An Analogy for the Current Financial Crisis

Suppose for a moment that you were a well-to-do landowner in the old south.  You had a sprawling estate in the beautiful woods of... say... Georgia.  Your family was not too large, but big enough to efficiently operate the estate, although you needed to bring in lots of fuel and food from neighbors.  You have an appetite to consume that is far too great for self-sufficiency.

A hurricane has begun.  It is not safe to be outside, but luckily your house was built sturdy and should remain intact.

Father has been out hunting and using up much of the potable water, so supplies were low.  Not to mention the fact that father has pissed some neighbors off by poaching game on their land.

So you are hunkered down to ride out the storm.  You hope that you have enough water to make it through, but you aren't sure.  This storm is pretty impressive in scale and duration.

Then all of a sudden, the bottom falls out...

What!  Wally started a fire in the game room!  Damn, I knew that kid was up to no good.  I've told that incorrigible brat time and time again to stop playing with fire, but he never learns.  This is not the first time that Wally's antics have cost the whole family.

The fire has begun, and appears to have the potential to bring down the entire house if it isn't stopped.  This is the worst fire since the Great Fire of the previous century.

So, of course, the irresponsible Wally comes running to the cousins to ask them to pool all of their water together and throw it on the fire.   This will require that everyone in the household give up their precious, and much needed, water.

If you don't use your water to put out the fire, it will likely burn the whole house down - and then where will you be?  If you do use the water, who knows if it will even stop the fire?  You could then be stuck in the middle of a hurricane with no shelter and no water.  Even worse, your neighbors won't help you.  It doesn't matter that you help them all of the time.  They'll turn their back on you and watch you perish.  Their only regret will be that they don't get handouts anymore.

Uncle Pauly since he is a fire expert and knows exactly how much water it will take to stop the fire: 700 gallons.  Do we put all of the water on at once?  Where do we throw it?  Uncle Ben has some firefighting experience, and has studied fires like this in the past... but every fire is different.

700 gallons!  Damn you, Wally!

Making Lemonade...

So hurricane Ike is bearing down on us today, and after the preparations were made I thought it was time to have a little fun. I decided, as they say, to make lemonade out of lemons. Now, I have often complained that Houston has no gravity. In this sense, I mean that there are no hills in which one can generate speed on a bike, skateboard, or any other sort of personal craft. Today, we are getting plenty of wind from the pending hurricane so I thought I would take advantage of it.

The idea is simple. You duct tape 2 corners of a sheet to your roller blades and grab the other 2 with outstretched arms. Voila! You've made a human sail:



It would be nice if it worked a little better going forward, but you have to let the sail bow out like a boat sail. I guess the design needs a little work, but here you can see the test run:

Being back in Mumbai, India has been a satisfactory experience so fare on this, my second trip. I think I am finally getting used to everything here in India. The traffic doesn’t surprise me, and I pretty much expect (and get a kick out of) the constant inconsistencies in everything from food to security procedures. No hassle at the airport this time around since I just went right through the x-ray scanner that caused my dual-laptop dilemma last trip.

One thing that happened today would have probably been disturbing last trip, but I actually thought it was borderline on funny. A colleague and I went over to the cricket batting cages at the mall next door to try our hand at 3 overs that were surely pure comedy to the spectating locals. On our way back to the Tunga, we were literally accosted by the begging children that are so common here in Mumbai. Normally, their advances are relatively harmless with the occasional touching of your shoes or maybe your stomach. This time, however, a tour book poking out of my pocket set a horde of the kids into a frenzy. A small girl snatched the book from my pocket as I was mostly concentrating on protecting my wallet. As I plucked it out of her hands and held it high above my head, I found myself engulfed in throngs of children pulling and my shirt and arms in a manner that was far from comfortable. On small boy was clinging to my arm so tightly that his feet were completely off the ground! We scuffled back to the safety of the hotel literally dragging the horde along.

I was smiling and laughing, which probably provoked the situation even more as the kids now seemed to view this as some kind of make-the-stupid-American-uncomfortable game. They were smiling and laughing as well, which made the situation seem less threatening and rather comical. Luckily that Hindi shouts from the security guard at the gate of the hotel dispersed the beggars, and we had a good laugh as we assessed the damage to my poor Jazz Fest T-shirt. There were smudges of street grime everywhere, and several areas where the cotton remained in a distorted shape from the small clenching fingers. I truly wish that I could help them without exacerbating the problem, but tour guides and locals alike consistently say that donations to charity are the right way to contribute to the well being of the impoverished locals.

So now I sit 7 stories above the craziness below in my safe and cozy hotel room. It is tragically unfortunate that for those kids life is so unfair. I only hope that the prosperity that India is experiencing as a country can trickle down to all of the slums, ditches, and alleyways of the Maximum City.