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Your Week — Daily event picks
Alan Greenspan proclaimed that central bankers can’t foresee or forestall bubbles
More Taleb: On Obama and Geithner: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=krU1wPb7i6c&featur… Speaking truth to power at Davos: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ODJf1eMgbs&featur… Interviewed with along with his friend Benoit Mandelbrot on the News Hour (fractal geometry and chaos theory genius): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DLFkQdiXPbo&featur…— September 16, 2009 10:33 p.m.
Alan Greenspan proclaimed that central bankers can’t foresee or forestall bubbles
Lt. Col. (Ret.) Walter Crandell, combat veteran of three wars, used to tell me about "experts": "An "Ex" is someone who used to...and a "spurt" is a drip under pressure." It's truly stunning that the administration chooses to listen ONLY to those who have been so dramatically, publicly, and disastrously wrong. If our government had even a shred of intelligence we'd have someone like Nassim Taleb as Treasury Secretary. See: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ABXPICWjFIo— September 16, 2009 10:22 p.m.
Mark-Elliott Lugo says San Diego Transit worse every year
I've used public transit on three continents, and San Diego's is some of the worst. 1. No posted schedules at bus stops. Go to a typical stop and the only information you'll see is the number of the bus. Nothing else. You'll get no idea where it's going, or when it will arrive. Then, if you don't have exact change, you're out of luck. Come on! This is the most basic thing possible and they cannot do it? What idiots... 2. Truly stupid routing. Why don't the route planners connect where people live and where they work? It's not that difficult to figure out. Instead they spend enormous sums to give a free gift to the Padres and Chargers, running special schedules to get people to games...but they cannot get you to work and back. 3. Contempt for the public. I've attended public hearings on transit, and it was very clear that the officials were only doing it because they were required to hold some kind of meeting under the law. They treated the members of the public with condescension, scorn or contempt, not listening or responding to anything said by those who took time off work to attend. At the end of the meetings, NOTHING was changed in their proposals. It was just a show. 4. Technological ignorance. In many cities around the world you can buy fare via your mobile phone. Send a text message to a designated number and get on the bus. Simple, cheap to maintain, and no more exact-change hassles. Setting this system up is child's play and cheap to do. Instead, the MTS has sunk unknown millions into the "Compass Card"...which simply does not work. (This is an article just begging to be written, READER stringers!) 5. Dangers to passengers. I've seen the unprovoked attacks. Junior wannabe gangsters take over the back of the bus, and woe unto any who dare even look at them. You will be swarmed and beaten senseless -- or worse. MTS puts ticket inspectors on the Trolley...because that's visible to tourists and politicians. But riding the bus, you'd better keep forward of the middle door and be careful, or you might end up smacked in the head at the least, kicked to the ground at worst. You're on your own, and MTS simply doesn't care. In summary, MTS is a wasteful, arrogant, incompetent, and unanswerable waste of tax money. We'd be better off allowing private bus companies to create their own routes that actually serve the citizens of San Diego instead of pouring money into the "public" MTS rat-hole.— September 16, 2009 10:14 p.m.
Convention Center Seeking "Specialist"to Ballyhoo Expansion
Over at VOSD the reports on the convention center got lots of comments...almost all negative. They're furious. So these dishonest phoney number believing clowns want to hire someone full time to fight their online corner. It's not enough they've got the entire establishment in their pockets. They're like a rapist who whispers he loves you and expects that to make it all okay.— September 16, 2009 9:39 a.m.
Fat People Flying
Charge people by their total weight. Step up onto a scale, with all your luggage, and pay based on the total. If you require less fuel to get to your destination, you pay less. If you require more fuel (and an extra seat!) then you ought to pay for what you're using. I'm fairly fit and being an experienced flyer I rarely take more than a small bag with me onboard, even when travelling overseas. Yet I pay just as much as the 350 pounder next to me taking up half my seat and cramming three oversized bags into the overhead.— September 13, 2009 4:50 a.m.
The Busby Affair
That the man, Phillip Dan Cook, 65, Republican voter, has moved out is not surprising. Looks like he was renting a converted garage in the lower rent area along a busy road, and at the back to an angle is the stand of trees below the lavish custom house in the police report. Google mapping both his address and the address of the residence where the incident took place you can see that there's a path right from his place to where the trees are. It's highly unlikely that some stranger walked up there, past his residence, so it sure seems probable he was the heckler. Read the leaked incident report. http://www.flashreport.org/blog.php?postID=200906… Again, according to the police report, it's clear that "Shari" had already agreed to comply with the noise warning and by trying to place her under arrest, Abbott acted in a way that even Bonnie Dumanis declared in her exoneration could be "inappropriate" according to Sheriff department rules. See: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2009/8/26/204742/198 As has been noted elsewhere, there is NO requirement to identify yourself to police unless you are under suspicion of committing a crime. There was no crime. Abbott's job was to merely deliver a formal noise complaint, note it in his log and leave having noted that this was clearly NOT a raucous party but just a typical fundraiser that was being harrassed by a crank neighbor. Can the D.A. use Google maps? Can they assemble the obvious enough prima-face evidence and conclude, yep, the crank and the heckler are the same dude, whose actions caused embarrassment, extraordinary expense, and nationwide news? Abbott, according to Barman, was VERY aggressive: "The next thing I know, Deputy Abbott violently grabbed my right wrist, twisted it behind my back and threw me to the concrete floor...twice. At some point, he was kneeling on top of me with his knee pressed into the back of my knee with the rest of his 250 + pounds on my back. I was then dragged across the floor through broken glass before he let me onto my feet. As I was being walked out of my home with my wrists handcuffed behind me, another sheriff's deputy with a police dog threatened to release the dog on me." Barman's offence was knowing about and insisting on defending her rights under the law. After having received the officer's notification of a noise complaint, her obligation was through. Had she demanded that he leave the premises, the officer was obligated to go. Instead, Abbott (has he been tested for steroids?) escalated the situation, following her and demanding her date of birth like a barking KGB interogator, then tackling the homeowner for attempting to walk away from him. He should be fired. Abuse under color of authority is clear in this case.— September 10, 2009 2:21 a.m.
Professor Tells How Convention Center Stats Grossly Mislead
Robert A. Rauch specializes in consulting, management and marketing for the hospitality industry. He's recently been named CEO of sandiego.com, a promotional web site. I don't think anyone needs to take his opinions too seriously, considering the obvious bias he brings to the discussion. On the other hand, Heywood Sanders is an independent academic who has been telling the same story for years, and backing it up with numbers. Rauch himself says on his site hotelguru that the hotel industry is facing hard times...but goes on to claim that San Diego is somehow different. That's the crux of the problem. Those insiders in San Diego who simply don't understand that lovely though our fair city may be, it's not so unique as we like to think. We are susceptible to the same economic trends as the rest of the world. Heywood Sanders has real data on his side. The hotel industry, begging for government handouts, is basing their arguments on wishful thinking. When that doesn't work, they attack people like the professor who have the audacity, and facts, to disagree. If San Diego accepts this task force's report at face value, we're simply retarded and deserved to be fleeced once again by the same wolves in sheep's clothing that run this town and serve on such task forces.— September 2, 2009 4:25 a.m.
Convention Center Embarrasses Self, San Diego Again
Let me thank Professor Sanders for his testimony. He has shined a bright light on the roach nest that passes for leadership in San Diego. San Diego shouldn't be "a second rate, insecure city that can't take constructive criticism." We can be better. Much better. Steve Johnson and Bob Nelson are disgraces to our city. They claim that Professor Sanders is a "whack job" and that his testimony was without value. Well, these jokers with their phoney numbers and inflated egos have been exposed. The mayor's task force was a stacked deck that, with the laudable exception of Lani Lutar, voted in favor of rampant and obvious stupidity. Don Bauder, Professor Erie, and the Voice of San Diego deserve a lot of credit for bringing the truth of this sham to the attention of your readers. San Diego cannot come to grips with, much less solve, its many problems until we stop relying on the recommendations of self-interested fools who have been consistently wrong in the past. All the members of the task force, with the exception of Lani Lutar, should be barred from ever advising the city on any issue ever again. Is this something the Grand Jury could investigate? Best, Fred Williams— September 2, 2009 3:07 a.m.
Stripped
SDaniels asked about the affects of this difficult work on women. Allow me to invert the question to ask the same of men doing similar work: "I am also still wondering if you can discuss more about the psychological impact on the men employed at these sports clubs, and why you think psychotherapy and psychiatric help are not good options for them. Can you share your observations, and a typical profile of a career athlete?" Male professional athletes, who use their young bodies to entertain a mostly male audience drinking beer, are often negatively influenced by their experience. The let down when they are sidelined by career ending injury is enormous. Often insufficiently prepared for any academic endeavors, and now permanently injured, they frequently fall into the economic underclass. The pressures to use performance enhancing drugs, emphasis on athletics rather than intellectual activities, and a dream world where they are often pampered and treated as if they are special warps their perceptions of reality. Psychological counseling is missing when they lose these trappings of success. Almost all of them will fail, since the chance of going from the college ranks to the pros is only one in fourteen thousand. While playing looks glamorous, insiders know that it's hard degrading work. The typical profile of a career athlete is nasty, brutish, and short. At the peak of their health, they are forced to undergo training regimes and endure humiliations from all powerful coaches and others in a position of power to decide their futures. They are made to feel as if they are nothing more than expendable bodies being put through a machine, to be discarded when used-up. Injuries, sometimes untreated so that they can "play through the pain", are common among professional athletes, adding to the high levels of prescription pain killer abuse that athletes report. Clearly, male professional athletes need protection from the thugs destroying their lives... They are VICTIMS, just as much as the young women using their athletic young bodies to entertain beer drinking men. Why do we regulate strip clubs and hold their employees in low esteem, while simultaneously treating the Padres and Chargers like heroes? Isn't giving our tax money to John Moores and Alex Spanos just as sensible as building Dirty Dan a state of the art strip club so San Diego can finally be "World Class?"— September 1, 2009 2:25 a.m.
Letters
I'd rather live in a world filled with "hate speech" than a world censored by those who claim to "know best". Language evolves. So do the euphemisms we devise to avoid causing offence. The world used to have an unfortunate percentage of its population everyone called "stupid" or "idiot". Then the kids began calling each other these words on the playground, as kids always will, and the words became derogatory. Well-intentioned parents began using a non-offensive word that meant slower than average -- retarded. Thus, "retarded" became an acceptable euphemism. Until, predictably, it became itself a derogatory term and the kids on the playground began calling each other retarded, shocking and offending the teachers and mothers...who came up with "special needs". The pattern will repeat. "Special Needs" will inevitably become a slur used by grade schoolers, and in its turn a new euphemism shall arise...maybe, "unexceptionally different". Shall we begin banning the insensitive use of "special needs" right now? Let's shorten the cycle, heh? If we give in to the impulse to censor, even voluntarily, we shall be forced to continually reduce the number of acceptable words until we finally have no language left at all...except euphemisms. Let's hear the haters, let everyone see them for who and what they are...trying to hide the ugly underneath and suppress unpopular views, even horribly unthinkable and repugnant views, only gives them more power. Know your enemy. Don't make yourself wilfully blind in a vain attempt to control how other people express themselves. To sum up, it may be retarded to label someone retarded (by the way, Pete's orginal comment said our country's drug policy is retarded), but it's even more retarded to try to ban the word retarded.— September 1, 2009 2:07 a.m.