Month: May 2009

Book Review: Cork Boat

by

One of my coworkers was so taken with Cork Boat: A True Story of the Unlikeliest Boat Ever Built that he shoved his copy into my hands and demanded that I read it. He came to regret that decision.

The book is a memoir from John Pollack, a man whose talent as a writer is without question. I just wish such ability resided in a decent human being.

Pollack starts his tale in the conventional way by talking about his childhood, but his early years were anything but conventional. The scion of a Liberal political activist mother and father who was a professor of geophysics, the family was constantly traveling the world to poke and prod into the remote corners of the Earth. The author attributes this upbringing as having instilled in him an unquenchable desire to strive for achievements less ordinary. This manifested itself in a childish plan to build a boat from used wine corks, which is certainly nothing less than less ordinary. As far as writing a memoir is concerned, so far so good.

He also relates the sad tale of losing Sara, his sister and constant companion. His father took the family to the Himalayas on a research project when Pollack was 12. His sister was swept away in a mountain stream, along with one of the native guides who selflessly plunged into the torrent in a rescue attempt. Neither were ever seen again.

It was at this point that I began to have a faint stirring of unease. One of the guides willingly gave his own life in a futile and heroic attempt to save his sister, and Pollack barely devotes a single sentence to this selfless act. Admittedly, the loss of a sister would be a monumentally greater tragedy then the death of a man who he had met only days before, but Pollack never even mentions the name of the hero. I get the distinct impression that he never even bothered to ask.

Read more

Quoted Without Comment

by

“A recollection touched him, booklegged stuff from the forties and fifties of the last century which he had read: French, German, British, Italian. The intellectuals had been fretful about the Americanization of Europe, the crumbling of old culture before the mechanized barbarism of soft drinks, hard sells, enormous chrome-plated automobiles (dollar grins, the Danes had called them), chewing gum, plastics … None of them had protested the simultaneous Europeanization of America: bloated government, unlimited armament, official nosiness, censors, secret police, chauvinism … Well, for a while there had been objectors, but first their own excesses and sillinesses discredited them, then later …”

– Poul Anderson, Sam Hall

Monkeywrenching Socialism – Ratchet Smashing II

by

On reading this article on unsustainable public/private compensation gaps I wondered whether I had any pension funds drawing on my tax dollars that were grossly underfunded and would inevitably be coming after my budgeted retirement savings to save their pensions. There doesn’t seem to be an easy way to get that information but it’s vital for financial planning for the long haul to a dignified retirement where one can reliably live on your own money.

The cycle of negotiating generous government employee contracts, underfunding pension contributions, and then jacking up taxes to make up shortfalls at the last moment is another way the socialist ratchet effect works. Since so many of these pension funding sources are location based, the real estate industry offers us a way out.

When you buy a house the quality of the local public school district is a large factor influencing prices. Childless couples buying a house with no prospect of children will still take an interest in their local schools because of the influence school quality has on house prices. Most who have gone house hunting knows this.

If I know that taxes will have to double to pay for some lavish government promises within the timeframe of my likely ownership term, I’m going to not be so enthused about buying in that jurisdiction. I certainly would not pay the same price as a neighboring town or county that set up their pension payments as the actuaries say they should be funded.

Were there to be an unfunded liability index attached to every house in the US comprising of a basket of future expenditures traditionally paid by property or other municipal, county, or state taxes, housing prices would react relatively quickly to poor governance and the drop in housing values prior to the future crisis where the pension fund simply ran out of money would lead to a secular trend of homeowners increasing pressure for responsible government and likely smaller government.

Right now such an index doesn’t exist but all the information needed to make such an index are already public record. Any large real estate agent system that created such an index would have a competitive advantage over its rivals, even after those rivals replicated the work. The reputation benefits of being the guys who did it first are likely to last much longer than the exclusivity of the index.

Farmer Dan – Hay and Pork

by

A little while ago, I purchased a small parcel of land, just under 20 acres. This was a big deal for me, as my whole life I have pretty much banked every single penny I have ever made, preferring to “live small”. On this parcel are a few buildings, one of which we are rehabbing (the old barn). Oh the surprises you run into when rehabbing an ex-dairy farm. But those stories are for another day.

Read more

As Much As Anyone Who Wasn’t Blood

by

My mother-in-law died Easter morning. My husband had gone across the street to ask her when she wanted to come over for dinner; we had just bought some aids she had long resisted – believing they were a sign of dependence she wasn’t quite ready to accept. But by now she was blind and a new wheel chair, for instance, would make crossing the street safer and faster than with her halting steps which had slowed during the last year. She would have been 91 in a couple of months; she had held her great grandson in her arms. She had a quiet life – one of those people who defined herself as much by what she wouldn’t do as by what she did. But it was, nonetheless, full with a richness of purpose and accomplishment.

Read more