Neither Debt Nor Default
Still waiting for the other shoe to drop and push our economy into the abyss? Well there’s a new boot in town and it’s on the foot of the USPS. Unless you see a headline to the affect of “United States Post Office nationalized” in the next month or so, we will be facing a precipitous reduction in jobs at the USPS rather than a slow bleed beginning with the mooted cessation of Saturday delivery.
I’m not sure if attaching a post office bailout to the jobs bill sent to congress later this week is President Obama taking the USPS hostage, or giving it as a hostage to the GOP. Or maybe all the old people that vote love the post office so much that the two parties will work together to save it.
Hard to know what the GOP will do when faced with the choice of an angry Grandma unable to send birthday cards and sticking it in the eye of organized labor. Actually, not so hard to figure out. The post office is dead. Good thing Amazon is already working on a replacement.
Conflict?
During the craziness surrounding the debt ceiling negotiations I completely forgot that Eric Cantor stood to make money if the Federal Government defaulted. That helps explain his inability to negotiate in good faith.
I still don’t have the words to politely explain how I feel about that whole situation.
Another New Holiday
Happy End Of The Golden Age Of Apple Day!
Just as September needed a new holiday last year, I think August needs one this year. Steve Jobs Stepped down from Apple’s CEO position today, August 24th, so Golden Apple day it is.
I’m not going to bother to pretend to have an opinion on how critical Jobs is to Apple’s ability to make great stuff. Instead I will rehash my previous Schtick and reproduce the text on the bottom of this years Little Sumpin’ Wild six pack from Lagunitas in honor of the first Golden Apple day:
“Bring me Sumpin’ Wild!” His voice rang out down the double helical hallway. He was summoning the object of his desire, that Phenolic-Off-Flavor producing POF gene. He was a handsome, albiet pedestrian, heterozygous diploid strain and he longed for the wild side of things- the lights, the big city, the cloves, the subtle tropical fruit nuances… but he was an ordinary heterozygous diploid. “Bring me the POF!” he bellowed again down the helix holding forth his fresh new bud in hopeful anticipation of the imminent protoplast fusion that would allow him to decarboxylate ferulate to the 4-vinyl guaiacol and qualify him for pitching and subsequent ATP defilement of the luscious Little Sumpin’ wort. Hope springs eternal, but who among us is as lucky as all that..?
Back to Conestogas
If you like space here is an article as depressing as it sounds, The End of the Space Age. Unfortunately I think they are right.
More Photos
The Economist really does have the best pictures.
Photos
The Atlantic presents an amazing set of photos from the decade preceding World War II as the first in a 20 part photographic retrospective of the war.
Poop
They have finally figured out the origin of the E.coli outbreak in Germany and it is far scarier than expected. An antibiotic resistant strain apparently was bonded to bean sprout seeds and grew inside the sprouts so that you couldn’t have even washed it off. I always knew veggies were dangerous.
Summer
It is very draining to be a glass half full optimist in a world running at 30% for an extended period. Even further existential trauma is caused by the battle between my personal experience of life going from strength to strength and my desire to stand in front of a chalk board like Glenn Beck sketching a hazy picture of what is really going on in the world if you read between the lines of what people are willing to write.
I keep minting and discarding topics touching on the myriad ways in which things are fucked at the moment. Somehow those articles aren’t willing to write themselves and I’m more interesting in going for a swim than giving them voice.
So let’s cut over to technology. I’m grooving on Microsoft these days. I’ve started working with their Visual Studios 2010 development environments and .Net 4.0. I used to hate Windows development and now I am really happy with their current offerings. They have hit a whole range of sweet spots and made it very simple to re-purpose your work for multiple platforms.
I am looking forward to Windows 8 ARM support and the further convergence of PC, embedded and web applications. Microsoft is doing some fundamental things right while flying under the radar. Everyone is focused on the Apple/Google/Amazon circle jerk/cat fight and not paying attention to Microsoft.
The whole app store phenomenon has turned out to be a great way to monetize content, but the technical trick that it sells itself with is client side UI caching. That is in the process of becoming a pointless trick. In the ecosystem that comes after it Amazon and Google will hold the advantages when it comes to monetizing content and I think that Microsoft is positioning itself to be one of the prominent engines that that content runs on. Meanwhile Apple will slide back to being a purveyor of high end innovative hardware.
So there is your big prediction for the Summer. Apple is in the process of peaking. Amazon and Google will keep riding high. Microsoft will come back with an ecosystem that developers can make money on. Peek in your rear-view in 2013 and be amazed at my prescience.
In Case Of Optomism, Break Glass
Paul Krugman is good, as always, for a glass of cold water this morning. Just in case you need one.
Higher Education
Lexington has an excellent post discussing the increasing cost and decreasing value of post secondary education. He really gets at the heart of the issue.
