JK Rowling at Harvard

Someone should assemble the best commencement addresses each spring and publish them. Some incredible people spend a lot of time thinking up words of wisdom for other incredible people.

Here's my contribution for this year - JK Rowling's address to Harvard. If you don't have time to read it, just consider her concluding quote:

As is a tale, so is life: not how long it is, but how good it is, is what matters.

Black Helicopters

Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they aren't out to get you.

A friend of mine from college has spent the last few years chasing UFOs (aka corrupt hedge funds) with Patrick Byrne (CEO of Overstock.com), and it appears they've found a few. If you're interested in real world conspiracy theories, you can read the whole story at http://www.deepcapture.com - don't start it until you have a ton of time though, it's like 80 pages printed out.

For a 45 minute presentation on naked short selling, check out http://www.businessjive.com.

Or if you just want to read about spooky stuff going on at Wikipedia, you can check out his www.antisocialmedia.net.

I wouldn't normally pay much attention to this sort of stuff, but I trust Judd a great deal and suspect they're onto some interesting things that have pretty huge implications.

Breaking up is hard to do

A friend of mine has a son on an LDS mission in Sao Paolo, Brazil. She forwards me his emails pretty much every week so I can keep track of what's going on. He's a very funny kid. I thought this was worth sharing.

this week, i went through my ´first breakup.` this guy named claudio, who we have been teaching for the past month and a half, seriously sat us down and broke up with us. he explained that he likes us and that he still wants to be friends and everything and that we are welcome at his house anytime, but he doesn´t want to hear our messages anymore. he even, no joke, pulled the ´it isn´t you, it´s me.` thing. i wanted to throw a chair and laugh at the same time. this is not a joke either, he kissed me on the neck going out the door. wait...if we broke up...doesn´t that mean...i thought...he can´t, still...you know...have, uh, feelings for us does it? oh well. he´ll call me.

The Best Solution for High Prices is High Prices

From the New York Times:

Tax adjustments

If you were king for a day, which tax would you lower:
* Personal income
* Gas
* Corporate

Few Americans would choose the latter, but Greg Mankiw makes a strong argument for it.

Data on taxes

I pulled some data from the IRS today out of curiosity about some of the legends I'm hearing throughout the political discourse as well as an article I was reading the other day about the value of progressive income taxes. These graphs I threw together were pretty interesting to me. First, this shows the distribution of Adjusted Gross Income. Note that this is not income, it is stated income after deductions, exemptions, etc. Where do you stand? The guys on the right average $1.7M. Not bad.



This next chart shows the effective tax rate of these folks. So unless the guys at the right are incredibly good at adjusting their income, we really do follow a progressive tax scale and the poor lady down the block is not really paying more in taxes than the greedy Wall Street lawyer.



Finally, this last one shows how the top end of the population pays the taxes. The 1% of guys on the right pay 40% of the total tax bill while 50% of the population accounts for 10% of the tax. It's pretty clear why the Bush tax cut was a "tax cut for the rich" since there's no tax to cut for the poor, right? The way you cut taxes on the poor is through other taxes that disproportionately affect them (e.g., sales tax).



Probably worth noting that some of the Bush tax cuts weren't so much a tax cut as a tax correction, to try to adjust for taxes that currently create the wrong incentives in the economy such as double taxation on dividends. Does that cut taxes disproportionately for the rich? Probably, but it also creates the incentive for companies to pay out dividends again instead of using more and more debt. If you think dividends for those fixed income baby boomers are a good thing and corporate bankruptcy is a bad thing, you might just be a Bush tax cut fan after all!

Wanted - Someone Smarter than Me

During the first two weeks I was in South Africa I gleefully plowed through like five books, more than I'd read in a long, long time. Then I picked up The Brother Karamazov, a book that I'd been dying to read for a decade or two. Several people whom I admire greatly had recommended it highly as possibly the best fiction ever written.

A week or two ago I finally finished. Up until the very last page I was sure that the reason for their fascination would become clear. Nope. Didn't get it. I'm totally shallow. I read the entry on Wikipedia to see what I'd missed, thinking that maybe the 700 page book I read had been abridged down and stripped of the good part. Nope, that's what I read. And the really impactful parts were parts I'd read and thought were kinda good, but won't show up in any church talks anytime soon.

What's wrong with me? Someone tell me why this was such a gem? It's not that I hated it, but a book that takes me six months to get through is not worth writing home about (hmm, I guess I'm kinda writing home about it here...). It's not the pupu platter that A Catcher in the Rye was, but I won't be re-reading it either unless someone can convince me otherwise.

I need to go back to some pulse-racing pulp fiction or perhaps a nice warhater like Catch-22 or Slaughterhouse Five to restore my interest in reading I think. Everything else I've been reading is non-fiction which is generally a sure sign I'll be sleeping on the plane.

Problems with a Quote

I try to replace my quote from time to time just to keep things fresh even if I'm not posting. Problems are:
* No comments since it isn't a post
* Doesn't show up on readers

Kinda lame.

If my current quote doesn't convince you to give Chaim Potok a shot, I don't know what will. In the words of my good friend Anna Webb, "What we're really lacking in our church is a Mormon Chaim Potok."

I'm Real Busy

Feeling a bit TO'd that everyone's too busy to fit in a board game here and there.

Definition of recession

It feels like a recession doesn't it? High gas prices, high food prices, mortgage crises, the sagging American peso and low wage growth affect most all of us pretty directly. Recession is a vague term in a discipline that is rarely vague, but in general it describes a slump in economic activity, generally measured in real GDP growth. Strictly speaking, it should be at least two successive quarters of negative GDP growth. Quarterly GDP numbers were released yesterday and it is hard to see "recession" in this graph. I guess we need a different word to describe an economy that feels really bad, but is still growing just fine, and in fact appears to be on the mend.

A Dreaded Election

Once again it appears an election is approaching where I feel no excitement for any available candidate. I've tried to spend a few minutes here and there studying up on the parties and the issues.

Lately I've had the desire to really get at the heart of what exactly it means to be Republican or Democrat. I've been a bit disheartened by what I've found. I think I have a great deal in common with principles that seem to fall on either side and some that seem to be shared values, but their own websites do little to help me educate themselves. I expect vague - since that seems to be the way these things work, but it's more than that.

On the DNC website, rather than learn about what they believe in and the plan they have to change the mess we're in, I found that 80% of their pagespace is dedicated to vitriolic attacks on McCain. I'm no fan of McCain either, but tell me what YOU believe, not how you feel about McCain. I'm done falling for the common enemy argument.

I'm completely disenchanted by the RNC these days. Not only has Bush been an eight year massive disappointment, but the xenophobia Mitt Romney underwent bugged me a lot. I checked out their site today to see what they stand for. I found it interesting that they actually have a link entitled, "Mormons". Interested, I clicked to see if this was going to be a "Mormons should go to hell" link or a "Sorry we forgot we weren't in Salem, MA" link. Ironically, the link is broken. That kind of sums things up for me.

I feel like a certain 14 year old wandering from party to party with one saying, "Lo, here!" and the other saying "Lo, there!" I think I'll spend the next break I have looking into other parties. Maybe the libertarians are worth investigating.

Genealogy and Desi Rock

I think I'm in love.

A few years ago I started to fall in love with doing genealogy, or family history. The seed started to germinate while we lived in Sweden and Katie was able to find some of my ancestors and where they had lived. It grew a bit more when I started to interview my grandpa and record his experiences, including his time on the western front of WWII. He gave me all the letters he had written my grandma during the war and one of my most prized possessions is the final letter she wrote him before she could write no more before succumbing to ALS.

I have a world to explore on my dad's side since very little had been done on that side and I knew almost nothing about those roots. While we were living in Boise I started to do research on that side but kept coming up dry. Things just didn't seem to match and I never had enough time to really get immersed in it while chasing around our gang of kids and working on adoptions.

But now my cousin's wife (and now one of my personal heroines) has started to post all of the results of countless hours of investigative work she's done on my side of the family. I'm amazed at what she was able to accomplish. The names and dates won't mean much to you, but if you check out her blog you might see why this is such an addictive hobby for those that give it a shot. I can't wait to go visit Buena Vista, CO. Thanks Desi!

There's No Place Like Home

South Africans have been rising up against foreigners in the townships and the CBD in Joburg. Probably would not have affected us directly since it's about poor blacks, primarily from Zim, taking jobs and causing crime. Nevertheless, our quiet suburb will feel particularly peaceful at bedtime tonight. I really hope Trust is ok...

I Feel So Much Better

Mankiw has spared me the guilt of overpopulation. He wrote this ten years ago - it's about time I read it.

Thank Mint, I'm Rich!!!

As an old fart, I'm a little late getting to the online money management game. We've been Quicken users historically, which is just plain silly these days. With the prevalence of the web it is a no-brainer that my money management should be always-on, anywhere and tied into my online banking. I'm tired of entering receipts and categorizing the same transactions over and over. Fortunately there are pretty darn good solutions out there, and they are generally free or very cheap (by the way, the free ones appear better than the cheap ones from what I can see).

Even more fortunately, they appear to be handing out millions of dollars.

I've set up accounts today on Quicken online (sucks) and Mint just to see how they work and decide if I make the switch. My accounts and activity pulled into both of them perfectly. Except for the IRA I have recently set up at Chase. I haven't yet put any money in that - still need to sign some paperwork to transfer an IRA I have. But check out what Mint says I have in that account. Can anyone show me how I make a transfer to Switzerland or the Cayman Islands from this screen?

The Familial Engine

I get paid to spend time thinking about other people's business models and how they spend their money - how to grow their top line, decrease their costs, increase the bottom line, and how to spend that bottom line.

Sometimes I'm so busy thinking about other people's money I have little time to think about my own. In fact, I'm ashamed to say that I haven't truly balanced a checkbook since we left for Africa - too many moving parts and Quicken on a computer in a storage unit.

Lately I've given a fair amount of thought to our family's business model, which isn't much different from anyone else's. I envision our business model like a large funnel sitting over a sink with four holes. We pour my income into the top each month (at least what Uncle Sam allows me to pour - there's a decent leak in that pipe). We then run our family month to month, paying the mortgage, food, etc. The liquid that runs out the bottom of the funnel is what's left after we're done. For some, no money runs out. In fact, some have to throw a bit of extra liquid in the top off of credit cards just to make ends meet. *knocks on wood*

We then get to choose which sinkhole to let those meager drippings enter.
1) We can buy something we've really, really wanted, like a new board game or plasma TV.
2) We can give it to someone that really needs it a lot more than we do (feel free to paypal me if I'm that certain someone for you)
3) We can save it for later - retirement, college or a rainy day.
4) This is going to sound like #3, but I keep it separate - we can build assets with it. When you build assets in #3, you invest in a 401k or whatever. In #4, you invest to try to move your life toward working your assets off, instead of what most of us work off. You try to make a living less by the hour or the month and live on the golf course while you're lemonade stand pays the bills. (for more detail, read Rich Dad, Poor Dad - I haven't read it but know this is what it's about)

The nice part about numbers three and four is that the sink has storage containers under those holes - it doesn't hit the sewer unless you sell corn (another story). You could say #2 is a container as well - what comes around goes around. If you follow the pipe under #1, you usually find the end of the pipe either in my game closet, a garage sale or the DI.

I'm not proud about the drippings out of my funnel. I'm also not proud of where those drippings fall. I think where you put your drippings, and how voluminous they are will vary over time. It's fairly irresponsible to give away everything and not have something for a rainy day. It's fairly boring to not spend on some things you've really, really wanted. But here are three parting thoughts, two from C.S. Lewis and finally one of my own (I couldn't find my favorite from C.S. Lewis that says that our charity should force us to live below those with similar means):

"I do not believe one can settle how much we ought to give. I am afraid the only safe rule is to give more than we can spare..."

"Nothing that you have not given away will ever be really yours."

"At the last day I believe we won't be asked how much we chose to share; we'll be asked how much we chose to keep."

She Prefers a Nice Firm Mattress

Lucy's got her first real bed when we got to Dallas. Before that she spent most of life in a portacrib of some sort due to our wanderings. Now she gets to sleep in a big girl bunk bed with Madi. But she doesn't seem to like that.

Even if we put her to bed asleep, every morning we wake up to find her sleeping on the floor, usually not far from her bed. This isn't because she falls out of bed - she has a safety rail. She gets out and finds a particularly uncomfortable spot, without a blanket. This is where I found her this morning - at the top of the stairs. Scary. Falling out of bed is one thing; falling out down the stairs is another.

Everyone Needs a Little Place They Can Call Home

Mukesh Ambani is building a place for his family - a wife and three kids - in Mumbai. A humble abode of 400,000 square feet, 27 stories high. It will cost about $2B. And to think I feel guilty about my house knowing that there are starving kids in India! Kids, I guess you don't have to eat your vegetables after all.

Korver

Great article from the SL Trib about Kyle Korver. I didn't know any of this stuff about him. What an awesome person and example. I'm even more excited now to keep watching him drop 3s throughout the playoffs.

Culinary Dreaming

One of my top five dream vacations to take with my sweet wife is to take our bikes and appetites to the Napa Valley for a week of biking by day and dining by night. Neither one of us drinks, but the Valley is so full of restaurants I'd like to enjoy that I don't really care. Vineyards make beautiful scenery for biking.

The top places I'd like to visit are Terra, Mustards Grill and the French Laundry. These are some of my favorite cookbooks. We cook from Mustard's Grill a lot. The French Laundry takes way too much time to cook from - Bryn gave me that one year because she figured they'd have great French toast. The only downside of the Napa Valley is that I'd really like Jean-Georges to be there, but his best restaurants really require a trip to NYC.

That said, he's now given me another reason to want to go to Istanbul (was once Constantinople).

Another perspective on FLDS

Being a Mormon in Texas, I'm a bit closer to this FLDS thing than I care to be. I have to admit (sorrowfully) that my reaction for the most part has been to keep my head low and hope it will pass without disgracing me and mine. Not very Christlike.

I've read a blog or two lately that have made me rethink this a bit. Undoubtedly a polygamist compound is at least eery and probably criminal in some regards. There's unquestionably abusive, illegal and unconscionable behavior. However, does this mean that the children should be taken from their moms? The moms are widely viewed as too young and too weak, but I don't think anyone thinks the moms have been abusive. So why are they removed from their children, or their children from them? Thousands of kids were abused by thousands of their Catholic priests. Did this mean they should be taken from their moms?

I'm more than a bit worried that when the government concludes that a religion is "cult" it can then remove human rights so readily. Will they come for my kids when they realize I have food storage and don't watch rated R movies? If I ever do something horrible and they associate this with my religion, will they take the kiddos from Katie? The logic here is disturbing to say the least.

We may cringe at the philosophical or religious beliefs of another, but holy cow it seems to me we have to be careful that such an aversion doesn't lead to blatant discriminatory behavior. Who will history judge as the most abusive - the FLDS men or the State of Texas?

That said, could we get the FLDS to change their name once more? Perhaps something more clear like "We're Not Mormons"?

CrossFit

For the last couple of years I've been studying a workout regimen and lurking on sites that talk about it. Since we moved to Dallas we've bought a lot of the equipment required and I've started fitting in a workout a few times a week. Here's a shot of my little garage gym. Here's hoping that after a month or two of it I won't feel like I'm going to die by the end of the workout. After a few years of mostly cardio workouts, these more varied workouts are kicking me.

Graham Green

It isn't home until Katie paints a wall green. I hope this means we're home now.

Wear Your Helmet

Mason got hit by a car this morning on the way to school. He's ok.

You can see in the picture a few things - the crumpled handlebars, the pieces of his shirt on his brakes, and the smashed bike helmet. He wasn't wearing the helmet - it was on his handlebars.

Wear your helmet!

Life as a paradox

I have been struck lately by a paradox we all live with every day and that because of my genetics I am very keenly aware of this more than most.

On one hand, we should live each day as if it is our last. Seize the day. Carpe diem. Dead Poets. My dad got sick when he was 27 and spent the next 27 years dying, eventually passing away at 54. I can't tell you how relieved I was to celebrate my 28th birthday in good health - definitely my favorite birthday (even if Mason spoiled the surprise! :-) ). Growing up in a convalescent center, I was always cognizant of the need to live each day as though it could be my last.

On the other hand, I was born into one of the more frugal families that's ever lived. My dad was perhaps the greatest miser known to man, but my mom has also been very good with a dollar and now my brother has shown a keen ability as well. It's our family's unique talent. Why do we do this? If we should live for today, why bother? Well, the reality is that we might not die today. In fact, odds are we won't. Odds are we'll live for a long time.

So each day we're faced with a set of choices and depending upon our mindset we'll behave differently.
* Save or spend?
* Eat or diet?
* Study or play?
* Work or golf?
* Chase your dreams or be responsible?

The carpe diems of the world are now in foreclosure. Others live to regret all that time they spent at the office. Either way the temptation is to some day live with regret.

Everyone has to come to their own conclusions, but when all is said and done I've chosen to live each day as though it won't be my last. In fact, I'd like to believe that there is no 'last', which is why I celebrate Easter. Either way, since regret is inherent in the paradox, it seems worth setting aside as much as possible and replaceing it with joy in the good choices made.

Seize the day, that you might enjoy the next, and the next, and the next.

A Tax Fable

Suppose that everyday 10 men go to PJ's for lunch. The bill for all ten comes to $100. If it were paid the way we pay our taxes, the first four men would pay nothing; the fifth would pay $1; the sixth would pay $3; the seventh $7; the eighth $12; the ninth $18. The tenth man (the richest) would pay $59. The 10 men ate lunch in the restaurant every day and seemed quite happy with the arrangement until the owner threw them a curve.

"Since you are all such good customers," he said, "I'm going to reduce the cost of your daily meal by $20." Now lunch for the 10 would cost only $80. The first four are unaffected. They still eat for free. Can you figure out how to divvy up the $20 savings between the remaining six so that everyone gets his fair share?

The men realize that $20 divided by 6 is $3.33, but if they subtract that from everybody's share, then the fifth and the sixth man would end up being paid to eat their meal. The restaurant owner suggested that it would be only fair to reduce each man's bill by roughly the same amount that each paid and he started to work out the amounts each should pay.

And so the fifth man paid nothing, the sixth pitched in $2, the seventh paid $5, the eighth paid $9, the ninth paid $12, leaving the tenth man with a bill of $52 instead of $59. Outside the restaurant, the men began to compare their savings.

"I only got a dollar out of the $20," declared the sixth man pointing to the tenth, "and he got $7!"

"Yeah, that's right," exclaimed the fifth man. "I only saved a dollar, too. It's unfair that he got seven times more than me!"

"That's true," shouted the seventh man. "Why should he get $7 back when I got only $2? The wealthy get all the breaks."

"Wait a minute," yelled the first four men in unison. "We didn't get anything at all. The system exploits the poor."

Note: I have not checked the math on this, but believe it is directionally correct. The numbers I've seen from the Congressional Budget Office show that the top two guys in this fable would actually pay $85 at the outset, not $77 (which is coincidentally $2 higher than it would have been before Bush's tax cuts "for the rich".

Best of October 2007

We're now under a week from a very relaxing and generally inspirational weekend in front of the TV. Six months ago I reviewed my highlights from April 2007. Here they are again this time around. Here are my top five discourses I will most want to remember and review as the years go by, in reverse order.

The Only True God and Jesus Christ Whom Thou Hast Sent - Holland

"So any criticism that The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints does not hold the contemporary Christian view of God, Jesus, and the Holy Ghost is not a comment about our commitment to Christ but rather a recognition (accurate, I might add) that our view of the Godhead breaks with post–New Testament Christian history and returns to the doctrine taught by Jesus Himself."

The Great Commandment - Wirthlin

"The most cherished and sacred moments of our lives are those filled with the spirit of love. The greater the measure of our love, the greater is our joy. In the end, the development of such love is the true measure of success in life."

God Helps the Faithful Priesthood Holder - Eyring

"But it is never going to be easy for you or for those you serve. There will always be pain in service and in the repentance necessary to bring the power of the Atonement to change hearts. That is in the nature of what you are called to do. Think of the Savior, whose service you are in. At what point in His mortal life can you see an instance when it was easy for Him? Did He ask easy things of His disciples then? Then why should it ever be easy in His service or for His disciples?"

O Remember, Remember - Eyring

"Tonight, and tomorrow night, you might pray and ponder, asking the questions: Did God send a message that was just for me? Did I see His hand in my life or the lives of my children? I will do that. And then I will find a way to preserve that memory for the day that I, and those that I love, will need to remember how much God loves us and how much we need Him. I testify that He loves us and blesses us, more than most of us have yet recognized. I know that is true, and it brings me joy to remember Him."

Slow to Anger - Hinckley

"I plead with you to control your tempers, to put a smile upon your faces, which will erase anger; speak out with words of love and peace, appreciation, and respect. If you will do this, your lives will be without regret. Your marriages and family relationships will be preserved. You will be much happier. You will do greater good. You will feel a sense of peace that will be wonderful."

Honorable Mentions

Blessed Are the Pure in Heart - Clayton
Mothers Who Know - Beck

Reflections:
Amazing how many of my favorites are from the Saturday evening session - is it because I pay closer attention or is it unfair to women?
Grateful to get more than one talk out of Eyring each time. I wish Holland and Bednar could also be in the First Presidency.
Grateful to be on this side of the ocean - Sunday afternoon had some great talks, given in the middle of the night in Joburg
I love talks that make me think - I think Beck wins this award for me and most.
It won't seem quite right without Pres. Hinckley behind the podium he grew and built, but I expect widows to be well taken care of during the next decade or so which is a good thing.
I'll go with H David Burton for $1200.

Dumb politics, on energy

Five executives from Big Oil are set to be grilled today by Congress on why it is that they are so greedy that even though they made record profits last year they still think they qualify for tax breaks of $18B.

Unquestionably, these are great times to be in the oil business. Sunk investments from the past are now reaping high rewards as the developing world has pushed oil prices over $100/barrel. However, let's think just a bit about what's really going on here.

Say you got a raise last year and made more money than you ever have. (By the way, the whole idea of things is that each year you try to make more money than last year since things just keeping getting more expensive, so one hopes that every year is a record year.) You did well last year, perhaps even collected a handsome bonus at the end of the year for your hard work. Now the IRS calls you in for an audit. They'd like to reneg on deducting your charitable donations and your mortgage interest. "Wait a minute," you say, "I played by the rules and was planning on those deductions. Without them I'm going to have a hefty income tax bill."

"Well, that's only fair. You made good money last year. You should pay more."

"But I did pay more. I pay a percent of my income, and that percent goes up as I make more."

"Yeah, but it's still not enough..."

Let's strip apart what Big Oil has really done.

If you held Exxon Mobil for the last five years, you'd be really happy. Their stock price was around $36/share five years ago and is now over $82/share - over a 100% increase over five years or 18% per year - that's very good.

However, if you'd held their stock for the previous five years you would have bought at $35/share - a $1 increase over five years. Pretty miserable. So in the most recent five years things went well, but over the entire ten year period you would have had a return of 9%, which is basically the market average.

And those record profits? Exxon Mobil made $39.5B last year!!! To calibrate that, you have to know they are the largest company in the world, with revenues of $377B, which means their net margin is 10%. AT&T made 12%. Kraft made 8%. Is 10% unreasonably high? Should they give some back?

My concern with these profit witch hunts that happen from time to time is that they undermine one of the things I like about capitalism and that is that it basically follows the law of the harvest. That which you sow, so shall you reap. Or better said in this case, as you explore and drill, so shall you pump and refine. If you take away later returns, you stifle earlier investment. As (yet another) aside, this is precisely the logic that comes down from time to time when a pharma company makes huge profits off a blockbuster drugs. After billions of dollars of R&D and ten years of regulatory hoops, they hit the jack pot and then everyone gets mad, often even those whose lives and lifestyles they are improving.

So Congress would apparently like Big Oil to do one of two things (in the name of Big Government):
1) Give money back to the government, give up on the tax breaks. All of you that would decide to give a little something extra to the government if you get a good bonus this year, please raise your hands. Anyone? How about $18B? Where's the love? Where's the gratitude?
2) Cut price and give money back to the people. Supply and demand are balanced by price. If you cut price you increase consumption. Do we need to consume more oil? Is higher consumption something we want to encourage?

I do agree with one assumption underpinning this procedure. If someone wastes the people's money - they should give it back. After wasting all this time and money, shouldn't members of Congress take a pay cut? And as long as we're at it, I feel they should void their pensions after their baseball steroids probe.

Dumb politics, v. 2.0

Can I rant once more this week?

I've spent a lot of my adult life with people or in places where there is a decidedly liberal bent. I've routinely been in cultures or climates where a conservative American viewpoint is unfathomably naive and foolish. Only the uneducated, those who muscle their way past one another to quarrel on Jerry Springer or watch tractor pulls, could possibly follow such a backward worldview.

I've also spent most of my overall life living in one of two of the most conservative states in the US - Utah and Texas. This week I was in a conversation with two guys I admire a great deal and one of them expressed his opinion that the only way someone could become liberal is to simply not be fully educated in the truth.

So it is very clear to those centered in either American party that if people were simply fully educated, they would clearly see the world their way.

My impression is that the good thing about a multi-party system is that sometimes two or more truths may intersect at an issue where they become mutually exclusive so we have to choose the better of two truths, which is rarely simple unless you don't think too long about it, reduce it to sound bites and slogans, or hold one of the truths far more strongly than the other (and expect that others should as well).

A prime example of this for me is the abortion issue. For most, this is reduced to a sound bite and a slogan. For some, either choice or life is so clearly more valuable than the other that this is a non-issue. However, I think for most, when we think deeply about this, there's truly a paradox in play. Even someone who is ardently pro-life would agree that choice is important and there is a point at which choice is paramount, even if that is before conception (e.g., a woman should have a choice of who she sleeps with and when. She should not be a victim - she has choice). Even someone who is ardently pro-choice would agree that life is important and there is a point at which life is paramount, even if that is after birth (e.g., a woman should not have a choice about killing her three day old infant). So at the extremes we can agree that early on, choice prevails and later on life prevails. But when does that switch get flipped? For some it is at conception, for others it is shortly thereafter, for others at "quickening", for others during first trimester, for others at birth, etc. So we are not pro-choice or pro-life, but we are all both, with a disagreement over timing. Lawyers who are active in this debate know that the whole question is about timing - very few of the rest of us understand this, or at least acknowledge it.

My point in this is not really to debate abortion, a topic so visceral, but to make a point using a visceral topic, that politics is beautiful when it creates tension between truths and makes us stretch our minds to comprehend those tensions and make choices and trade-offs, individually and collectively.

Unfortunately, politics is rarely beautiful or philosophical. Instead of marrying a tension between two truths, it is generally a tension of two falsehoods or criticizing one another's truths. Somehow I got on Planned Parenting's mailing list and routinely get letters asking me to donate so they can fight against the "anti-choice" zealots. So you are either anti-choice or anti-life. Nice. The pro-life lobby could never have convinced me so well of their validity and usefulness as the Planned Parenthood did, though entirely unintentionally.

A Sunday School teacher I admire greatly once taught me that ethics and truth are rarely interesting when they lie along lines that are well-established. The interesting parts come about in the gaps between these truths. I would simply add that they are also interesting when they intersect and sometimes oppose one another. Perhaps my liberal and conservative friends might take solace in knowing that many times they are both right.

Dean's ring

Here's an mpg of Dean's ring from his earlier post.

Dumb politics

So everyone's convinced that we're headed into recession. All sorts of indicators are lining up in its favor. I'm positive we are because I hold the keys to the most correlated indicator - I'm making a push for partner. :)

At any rate, I'm a bit exhausted this week with the political rhetoric I've been listening to on the way to and from work and have to vent a little. I feel like I've heard at least 50% of our congress say the same line this week - "If this administration can rush to bail out a big, fat, greedy Wall Street bank, why can't they spend some energy finding ways to bail out mortgage holders who now may lose their homes through no fault of their own to the big, fat, greedy mortgage companies." Pffft.

I'm actually quite sure the politicians that are saying this know what they are saying but say it anyway. Just want to make sure you do.

Let's dissect this just a smidge and understand it. So the big, fat, greedy Wall Street bank in question is Bear Stearns. Even by Wall Street standards they really are big, fat, mean and greedy and had more than a few enemies. A few weeks ago their stock price was around $100/share. They only had a few 1,000 employees in New York - most of this value was held by the public markets - index funds, 401ks, pension funds, etc. Some hedge funds (also mean, fat and greedy) recognized that Bear had a lot of exposure to the subprime mortgages and start to short the stock (read: sell it). As the value of Bear Stearns started to drop, something happened that completely destroys a trading company - people lost trust that they were going to make it. If what you do for a living is trade, and people don't trust that you can make good on your trades, and no one wants to trade with you, you're dead. This is called an abrupt shift in trading liquidity. Their stock plummeted. On Friday they closed at ~$35/share. Monday morning it was clear they would be bankrupt ($0/sh). JPMorgan offered to keep the company alive and buy it for $2, but only if the Fed would back up the credit in the company to the tune of $30B, if I remember correctly. So the net effect was that the owners of Bear Stearns basically lost everything -98% of the value- in a matter of about a week. What was $18B in value fell to $240M.

Who lost 98% of their money? Mostly pensions, 401ks, investors, and the employees that had shares in the company. You, the reader, probably lost some of that value somewhere deep in one of those Fidelity mutual funds in your 401k. James Cayne, chairman of Bear Stearns, had been one of the wealthiest men in America (#388 on Fortune's Top 400 Wealthiest Americans), worth $998M two weeks ago. He sold his stake today for $61M (still a lot of money, admittedly).

I lived through a very similar situation a few years ago. I'm amazed no one has talked about the parallels between this situation and the Enron trading situation. I believe the reason is that no one really wanted to understand what happened at Enron. Kinda like this time. Everyone wanted to blame all those lost pensions and employee fortunes on big, fat, mean and greedy Ken Lay. I need to be careful here not to defend the guy because he really was big, fat, mean and greedy. However, the collapse of Enron was not about shady deals or off-balance sheet vehicles, at least not directly. Those were the stimuli that created a loss of confidence in a trading company (energy trading instead of mortgages). Shady deals were to Enron what subprime mortgages were to Bear Stearns. People lost confidence in Enron (who was #5 on the Fortune 500 at the time), so they couldn't trade.

Let's step back and give an example of what happens. If Bobby owes June $100 and June owes Billy $100 and Billy owes Jake $100 and Jake owes Bobby $100, everyone's comfortable because everyone's going to get their $100 and no one's too worried about it as long as everyone trusts each other. But if suddenly everyone realizes that June doesn't have $100 and is moving to Buenos Aires, the system is shocked. Jake freaks because he realizes Billy isn't going to get $100 from June to pay him with. The whole system starts to fall apart. Now realize that trading companies by their nature have a lot of obligations like this, but they are all "closed" - I've lent from company A and to company B. If I put $100 in the bank and they turn around and use that $100 to give someone a loan on their home, you see how this works. I don't have "open" trades unless I borrow without lending or lend without borrowing. I can have some open trades, but not many, before I need an awful lot of cash to cover.

After Enron collapsed, I worked for one of the Jakes or Billys of the energy industry. They had done nothing wrong, but their portfolio was now in utter disarray because all the trades on their books were now open and exposed (by the way, these are trades where revenue has already been booked due to mark-to-market accounting). We worked feverishly for a month to try to save the company and unwind deals the best we could. That entire industry basically unravelled. Everyone knows about Enron, but people outside of energy generally don't realize that the damage cascaded through the entire industry, destroying people's retirement plans and causing hundreds of thousands of layoffs.

What the Fed did in saving the skeleton of Bear Stearns is they tried to keep this from happening. The fat, greedy guys lost 98% of their value. Many of them had already lost their jobs. The trick was to make sure this did not roll through Wall Street. It wasn't a bailout of greedy, fat guys unless you think Americans are fat and greedy. It was an attempted bailout of the financial sector - remember, asset-light energy trading effectively evaporated.

Should the government bail out homeowners as well? Some of the same logic applies, but there are a few differences.
1) Incentives - if you bail people out (see: hurricanes and home insurance), they have no incentive not to take undue risk. Take on risk and the government will save you. The counterargument is that now businesspeople have the same incentive problem. Um, the owners of Bear Stearns lost 98% of their value and the credit managers long ago lost their jobs. I think they have a pretty strong incentive not to do this again.
2) Bear Stearns shareholders lost everything, or at least 98% of everything, but can keep people employed and the machinery working if they don't go away. Bailing out homeowners keeps them from losing anything. In many cases they don't have much to lose since their home is a borrowed asset. They go from little net worth to little net worth and bad credit living in an apartment. They don't lose everything - the creditors just take back what never was theirs, or at least only marginally so.
3) The mortgage crisis isn't a loss of faith in large trading partners, it is a reduction in faith of many. The banks never trusted mortgage holders, they just mistrusted them less than they should have. Credit management is about estimating how many people will reneg on their commitments. They were wrong in their estimates, but no one is saying, "Wow, I've been trusting the public all these years and now the public is going away. I best not trade with the public anymore."
4) I think most importantly there's a massive difference in the real value of what the Fed would have to do. In the case of Bear Stearns they put up a large guarantee, but hope not to have to exercise the guarantee. It should cost the taxpayer nothing, but could cost $30B. They just lose a bit of interest because the Fed reduced the borrowing rate. The Economist estimates the loss of value from mortgage defaults will be about $300B - real money. It's hard to come up with that kind of cash. (By comparison, the current estimate for the war in Iraq so far is over $500B)

Let's be clear. The Fed is not in the business of saving anyone, private or corporate, for sympathetic or ethical reasons. They do it to stave off economic shocks. They saw Bear as a shock that the economy could not weather, with a relatively low cost to acheive, but so far believe mortgages do not have that same precipitous impact. Perhaps the mortgage crisis needs some intervention, but it is NOT because of some sort of equitable treatment thing between mortgage holders and Bear Stearns. It is also worth considering that today's interest rates, at a nearly negative real yield, are effectively a bail out - homeowners with equity can refi at an awfully low rate and save their homes. (if they have equity - if not, again, they aren't losing THEIR house)

That, undoubtedly, is the longest most rambling post evar. I'd edit it down (same content, half as long) but I gotta get to work.

How To Be Mugged

I heard this story on NPR this morning on the way to work and had to share it. I was mugged once and guarantee I did not have Julio's perspective or quick thought.

Click here.

Ready for the big game

I believe January is the best month for high-end TV sales in the US, even higher than the Christmas season, due to preparations for Super Bowl parties.

We bought our TV before moving to Chicago in 1996 because we knew we would be starving students without a way to buy one later. The logic was to buy a TV right away before we had no money and would decide raman would be more prudent. Good move - we didn't starve and it became the mecca for watching Jazz/Bulls Finals and the Utes' trip to the Final Four. It has lasted through about nine moves, several generations of video game consoles and a lot of Super Bowls, most of which we probably didn't watch.

Well last week we finally replaced the TV. Yesterday Katie brought home the new couch to complement the TV, rounding out my ability to successfully avoid exercise and watch reruns of Arrested Development instead.

As I plopped down on the couch last night and took the remote lovingly in hand I thought about the fact that there's a big game coming up. It's not the Super Bowl. It's not even March Madness since the Utes are irrelevant this year. Nope, this year and this time the big game is coming up next weekend. When I sustain Pres. Monson as the new leader of the church, I'll be able to see every pore in his face. Then I'll snuggle into the cushions of my new couch until time to make Conference Brunch and lament being so far from family for Katie's favorite time to be with family. The waffles and bacon never taste quite the same when it's only (!) the eight of us.

By the way, Boo asked us to call JB and invite her to come over for conference, so consider yourself officially invited. Just drop by. We've got a big screen and plenty of room on the couch.

Moore's Law's Effect on Education

Will technology blow up the classical concept of education? Ty and Aaron are probably closest to this. Cool article by Cringely.

O Jogo Bonito

Happy Easter

Martin Marty

Never heard of him. Apparently the Institute for the Advanced Study of Religion at my alma mater is named after him. The Institute has a pretty cool little service they call Sightings that I'd never heard of but think I'll be paying closer attention to now that I just read two articles published therein.

My friend (at least I consider her my friend) Kathleen Flake's essay on President Hinckley's funeral.

An article rebutting the hate speech leveled at Mormon's during Romney's campaign.

Both well-written, respectful and uplifting. If all of their articles are of this caliber I think I may have found a new "regularly read".

Banging, cont.

So I thought the story was outstanding, but tonight it got even better.

I was on my way home from work and called to see how things were going in our sweet corporate apartment. "Well, I just said goodbye to a policeman". Hmmm. Our neighbors now called the police. Surely the police would look at the situation and realize these guys were hypersensitive, right? Nope. He watched Lucy practicing her new two footed hop and Porter running across the room and confirmed that we could indeed receive a citation for the local noise ordinance for that. Huh? This is the state that gave us Kelli Clarkson and my five year old running or my two year old learning to jump with two feet is citable? Good grief. The oppression of electric fence in Joburg suddenly feels less onerous.

So there are only a few ways to respond to this sort of thing:
1) Retaliate. Light a bag full of human feces on fire on their doorstop and run for it.
2) Avoid. Move the kids to the other apartment and pray the second floor neighbor is less extreme on that side of the building.
3) Apologize.

Guess whose ideas these belonged to. Katie won with #3 by a hair over my favored approaches. As it turns out the people below us are very nice. We had a long talk. I thought for sure he'd be some ornery, feeble old fart. Actually, they're from Brazil, had really crappy neighbors right before us and have been deathly ill. He also works at 2 am and goes to bed at 7 pm. We apologized, as did they. We'll try harder. They'll lay off the 911 for seven days so we can get out of their hair.

As always, Katie was right. I've got to believe that even cops in Texas would have appreciated the flaming poo bag though.

Banging on the Ceiling

So we have the glorious opportunity to live in a corporate apartment for the next week and a half until our house closes. Better said, we're living in two two-bedroom apartments. With six kids. On the third floor. Did I mention we checked 16 (two each) 50-pound pieces of luggage? So when we arrived in Dallas late Monday night and got to move into our new digs, you can imagine none of us were all that happy. The kids were sad to leave cousins and friends. Katie was being a cheerleader. I was the sky cap.

We grabbed take-out at Sonic and stumbled into our new piece of paradise. After eating, the guy below us starting banging on his ceiling. Apparently we were being too loud and it was too late. It was 10:30 and we weren't really doing anything. The kids were tired and eating. He resumed this morning at 7:00 am when the kids were groggily eating their Cheerios.

How long has this guy lived in an apartment on the second floor? Don't you think you probably hear noise from time to time? I can't tell whether we should start spending our time in the second apartment to give him a reprieve or start playing loud music and dancing to show him what real noise is.

It's been nine years since I lived in an apartment. I had great neighbors and a great place. Is this what I've been missing all these years? Jenny, Josh, I have newfound respect for the two of you. Just don't have kids, and if you do, make sure they don't crunch too loudly on those Cheerios.

New header image

"Look at me! I'm on top of the world!" - Homer J. Simpson

That little image you see just above that says "second fiddle"? I spent a boatload of time getting that right so both of you could enjoy a new look to my blog.

Katie has long wanted to be able to fiddle with these sorts of images to enhance her blog. She also loves to scrapbook. So I bought her killer layout software - Quark - for Christmas. I used Quark back when I was younger - like 20 years ago. It's become a lot beefier and more complicated in the ensuing years.

Here's what I had to do to get this image to work:
* Figure out Quark enough to get the layers, fonts and image right.
* Save it. Doh - it saves as a Quark file and nothing can read it.
* Save it as the other option - EPS. Doh - I don't have photoshop to open this so I can save it as a jpg.
* Buy photoshop. Doh - Adobe's web site won't accept my credit card.
* Screenshot and save in Paint? Doh - this is a Mac and I don't know how!
* Ah hah (weeks later). Screen shot using Clip. Save as Tiff. Doh - Blogger doesn't accept tiff.
* Ah hah. Macs have a preview program that can open tiff and save as jpg. Catch that? Four file conversions - Quark to EPS to tiff to jpg. Alas.
* Upload. AHHHHHHHH! Width is off and my OCD kicks in.
* Grab the image on my PC and shrink it by "eyeballing" the width until I get it right - on the third try. So if the aspect ratio appears a bit tight horizontally, it is - 1.99% to be exact.

So woo hoo. I can finally make a decent masthead. It's as easy as 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9 on our cool iMac with its rocking design software.

By the way, I really like the image. He/she who guess what it is (not Katie) gets a shiny new congratulations and an invitation to the next game night. Hint - it's an original photograph from yours truly sometime in the last month or two.

Bittersweet Feelings

Gordon B. Hinckley, the leader of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, passed away Sunday evening. It's interesting for me to hear those outside the church sometimes scoff at the admiration members of the church have for their leader, as though this common affection is somehow lemming-like. His passing has given me pause to consider the impact he has had on me personally.

I never met him in person, but have been very affected by his counsels, his leadership and his example. He has been the leader of my church almost my entire married life. One third of the members of the church have never known another prophet. He has inspired me and admonished me with counsel of how to live, love and whom I should strive to become. I could probably write an entire page summary of his teachings that I remember and have attempted to apply to my life. Most recently I have been trying to follow his specific counsel about being slow to anger and quick to forgive.

Under his direction, he has brought the full opportunities of the church to the world through a massive building program. However, the program he may be less remembered for by others is the program that has most affected me personally - the perpetual education fund. The fund is a mechanism whereby earnings from donations are extended as educational loans to capable people in areas where they might not have that opportunity. They then pay the loans back and the program continues.

This program has impacted me in a very personal and emotional way for two reasons. First, it was modeled after a similar program from the 1860s called the perpetual emigration fund, and was the means my ancestors used to emigrate from Europe to Utah. I'm a beneficiary of this charity. Second, I served a mission for the church in Latin America and was struck by the inequities inherently there. I was no more intelligent or capable than my Latin American associates, yet when my mission ended I would return to the university and a life of opportunity while they would return to their village to try to support themselves and their families with little opportunity. I literally wept when he introduced this program and am so pleased to have such an elegant way to give back.

Finally, I have been touched by his example despite not having spoken a word to him. I have admired him from a distance, in public and through friends, as I've seen how he treats others, his family, and particularly his wife. I have no doubt he is very pleased to be reunited with her this week. I try to be as optimistic yet self-effacing as he.

Coincidentally, I know his personal secretary quite well. He tells the story that the Monday after his wife's funeral, Pres. Hinckley came into work, slammed his fist on the desk and said "Let's get to work." As torn as he felt by her passing, he was not going let his grief stand in the way of what he had to do. I suppose those that cared for him can only do the same.

It has been said that the highest tribute we can give the dead is not grief but gratitude. I'm very grateful for the impact Pres. Hinckley has had on my life in a very personal way and look forward to being similarly instructed by his successor, Thomas S. Monson.

Though Pres. Monson has enormous shoes to fill, he will do so splendidly. He is equally capable, insightful and kind. I anticipate continual admonishments to "always do our duty", which has always been Pres. Monson's repeated theme.

Horse Kicked One Last Time

So I've beaten this dead horse quite enough, but I got interested today in our Christmas card mailing list and started pulling some stats. Some I found interesting. Bear in mind that we really don't try to send a ton of cards - we just happen to have moved a lot. Churn reduces the number a lot as well. As an example, we currently only send 12 cards to Sweden though we certainly consider more than 12 Swedes to be good friends after the time we spent there. Here are some stats on the list.

Countries represented - 7
States in the US represented - 25
Most common states - Utah (107), Texas (54) and Idaho (46)
Most common country outside of US - Sweden (12)
Most common first names - Greg, John (6 each)
Most common last name - Wright (5)

I was tripped to see we send cards to 50% of the states in the US. Bschool is probably the #1 reason, more than our tendency to relocate. Also interesting that Wright was more popular than Graham or Hadfield. I guess that's what happens when you have a small family or lots of daughters changing their names as they are married. And no, I didn't send myself six cards.

You didn't want to know any of this, but it was a nice break over lunch to play with pivots.

Load shedding

It's been a while since I've shared quirky things about South Africa from my foreign viewpoint, but I think it's that time. However, I think even South Africans would find this quirky.

South Africa has not invested quickly enough in several types of infrastructure over the last decade or two to keep pace with the growth they've experienced. The most visible example of this right now is in the power industry. Even though this summer is unseasonably cool, they do not have remotely enough power generation capacity.

Every day they have to black out a different part of the country. It feels like it is nearly always either Woodmead or Bryanston, where I live and work. The power goes out for a few hours and everyone quickly tries to convince their boss that they can't work without a PC/power and get out of the building before the power comes back on and ruins their short day. This is pretty comical to watch, lame to live through and a bit scary since the stoplights are ALWAYS out right now, seemingly everywhere. Traffic's a nightmare.

Here's the part I find the most funny though. You can imagine how this puts strain on the economy. POS systems don't work when the power goes out at the mall. Restaurants can't serve food. Ice cream is always melted or gross at the grocery store.

The funny thing is how it is affecting the local gyms.

Gyms are starting to lose significant business because they are just plain dangerous. Imagine you're at the gym, minding your own business, listening to your iPod and watching a rugby game on TV while you run on the treadmill. You're cruising. You're quite sure you could be the fastest guy in the gym right now, even faster than those twenty somethings down the way. Kick it up a notch. Feel the burn. Feel the sweat. BAM! Lights go out, TV turns off and the treadmill stops abruptly. You go flying into the console ahead of you blindly. Bruised and bloody you hear nothing but Pearl Jam from your iPod, suddenly way too loud, and the screams of all the other treadmill runners around you.

This doesn't happen just once. It happens every night.

This is an indication of how far the load shedding culture has gotten - one of my consultants got an SMS on his phone the other night from a restaurant he'd eaten at the previous night right after the lights went out. "We have generator power and serve dinner through load shedding", it said. Very entrepreneurial. Very funny.

Especially funny when you get to leave in a couple of weeks. Estimates are that it will only worsen for at least five if not ten years before more generation is available. One more good reason to love Texas. (are you counting these, Katie?)

Churn

For the last few years I've been responsible for quite a bit of direct marketing. I may have put a catalog in your mailbox or an email in your inbox. It's also possible I put a Christmas card in your mailbox. At least I don't telemarket.

One of the challenges for any direct marketer to manage is churn - people moving or changing email addresses. This is also the case for those of us who try to stay in touch by exchanging Christmas cards. One of the most disappointing things each December or early January is to receive that pile of "return to sender" Christmas cards and realize that we've lost touch with a few more friends.

If you happen to know where any of the following now live, please email me so I can get back in touch. I hate to lose contact with good friends.

S. & H. Henretta
E. & A. Kerr
P. & M. Ceverha
C. Condiff
Alfredo & C. Gomez
J. Pearson

The Office

You've probably already received this via email from me.

One of the rare TV shows I enjoy is The Office. It is one of maybe two or three shows Katie and I can both enjoy, at least as long as Jim is yearning after Pam. I mostly enjoy it because I enjoy watching Jim (reincarnation of Mark Taber) terrorize Dwight. So I got this email from some guys I used to work with that made me grin. Hopefully it will make you grin too.

Stewart, the phone guy, went on vacation for three weeks. Three weeks is a long time for a vacation in the US, especially when you're in charge of the phones. He sits in the IT department. Apparently they thought his area needed some sprucing up, so they gave his cubicle a little makeover. This is a picture.



It is now complete with working porch and interior lights, a ceiling fan and a planter box with real petunias. I'm so grateful for workers with a sense of humor. I only fear that by the transitive property that means I'm grateful for IT, which is rarely the case.

Christmas cards poll complete

OK, so my little poll that was hardly statistically significant proved what I feared. We send the most Christmas cards of anyone bored enough to participate in my poll. Thanks J for licking all those envelopes. Thanks Katie for not making me manufacture them by hand this year. What a tradition! And now we get to do it again in a month with change of address cards.

We either need to stop moving, stop making friends when we move, or stop deluding ourselves that people want to get a card from us after we've moved.

There were three people that didn't send a single card. Somehow I suspect that single is a word that could be used for these three in more than one context...

Blog Withdrawal

My favorite blogger has been inconsistent and quiet over the last while. She's written little and not at all in a couple of weeks. She's been busy visiting new places and hosting guests. I need to get the kids to bed early for her so she can pen some new insight, or at least post cool pictures from her time in Cape Town and Victoria Falls.

In the meantime, here's a picture from the aforementioned trip to Cape Town. It looks like they are just in front of the beach, but in this picture they're actually quite a ways up there - we hiked up to a promontory where we could see most of the cape.

Come back, Katie, come back.

I Miss My Dog

I'm coming, boy.

Thank you Amanda and John for bailing us out!

The Holidays are Over

Over the last three weeks we've been frenetically trying to see as much of Africa as we could while South Africa was away on holiday. We have less than a month left here and I had spent most of my time working, so it was time to cram in as much sightseeing as we could. In the last bit I've visited Durban, Cape Town, Pilanesberg, the Apartheid Museum, the orphanage (twice), Swaziland, Victoria Falls, and Drakensberg. I'll push some pictures up to Katie's web gallery so you can see some of the fun. In the meantime, here are two pictures that for me summarize much of the last three weeks.

Here are some more pics from Cape Town.

At the Orphanage

For our Christmas family service project this year we donated shoes, diapers, etc. to the orphanage that Katie and the kids visit every other week. I thought the family would like to see some of the pictures from the two days we spent there.

For the life of me I can't get this "user friendly" iMac to publish pictures the way they display on the Mac, so you'll have to click here to see the pics.

While I'm here I'll make it so you can also click here to see some shots of Christmas morning and here to see some shots of Swaziland, Drakensberg and Lucy's latest random sleep spot. She refuses to take naps right now, but crashes randomly shortly after refusing. Today she fell asleep sitting up - kinda reminded me of her grandpa in church. :)

Merry Christmas, Grandpa and Grandma

Quick post for those interested in seeing the most relaxed Bill and Gayle you may ever witness. Thanks to all those that contributed to their time at Ivory Tree. The only thing that would have been nicer is a few more days. I don't think I've seen them so relaxed and pleased.

We Will Rock You

The stalwarts (or the terminally bored) among you will recall that while I was sick a while ago Lucy serenaded me with her version of We Will Rock You. It's her favorite song and she sings it constantly. With Brynley's coaching, we were able to get a decent version of it on video. Enjoy.

Go to sleep Lucy

I was digging through our pictures trying to find something and came across this gem I took of Lucy about a year ago. I think I was in the kitchen cooking and Lucy was playing on the carpet in the hall. When I noticed how quiet she had become I walked over to check on her and found her asleep, doubled in half from where she'd been sitting. If I did this I would disconnect ligament from bone in several places.

This is how I feel some days right now because Lucy has turned into a very sporadic sleeper. In fact, several of the kids are difficult this way right now. It seems like almost every night our sleep is interrupted by someone screaming, scared or peeing (sometimes even in the toilet). It messes up what little exercise routine we have and makes Katie and I look and feel like this picture most nights by the time we go to bed.

As an aside, I'm sure having teenagers/puberty will present it's own challenge, but so far I'll gladly take 6x college, weddings, terrible twos, dance recitals, birthday parties, etc., but 6x potty training is for the birds. I can't express enough gratitude for Katie, that she's the one that has to deal with this 90% of the time. I think the only one more grateful than me is Molly.

Mary Creesmus

What a difference a year makes. Last year I was frantically selling cookies - December was where we made all of our money. As we came out of the holiday season last year, we had a very disgruntled customer who got word from a recipient of a gift basket from her and was able to return the "custom gift card" to us that he had received. Every single word in the card was misspelled. I think you could shake up a game of Boggle and get a more coherent message. Call centers rock!

Now here I am in the southern hemisphere, living behind electric wire and enjoying summertime. We'll spend this weekend on the beach in Durban. We sent out our Christmas cards early this year in hopes that any cards we might receive, we might actually receive. We were concerned about our buyers in SLC getting a mailbox full of cards that we'd never see. As a result, I've started to notice a trickle of visitors hitting my blog since we published Katie's blog address on the card. Hers is the official version of the story - mine's a footnote. Despite the fact that my blog is on the Internet (by definition) I like to believe that Katie and a few others are the only ones that read it. Therefore, I felt a sense of panic when I realized that others may suddenly be reading my thoughts. You're reading my mind! Yikes.

Well, at this point I guess all I can say is welcome and I hope you have a vary mary chreesmush.

What I know about you

I've been tempted to bag this whole blogging thing from time to time.

Usually I give up because I realize that no one's actually reading my blog but Katie, so why not just email? Occasionally, I give up because I realize someone else is reading my blog and I've just offended them. oops.

Then I get back in the game. This usually happens because someone emails me and asks if I'm dead or something because I haven't posted in weeks. The other thing that happens is that I have something I really want to publish to the world, even if the world turns out to just be Katie.

Well, I'm back, but for a different reason. A month ago I installed tracking tags on my blog. One advantage of working in eCommerce for a while is that I know about such stuff and have limited html skills (Napoleon's got nothing on me). As it turns out, 60 people have visited my blog this month, which is 20-60x more than I would have thought. Here are a few things I know about you (in addition to your credit card numbers, PINs, weight and other things that I can track but shouldn't share):

* (Obviously) Katie is my #1 source of visitors - 50% come from her blog
* I've had visitors from the US, Sweden and South Africa (thanks Katie)
* From the US, my visitors are from quite a few places: Utah, TX, WA, OH, CA, ID, WY, MT, IL, MA and so on. May I just tell the guy in WY that I don't like BYU either, so please don't throw beer cans at my house? I don't know for sure who you are, but suddenly I have a much better idea.
* 83% of you are still using Internet Explorer. Welcome to the 21st century: Use Firefox
* One of you is still on dialup. Email me and I'll send you $100 to get you started toward a future of broadband bliss. This is surely tax deductible. This is probably the guy from WY.

I know, you all want access to such groovy stats and want to see neato graphs like I can. Well, it's free since Google has taken over the world (and I, for one, welcome our limitless P/E multiple overlords). Check out Google Analytics if you haven't already.

And my sincere apologies to my cousin in WY for the jokes - no offense intended, I'd hate to quit blogging again so quickly because I've given offense.

And for the literalists among you, I can't really track your weight, at least not yet.

Lastly, yes Katie, I've installed tracking on your blog too!

Dare I Admit It?

The classic move of a family that has too many kids and is totally out of control is the "forgotten child". I think every large, Mormon family of my youth had this story somewhere in their family history. I only had one brother, so I always thought this was ludicrous and irresponsible. The story usually goes something like this:

"We were on our way to Disneyland in our 1977 station wagon when we pulled over for a rest stop somewhere in the Nevada. The kids all got out and ran to the bathroom and we broke out licorice and water bottles. We all piled back in and headed on, hoping to make it by sundown. About twenty miles outside of Podunk, someone asked where Jimmy was. Stunned, we all turned at once to Jimmy's vacant spot in the back of the station wagon. Well, the highway patrolman was very understanding when we returned to find him next to his car, with Jimmy sitting in the backseat playing his video game with tear-stained cheeks. And so forth."

I'd be really embarrassed if that every happened to me. Really, really embarrassed. I'd be mortified if it wasn't a rest stop, but my client's house. Please let such an embarrassing thing never happen to me (again).

*sigh*

I can die now.

Trip to the orphanage

I wish I could tell you about this wonderful experience, but I was at work. Katie and the kids will hopefully report in detail. Here are a couple of things I was touched by in the telling though:
* Trust had never been to an orphanage. He was deeply touched and could barely sleep that night.
* Madison had the kids giggling as they ran to her and then she chased them.
* Mason held babies the whole time lovingly.
* Bryn had the kids dressing up. She felt like an old hand in charge.
* The little kids looking sadly on while the older kids ate first because there weren't enough spoons - the orphanage pecking order.

What a nice experience to have regularly.

Sign of a busy man

I found Nelson Mandela's house underwhelming, which I think is the point. There are really only three rooms that he lived in inside his modest red brick house - front room, bedroom, kitchen. The house was burned on the inside so little still exists from when he lived there, but it has been filled with sundry memorabilia, honorary doctorates and the like.

This is what struck me. The rain gutters were atrocious. They were mostly rusted through and needed to be cleaned out. Noticing this made Mr. Mandela seem a kindred spirit. My rain gutters always need work. Isn't that a good sign that he was away doing more important things than cleaning his rain gutters? I'd like to believe mine look horrible because I'm busy changing the world.

The reality is that I'm probably just busy playing a boardgame.

Six kids

Any other questions?

I've Been Here Before

Katie and I finally go to go to Soweto. She'd been there before but I hadn't. Soweto's probably the first thing anyone should do that visits Joburg. Soweto is short for "Southwestern Township" also "So Where To?" - the ghetoo the blacks in Joburg were forced into in the run-up to Apartheid. More importantly, it's where Nelson Mandela lived in the years before he was put in prison, and where the members of the ANC plotted and schemed to get their rights. It's the epicenter of the dawn of South African civil rights.

We went to the Hector Pietersen Memorial (he's the boy that was shot and became the poster child - literally - for the global sanctions against the South African government), Nelson Mandela's home (then, not now), Wandee's (sp? "real African food" really not very good), and for a walk around a real township (the African euphemism for shantytown).

I think for most people, a walk through a township is a real eye-opening and potentially life-defining experience. We got to go into one of the small corrugated huts and talk to a couple of Xhosa women with a baby (shown above), ask them questions, and see how they live.

The township experience is set in the backdrop of a day of learning about Apartheid. I think many people define the township as a relic of Apartheid. As I learned about the Apartheid years, I felt sorrow for the atrocities committed by whites against blacks. However, I had a different take on the township. You see I've been there before.

I've met, loved and taught so many people in abject circumstances that don't know what Apartheid is. I've sat on their floors, eaten a few morsels of their humble dinner, talked with them and learned from them. I don't believe the poverty I see is a relic of Apartheid. Katie saw more extreme poverty in Haiti, I've seen it in Costa Rica and Mexico, and I'm sure you'd see it in any country south of the Sahara. The people of South Africa are not unusually poor - unfortunately, poverty is not unusual at all. They've suffered unusually. They've been treated unequitably. They were once trodden upon. But that is not the source of South African poverty, only its disparity.

Today I feel for the people living in the townships. I feel for them as I feel for any that live in such poverty and struggle to rise above. I feel for them as they try to find a few rand to feed their children, without speaking English, without clothes and transportation. But I also feel for them because they have to live life believing that this is their legacy - that Apartheid did this to them. That has to be very disabling. As crippling as poverty can be, it seems it is far more crippling when it destroys hope because one believes that it is a legacy, something handed down and must be suffered, if not with anger then at least with resolution - misplaced resolution - not the sort of resolution that moves one's family out of the townships, but the sort of resolution that takes fate as it is unquestioningly.

I understood a different sort of resolution on the drive home as Trust told us about his family, about how his father was beaten and killed by members of the Mugabe regime. As an 11 year old boy Trust watched his dad slowly die of his injuries and then lived with a resolve to take care of his family. That's the sort of resolution I can most admire. The gospel eventually gave Trust the peace to leave the anger behind and the satisfaction that his father awaits him and is well-pleased. How beautiful to see the stark contrast of different resolutions.

I've made a few of my own.