Secretary of Steelers

Break my heart, why don't you, Condi?

Four Things

Here are four things I like about San Francisco:

1. The Goldilocks weather. Not too hot, not too cold. Like Seattle, but with more sun.

2. Polite people. The biggest surprise. There's a big-city feel, but folks are almost unfailingly nice and helpful.

3. Nice scenery. One of the most beautiful places I've lived. No dearth of natural wonders to check out.

4. Good food. Especially Asian. We've found some of the most authentic Chinese grub outside of Beijing.

And here are four things I don't like about San Francisco:

1. Traffic. Horrible. There are bridges everywhere, and while magnificent to look at, they are often a bear to cross. And expensive. See No. 2.

2. Prices. Housing prices are obviously stratospheric, with the median home price hovering somewhere around $650,000. In one day, a family of three could spend as much as the cost of a full tank of gas on public transportation.

3. Pizza. Or rather, the apparent dearth of good pizza places. I saw this gripe once or twice in guidebooks, but it has proven true. There are more and better pizza joints in Seattle, which is 1/4 the population and allegedly not as sophisticated.

4. Grime. I guess it's just a function of being a large city, but San Francisco is dirtier than I would have expected. More crowded, too. It's amazing how many houses they can cram together on one hillside around here.

Happy Year of the Dog

What would Lunar New Year be without a tragic firework explosion in China?

Did anyone win the The Mayor's Tragic Firework Blast Betting Pool? My money's always on China, though Vietnam has made a strong showing in recent years.

Seriously, though, this is horrible stuff, and it's a testament to how frequently it happens, and the control China exerts over media access, that it only warrants a few paragraphs of coverage.

Zep Legacy

Here's the best name for a cover band, like, ever.

What do you call four chicks who perform Led Zeppelin tunes?

Folks, I give you...

Lez Zeppelin.

That beats "Hells Belles", an all-girl AC/DC cover band.

Apparently they rock, too. I am so getting their CD if they ever put one out.

Big Food

Viewing this collection ofsuper-sized portions makes me want to ralph.

Check out the guy who polished off "The Shank". I wonder if the wait staff offered him an after-dinner mint?

"But sir, it's only wafer-thin!"

Interstellar Finance

Let's say an astronaut is in a spaceship traveling at a relativistic speed such that for an observer on Earth, he ages half as quickly. This type of scenario is commonly found in sci-fi literature, and can make for interesting plotlines. But what happens to the laws of economics?

For instance, let's say that astronaut put $10,000 in an account that pays 5% interest. From the perspective of the relativistically accelerated space-farer, he is gone only one year, so he should get $10,500. But to those on Earth, he will have been gone two years, so he gets (about) $11,000. What is the "correct" interest rate? The astronaut's discount rate is different depending on your frame of reference.

Check out this cool discussion on the Marginal Revolution blog to ponder this, and other interstellar finance and trade issues.

Spaceport

Quote of the day:

"The spaceport represents the future of economic development in southern New Mexico." -- New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson.

Richardson is saying this because he wants the state to pony up $100 million to help build Earth's version of Mos Eisley. Maybe they'll call it Los Eisley.

My inner libertarian is sternly shaking his head in disapproval. Richard Branson and Jeff Bezos and Burt Rutan can probably scrounge up enough dough to build their own spaceport.

But my inner X-Wing pilot is saying, "Suh-weet. Let's do it."

Psychological Football

The Seahawks are going to win the Super Bowl despite being 3-1/2 point underdogs.

This isn't an idle boast by an overzealous fan. It's a psychological certainty.

Or so says the Football Freud.

Suckage

You know what sucks?

Moving into a new place, and hooking up the TV, the amplifier, the DVD player, the Xbox, the TiVo, and then stringing up the 5.1 surround system, making sure it all works, then standing back and realizing it would all be so much better against that wall.

On the plus side, I also hooked up the cable modem, wireless router, Vonage box, the Kick-Ass PC, and an iBook, and everything worked on the first try. It was uncanny, I tell you!

Bold Plate

As I was parking in the garage of our new apartment I noticed an SUV a couple spots down with the license plate "GLOCK37". It is parked next to a car with a "Bush Must Go" bumper sticker. Not that the two drivers are necessarily at oppposite ends of the political spectrum.

At first I thought it was pretty bold to have that plate in this rabidly anti-gun area. But then I thought, the Glock 37 is a compact (i.e., concealable) .45. With a plate like that, who's gonna mess with him?

Waaah!

One of my favorite parts of the game was how the Seahawks totally shut down Steve Smith, the Panthers' vaunted receiver, who had 200-plus yards catching the week before.

Fox kept showing Smith on the sidelines getting pissed off, yelling at the coaches, and basically acting like a whiny little beyotch.

I glad he got pwned. But I do admit his punt-return runback was impressive.

Oh yeah, that was another thing -- how lame was the Panthers' punting unit? They had one punt for like 26 yards and another for just barely over 30. Meanwhile, the Seahawks, when they had to punt at all, were getting monster bounces or sailing out of bounds at the 5 yard line, stuff like that.

Oooh! And how about that sweet play that had backup QB Seneca Wallace go in as a wideout and saw him make a sweet-as-candy over-the-shoulder catch for 28 yards? What a crowd-pleaser. I'm sure that helped get everyone -- players and fans -- fired up.

What?

The Steelers are 3-1/2 point favorites in the Super Bowl?!?!

The 6th-seeded team is going to beat the NFL's top offense, the team with the second-best record, the team with the NFL MVP, the team that routed the opposition on the road to the Super Bowl?

Sure, *snicker*, whatever.

Ahhhhh....

Beautiful.

The Seahawks' performance was as close to football perfection as I've ever seen.

They dominated the Panthers on the ground.

They humbled them in the air.

They crushed them on defense.

Let's hope they can channel Ted Nugent and dish out a little Motor City Madness.

Bad Chinese Tattoos

Longtime LMNOP lurker J-Dogg has forwarded this gem of a site dedicated to exposing tattoos of badly written or meaningless Chinese characters.

The equivalent would be say, someone trying to get the word "MOM" but ending up with "MIM".

Or thinking they are getting fancy calligraphy with all the curlicues and whatnot, but then ending up with something that looks like a D+ effort from a 2nd grade penmanship lesson.

Some are complete nonsense, like the woman who thought she was getting her Grandpa's initials.

The most painful one for me is the guy who tried to get the Chinese for "bad boy". The characters are actually beautifully crafted, and look they could have been copied from a high-quality scroll of calligraphy. The only problem is that the tattooist mixed up the order of two of the three characters, thus rendering the phrase completely meaningless.

Western travellers to China have long been able to laugh at the ridiculous nonsense English phrases that crop up on t-shirts, hats and advertisements. Looks like the tables are turning.

Bottom line: if you decide to get a tattoo in Chinese, double or even triple check the characters. The price of error is high.

You Know What Sucks?

Moving house for the second time in three months.

Paying first and last month, $1,000 security deposit and a $600 "move-in" fee.

Finding out you have to give 30 days notice on the current place, so you actually pay double rent for a month.

Being in the new place for all of five minutes and having the downstairs neighbor knock on the door and ask you to keep it down.

Hey, he's four years old, short of lashing him to the fireplace there's only so much we can do to stop him from moving around.

Sheesh.

One Win Away...

One concussed MVP, three lost fumbles, and 21 years of bad history couldn't keep the Seahawks down today.

The Seattle Seahawks wrung out a comfortable 20-10 victory over the Washington Redskins on Saturday in a rain-saturated Qwest Field.

Although they were 9-point favorites going in, the Seahawks overcame a parade of setbacks to advance to the conference championships next week, when they'll host either the Bears or the Panthers depending on the outcome of that matchup on Sunday.

A couple minutes into the game, NFL MVP Shaun Alexander, who fumbled only once all season, lost his grip on the football close to the Redskins' goalline, abruptly ending a forceful opening drive that probably would have sent the Seahawks steamrolling through the rest of the contest.

Ten minutes after that, Alexander was clutching the turf in pain. The diagnosis: concussion. The Seahawks would have to win the game without their only true superstar, a man who rushed for nearly 1,800 yards and scored a record 28 touchdowns for them in the regular season.

This wasn't an ordinary playoff game for the Seahawks, which had gone an NFL-record 21 years without winning a post-season contest. Nor was it ordinary for Seattle, a city that has been without a pro sports title since 1979, when the SuperSonics won the NBA championship.

Seattle teams are notorious for being on absolutely on fire during the regular season, only to sputter and fizzle in the playoffs.

In 1994, for example, the SuperSonics racked up an amazing 63-19 season, and went up 2-0 against the 8th seed Denver Nuggets in the first round of the playoffs. The Nuggets won the next two games and forced game 5 in Seattle, where they rallied to tie it as time expired. They won in overtime, marking what is surely one of the greatest comebacks in all NBA history.

Then, of course, there were the 2001 Mariners, who won the most games -- 116 -- of any team in history, behind the bats of rookie Ichiro Suzuki, DH Edgar Martinez and 2nd baseman Brett Boone, and the arms of Freddy Garcia, Aaron Sele and Jamie Moyer. But they struggled to beat Cleveland in division series and the lost to the Yankees in the ALCS.

So it would have been completely in character for the Seahawks to have collapsed. Fans would have been pissed off, but they would have shrugged and muttered, "Well, what do you expect? They are still the Seattle Seahawks, after all."

Instead, the Seahawks gradually built momentum after a stalemated first quarter that saw something like nine three-and-out series between the two teams. Washington got three on the board, then the Seahawks answered with seven, the first batch of 17 points that went unanswered by their opponent.

The Redskins did make it interesting for a while, with a 52-yard reception followed by a 20-yeard pass that ended up being a fluke TD by ricocheting off a defender right into the arms of a surprised Santana Moss.

But despite giving up the occassional big gain or allowing a couple fourth-down conversions, the defense stepped up and made enough stuffs, sacks and smackdowns to eventually squelch Washington's comeback hopes.

Looking at the game recap, what strikes me the most, after I'm done wincing at the "5-3" under Seattle's "fumbles-lost" column is that the 'Hawks only had two penalties for 10 yards, compared to Washington's seven flags that cost them 50 yards. One of those was a false start on Washington caused by the 103-decible roar of the 70,000 fans. Way to go, 12th man.

Seattle also had 50 percent third-down efficiency, versus Washington's 26 percent. And while Brunell was sacked twice, Hasselbeck didn't get taken down at all. Oh yeah, and Washington missed a field goal that would have brought them within one score of tying and maybe given them a little extra motivation. You can't miss 36-yard field goals in the post-season.

Now it's time for the deep breath as I look to next weekend. Is it safe to start believing that the Seahawks could actually make their first Super Bowl trip? Or shall I get ready to shrug and mutter, "What did I expect? They are still the Seahawks, after all?"

Battlefield 2 "Booster" Pack

Electronic Arts is about to release a "booster pack" for its hit "Battlefield 2" game, which, incidentally, I've been obsessively playing for the better part of two weeks.

The pack will introduce a new European army with seven new weapons, four vehicles and three maps.

No word yet on whether a white flag comes standard with the Euro kit.

Awesome Shot

So when we were out at Half Moon Bay, we came around this rocky crag and, holy crap, Saturn and its moon Dione were, like, right there. They were moving pretty fast, but I managed to get a shot or two before they disappeared around the next bend.

Pretty cool, huh?

Taxes

Did you know that if you steal stuff, you have to claim it as income to the IRS?

Check it out, it's right here on page 32 of Publication 525: Taxable and Non-Taxable Income:

"If you steal property, you must report its fair market value in your income in the year you steal it unless in the same year, you return it to its rightful owner."

China's Future

James Waterton at Samizdata has an interesting essay pontificating about China's future. The comments are well worth reading, as they flesh out some background and give some good back and forth on whether or not China is headed for some sort of major internal crisis soon. I left a comment as well, which I reproduce here, albeit in a slightly cleaned up format.

A nice piece overall, James. I agree that there is plenty of cause for skepticism and concern over the state of the Chinese economy, despite its numerous and real achievements over the past two decades. I offer the following thoughts:

The non-performing loan issue has been at the forefront of worries for the better part of a decade. As you mentioned, the write-offs are simply shifting the bad loans to asset management companies, which have been desperately trying to sell them to investors, including foreign ones, but the are barely getting 25 cents on the dollar for them. And although the loans are off the books of the banks, the real question, as one commentor pointed out, is whether the banks have managed to control the rate of creation of new bad loans. Keep in mind that when you see the latest NPL figures from Bank of China or whomever, that applies only to loans made before 2001 or so. Their excuse is that loans need time to go bad so it's impossible to assess the quality of newer loans and thus they don't have more recent data.

On foreign direct investment, the $50 billion or so China brings in a year is just a drop in the bucket to domestic investment. I think it accounts for maybe 3-4 percent of the total investment. In that sense, the economy really isn't all that reliant on FDI to drive growth. Where FDI is important is in the technical and management expertise foreign projects tend to bring, as well as the prestige China enjoys in being able to tout that it is the No. 1 destination for foreign capital in the world.

I am skeptical that your ATM experience holds much significance beyond the fact that the banking system in China generally sucks. I lived in Beijing from 2002 until late last year, and ATM problems were common throughout that whole time. Often I would have to hit three ATMs near my home and work to find one that had money. It's also more reflective of the fact that China is a cash economy. Checks are unheard of and only a tiny fraction of one percent of people have actual credit cards.

I also think the idea that China's ethnic minorities could forcibly eject their Han overlords from their territories is dubious. I don't discount some surge in violence -- mass protests, lynchings, riots, that sort of thing. But I think it's highly unlikely that any ethnic group could organize an effective force able to deal with the local PLA garrison. In Tibet and Xinjiang those garrisons are formidable and the general populace is unarmed. In Inner Mongolia, the Han outnumber the ethnic Mongols by quite a large margin, and many Mongols have effectively been integrated into Han society, to the point where many of them use Chinese names rather than Mongolian ones. While you hear the occassional lip service to throwing out the Chinese, I doubt the will to attempt that is very strong.

Finally, you say the world has made a grave error by investing in China. I think that view is exactly wrong. Consider the alternative if the West shunned China: an isolated and impoverished country ruled by an even more authoritarian and paranoid regime than the one that exists now. Whatever faults of China's rulers, and they are many to be sure, there is no denying that the average Chinese is wealthier, happier and, yes, freer than they were even 10 years ago. Of course the "peaceful evolution" idea that a democratic transformation of China is inevitable as a wealthier populace demands greater political freedom is unproven. But our active engagement with China has made that outcome far more likely than under alternative, more antagonistic policies.

Any thoughts?

SF Photos

In response to popular demand, here are a couple more photos, this time from our wallet-busting foray to downtown San Francisco a couple days ago.

The first is of cable car madness. I give you not one, not two, but three cable cars in the same photo.

Also note the freaky clown in the foreground. He was even scarier up close.

This was just a couple days after I learned there is a name for fear of clowns: coulrophobia.

The other shot is just of some random building about a block from my office.

Both pictures brought to you courtesy of the Oriental Wife.

Of course, I don't think Marshall, Texas has scenery quite like this. These were taken at a beach down by Half Moon Bay. I always had a mental image of Half Moon Bay being someplace really far from San Francisco, but it's only about 25 miles south of the city, within easy striking distance for a day hike or stroll on the beach. Pretty cool.

What Makes A Grown Man Weep?

You know what makes me cry? Apart from sunshine on my shoulders, I mean?

This is what $300,000 gets you in my neighborhood north of Berkeley.

This is what $300,000 gets you in Marshall, Texas.

Yes, I know that home is massively discounted for, well, being in Texas. But Marshall doesn't look like a bad place, considering.

They're Baaaa-ack

With the Dodge Challenger and Chevy Camaro making comebacks, can the return of the mullet be far behind?

P.S. Those cars are sweet.

What the...

"BloodRayne", the latest attempt by director Uwe Boll to turn beloved video game franchises into scorned and hated movies, is out. It appears to be the usual tripe.

Just one question: how did the studio convince Ben Kingsley, Billy Zane, Michael Madsen, Michelle Rodriguez and Kristanna Loken to take part in this stinker?

Livin' Large

I took the Oriental Wife and Number One Son into downtown San Francisco over the weekend for some tourist action. We spent $27. On transportation. Public transportation. Granted, $10 of that was to ride the tourist trap cable car, but you've gotta do that at least once. But still, Number One Son rode for free because he's under 5. If we did this trip a year from now, it would cost us over $40.

Then today, I drove to work because I had a lunch meeting down in Half Moon Bay. First, I parked near the office for 40 minutes. That cost $11. It was another $11 for valet parking at the Half Moon Bay Ritz Carlton. Then I parked near the office again for three hours, and it was $27. Thankfully I can expense all this. Makes me want to riff on the MasterCard commercials:

Riding the San Francisco public transport: $27.

Parking in San Francisco: $49.

Living in San Francisco: Unaffordable.

The Winning Ticket

Okay, this is one mean practical joke.

Some guys Tivo a lottery drawing. Then, they buy a ticket with the winning numbers. Next, they invite an unsuspecting friend over, and tell him to stop by the store and pick up some beers and, oh yeah, grab a couple lottery tickets while you're at it.

The friend arrives, and the guys secretly swap their ticket with the "winning" numbers for one of the ones the friend bought. Then they sit down to watch what the friend thinks the drawing.

Hilarity ensues.

Link via The San Jose Mercury News'"Good Morning Silicon Valley" e-mail newsletter.

Nothing

I haven't blogged anything because I haven't had anything to say recently.

Then I thought, "I'm totally gonna blog that." Problem solved.

A Product Review

Sounds like a hell of a scone pan.