Stan Taylor

I try to keep up with basic US economics, and I am very concerned that the US (and thus much of the world) is going to face a severe recession in the next few years. There are many causes, but the primary one is the international monetary house of cards that has allowed Americans to maintain our current lifestyle.
We Americans buy lots of imported goods from the likes of China and oil from the likes of Saudi Arabia. In turn, these countries buy bonds to finance our federal deficit spending. The federal government then devalues the dollar in order to make imported goods cheaper and to keep the whole process going.
But as the value of the dollar falls, so does the value of foreigners’ investment in US federal bonds. These supplier countries begin taking such measures as buying less American debt, pricing their goods in other and more stable currencies. It’s a balancing act for them: on the one hand, they want to limit their losses on dollars; on the other hand, they need to continue to enable Americans to buy their goods.
It’s not a cycle that’s infinitely sustainable. At some point, it all comes crashing down. The question is only when and how quickly.
UPDATE: Even the CEO of Wells Fargo bank said recently: “We have not seen a nationwide decline in housing like this since the Great Depression.”

My pastor emailed me his sermon so that I could publish it on the church web site, and here are the targeted ads that Gmail displayed along side the email:

I am not going to click on that ad even to satisfy my curiosity.

Via Ugly Food.

…for every time I’ve helped someone sort out domain registration and web site hosting issues (explaining how name servers work, how to get the domain registrar to change name servers, etc.), I’d have, well, at least $20. What a pain for a non-geek to manage. (I just did it again, if you couldn’t figure that out)

In this morning’s team standup meeting, one of the team members reported on her progress with some automated testing. Afterwards, our scrum master asked her, “But the real question here is: ‘Do you consider Watir testing to be a form of torture?'”

Wired News ran a contest for the saddest cubicle. Check out the winners. This reminds me of when I worked for AT&T in New Jersey back in 1996-97. AT&T had a hiring freeze on, so I was hired as a contractor from a non-personnel budget. Furthermore, this was right after the AT&T/Lucent split, and the group I was working with was working in an overcrowded building that had gone to Lucent.
Due to all of these factors, my AT&T manager couldn’t request an office for me. I worked for several months in a data center. Go to the basement, unlock the door to a huge, roaring data center at 65 degrees. Walk through it to one corner that had been walled off. Inside was a small testing lab that was somewhat warmer and somewhat quieter. That was my office. Lovely.

A few years ago, Samuel attended a birthday party at an ‘inflatable party zone’ (like this, but not the same one). One of the inflatable toys was a caterpillar through whose body the kids could crawl. They went in under the head and exited via a vertical slit on the back end. It was one of those occasions when I really regretted not having my camera. But that was nothing compared to this (which I found on the internet):

That’s a child psychologist’s money machine.

Fred Clark writes today about a new study of perceptions of Christianity in American culture.
Fred excerpts this paragraph from the study:

The study discovered a new image that has steadily grown in prominence over the last decade. Today, the most common perception is that present-day Christianity is “anti-homosexual.” Overall, 91 percent of young non-Christians and 80 percent of young churchgoers say this phrase describes Christianity. As the research probed this perception, non-Christians and Christians explained that beyond their recognition that Christians oppose homosexuality, they believe that Christians show excessive contempt and unloving attitudes towards gays and lesbians. One of the most frequent criticisms of young Christians was that they believe the church has made homosexuality a “bigger sin” than anything else. Moreover, they claim that the church has not helped them apply the biblical teaching on homosexuality to their friendships with gays and lesbians.

I’ve long maintained that the silent majority of Christians–the people in the pews, not the ones on the radio and TV–aren’t really that engaged in the political and religious battle over homosexuality. I have no doubt that most Christians consider homosexual sex acts a sin (which I don’t really agree with), but I’ve assumed that issues closer to home were of greater concern.
So, when I read the paragraph above, I immediately assumed that this perception was shaped by the bigmouths in the media who spout hatred, but who don’t really represent this presumed silent majority. But then, I read on in the article about the study’s report and found this:

David Kinnaman, who is a 12-year-veteran of the Barna team, pointed out some of the unexpected findings of the research. “Going into this three-year project, I assumed that people’s perceptions were generally soft, based on misinformation, and would gradually morph into more traditional views. But then, as we probed why young people had come to such conclusions, I was surprised how much their perceptions were rooted in specific stories and personal interactions with Christians and in churches. When they labeled Christians as judgmental this was not merely spiritual defensiveness. It was frequently the result of truly ‘unChristian’ experiences. We discovered that the descriptions that young people offered of Christianity were more thoughtful, nuanced, and experiential than expected.”

Great. So maybe my presumed silent majority is, in fact, a minority. That’s just depressing in so many ways. It also makes me think that I need to try harder to explain the tolerant and loving version of Christianity to those around me.

As soon as Amazon’s DRM-free MP3 service was launched (see my earlier post), Yahoo! Music’s VP for product development Ian Rogers handed the music industry their collective DRM-laden ass on a platter:

But now, eight years later, Amazon’s finally done what was clearly the right solution in 1999. Music in the format that people actually want it in, with a Web-based experience that’s simple and works with any device. I bought tracks from Amazon (Kevin Drew and No Age), downloaded them, sync’d them to my new iPod Nano, and had them playing in my home audio system (Control 4) in less than five minutes. PRAISE JESUS. It only took 8 years.
8 years. How much opportunity have we lost in those 8 years? How much naivety and hubris did we have when we said, “if we build it they will come”? What did we spend? And what did we gain? We certainly didn’t gain mass user adoption or trust, two prerequisites to success on the Internet.

That’s the most heart-warming ‘Kiss my ass’ I’ve heard in a very long time.

I’m a big fan of the band The Decemberists. I downloaded most of their music that is available on eMusic and purchased their most recent album at a retail store (the only CD I’ve bought since I got my iPod two years ago).
I listen to The Decemberists all the time, but I had never actually seen the band–not even photos. I caught their recent performance on Austin City Limits this weekend, and I was shocked that lead singer Colin Meloy looks nothing like I imagined him.
With his distinctive tenor voice, I’d pictured Colin Meloy as a thin 20-something hipster. Instead, he looks like he’s in his 30s; he’s somewhat heavy set and wears glasses. He looks much more like a fellow parent who I would run into a a PTA meeting. I didn’t realize until I saw him in performance what a strong mental image I’d formed of him. Strange.