erudito

A year after the West’s slump began to spread to emerging markets, it has become clear that the recession has been a moment of tectonic slippage, a brief but powerful acceleration in the deep-seated movement of economic power away from rich nations towards emerging markets.

Although the house price bubble appears obvious in retrospect--all bubbles appear obvious in retrospect--in its earlier stages, economists differed considerably about whether the increase in house prices was sustainable; or, if it was a bubble, whether the bubble was national or confined to a few local markets. Monetary policy is also a blunt tool, and interest rate increases in 2003 or 2004 sufficient to constrain the bubble could have seriously weakened the economy at just the time when the recovery from the previous recession was becoming established.

If you thought elected officials in your state were running the budget show, you might be in for a surprise. Likely as not the federal courts are more powerful budget authorities than the state's legislature or executive. A few consent decrees can easily cripple any attempt to pass a balanced budget requirement in a state legislature, and overturn the act itself in federal court if it does happen to pass.

… that the permanent government has disqualified itself from superintending California's welfare state, ostensibly its reason for existence. When parents can't enroll their children in healthcare programs online because it is more important to protect clerical jobs, the humane purposes of the welfare state are mocked. When teachers unions proudly commend themselves for making it effectively impossible for schools to discipline or fire faculty members who are burnouts and creeps, the endless, cynical talk about putting children first becomes an indictment. If the rhetoric determined the reality of the welfare state, the needs of its clients would always take precedence over the demands of its personnel. It is a scandal that the politicians who ought to be most deeply concerned about using California's tax dollars as efficiently as possible to assist the state's neediest residents are, instead, complacent and often insistent about diverting billions of those dollars to the government workforce.

For example, the stimulus offered $80 billion for Medicaid to cover health-care costs for unemployed workers and single workers without kids. But in 2011 most of that extra federal Medicaid money vanishes. Then states will have one million more people on Medicaid with no money to pay for it.

The typical lifecycle of this business is that a public agency runs to us begging to take something over to keep it open. We do so on a quickly negotiated contract, and then find ourselves spending a ton of money to fix all the deferred maintenance problems left by the public agency. About when we finally get the place cleaned up and public trust restored and finally have the prospect to make a little money at the location, the public agency decides it is time to seek competitive bids. Everyone who refused run the place when it was a mess now come out of the woodwork to bid on running the facility now that its fixed up, several of whom seem to have oddly close relationships with senior officials of the public agency. We bid, some of which we win and some of which we lose. If we win, we get to enjoy the fruits of our labor. If we lose, we shrug and try again.

robinmckinleys

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/RobinMckinleysBlog/~3/HQffa0z6GBg/

http://robinmckinleysblog.com/?p=3388

Lots more, apparently.  I admit this walking home at 1 am thing could get old, although I’m more worried about my elderly car.  I’ll have to get him started tomorrow and attempt to drive him somewhere, but neither my cul de sac nor the long mews driveway has been ploughed, and while I still cope reasonably well with snow*, I don’t cope with snow and walls that are less than a car-with-both-its-front-doors-open-at-the-same-time wide.  There’s a long sort of tunnel at the mews, before you get to the jigsaw courtyard.  And then there’s the jigsaw.  Wiggling your way in and out requires a lot of as-far-but-no-farther back-and-forth-and-back-and-forth and it would only take one slither to put a dimple in one of the frelling BMWs.  And once you get to the road, you have to deal with all the other drivers, many of whom drive like they believe snow is something that happens on reruns of Northern Exposure and nothing to do with them.**

            Meanwhile.  I know I usually do a guest post on Wednesday, but I wanted to give you my photojournalistic news of fresh disasters.***  That was before the weather report said we’re going to be doing this for the next fortnight.  So there was frelling little hurry.  But I got all thrilled by yesterday’s snow sky and the obvious thing to do was a Before and After.  And then today it wouldn’t stop snowing so all my photos are really dark.  But . . . too bad.  You’re getting weather photos tonight and tomorrow you can have a guest blog.

            Now supposing I stay on line long enough to load the photos. 

Winter landscape.  Yesterday morning’s back of beyond hurtle.

Snow sky.

Snow.  We walked over to Old Eden and then out.

Snow with hellhounds. 

The snow kept getting on the lens, and doing Conan-Doyle, fairies-at-the-bottom-of-your-garden things to my attempts at photos.  So, maybe those star things are an alien intelligence trying to make contact through snowflake patterns. 

This swan is so cold he’s gone rusty.  Ha ha.

* * *

* Although I don’t want to.  That was my old life.  In my new life the grass stays green all year round, and I spend December through February looking at it and giggling.

            Wednesday night tower practise was cancelled.  Yesterday’s handbell practise was cancelled.  I dunno if Colin is going to feel like skating over from West Plinth tomorrow or not, for our usual Thursday handbells.  I wouldn’t if I were he.  But Niall is going to start going grey and sweaty and twitchy if he doesn’t get some handbells soon.    

** There has actually been an invisible lightning-raid snow plough through here.  And some moron left his car parked on the main road at the foot of my cul de sac.  Which means that the mouth of the cul de sac hasn’t been ploughed, because the plough had to go around the moron.  Don’t let me leave out the fact that it is illegal to park on the main road.   You may remember that the cul de sac is steep, yes?  And it would be really nice if your wheels had a chance to regroup on pavement before you just launch yourself into the road like a hellhound over a fence, and launching is what is going to happen as soon as that unploughed snow has been slid over and packed down once or twice more.  At the moment the situation is pretty moot for me, since we’d never make it to the top of the hill anyway, where we get to park, so we won’t be coming down it any time soon either. 

*** There must be some old Beyond the Fringe listeners out there?

englishcut

http://www.englishcut.com/archives/000289.html

(Ron and Pat on one of our English Cut parties)

I would like to wish all of our readers our very best wishes for the new year. Sadly the start of 2010 has been marked with the loss of a very dear friend and colleague, Mr Ron Hardy.

Ron has been working for Edwin and I for the last thirteen years. He has been in the tailoring trade all of his life and sadly passed away at the untimely age of only 67. Until last summer Ron was working full time as hard as ever. Apart from the huge loss to his partner, Pat and their family. His amazing skill and patients will be a great loss to our trade.

(An example of Ron's work)

Ron has made for many clients who have recognised his wonderful skill in making their clothes over the years. Recently you may remember the beautiful overcoats that Ron made for some of my clients. I hope our friends who were fortunate enough to own some of these pieces will treasure these truly rare and outstanding garments. These of course were only a tiny example of Ron's huge contribution to this very special trade.

One look at at some of our friends work confirms the outstanding beautiful skill that so much reflects the man. Ron's calmness and unflappable patience has helped not only myself but everyone who was fortunate enough to know Ron.

We have all lost a wonderfully kind and witty man who will be extremely missed by all who knew him. Our thoughts and prayers are with his family at this sad time.

dressaday_feed

http://www.dressaday.com/2010/01/dont-wear-green-tarletan-dresses.html

Attention has very frequently been called to the presence of large amounts of arsenic in green tarlatan, which has given rise so many times to dangerous symptoms of poisoning when made into dresses and worn, so that it is very rare now to see a green tarlatan dress. This fabric is still used, however, to a very dangerous extent, chiefly for the purposes of ornamentation, and may often be seen embellishing the walls and tables at church and society fairs, and in confectionery, toy and dry-goods stores. The writer has repeatedly seen this poisonous fabric used at church fairs and picnics as a covering for confectionery and food, to protect the latter from flies. As is well known, the arsenical pigment is so loosely applied to the cloth that a portion of it easily separates upon the slightest motion. Prof. Hoffmann after examining 11 large number of specimens estimated that twenty or thirty grains of the pigment would separate from a dress per hour, when worn in a ball-room.

But green tarlatan is not the only fabric which contains arsenic. We find arsenic sometimes in other substances used in making articles of wearing apparel, usually in the form of arsenical pigments. The writer detected a large amount of arsenic in a specimen of cloth known as "Foulard cambric," which had been made into a dress; after wearing the dress a short time severe conjunctivitis was produced, together with nasal catarrh, pharyngitis, and symptoms of gastric irritation. The pattern of the dress consisted of alternate stripes of light-blue and navy-blue, and contained 0.291 grm. per square meter. Conjunctivitis has also been recorded from wearing of "tulle" dresses. A pustular eruption upon the neck and arms was caused by "a splendid dark-green dress, trimmed with light-green leaves," obtained "from a well-known Parisian atelier;" the dress was found to contain "a large percentage of arsenic."

Excessive irritation of the skin has frequently been caused by wearing stockings colored with an arsenical pigment. The writer has detected arsenic most frequently in light-red, magenta-colored and brown stockings; in one case, that of a child, which came to the writer's knowledge, great inflammation of that portion of the skin which came in contact with the stocking took place first, then occurred symptoms of general poisoning, which resulted in a short time in death.

Dr. Jabez Hogg reports also among other articles of wearing apparel fatal cases of poisoning from the green flannel lining of boots, and poisoning by maroon flannel shirts, by calico shirts, gloves, coat sleeves, hat linings, and paper collars.

robinmckinleys

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/RobinMckinleysBlog/~3/YJ5VuBC8c5E/

http://robinmckinleysblog.com/?p=3386

 We’ve got house-sized drifts from the wind but by carefully employed scientific calibration of the top of my town-centre, semi-protected  garden wall it’s only about four inches total.  However these are evidently the advance-guard guerilla inches sent to infiltrate our technology and render us helpless to do anything but sit by a wood fire and read hard copy.  It’s also still snowing and the sky is fully loaded.   Peter has no internet connection at all and mine here at the cottage is on and off.  If I don’t post later it’s because I can’t get on line.

erudito

Any time Dennis Kucinich is the voice of reason, you know you're really screwed.

… because Cameron endows the blue people with English-speaking abilities, hot bodies, classically beautiful features, and the exact same family structure and benevolent rule as the greats of Western civ. It’s just so natural to love ‘em. They’re not ugly and they’re totally like us!

James Cameron claims to have written this film fifteen years ago, which would put it squarely in the middle of the Ecstasy craze. All the glowing colors, peace, and love, that exists on Pandora certainly seems drug inspired.

We live in an age in which it's the norm to speak glowingly of spirituality but derisively of traditional religion. If the Na'Vi were Roman Catholics, there would be boycotts and protests. Make the oversized Smurfs Rousseauian noble savages and everyone nods along, save for a few cranky right-wingers. …
What I find fascinating, and infuriating, is how the culture war debate is routinely described by antagonists on both sides as a conflict between the religious and the un-religious. The faith instinct manifests itself across the ideological spectrum, even if it masquerades as something else.

The widespread support for Polanski shows the liberal cultural elite at its preening, fatuous worst. They may make great movies, write great books, and design beautiful things, they may have lots of noble humanitarian ideas and care, in the abstract, about all the right principles: equality under the law, for example. But in this case, they're just the white culture-class counterpart of hip-hop fans who stood by R. Kelly and Chris Brown and of sports fans who automatically support their favorite athletes when they're accused of beating their wives and raping hotel workers.
No wonder Middle America hates them.

Instead of focusing on inputs, the Times should focus its quality control on outputs: what actually appears in the paper. Drop the absurd ethics guidelines, hire freelancers who know their subjects and how to write about them, and disclose any potential conflicts so readers can make up their own minds. Think about delivering value to the reader rather than ritualistically adhering to journalistic guild customs. Alternatively, the Times could shrink the paper to include only that reporting whose costs it can cover out of its own budget and stop trying to free ride.

robinmckinleys

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/RobinMckinleysBlog/~3/XfK33UM2ApA/

http://robinmckinleysblog.com/?p=3384

It is so beautiful out there right now.  There are lights on the main road but both the long mews drive and my steep little hill are dark . . . except they aren’t.  There’s moon behind the cloud and the white snow lights up amazingly.  And it’s all new and fresh and . .. white.  This entirely mundane little town is a fairyland, just like the stories.  We might have found ourselves in Lothlorien.*  

. . . Phew.  And that was a brief flicker of power outage.  No, no, I want my broadband.**  And my electric blanket.  There are towns not far from here where the electricity is lying in a snowdrift in a dead phone zone too. 

One of my hellhounds’ loveliest virtues (paired as it is with its opposite virulent nuisance) is that they’re always up for an adventure.  They’re sleepy this time of night, when I roust them to stagger out to cold dank Wolfgang, and especially lately when we just keep driving till Wolfgang warms up, by the time we get home they’re all warm and cozy and crashed out again and don’t want to go through the whole moving business again. . . .  But when we got out there tonight and I turned toward the drive instead of the car they were awake and ready for business instantly.  Hey!  An adventure!  Just what we wanted at 1 a.m. in a blizzard!

 * * *

* Does it snow in Lothlorien?  I can’t remember.  And Galadriel would probably whap me up longside the head for ‘fairy’. 

** And it’s just taken me two tries to get on.

robinmckinleys

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http://robinmckinleysblog.com/?p=3381

It’s snowing.  And snowing.  And snowing.  And . . . There’s only about an inch and a half** out there now, but it’s coming down in that steady, concentrating way that is bad news.  Well, it’s good news if you’re a kid and want to stay home tomorrow and build a snowperson.***  It’s bad news for those of us who get claustrophobia easily, don’t like falling down, and have hellhounds.  And are worried about the fresh-veg deliveries† to the local greengrocers’, fresh veg having become about the only thing I eat in quantity in these metabolism-challenged days.

            Meanwhile I have managed to get through nearly an entire day without really noticing that I haven’t done anything.††  I could get used to this.†††

            Meanwhile . . . tell you what, I’ll write another quick post when I get back to the cottage.  Just so you’ll know I’m not lying in a snowdrift trying to strike wet matches to see why my RaspBerry is refusing to function.  If I fall in a snowdrift I more or less guarantee it will be a snowdrift in a dead phone zone. 

* * *

* It didn’t start till this evening.  It’s just been threatening us all day.^  Hellhounds and I had a lovely walk . . . waaay the ungleblarg out in the middle of nowhere, because it took that long for Wolfgang to stop whimpering about being cold and all his engine oil is pooling in his ankles.  And have I mentioned how I’ve got a box of matches on the dashboard so I’ll remember to leave them outside under the windscreen wiper on the driver’s side in case of unlocking problems when we come back from our hurtle?  Outside on the driver’s side so I can’t possibly miss seeing them?  Actually a box of wooden matches rides around perfectly well in the little hollow at the hinge of the bonnet where the wipers attach.  Ask me how I know this.  

^ With luck there will be before-and-after photos tomorrow.  Snow skies and . . . snow. 

** Mmm.  Two inches. 

*** I am building a snowperson.  Remotely.  He’s called Wolfgang, and by morning all he’ll need is the carrot and the lumps of coal. ^  Hellhounds and I are walking home tonight.  I haz yaktraxz.  I walk on water.  Well, so long as it’s frozen.  I actually did walk in them for the first time today:  although I had previously spent a remarkable amount of time figuring out how to get them on.  I suppose the manufacturer thought any damn fool ought to be able to stretch some rubber bands over their shoes and decided to save 10p on the purchase price by omitting the diagram.  Well, yes, but there are variations on this stretching process, and I was assuming that the YAKTRAX insignia would be arranged for the wearer’s delectation.  Silly me:  of course it faces out to gain new friends and influence people.^^ 

            I told the Midwestern friend who’d recommended them^^^ that they’d arrived and she said that she hoped . . . well, no, she said, she knew me well enough that she was SURE that I had ordered them in an AMUSING COLOUR.  She said that aside from aesthetic considerations, you wanted them in an amusing colour so they were easy to find when they flew off and landed in a snowdrift.  Um.  Pause for deep throbbing sorrow.  No.  The British market is clearly deemed not ready for amusing colours.  Mine are black because the choice was . . . black.  

^ Hey.  What do kids use for snowperson eyes these days? 

^^ Hey!  She’s not falling down!  It must be . . . YAKTRAX! 

^^^ She’s recommended them before.  But this is the Longest Spell of Really Cold Weather in Britain in Over Twenty Years, which is how long it takes to make me pay attention. 

† And if they’re serious about this nonsense continuing for the next several days then I’m going to start worrying about all the other deliveries.  Like . . . Green & Black’s. 

†† No.  Wrong.  I have done things.  I spent an hour and a half on the phone with Hannah.  And I watched a programme on TV.    I mean . . . wow.^  Now you’re all avid to know what I watched, right?  A rerun of Simon Schama’s The Power of Art?  A no-holds-barred study of how to clear your gutters so they stay clear for at least fifteen minutes?^^  The end of season three of Buffy the Vampire Slayer?^^^

            Nope.  Stargate Universe.  Huh?  There’s another one?  With Robert Carlyle?  It was the first intro ep, and we learn that (a) winning on-line computer games is dangerous (b) Robert Carlyle is a Bad Guy and (c) they’ve got enough backstory loaded for a very long series.  Other than that I’m damned if I followed about two-thirds of what was going on.  Is it now de rigueur that ‘excitement’ is demonstrated by mad cutting techniques so that no scene lasts more than twenty-two seconds and that you then zap to another one which takes place at another time, in another place, and with enough of the same characters to be really confusing?

            But it was great.  Lying on the sofa covered in hellhounds with the professional brain in abeyance.  Every few minutes it would stir and make little anxious thinking gestures:  shouldn’t we be doing something?#  No, no, I’d say.  We’re just going to lie here and watch more stuff get punched till it blows up.##  Notice how happy the hellhounds are.  We are providing joy to little furry creatures from the fifth infernal circle.### 

^ It’s less unheard-of that I should spend an hour and a half on the phone with Hannah than that I watch an entire TV programme at one go.   Well, barring Sky Opera.  And they didn’t run an opera every night for the entire month of December.  Hmmph. 

^^ First you hire your Klingon. . . .  The one drawback to the magnificent copper beech in the churchyard that hangs companionably over the back garden at Third House is the way it sheds.  

^^^ Please.  Buffy isn’t television.  

# Still haven’t found the beginning of what is now, or had better be, PEG II 

## I don’t really have to remind you of http://wondermark.com/520/ and http://wondermark.com/521/  do I? 

### Also possibly the eighth.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inferno_(Dante) 

††  No, no!  Must find rest of PEG!  Or at least write that story (which Peter gave me the plot to) about the parking fairy!

dressaday_feed

http://www.dressaday.com/2010/01/sub-ubi-semper-ubi.html

robinmckinleys

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/RobinMckinleysBlog/~3/2PVZFRTAymE/

http://robinmckinleysblog.com/?p=3370

A very little while.   The copyeditor, who is obviously a Higher Being, with titanium nerves and an All Night Brain, is going to have it back to my editor on the 25th, and . . . I’ll have a week to turn it around.  A week!  A WEEK!  –Remember I was saying that one of my resolutions for 2010* was to spend less time on the blog?  I think it will be safe to predict that I will be remarkably–even unrecognisably terse that week. 

Meanwhile I am making hay while the sun shines.**  Or anyway drinking champagne on an evening I don’t have to stay sober.***  Did I tell you about the Great Place Mat Quest?   Peter is impossible to buy presents for, right?  Well, he/we badly needed new place mats.  They lead a hard life with us somehow. †  . . . So, have you ever tried to find a set of waterproof cork-backed place mats with a different picture on each?  Different pictures you want to look at anyway.  I failed.  But at least these are roses.  I can pretty much stand to look at the same pink roses kind of a lot.   And Peter . . . well . . .  they’re waterproof and cork-backed and he’s not quite as preoccupied with things like domestic decorative bliss as I am.  And I’d've been happy to buy a set of waterproof cork-backed clematis place mats if I’d seen any.††

Just in case you want a better look at the flowers behind the champagne bottle.  Roses.  How unexpected.  Pink.  How unexpected.  Well, at least I’m spreading it around a little.  And that rotting apple in the fruit bowl isn’t.   It’s just a funny colour.   

And the object itself.  With chapter breaks. 

Four hundred and sixteen pages.  About 130,000 words.  A mere bagatelle to Samuel Richardson or Marcel Proust ††† but long enough.

Long frelling enough.  Now all I have to do is (a) survive the week following the 25th of January and (b) discover what I’ve done with the rest of what was still all one book before I chopped it in half last spring.

* * *

* Which the AP stylebook^ says we’re pronouncing ‘Twenty ten’.  Which is a bit of a relief.  I mean, how else were we going to pronounce it?  All year denotations have gone to hell since the turn of the millenium really, and I’m not looking forward to mumbling ‘twenty eleven’ for a year.

^ You do know the AP stylebook, don’t you?  http://twitter.com/APStylebook or if you’re still resisting Twitter+ http://www.apstylebook.com/

+ You have my complete sympathy.  It eats your brain.  Like so much else on the web.

** I wish.  It’s going to snow again tonight.  Waaaah.   However on the recommendation of some Midwestern friends I finally bought some yaktrax http://www.yaktrax.co.uk/ for both Peter and me with the intention of surviving this winter intact.^   Next I need chains for Wolfgang, unless someone at the city offices has figured out where maintenance left the sand. 

^ Peter keeps telling me, as I spill through the door at the mews with my latest meteorological complaints on my frozen lips, that when his kids were growing up they ice-skated at the local ponds every winter.  I don’t care.  This is not my southern England.  I want my southern England back.

*** I have a piano lesson on Friday!   I have a voice lesson next week!  For that matter I have a terrifying assortment of bell ringing opportunities beginning tomorrow.  Get thee behind me, Sa–I mean Niall.

† It wouldn’t have anything to do with chocolate.  Or tea.

††  Actually I did.  I found one set of waterproof cork-backed place mats with a variety of flowery things on them, including one clematis.^  I was thrilled.  I ordered it immediately.

They had run out.

^ And no roses.  I admit a qualm, but I was going to be strong.

††† Or JRR Tolkien