Uttishtha Bharata

"Man is supreme. The world is his field of play. World problems cannot defeat a man truly intelligent and well-disciplined in himself. Our youth must realize this and start living the life of preparedness to strive diligently and accomplish great and useful achievements for the generations to come. Actions, which have not the spirit of service about them, the sevabhava- if the Yagna spirit is not in the community - then all activities, however noble-looking they may be, can in the end bring about only sorrows and calamities.

Thus through action with the right mental attitude, "Awake Arise O Bharata!"(Uttishtha Bharata). This is the tireless call of the Geeta not only to the Pandava Prince of the Mahabharata, but to man at all times, in all climes, belonging to all races, religions and cultures.

The term Bharata denotes Arjuna, the descendant of the ancient King Bharat. Our country is called Bharat not merely because of this ancient King. The Rishis chose this name for its very word meaning. "Bha" in Sanskrit stands for Light, illumination, resplendence. Hence, Bhaskara - Sun; Prabha - Light, Prabhat - Dawn, Bhanu - Sun, etc. Ratah means "one who revels in". Thus Bha+Ratah means "One who revels in the Light of wisdom" This country stands for a life of dynamic activity in the clear light of true wisdom. Spiritual India, Bharat, has no boundaries - she sways her divine sceptical over world. Wherever there be one who lives courageously in the Light of Wisdom, stretching himself to reach the Supreme, he is a Bharateeya, a true Indian. Are you a true Bharateeya? Have you the courage to live your convictions? Do you live a life of no compromises? Are you straightforward, honest and heroic enough to reject corrupt and immoral ways? Are you constantly and silently fighting down your lower urges and vulgar passions? Do you consider the destiny of your nation and its people more sacred than your own personal safety and security? Then you are a Bharateeya. Are you awake? "

47 days

On August 5, 2008, uber ultra-runner Karl Meltzer set off on the biggest race of his life. His challenge: to run the entire length of the 2,174-mile Appalachian Trail in less than 47 days. Definitely daunting. Absolutely grueling. Probably insane. But when he does it, he’ll rule the AT as the guy who conquered it, all of it, the fastest on two feet. This is going to be Man vs. Nature, Man vs. Self, Man vs. Clock – and it’s going to be good.

http://www.whereskarl.com/

corruption, contracts, marriage, society

Random ramblings on corruption, trust, marriage. The goal of this post is to not make any sense. Mindful mindlessness! Or is it mindless mindfulness? :)

Corruption

If we take our contemporary usage, corruption indicates a 'loss of integrity' – whether of individuals or of your database.

How do we evaluate corruption in different cultures?

So I will try to place before you the ideal. In each nation, man or woman represents an ideal consciously or unconsciously being worked out. The individual is the external expression of an ideal to be embodied. The collection of such individuals is the nation, which also represents a great ideal; towards that it is moving. And, therefore, it is rightly assumed that to understand a nation you must first understand its ideal, for each nation refuses to be judged by any other standard than its own.

Evaluate within the same cultural standard.

A person taking a bribe in India is not corrupt. He delivers on his word. That is integrity. 

...... those who take the bribes do keep their word and deliver the goods. In the absence of legally enforceable contracts, the relation of corruption can flourish only on condition that there is impeccable integrity among the corrupted. This integrity is of an ‘impeccable’ sort because (a) there are no other ‘witnesses’ to the act of corruption outside the participants and (b) there is no need or possibility for any kind of legal mechanism to enforce the ‘agreement’. Corruption as a social phenomenon is possible if and only if both parties impeccably observe the ethical rule of keeping the promises. 

In Indic Traditions, a person who breaks his word is corrupt. 

A certain degree of trust is required for any system to work. The corruption that we see in India persists percisely because of the tremendous trust built into the system based on Indic Traditions - that a person delivers on his word.

Every functional system needs trust. Any form of relationship needs trust. Systems are built on relationships.  Trust takes a long time to build and is broken by one inconsistent act. The so-called corrupt structures in India - have gone through the trust building phase. They can't be broken.

Words are contracts in India. No legalese is required. The social structures ensure that promises are kept.

Question: how does one build broken trust?

Trust in the West is built/enforced by legal contracts or regulation. Words are NOT to be trusted. Marriages have pre-nups, marriage contracts and the all powerful Govt enforces alimony and child-support. Negative enforcement - a system built on NOT trusting each other. This tries to keep marriages alive, with not much success.

You Western people are individualistic. I want to do this thing because I like it; I will elbow every one. Why? Because I like to. I want my own satisfaction, so I marry this woman. Why? Because I like her. This woman marries me. Why? Because she likes me. There it ends. She and I are the only two persons in the whole, infinite world; and I marry her and she marries me -- nobody else is injured, nobody else responsible.

Your Johns and your Janes may go into the forest and there they may live their lives; but when they have to live in society, their marriage means a tremendous amount of good or evil to us. Their children may be veritable demons -- burning, murdering, robbing, stealing, drinking, hideous, vile.

The West is individualistic. They hold the pursuit of temporary individual happiness in high esteem. The feeling of being in love.

We are married sometimes when children. Why? Because the caste says: if they have to be married anyway without their consent, it is better that they are married very early, before they have developed this love: if they are allowed to grow up apart, the boy may like some other girl, and the girl some other boy, and then something evil will happen; and so, says the caste, stop it there. I do not care whether my sister is deformed, or good - looking, or bad - looking: she is my sister, and that is enough; he is my brother, and that is all I need to know. So they will love each other. You may say, "Oh! they lose a great deal of enjoyment -- those exquisite emotions of a man falling in love with a woman and a woman falling in love with a man. This is a sort of tame thing, loving each other like brothers and sisters, as though they have to." So be it; but the Hindu says, "We are socialistic. For the sake of one man's or woman's exquisite pleasure we do not want to load misery on hundreds of others."

There they are -- married. The wife comes home with her husband; that is called the second marriage. Marriage at an early age is considered the first marriage, and they grow up separately with women and with their parents. When they are grown, there is a second ceremony performed, called a second marriage. And then they live together, but under the same roof with his mother and father. 

What happens to the feeling of being in-love? (let us, for the moment, ignore whether it is love, or what is love)

... Alas, it was but an illusion by which we were tricked into by signing our names on the dotted line, for better or for worse. No wonder so many have come to curse marriage and the partner whom they once loved. After all, if we were deceived, we have a right to be angry. Did we really have the "real" thing? 

The western society has no vested interest in marriages, add to it the pursuit of in-love experience, resulting in: Forty percent of first marriages, sixty percent of second marriages and 75% of third marriages end in divorce. 

The in-love experience does not focus on our own growth nor on the growth and development of the other person. Rather, it gives us the sense that we have arrived.

Those who are in pursuit of the in-love experience are setting themselves up for major trouble. Its only gonna get worse each time!

Some channel deepening seems called for

"What’s new?" is an interesting and broadening eternal question, but one which, if pursued exclusively, results only in an endless parade of trivia and fashion, the silt of tomorrow. I would like, instead, to be concerned with the question "What is best?", a question which cuts deeply rather than broadly, a question whose answers tend to move the silt downstream. There are eras of human history in which the channels of thought have been cut too deeply and no change was possible, and nothing ever happened, and "best" was a matter of dogma, but that is not the situation now. Now the stream of our common consciousness seems to be obliterating its own banks, losing its central direction and purpose, flooding the lowlands, disconnecting and isolating the highlands and to no particular purpose other than wasteful fulfillment of its own internal momentum. Some channel deepening seems called for.

Zen and  The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

new year, new beginning

We must learn the elements of our being, the blood that courses in our veins; we must have faith in that blood and what it did in the past; and out of that faith and consciousness of past greatness, we must build an India yet greater than what she has been. There have been periods of decay and degradation. I do not attach much importance to them; we all know that. Such periods have been necessary. A mighty tree produces a beautiful ripe fruit. That fruit falls on the ground, it decays and rots, and out of that decay springs the root and the future tree, perhaps mightier than the first one. This period of decay through which we have passed was all the more necessary. Out of this decay is coming the India of the future; it is sprouting, its first leaves are already out; and a mighty, gigantic tree, the Urdhvamula, is here, already beginning to appear; and it is about that that I am going to speak to you.(Swami Vivekanda - Vol III, 285 - 286)

Most of us know the following verses from the Gita that begins with "Yadaa Yadaa hi dharmasya" and ends with "sambhavaami Yuge Yuge." Permit me to give a rough translation of these four lines for the sake of this discussion: "Whenever Dharma begins to wane and Adharma waxes, which happens in each Yuga; To protect the good and punish the wicked, and to re-establish dharma, I fashion myself."

You also know how most have been taught to interpret these verses: Krishna's *avataara* occurs in each 'Yuga' and that it has either already taken place in our Yuga, or that it will still happen again, etc.

However, if you read it again with the eyes of a twenty first-century human being, here is what is striking and, if true, breath-taking. These verses are telling us the following (I am going to *reformulate* the substance of these verses in my terminology and not just provide an 'interpretation'): There is an assumption that there is a process of *learning* to be moral and that this is a learning process in society. It is inevitable, this is the second assumption, any social learning process can and does undergo *degeneration*. From this it follows, this is what the verses now describe, that: when such a degeneration of the learning process occurs, at some critical phase in the degeneration at the level of society, other mechanisms in society are going to *kick in* and regenerate this learning process (i.e. the process of learning to be moral).

This is a breath-taking claim about the nature of moral learning in India (let us keep it confined to India at the moment). Of course, they (the writer/writers of Gita) formulate this 'insight' using the images *familiar* to them about Krishna and his 'avataaras'. But that need not detain us. But what should, is their insight into the nature of society. Where and how did they discover these things? How did they discuss these things? What kind of a research did they do so that they came to have this extraordinary insight? This insight, even if it proves to be wrong, is *light years ahead* of any extant psychological or sociological theory about moral learning and moral development that you care to mention.

So, just these two verses are formulating a scientific hypothesis *in the best sense of the term* about the nature of moral learning. Believe me Rudra, I am dumb struck. The western culture has not even *suspected* the existence of what these verses *take for granted* (for example, the two assumptions I have just identified). How and why did the Indians think of these things those many thousands of years ago?

Chaos reigns within - Reflect, repent and reboot - Order shall return. 

humility towards learning

The typical 'academic' way of saying that one does not have criticisms of a work is by acting pompously: "I have read it but I am not impressed". Many academics hate acknowledging that there is much they have not read or, if they have, that they have nothing to say on that. After all, your 'intelligence' is proved by the fact that you can demolish everything except your own pet theory; so, they say 'I am not impressed'. This remark works when one has a high-standing in the academic world; further, by making such a remark, one also suggests that one is so 'busy' doing 'serious scientific
research' that one cannot be bothered to spend time criticizing third-rate ideas. In none of the domains I work is Steve Farmer (or his work) either known or recognized. He is a non-entity in the domains of sociology, political theory, psychology, philosophy and Ethics, law, history... So, whether or not he is 'impressed' by my writings leaves me and my academic colleagues cold. My peers in the peer-reviewed scientific journals find our writings on secularism worth publishing. If Farmer has anything interesting to say, apart from not being 'impressed', he can do so in the pages of all these journals. So far, he has not; and, I predict, nor will he ever.



Farmer is playing such a game: showing that he is both a 'serious researcher' and a very 'intelligent' man by telling you that he is 'not impressed'. Do not expect academic courtesy in such games: it is played only by those pretentious people who are unable to contribute anything to scientific research but fancy themselves as either 'brilliant intellectuals' or even 'geniuses'.



Many Kannada intellectuals and UR play the indigenous version of the same game. Some are also prejudiced; a few others ignorant. Many would not understand our arguments because they lack the required background knowledge. In short, most Kannada intellectuals (including UR) are at a disadvantage when it comes to discussing with us. They cannot show humility towards learning the way a student can; these people are already 'established' and they make their living on the basis of the 'authority' they have been conferred with. To acknowledge that one is ignorant (of many things) or that one is wrong (about one's beliefs) requires that people who call themselves 'intellectuals' are also truly that: ready to learn at any moment and acknowledge mistakes, when they discover them.



Let me give you an example of one such true intellectual. Gottlob Frege is rightly considered as the father of modern formal logic. At the beginning of the twentieth century, he wrote a book called 'The Foundations of Arithmetic' (in German), which was an attempt to describe arithmetic as formal, logical system. The manuscript version of the book apparently circulated in Europe and just when Frege received the page-proofs of the book, he also received a letter from a young unknown (at that moment) British student. This student showed that there was a fundamental flaw in
Fregean system, which made Frege's two decades work a wasted effort. Frege nevertheless published his book but with a foreword. There he spoke of the above letter, explained the criticism of this student (it is called the 'barber paradox') and openly acknowledged that his work (of the previous two decades) was a waste. He published it nonetheless, more for historical reasons than for its cognitive relevance. That young and unknown student answered to the name of Bertrand Russell who, at a later stage, reacted to an unknown male nurse from Vienna (during the first world war) the way Frege had reacted to him. That nurse was Ludwig Wittegnstein, another great thinker of the twentieth century.



These are the kind of people we should aspire to become if we have to bear the title of an 'intellectual' proudly. 

TheHeathenInHisBlindness : Message: RE: [TheHeathenInHisBlindness] Re: cross posting

Global Imbalance - An imminent Dollar Crisis

From comments:


Venkatesh is definitely impassioned and speaks about interesting subjects, but his interpretations leave much to be desired both in depth of knowledge and analytical rigor. I would call him a demagogue, short on facts, and skewed in conclusions . Some of his predictions have already been proved wrong, eg US currency exchange rates, oil prices; and his analysis/prescriptions reveal a profound lack of insight, eg lack of US family formation as the cause of savings rate declines in the USA. There are indeed many troubling problems in the US, including the real estate bubble, productivity slowdowns due to education and technology problems, consumerism as the driving force for the economy, asset valuation failures in lending, a drain on US wealth to fund the Iraq war etc. Exports to the USA have been the driving force for the world economy for decades. This is the reason all countries work really hard to get “MFN” – most favored nation, so that their exports are allowed in to the usa with fewer restrictions. This creates jobs, wealth and infrastructure (and funds for research and new technology) in the exporting countries. Countries often finance a portion of their exports to create demand for their products, as most countries, (incl india and china) have done to fuel their industrialization. Stop US imports and consumerism, and the world economy will grind down. Consumerism as a economic model is definitely flawed and problematic, and causes downstream problems, see http://www.storyofstuff.com The only significance of the Venkatesh video is that some few people may possibly believe it to be true and accurate, and make decisions that will ultimately prove to be injurious to their economic well-being. Far the greater threat both to US and Indian (and global) well-being, is the base assumption that continued growth in consumption, production, population etc is possible or desirable in a very resource-constrained “closed system” like the planet earth (ie essentially no resources come in from space – except for sunlight/heat, and none go out), a small blue dot of life in a vast and unfriendly universe.

Global Imbalance - An imminent Dollar Crisis

Obama's Chief Speechwriter, 27, Works on Inaugural Address

They stumbled upon it by accident in 2004, when Obama, just elected to the Senate, needed to hire a speechwriter. He brought Favreau, then 23, into the Senate dining room for an interview on his first day in office. They talked for 30 minutes about harmless topics such as family and baseball before Obama turned serious.

They stumbled upon it by accident in 2004, when Obama, just elected to the Senate, needed to hire a speechwriter. He brought Favreau, then 23, into the Senate dining room for an interview on his first day in office. They talked for 30 minutes about harmless topics such as family and baseball before Obama turned serious.

"So," he said. "What's your theory on speechwriting?"

Awkward silence. Favreau, just graduated from Holy Cross, had talked his way onto  Sen. John F. Kerry's presidential campaign in 2003 and had become a press assistant, arriving at the office at 3 a.m. to clip newspapers. The speech he had given as class valedictorian circulated around the staff, and Favreau eventually got a shot at speechwriting. He wrote well and rose to the top of the department, but there was never any time to formulate theories. Now, Favreau looked at Obama and went with his gut.

"A speech can broaden the circle of people who care about this stuff," Favreau said. "How do you say to the average person that's been hurting: 'I hear you. I'm there. Even though you've been so disappointed and cynical about politics in the past, and with good reason, we can move in the right direction. Just give me a chance.' "

"I think this is going to work," Obama said.

Obama's Chief Speechwriter, 27, Works on Inaugural Address While Making His Own Transition - washingtonpost.com

In the Name of the Father

Gerry Conlon (Daniel Day-Lewis) and his friend Paul Hill (John Lynch), fed up with life in IRA-era Belfast, move to London and join the hippie scene. They hook up with a bunch of spaced-out hippies squatting in a derelict flat. There they meet Carole Richardson and Paddy Armstrong. Hanging out in a London park after a fight with their flatmates, Hill and Conlon meet a homeless man named Charlie Burke in a park, who claims the bench they are sitting on belongs to him. While the two talk to Burke on the park bench, an explosion is heard. Later that night Conlon steals money from the apartment of a prostitute who drops her keys on the sidewalk outside her house. A fellow squatter, jealous of Conlon's advances to a female in the group, drops a hint to the police that Gerry and Paul, being Irish, may be involved in the bombing, and they are arrested.

Britain's newly-passed new anti-terror laws enable the police to hold suspects for 7 days without charge. During this time, Gerry and Paul are subjected to torture until they confess. The four principal defendants (Hill, Conlon, Armstrong and Richardson) are sentenced to 14-30 years in jail. From their prison cell, Gerry and his father Giuseppe (Pete Postlethwaite), who is sentenced along with him as part of the Maguire Seven, try to appeal. Giuseppe's health continues to worsen while in prison. In the meantime, the police arrest IRA member Joe McAndrew (Don Baker) who admits to the Guildford bombing. The police ignore his confession and the Guildford Four remain in prison.

In the Name of the Father (film) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Wireless Power Consortium Pushes For Standard

Sure. Let's just use this other power adapter from something else. With a little extra force, see, it fits fine. OK, now just to plug it in...

BLAMMO!!!!

Wife comes running in and sees the disaster and, being a good American, calls a lawyer.

This is why power adapters of different voltages, different capacities and different functionalities are designed with unique connectors. The intent is to keep you from causing problems for the company via lawsuits. Lawsuits caused directly by your ability to connect two mismatched devices together. Unless this risk can be eliminated, you are not going to get rid of every device having a different and unique connector.

Now it might be nice if there was an ISO standard for connectors (like there is for mains power connections) so there would be a few thousand "standard" connectors for every given voltage, regulation mode, current and AC or DC variety. This would solve everyone's problem, wouldn't it? Until you attempt to get everyone behind the idea of the few thousand "standard" connectors. That are all unique and different from today's non-standard connectors.

Wireless Power Consortium Pushes For Standard

Department of Labor auditing all permanent labor certification applications

The U.S. Department of Labor today announced that it has begun auditing all permanent labor certification applications filed by attorneys at Fragomen, Del Rey, Bernsen & Loewy LLP. The department has information indicating that in at least some cases the firm improperly instructed clients who filed permanent labor certification applications to contact their attorney before hiring apparently qualified U.S. workers. The audits will determine which, if any, applications should be denied or placed into department-supervised recruitment because of improper attorney involvement in the consideration of U.S. worker applicants.

ETA News Release: U.S. Department of Labor auditing all permanent labor certification applications filed by major immigration law firm [06/02/2008]

working in US

For $48000 pay, $4000/month

• Employer taxes 12.5% ==> 500

• Withholdings from your paycheck - Total: $951
• Federal Withholding - $506.17
• Social Security - $248.00
• Medicare - $58.00
• New Jersey - $106.92
• SUI/SDI - $37.00

• Total money stolen by Govt per paycheck = $1441

Official Gmail Blog: New in Labs: Tasks

Take entering a new task: just click in an empty part of your list and start typing. No buttons to click and it's saved automatically. Hit Return and you've got a new task right there.

You can also easily convert emails into tasks: select one or more messages and go to More Actions > Add to Tasks. (Or turn on keyboard shortcuts and use <shift> + t.)

Official Gmail Blog: New in Labs: Tasks

Opportunities for Anticompetitive Behavior in Postal Services

In the United States, the delivery monopoly is over letter mail. The Private Express Statutes prohibit the private carriage of "letters or packets," and the Postal Service defines a letter as "a message directed to a specific person or address and recorded in or on a tangible object." The courts have accepted the Postal Service's broad test for a letter as, "the presence or absence of an address."

The USPS's definition of a letter, adopted by the Postal Service in 1974, differs from earlier definitions and is much more expansive. Indeed, the Post Office and then the Postal Service has consistently expanded the scope of its monopoly over a 200-year period. Such an expansive definition leads naturally to monopolization of materials not intuitively considered letters, such as bills and advertising matter, which constitute a substantial and increasing proportion of the mail stream. According to the Postal Service's definition, an addressed grocery store advertisement is a letter.

A substantial portion of USPS revenue comes from monopolized activities. In 2002, 57 percent of the Postal Service's revenues were from monopolized first-class mail, while almost 25 percent were from partially monopolized Standard Mail A (formerly third-class mail).

The monopoly is well enforced. The USPS can conduct searches and seizures if it suspects citizens of contravening its monopoly. For example, in 1993, armed postal inspectors entered the headquarters of Equifax Inc. in Atlanta. The postal inspectors demanded to know if all the mail sent by Equifax through Federal Express was indeed "extremely urgent," as mandated by the Postal Service's criteria for suspension of the Private Express Statutes. Equifax paid the Postal Service a fine of $30,000. The Postal Service reportedly collected $521,000 for similar fines from twenty-one mailers between 1991 and 1994.

AEI - Short Publications - Opportunities for Anticompetitive Behavior in Postal Services


http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/12/09/1935223

US officially in recession

"Unfortunately, two-thirds of the American economy is based on the spending of the American consumer," said Mike Stanfield, chief executive of VSR Financial Services. "When the consumer pulls back, it's very hard for the economy to gain much traction."

US officially in recession, Dow falls sharply

Playboy to continue aggressive cost cuts

Playboy Enterprises Inc, publisher of one of the world's best known adult magazines, plans to continue "aggressive cost cutting" across the company in 2009 after cutting 14 percent of its workforce in 2008, according to Chief Financial Officer Linda Havard.

Playboy to continue aggressive cost cuts in 2009 | Entertainment | Industry | Reuters



Recession affects 'vice' too! Or.. is it just poor management?

Sungevity Displays Sunshine Online at Web 2.0 Launch Pad

Sungevity is a shining example of a company that tackles a global problem with a Web 2.0 solution. In only 6 months since its launch, Sungevity has sold more than 100 solar installations and is now the fastest growing solar company in California. Already its environmental impact has been impressive -- Sungevity has saved its early customers over $2 million dollars in electricity bills and abated 2,700 tons of CO2 over the next 25 years.

Sungevity Displays Sunshine Online at Web 2.0 Launch Pad - MarketWatch

Credit-card industry may cut $2 trillion lines

The U.S. credit-card industry may pull back well over $2 trillion of lines over the next 18 months due to risk aversion and regulatory changes, leading to sharp declines in consumer spending, prominent banking analyst Meredith Whitney said.

The credit card is the second key source of consumer liquidity, the first being jobs, the Oppenheimer & Co analyst noted.

"In other words, we expect available consumer liquidity in the form of credit-card lines to decline by 45 percent."

Credit-card industry may cut $2 trillion lines: analyst - Yahoo! News

http://www.lewrockwell.com/blog/lewrw/archives/024243.html

Saving Detroit

When I was a kid, there were many big name American television brands: Zeinith, Motorola, Magnavox, GE, RCA. Most simply quit making consumer electronics because they could make more money building stuff for the Pentagon. They took a hit when Japanese TVs first came to this country, but instead of buckling down and building better stuff, they simply left the market.

Our auto industry did the same thing. When VW first came over, Detroit got out of the small, cheap car market. When Toyota and Honda came over, they didn't care because they were only making small cars. As Toyota and Honda built bigger cars, Detroit concentrated on making even bigger cars.

Soon, foreign companies built cars from sub-compact to family sedans, and GM and Ford simply ignored those markets. Instead, they concentrated on the truck market and the SUV market.

Tell me one decent car made by the big three that can compete against a Toyota or Honda car? The Chevy Malibu? The Ford Taurus. Heck, does Ford make a Taurus still? I think they just came out with a new one last year after a decade of hiatus.

Look at fit and finish. For the past two decades, maybe longer, GM cars were berated because their dashboards were composed of cheap shiny plastic and had big gaps in them. So, is a Toyota dashboard made from exotic hardwoods, or somehow can Toyota take the same cheap plastic and make it look nicer? It isn't that Detroit can't make decent cars, they simply didn't because they'd rather not compete.

I also don't believe that the consumer truck market simply was a stroke of luck for Detroit. They actively created it. People wouldn't buy trucks if they didn't have 18 speaker Bose speaker stereos, automatic climate control, and leather seats. I use to drive a Ford trunk back in the 1970s, and I would never have bought one unless I really, really needed a pickup truck.

I am convinced that Detroit would have left the automobile industry long ago if they could take the safe haven of building vehicles just for the military -- just like almost all the other American industrial base did.

Maybe that's our problem. Our overly large military industry gave our companies a safe haven away from the tough world of consumer competition. After all, Japan and Germany have no real military to speak of. If you were a German or Japanese company, you had to build what the civilian population wanted to buy and not what your military would buy.

I, Cringely . Pulpit . Saving Detroit . Comments | PBS

Home Prices Snowball

Most amazing and most worrisome to me is the changing balance of equity and debt supporting the U.S. housing market. In 1998 the U.S. residential housing stock totaled $8 trillion supported by $2.5 trillion of debt, in other words, a 31% debt to value load.

Ten years later, our housing stock is $19.7 trillion (October 2008) supported by $10.6 trillion, or a 53% debt load. Debt load, or more like a giant margin call! And a margin call it is. This is what happens when the capital markets meet the real estate markets--it's payback time.

Home Prices Snowball - Forbes.com