Colin and I have made a random encounter with each other in the Bay Area.  We’re gonna hit the town, and we’ll be thinking of y’all while we’re out.

Love,

Colin & Brian

Since I know there are some fans of Moulin Rouge! in the audience here, I just figure I would draw attention to Baz’s first film SINCE then because I’ve never heard of it.

http://www.australiamovie.com/main.html

http://www.geekologie.com/2008/11/good_idea_man_submits_drawing.php

This is a tough one for me.  Anyone who’s been around me in the past year knows my seething contempt for the Big 3.  The fact that they could be so willfully ignorant to state of affairs in the auto industry is completely unfathomable to me.  So in this vein, I would like nothing better than to see GM topple to ground for their gross mismanagement.  The Big 3 truly could have been leaders in the new auto industry if they had taken steps to improve their fuel-efficiency standards 10 years ago and gone out on a limb to develop alternative energy vehicles.  Instead, they went kicking and screaming to Congress over CAFE standards, and continued to pump out SUV after SUV in a blind must-maintain-the-status-quo mindset.  So, basically, f you guys for being such idiots and making me buy a Japanese car.

On the other hand, there are literally millions of people that would be affected by a Detroit collapse.  Now, the laissez-faire wing will be coming out of the woodwork explaining this away as an “adjustment” and some “rebalancing” will be needed.  Their are two problems with this line of thinking: a) the sheer size of this collapse would be devastating, b) these same preachers of free market doctrine won’t provide the relief to these working families to “adjust.”  So, in my view, there’s two ways you can go about doing things here.  You can either prop up the auto companies, hope that they return to solvency in the future, and save the millions of people from being heavily affected, or you can let Detroit fall, and provide extensive social services to the millions affected in order to assist them in their transition to another segment of the economy.  Both ways cost money.

So the big question then becomes, which way is cheaper and more effective?  I’d say the former, assuming you believe that these same executives that have run these companies into the ground based on a hear-no-evil brand of ineptitude can actually return them to dominance.  These prime loans to the Big 3 will eventually be payed back, with interest, and will have the least amount of impact to the millions entangled in Detroit.  But the assumption here is a big one.  Can these companies return to solvency?

Here’s where Congress may be able to provide a nudge.  By stipulating in the terms of the loan that the Big 3 must begin development of alternative energy vehicles, specifically plug-in hybrids, these comapnies may be pushed on to the right track.  Now this kind of steps in to some dangerous territory that borderlines on government planning of an entire segment of the economy, but if you structure it in a way that provides incentive, rather than command-and-control, it may just work.

I don’t like this bailout.  At all.  But the more I think about it, and the more I learn about the sheer size of the number of people involved, the more inclined I am to accept it.  Although, the devil is always in the details…

[Update]

Turns out CAPAF agrees:

To ensure that the managers who helped create this mess are not unduly rewarded, the loans must disallow excessive executive compensation. In addition, the auto companies must fulfill their commitments to provide both health care and retirement security for their employees and retirees. The companies must commit to continue their research and development of advanced, clean-vehicle technology and energy efficient manufacturing. A loan oversight board should ensure the companies develop a long-term business plan based on the production and sale of fuel-efficient vehicles.

The auto companies should embrace—not resist—the transition to less polluting vehicles. They should assure Congress that they will cease their legal and lobbying opposition to the imminent new fuel economy standards, and the California motor vehicle greenhouse gas standards that President-elect Obama said he would allow. These measures will reduce oil dependence, increase national security, save families money, and reduce pollution. In addition to harming the nation, continued opposition to these standards would keep the companies on the path that got them in this mess in the first place.

Please support the $25 billion loan for U.S. auto companies and include the aforementioned safeguards. This will help protect American jobs and ensure progress toward significantly more efficient vehicles.

After a pleasant weekend of hanging out with Adam, Eric and Myself made this short film. Shot and Edited in one day for a quick burst of inspiration for the two of us. Enjoy.

So, i was catching up on some Yglesias and saw this post:

But even though the deflation of a housing bubble would lead to economic problems, it’s just not the case that “the economic crisis” (as folks have taken to calling it) was primarily caused by the rise and now fall of an asset bubble in the housing sector. Such bubbles and their collapse are problematic, but also somewhat banal. We had one just a few years back when the dot-com stock bubble collapsed. That provoked a recession and the loss of a lot of paper wealth in the stock market, but there was no crisis. There was no crisis because the big movers and shakers of the finance world didn’t build a giant house of cards built on the assumption that tech stocks would continue to rise in value indefinitely. Some people made bad bets along those lines, of course, but nothing close to the scale of what we’ve seen recently.

And the essence of the crisis is right there. Not in the deflation of the bubble as such, but in what was done on top of the bubble with leverage and so forth so as to create a situation so precarious that credit markets were on the verge of total collapse a little while back. It’s the people who did that who deserve blame.

This is a very important distinction.  All too often you hear people saying “Well, this all started with the mortgage meltdown…” but there’s a lot more going on than that.  Yes, the mortgage meltdown was a problem, but it wasn’t nearly as problematic as financial firms leveraging all of their assets 50-1 betting on mortgage-backed securities.  That’s your real root cause of the financial crisis.

Let me put it this way, if I coat my body in gasoline because I like the way it smells, then someone ends up lighting a match near me, and I get third-degree burns all over my body, it would be true to say that this all started with the match.  But it would be important for me to recognize that wearing gasoline as a perfume is really high-risk behavior, and therefore was the real root cause of the entire issue.

Hey everyone. I will be flying out to San Fransisco tomorrow morning to attend AdobeMAX. I will be presenting at AdobeMAX on Sunday morning and I will be there until Thursday. Anyone in the area? I will be presenting on my New Media Showcase project. I will let you know how it goes!

Hey everyone!

We presented Army Ants on Wednesday. It is done! And I am incredibly proud of the results. I will be hopefully uploading a video today of our final project. It won’t be a well edited video or anything, but it should show what we worked on.

This is the best game ever made. Please play with sound.

QWOP!

This has become my absolute favorite beer.  I don’t really drink it all the time, but if I want to treat myself, I make a special trip to BevMo to snag some.  The depth of flavor on this IPA is ridiculous.  It has that characteristic IPA bitterness at the end but it is softened up by a rich, malty, near-sweet front that brings an amazing amount of complexity to the taste.

It is pricey, though, which is why I don’t drink it all too often: 9-11 bucks for a 4-pack.  That’s right: 4-pack.  The good news is that it’s 9% alcohol by volume, so it’s as good as 2 beers in 1.

Check it out.

Moving + Work Travel = Horrible

Sucks, too, because I’ve had a lot of stuff swimming around in my head that would make some good blog posts.  Alas, no time.

Maybe next week, although by then, the thoughts are sure to be irrelevant…

Seriously?

Seriously?!

Wow.

The sex act called fisting is a source of confusion and misconceptions for many Christians. This is unfortunate, because it means that many Christian men and women are depriving themselves of what could be the most spiritual sexual experience of their lives. Like anal sex and BDSM, fisting is often mistakenly associated with the gay community or is considered a sex act too extreme to be appropriate for Christian couples. Not only are these views incorrect, but fisting actually has a scriptural precedent, as we will show.

The Fist of Might

Over and over in the scriptures, the hand and fist of God are described as a symbol of His awesome power and the means through which this power manifests: “O God, God of our ancestors, are you not God in heaven above and ruler of all kingdoms below? You hold all power and might in your fist.” (2 Chronicles 20:6) Of course, the Old Testament often makes reference to God smiting his enemies with his fist or striking down the wicked with his hand, but it is also the means through which he administers his blessings and benevolence to the righteous: ”You open Your hand and satisfy the desire of every living thing.” (Psalms 145:16) Through the hand of the Lord, he guides us to do his will, touches our lives, expresses His love, and provides for our needs with His abundance.

The biblical significance of the hand is important, because in the act of fisting, one partner (usually male) inserts his entire hand and fist into the vagina or rectum of his partner. Rather than copulating with his penis, he penetrates her with his fist. Given the powerful symbolism of the fist, it is no surprise that couples who have partaken in the practice of fisting have described it as being a profoundly spiritual experience. On a symbolic and sexual level, a wife who is fisted by her husband has the experience of surrendering completely to the divine love and power of the Lord, as embodied by her partner’s hand. The husband in turn has the experience of touching and caressing her inwardly, in such a deep and intimate manner as God touches our own souls with His grace.