For the first time in ages I did
work for hire in the fall, parking bikes at Levis Stadium for
football games. The work wasn't particularly hard, and the fans
were very interesting. It was a new world to me. One thing that
surprised me was how much football fans rain money around the
game. 49er fans like to represent their team. Among the 9er fans
that rode their bikes to the game, I'd say that GORE shirts were
the icon of choice. I think it's more than a coincidence that Al
Gore is the public face of concern over climate change. I feel
very apropos parking bikes at 49er games in a GORE shirt. Hope I
get a chance to do that again this year!
Late Nov, 2014: That's my favorite
dessert. Dip up some peanut butter with a piece of chocolate and
eat. Yumm!
In the news they announced that
the politicians in Washington DC came to some sort of budget
agreement for the "One point one trillion dollar federal budget
for next year." That bothers me, because according to these
clippings from the Palo Alto Daily news front pages, the
national debt grew by most of a trillion dollars in the last
year. The national debt grew by about as many dollars as the
budget has in it. This is a symptom that we are dealing with a
runaway train (so to speak).
I included that middle number so we can see that in just the
past three weeks or so $159 billion was added to the debt. On
the radio the talking heads just report the latest numbers,
similar to the way the paper just puts them in a box on the
front page. To get this problem you have to remember further
back than just the now numbers.
When I was young it took many years to add a trillion dollars to
the national debt. I remember conversations where the "three
trillion dollar debt" was discussed. That was back in the '70s.
I remember calling into radio shows to try and talk about it in
the '90s. The treatment they gave me convinced me that's not the
way to solve the problem. What is? If you have any ideas I'd
love to get them.
