Indy Telecom & Industrial Media

A long, long time ago, BPSK and I had a conversation on the “capitalism” that UK and the US practice.

We made fun of the faux capitalism that’s in reality a Fabian-esque socialism that Britian practices, and how the US would “differentiate” itself by Paulson calling up Pandit to do a save.

Well, turns out that we weren’t too off. Paulson did not call Pandit, but instead called Dimon to do a save. Isn’t it a joy to be in a capitalist economy where the free market decides what needs to be done?

To this end, I recently came across an article that suggested that the Fed is considering Nordic-styled nationalization of US banks to help bail out the economy from its current crisis.

Let’s just say that I am at a loss for words.

Well, it’s Friday and here is the link fest.

• No Country for Old Maids:  Bill Gross’ take on the current economic situation.
• Clinton Fears Japan-Style Malaise: Hillary’s take on how the US may be slipping into a Japanese-style economic malaise (and of course, Dealbreaker has an excellent take on it).
• Long on Asian Dudes:  Hollywood’s stereotypical casting process.

I recently stumbled upon this gem — a recreation of Dune in Lego.

Granted, it’s made off the movie, but who cares — it’s from Dune, and is rather well made.

Bless the Maker and all His Water. Bless the coming and going of Him, May His passing cleanse the world. May He keep the world for his people.

My friend Lydia at a Chicago Bulls game, to some cheerleaders:

“Go read Jane Austen or something.”

Here are a few assorted interesting links from the past month; ideally, I’d have liked to blog about a few (if not all) of them, but there’s only so much you can do in a week.

• Derivatives: The stupidity of the Indian media on derivatives (Rediff)
• Pop goes the economy: The correlation between economic performance and champagne purchases (The Economist blog)
• Information overload: Why we’re powerless to resist grazing on endless web data (WSJ)
• Old-School Economics: Why the recession was bound to happen anyway (NYT)

With a sluggish economy, it was only a matter of time before stores adopted the any-which-way-they-can to make money attitude.

The NYT has a post on how a lot of the megastores are willing to negotiate with the customer on what the prices may be.  This includes such big names as Best Buy, Home Depot and Circuit City. Here’s an excerpt:

“We want to work with the customer, and if that happens to mean negotiating a price, then we’re willing to look at that,” said Kathryn Gallagher, a spokeswoman for Home Depot.

…

“The recession is helping to push these seedlings to the surface,” she added. “It’s a real turnabout on the part of the buyer and the seller.”

Wow. Un-freakin’-believable.

I recently stumbled upon the paintings of Fabian Perez, an Argentinian painter with a rather interesting gallery. Most of his work seems to be centered around the Argentinian culture, and he has some work that’s centered around the Japanese culture.

His Japanese themed paintings don’t really appeal to me in any way, but I certainly enjoy his Argentinian-themed paintings. I’d certainly love to buy prints of them, unfortunately I cannot seem to find them any place. But here are a handful of my favorites for your viewing pleasure!

Of course, my favorite one turns out to be an untitled painting, although I’ve seen it called “Solitude” elsewhere on the web.

I also found out that there is a coffee table book of some of his paintings called, “Fabian Perez: Waiting for the Romance to Come Back“.

Finally, eBay has several his originals of his available through various fine art sellers. A little too expensive for my liking, but maybe some day, who knows!

Sir Arthur Charles Clarke died yesterday in Sri Lanka, at the age of 90.

I grew up reading a lot of his works — 2001: A Space Odyssey and the sequels, the Rama series, his many, many short-stories, and of course, my favorite, Childhood’s End.

In a way, he was one of the two authors (along with Asimov) who bridged the gap between my youthful love for cheesy science fiction to my interest in what later became serious, literary science fiction. I had always told myself that some day — some day — I will go meet him in person in Sri Lanka. Years have past, and although I’d had the opportunity to do so on several occasions, I never got around to doing it.

To quote Mr. Clarke, “We stand now at the turning point between two eras. Behind us is a past to which we can never return.”

I hope wherever he’s gone, it’s full of stars.

Okay, more interesting geeky cufflinks. Someone was bored enough and decided that wearing cufflinks made out of ethernet connectors would be the way to go.

This person gets invited to a Black Tie party, and realizes that he cannot find his cufflinks. So, he goes ahead and makes himself a pair of cufflinks from ethernet connectors (although how someone who wears French cuffed shirts can have just one pair of cufflinks, I’d never know, but I digress).

Well, I guess no better way to showcase those l33t *nix-fu skills.

In Buffet: Making of an American Capitalist, Roger Lowenstein states how every time the economy did badly, Congress did one thing — they conducted hearings.

And this time around, with the economy in the doldrums, Congress did just one thing that they do best — they conducted hearings on executive pay.

Of course, one but needs to look at news headlines on where they are headed with all this — 2 Realities: Rich CEOs, Homeless Americans – Subprime CEOs Explain Why They Made Millions While Americans Lost Homes.

I could go on and on about how idiotic I think this whole exercise is, but every time something like this comes along, I’m reminded of Atlas and how he should sometimes shrug and move on.

Congress:

“There seem to be two economic realities operating in our country today,” Representative Henry A. Waxman, Democrat of California, the committee chairman, said as the hearing opened Friday morning. “Most Americans live in a world where economic security is precarious and there are real economic consequences for failure. But our nation’s top executives seem to live by a different set of rules.”

…

Elijah E. Cummings, Democrat from Maryland, noted that “We’ve got golden parachutes drifting off to the golf course and have people I see every day who are losing their homes and wondering where their kids will do their homework.”

…

(Loosely translated: You make a lot of money when there are a lot of poor people (and stupid people, who lost their houses because of their greed).

Executives:

Who is John Galt?

(Loosely translated: Umm, this is capitalism. Survival of the fittest. We’ve worked hard to get where we are and we deserve it. Go away.)

Update: I’m quoting a friend here – “Socrates was right, but they still made him drink hemlock. That’s something american business often forgets.”

Just how much are you willing to pay for that coffee machine of yours? Does $11,000 sound a bit…steep?

Well, apparently, that’s how much Clover’s new coffee machine costs.

Take this excerpt from this Slate article on Clover’s new coffee machine -

The Clover is so eyebrow-raisingly expensive because it’s not mass-produced: Each device is built to order by a small Seattle company. It brews coffee like a French press, but it’s more dramatic to watch and much more precise. Unlike lesser methods of making coffee, which are no more reliable than their users and can’t be counted on to produce the same cup twice, the Clover is equipped with a “PID algorithm” for regulating temperature and “programmable workflow modes” to help micromanage the brewing process. Latourell enumerates six variables that contribute to the taste of brewed coffee—choice of bean, grind, “dose” of coffee, brewing time, temperature, and amount of water. The first three, for better or worse, are in the hands of the barista (”Call me when you get a better grinder!” Latourell half-teases the Grumpy staff)—but the Clover can precisely regulate the last three.

And of course, the article goes on to make a comparison between wine and coffee and how connoisseurs would be willing to pay much higher for a good cup of coffee.

All I can say is this – it’s a cup of coffee, and it wakes me up. Now, if I’m going to be adding milk and sugar and foam to my coffee anyway, why would I bother with the “finer” tastes and aroma of jasmine (or whatever) in my coffee?

Ah, well.

Want to arm that Lego soldier of yours? Or maybe you just want to build your mini-me a weapon collection just as cool as yours.

No matter what you want to do, BrickArms can help you do it!

BrickArms specializes in making weapons and mini-figures for Lego, most kinds imaginable (and some not).

Super cool, super mean and super awesome.

(via Boing Boing)

I am old school in a lot of ways. Growing up, my Mom stressed the importance of penmanship, and I used a fountain pen for the longest time.

In fact, to this day, I still treasure my Parkers, Sheaffers and Mont Blancs (and even my Hero pens, for those that remember). And I still don’t understand what the big deal about ball-point pens is (if anything, they encourage bad handwriting, and I’d much rather use a gel pen if I have to use a non-fountain pen).

Anyway, it’s been a while since my reserve of ink ran out. And I still am quite nostalgic about using ink from ink bottles, which is an art in itself. Not to mention Turquoise and Persian blues, my two favorite colors for penmanship.

So, I called up the local staples and asked them if they had any fountain pen ink. The girl at the other end had trouble understanding my question, let alone answering it, so I gave up after five minutes of me trying to explain to her that I was not looking for printer ink. Delana suggested that we go to an Office Depot nearby, so I decided to give that a try.

Ah, the joy.

The conversation went something like this –

Me: Hi. I’m looking for ink. Well, fountain pen ink.

She: Huh? Ink?

Me: Well, yes, ink? For pens?

She (quite confused): Huh? Ink? Pens?

Me (worried that she is going to repeat every line I say): Yes. Ink. For pens.

She: I do not know if we carry that.

Me: Oh?

She: You could check in aisle 4. That’s where we have all pen related stuff.

Me: Do you think you’d have Turquoise or Persian?

She: Huh?

Me: Never mind. We’ll go look.

And then, she proceeded to exchange weird glances with a colleague, looking at me like I was from Mars or something. Anyway, we head over to the aisle that she directed us to, and what do we find? Pens. Lots of pens. But not even a single fountain pen (later on, we did find a handful of Mont Blancs and Watermans locked up all the way across the store).

And ink? Good luck.

And then, a friendly man who works at the store shows up, asking us if he could help. He tells me that they probably have some standard ink cartridges, but nothing even approaching ink bottles or Turquoise. He recommended that I look at Bankhardts, but I wasn’t so sure. So, I settled for generic European-styled cartridges for blue ink, but I wasn’t really a happy camper.

I had almost forgotten about it when this afternoon, we headed out to the mall to grab some food when we stumbled upon this store called Appointments. Lo and behold! They had not just a few but several fountain pens. What more, the guy running the place even knew what I was talking about.

And of course, I asked him if he had any good Turquoise or Persian ink — and to my indescribable joy, he said yes. While he did not have any bottles, he carried some cartridges (it was the last pack, in fact) of Turquoise blue. I couldn’t help but tell him about my earlier experiences at the so-called “stationery” stores — and he knew, of course, and we laughed about it.

But I cannot help but wonder. I’m fairly certain that while fountain pens aren’t exactly new, they aren’t exactly old either. Are there really so few folks who use these things that most people working at stationery stores do not even know about them, let alone stock them?

I’m still in my mid-twenties, and I’ve never considered myself old — but for the first time, I felt old and out of place (and out of time). A dying breed from another era, that is what I am reminded of.