hundreds of federal agents to the country’s southern border to prevent a spillover of drug-related violence from Mexico, and that it would focus more efforts on stopping weapons and money from flowing south. In a briefing with reporters on Tuesday, the secretary of homeland security, Janet Napolitano, said that 360 agents would be sent to the Border Patrol and to Immigration and Customs Enforcement units along the 2,000-mile border, and that 100 agents would be sent to Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives units there.
Officials said one hundred of the redeployed Border Patrol agents, and several new canine teams, would inspect people and vehicles leaving the United States, aided by mobile X-ray units for cars and more sophisticated license-plate readers. Ms. Napolitano called the redeployment “a very robust movement of personnel.” She added, “If anything, this is really the first wave of things that will be happening.”
Law enforcement personnel will also be added to the United States Embassy in Mexico, and an estimated $30 million in stimulus funds will be spent to support the work of local and state law enforcement agencies along the border. The plan will also draw on $700 million appropriated by Congress under the so-called Merida Initiative, put into effect by former President George W. Bush, to provide training and equipment to Mexican law enforcement agencies. Many of the measures expanded on programs that were started by Mr. Bush.
Ms. Napolitano said the administration was still considering requests by the governors of Texas and Arizona to deploy the National Guard— a step she supported when she was governor of Arizona. She said she would discuss the request next week with Governor Rick Perry, when she stops in Texas on her way to Mexico. Ms. Napolitano is one of many administration officials who have planned trips to Mexico in response to growing concern in the United States about violence there.
Deputy Secretary of State James Steinberg said, “We see this as a critical partnership, one that requires as much high-level attention as any bilateral relationship we have.” Officials said the plans announced Tuesday were a kind of down payment on President Obama’s promise to pursue a “comprehensive strategy” for securing the United States’ southern border and helping President Felipe Calderón of Mexico in a battle against cartels whose bloodletting has touched every corner of Mexico and whose organizations have stretched into many parts of the United States.
During a news conference on Tuesday night, Mr. Obama said the Mexican drug cartels “have gotten completely out of hand,” and he praised Mr. Calderón, saying the president “has been very courageous" in taking on the drug cartels. In a shift from the policies of previous administrations, Mr. Obama has emphasized that the drug war is a “shared responsibility”, expressing support for Mexico’s fight and vowing to lead one on this side of the border as well. Ms. Napolitano echoed that thinking on Tuesday, calling the fight against drugs “a demand issue and a supply issue”.
An estimated ninety percent of the illegal drugs that enter the United States pass through Mexico, while some ninety percent of the weapons seized from drug traffickers or at crime scenes in Mexico come from north of the border. Meanwhile, the southbound cash flow is estimated in the tens of billions of dollars. The White House press secretary, Robert Gibbs, said Tuesday that Washington’s relationship with Mexico was getting “sustained, high-level, comprehensive attention”. He said the efforts against traffickers would be led by the White House in coordination with the Departments of State, Justice, and Homeland Security.
As a former border-state governor, Ms. Napolitano emphasized the importance of coordinating her agency’s efforts with state and local officials on the front lines of the drug fight. She has sent a high-level member of her staff to meet with law enforcement officials along the southern border. And each week, she confers by telephone with border sheriffs and police departments. When asked whether the shift in personnel signaled a shift in the focus of Homeland Security away from the threat of terrorism, Ms. Napolitano said, “Absolutely not. Our department has a very broad mission,” she said. “We have to be able to multitask. One of the changes in the threat environment has been what is going on in Mexico. So we need to make changes in order to deal with that particular threat.”

Rico says it's easy to forget that this problem long pre-dated 9/11 and al-Qaeda...

Now he gets religion

The New York Times has a letter of resignation from an executive vice president at AIG:

Dear Mr. Liddy,
It is with deep regret that I submit my notice of resignation from AIG Financial Products. I hope you take the time to read this entire letter. Before describing the details of my decision, I want to offer some context:
I am proud of everything I have done for the commodity and equity divisions of AIGFP. I was in no way involved in— or responsible for— the credit default swap transactions that have hamstrung AIG. Nor were more than a handful of the 400 current employees of AIGFP. Most of those responsible have left the company and have conspicuously escaped the public outrage.
After 12 months of hard work dismantling the company— during which AIG reassured us many times we would be rewarded in March 2009 — we in the financial products unit have been betrayed by AIG and are being unfairly persecuted by elected officials. In response to this, I will now leave the company and donate my entire post-tax retention payment to those suffering from the global economic downturn. My intent is to keep none of the money myself.
I take this action after eleven years of dedicated, honorable service to AIG. I can no longer effectively perform my duties in this dysfunctional environment, nor am I being paid to do so. Like you, I was asked to work for an annual salary of one dollar, and I agreed out of a sense of duty to the company and to the public officials who have come to its aid. Having now been let down by both, I can no longer justify spending ten to fourteen hours a day away from my family for the benefit of those who have let me down.
You and I have never met or spoken to each other, so I’d like to tell you about myself. I was raised by schoolteachers working multiple jobs in a world of closing steel mills. My hard work earned me acceptance to MIT, and the institute’s generous financial aid enabled me to attend. I had fulfilled my American dream.
I started at this company in 1998 as an equity trader, became the head of equity and commodity trading and, a couple of years before AIG’s meltdown last September, was named the head of business development for commodities. Over this period the equity and commodity units were consistently profitable— in most years generating net profits of well over $100 million. Most recently, during the dismantling of AIGFP, I was an integral player in the pending sale of its well-regarded commodity index business to UBS. As you know, business unit sales like this are crucial to AIG’s effort to repay the American taxpayer.
The profitability of the businesses with which I was associated clearly supported my compensation. I never received any pay resulting from the credit default swaps that are now losing so much money. I did, however, like many others here, lose a significant portion of my life savings in the form of deferred compensation invested in the capital of AIGFP because of those losses. In this way I have personally suffered from this controversial activity— directly as well as indirectly with the rest of the taxpayers.
I have the utmost respect for the civic duty that you are now performing at AIG. You are as blameless for these credit default swap losses as I am. You answered your country’s call and you are taking a tremendous beating for it.
But you also are aware that most of the employees of your financial products unit had nothing to do with the large losses. And I am disappointed and frustrated over your lack of support for us. I and many others in the unit feel betrayed that you failed to stand up for us in the face of untrue and unfair accusations from certain members of Congress last Wednesday and from the press over our retention payments, and that you didn’t defend us against the baseless and reckless comments made by the attorneys general of New York and Connecticut.
My guess is that in October, when you learned of these retention contracts, you realized that the employees of the financial products unit needed some incentive to stay and that the contracts, being both ethical and useful, should be left to stand. That’s probably why AIG management assured us on three occasions during that month that the company would “live up to its commitment” to honor the contract guarantees.
That may be why you decided to accelerate by three months more than a quarter of the amounts due under the contracts. That action signified to us your support, and was hardly something that one would do if he truly found the contracts “distasteful.”
That may also be why you authorized the balance of the payments on 13 March.
At no time during the past six months that you have been leading AIG did you ask us to revise, renegotiate, or break these contracts— until several hours before your appearance last week before Congress.
I think your initial decision to honor the contracts was both ethical and financially astute, but it seems to have been politically unwise. It’s now apparent that you either misunderstood the agreements that you had made— tacit or otherwise— with the Federal Reserve, the Treasury, various members of Congress, and Attorney General Andrew Cuomo of New York, or were not strong enough to withstand the shifting political winds.
You’ve now asked the current employees of AIGFP to repay these earnings. As you can imagine, there has been a tremendous amount of serious thought and heated discussion about how we should respond to this breach of trust.
As most of us have done nothing wrong, guilt is not a motivation to surrender our earnings. We have worked 12 long months under these contracts and now deserve to be paid as promised. None of us should be cheated of our payments any more than a plumber should be cheated after he has fixed the pipes but a careless electrician causes a fire that burns down the house.
Many of the employees have, in the past six months, turned down job offers from more stable employers, based on AIG’s assurances that the contracts would be honored. They are now angry about having been misled by AIG’s promises and are not inclined to return the money as a favor to you.
The only real motivation that anyone at AIGFP now has is fear. Mr. Cuomo has threatened to “name and shame”, and his counterpart in Connecticut, Richard Blumenthal, has made similar threats— even though attorneys general are supposed to stand for due process, to conduct trials in courts and not the press.
So what am I to do? There’s no easy answer. I know that because of hard work I have benefited more than most during the economic boom and have saved enough that my family is unlikely to suffer devastating losses during the current bust. Some might argue that members of my profession have been overpaid, and I wouldn’t disagree.
That is why I have decided to donate 100 percent of the effective after-tax proceeds of my retention payment directly to organizations that are helping people who are suffering from the global downturn. This is not a tax-deduction gimmick; I simply believe that I at least deserve to dictate how my earnings are spent, and do not want to see them disappear back into the obscurity of A.I.G.’s or the federal government’s budget. Our earnings have caused such a distraction for so many from the more pressing issues our country faces, and I would like to see my share of it benefit those truly in need.
On 16 March I received a payment from AIG amounting to $742,006.40, after taxes. In light of the uncertainty over the ultimate taxation and legal status of this payment, the actual amount I donate may be less— in fact, it may end up being far less if the recent House bill raising the tax on the retention payments to ninety percent stands. Once all the money is donated, you will immediately receive a list of all recipients.
This choice is right for me. I wish others at AIGFP luck finding peace with their difficult decision, and only hope their judgment is not clouded by fear.
Mr. Liddy, I wish you success in your commitment to return the money extended by the American government, and luck with the continued unwinding of the company’s diverse businesses— especially those remaining credit default swaps. I’ll continue over the short term to help make sure no balls are dropped, but after what’s happened this past week I can’t remain much longer— there is too much bad blood. I’m not sure how you will greet my resignation, but at least Attorney General Blumenthal should be relieved that I’ll leave under my own power and will not need to be “shoved out the door”.
Sincerely,
Jake DeSantis

Rico says it's nice the guy decided to donate the money, though he could've given it back, the fuck... (And the rich are different than you or me; when was the last time you even saw, much less got, a check for $742,006? Oh, yeah, and forty cents...)

We know what to do with rustlers

The New York Times has an article by Malcolm Gay about people rustling Brahmas in Missouri:

Crashing through a gate in the dead of night, thieves using trucks and trailers recently robbed a farmer here of 53 Brahman crossbreed cows valued at some $50,000. Known for a distinctive hump at the base of the neck, Brahman cattle are rare here and would be easily spotted at a local auction, leading investigators to think the rustlers already had a buyer— or a butcher— lined up.
“Those were full-grown cows,” Sheriff Joey Kyle of Christian County said. “Around 1,100 pounds apiece. That’s 53,000 pounds of beef on the hoof. Your normal stock trailer will handle a dozen to fifteen cows, so do the math.” It was the first cattle theft in the county in more than two years and the largest state officials could recall. It came amid a surge of such thefts here in southwestern Missouri. In January, rustlers hauled away forty cows in nearby Lawrence County. Investigators in Barry County report thirty head stolen in the last six months. In Greene County, Sheriff Jim Arnott said rustlers had struck ten times since October, stealing a total of 93 cows. “It’s a big spike,” Sheriff Arnott said. “Usually we’ll go a year or two with no thefts, but it’s really picked up. In these economic times people are taking desperate measures, whether it’s stealing, or whether they’re trying to come up with money through insurance fraud.” Earlier this month, rustlers in Watertown, South Dakota, used tractor-trailers to steal nearly two hundred cows from an auction market. State officials in Wyoming report that thieves stole 225 head of cattle in 2008, up from ninety in 2006.
In Montana, where sixty cattle were recently reported missing in a series of thefts, officials described an increase in rustling since the summer, and the International Livestock Identification Association reported swelling numbers of missing-animal claims this year among its twenty member states. Equally alarming, investigators say, is a spike in cattle-related fraud. Out-of-state buyers build a relationship with an auction market, only to disappear with livestock they used in-house credit to buy but never paid for. Investigators also say that people are now falsely claiming ownership of cattle as collateral for loans. “It’s across the board,” Lee Romsa, state brand commissioner for the Wyoming Livestock Board, said. “We’re not just seeing more thefts, we’re seeing more large thefts.”
Still, no state seems as hard hit by cattle rustling as Missouri. “They’ve just been plagued,” said Larry Gray, head of law enforcement for the Texas and Southwestern Cattle Raisers Association. Mr. Gray, who said that cattle theft was often tied to drug activity, added that Missouri farmers might be more vulnerable to rustlers because many farmers there were “absentee producers” with smaller operations. “Thieves like to prey on the smaller producers,” he said, because “it’s a lot easier for the thieves to get and load the cattle.”
Also, unlike many larger cattle-producing Western states, Missouri does not have a “brand law,” meaning that cattle producers are not required to register brands with the state. Not having to register saves many of the state’s 65,000 ranchers from paying fees, but it also means that cattle often carry no identifying marks. Auction markets and stockyards are not required to verify ownership of unbranded cattle, and that, the authorities say, allows thieves to unload stolen livestock quickly. “You could drive up to any sale barn, drop off your load of cattle, and, if they pass the agricultural inspection and are sold, you get a check in the mail,” Sgt. Jason Clark, a Missouri Highway Patrol spokesman, said.
Since 2004, after a surge in cattle thefts following a spike in beef prices, many of the roughly 130 auction markets in Missouri have begun asking for identification and proof of ownership from anyone trying to sell unbranded cattle. But the program is voluntary, and the Missouri Cattlemen’s Association estimates that thieves have stolen more than $1.1 million in cattle and equipment in the past four years.
To counter the tide, sheriffs have stepped up their efforts, pulling over suspicious cattle trailers, educating farmers and ranchers about protecting their livestock, distributing fliers at feed stores, and notifying auction markets when a theft occurs.
A bill in the General Assembly would stiffen penalties for livestock theft, and the Missouri Farm Bureau and the state cattlemen’s association each offer rewards of up to $5,000 for information leading to the arrest and conviction of cattle thieves. But investigators say efforts to track down stolen cattle rarely bear fruit. There is no national identification database for cattle, and thieves often move quickly, shipping stolen animals to auction markets in other states that do not require brand inspection. “If they don’t have a chip or branding or a tattoo, you’re pretty much looking for a black cow,” said Sheriff Arnott, who said he had traced stolen cattle as far as Mississippi.
Bob Gammon, who owns a farm in southwestern Missouri, has branded his cattle since he began raising them in 1946. Still, Mr. Gammon has not been able to recover the eighteen head that were stolen in January. After crushing a gate, the thieves used one of Mr. Gammon’s trailers to haul away the livestock, which he valued at $15,000. “When I got there the next morning, there was a gate laying down and a few cattle out on the road,” said Mr. Gammon, who has put heavier chains on his gates and installed an alarm and lighting system in several farm buildings. “I thought I was doing everything right, but I haven’t heard from the cattle yet.”
Sheriff Kyle, who said a subpoena had recently been issued in the Brahman theft in Christian County, said officials were under pressure to find stolen cattle before the animals disappeared inside a slaughterhouse. “Down here, a sheriff lives or dies by whether he keeps the cattle thefts down,” he said. “But there are no serial numbers on hamburgers.”

Rico says there may be a movie in this, but it ain't a Western...

Civil War for the day

Lieutenant John Bean, USA, a Civil War resident of Douglas County in the Dakota Territory from 1882 to 1915.

Googlies and the like

The New York Times has an article by Joshua Robinson about the surgeance (since there was never one to have a re- of before) of cricket in America:

Sandwiched between a soccer game and a barbecue, the Montgomery College cricket team edged closer and closer to victory. And when at last it came, after four days of wickets, overs, and sixes, the players were jubilant. Just as cricketers do from Australia to Antigua, they snatched the wooden cricket stumps out of the grass and waved them around their heads in mad celebration. The players felt they had claimed more than the three-foot trophy for the first American College Cricket spring break championship. In their minds they had brought their sport one step closer to the American mainstream.
Though cricket counts its fans by the billion worldwide, the sport does not register a pulse in the United States. Of the five teams in attendance at this experimental event last weekend— Montgomery, from Maryland; Boston University; Carnegie-Mellon, from Pittsburgh; the University of South Florida and the University of Miami— most exist only as social clubs. None of them have club team status, and the sport is not officially recognized by the NCAA. “This is an opportunity for us to really show athletic directors at a Division I level that cricket matters, cricket is a big sport and cricket has a marketing capability in this country,” said Sumantro Das, an all-rounder and junior at Boston University, who learned to play as a child in India.
With only a few weeks’ notice, the five teams did what many college students do this time of year: they packed their sunscreen and headed to Florida. Nearly sixty players drove or flew at their own expense to the lush cricket pitches of Central Broward Regional Park. They played a version of cricket in which many stuffy traditions are left behind and matches are completed in about three hours instead of taking up to five days. The only custom-built cricket stadium in the United States stands in this park, but securing the 5,000-seat facility was far too rich a luxury for the tournament’s shoestring budget. Competing on the park’s manicured fields was already an upgrade over the converted soccer fields and tennis courts the players were used to.
“I wanted them to see the stadium to know what they are playing for,” said Lloyd Jodah, the founder and president of American College Cricket. “That is where we want to be next year.” The idea for the college tournament came to him last year as he campaigned to have cricket included in the Olympics. Standing on Wall Street with a cricket bat in one hand and petitions in the other, Jodah, an immigrant from Guyana who works selling health club memberships, met Kalpesh Patel, a Jamaican business student from the University of Miami. Once Jodah heard how difficult it was for college cricketers to find regular games, he began toying with the idea of a nationwide organization for collegiate clubs and founded American College Cricket. He made a group on Facebook as a way to reach out to players. “We always had the desire to play, but there was no real framework for us to get involved,” Patel said. “So this idea gave us the push to get involved with the most competitive form of the game.”
Jodah and Nino DiLoreto, a former soccer player from Abruzzi, Italy, spent many evenings tracking down college cricket players, and the group swelled to more than 500 members. “We could have waited till next year to have the tournament and maybe taken more time to organize it,” Jodah said. “But it was important to actually do something this year, to have something to show for ourselves.” Invitations went out and T-shirts were printed.
At the Boston University Cricket Club, expenses for the trip became the subject of six- and seven-hour meetings. After much deliberation, and financial help from the university, the roughly dozen members agreed that the opportunity to play for a long weekend was worth $400 each. “Putting up that kind of money, especially when most of us have none, was a big decision for us,” Das said. “But it was significant because who else is doing anything for cricket in this country?”
Unlike a couple of the teams, which had snazzy uniforms, the University of South Florida contingent did not even have a team until a few weeks ago; they were just a few guys who played a regular pickup game. They settled on sweatpants and green T-shirts from the college bookstore. Not having names on their shirts caused a few awkward moments when a player would run to the borrowed picnic table/scorer’s table with no idea of which of his new teammates was batting next.
But the players all knew the finer points of cricket etiquette, lilting cries of “Ball” or “Shot” into the wind after each pretty play— high cricket praise that requires no adjectives. Other cheers followed in at least a half-dozen different languages and dialects, but instructions on the field were usually in English. Miami players adopted an English-only rule after a few plays were botched in translation.
Nearly all the players were born abroad. And even though the sport had a rich history in the United States until World War Two, it is still widely seen here as an obscure game played exclusively by foreigners. Most who play it here are from countries that belonged to the British Commonwealth. The aim of this tournament, Jodah and DiLoreto explained, was to make cricket more accessible by growing its college identity, something that rubbed off on the Miami players as they belted Hurricanes chants. “We’re not playing on Saturdays for the fun of it anymore,” Patel said. “We’re playing for our school.”
After the championship match, in which South Florida could not handle Montgomery’s firepower, the local fans— three Jamaican retirees sitting in the shade— nodded in approval, clapping politely.
Many of the players said the four-day adventure had spurred them to continue growing the sport when they return to campus. And nine years after moving to Maryland from his native Pakistan, Montgomery’s captain, Adil Bhatti, said he hoped to take it one step further. He wants to try out for the United States national team, which plays in International Cricket Council tournaments. “We live here and we play cricket here,” Bhatti said. “I would absolutely want to represent the U.S.”

Rico says it was a nice surprise to see his alma mater, CMU, represented at this event...

Ah, the Russians

From the Ural Motorcycles site:
Allow us to introduce Ural Gzhel – a very special Ural Tourist hand painted in the 14th century pottery painting style by our own Svetlana Zyryanova.
Svetlana is an employee of the IMZ factory Paint Department. Some of the things she does at work is polishing the paint and applying camouflage spots onto Gear Ups. In her spare time, Svetlana is an accomplished artist. She became very interested in taking on a project of painting Ural Tourist in an exclusive Gzhel style. It was an exciting opportunity for her creativity to take the lead and make something unique and exquisite. She chose her own paint, the brushes, she came up with the design and patterns and hand painted every detail in her own spare time. The result was amazing! We are proud now to present to you her beautiful work of art. On the left side panel one can see Svetlana’s signature and the date – September 2008.
Why Gzhel and what’s "Gzhel"?
Gzhel is an example of traditional Russian folk art with roots going back to the 14th century. The art of gzhel pottery and design originated from the settlements southeast of Moscow along Gzhelka River. Today this well-known design of blue ornaments on white background is one of Russia’s cultural gems. Gzhel evolved from pottery to the famous blue-patterned fine porcelain known for its makers’ exquisite taste and excellence in craftsmanship.
We decided to dress one Ural in the finest design that centuries of tradition afford us; share with you the talent of the people at our factory and demonstrate what they can actually do.
This motorcycle looks like the finest porcelain figurine, but luckily it is not as fragile… and one can actually drive it! The beautiful hand painting on all body parts is clear coated for protection so that you can really show it off on the road.
How to buy Gzhel Ural?
It is truly one of a kind Ural and we just can’t bring ourselves to putting a price tag on it. That is why we will offer it on eBay on 3 April at noon EST with the help of one of our dealers. The delivery of the motorcycle will take place at a dealership close to the winning bidder.
The winning bidder will also receive a special souvenir – an exclusive bottle of Gzhel vodka … with at least some vodka left inside.
The last but not the least – we will donate 10% of proceeds from the sale of Ural Gzhel to the Irbit Children School of Arts to support local arts program in Irbit.

Rico asks how can you resist?

Don't look down, whatever you do

Rico says this, from his old friend Bill Austin:
Supposedly it's a bathroom floor in a tenth-story apartment, faux painted.
Rico says he's not going in there...

Quote for the day

From James Lee Burke's Swan Peak:

At a certain time in your life, you think about death in a serious way, and you think about it often. You see your eyes and mouth impacted by dirt, your clothes a moldy receptacle for water leaking through the topsoil. You see a frozen mound backlit by a wintry sky, a plain of brown grass with tumbleweed bouncing across it. Inside the mound, if your ears could hear, they would tell you the shovel that raises you into light again will do so only for reasons of scientific curiosity.
When you see these images in your sleep or experience them in your waking day, you know they do not represent a negotiable fate. The images are indeed your future, and no exception will be made for you.
During these moments, when you try to push away these images from the edge of your vision, you have one urge only, and that is to somehow leave behind a gesture, a cipher carved on a rock, a good deed, some visible scratch on history that will tell others you were here and that you tried to make the world a better place.
The great joke is that any wisdom most of us acquire can seldom be passed on to others. I suspect this reality is at the heart of most old people’s anger.

Rico says that he has had his moments of having to consider all this; it is at the heart of his anger, for sure. But his blog and his novels are his 'ciphers carved on a rock'...

Some wretched little country somewhere

Courtesy of my friend Kelley, this apré-firefight lull in the battle. Rico says the Swiss-cheese effect on the bus is incredible, though...

Probably had enough already...

The New York Times has an article by Mary Williams Walsh and Carl Hulse about the state of things at AIG:

The New York State attorney general, Andrew Cuomo, said on Monday that he had persuaded nine of the top ten bonus recipients at the American International Group to give their money back, as the Senate retreated on plans to tax such bonuses. Mr. Cuomo said he was working his way down a list of AIG employees, ranked by the size of their bonuses, and had already won commitments to pay back $50 million out of the total $165 million awarded this month. But, in a reversal of the stand he took last week, he said he did not intend to release any names. “If the person returns the money, I don’t think there’s a public interest in releasing the names,” Mr. Cuomo said in a conference call with reporters.
In Washington, the Senate majority leader, Harry Reid, said that efforts to recover bonuses like the ones at AIG through punitive taxes would be delayed. Other officials said momentum in Congress had slowed considerably, given misgivings voiced by President Obama.
Mr. Cuomo said that he hoped eventually to recover $80 million in bonuses paid in March to AIG employees in the United States. But he said an additional $85 million had gone to people outside the United States, and he did not believe his office had the legal standing to pursue them. That would appear to spare people in AIG’s financial products office in London, the seat of the company’s business in credit-default swaps— the derivatives that nearly sank the company and paralyzed the global financial system last fall. “We have a very aggressive theory about our jurisdiction, but we don’t have a theory that gets us to London,” Mr. Cuomo said. A person with knowledge of the investigation, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said that two recipients in the London office had returned their bonuses voluntarily, however. Mr. Cuomo said that of the top twenty recipients in the United States, fifteen had returned their payments in full. The rest included people who refused, who were still reviewing their options, or who had not yet been located, he said.
A spokeswoman for AIG, Christina Pretto, confirmed that employees had been agreeing to give back their bonuses, and said there had also been “a handful of senior-level resignations.” She said the company expected more resignations.
This bore out the predictions of AIG's chief executive, Edward Liddy, that if employees had to give back their bonuses, they would probably resign. In remarks to a House Financial Services subcommittee last week, Mr. Liddy expressed concern that such resignations would make it harder for AIG to wind down its portfolio of derivatives, currently worth $1.6 trillion. The company wants to minimize losses while exiting the derivatives business.
Ms. Pretto said the company thought so far that the situation was manageable. On the same day Mr. Liddy spoke, lawmakers began rushing to impose heavy taxes on bonuses paid to executives of companies receiving federal support. The House on Thursday voted overwhelmingly in favor of a near total tax on such bonuses.
But after complaining last week that Republicans were blocking a similar bill in the Senate, Mr. Reid, Democrat of Nevada, indicated on Monday that any action would be delayed. “Republicans have asked for more time to study the legislation, and they’re entitled to that,” Mr. Reid said as he opened the Senate on Monday afternoon. Aides said the Senate would spend the next few days on a bill to expand national community service programs, and could return to the bonus issue this week.
The Republican leader, Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, said there were important reasons to put the brakes on the legislation. “This bill ought to slow down, and we ought to think about the ramifications of what we are doing,” Mr. McConnell said at a news conference. “I gather from listening to the administration over the weekend that they are having some second thoughts about whether this is the right way to go.”
After the House vote last week, the White House said that Mr. Obama looked forward to signing a final bill. But within hours, the president began to back away from that position, and in an interview on Sunday on 60 Minutes, he said he had not reached a conclusion. “We can’t govern out of anger,” Mr. Obama said. Pressed about the constitutionality of a steep tax on bonuses, the president, who is a former constitutional law professor, said, “Let’s see if there are ways of doing this that are both legal, that are constitutional, that uphold our basic principles of fairness, but don’t hamper us from getting the banking system back on track.” He added, “That’s why we’re going to have to take a look at this legislation carefully.” Some officials said that the president’s questions had created significant reluctance to act in the Senate, because lawmakers do not want to get too far out in front of the administration if the president ultimately is not going to back the tax.

Rico says that, if he'd gotten millions from these idiots, he still be "reviewing his options", too (and preferably somewhere with no extradition treaty)...

Glad somebody likes it

Donte said... I recently came across your blog and have been reading along. I thought I would leave my first comment. I dont know what to say except that I have enjoyed reading. Nice blog. I will keep visiting this blog very often.

In the soup

Rico says that watching In the Electric Mist (with Confederate Dead), a splendid little Dave Robicheaux mystery starring Tommy Lee Jones (and way better than Heaven's Prisoners, which starred, though it's a dubious phrase in his case, Alec Baldwin as Dave Robicheaux, but Eric Roberts was great as Bubba Rocque), put him in mind of the Katrina-related problems in New Orleans. Mayor Nagin is still facing the same problems, all brought on by trying to govern a city that's below water:

The City of New Orleans is undertaking an unprecedented level of capital improvement, street, and landscape enhancement projects to rebuild New Orleans to pre-storm conditions, returning it to its status as one of the nation's most vibrant and thriving communities. Already, $1.1 billion has been allocated toward active recovery projects.

Rico says they could take a couple billion more (hey, what's a couple of billion, given how many we're giving those idiots at GM?) and pump out the sediment that the Mississippi carries past the city every day (and dumps into the Gulf, making it worse) and fill up the low-lying areas of the city until it was well above flood stage, thus making it a regular, non-flooding city like Baton Rouge or, hell, Detroit...

Sadness in Trollhattan

Sarah Lyall has an article in The New York Times about the lamentable demise of Saab:

Saab Automobile may be just another crisis-ridden car company in an industry full of them. But just as the fortunes of Flint, Michigan are permanently entangled with General Motors, so it is impossible to find anyone in this city in southwest Sweden who is not somehow connected to Saab. Which makes it all the more wrenching that the Swedish government has responded to Saab’s desperate financial situation by saying, essentially, tough luck. Or, as the enterprise minister, Maud Olofsson, put it recently, “The Swedish state is not prepared to own car factories.”
Such a view might seem jarring, coming as it does from a country with a reputation for a paternalistic view of workers and companies. The “Swedish model” for dealing with a banking crisis— nationalizing the banks, recapitalizing them and selling them— has been much debated lately in the United States, with free-market defenders warning of a slippery slope of Nordic socialism.
But Sweden now has a right-leaning government, elected in 2006 after a long period of Social Democratic rule, that prefers market forces to state intervention and ownership. That fact has made the workers of Trollhattan wish the old socialist model were more in evidence. “I don’t think the government knows the situation in this town, how many people depend on Saab,” said Therese Doeij, 25, a clerk at a photo shop who has several friends who work at the company. “To them it’s just a factory. They don’t see the people behind it.”
Governments all over the world are confronting the disintegration of the global automobile market in different ways, with loans, bailouts, and takeovers. But Sweden’s approach has been particularly hard-nosed, and particularly unequivocal. Why is the government apparently dead set against helping Saab, an iconic brand that stands as a global symbol of Sweden along with Ikea, Volvo, and Abba? That is what Paul Akerlund, the local chairman of the automobile workers’ union, wonders. “I’m a little surprised,” he said. “They say the market should help itself, but the market has collapsed around the whole world. It’s an extraordinary situation.” He added, with a note of accusation in his voice, “In Germany, France, and England, the government is going in to help the car manufacturers.”
Swedish officials have condemned what they see as protectionism by other European countries that have pledged to prop up their own failing car industries. They have also been scathing about General Motors, Saab’s owner, and the last thing they want is to seem to be bailing out a despised foreign company.
Struggling for its own survival, GM has said it will completely pull out of Saab by the end of 2009, a course that Ms. Olofsson, the enterprise minister, described as tantamount to declaring “that they wash their hands of Saab and drop it into the laps of the Swedish taxpayers.” She said: “We are very disappointed in GM, but we are not prepared to risk taxpayers’ money. This is not a game of Monopoly.” Saab lost about $343 million last year. It is now going through a Swedish process known as reorganization, a step short of bankruptcy, as it tries to persuade its creditors to prop it up while it looks for a buyer. Joe Oliver, a spokesman, said in an interview that “around six serious investors” from Sweden and abroad had expressed interest.
Time is running out. But the prospect of failure is too awful for Trollhattan’s mayor, Gert-Inge Andersson, to even contemplate. In a city of about 54,000 people, Saab employs 4,000. “I’m being optimistic, because I can’t envision a time when Saab doesn’t exist,” Mr. Andersson said in an interview in City Hall. His son worked at Saab for a decade; his daughter’s boyfriend works there now. “Saab is our identity,” he said. “We have lived with it for many years, and it’s very important to all of us.”
Saab was always known for its innovative engineering. But analysts say that in recent years, with General Motors’s emphasis on volume rather than individuality, it has lost its edge. “Under GM’s ownership, they denuded the intellectual content behind the brand,” said Peter Wells, who teaches at Cardiff Business School in Wales and specializes in the automotive industry. “Its products are not exciting enough, and Saab doesn’t have a strong brand identity anymore.”
The numbers speak all too loudly. Saab sold just 93,295 vehicles worldwide last year, 21,383 of them in the United States. As global demand plummets, the expectations for this year are even more dire. The company announced this month that it planned to lay off 750 workers in Trollhattan.
This is not a rich city. Besides Saab, the largest employer is the municipal government. The houses run mostly to modest wooden two-story structures and low-rise brick apartment buildings. But about forty percent of the people here drive Saabs, Mayor Andersson said. On a cold evening last month, 3,000 people held a torchlight ceremony to show their support for the company.
Leave the tourist office and you come immediately to the Saab Museum. A shining, sparkling valentine to a company and an industry, it features treasures like the groundbreaking turbo engine unveiled at the 1977 Frankfurt automobile show, and the prototype of the very first Saab car, from 1947— Ur-Saab, its license plate says proudly. All the cars here, even the rarest and most precious, are still driven from time to time by enthusiasts.
Some 50,000 tourists visit each year, said Ola Bolander, who works at the museum. Saab sponsors a festival for its fans every other year; 20,000 came to the last one, in 2007. “Saab has always been a bit different, a bit more interesting,” Mr. Bolander said. “It’s gone its own way, and it’s in the heart of the Swedish people.”
Sweden has nine million people. Labor leaders say Saab’s collapse would disproportionately affect southwest Sweden, an industrial belt that is also home to Volvo. But it would reverberate through the rest of the economy, which depends heavily on industrial exports, jeopardizing perhaps tens of thousands of jobs.
Sweden is famous for its generous unemployment provisions, which include retraining for laid-off workers. But unemployment is quickly rising. Tomas Eneroth, a member of Parliament and the spokesman for industry and trade for the opposition Social Democrats, said the government’s tough line was foolish. “The fact that they are so passive,” he said, “is every day now making it worse and jeopardizing the possibility of having Saab still in Sweden.”
Around the corner from City Hall, Johann Riden, a sales clerk in an electronics store, said about half his customers worked either at Saab or at companies that do business with Saab. “I have friends there, my colleagues have family there, and my friends have family there,” said Mr. Riden, 32. “If you look around, you see Saab everywhere.”

Rico says his ex-wife used to drive one (he drove Volvos); great car, the Saab, and he'll be sad to see them go...

Genetic? Sounds like it

Rico says this article in The New York Times by Anahad O'Connor talks about how some people carry following in their mother's footsteps a little far:

Nicholas Hughes, the son of the poet and novelist Sylvia Plath and the British Poet Laureate Ted Hughes, killed himself at his home in Alaska, nearly a half-century after his mother and stepmother took their own lives, according to a statement from his sister. Mr. Hughes, 47, was a fisheries biologist who studied stream fish and spent much of his time trekking across Alaska on field studies. Shielded from stories about his mother’s suicide until he was a teenager, Mr. Hughes had lived an academic life largely outside the public eye. But friends and family said he had long struggled with depression. Last Monday, he hanged himself at his home in Alaska, his sister, Frieda Hughes, said over the weekend.
“It is with profound sorrow that I must announce the death of my brother, Nicholas Hughes, who died by his own hand on Monday 16th March 2009 at his home in Alaska,” she said in a statement to the Times of London. “He had been battling depression for some time.”
Mr. Hughes’s early life was darkened by shadows of depression and suicide. Ms. Plath explored the themes in her 1963 novel The Bell Jar, which follows an ambitious college student who tries to kill herself after suffering a nervous breakdown while interning at a magazine in New York City. The novel reflected Ms. Plath’s own experiences, including her early struggles with depression and her attempt at suicide while working at Mademoiselle in New York as a college student.
After a stay at a mental institution, Ms. Plath went on to study poetry at Cambridge University, where she met Ted Hughes, who was on his way to world fame as a poet. The two were married in 1956, and had two children— Nicholas and Frieda— but separated in 1962 after Mr. Hughes began an affair with another woman, Assia Wevill. Ms. Plath killed herself at the age of thirty by sticking her head in an oven in her London home on 11 February 1963, as Nicholas and Frieda slept nearby.
Six years later, Ms. Wevill, who had helped raise Nicholas and Frieda after Ms. Plath’s death, killed herself and her four-year-old daughter, Shura. Ms. Wevill styled the murder-suicide in the same manner, using a gas stove.
Mr. Hughes, who became Poet Laureate in 1984 and was widely regarded as one of the greatest poets of his generation, resisted speaking openly about the deaths for many years. But in his last poetic work, Birthday Letters, published in 1998, he finally broke his silence and explored the theme. He died the same year, as the book— in some ways considered a quest for redemption— was climbing best-seller lists.
Mr. Hughes was said to have protected his children from details about their mother’s suicide for many years. But in at least one poem he seemed to indicate that Nicholas, who was only one year old at the time of her death, was pained even as a small child, recalling in one stanza how Nicholas’s eyes Became wet jewels/ The hardest substance of the purest pain/ As I fed him in his high white chair.
Nicholas had a passion for wildlife, particularly fish. As a young adult he studied at the University of Oxford, where he obtained a bachelor of science degree in 1984 and a master of arts degree in 1990. Afterward, he traveled to the United States, earning a doctoral degree from the University of Alaska at Fairbanks, where he became an assistant professor at the School of Fisheries and Ocean Science. According to the University, Mr. Hughes was an expert in “stream salmonid ecology” and carried out his research in Alaska and New Zealand. He resigned from the faculty in 2006, but continued his research, the school said.
One graduate student there, Lauren Tuori, recalled a peculiar habit of Mr. Hughes’s, saying he would often “seek out a larch tree in a forest of spruce”. She added, “Alaska could use more biologists like Nick, who still display wonder at the small things around them.”

One down, many to go

The New York Times has an article by Abdul Waheed Wafa and Mark McDonald:

A senior Taliban leader responsible for numerous roadside bombings and suicide attacks against NATO forces has been killed, along with nine other insurgent fighters, NATO said Monday. Maulawi Hassan, described as a well-known Taliban commander in southern Afghanistan, was killed Saturday in an attack on his compound near Kajaki, in Helmand Province, according to a NATO statement. “He became known for his insurgent activities in the autumn of 2008 and was heavily involved in several illegal activities,” the statement said, noting that there had been no civilian casualties in the attack. The statement said Mr. Hassan had reported directly to Mullah Rahmatullah, the Taliban commander who directs insurgency efforts from outside Afghanistan. The police chief of Helmand Province, Assadullah Shirzad, said the killing of Mr. Hassan and his men was “an important achievement for Afghan and NATO forces in Helmand, and a real blow to the Taliban”.
Commander Paula Rowe, a spokeswoman for NATO troops in Helmand, said the operation dealt “another serious blow” to the Taliban insurgency in the south.
A Taliban resurgence in southern Afghanistan has focused on Helmand, Uruzgan, and Kandahar Provinces, and attacks there have risen sharply in recent weeks. On Monday, Taliban fighters killed eight police officers and wounded another one when they attacked a patrol in the Spinbaldak district of Kandahar Province, the Associated Press reported, citing a police officer, Sahib Jan.
A day earlier, rockets hit the principal coalition air base in Kandahar. One contractor died and six others were wounded in the attack, the Associated Press said. The large airfield, used as a jumping-off point for coalition missions against Taliban forces across the south, comes under rocket fire almost routinely, but the death on Sunday was the first at the base, the United States military said. Two NATO soldiers also were killed in the area on Sunday, the coalition said in a statement, without providing details.

Rico says with placenames like Spinbaldak, you gotta love Afghanistan...

Sure, you can work there, but live there?

Slate comments on the state of certain states:

While every state is suffering during the recession, some don't have significant unemployment rates: Wyoming, Nebraska, Utah, South Dakota, and North Dakota.

Rico says he's sure they're lovely places to live... (But Utah? Nah. No bars.)

Everybody's getting in on the act now

That explains things

Courtesy of my friend Bill Champ, this explanation of derivatives and the collapse of the market:

Heidi is the proprietor of a bar in Detroit. In order to increase sales, she decides to allow her loyal customers— most of whom are unemployed alcoholics— to drink now but pay later. She keeps track of the drinks consumed on a ledger (thereby granting the customers loans). Word gets around about Heidi's drink-now-pay-later marketing strategy and as a result, increasing numbers of customers flood into Heidi's bar. Soon she has the largest sale volume for any bar in Detroit. By providing her customers freedom from immediate payment demands, Heidi gets no resistance when she substantially increases her prices for wine and beer, the most consumed beverages. Her sales volume increases massively.
A young and dynamic vice-president at the local bank recognizes these customer debts as valuable future assets, and increases Heidi's borrowing limit. He sees no reason for undue concern since he has the debts of the alcoholics as collateral.
At the bank's corporate headquarters, expert traders transform these customer loans into DrinkBonds, AlkiBonds, and PukeBonds. These securities are then traded on security markets worldwide.
Naive investors don't really understand that the securities being sold to them as AAA secured bonds are really the debts of unemployed alcoholics. Nevertheless, their prices continuously climb, and the securities become the top-selling items for some of the nation's leading brokerage houses, who collect enormous fees on their sales, pay extravagant bonuses to their sales force, and who in turn purchase exotic sports cars and multimillion dollar condominiums.
One day, although the bond prices are still climbing, a risk manager at the bank (subsequently fired due to his negative attitude), decides that the time has come to demand payment on the debts incurred by the drinkers at Heidi's bar.
Heidi demands payment from her alcoholic patrons but, being unemployed, they cannot pay back their drinking debts. Therefore, Heidi cannot fulfill her loan obligations and claims bankruptcy.
DrinkBond and span style="font-style:italic;">AlkiBond drop in price by ninety percent. PukeBond performs better, stabilizing in price after dropping by eighty percent. The decreased bond asset value destroys the banks liquidity and prevents it from issuing new loans.
The suppliers of Heidi's bar, having granted her generous payment extensions and having invested in the securities, are faced with writing off her debt and losing over eighty percent on her bonds. Her wine supplier claims bankruptcy and her beer supplier is taken over by a competitor, who immediately closes the local plant and lays off fifty workers.
The bank and brokerage houses are saved by the Government following dramatic round-the-clock negotiations by leaders from both political parties. The funds required for this bailout are obtained by a tax levied on employed middle-class non-drinkers.

Rico says it's funny as hell, until you realize how true it is...

Civil War for the day

General Robert E. Lee surrendering to General Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Court House on 9 April 1865; wood engraving based on an illustration by Alfred R. Waud, 1887. The Granger Collection, New York.

Big boys and their toys

Courtesy of my friend Dave, a bunch of SEALs transitioning from one form of transportation to another, the hard way...

Nano technology

The Nano from Tata (the bigger one) costs $2,500. The Nano from Apple (the smaller one) costs $149. Rico will still take the smaller one...

An easy one (not)

From my friend Kevin (the one that's female), this:

Which one's the blonde?

Shoulda been easy, but Rico didn't get it

And the answer is:

The one with the wrong leg up, of course...

Good question

Courtesy of my friend Joan Davis, this conundrum:

Why are builders afraid to have a thirteenth floor, but publishers aren’t afraid to have a Chapter Eleven?

Tough poodle

Courtesy of my friend Joan Davis, this story:

A wealthy old lady decides to go on a photo safari in Africa, taking her faithful elderly poodle, Cuddles, along for company. One day the old poodle starts chasing butterflies and, before long, Cuddles discovers he's lost. Wandering about, he notices a leopard heading rapidly in his direction, with the obvious intention of having lunch.
The old poodle thinks, Uh oh, I'm in deep doo-doo now! Noticing some bones on the ground close by, he immediately settles down to chew on the bones with his back to the approaching cat. Just as the leopard is about to leap, the old poodle exclaims loudly, Boy, that was one delicious leopard! I wonder if there are any more around here?
Hearing this, the young leopard halts his attack in mid-pounch, a look of terror comes over him, and he slinks away into the trees. Whew!, says the leopard, That was close! That old poodle nearly had me!
Meanwhile a monkey, who had been watching the whole scene from a nearby tree, figures he can put this knowledge to good use and trade it for protection from the leopard. Off he goes, but the old poodle sees him heading after the leopard, and figures something must be up.
The monkey soon catches up with the leopard, spills the beans, and strikes a deal with the leopard. The young leopard is furious at being made a fool of, saying Here, monkey, hop on my back and see what's going to happen to that conniving canine!
Now the old poodle sees the leopard coming with the monkey on his back and thinks What am I going to do now? Instead of running, the dog sits down with his back to his attackers, pretending he hasn't seen them yet, and just when they get close enough to hear, the old poodle says Where's that damn monkey? I sent him off an hour ago to bring me another leopard!

The moral of this story: Don't mess with old farts.
Old age and treachery will always overcome youth and skill, because brilliance and bullshit only come with age and experience.

That'll torque the religious

Rico says he knows several people whom this'll piss off:

Bowling for Columbine did it to the gun culture. Super Size Me did it to fast food. Now The God Who Wasn't There does it to religion.
The movie that has been astounding audiences in theaters around the world is now available on a high-quality, feature-packed DVD. Own the taboo-shattering documentary that Newsweek says "irreverently lays out the case that Jesus Christ never existed."

In this critically acclaimed film, you will discover that:

• the early founders of Christianity seem wholly unaware of the idea of a human Jesus
• the Jesus of the Gospels bears a striking resemblance to ancient heroes and pagan savior cults
• contemporary Christians are largely ignorant of the origins of their religion
• fundamentalism is as strong today as it ever has been; an alarming 44% of Americans believing that Jesus will return to earth in their lifetimes

From exposing the hidden history of Christianity to lampooning the bloody excesses of Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ (which caused Gibson to attempt legal action against the documentary), The God Who Wasn't There pulls no punches. Directed by award-winning filmmaker (and former Christian) Brian Flemming, The God Who Wasn't There includes stimulating interviews with:
Sam Harris, author of The End of Faith and Letter to a Christian Nation
Robert M. Price, Jesus Seminar fellow and author of The Incredible Shrinking Son of Man
Alan Dundes, Professor of Folklore at the University of California at Berkeley
Richard Carrier, historian and author of Sense and Goodness Without God
Barbara & David P. Mikkelson, authors of the Urban Legends Reference Pages at snopes.com

Dazzling motion graphics and a driving soundtrack propel this uncompromising film that the Los Angeles Times calls "provocative, to put it mildly". The special features on this DVD are both generous and carefully selected. The superb commentary tracks on this DVD are not the usual "making of" chat, but consist of original material that director Brian Flemming crafted to deepen the experience of The God Who Wasn't There.
The two separate tracks are:
The Atheists. This lively track features evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins (The God Delusion). Topics discussed by this towering atheist figure range from the horrors committed in the name of God to the power of science to combat "religion and all other forms of superstition." Relevant audio from other interviewees is also woven into this timely and candid examination of irrational beliefs.
The Scholar. This track delves deep into the Jesus Myth hypothesis with pioneering scholar Earl Doherty (The Jesus Puzzle). If you are intrigued by the possibility that Jesus Christ did not exist at all, you will find this audio track fascinating. Doherty has been studying for decades the evidence that mainstream academics are only beginning to discover. Prepare to be astounded.
The DVD also includes more than one hour of additional interviews on video. These illuminating extended clips did not make it into the fast-paced main feature, but many viewers nonetheless highlight them as a favorite part of the DVD. Topics include:
The Rapture. Soft-spoken Rapture-believer Scott Butcher explains why he is certain that everything in the Book of Revelation is about to come true. (However, he is unable to explain where he got the idea that all airlines have a rule that at least one pilot in the cockpit must be a non-Christian, lest both pilots be Raptured at once while the plane is in flight.)
Legend. Barbara and David P. Mikkelson, the creators of Snopes.com, discuss the creepy lessons behind a certain urban legend popular among Christians.
What God wants. Philosopher Richard Carrier performs a thought experiment in which he asks: If there is a God, what does he want? The results are both hilarious and difficult to dispute.
Who needs God to be good? Author Sam Harris disputes the notion that morality has any relationship to dogma.

Rico says it's a bitch when your dogma gets run over by karma...