Monthly Archives: September 2008

A Brief Comment on the “Bailout”

Frankly, no one should be bailed out from anything. Companies who willingly committed fraud in screwing up our economy should not only not receive any taxpayer bailout money, but should be prosecuted and imprisoned. Debtors who willingly entered into mortgages and loans they could not afford to pay off should be allowed to realize that they made a mistake and that mistakes have consequences. Those who deceived people into accepting those mortgages and loans should be forced to give those people every dime of their money back, including the interest.

Bailing out anyone in this mess will only promote the continuation of our failing credit-based economy, when we should be demonizing the massive use of credit. We are not going to fall into a depression if people or companies don’t get bailed out, but we almost assuredly will if those most guilty of damaging our economy are allowed to continue with the full encouragement and financial support of the government.

I don’t know why anyone thinks that giving a metric fuckton of money (my money and your money, not just some money that’s sitting around) to the people who fucked up and got us into this mess in the first place is going to get anyone out of this mess.

Bless the Internet

Sometimes, I don’t know what I would do without the internet.

Case in point: CNN.com has a “story” that’s mostly just summarizing the opinions of some site commenters regarding the insipid and criminal proposed federal investment bank bailout plan, answering the question “what would you do with $700B?”

I needed only to read this response to the question to have my whole day validated:

Buy lots and lots of ponies.

Color Test

I like the design and implementation of the FM 100 Hue test for color perception. I’m also a little bit surprised that I got a perfect score on it. I figured I would have done well, but I didn’t expect perfect.

Labor Day

Reading my RSS feeds on the Google Reader, I saw a post on Get Rich Slowly, “Every Job I’ve Ever Had“, posted on the occasion of Labor Day. I liked the idea of thinking up all the jobs I’ve ever had, so here’s all of the jobs I’ve ever had:

  • dishwasher at Ocean Edge Resort
  • dairy department at Stop & Shop
  • bakery at Purity / Star Market
  • sysadmin intern at Chrysalis Symbolic Design
  • cook at Old Jailhouse Tavern
  • student assistant at UMass Lowell Media Center
  • cook at UMass Lowell South Campus cafeteria
  • Durgin Hall stage crew
  • selling tickets at Tsongas Arena box office
  • Boarding House Park stage crew
  • UMass Lowell summer dorm maintenance crew
  • cook at Chili’s (two whole days!)
  • document prepation at Marine Systems
  • sorting donations at Goodwill (two whole weeks!)
  • delivery at Classic Flowers
  • cook / trainer at On The Border
  • Mac Specialist at Apple Store
  • temp at Beacon Hill Staffing Group
  • mailroom at ProMutual Group
  • Policy Data Tech at ProMutual Group