Monthly Archives: December 2006

Quagmire Accomplished

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I really wonder what the average Iraqi thinks of this: (also from today’s Reuters feed)

The paperwork is in order for Hussein’s execution, and the judge echoed a widespread belief that the hanging could be imminent.

At the same time, attorneys in the United States were taking court action to block the execution.

Haddad, a judge on the appeals court that upheld the former dictator’s death sentence, and an adviser to Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki each confirmed the paperwork preparation late Friday.

“All the procedures have been completed,” Haddad said.

Attorney Nicholas Gilman says in an application for a restraining order, filed in U.S. District Court in Washington, that a stay would allow Hussein “to be informed of his rights and take whatever action he can and may wish to pursue.”

Why yes, as a matter of fact this is the kind of democratic process we want you to embrace.

I love to travel!

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No, not me!

From today’s Reuters feed:

A 21-year-old German tourist who wanted to visit his girlfriend in the Australian metropolis Sydney landed 13,000 kilometers (8,077 miles) away near Sidney, Montana, after mistyping his destination on a flight booking Web site.

Dressed for the Australian summer in T-shirt and shorts, Tobi Gutt left Germany on Saturday for a four-week holiday.

Instead of arriving “down under”, Gutt found himself on a different continent and bound for the chilly state of Montana.

“I did wonder but I didn’t want to say anything,” Gutt told the Bild newspaper. “I thought to myself, you can fly to Australia via the United States.”

Gutt’s airline ticket routed him via the U.S. city of Portland, Oregon, to Billings, Montana. Only as he was about to board a commuter flight to Sidney — an oil town of about 5,000 people — did he realize his mistake.

The hapless tourist, who had only a thin jacket to keep out the winter cold, spent three days in Billings airport before he was able to buy a new ticket to Australia with 600 euros in cash that his parents and friends sent over from Germany.

“I didn’t notice the mistake as my son is usually good with computers,” his mother, Sabine, told Reuters.

Pay attention, children. This is why you need to care about spelling and geography and not just be a geek.

Financial Planning

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Recently I had to make some decisions about what to do with a significant amount of cash from an inheritance. I ended up putting it into an annuity. Generally, annuities are a bad idea. (“Bad” because the fees and fund expenses can eat up any tax advantages. Not true in my case, but I digress.)

Anyway, in talking with some folks about where to put this money, I was amazed at the number of otherwise very smart people who don’t have a clue about financial planning.

Once upon a time, I was like them. I didn’t have a clue either, and my financial strategy was “ignore it.” I was enlightened by none other than Scott Adams, in his book Dilbert and the Way of the Weasel. There’s a simple nine point plan, and like much of Adams’ work, amusingly simple. The points are:

1. Make a will
2. Pay off your credit cards
3. Get term life insurance if you have a family to support
4. Fund your 401k to the maximum
5. Fund your IRA to the maximum
6. Buy a house if you want to live in a house and can afford it
7. Put six months worth of expenses in a money-market account
8. Take whatever money is left over and invest 70% in a stock index fund and 30% in a bond fund through any discount broker and never touch it until retirement
9. If any of this confuses you, or you have something special going on (retirement, college planning, tax issues), hire a fee-based financial planner, not one who charges a percentage of your portfolio.

HGTV

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You know what annoys me? HGTV — that’s Home and Garden TV– seems to have given up the “G” part of their name. They’ve cut back drastically on the gardening shows. Even the idiot savant, that geek of gardening, Paul James, has had his show cut back from four episodes a week to one. (Paul is wildly popular, and has a substantial following, but I ain’t one of his fans.)

Instead, HGTV seems to be focusing on instant remodels that no human could do and “flipping” houses (a REALLY good way to lose your shirt and probably some body parts in the current real estate market.) And there’s no shortage of “reality” makeover shows featuring otherwise unemployable “designers.”

As an example, today’s HGTV menu has sixteen shows with “design” in the name, and zero that have anything to do with gardening!

Bread experiments

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I had an earlier post, blogged from the NY Times, that talked about a peculiar no-knead bread recipe. I’ve since been following the blogs and a couple of followup articles, and it’s got me interested in recipes based on weight-to-weight percentages of ingredients. Typically, that’s how the professional bakers do it. As a starting point, today I’m making a 75% hydrated loaf (500 g flour, 360 g water.) It seems to be a pretty wet dough. Photos when they’re available.

Unclear on the Concept, part MCLXVI

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Yet another foaming idiot, one Dennis Prager, has an editorial on something called townhall.com in which he opines that

Keith Ellison, D-Minn., the first Muslim elected to the United States Congress, has announced that he will not take his oath of office on the Bible, but on the bible of Islam, the Koran.

He should not be allowed to do so — not because of any American hostility to the Koran, but because the act undermines American civilization.

Whew. Sure sounds like American hostility to the Quran to me.

You know, it strikes me that generally these right-wing wackos claim to believe in the Constitution. Perhaps he should read the part that says “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof […]” Guess what? That doesn’t just mean the various cults of Jesus are the foundation of American democracy.