Where I've been, and where I'm going.

Like a lot of blogs, this one has been abandoned for a very long time. As I move on from this current place in life (Texas) I decided to go through the wide internet and find these old blogs and hopefully breath new life into them. I've been blogging since 2003. I started on a blogspot account, which turned into a blogger account. Holy crap that was 12 years ago. That blog was closed down in 2007. I then started up another blog ("A bit more professional" was the first post) which I used until the end of 2011. Since moving to Texas from Dublin I've dropped personal blogging, but in the last few months I've been feeling the need to write more. With that, I hope to start getting more out in the world, but probably not at this URL. I'll post the new site when it's done.

Reading List

Neil deGrasse Tyson, full-time astrophysicist and part-time actor (usually playing himself) recently held an interview on the news aggregator website Reddit.com starting with “I am Neil deGrasse Tyson -- AMA [Ask Me Anything]”. Responding to the questions “Which books should be read by every single intelligent person on planet?” he answered:

The Bible, The System of the World (Newton), On the Origin of Species (Darwin), Gulliver's Travels (Swift), The Age of Reason (Paine), The Wealth of Nations (Smith), The Art of War (Sun Tsu), The Prince (Machiavelli). If read all of the works above, you will have profound insight into most of what has driven the history of the western world.

Any additions? Subtractions? Comments? I would also recommend reading the entire interview, and his previous interview here, if only for the comments about education and his very simple debunking of the "Ancient Aliens" myth.

Percolating thoughts

An idea occurred to me this morning concerning CEO wages. An odd subject to dwell on, but one that is timely and currently important. Since the start of the great recession the media has been reporting on the multimillion dollar “Golden Parachutes” that are given to outgoing CEOs of spiraling companies. The ongoing #Occupy protests point to them as signs of corruption on Wall Street. This little blurb on Daring Fireball about Research in Motion, the makers of the Blackberry, references some past speculation on why Co-CEOs Mike Lazaridis and Jim Balsillie still have jobs. And finally, the obituaries of Steve Jobs brought up his $1 yearly salary (plus stock options).

All this made me think that companies would be much better served by their CEOs if they were paid these high-end, 1% salaries, primarily in company stock. Their worth would be directly tied to the company they run. Their retirement packages (and golden parachutes) are predetermined and paid in not a dollar amount, but a set amount of stock. They run the company into the ground they don’t get to walk away with more of the companies money. Would HP, one of the largest PC makers in the world, have had to deal with a CEO who tried to dismantle a money-making arm of the company after 11 months in office if that loss in revenue affected his ability to make ends meet?

This, of course, would not happen in most companies. After booting out a bad CEO a board would pay almost anything for one with a proven track record, and those can be very costly. But even a high five-figure salary, augmented by heavy stock options, can pay off more in the long run for a good CEO.

It would take some backbone for a board to insist on paying primarily in stock, and most won’t do it. Boards of directors seem to have short memories, thinking their new CEO will always be better than their last one. Of course, if the new CEO was better than the old one they would want to get mostly stock.

Oh, and as I was writing this, Sony posted a 1.2 Billion dollar loss for the year, mostly caused by their TV business, which hasn’t been profitable in eight years. How does Sony CEO Howard Stringer still have a job?

Riots in london

I'm not in london, but some friends are, and some more are moving there at the end of the month. As the riots start to spread from london to the midlands and scotland there is a chance they could spread further, however it's very doubtful that they will spread it Ireland. The Irish had several good opportunities to rise up over the past year and since they haven't already I doubt they ever will.

The Guardian has had wonderful accounts of the nights and days of riots, much better than the BBC. From today's liveblog:

At the 8:32am marker:  Diane Abbott, Labour MP for Hackney North and Stoke Newington — an area that has seen a lot of the trouble — has told BBC Breakfast a curfew should be imposed.

"I have not heard of a curfew on mainland Britain in the past century. [It's] very difficult to impose. I'm not saying that it is definitely the way forward but it is something we have to consider. These young people, who seem to have no stake in society, are trashing their own communities. We cannot continue to have increasing numbers of looters on the streets night after night."

I understand the need to first put the fire out before investigating what started it, but it's quotes like this, wherein they show that they know what started the riots, how it's been that way for years and no one has tried to fix it, really grinds my gears.

Also, if you read it line by line it almost starts to steer into the philosophical with "These young people, who seem to have no stake in society, are trashing their own communities.." I kinda wish she went on to say "When this is over we need to take a look at ourselves to find the causes of these horrible symptoms..." but she jumps right back into the safe political rhetoric.

Also interestingly, there was a similar incident that sparked riots in Tottenham in the late 70s, where a mother, after the police busted down her door, died of a heart attack.

Lockdown Dublin

To prep for the arrival this morning of Queen Elizabeth II the city of Dublin has pulled out all the stops, but with good reason. Before she landed the Gardai had found two pipe bombs, which were disposed of safely.

They blocked off O'Connell Street, the main north/south road in town, and have blocked off street-side parking everywhere in city centre. According to one of the papers there are over 8,ooo uniformed police around for the visit, the first time the sitting monarch has come to the Republic. There was apparently a near riot (with only a couple of arrests) near the Garden of Remembrance, the park north of the river that serves as a memorial to those that died in the rebellion and civil war. The pictures that have come out have not helped out the protesters, who were, apparently, just the normal sweatpants and tracksuit wearing thugs that populate the north Dublin scene.

The Guardai also spent the last week going around and sealing every manhole, water main, and hole in the sidewalk. They actually went around twice. The first pair went around with a can of spray paint and a wrench, saw an opening to the sewers, dropped the wrench on top of the cover, sprayed the wrench with paint, picked it up and moved on. The second pair followed up in a couple of days and actually sealed them.

Note that it's not even the end of the first day, and there are two more days of this. And then we do it all over again with Obama, which should be a comparatively easy time.

Year in Pictures Day 2

, originally uploaded by morndry.

Vampire fang ice cubes, one of Meg's Christmas presents.

Year in Pictures Day 1

, originally uploaded by morndry.

Trying this year in pictures again, hopefully this time I'll stick with it. This was taken early, early this morning at a pub.