My Most Recent Demise

My first Internet life and death: GeoCities.com  1995-2009 - Yahoo bought and then shut down free hosting.


False Alarm: My most recent demise: koolhost.com 2009-2011 - Three good years of free hosting was "off the air" for a day or so.



Still extant Internet presences:
   ( Welcome Virtual Visitor - koolhost.com )  dead Aug 2014
    From The Herd - These ramblings on Blogspot 2011-present
    ... - Google+  2011-2019
    Robot Carl - Vimeo

    A Curious AGI  



and webmaster for:
   Retired Site:  Gold Coast Archers USA Archery Corner  - Google Sites
    Retired Site: Archery Chat Bot - Pandorabots.com

    Rugwarrior Robot Yahoo Group - Started in 2000, till shutdown in 2020



(I still can't bring myself to sign up for Facebook.  I must have Antiestablishmentarianism. )

Real Estate Capitalism Exposed - CNN as a co-conspirator

"According to Fiserv (FISV), a financial analytics company, home values are expected to fall another 3.6% by next June, pushing them to a new low of 35% below the peak reached in early 2006"
http://money.cnn.com/2011/10/31/real_estate/home_prices/index.htm?hpt=hp_t2

Boy, I trust that company... Let's "bring it all home", so to speak.  According to Zillow.com my home in early 2006 was worth 203% of what I paid in 2001;  That's the peak to use for a reference. 

According to the CNN article "The first post-bubble bottom was hit in 2009, when prices fell to 31% below peak."  Zillow shows my home was 58% below the peak (and 14% below what I paid for it).

In Aug 2011, Zillow showed my home at 59% below the peak which was then 16% below what I purchased it for 10 years prior.

Who cares about % below peak anyway.  That is only a measure of a "missed opportunity".  What they are really saying is "You missed an opportunity to sell your home in 2006 at a 100% profit (or 700% profit over investment at that point), live in an apartment for three years, then buy your home back for cash and have 50% left to upgrade the appliances, paint and carpets, and pay two real estate commissions, pay the title company twice, pay the mortgage closing cost twice, pay the state tax stamps twice.  *Everyone makes out like a bandit with no losers*." 

Thanks for rubbing it in Fiserv and CNN.  So I missed an opportunity to put $250k in my pocket at the expense of some schmuck you duped into buying a home at the peak of a boom...(The folks I sold to would have actually lost $200K, but hey, its a free market, right?  We would have felt we "earned" that  money. ) 

I'm actually starting to feel better already.  I didn't lose anything and I didn't help the real estate tycoons destroy the savings, credit rating, and happiness of someone else. 

Maybe, I should get a double tax credit - I lost (missed out on - same thing) $200K on my investment, and I did a charitable thing by not stealing some bloke's $200K.  All the government will do is waste my tax dollars building roads and bridges anyway - why shouldn't I get a tax break?

Thanks for trying to make me feel bad, CNN.

One Vote?

I've heard "One person - One Vote" for many years, but since the Supreme Court gave corporations the unlimited right to contribute to political campaigns, perhaps it should also be said "One CEO - More Than One Vote"

Please explain the end of Asimov: "Foundation and Earth"

I just finished F&E today and am very disturbed and confused by the ending. All along the "future history", the reader experiences various social (psycho) mechanisms used by rulers, groups, (and a few "isolates"), and shown the benefits, problems, and ultimately the demise of each mechanism.

It seemed to me that over and over, the individual thinking of Trevize had demonstrated the holes in a unified galaxy under Gaian social order, so I don't understand how Trevize just gives into this Daneel as the correct (or even best) path for the future. I was not convinced. I know he wanted someone else to hold the responsibility for "humanity", but to hand it over to Daneel?

The extolled instincts of Trevize, were usually very much in line with my feelings (encouraged by the mind of Asimov?), but at the end my instincts were not assuaged, while it seemed Trevize was at peace with his delivery of the future to Daneel and the Gaian Galaxia which would obliterate the individual from humanity and remove the uncertainty caused by individual thought.

Is this the intention? That I should be left wanting? It seems every prior book was quite complete, and this one tried with the dicussion to wrap everything up, but either I totally missed the point, or the point was indeed to leave me confused (and quite disturbed.)

Can anyone point me to any discussions of the end with I. Asimov, the master or my future sanity? Am I accursed to a "search for [my] Earth"?

Secret Real Estate Agenda Behind The Debt Ceiling Stalemate?

I've been wracking my brain trying to understand why the Republican politicians have been so intransigent in the debt ceiling negotiations, and why President Obama would even sit down to discuss an offer that contained only cuts in social programs? 

Could it be the real agenda for both parties is: raise interest rates, (to generate inflation, to stop real estate deflation, which will spur real estate investment, which benefits bankers, builders, land barons, suppliers, trades, and county governments, and which used to be a major component of our economic growth)?

Forgot to mention