Billion-Dollar Handouts

It has always been a source of amazement to me that many in the same crowd that push for free markets - for unrestrained capitalism - are so quick to put their hands out when they are in trouble. These folks inevitably decry social welfare programs, but they are the first in line to demand protectionist laws and a wide variety of direct and indirect subsidies for their own enterprises.

In short, they want a level playing field for their competitors, a field advantage for themselves, and zero tax burden.

Individuals are heavily criticized when they express this same sense of entitlement. As well they should be. Large enterprises, however, can use other arguments to persuade government to bail them out of the messes they created themselves:

1. People will lose jobs.
2. The economy will suffer.
3. Investors will lose their shirts.

These are all risks of a free market, risks companies are happy to accept until they become the economic equivalent of doddering old fools who refuse to step aside and let the young pups play the game. In a global market, subsidizing a failing company only serves to fill a void that a more dynamic company could step up to fill. This is unhealthy, and economists know it.

Thus far, our duly elected representative government has taken steps to bail out predatory lenders and imprudent home buyers, rewarding the wicked and the stupid while leaving taxpayers (that's you and I, my loyal reader(s)) to hold the bag.

We've been given a great deal: a short-term reprieve on an economic bust for the long-term price of more debt.

But wait - there's more!

Now the Big Three automakers have their hands out, insisting that taxpayers need to bail them out because lenders aren't willing to do so.

Wait - the same industry that underwrote loans to folks with poor credit won't lend the Big Three any money? And it is a good idea for the rest of us to loan them money why?

Corporate behemoths go through a natural life cycle, rather like that of a star. When they become too large and bloated, they must die. Nature must run its course. Hooking them up to life support isn't the answer.

This isn't an inevitability. Companies become bloated and unwiedly when the board members and executives spend more time on the golf course than in their boardrooms and corner offices. When that happens, investors need to watch out.

With regards to the Big Three, with their stagnant share prices, all I can say is, watch out, or simply . . .

Fore!

I Think You Have Bigger Problems

It is always interesting when I enter a home to do pest control work.

People have very different ideas about what constitutes a problem. Today I arrived at a home where I was instructed to treat the basement and the outside for spiders. I was met by the lady of the house and informed that her daughter had a serious lung condition that left her with only seventeen percent breathing capacity.

I made some sympathetic noises and followed her to the basement, discussing the treatment options along the way.

Entering the basement, I was hit by the overwhelming odor of cat urine. And her daughter had breathing problems? Wow. I was reminded of the smokers that invariably scurry away while I am spraying the outside of one of the nursing homes where I perform routine services. One or two will remain to ask if "that stuff will hurt me."

Ummm . . . you're putting me on, right? Did you know that nicotine fell out of use as an insecticide due to its unacceptably acute health risk to people?

And why do so many health care workers smoke, anyway?

But I digress.

Here I was at this woman's home, marvelling at the dank and dingy basement where her adult children lived in semi-squalor. She showed me her son's room, where a stained mattress and dirty laundry were casually strewn about the floor (yes, the mattress was also strewn. Just use your imagination, okay?)

The dominating feature of this room was a huge, obviously newer flat-panel television.

Cat urine and a $2,500 television - a strange set of priorities. A willingness to pay for a spider spray when they can barely afford to eat is equally strange. The health risk posed by spiders is vastly exaggerated; they are nearly always more a nuisance than anything else.

But more on that in a different post.

I cannot afford a flat-screen behemoth myself - but it might be more accurate to say it would be irresponsible of me to buy one.

A lot of Americans buy things they probably shouldn't. Given the consumer debt load in our country, one wonders when it will be time to pay the piper. Or will the piper be left holding the bag?

Maybe I already know the answer. Maybe my lady customer gave it to me today.

"Just send me the bill."

EarMitts

I apologize if I have alarmed you, my loyal reader(s), through my prolonged absence. But really, you need have only used your own logical faculties to reason that my disappearance was not permanent. Why, how could I fulfill my destiny and lead the masses to a bloody coup before establishing the New World Order? I couldn't, of course. So I must not have disappeared forever.

No, I was merely laid low by a perennial illness that mimics a mild flu and ear infection. You see, if I am exposed to cold air, especially cold wind, my ears will inevitably ache terribly some hours later. Then flu-like symptoms follow, and only through the application of warmth to my ears does the agony cease. Sometimes I am sick for days.

This evening, after taking a bath that was far too hot, I came to realize something new: not everybody gets puking sick when they take an overly warm bath! My wife, wise woman that she is, pointed this out to me. After She Who Must Be Obeyed spoke, I thought further on the matter and reasoned that the Japanese, who love absurdly - in fact uncomfortably - hot baths, would all come crawling out and succumb to overwhelming nausea if my situation was true for everyone.

My best hypothesis is that my inner ear is so sensitive that these excesses of hot and cold cause me considerable illness. Perhaps fluid is perpetually trapped in my inner ear. I have searched far and wide on the Internet for the answer to my dilemma, in search of the wisdom of an eagerly blogging ENT, but to no avail. All I have discovered is that there are others who share my malady.

I also stumbled onto EarMitts, the product of an enterprising teenager from my own home state of Idaho. I won't be buried in sexual advances from amorous women while wearing them, but I'm game to give them a try.

Besides, I've always wondered what I would look like in Princess Leia buns.

The Pros and Cons of Learning Online

I earned a significant portion of my bachelor's degree online, and now I am earning an entire master's degree online. I feel like I have a fair amount of authority to speak on the advantages and disadvantages of the format. This evening, as my two-year-old hit the power button on my PC while I was just finishing an hour's worth of work on a big assignment, it occured to me that the differences can be pretty significant. Here's a quick sampling of the highlights and lowlights of the virtual classroom:

Pros:

• you can drink beer in class
• you can take your kid to school
• you can take a break to watch your favorite television show
• you can attend class in your bathrobe
• you can attend class in your underwear
• you can attend class entirely unclothed
• you can attend class at two in the morning
• you can attend class at lunchtime
• you can attend class on your cell phone

Cons:

• you can drink beer in class
• you can take your kid to school
• you can take a break to watch your favorite television show
• your dog can't eat your homework
• you have to remember to go to class
• you can raise your hand as long as you like, but the instructor won't answer your question
• you can't get phone numbers from pretty coeds
• you have to get a defense lawyer after to going into a homicidal rage when your two-year-old hit the power button on your PC while you were in the middle of an online exam with a cutoff time just thirty minutes away

As you can see, sometimes the advantages are also disadvantages. It takes a great deal of discipline to take classes online, and some folks just aren't cut out for it. But the advantages, well, they're worth weighing.

There are many more pros and cons that I could list, and if I have time later, I'll list them. I'm hoping I won't have that kind of free time, though. What the odds are of having that kind of free time in the near future, I just don't know.

I'll have to ask my lawyer.

Don't Get Stung - Secrets from a Master Exterminator

In keeping with the pest control side of my blogging purposes, I bring to you, my loyal reader(s), some insights into the control of stinging insects, namely those of the hymenopterous variety.

Most folks that call a pest control firm tell the receptionist that they have bees. Usually this isn't the case. It is hardly necessary to be an apiculturist to know the difference between bees and wasps or yellowjackets. We could go into the classification of insects in the order Hymenoptera in great detail, but that would serve little purpose here. Suffice it to say, if they're bright yellow instead of orange and hairy, you don't have bees.

Bees make honey, and are important contributors in the ecology web. We all know that they are pollinators; some people will remember that colony collapse disorder has been in the news lately, and our bee colonies are in trouble. Fewer know that if you actually have bees, we are all better off if you call a local beekeeper instead of the exterminator. Many beekeepers will come and capture a feral colony if they can at no charge. Why? Well, the situation is analagous to calling a farmer if you've got wild cattle. Free livestock is a pretty good deal.

Bees (at least those that aren't of the Africanized variety) are fairly docile, and can easily be approached if you aren't the nervous type. If you just can't get a beekeeper in your area to come get your bees, and you can't afford an exterminator, an insecticidal dust is your best option. You need only treat the entrace hole. Keep in mind, though, that once you've got an inactive bee hive in your walls, loaded with honey and dead larvae and adults, you'll have another problem. The nest will be highly attractive to dermestids, fungi, and other undesirables.

Chances are, though, like most folks that call, you don't have actual bees. You have wasps. Or yellowjackets. Or hornets. Or . . . well, let's limit our discussion to the most common nuisance calls. Social wasps construct open-celled paper nests most often under the eaves on the sunny side of a structure and similar areas. If you've got a poorly built house, you're in trouble. Neglected cedar shake shingles, for example, are a haven for paper wasps. They offer cellulose for the construction of nests, and shelter as potential nesting sites.

Yellowjackets, on the other hand, usually construct nests in voids in the ground, an old stump, or even a house. Some will build aerial nests. These can be distinguished from paper wasps by their enclosed appearance. Yellowjackets are generally also distinguishable from paper wasps in flight by observing their legs: yellowjackets carry theirs next to their body, while paper wasps allow their long legs to dangle beneath them.

I guess they like to show them off.

The key here, and the difficulty, as with all social insects, is to treat the nest. This isn't terribly difficult if the nest is in a known location, and if you can approach and treat it safely. Dusts are superior to other insecticial formulations because of their longer residual effects, especially where yellowjacket nests are concerned. Yellowjackets become more difficult to approach as the summer wears on and the colony grows in size. And when their nest is in a void, the only exposed area that the workers must traverse is the entry to the nest - that is where you want to focus your efforts. Approach it in the cool of the morning to treat it, and if you get stung, well, that's your own fault for not calling me, the professional. Caveat DYI, as it were.

What if you can't find the nest, or it is on a neighboring property where you can't treat? Insects are disrespectful little buggers, who don't observe property boundaries; keep that in mind. The alternative here is the trap. A number of traps are on the market, and they all work fairly well at what they claim to do. The main mistake I see here is this: people have a lot of wasps or yellowjackets flying around their favorite outdoor hangout, such as a patio. So they put the traps there.

The traps are attractive, of course, otherwise they wouldn't work very well. Consequently, every wasp and yellow jacket for several hundred yards is now visiting your patio, because you foolishly put the trap there.

So place the trap as far away from your house as possible, in an area you don't visit much, such as a neglected corner or, even better, your neighbor's house ("Hey, Bill, the yellowjackets sure are bad this year. I bought some extra yellowjacket traps and I figured I'd set one up for you, too. Naw, don't thank me - it's the least I can do.")

What can you do in prevention? Pretreat known harborage areas, pretreat sources of cellulose (like your cedar-shake shingles, or your unpainted fence - and paint that fence this year, gosh darnit!), hang out traps well in advance of the season to capture inseminated queens establishing nests, and eliminate standing water where possible (another necessary component of nest-building). Eliminate food sources by controlling pests, like aphid, that are feeding on your plants and, in turn, providing food for wasps and yellowjackets. Lastly, if you can place ant baits where wasps and yellowjackets are foraging (within the limits of the label and your state laws, of course), the effect on the local population can be surprisingly effective. Use both sugar-based and protein-based baits for maximum effect.

One last situation comes to mind - the invasion of your home by overwintering wasps (no, they don't overwinter in their nests, or return to their old ones, even though they may build in the same locations; each pupal cell is only used once). Unfortunately, areas such as attics, which are like the Bahamas to wasps looking for a place to lounge over the winter, are often poorly sealed. Use exclusionary tactics, such as fine-meshed screens, to cover areas that permit access to wasps looking for places to spend their dormant period. If you're reading this in the late winter, and it's too late to utilize this tactic, you will need to treat the areas where the emerging wasps are overwintering. Because we heat our living spaces, our homes throw off the environmental cues that wasps depend upon to tell them when to emerge in the springtime, and this can be an ongoing problem.

Alternatively, you could turn off the heat and just dress warmly all winter. Very warmly.

And if they don't really bother you, then don't bother them - yellowjackets and wasps prey on other insects while feeding their larvae, so they're actually beneficial. They perform pest control for free.

It's okay, really. I don't mind the competition.

Don't Eat Yellow Snow

Sometimes commerical marketing efforts encourage us to do things we shouldn't. Like smoke. Or drive gas-guzzling land whales. Or eat foods fried in oils laden with artificial trans-fats.

Or get lit up around hordes of bikini-clad women.

Actually, I don't know how hard that last bit would be on my health. But I'm sure it would hard on something.

There has been an increasing social movement towards making sure we can't make any choice for ourselves, for better or worse. This is especially distressing, in my view, when it comes to dessert. Our government has made our choices for us when it comes to wearing our seat belt, eating french fries, and smoking in our favorite tavern.

These are all mala prohibitum crimes - they are bad because the government says they are. And they are crimes, and you will be prosecuted if you break the law.

Some laws, those that cover mala in se crimes, or acts that are wrong because every sane person thinks they are wrong, are necessary for a stable society. It would be tough to go through life in a society where rampant homicide was the norm (although I am still a champion of one of my chief engines of social change, the one bullet rule). Mala prohibitum laws frequently aren't necessary, and they are proliferating. Worse, there has been little outcry against the steady destruction of our liberty.

Unfortunately, our forefathers never saw fit to write liberty into the Constitution. Then again, as our five-to-four Supreme Court decisions make painfully aware, our forefathers didn't much believe in concise, unambiguous language, either.

Perhaps it never ocurred to them that a government would want to infringe on its citizens' liberties. Especially the government of a nation founded with a Declaration of Independence that insists that Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness are inalienable rights. Legal scholars disagree on what, if any, impact the Declaration of Independence has on United States law, strangely enough; what basis does the Constitution have without it, one might ask?

Evidently, such rights aren't - you'll have to excuse the redundancy - self-evident. And hardly anybody wants to stand in a courtroom and insist to the judiciary that they are. Why Americans are so willing to part with their liberties is something of a mystery to me. Perhaps it has to do with the level of comfort and safety the human animal is willing to exchange for liberty.

Me, I'm immune to such influences.

So. If you'll excuse me. I have to ask my wife if I can go out with my buddies this weekend.

The Degree Mill

Earlier, I shared with you, my loyal reader(s), my reservations about earning the MSA at the University of Phoenix online. After all, some disgruntled students, and even faculty, have aired their grievances about the quality of the online instruction - online (where else would they rant?)

Some degrees will never lend themselves to the online format, that much must be acknowledged. It is difficult, if not impossible, to provide and evaluate practicum for the sciences. Like quantum physics. Chemistry. Genetics.

And sexology.

So it is a little difficult to take some online degree programs seriously. Accounting, however, offers little more in the way of quality when an instructor is walking you through a journal posting on a chalkboard. So I took a risk and enrolled in the MSA program at the University of Phoenix online, as you, my loyal reader(s), are well aware.

Despite allegations that the UoP is a degree mill, my coursework thus far has been anything but a cakewalk. I'd like to see the complainers go through just the first two weeks of class in my degree program, all introductory material no less.

Need some detailed information? Week one: four chapters of reading, three discussion questions (many of which are multi-part questions, in effect doubling or tripling the actual answer requirements), each requiring a minimum 60-word response and subsequent follow-up to other students' responses, as well as the instructor's additional prompting, a minimum of four days out of each week, twice each day - at an additional minimum of 60 words.

That's 180 words of substantive writing (hackneyed responses like "I agree!" don't count, obviously) just for the initial answers to the discussion questions, and then two substantive notes four times per week of a minimum 60 words = 2 x 4 x 60 = 480 words.

And that's the easy part. So I've read four chapters, written 660 words just for discussion and participation points, and now come the assignments: two short written assessments covering the first week's introductory material, the first from 200 to 350 words, the second from 350 to 700 words.

Phew! That's four chapters of reading and 1,210 words if you're the bare-minimum type. I did closer to 2,000. And that's just week one.

Week two has the same discussion/participation requirements, plus reading, of course, and the assignments this time demand a written explanation of each step of a month's worth of general journal entries for a fictional business, the actual journal entries themselves - post each transaction to the appropriate account! - and then copy those entries to the general ledger, and then create a trial balance sheet for all the account balances. This, of course, is just the first assignment for week two.

The second assignment instructs the student to create a PowerPoint presentation to train bookkeepers about the purpose of each of the four main financial statements. Additionally, the presentation must contain instructions on how to prepare journal entries (you don't really "prepare" journal entries - that begs the question, prepare them for what - but the syllabus was written by an accountant, not an English major, so we'll let that slide). These instructions must portray screen-shot examples of sample entries. Lastly, notes must accompany each slide to clue the speaker in on what he or she is talking about - explaining, in part, what the components within each financial statement are.

Sound like a gimme diploma to you?

Me neither.

Now if you'll excuse me, I've got a PowerPoint presentation due.

Defining Justice

Although I have yet to attend law school, I sometimes weigh in with my own legal analysis on a topic or case.

While judges might seem to be more qualified than I am to engage in the issuance of learned opinions, think on this for a moment: the highest court in our land frequently issues split opinions of 5 to 4.

Also, appeals court judges frequently reverse the rulings of lower judges.

So judges can be wrong.

In fact, it may be that the appeals judges are wrong; such positions aren't bestowed based on superior legal reasoning ability. No such criteria exists in appointing judges to the bench. The process is alarmingly sloppy and political.

So it is no surprise to see that judges have enormous difficulty in doing their jobs; namely, interpreting the laws. A recent decision by the 9th Circuit explained that the justices did not know what "livestock" is, but they returned the case to the lower court to think further on the matter (thereby acknowledging that the lower court knew better than they did anyway, making one wonder why they did not simply confirm the lower court's ruling). After consulting several definitions themselves, the justices found that the term was too ambiguous.

The animals in question? Dogs. The appellants insist they are dog farming, evidently.

Why do so many sources needed to be consulted? Only two dictionaries are really necessary: one descriptive, one prescriptive. Better, one descriptive dictionary published in the year the legislation was written that used the word "livestock." That would act as fair authority on what the lawmakers thought "livestock" meant.

All of this seems quite a stretch, though - would it be possible for the U.S. to begin appointing judges that have some passing familiarity with the culture they are making rulings in, therefore negating the need to rush to a dicitionary to define whatever word some ornery lawyer decided to pick a semantical battle over? How much tax money has been wasted on legal battles like these?

Meanwhile, political moves are afoot in Idaho to attempt to get canines defined as livestock. This would be especially unfortunate, because, by law in Idaho, if you were to strike livestock on a public road, the liability would lie with you, the driver - not the livestock owner.

So get along, little doggies . . .

Too Many Kids in This Tub

In the need to post something, anything, to maintain the interest of you, my loyal reader(s), I offer a cherished childhood rhyme that came back to me today:

There's too many kids in this tub,
There's too many kids in this tub.
I just washed a behind
That I don't think was mine -
There's too many kids in this tub.

Thinking today about the pressures that a stagnant population puts on an economy reminded me of this nostalgic little ditty. Prior to the economic boom fomented by the introduction of the personal computer, and then the Internet, another boom came: the Baby Boom. Following the baby boom, one needed only invest in Gerber stock, then toymakers, and so on as the tots grew to ensure a return four times better than that offered by the Dow during the same period.

The best solution to overenthusiastic procreation is wealth, and it is obvious when we look at the birth rates of the wealthiest nations - where the death rate sometimes exceeds the birth rate - to see that this is true.

A birth rate that exceeds the death rate is good for an economy, but it can't hold out indefinitely; resources become ever scarcer as a result. In fact, the U.S. economy is already feeling the loss of momentum as our once-abundant resources become tapped out. (First Peoples didn't do much mining, positioning colonists ahead of their European brethren). We have to move on to ores of less purity, and production costs will soar as the need to refine consumes the process of getting ores to market.

The main reason ores become more quickly depleted is, of course, more people. Growth comes with a price. An environmental price, too, to be sure; it is clear that other nations have not enjoyed enough prosperity in time to head off an unsustainable population.

Where to next for humanity? I don't know, but one thing is clear: there's too many kids in this tub.

Widgets Wednesday

When Google Desktop Gadgets first came out, I had to give them a whirl on my Vista machine. They were fun, but unnecessary little apps, and not useful enough to justify their memory consumption. So I sent them to the great Recycle Bin in the sky.

We fast forward to a few months later.

Yahoo! came out with their own Widgets for the desktop, and they promised a new level of fun and utility, so I burdened my RAM again with piggish niblets for the sake of evaluation. I found I liked Yahoo! Widgets more than Google's Gadgets - we'll avoid the humorous digression here, beg as it might for our acknowledgement - and I decided I might just keep them around.

After all, there were apps that kept me apprised of crucial data, such as the local werewolf threat level. And a SiteMeter Widget was available that helped me monitor when you, my loyal reader(s), visited my blog. Updated every six minutes - an indispensable tool to apprise me of the flood of newly edified masses converging on my site daily.

Alas, it was not to be. Just a few days into my recent install, Yahoo! Widgets crashed consistently every time it was loaded. I uninstalled the program with just a hint of sentiment clouding my eye.

Yahoo! Widgets, we hardly knew ye.

Tasty Tuesday: Chocolate Mix Skittles

I like to try new things when dining, even if it's just a snack. As they say, variety is the spice of life. I tend to like things other people review with distaste, too: Mountain Dew Baja Blast; Shamrock shakes; Arch Deluxe burgers.

Granted, Baja Blast tastes remarkably akin to mouthwash. But that just makes it all the more refreshing.

And Shamrock shakes resemble toothpaste. No argument there. But remember, you've always been told you can't swallow toothpaste, so this is one junk food item you can suck down and have two reasons to feel naughty about.

The Arch Deluxe? Actually, I'm still mystified as to what was supposed to have been wrong with the darn thing. I liked it; it was a nice addition to the grease parade Ronald serves up.

It was in this spirit of adventure that I tried Chocolate Mix Skittles. Adventurer beware: sometimes the jungle holds surprises that cut the excursion short. I skirted culinary quicksand, dodged delectable dangers, and flirted with fossilized foods not to engage in alliteration, but to bring you, my devoted reader(s), a review of Chocolate Mix Skittles. I observed a careful process of tasting, rinsing with water, and tasting again. My two-year-old assisted and offered her own analysis of each flavor.

However, I have elected to publish only my test results:

Brownie Batter: Day-old brownies, in flavor and texture.

Chocolate Pudding: Week-old chocolate pudding, in flavor and texture.

Chocolate Caramel: A batch of Sugar Babies with the blend slightly off.

S'mores: Now this one was just wrong. In moral and culinary terms.

Vanilla: Vanilla. Chewy vanilla.

These flavors lend themselves well to pastries, but not to chewy candies; chewy candies are better suited to fruity flavors. Plus, who ever heard of a brown rainbow?

If you buy these, brace yourself for disappointment: there is no gold at the end of this rainbow.

Frivolous Legal Reform

The Institute for Legal Reform solicited my participation in a survey. Each question was looking for basically the same answer, and they all went along the same general theme, such as:

Which of the following statements is most concerning to you about frivolous lawsuits?

And:

Have you been a victim of lawsuit abuse? Please use the box below to share your story with us.

Well, naturally I had an answer to that!

"Yes. I am constantly exposed to nonsense news stories that exaggerate the prevalence of frivolous lawsuits and distort or omit details of putatively frivolous lawsuits."

The prevalence of frivolous lawsuits is vastly exaggerated by the media - sensationalism sells - and the media is continuously egged on by business interests, who always strive to limit, or preferably, completely eliminate, their liability.

You might think that the traditionally liberal media, and more conservative business interests, make for strange bedfellows. But they sing with the same voice when it comes to putatively frivolous lawsuits. Take, for example, the much-publicized McDonald's coffee lawsuit. An older woman spilled coffee in her lap. Now, that was her own fault, and we would expect it to hurt. What we wouldn't expect is for the coffee to deliver a third-degree burn to her perineum, and for her to incur serious pain and medical costs.

Yet this is exactly what happened. And too many media reports left out the details: coffee, meant for drinking, would actually have caused her injury had she drank it instead of spilling it.

McDonald's argued that their research showed that people usually take their coffee elsewhere, then drink it. Which makes little sense for those who actually stay at the restaurant - I guess they just look at their coffee.

The point here is, the press, in its eagerness to enrage us and increase newspaper sales, left out all of the details that demonstrated that the suit was perfectly reasonable, and was really not a news item at all (except maybe to serve as a warning not to order coffee at McDonald's, or, at least, to order it with ice, as many people in the know do).

As with statutes that limit how much a jury can award a plaintiff, laws that dispense with the judgement of twelve reasonable women and men will only serve to hobble our system of justice. A corporation's malfeasance caused your infant to die a horrible and tragic death? Too bad, that's only worth $100,000. This is the thrust of the laws that have been enacted to reduce awards, and do away with the common person's judgement in a civil case.

See a problem here?

Businesses have further eliminated their liability by lobbying legislators to create the LLC, or limited liability company. The LLC allows small businesspeople to enjoy the same limited liability as a corporation without the nuisance of board governance and rules of procedure. While most states allow for piercing of the corporate veil to protect against abuse of the corporate form, the State of Nevada has specifically directed that a veil-piercing cannot take place against an LLC in a civil liability case.

So take note: those ladies on the outskirts of Vegas aren't the only ones it is perfectly legal to screw now.

Wiley's CPA Review Software

In the ongoing saga of my personal life, which, no doubt, is of considerable and compelling interest to you, my faithful reader(s), I am delivering an update on my MSA with Phoenix University online.

My CPA review software, central to the course, arrived today. Well, most of it arrived. The UPS guy, before walking away and spitting on my lawn, was kind enough to make sure he handed it to me directly.

I don't blame UPS entirely for the state of my CD-ROM. Part of the blame goes to the folks who packaged it for shipping - a soft envelope with just a hint of padding really can't be expected to make it through the shipping process, which involves more than just indifferent delivery people.

It involves indifferent sorting machinery as well.

It appears my software will still work, as the case has sacrificed its life for the well-being of the CD-ROM, but I don't have time for an-in-depth analysis at the moment.

I'm a harried grad student, remember?

Off to class!

The Sky is Falling

A Wells Fargo economist has announced that nothing lasts forever.

This is what I've been saying all along. If we expect the same sort of spectacular economic growth we saw after the introduction of the personal computer, and then the Internet, then something big has to come along. Something everyone just has to have.

New medical therapies, nanotech, and other technologies that are touted to be just over the horizon don't fall into the must-have category. Medical advances will be applicable only to those suffering from the diseases they aim to treat; even worse, medicines that are an improvement over existing chemistries will only capture the same dollars already spent on existing technologies.

People won't be buying a new invention or service, they'll just be replacing the worn-out items they already own. This is called a replacement economy, and it describes the one we're already in.

We'll ignore bubbles, like the housing bubble, because they represent false growth. Only a few lucky souls profit from these events. The rest suffer. Why anyone is foolish enough to get excited at the prospect of increased market value on their home is a mystery to me; if you sell your home, you've just got to buy another one in the same appreciated market. You've gained nothing except a larger house payment (doh!) and the same amount of equity you already had in your previous home (assuming you put it into your new home and didn't squander it on toys - oops!)

Of course, you could sell your home in L.A., and move to a small town with a dead economy. You'd be ahead then; the houses would be cheaper. You just couldn't find a decent job.

I suppose, in all fairness, that this is a viable option for a retiree. But most of these depressed communities offer very little to the AARP bunch. Except maybe some darn good cherry pie.

And while the criticisms of economists being as reliable as weather forecasters aren't entirely unfair, such protestations don't really address the current economic environment. None of the naysayers have offered a convincing argument that the next big thing is just around the corner.

So the sky may be falling, but that's okay: pay down your debt now, and invest the rest so you can buy a ticket to outer space later. It should be darn affordable when the trip is just that much shorter.

The Whore of the Convenience Store

Many happy moments of my childhood were spent in Riverfront Park and the surrounding environs in Spokane, Washington. Very near the park was a Hostess Bakery store, where one could purchase all kinds of delicious things (hey, I was a kid at the time, not a discriminating gourmand).

Once in awhile I will buy a Hostess product merely because I am feeling nostalgic. Or maybe I am just mistaking that feeling with hypoglycemia. At any rate, I recently succumbed to my consumeristic desires recently, and bought some Zingers.

You're probably familiar with Zingers. They're a close cousin of the Twinkie, that junk food staple of survivalists everywhere; nigh invulnerable to everything up to, and including, global thermonuclear war.

So imagine my surprise when I opened the package and found that yet another organism had found my Zinger desirable: mold!

Quality may have gone down recently at Hostess. Frankly, I'm not surprised; the bakery I often visited as child is now closed. As is one that I used to service during the course of my pest control work.

Why did they close so many locations? I asked this very question to the staff there when they informed me they would be closing and losing their jobs. They blamed the implosion of Hostess to - in their words - "the Whore of the Convenience Store:" Little Debbie.

Now, Little Debbie doesn't make me want to walk like a camel, despite her popularity in the Deep South, and she is a poor second to Hostess, in my estimation. But, according to my sources at Hostess, she paid a premium for better display space at convenience stores and gas stations, and she quickly pulled ahead of Hostess. The folks who regularly visit these places quickly snatched up the cheaper treats (truckers aren't known for their discriminating palates), and Hostess lost traction.

Hostess never saw this coming, because management was asleep at the wheel. The embittered purveyors of puffed pastries shared that with me as well. I confirmed the widespread view of a management staff that spends too much time on the greens at Twinkies.org, a forum for Hostess customers and employees.

And no, Hostess was not happy about the registration of their brand name for a domain under somebody else's ownership, but it is a testament to how poorly managed IBC was that nobody took steps to ensure it couldn't happen in the first place.

That was in 2004. I remember seeing the Interstate Bakeries Corporation's Chapter 11 papers when they crossed my desk after the retail store in my town shut down. As it turns out, IBC was a holding company for even more shell companies - what a mess! I am always reluctant to invest in companies that try to make sure investors are unable to see the forest for all the trees.

Apparently, corporate governance is still a problem, and IBC headquarters is still a sticky, waist-high mess of Twinkies. Management still hasn't crawled out of Chapter 11 bankruptcy four years later.

But please excuse me.

I have a moldy Zinger I need to throw away.

A Gap in GAAP

It's breakfast.

I've whipped out the laptop in anticipation of catching up on some schoolwork, accessing Ronald's WiFi connection (one of his few redeeming qualities). Because my body is not configured to sustain third-degree burns, I had to opt for an iced coffee.

I desperately need the caffeine.

One of the less endearing aspects of my laptop is the absence of a volume control that operates independently of the operating system. I had not turned the volume down since I last used it, so I was furiously punching the Fn and Page Dn buttons as it booted up to silence the annoying Windows trumpets.

I know the sound is annoying because of all the annoyed looks I got.

So now I'm live, and ready to bring you, my loyal reader(s), the latest enthralling installment in the saga that is my life while earning the MSA at Phoenix University online.

I learned something of considerable interest in this day and age of continued corporate accounting scandals. According to one of my textbooks, "the SEC indicated in its reports to Congress that 'it continues to believe that the initiative for establishing and improving accounting standards should remain in the private sector, subject to Commission oversight.'"

Hell, the SEC doesn't want to be held accountable for rules that have allowed corporations to fleece investors and ruin people's lives. Why should the buck stop with somebody saddled with the task of oversight? Although that didn't stop the chief accountant of the enforcement division of the SEC from recently noting "one can violate SEC laws and still comply with GAAP,"again according to my book.

Yet the responsibility for developing GAAP rules still should remain in the private sector?

Some advice to the CEOs and CFOs out there: watch your step. You might fall in the GAAP.

U of P Prep

Today, I officially start classes to earn my MSA with Phoenix University online.

They have a few requirements to earn this degree online, primarily involving software. They also offer crucial downloads: Adobe Reader; Macromedia Flash Player; Macromedia Shockwave Player; Microsoft Online File Converters and Viewers; Microsoft Internet Explorer/Outlook Express; Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint 2007 File Formats; and most importantly, the University of Phoenix Custom Screensaver.

I wasted no time in downloading the screensaver. Now I feel ready to learn!

All poking fun aside, I'll admit to having some reservations about earning an entire degree online. Despite my familiarity with the format - I attended about half of my classes online for my business administration degree - I knew such classes could be a sham. I wasn't worried about academic legitimacy, though; accreditation was actually the least of my concerns. I wanted the MSA in order to buttress my law degree later on. As much joy as divorce and criminal cases might bring me, I hoped to build qualifications for a different kind of practice.

So I needed a degree that would give me some solid background in matters financial. Not some Cracker Jack® prize to hang on my wall, but real knowledge. I have to actually know the stuff when I finish.

I haven't been disappointed, now that I've seen the texts, lessons and assignments. Quite the opposite - this stuff is a little bit intimidating, I'll admit. It will require as much time as my enrollment counselor said that it would. If not more.

My every spare waking moment will need to be dedicated to class. So how do I have time to blog, you ask?

I don't.

So bye. Gotta go to class.