The State of Things?
2008.10.08 - Wednesday
This seems pretty accurate to me.
"The fact that the decline in Harper's fortunes seems to go lock step with a decline in the stock market indicates that the entitlement psychology has spread far beyond starving artists and cranky university students: apparently middle class Canadians now feel "entitled" to a rising stock portfolio and soaring real estate values, and feel that it is the job of the state to guarantee those things."
Source Pending.
Lazy Programming
2008.10.05 - Sunday
There's nothing worse than having to put up with computer software bugs. Programmers, as a general rule, don't like to look backwards. They'll debug up to the point where the program can be successfully sold, but from there on it becomes all about fancy new features and gadgets, instead of making the original functions of the software more efficient and stable.
I spent nearly two full days this past week struggling with a plugin to load a Realflow mesh sequence into Lightwave for shading and rendering. Realflow is one of the most advanced fluid simulation programs out there and works great for any kind of effects involving flowing water or other fluids. Lightwave, or Maya, is a run of the mill 3D animation package. Realflow provides plugins for exporting the fluid simulation to any number of popular 3D suites, but I just couldn't get the plugin to work in Lightwave. It tried installing at least three different versions of both Lightwave and the plugin, but nothing would work in any combination. I tried bringing my fluid mesh into Maya, but that plugin wouldn't work either.
Eventually, on some obscure 3D graphics forum, I found a single comment that solved the entire issue. See, my sequence of meshes had a frame padding of four digits (0001, 0002, etc). The plugin, however, won't work unless your sequence has a frame padding of five or higher (00001, 00002, etc). As soon as I renamed my files, adding in the extra zero, the plugin worked fine in Lightwave and Maya. Nothing in the documentation, nothing on the website. No hint, whatsoever, that a simple file naming quirk, which doesn't hamper any other piece of software that I'm aware of, was crippling the crucial bridge between Realflow and any other 3D package. Realflow didn't even default to numbering its output files in the only way they could be used by Realflow's own plugins!
Completely ridiculous.
Financial Collapse, and Why
2008.10.01 - Wednesday
Exciting times in the United States, and soon the world, I hope. I'm sure a lot of people reflexivly blame Bush and the Republicans for the current crisis, but those people, frankly, don't know what they're talking about. First, in case anyone thinks this whole situation has come out of the blue:
The New York Times, September 30, 1999
"Fannie Mae, the nation's biggest underwriter of home mortgages, has been under increasing pressure from the Clinton Administration to expand mortgage loans among low and moderate income people and felt pressure from stock holders to maintain its phenomenal growth in profits."
"In July, the Department of Housing and Urban Development proposed that by the year 2001, 50 percent of Fannie Mae's and Freddie Mac's portfolio be made up of loans to low and moderate-income borrowers. Last year, 44 percent of the loans Fannie Mae purchased were from these groups."
Of course, the whole idea of government insured, easy access loans to low-income earners didn't come about in the 90s. The Community Reinvestment Act was originally signed into law by President Carter as a means of opening up more credit to low-income neighbourhoods and allowing those with less than ideal credit ratings to actually obtain the money nessessary to own a home. The loans would be insured, or essentially subsidized, by the government through public entities such as Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, who would then sell the loans in packages to banks who were required by law to participate. In the 1990s, under President Clinton, the program was expanded, since it was determined that there still remained too many low-income and minority Americans who were unable to secure a loan without even more government help.
Now, of course, the reason these people wouldn't normally be approved for a loan is because any bank with a right mind knew the risk was too high. The chances of the loan never being repaid were significant. With the government backing the Fannie and Freddie packages however, banks believed the investment had enough security and eventually became heavily involved in the "sub-prime" mortgage market. Republicans in Congress were concerned with the economics of the plan. After all, it's essentially social housing. Several times during the 90s, as well as at least three times during the 2000s, Republicans attempted to place more regulation on Fannie and Freddie or to at least ensure they were following the rules that were already in place. Democrats ensured the defeat of every attempt, usually resorting to attacking the regulator itself for doing its job and pointing out systemic problems and abuses:
The 90s were booming economic times, and during such times socialist economic policies can usually be swept under the rug. The economy can even be strong enough to overcome their cancerous effects, for a time. However, no economy stays booming forever. Eventually there was a downturn, and hundreds of thousands of people who had signed up for mortgages they could barely afford were unable to cope with even a slight interest rate change. People could no longer pay for their homes, and the banks weren't getting the money returned to them. On numerous occasions, the Federal Reserve lowered interest rates in key lending markets, to allow financial institutions to borrow more money more easily in order to continue funding basic operations. It couldn't last. The ship was taking on water, and the Fed was bailing it out with a bucket. Now, Wall Street is asking for a pump. Still, one doesn't set sail in a sinking ship.
It should be noted that the man in charge of Fannie Mae while it swindled Wall Street and ultimately the American tax payer, who received millions of dollars in bonuses and a government salary of hundreds of thousands, Mr. Franklin D. Raines, is currently Barack Obama's economic advisor.
Personally, I feel there should be no bailout. Oh sure, it would hurt, but it's nessessary. Democrats and socialists all over the world are pointing to this as an example that the "free market" doesn't work, but is that really true? Is government law which forces banks into risky lending practices a "free market"? Is socialist politicians protecting a failing government corporation a "free market"? Is the government, via the Federal Reserve, pumping hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars into the economy a "free market"? I'm not even talking about the $700 billion bailout package. The government is already knee deep into this mess for hundreds of billions with the bailouts of Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, AIG, and Bear Stearns. The free market would never have permitted this situation to develop in the first place, but in that free market, millions of people wouldn't have been allowed to buy homes they could never afford, either.
I just don't think people are ever going to learn that socialist economic policies always...always result in stagnant or crippled economies. If it costs America a recession or a depression, this generation of Americans needs to learn that lesson. I was heartened when they voted down the bailout package, but as with all forms of modern democracy, they'll just vote on it again, and again, and again, until they vote "correctly". Just like the European Union, when they bother to have a vote at all. No, they'll rescue their economy, plunging their already catastrophic levels of personal and private debt into what will become litterally incomprehensible amounts of money. Obama will get elected and push through a few of his socialist policies, and it will bankrupt the country all over again.
Hurt a bit now, or hurt a lot later. I think we all know which one people always choose.
PS - After this mess, I never, ever want to hear someone complain that the space program is "too expensive." Oh, and just for fun... The Lowdown On ACORN.