Urb's Blog

Three study units down, 17 to go

2009-04-23T18:04:00.000-07:00

As you may know, I've been trying to make a career transition -- from past work as a technical writer to a second career as an accountant. It's been tough, however, to get employers interested in a 45-year-old who wants to start at the bottom. So I'm working on adding some value to my resume by taking the CPA exam. It's a grueling four-part ordeal that requires you to know a lot about a lot of things -- but at least you get to take one part at a time. I'm starting with REG -- regulation and taxes. I got ahold of some study materials, meanwhile sending in my application to take the REG exam sometime during July or August (the exam is given during four two-month "testing windows," each of which consists of the first two months of a quarter-year, with the third month being used for keeping track of what's going on, at testing HQ).

Stay tuned for updates -- it's going to be a haul!

Recent updates

2007-03-12T18:22:00.000-07:00

For those who might be interested, I finally resurrected the Column™ a few weeks ago, with an item about a hypothetical geography book I've always wanted to write: The State Borders and How They Got That Way. Also, the podcast has had a couple of recent additions.

Deny this!

2007-02-10T14:25:00.000-08:00

With the release of the IPCC's Fourth Assessment Report summary on climate, the mainstream press has gone into a feeding frenzy of apocalyptic headlines and hyperventilating hyperbole about the now-inevitable climate catastrophe the Earth is in for. Ignoring that the report itself is little changed from the Third Assessment Report of 2001, activists and journalists have joined in lockstep, deriding anyone who questions the horrific picture as a "denier," grouping them with the "Holocaust Deniers" who insist that Hitler was really a nice guy.

As a counterpoint to the hysteria, Lawrence Solomon of Canada's National Post has written a series profiling ten of these skeptical individuals. It's an interesting series -- Solomon describes their credentials and the arguments they make, most of which don't really "deny" anything in particular but rather try to shed some light on what might be going on with global climate other than the orthodox CO2-induced-furnace situation that everyone seems to be worried about.

Take a look at Solomon's series, and see if these guys look like a bunch of nuts... or if they might actually have something to say.

Really, I hate to sound like Urbie-One-Note, with these repeated columns and blog entries on global climate -- but when we're hit with alarmist media pronouncements on a daily basis, it's hard to let it all pass without comment. When things reach the stage where intelligent discussion is impossible because everyone's made up his mind, that's a sad state of affairs. But that's what we get from the global-warming Gore-huggers. Their dismissal of skeptics as "deniers" is a low blow. Meanwhile, if they'd take the time to read the IPCC's Third Assessment Report (as opposed to merely taking a few incendiary phrases from the Summary for Policy Makers, which gives a much more extreme opinion than the entire report), we'd all be better off. (The Fourth Assessment Report, which has been completed but not yet released, is an update of the Third report, but as far as can be determined from the summary, does not contain any great new revelations about the state of world climate.)

Once again, it's important to reiterate that there is cause for concern about possible human influences on global climate. It would be a decidedly good thing to burn less gas and coal. We should be looking at all possible options to reduce the amount of carbon dioxide that goes into the atmosphere. But using terms like "deniers" serves no one.

Urb's Blog

The MazzCast goes live

2006-12-28T08:56:00.000-08:00

Back in 1988 and 1989, I recorded a whole bunch of weekly jam sessions in which I was a participant. They were hosted by banjo and song virtuoso Jimmy Mazzy, who is known to trad jazz enthusiasts nationwide as the best in the business at his chosen craft. I'd started sitting in with Jim sporadically in about 1984 or so, when I was still in college (the first time), but by '88-9, was playing every week -- at the time, the venue was Ephraim's restaurant in Sudbury, MA -- and had realized that he had an extraordinary group of musicians assembled. I'm not sure of the merits of my own modest contributions to the group's efforts, but in terms of the overall music that was happening, it seemed like we were catching lightning in a bottle. In a rare bit of foresight, I thought, why not catch some of this stuff on tape, so that instead of just having great memories of these sessions, I'll have the sessions themselves? I brought a tape recorder to Ephraim's every Wednesday night for several months, compiling three shoeboxes' worth of cassettes -- and, listening back to the tapes, there's some pretty good material there. But what to do with it? It was expensive to put out a record, back then, and besides, I doubt it would have sold much -- trad jazz is not exactly synonymous with big sales in the record business. So the tapes sat in my closet for 17 years -- during which time, I moved several times, necessitating some plotting and scheming to make sure the collection survived each move intact. Typically, I'd split them up, putting two boxes on a moving truck while moving the third myself in the car -- so that if the truck crashed, got stolen, or was staffed by chimpanzee movers who destroyed things, I'd have moved at least some of the material separately.

Fast forward to the present day. With my Mac Mini, GarageBand, and an iMic, it's easy to digitize music and turn it into an MP3 file -- and a podcast. What's more, it doesn't cost anything to do, once you've got the Web space. So I give you the Jimmy Mazzy & Friends jazz podcast. As of this moment, I've only got one program on-line -- a 40-minute segment from December 28, 1988. But I'm already working on the next program, which will be made up of the second set from that same session. And there's a whole lot more where that came from.

In future programs, I may mix some other material in with the Mazzy-&-Friends sessions, because I have a lot of recordings of other groups I've played with. But the main idea of the podcast is to get some of these sessions out there, in hopes that they might find an interested audience. Let me know what you think!

Urb's Blog

The wronger he is, the stupider he gets

2006-12-02T12:04:00.000-08:00

Awhile back, I opined that George W. Bush was the worst President in my lifetime -- by a nose over Jimmy Carter -- but in light of his exponentially-increasing state of denial over recent events, I'm going to have to strengthen that booby prize a bit and say that, unless I've missed something, Bush is in serious contention for the distinction of being the worst in American history, period.

This observation would almost seem too obvious to bother making -- and it has been made by countless media pundits already. But I can't help shaking my head at the way Bush gets more intransigent, the more disastrous things get in Iraq. And now that the Baker-Hamilton panel, appointed by Congress, is nearing the release date for its recommendations, Bush is throwing away his one chance to save face and salvage his political/historic legacy -- which, ironically, he seems to spend a lot of time worrying about. The panel would seem to be offering him a golden opportunity to fix his broken Iraq policy, meanwhile partially erasing his image as the guy in the old joke, who says, "I did make a mistake once -- I thought I was wrong about something; turned out, I wasn't!"

But no -- listening to Baker-Hamilton would be too smart (although the panel does contain, among others, Reagan-era sleazemonger Ed Meese, so it might be asking a lot to expect stellar results from their deliberations). And this guy is too stupid. Given that his party just got it's collective butt booted out of Congress, I can't imagine him getting too much accomplished in the last two lame-duck years of his term.

Urb's Blog

Science and assuming your conclusion

2006-11-18T14:53:00.000-08:00

This week's "Science Journal" column in the Wall Street Journal discusses a dramatic shift taking place recently in the field of Alzheimer's Disease research.

According to the columnist, Sharon Begley, research into Alzheimer's has been dominated by one particular theory about what causes the disease:

Proponents of the leading theory of Alzheimer's have been in pitched battle with scientists who have other ideas about this awful neurodegenerative disease. For more than 20 years, the leading theory has held that sticky blobs in the brain called amyloid plaques cause Alzheimer's. Because that idea has numerous problems, doubters argued that the plaques might be innocent bystanders to the real, "upstream" culprit. If so, targeting the plaques, or the rogue protein called beta-amyloid that forms them, would do nothing to help the 4.5 million Americans who suffer from Alzheimer's.

You might think this debate would play out with each side conducting research, in a "may the best science win" approach. But as I've written before, many scientists whose work challenges the amyloid dogma have been unable to publish in top journals, and their grant proposals, "go down in flames," as Mark Smith of Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine told me. "Among the major journals and funding agencies, the attitude was, 'if it isn't amyloid, it isn't AD.' "

A remarkably similar phenomenon -- only worse -- has been taking place in the field of global climate research. Over the past ten years or so, the idea that the Earth is in the grip of a catastrophic period of human-induced global warming, caused by one thing and one thing alone: the burning of fossil fuels. Anyone who conducts climate research, at this point, is essentially required to start with the premise that this is true. Research papers that don't support the global-warming hypothesis are seldom published and almost never funded, and researchers who disagree with the hypothesis are branded "the denial machine" (Climate Science Watch) as if there were some vast right-wing conspiracy against the obvious "inconvenient truth" of massive global warming.

In an Orwellian turn of events, the National Coalition Against Censorship's "Knowledge Project" has come out against "actions that suppress and/or distort research findings." There certainly is some suppression and distortion going on, in the area of climate research, but it's not what the NCAC thinks it is. On the contrary, it's the skeptical climate research that's being suppressed and/or distorted, while the stuff that makes for better headlines ("Warmest Temperatures in the last 1,000,000 years," etc.) gets trumpeted by the mainstream press worldwide.

This is dangerous. Scientists are supposed to do research, investigate all the relevant phenomena, then publish their results and let the chips fall where they may. When you start requiring scientists to start with a certain restricted set of premises before they can get their research funded, you end up with bad science.

I've argued repeatedly that global climate is a complex phenomenon not explainable merely by studying a carefully selected subset of data designed to support a politically popular conclusion. We may well be influencing global climate by burning too much carbon -- that's a strong possibility. But dismissing skeptics as "the denial machine" does nothing to further our understanding of what is and what is not going on with global climate.

Urb's Blog

No, as a matter of fact, you don't deliver!

2006-11-09T17:48:00.000-08:00

For several years -- ever since we lived in Illinois, in fact -- we've had a mailbox at The UPS Store, which used to be called Mail Boxes, Etc. It's a great place to get your mail -- it's secure, so no one can steal your mail (and with it, your identity); they give you a key, so you can get in when the store is closed; there's always someone there to sign for packages; and they provide a lot of other services, like packing, fax sending and receiving, and so on. Bottom line: we'd rather get the mail there than at home.

There's just one problem: when you move, the US Postal Service refuses to forward your mail. That's right -- they do not forward it, even if you submit a change-of-address card and clearly indicate your old and new addresses. I have no idea why this is so -- my sister, who works for the Postal Service, doesn't know, either. But for some reason, the US Postal service -- a public agency, staffed by Federal employees and partially funded by the taxpayer -- refuses to forward the mail of its own customers who exercise their right to use a private mailbox store.

Back in 1999, when Meg and I moved from Illinois to Arizona, this caused me some pain, in the form of a ding in my credit report. Several months after we moved, I pulled into a gas station and tried to charge some gas with one of my credit cards. The charge was refused. Funny, I thought, this card certainly isn't maxed out -- but I just pulled out another card, paid for the gas, and went on my way.

Later, when I called the credit card company to ask what was up, they said, "Oh -- our records show that you haven't paid us in several months, so we cancelled your card. You owe us $72.00," or some such amount. I sent them a check for the unpaid balance -- but by then, it was too late to avoid an adverse entry in my credit report. Which is still in there, because it takes seven years for entries to scroll off your credit report.

The reason for this oversight was simply that I hadn't received a bill for that credit card -- because the Postal Service hadn't forwarded the bills they'd been sending to my old address at the UPS Store -- and, because I forgot to call the credit card company and give them my new address (which I must have done with my other cards), I never got the bill. And got my credit rating dinged up as a result.

This time around, when we moved from Arizona to Rhode Island, I was very careful to make sure I got all of my credit card addresses updated -- directly with the companies involved -- and made arrangements with our old UPS Store to collect our mail every couple of weeks, stuff it in a box, and mail it to our new address, since the Postal Service was not going to forward it. This is fine, provided we remember to tell every single person, company, and other entity that might care that we've moved, that we've moved. In the case of Coconino County (where we own a five-acre parcel of land), we almost didn't get our property-tax notice this fall -- because although I stopped by the county office in person to give them our new address before we moved, they nonetheless sent the notice to our old address. Fortunately, it happened to get to our old UPS Store before the last train left for our new address (even the UPS Store will only forward your mail for a certain amount of time, unless you pay for another three months' mailbox rental, which seemed rather pointless, since we have no intention of going back to Arizona).

All of which is a roundabout way of asking, why -- by what right -- does the Postal Service get off thinking it's OK to refuse to serve its own taxpaying customers by forwarding their mail? There is no earthly reason why they can't forward it -- after all, the UPS Store mailbox address looks like any other street address with a box or apartment number. For some reason, though, postal regulations allow them to say, "Sorry, if you're using a private mailbox, you're out of luck." I say a big "Phooey" to that. And if Congress ever decides to give serious consideration to privatizing the post office, the bureaucrats responsible for the current non-forwarding policy may regret being so customer-unfriendly.

Urb's Blog

There's Antimony, Arsenic, Aluminum, Selenium....

2006-10-23T14:11:00.000-07:00

The other day, it was reported that physicists at Russian and American labs have created a new element, by firing neutrons at a heavy metal. For a thousandth of a second or so, they claim to have created a few atoms of Element 118 -- that is, an atom with 118 protons.

For now, the element is known by the temporary moniker "Ununoctium," after its atomic number. Various of the scientists involved want to name it after one or another nuclear physicist, as is the custom with trans-Uranium elements.

A more inspired suggestion, however, came from Meg, who thought it was high time the scientific community honored the author of the following lines:

These are the only ones of which the news has come to Haaahvard;

There may be many others, but they haven't been discaaahvered!

Why not, she offered, call it Tomlehrium?

Urb's Blog

Why I'm not a Net pundit

2006-10-10T14:57:00.000-07:00

I don't get why Google is paying 1.6 billion dollars to buy YouTube. (Actually, they're not really "paying" anything -- they're issuing stock worth $1.6 billion, which is easy to do provided your existing stockholders don't mind. Intuitively, you'd think that by buying something by printing new shares of stock, the company would be diluting the value of its existing shares, but it isn't -- assuming the asset they're buying is, in fact, worth what they're paying for it. Assuming YouTube is actually worth $1.6 billion, Google's balance sheet will now show an additional $1.6 billion in the assets section and the same amount under stockholders' equity. Think of it this way: if Google had issued $1.6 billion worth of new stock and sold it on the open market for cash, then taken the cash and bought YouTube, Google's balance sheet would look exactly the same as it does. But again, the "if YouTube is really worth that kind of money" is a big if. I was recently looking over the financial statements of a company I used to work for, and noted that in 2002, they had restated their 2001 earnings, taking a loss of approximately $1 billion for "Goodwill/Asset Impairment." That's a geeky way of saying "We figured out that this company we bought really wasn't worth what we paid for it, so we took a hit." If at some point, YouTube proves to be a turkey -- if the millions of videos watched every day don't translate into profit, as they haven't so far -- you might see Google taking a similar charge against earnings in a future year. But I digress.)

What, exactly, is YouTube? Basically, it's just a server farm, with an extremely fat Internet connection that allows it to stream huge amounts of video at people like you and me every day. I hasten to add that I think YouTube is one of the greatest things out there -- I use it a lot, most recently when I ran across some videos of symphony orchestra performances. But as we saw during the Internet bubble of the '90s, cool and great don't necessarily mean profitable.

In any case, I don't get why Google couldn't just promote its own video site -- which is horribly under-promoted at the present time, with just a plain link that says "Video" on the Google home page. Why shell out a billion and a half for something they could do just as easily in-house for a lot less money?

I haven't seen YouTube's financial statements, but it'll be interesting to see how much Google records as "Goodwill" on its balance sheet next year. Goodwill is what my first accounting prof used to call "blue sky" -- it's what you pay for a company over and above what it's really "worth," on paper, in terms of its net assets. When you buy a company because it has a good reputation, a lot of happy customers, and a lot of brand loyalty, you pay extra money -- that's goodwill. I sure hope, for Google's sake, all that goodwill doesn't get ill.

Urb's Blog

Actual photographic proof

2006-10-09T17:36:00.000-07:00

... that I have a BS in Accountancy can be found here. The sheepskin finally arrived in the mail today. So I now have proof!

Urb's Blog

BS at last!

2006-09-24T05:28:00.000-07:00

BS in Accountancy, that is. After three years of blood, toil, tears, and sweat -- taking a few professors' names in vain along the way -- I finally have my degree from Northern Arizona University, as of Wednesday, September 20th. (Technically, the degree shows up as having a "Confer Date" of August 8th -- I guess that's like backdating options or something.)

I finished my classes and handed in the graduation paperwork in mid-July, the week before Meg and I flew out here to Providence to look for an apartment. Why, then, did I not get my degree until late September? Well, I'm not exactly sure, but when I called the Registrar's office on Thursday, they said there had been a personnel change over at the business school (which is where my graduation application sat for two months), and I apparently got lost in the shuffle for awhile.

In any case, however, they informed me that my application was processed, and my degree approved, on Wednesday, and that I have my degree in accounting (I don't know why they call it "Accountancy," since no one uses that term in the real world, except in academic publications such as the Journal of Accountancy.)

Ending my schooling with a long-distance phone call to the Registrar seemed anticlimactic, so I dug out my CD of Elgar's Pomp & Circumstance March #1 and uncrated a CD player to play it on -- I don't know if the neighbors could hear it, but I cranked the volume high enough that they might have. When you graduate in September, the only ceremony you get is the one you do yourself, so that's going to have to suffice.

But... onward and upward. Actually having the degree means I can move forward with my career, er, job search activity. That's going to resume this week.

Urb's Blog

Yay, Stuff!

2006-09-12T17:43:00.000-07:00

But a Bronx cheer to Movers. Yesterday, our apartment changed from rattling-around empty to so full that, as my Aunt Georgia would say, you have to step outside to change your mind. That was courtesy of United Van Lines, who came by at the ungodly hour of around 4:00pm to start unloading our stuff (they didn't get finished until after 11:00 -- I'm sure the neighbors loved that).

This is the second time that Meg and I have hired movers -- when we moved locally in Flagstaff, we did it ourselves. And I must say, having someone else move your stuff is an experience best avoided, if at all possible.

The problem is that your agenda and that of the movers are not closely correlated. In this case, first of all, they didn't show up on the date we were promised, arriving on Monday instead of last Friday.

That part is no big deal, but what's a more serious issue is that the movers don't care about how organized the move is, or where your stuff goes. As in our last move, we designated that some of the items (furniture and boxes -- mostly the latter) should come to our apartment, while others went into storage. And although most things ended up where they were supposed to go, some did not. The piano went to storage, as it was supposed to -- but the piano bench got delivered to the apartment. One of our bookcases, which has removable shelves, was supposed to come here, but it went into storage -- meanwhile, the shelves came here! And when we were dividing up things that were supposed to come up to the apartment and things that were destined to go out to the garage, naturally some items ended up in the wrong place (not trivial when the apartment is on the third floor!).

I was not amused that they broke the fairing on my BMW -- granted, it's a cheap JC Whitney $45 accessory, but nonetheless, they broke it, which they're not supposed to do. They also roughed up a few small pieces of furniture (not too seriously, except in the case of a cheesy little wheeled cart that came apart altogether) and generally didn't take as good care of our things as they should have. Movers, of course, are notorious for breaking things, and I know people who've had much more serious problems -- but nonetheless, we were not particularly happy with the job they did. I don't know if we're going to bother trying to make a damage claim -- probably not, because (a) we didn't have a very thorough inventory of our stuff, and (b) I signed off on the paperwork -- at 11:00 at night, when the movers wanted to get the heck out of here and we wanted the same thing! (What do they think you're going to do -- inspect each item as it comes off the truck? If we'd done that, they'd still be here!)

In any event, onward and upward. The stuff is here, we're going to get it sorted out, and another big item is checked off the to-do list.

Urb's Blog

Back on the East Coast

2006-09-08T15:19:00.000-07:00

I am happy to report that Kafalas.com has arrived here in Providence, RI. We got here yesterday afternoon, after four days on the road and three nights smuggling Bix into Hampton Inns in Oklahoma City, Indianapolis, and Mechanicsburg, PA.

Thus ends our failed experiment of living in Flagstaff, AZ for seven years. I'm working on reactivating the Column™ and devoting a lengthy installment to an examination of why Flagstaff didn't work, but in the meantime, here's a shot of what Arizona looks like in the rearview mirror.

Urb's Blog

Back to Real Bowling

2006-08-23T17:39:00.000-07:00

One of the biggest changes on tap, once Kafalas.com relocates to the Ocean State next month, is going to be a downsizing -- no, don't worry, we're not talking personnel, but a downsizing of bowling balls, from 15 pounds to 2 pounds, 7 ounces (or possibly 2-pounds-6; we're not quite sure yet). I'm planning a serious foray back into the sport of candlepin bowling, which was a major interest -- no, it was the singular focus of my life -- from age 9 until 15-16 or so.

The other day, some public figure or other was talking about having been granted a rare opportunity to "go back and take the road not taken." Well, yours truly is going to try to do the same thing.

One thing I like about candlepin bowling is that it does not suffer from the artificial manipulation of lane conditions that has turned tenpins into a travesty. To give an example of the latter, when our local tenpin house, here in Flagstaff, replaced its old wood lane surfaces with synthetic lanes last fall, scores immediately shot up. Almost all league bowlers found that their averages were now 10-15 pins higher than before.

I hadn't bowled in a league in three years, being otherwise occupied by the NAU College of Business Administration, but since I was pretty much done by this summer, decided to join a summer mixed league, just for fun. And I found that, like most of the locals, my average skyrocketed, too -- despite the long layoff, I was averaging 208 on the easy lane conditions; this despite the fact that even when I had a busy schedule of leagues, practice, and tournaments, the best "book" average I'd ever had was 203. I recorded a 740 series, besting my previous high by more than 25 pins (I'm not sure exactly how many, because I don't remember exactly what my high series was -- I think it was either 712 or 714, something like that).

Roughly halfway through the summer, the lane-oiling machine went kaput, and the boss had to buy another one. Despite the lane mechanic's best efforts to program it with a similar oil pattern to that of the old machine, the pattern has turned out to be much different -- and much more difficult. I haven't managed even a single 600 series on the new pattern (although I'd have done it last night if I'd been able to throw one more strike in the last frame). Everyone's average has been dropping -- which, in my view, is a good thing, because the old pattern was ridiculously easy.

This illustrates the main problem with tenpin bowling these days -- it's all about the oil pattern (and, to some degree, the equipment you're using). Candlepin bowling is a totally different story, because the lanes are not oiled, or at least not in any particular way, and everyone uses pretty much the same equipment. Furthermore, there is no difference between scoring conditions for open, league, and tournament bowling (as in tenpins).

I'm looking forward to getting back into a form of bowling that still has some integrity, as a sport. There are no candlepin houses in Rhode Island, but there are quite a few within an hour's drive. So I'm going to take a shot at it. Wish me luck!

Urb's Blog

Just because Bush is wrong doesn't mean...

2006-08-11T07:44:00.000-07:00

... there are no terrorists. Yesterday's arrest of a bunch of Pakistani Brits by Scotland Yard vindicates the observations, a couple of years ago, of financial journalist Annie Jacobsen:

http://www.womenswallstreet.com/series/series.aspx?cid=9

Basically, Jacobsen wrote that she observed what seemed to be a dry run for a terrorist attack on a jetliner. She watched a bunch of Syrians behaving in a strange, coordinated fashion that looked as if they were reconnoitering an airplane with an eye toward blowing it up. Jacobsen wrote a series of columns about it, received a bit of media attention (including a spot on MSNBC's conservative "Scarborough Country" news/talk show), but was dismissed by most people, including Kafalas.com's liberal friends, as a paranoid, jittery weenie with a touch of racism. The group of Syrians on the plane were supposedly identified as a touring band on their way to a gig in Tucson or some such place.

Well, I'm here to tell you that yesterday's arrests were a vindication of what Jacobsen was saying. Not a vindication that the episode she witnessed was, necessarily, that of a group of terrorists scoping out a plane and trying out an attack procedure -- but a vindication of the assertion that such scoping-out missions have been going on.

Jacobsen's contention was that because of tightened security on airlines, it's tougher to get weapons or explosives on-board than it used to be and that as a result, terrorist groups have gotten smarter and decided to try bringing explosives on-board in the form of components, to be assembled into deadly form on-board by a team. The Russian jet that was blown up last year, and the plot that was revealed yesterday indicate that she was correct.

It may be that the Pakistanis arrested yesterday were not all that close to a successful attempt to blow 10 planes out of the sky, or whatever it was they were supposedly trying to do. If they were still experimenting with test tubes last week, that suggests that they probably didn't have the formula down just yet (and also that they're not as smart as we're giving them credit for being). Nonetheless, there was a threat there, and our friends at Scotland Yard dealt with it. This is a good thing.

Urb's Blog

A house competing against itself?

2006-08-02T08:13:00.000-07:00

The other day, I discovered something that any savvy college student should know by now, but which had somehow escaped my attention: You can sell college textbooks on Amazon.com, eBay, Half.com, and other places and get a lot more money than you'd get by selling them back to the college bookstore.

This is, in itself, no great revelation -- eBay is a great place to turn just about anything into cash, because it lets you reach so many buyers that you're bound to find someone who'll be interested in the item and give you decent money for it. But the one that surprised me was that Amazon does it, with their zShops area.

When you call up a listing for any book on Amazon, they give you a button that says "Sell yours here." If you do that, it gives you an easy way to set up an on-line listing for your used copy of the book.

When you sell a book this way, Amazon takes a cut of the proceeds -- but not a large one. I just listed my old cost accounting textbook for sale, at $20 (it's an obsolete edition), and if it sells, Amazon's commission is only $5.19.

You have to wonder about this business model. In Tom Friedman's excellent book, The World is Flat, he says, "I used to love Amazon.com, until I found out they were selling used copies of my books." Used bookstores, competing with retailers and publishers selling new books, is one thing... but by selling used books on its own site, Amazon is competing against itself. The price of a used accounting textbook is typically much less than that of a new book -- in some cases, not all that much less, but from Amazon's point of view, it's hugely reduced, because they're only taking a small commission. That cost accounting book I just listed sells, new, for $158.20, but you can buy a used copy (this is for a newer edition than the one I'm selling) for $39.95. So Amazon's commission on that book should be around $10, based on what they're offering me for my old book priced at $20.

I'd like to have been a fly on the wall in the executive suite when Amazon decided to implement this policy. Granted, used books are a line of business that's out there, and someone's going to be selling them no matter what you do -- but I'm sure there was some lively debate over whether Amazon should go into that business themselves. After all, how many people are going to pay $158.20 for a new book when they can get a used copy of the same book for $39.95? Perhaps the logic is that Amazon's costs are much lower when they sell used books -- they don't touch the physical book, so there's no shipping-and-handling to worry about -- but still, I'm not sure I'd want to be the executive who advocated doing it.

Urb's Blog

It's my money -- gimme it!

2006-07-25T15:56:00.000-07:00

The other day, I needed to move some money around to cover a check (if you're curious, it was a check for the security deposit and some pro-rated rent on an apartment in Providence, Rhode Island -- yes, it's official: Kafalas.com and its principals are relocating to Providence), so I logged into my bank's Web site and tried to find the "Transfer Funds" choice. I wanted to move some money into my checking account from a CD I have at the same bank.

Well, there is a "Transfer Funds" link on the bank's Web site, but when you go there, you find that it just lets you set up a transfer from an account outside that bank -- or, possibly, from another checking or savings account you might have at the same bank.

That was no good -- I don't have another checking or savings account; I just have the CD. And there's no way to pull money out of the CD and put it in your checking account on the site.

So I tried it by phone. Naturally, this was Sunday afternoon -- but these days, it's a 24/7 world, and I thought it was not unreasonable to expect that I could get customer support, possibly from Bangalore, on a Sunday.

No dice -- although they did have someone on the phone, they couldn't do anything with my CD. Call back after 7:00 a.m. on Monday, they said, for that. Well, how about a cash advance on my credit card, I asked. Sorry, can't help you, they said. You'll have to call your credit-card issuer.

So I tried that. My Visa card has 24-hour customer service, and given my bank routing number, they said sure, they'd take a cash advance on the card and stick it in my checking account -- in 3-5 business days. What's that about, I asked. That's how long it takes, they told me. That's not good enough, I replied, because I've already written this check and need to get some money into my checking account ASAP, so it won't bounce. Sorry, can't help you, they told me, but you can go to an ATM with the card, take out a cash advance, then deposit it in the bank. An option, but a clumsy one, in my opinion, so I didn't want to do that.

So I went to the bank (in the big 25-story bank building in downtown Providence, reportedly the model for the building that Superman "leaps in a single bound" in the original comics) first thing Monday morning and was able to make the transfer the old-fashioned way: by sitting down with one of their customer service staffers and filling out a couple of forms.

But I wondered why it was not possible to make the transaction on-line or by phone. Everything's electronic and instant these days... isn't it? Why couldn't I transfer money from the CD (incurring a small penalty) on the Web site? And why couldn't I take a cash advance on my credit card and have it show up immediately, instead of in 3-5 business days?

I think it's that financial institutions have become so paranoid about identity theft (admittedly a huge problem these days) that the default setting is "Sorry, can't help you" instead of "Right away, sir." Even though there was no evidence, in this case, that I was not who I said I was, my bank and credit-card issuer have both instituted policies under which it is not possible to get your money instantly, despite the technology that should make it not just possible, but easy.

I'm not sure what I think about this. On the one hand, I was really frustrated on Sunday, when I couldn't get at my own money to put it in my checking account (although my bank will cover overdrafts up to a certain amount, because of that CD I have on deposit -- so even if I hadn't been able to move the money at all, the check would not have bounced). But at the same time, I can see the merits of building some delay into the system -- so that if it had been an identity thief instead of the real me, on the Web and phone last Sunday, they wouldn't have been able to clean me out.

Urb's Blog

All finished!

2006-07-17T14:27:00.000-07:00

I've done everything I need to do for my accounting degree. Last Friday was the last day of my internship, and I got the term paper in early (it's not due until August 1, but I figured I'd get it in early because I had the time). So it's almost time to tune up the orchestra for Pomp & Circumstance March No. 1, Take 2 (Take 1 having occurred 21 years ago, which is a scary thought).

It's been a long march, and there was a time, along about last November or so, when I was starting to have doubts as to whether I'd even finish my degree. Perseverance, however, has paid off, and I should have a newly-minted degree by sometime next month. Once I get a couple of forms dropped off at the NAU business school this afternoon, all that remains is to sit by the mailbox and wait for my diploma to arrive.

With that settled, stay tuned for Kafalas.com's upcoming relocation and Long March Back East. Details, I hope, next week!

Urb's Blog

Coincidence... or not?

2006-07-08T16:22:00.000-07:00

Today, I experienced one of those little coincidences -- well, the events happened a week apart, so technically, it's not a coincidence, and I'm not sure what I should call it -- that make people of faith say, "HA! This proves conclusively that there is a God, because there's no possible, conceivable way this could happen just by chance."

Let's rewind back to last Saturday, when I played an early-morning round of golf down at Beaver Creek GC in the Verde Valley. The 16th hole at Beaver Creek is a par-3 of some 157 yards from the white tees; not a particularly difficult hole, and in fact, one that I've parred numerous times, but no pushover, either. I took out my hybrid 5-iron, teed the ball up, and hit a fantastic shot, which scooted up onto the green and ended up some 10 inches southwest of the cup -- that is, just barely left and short. It was so close to an ace that I marked off the distance from edge-of-ball to edge-of-cup on my scorecard, before tapping in for birdie.

OK, fine. So today, again I drove down to Beaver Creek and teed off at around 7:30. Didn't have a great round, but on the 16th hole, once again, I used the 5-hybrid, again the pin was in an accessible location near the front-left of the green, and again, I hit a good shot (although as it left the tee, I thought, "Not as good as last week!"). I saw the ball start left, then fade back toward the pin, but I lost sight of it as it got close to the green.

When I got there, I found that it was, once again, within tap-in range. I measured it and marked the distance on my scorecard, and as far as I could tell -- within the accuracy of measuring with a piece of cardboard -- the ball was exactly the same distance from the cup as last week! This time, though, it was even closer to being an ace, because it was headed for home. My pitch mark was some 3-1/2 feet short of the pin, and the ball came to rest on a line aimed dead-center from the pitch mark to the center of the cup. Had the green not been quite so soft from last night's rain, I'd have put a 1 on my scorecard.

I'm not sure what this means. Possibly nothing much -- I do not now believe and never really have believed that there is a "higher power" up there, looking down on us -- certainly not one that takes a great deal of interest in the fortunes of a bogey golfer. A couple of virtually-identical brushes-with-ace are probably not going to convince me there is such a being. Still, it's one of those "things that make you go 'hmmmmmmm,'" ¿no?

Urb's Blog

Youth movement? What youth movement?

2006-07-03T19:43:00.000-07:00

Reports of a changing-of-the-guard on the LPGA Tour are, it is safe to say, greatly exaggerated. Despite the influx of teenage phenoms, young Korean stars, and new talent from every quarter, the three major championships contested so far this year have all gone to veterans: Karrie Webb won the Kraft-Nabisco (the event most of us still refer to as the Dinah Shore) in March, Se Ri Pak won the LPGA Championship a few weeks ago, and today, Annika Sorenstam took the US Open title.

Those of us who have had about enough of the overkill publicity surrounding certain young stars take a certain amount of satisfaction that experience still counts for something out there. Photogenic teenagers with game certainly make for good TV -- and good publicity for the tour -- but it would be a shame if the sport turned into tennis, where you're washed up and put out to pasture by 30, for the most part. In golf, this is not likely to happen, simply because the game is not suited to people who are young, impatient, and of poor judgment. I keep thinking back to some words of wisdom from an early golf mentor of mine: "Golf is a game of patience," he told me. Having grown up in Jamaica, where cricket is a popular sport and six-hour rounds of golf are not unheard of, this guy knew a thing or two about patience -- but in any setting, his point was well taken. To put a good round or tournament together, you have to play one shot at a time, forget the bad shot you just made, and don't try to make up a whole bunch of strokes at once. Keep grinding until you've got a good score on the card, is what my mentor was getting at. And even at my humble bogey-golf station in life, I'm finding that although my swing hasn't changed much in the past 10 years, my game is getting better gradually over time.

As far as the tour is concerned, it's always been true that players tend to peak in their 30s. This will undoubtedly prove the case with most of today's teenage phenoms on the LPGA Tour. It's certainly been the case with Webb and Sorenstam, and may turn out that way with Pak, who is only 28, despite having been on tour since 1998. In any case, the veterans have shown that they can still teach the kids a thing or two.

Urb's Blog

Hara-kiri at Winged Foot

2006-06-19T06:42:00.000-07:00

Much has been, and will be, made of Phil Mickelson's implosion on #18 in yesterday's US Open final round. But the guy you really have to feel sad about is Colin Montgomerie. He plays great all week, except for one bad stretch of holes at the beginning of Saturday -- then blows it all with one ill-advised change of club while standing out in the 18th fairway, waiting for the green to clear. All he has to do is make one passable iron shot from a perfect lie in the fairway, and a career's worth of frustration is expunged. But no....

Urb's Blog

Net Neutrality -- will Congress never learn?

2006-06-14T20:46:00.000-07:00

The debate over proposed "Net neutrality" legislation is another example of a situation where Congress should sit on its backside and let market forces handle it. Will they never learn that they don't know how to regulate technology industries? Time after time, Congress enacts well-meaning legislation that ends up having unintended consequences, and a few years down the road, a whole series of "regulatory reform" negotiations have to take place, to undo the damage the original regulations did, and get back to letting the market operate.

In the case of "two-tiered" charges for Internet content, I say let providers charge higher rates for bandwidth hogs, if they want. If customers don't like it, there are a lot of ISPs out there, and people can switch.

Once again, Congress, don't touch it -- you'll just break it.

Urb's Blog

Urbie the card-carrying member

2006-06-12T06:27:00.000-07:00

Of the ACLU, that is. What?, I hear you asking. Has the Urbster lost his marbles and actually joined an organization he once derided as the American Criminal Lovers' Union? Yes, it's true -- that I've joined, that is; not that I've lost my marbles.

That's because in recent years, I have become increasingly alarmed and/or disgusted with the way the Federal government has slowly turned its back on our history and the Constitution. The last straw, or straws, came in the form of the Bush Administration's warrantless-wiretap and IP-snooping schemes, which will do nothing to stop terrorism while doing a lot to give King George the ability to gain information on us that he has no business gaining.

The ACLU has just filed a lawsuit that hopes to end the NSA's warrantless-wiretap program. The administration, of course, claims that the suit is a grave threat to national security. Well, I say the Bush Administration is a far bigger threat to national security.

So last night, I surfed over to ACLU.org and signed up for a year's membership. I'm not entirely on-board with everything the ACLU stands for -- in particular, I do not agree that illegal searches and seizures should result in criminals getting off the hook.

I'm currently doing an internship at a law firm that does a lot of criminal defense work -- and the party line is that when a drug mule gets pulled over with 100 pounds of weed in the trunk, it's considered a "victory" if the mule gets off scot-free because the cops pulled him over for the wrong reason. I do not agree with this philosophy -- I think if the cops pulled the mule over for the wrong reason, that should be grounds for a second legal proceeding to punish the cop, as is the case in some countries (Canada?), while the criminal should still be punished.

But I digress. The ACLU is putting its money where its mouth is and standing up to the Bush Administration. This alone is enough reason to put philosophical differences aside and join up.

Urb's Blog

Kulick makes the show

2006-06-04T20:09:00.000-07:00

Today was the final day of the Professional Bowlers' Association Tour Trials -- the PBA's tour qualifying tournament -- and in what should be, but is unfortunately not likely to be, front-page news on every sports section in the country, a woman was among the 10 bowlers earning full-time exempt status for next season's tour schedule. The bowler in question, Kelly Kulick of Union, NJ, won the 2003 US Women's Open and was a rising star on the PWBA women's tour before it folded that year.

I used to be a big fan of the PWBA, when they were televised every week. The PBA tour is dominated by power players who have the strength and technique to put a million revolutions on the ball, hook it out of the house, and bludgeon the pins into submission. With today's equipment, men's bowling has become such a power game that it doesn't make a very good spectator sport, as far as I'm concerned. The women, by contrast, are mostly finesse players, who play a game that bears more resemblance to that of mortals like me, except that they're a lot better at it. Kelly Kulick, however, has the versatility to play whatever game the lane conditions require -- she can go fairly straight up the boards, or she can stand left and crank it with the big boys. As for whether she can compete on the PBA tour week in and week out, well, we'll find out next season. I wouldn't bet against her!

Urb's Blog

The Baddest of Them All?

2006-06-02T07:48:00.000-07:00

Yesterday's Quinnipiac University poll showing that respondents rate George W. Bush the worst President since 1945 raises some interesting questions. Here at Kafalas.com Central, we've pondered the question of who was worse: Bush or Jimmy Carter. Personally, I'd say those two are head and shoulders above (or below) the rest, in terms of bad Presidents in my lifetime. As for who was actually worse, though, that's a tough one.

Carter was most notable for stagflation, unemployment, and in the foreign policy arena, the Panama Canal treaty and the Iran hostage rescue attempt (which my dad dubbed the Jimmy Carter Desert Classic). His smarmy speeches about the "national malaise" afflicting the country -- the main symptom of which being his unpopularity -- exemplified how incompetent and out-of-touch he was. Although I was a youngster at the time, I formed an opinion, which I still hold, that his actions in office were more blatantly political than those of any other President -- he was not concerned with doing the right thing so much as with appearing to do the right thing, in order to cultivate voters. However, even in this regard, he was completely inept, as was revealed when he got clobbered in the 1980 election.

The Quinnipiac poll lists Clinton as the third-worst, behind Nixon. This is most likely the result of the bluenoses who rate him a bad President because of what happened under his desk in the Oval Office. As far as I'm concerned, that had nothing to do with his performance as President -- and since my income tripled while he was in office, what more need be said?

But it's pretty clear that GWB has been the worst we've seen. That was readily apparent since before he even took office -- clearly lacking the qualifications, he was anointed as the GOP candidate well before any actual voters had a chance to register their opinions at the ballot box. On-the-job training was supposed to make up for his inexperience -- but as we've seen, it didn't work very well. Basically, there isn't a single success story since he took office. Obviously, Iraq is the big disaster -- the whole world sympathized with us after 9/11, and he's managed to turn it right around to where everyone hates us, and justifiably so. (There's a curious parallel with his father's remarkable feat of losing the 1992 election only a little over a year after having enormous popularity in the wake of the first Gulf war.)

On the domestic front, maybe the economy has had a lukewarm recovery over the past year or two -- but that's not his doing; it has a lot more to do with the private sector doing what it does best -- innovating and creating jobs on its own.

Meanwhile, the administration treats the Constitution like "just a piece of paper," with its blatant attacks on the privacy of you and me. Have you heard the latest one? Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and FBI director Robert Mueller met with representatives of several ISPs last week to demand that they record their customers' Web-surfing activity and keep those records for two years. The idea, they say, is that somehow, a record of which Web sites were visited from which IP addresses would help them track Al-Qaeda.

The Bush administration has come up with some howlers in recent weeks, but this is the best one yet. Just exactly how do they think they're going to get useful information out of these records? Do they think terrorists use the same IP addresses they were using two years ago? Their Web sites change on an hourly basis -- and, if they're as smart as I assume they are, they don't have static IP addresses, either.

The other explanation for this initiative is that it would help track the spread of child pornography. As I've noted before, the Bush Administration's prurient obsession with child pornography is troubling, to say the least -- why they spend so much time thinking about it is anyone's guess. But in any case, using it as an excuse to attempt such a massive invasion of privacy is inexcusable.

All in all, it's hard to disagree with the results of the Quinnipiac poll -- at least as far as the booby prize is concerned.

Urb's Blog

Pass a bill -- any bill!

2006-05-30T07:41:00.000-07:00

The Capitol Hill fight between the House and Senate (actually, I should say "among" the House, Senate, and White House) over the various immigration bills currently under consideration is a perfect illustration of why I say a do-nothing government would be better than the one we have.

On issue after issue, legislators feel that their job is to pass something, anything that will convince voters that they've "addressed" a particular issue. What we end up with is a law code the size of a Manhattan phone book, that still does not do much to improve the state of our society.

The Houston Chronicle notes that "Republicans are feeling the political heat to finish an immigration bill before the November election." Not wanting to be left out, the Democrats and the White House are also feeling some heat on the same issue. Pick up the paper, and Congressman after Congressman, and Senator after Senator, keeps saying, "My constituents are telling me that we need to pass a bill before we go home."

The problem is that all of these bills stink. I have yet to see a proposal that will actually accomplish anything, in terms of changing the status quo on illegal immigration. A new fence won't do it -- people who want to get in will still find ways in. They'll cut holes in, climb over, burrow under, or pay people to take them around any fence we build along the Mexican border. A convoluted process to allow illegal immigrants to gain citizenship won't accomplish much, either -- as I've argued before, I think most employers and workers won't participate unless you can show them a clear benefit from doing so. Telling illegal workers to go home? That's so ridiculous as to need no discussion.

But this is typical of how Congress operates these days. (And by "Congress," I mean essentially any governing body -- state legislatures, county boards of supervisors, and city councils are not exempt from my condemnation, nor are individual officials.) They see a problem, they pass a bill. The bill doesn't fix the problem, so they pass another one. And another, and another, ad infinitum.

What few seem to grasp -- and talk about your blinding flashes of the obvious -- is that we cannot govern our way to perfection. The world is imperfect. Many times, legislative attempts to make it better only increase the cost -- of living, of doing business, of everything -- while not fixing the problem they were intended to fix.

This is why I voted a mostly-Libertarian ticket in the last election. It's not really that I'm that much of a free-market, laissez-faire person in principle -- it's more that the quality of our government, its competence, has reached such a low level that on many issues, it would be better to do nothing and let society muddle through. Really -- "I'm from Washington, and I'm here to help" is not what we need to hear right now. Legislators, don't touch anything -- you'll just break it.

Urb's Blog

What will they think of next?

2006-05-29T12:19:00.000-07:00

For decades, the environmental movement has had an underlying socio-political backdrop. Basically, what it amounts to is that they can't stand the big cars, suburbs, consumer products, agribusiness, and overall consumption level of post-war America (and the industrial world generally). So they keep coming up with "crises" that threaten the destruction of the world as we know it, unless we change our ways.

And every time the "crisis" is averted -- or overcome through technology and, in some cases, corrective legislation -- the greens are back to square one and have to come up with another impending "crisis," in another attempt to shut down what they perceive as the excesses of an affluent economy.

In the 1960s, it was the Silent Spring movement, an effort to ban pesticides in response to the book of that name. Pesticides were (and are) a legitimate problem, and in reaction to the environmental damage they were causing, government and industry made great strides to fix the problem. Crisis averted.

In the 1970s, it was the "energy crisis." A combination of misguided government policies led to oil and gasoline shortages, as well as stagflation. This was supposed to herald "the end of cheap energy," and we were all going to have to stop burning gas, end suburban sprawl, and generally mend our wasteful ways. As it turned out, high oil prices spurred exploration, and Washington bribed Saudi Arabia (with military sales) to pump more oil and undercut its OPEC allies. Once again, crisis averted -- and greens frustrated, as their predictions of doom once again failed to come true.

Now, at the dawn of the 21st century, they're all hot and bothered about "global warming." Finally, they think, we face a crisis that we can't clean, drill, and bribe our way out of. Presumably, there is no way to cut down on our profligate carbon dioxide emissions -- which, they claim, are causing the Earth to heat up in ways that will have disastrous consequences for civilization and ecology.

I've written enough skeptical pieces on global warming that I'm not going to address that subject today -- who wants to sound like Urbie One Note? Also, I reiterate that, as an old geography major, I do not dismiss the idea of global warming entirely. It is certainly possible that human CO2 emissions are affecting global climate; the evidence is not nearly as clear as Al Gore and his crowd have convinced the general public it is -- but the idea that we are causing some warming cannot be ruled out.

However, much as it pains me to say this, the greens may be mistaken in the idea that they've finally found the key to shutting down industial society. That's because once again, the capitalist market economy is smarter than they think. There may, indeed, be ways to cut down our CO2 emissions without driving less. Exhibit A: a new Volkswagen engine that incorporates both a supercharger and a turbocharger. (For those not mechanically inclined, a supercharger is a blower connected to the crankshaft of an engine via a belt, much like a fan belt, that forces more fuel-air mixture into the cylinders than would get in naturally because of air pressure. A turbocharger is a similar device, but instead of working off the crankshaft, it uses exhaust gas flow to drive the blower.) According to Car & Driver, the 1390-cc VW "twincharger" engine is able to put out as much horsepower (around 170 bhp at 6000 RPM) as a much larger engine but with lower CO2 emissions and fuel consumption.

Another way of cutting down CO2 emissions -- albeit one that, for now, is less attractive for other reasons -- is to burn ethanol instead of gasoline. When President Bush touts the benefits of ethanol, he's just blowing smoke, for the most part, and trying to deflect public hostility derived from his coziness with the oil industry -- but ethanol does point the way to another method of decreasing our CO2 output. There are many economic and logistical problems to be addressed, but the energy industry is spending a lot of R&D money working on it.

Neither of these ideas is going to result in a huge reduction in CO2 emissions overnight, but they suggest that the green dream of abolishing capitalism through environmental "crisis" simply is not going to come true. They can come up with one crisis after another -- but each time, we figure out a way to answer their gripes while keeping the economy going. Once the auto and power industries figure out how to make cars and power plants that don't put out much CO2, the enviros will have to come up with something else to complain about. Wonder what it'll be?

Urb's Blog

Arrogant execs get comeuppance

2006-05-26T07:42:00.000-07:00

So Ken Lay and Jeff Skilling are busted. Here's hoping they get an extended stay at Club Fed when their sentencing date (September 11th, just to make sure they have a bad day) rolls around.

What kills me is that they and their high-priced legal team rested their hopes on the defense that Enron was a sound company brought down, somehow, by a wave of short-selling and some hostile reporting from the Wall St. Journal. If you're running a sound business that's moving product and making money, exactly how much damage can short sellers and bad press do? Can they cause customers to stop buying what you make? Can they cause your bank account to disappear?

I'd say Ken and Jeff underestimated the intelligence of a jury of their peers. One can only hope that other executives are paying attention.

Urb's Blog

Clueless Congress, Part II

2006-05-25T08:25:00.000-07:00

Further evidence that our elected representatives in Washington are off their collective rocker can be found in the immigration bill just passed by the Senate, which will be ineffective and probably counterproductive. (The bill, that is, not the Senate -- although "ineffective" and "counterproductive" aren't bad ways of describing the latter.)

The New York Times offers this description of the bill:

Under the Senate agreement, illegal immigrants who have lived in the United States for five years or more, about seven million people, would eventually be granted citizenship if they remained employed, passed background checks, paid fines and back taxes, and enrolled in English classes.

Illegal immigrants who have lived here two to five years, about three million people, would have to leave the country briefly and receive a temporary work visa before returning, as a guest worker. Over time, they would be allowed to apply for permanent residency and ultimately citizenship.

Illegal immigrants who have been here less than two years, about one million people, would be required to leave the country altogether. They could apply for the guest worker program, but they would not be guaranteed acceptance in it.

The legislation would also require employers to use a new employment verification system that would distinguish between legal and illegal workers. In addition, it would impose stiff fines for violations by employers, create legal-immigrant documents resistant to counterfeiting, increase the number of Border Patrol agents and mandate other enforcement measures.

Consider what this is saying. If you've been in this country for five years -- presumably, this means you're pretty well established in the American economy -- you get to apply for citizenship, which, according to news reports, will take about 11 years to be approved. Well, so what? What difference is it going to make, either for the country or for the immigrant individual, if the latter becomes a citizen or not? In some abstract sense, it might make people feel better -- but in terms of substance, I can't see the difference. My first consulting client, back in 1991, was a Swiss national who had become a very successful businessman in this country and abroad, but had found there was no need to become an American citizen. Why should a Mexican laborer think differently?

As for the people here less than five years, who will be "required" (I say that in quotes, because in order to be required to do anything, they first have to be identified) to go home "briefly" and apply for a work visa, or if here less than two years, have to go home for good... well, who's going to own up to that? People who are here illegally in the first place are, by definition, lacking verified documentation of when they came in. When the INS raids a workplace to try and identify illegal aliens, they're all going to say, "Oh, sí, I've been here for more than five years, so I get to stay, ¿no?" How many, I ask you, are going to admit to being recent arrivals and thus subject to being kicked out of the country?

This whole bill is just political grandstanding. It will accomplish nothing -- there may be a few longtime foreign workers who will sign up for citizenship, but overall, it won't have any effect on the inflow of workers across the border.

Which, as I've argued before, is really not such a bad thing. Our economy is telling us that it needs more low-end labor. We need people to pick vegetables -- and also to mow lawns, build houses, and do all kinds of other manual-labor tasks. This is exactly what happened 100 years ago, when people like my grandparents found they were having trouble making ends meet in Greece and came here to make a life for themselves -- and to help build the American economy into the powerhouse it is today.

Urb's Blog

Clueless Congress

2006-05-22T09:16:00.000-07:00

Last Thursday, the US House of Representatives voted to continue a quarter-century-old ban on oil and natural gas drilling in roughly 85% of the country's coastal waters from Alaska to New England.

This is the same Congress that, in recent weeks, has been throwing a temper tantrum over the price of gasoline, accusing oil companies of "price gouging," and proposing all kinds of stupid legislative ideas that would end up making gas prices go higher, not lower (or, in the case of price controls, would lead to shortages like we had in the '70s).

If we're going to "do something" about the price of gas, someone needs to make some tough choices here. Either allow the oil companies to increase the supply, or stop using so much gas. It has to be one or the other.

By continuing the ban on offshore drilling, Congress has told us in no uncertain terms that it has no intention of increasing the supply of gas. Well, they're not likely to do anything to decrease the demand, either. So we're left with no action, and with $3.00 gas.

This is not in itself a bad thing. The price of gas is exactly where it should be -- where the supply and demand curves meet. But the next time you see your Congressman grandstanding on TV, fulminating about "price gouging" and conspiracy theories, remember all the roadblocks Congress puts in the way of allowing the oil industry to do what it would like to do -- namely, meet the demand for its products that we consumers exhibit every day.

Urb's Blog

Internship in progress!

2006-05-20T08:34:00.000-07:00

I have begun my accounting internship at a small law firm in Flagstaff. Why an accounting internship at a law firm?, I hear you asking. Well, it turns out that there's a lot of number-crunching to be done there, as in any corporation. This was my first week on the job, and I jumped right in, doing some bank reconciliations and getting up to speed on the software they use to track... pretty much whatever goes on in the business, both in terms of practice and on the accounting end.

On Thursday, grades were posted for spring classes, and I am happy to report that I made it through the semester with an A and two Bs -- the latter included Accounting 455, which regular readers will recall had caused me no end of travail through the '05-06 academic year. In any case, it's over and done with, as are all the other requirements for my degree except the internship and my "capstone" strategic management class, which will run from June 5th until July 3rd.

Urb's Blog

Jazz musicians: look in the mirror!

2006-05-19T08:25:00.000-07:00

A frequent lament among jazz musicians these days is that people aren't attending their performances. There's a pervasive attitude that if they can't find an audience, it's someone else's fault. Generally, they place the blame on the recording industry (for placing too much emphasis on big-bucks pop stars), the public schools (for not teaching enough music), or the government (for not spending enough money on subsidies for the arts).

I say the problem -- if it is indeed a problem -- lies with the artists themselves. Jazz -- never a very popular art form to begin with, or at least not in the past 60 years -- has become an abstract, irrelevant art form, or at least one that thumbs its nose at the idea that it should try to appeal to people who are not musicians themselves. You've either got free jazz (so-called because no one will pay you to play it) or obsolete jazz that merely rehashes music from 1959. Why should people go out to hear either one of those? As I discussed in my column on Henry Pleasants awhile back, if you stop caring whether your music appeals to listeners... well, pretty soon, you're not going to have any listeners!

This isn't to say that there aren't still a lot of great jazz musicians out there, playing great music. The common thread among these musicians is that their music can be appreciated or understood at more than one level -- they appeal to the musician and non-musician alike.

But complaints about the lack of a jazz audience are a mere cop-out. If you're not drawing a crowd, maybe that means you're not playing the right kind of music. Much as it pains me to have to state the obvious, jazz is not the only kind of good music out there. So if jazz isn't drawing a crowd, go play something else. At the risk of repeating myself, Bela Fleck, Edgar Meyer, and other bluegrass-derived musicians play to full houses of enthusiastic fans. The stuff they play isn't watered-down popular music, either -- it's technical, advanced music that also happens to be listenable.

If jazz musicians can't make their music listenable, it's their own fault. The solution to the problem isn't more money thrown at music education (although that would be a good thing), nor is it to tear down the recording industry, nor is it to increase government arts funding. The solution is to find ways to make good music that people are interested in hearing.

What language barrier?

2006-05-16T20:22:00.000-07:00

With all the bluster about immigration, legal and illegal, in Washington these days, and the need to "reform" the process of becoming an American, it's hard to decide which proposal is the worst. But my personal favorite is the idea that immigrants should be required to learn English in order to be allowed to live and work here.

Of all the politically correct orthodoxy we have, the most correct seems to be the idea that you have to be fluent in English to be successful in this country. This is simple ignorance of our country's history.

My grandparents came over from Greece in the early 20th century. My grandfather was literate in Greek, and with some effort, learned to read, write, and speak English fairly well. My grandmother, who had not learned how to read in Greece, never became very fluent in English (and as she got old, she forgot a lot of the English she had once known, as far as I could tell), nor was she able to read very well. But this in no way impeded her ability to become a functioning, productive member of American society. She raised six kids, worked in one capacity or another as needed, and basically lived the American Dream as a first-generation immigrant.

This is typical of the pattern in immigrant families; the first generation speak their native language, while their descendants grow up as English-speaking Americans. So why should the 21st century be any different from the 20th, in this regard? If today's immigrants are fluent in some other language (say, Spanish), why is it such a big deal that they learn English? Past generations of immigrants simply have not found the language barrier a significant problem.

I say the English-for-the-immigrants fatwa is nothing but racism and xenophobia. If Mexicans can come here, work productively as part of our economy, and function perfectly well using Spanish, ¿what's the problem? Why is it any different from the situation with Chinese, Polish, or Greek immigrants of earlier eras?

Urb's Blog

Changing the way Al-Q talks to the world

2006-05-15T07:17:00.000-07:00

The most idiotic thing about the whole NSA phone-records scandal is one that I haven't seen covered at all in the mainstream press. It doesn't take a genius to figure out that the Bush Administration has probably been spying on us for some time -- and if you're as smart as our friends at Al-Qaeda undoubtedly are, they didn't wait until USA Today broke the story to assume that their phone calls were probably being tracked. No, that's not the idiotic part. The idiotic part is that all the landline and cell phone records in the world are not going to help identify terrorist activity.

In all likelihood, Osama Bin Laden and his friends are not now, and have not been for some time, using the regular phone system. The phone records turned over to the NSA probably don't contain anything useful in the way of terrorist-tracking data.

I have three cousins, sisters who live in far-flung parts of the world. One lives here in the continental U.S., a second lives in Guam, and the third one lives in Norway. You'd think this would mean they'd rack up huge phone bills, staying in touch with each other on a daily basis. But these days, not so -- they've all got phone numbers on an Internet phone service like Vonage or Skype, which allows them to talk as much as they want without being charged for the time.

But what's more important is that it also allows them to have phone numbers in any area code they want -- I'm not sure how they've got it set up, but I think they all have numbers in the 617 area code (Boston), because most of our extended family lives in that area.

So what happens if George Bush's snoops look up these phone records for calls between Guam, the U.S., and Norway? All they see is a whole bunch of calls that appear to be from one Boston phone to another.

My guess is that Al-Qaeda is doing the same thing. So when you hear George say that "We're using data-mining techniques to identify patterns of calls, find out when there are a lot of calls between the U.S. and Pakistan," etc., don't believe them. If a terrorist in this country calls one in Pakistan, it's going to show up in the phone records as looking like a call from Boston to Boston, or from Austin to Austin (if I were a terrorist, I'd get a phone number in Texas, just to stick it to the White House).

This whole privacy-invading, data-mining fishing expedition by the Bush Administration isn't just illegal. It's also a big waste of time and money, and it isn't going to turn up anything useful. Because the bad guys aren't using the regular phone system to begin with.

urbie

Onward and upward!

2006-05-14T17:51:00.000-07:00

(Note: My regular blog is not working for the time being, because the Web hosting provider changed the name of a server without telling us, thereby breaking some scripts that we can't figure out how to fix for the time being. Until we get that sorted out, I'm using this space... ed.)

I am happy to report that the spring semester has finally come to a close, and that I survived intact. My rematch with Accounting 455 ("Live from Caesar's Palace, it's Kafalas-Wilburn II: This Time, We're Serious. $39.95 ONLY ON DIRECTV PAY-PER-VIEW!) turned out to be a success in the end, as I managed a B -- and I've never been so proud of a B in my academic life!

So that's done. All that's left is a summer "capstone" business-management class and a tax internship at a local law firm, and it'll be time to tune up the orchestra for Pomp & Circumstance March #2. Well, metaphorically at least -- NAU doesn't do anything in the way of ceremony for students who graduate in the summer. Or, that is, they do -- but what they do is let you put on the cap 'n gown and walk in the spring commencement exercises, which were held this weekend. Maybe I'm getting superstitious in my old age, but I felt it would be bad luck to commence before I was actually finished with the degree, so I passed on the spring exercises.

But in any case, we're getting close to the ultimate finish line, as far as NAU business school is concerned.