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Labels: becoming wealthy Labels: becoming wealthy In Poland, the Interior Ministry said at least 10 people have frozen to death due to temperatures reaching minus 13 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 25 Celsius ). Italian police said a Milan businessman standing on his balcony was killed when the snow brought down a canopy and part of a wall. A 47-year-old Serbian was found frozen to death in his home in the town of Zagarolo, east of Rome. The winter weather temporarily closed Milan's two airports, halted trains in the normally sunny south of France and pressed into service ice breakers in the Dutch port of Rotterdam. But it also sent Dutch skaters storming onto canals, and earned chimpanzees in Rome's zoo hot tea and cookies for extra calories. Milan's Malpensa and Linate airports shut down briefly, then struggled to overcome a morning of delays and cancellations when the facilities reopened in the early afternoon. The city, Italy's financial capital, had to dig out from a foot (30 centimeters) of snow, and the airport authority said flight crews and other workers had been unable to reach the airports. Snow blanketing much of northwestern Italy delayed trains up to three hours as the Italian railway had to slow track speeds. Schools closed in many cities. A rare snowfall in France's normally sunny Cote d'Azur sent the national railway into crisis mode, halting trains in Provence as well as the Alps. Authorities stopped all buses in the port city of Marseilles and closed surrounding highways, urging drivers to stay home. Several minor car accidents caused long traffic jams. The operator of France's electricity grid and a unit of Electricite de France SA, called on customers in southern and western France to limit power consumption during peak evening hours amid expected record demand. In Rome, keepers at the capital's zoo fed primates a special breakfast of warm barley porridge, croissants and cookies to make sure they had enough calories to keep up their body temperatures. At lunch, the animals sipped hot tea along with rice and yoghurt. The chimpanzees and orangutans also have been treated to modern floorboard heating and raised beds of hay and wood chips, the zoo said in a statement. Germany had its coldest night of the winter, with a temperature of minus 18 Fahrenheit (minus 28 Celsius) measured at one weather station in eastern Germany. At the Berlin Zoo, Knut the polar bear relished the bitter temperatures, scampering about his ice-encrusted closure as visitors watched. In the Netherlands, authorities at Rotterdam's port sent out an icebreaking ship Wednesday morning to ensure passage for barges using a vital artery to ply the country's inland waterways. It was the first time since 1996 that the port has used an icebreaker. Labels: global warming Labels: humor 1. If most women wait until they are in the mood before making love with their husband, many women will be waiting a month or more until they next have sex. When most women are young, and for some older women, spontaneously getting in the mood to have sex with the man they love can easily occur. But for most women, for myriad reasons -- female nature, childhood trauma, not feeling sexy, being preoccupied with some problem, fatigue after a day with the children and/or other work, just not being interested -- there is little comparable to a man’s “out of nowhere,” and seemingly constant, desire for sex. 2. Why would a loving, wise woman allow mood to determine whether or not she will give her husband one of the most important expressions of love she can show him? What else in life, of such significance, do we allow to be governed by mood? What if your husband woke up one day and announced that he was not in the mood to go to work? If this happened a few times a year, any wife would have sympathy for her hardworking husband. But what if this happened as often as many wives announce that they are not in the mood to have sex? Most women would gradually stop respecting and therefore eventually stop loving such a man. What woman would love a man who was so governed by feelings and moods that he allowed them to determine whether he would do something as important as go to work? Why do we assume that it is terribly irresponsible for a man to refuse to go to work because he is not in the mood, but a woman can -- indeed, ought to -- refuse sex because she is not in the mood? Why? 25 Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her 26 to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, 27 and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless. 28 In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. 29 After all, no one ever hated his own body, but he feeds and cares for it, just as Christ does the church— 30 for we are members of his body. 31 "For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh."[c] 32This is a profound mystery—but I am talking about Christ and the church. 33However, each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband. Labels: cars Sherry Jones was driving her 13-year-old son, Malcolm, to school the other morning when he mentioned something about some kid he didn't like. Something about the kid being a jerk. Jones told him that wasn't kind. When you speak of people, she said, always speak good of them. "Look at Barack! . . . During the campaign, no matter what, Obama always took the high road," she told him. "During the debates when John McCain would say a dig, Barack would never react. . . . He was always positive." Malcolm, who likes a good debate, was, for that moment, quiet. In that silence, Jones realized that something about her spontaneous, trapped-in-the-car lecture was working. "If my son didn't agree, he would let me know," says Jones, an accountant who lives in Silver Spring. "He always has something else to say. . . . Usually, he will say, 'Yeah, but . . . ' When I use Barack Obama as an example, I can see him. He's quiet. He may sit up a little straighter. "He hasn't gotten to the point where he says, 'You are right.' " But there is something to be said for him saying nothing. Labels: 2008 presidential candidates
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When Borrowing Is A Good Thing (Part 2)
I posted recently my analysis of the pay cash vs. borrow for buying the Jaguar, and received a couple of interesting responses from readers. One reader thought it made more sense to spend $5000 to $8000 (cash) to buy a used Subaru, rather than a Jaguar. The problem is that a $5000 to $8000 used Subaru around here means at least 80,000 miles or more--enough that the Subaru is well out of warranty, and realistically, you can expect at least a few substantial repairs on a car that age. The Jaguar is still under factory warranty, and will be for a couple of years. That alone is a strong case for the Jaguar.
The more substantial criticism of my analysis is that I was ignoring the income stream that I would enjoy from paying cash for the car, and putting those car payments that I am making into savings every month. I had completely overlooked that. It does change the equation a bit, but not quite as dramatically as you might assume.
What doesn't change: there is still a net $2738.94 interest income from the 4.30% APY CD (after paying federal and state income tax on the interest at a marginal rate of 33%). The total interest paid over 60 months on the car loan is $2458.23. But what interest would the $335.97 per month payment accrue over those 60 months?
Remember that the 4.30% APY CD was because I locked that interest in during November--and I would not get that interest rate today--and the way things are going, not likely again for another year or more. Also, that rate required me to lock it in for five years. While some of the early car payments could be locked in for five years, and get a roughly similar situation, the vast majority of those payments would be in the second, third, fourth, and fifth years. Unless I was locking up that money for five years (which is not a comparable situation), I would never get 4.30% APY--not even close. Furthermore, my credit union has a minimum $500 balance to get CD rates that high, so at least every other month I would just have the money sitting in a demand deposit account, at a much lower rate.
If I managed to earn 3% a year on the money that would otherwise be going to car payments (which seems extremely unlikely, with current interest rates), I would only have a net interest income of $1029.11 over five years--and I would be forgoing the $2738.94 net interest income that the $17,700 would have earned in the CD.
So, if I keep the money in a CD, and make payments: $2738.94 CD income - $2458.23 car loan interest = $280.71 net income. If I had paid cash, and broken a couple of CDs: $1029.11 net interest income (and that is making the optimistic assumption of 3% yield) - $2738.94 lost CD income, for a net loss of $1709.83. Even with a completely unrealistic 6% yield as I put those "car payments" into savings, this still comes to a net loss of $611.38 over five years.
So, what about the supposed rule that you should never make payments, if you can afford to pay cash? If there is a big difference in interest rates between CDs and loans, this might be true. Under some economic conditions, this might be true. If you don't have a spectacular credit score (my FICO number is 819), you may get stuck with such a high interest rate that you would be better off paying cash. But my guess is that many people that can afford to pay cash for a car probably also have a pretty decent credit score. (Okay, drug dealers might be the exception.)
I am adding the spreadsheet for modeling this here. This should apply to any loan where the interest is not tax deductible. Houses and student loans require different treatment--I may work on that as I feel more energetic.
I have updated my discussion of How To Become Wealthy with this at the very end.
UPDATE: One reader noticed a slight formula error; I made appropriate adjustments.
When Borrowing Is A Good Thing
It is conventional wisdom that borrowing to buy when you can afford to pay cash is a mistake. It is often a mistake, but not always. When I bought the Jaguar, I was reluctant to put the cash out of pocket, figuring that it might be useful to have the cash available as the economy sinks deeper and deeper.
For example, I was able to get 4.30% APY Certificates of Deposit in late November. The first year, the CDs for the $17,700 (roughly) that I would have paid for the car, title, and sales tax, would earn $761.10 in interest. Assuming a marginal federal and state income tax rate of 33% (because it may be a while before I get a permanent job again), that's a net of $509.94 of interest income. Over five years, the net income from the $17,700 in principal comes to $2700.89.
Over the five year life of the loan, my 5.24% car loan will cost me $2370.59 in total interest. That means that it actually saves me $330.30 over the life of the loan.
UPDATE: See a more detailed analysis here.
More Global Warming
From January 7, 2009 Associated Press:MILAN, Italy (AP) - Freezing temperatures and exceptional snowfall caused travel delays Wednesday across Europe and were blamed for at least 12 deaths, including that of a man in Milan who was crushed when a canopy collapsed under the weight of snow.
Motorola Razr Recharging From USB Port
I forgot my 110 VAC recharger for my Motorola Razr, and because the Jaguar's cigarette lighter is only hot when the car is on, my usual approach of leaving the phone in the car overnight to recharge doesn't work. Fortunately, my boss had a USB cable with the same little connector that the Razr uses for charging.
To my disappointment, however, when I plugged it in, the USB cable didn't recharge the Razr. It turns out that there is a device driver that you have to install (at least with some versions of Windows) to get the USB cable to do the recharging. My notebook, which runs Windows XP Professional, immediately recognized the Razr phone, and started charging. The desktop computer that I use at work required me to install a new device driver, which you can find here.
Computer Geek Humor
A friend forwarded this to me. If you don't program computers, you probably will just be confused by this, or worse, offended by the comparison of your religion to languages you don't know. (And some parts aren't quite historically accurate--Catholicism was far more the "burning people at the stake" crowd than fundamentalism.) Move along!Programming Languages as Comparative Religion
And yes, as a someone who has used Perl too much over the years, the comparison to Voodoo is quite apt.
C would be Judaism - it's old and restrictive, but most of the world is familiar with its laws and respects them. The catch is, you can't convert into it - you're either into it from the start, or you will think that it's insanity. Also, when things go wrong, many people are willing to blame the problems of the world on it.
Java would be Fundamentalist Christianity - it's theoretically based on C, but it voids so many of the old laws that it doesn't feel like the original at all. Instead, it adds its own set of rigid rules, which its followers believe to be far superior to the original. Not only are they certain that it's the best language in the world, but they're willing to burn those who disagree at the stake.
PHP would be Cafeteria Christianity - Fights with Java for the web market. It draws a few concepts from C and Java, but only those that it really likes. Maybe it's not as coherent as other languages, but at least it leaves you with much more freedom and ostensibly keeps the core idea of the whole thing. Also, the whole concept of "goto hell" was abandoned.
C++ would be Islam - It takes C and not only keeps all its laws, but adds a very complex new set of laws on top of it. It's so versatile that it can be used to be the foundation of anything, from great atrocities to beautiful works of art. Its followers are convinced that it is the ultimate universal language, and may be angered by those who disagree. Also, if you insult it or its founder, you'll probably be threatened with death by more radical followers.
C# would be Mormonism - At first glance, it's the same as Java, but at a closer look you realize that it's controlled by a single corporation (which many Java followers believe to be evil), and that many theological concepts are quite different. You suspect that it'd probably be nice, if only all the followers of Java wouldn't discriminate so much against you for following it.
Lisp would be Zen Buddhism - There is no syntax, there is no centralization of dogma, there are no deities to worship. The entire universe is there at your reach - if only you are enlightened enough to grasp it. Some say that it's not a language at all; others say that it's the only language that makes sense.
Haskell would be Taoism - It is so different from other languages that many people don't understand how can anyone use it to produce anything useful. Its followers believe that it's the true path to wisdom, but that wisdom is beyond the grasp of most mortals.
Erlang would be Hinduism - It's another strange language that doesn't look like it could be used for anything, but unlike most other modern languages, it's built around the concept of multiple simultaneous deities.
Perl would be Voodoo - An incomprehensible series of arcane incantations that involve the blood of goats and permanently corrupt your soul. Often used when your boss requires you to do an urgent task at 21:00 on Friday night.
Lua would be Wicca - A pantheistic language that can easily be adapted for different cultures and locations. Its code is very liberal, and allows for the use of techniques that might be described as magical by those used to more traditional languages. It has a strong connection to the moon.
Ruby would be Neo-Paganism - A mixture of different languages and ideas that was beaten together into something that might be identified as a language. Its adherents are growing fast, and although most people look at them suspiciously, they are mostly well-meaning people with no intention of harming anyone.
Python would be Humanism: It's simple, unrestrictive, and all you need to follow it is common sense. Many of the followers claim to feel relieved from all the burden imposed by other languages, and that they have rediscovered the joy of programming. There are some who say that it is a form of pseudo-code.
COBOL would be Ancient Paganism - There was once a time when it ruled over a vast region and was important, but nowadays it's almost dead, for the good of us all. Although many were scarred by the rituals demanded by its deities, there are some who insist on keeping it alive even today.
APL would be Scientology - There are many people who claim to follow it, but you've always suspected that it's a huge and elaborate prank that got out of control.
LOLCODE would be Rastafarianism - An esoteric, Internet-born belief that nobody really takes seriously, despite all the efforts to develop and spread it.
Visual Basic would be Satanism - Except that you don't REALLY need to sell your soul to be a Satanist...
Selfishness vs. Marriage
Dennis Prager, a conservative columnist, normally writes about politics and culture--but he seems to have opened up Pandora's box with these two columns about sex in marriage, provoking an interesting reaction from readers. Before getting to what Prager wrote, let's recast his argument in somewhat different terms: "Husbands, you may not always feel like doing house chores, but there are times that you really should do so, because it's important to your wife." Is there anyone who finds that argument objectionable?
Prager's argument is essentially that for a variety of reasons, the sexual drive of women tends to decline much more quickly than men:
The reactions of readers was quite interesting. I'll engage in some very broad generalizations and say that generally the socially conservative sorts (many of them women) agreed with Prager--with some even saying that even if they weren't in the mood, they found that doing so improved the relationship with their husbands. On the other side, many of Prager's critics seem to be generally more liberal and feminist, some of them calling Prager's suggestion "rape" -- even though Prager specifically and repeatedly emphasized that this was no excuse for men pushing or demanding, and specifically excluding relationships that have significant problems.
The more I thought about Prager's columns, and the reactions to it, the more it occurred to me that one of Prager's points is quite valid:The baby boom generation elevated feelings to a status higher than codes of behavior. In determining how one ought to act, feelings, not some code higher than one’s feelings, became decisive: “No shoulds, no oughts.” In the case of sex, therefore, the only right time for a wife to have sex with her husband is when she feels like having it. She never “should” have it. But marriage and life are filled with “shoulds.”
My experience is that almost every marriage that fails has, somewhere below the layers of depression, financial conflict, infidelity, or domestic abuse, a fundamental problem of selfishness. If one partner is selfish, and the other is selfless, eventually, there is a good chance that the selfless partner will start to feel taken advantage of. If the selfless partner expresses that anger, the marriage may break apart; if she (and it is usually she) represses that anger, she will likely sink into depression.
If both partners are selfish, conflicts over money or time will drive a wedge between them. Some couples can paper over those conflicts by spending money like Hollywood stars, but for most people in the real world, that just isn't an option.
In my experience, really successful marriages require both husband and wife to overcome the natural selfishness to which all of us are born. The first few years of many marriages are a time of adjustment, as (ideally) both partners adjust from traditional single life (what will I do next?) to being part of a couple (what does my spouse want?) It isn't a complete transformation, of course, and there are going to be conflicts between spouses, but it does reduce the conflicts to a manageable level.
Unfortunately, in a lot of marriages, one half may not abandon that selfishness--and the other spouse does all the adjusting. Or one spouse gives up a littlle selfishness, while the other spouse does nearly all the changing. This may make it possible for a marriage to survive, but it isn't ideal, and over time, a spouse who has done nearly all the giving starts to resent it.
One traditional Christian model of marriage is Ephesians 5:22 Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord. 23 For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior. 24 Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything.
Sad to say, there are men who have used verses 22-24 to put their wives in their place--and neglected to read the following verses, which compares what husbands are supposed to do for their wives to Christ sacrificing himself on the Cross. You can see why petty domestic tyrants might be reluctant to keep reading. "A text without a context is a pretext."
Do you want your marriage to be successful? You and your spouse must both work beyond selfishness and to concern for each other. If that means doing the dishes without being asked, or bringing flowers occasionally, or surprising her return from a trip with a house freshly vacuumed--or creating a night of passion when you aren't really "in the mood"--this all part of working beyond selfishness.
Jaguar As Road Car
I'm really impressed with the Jaguar as a road car, having driven to Bend. Quiet, comfortable, and very stable at speed. It doesn't have the passing power of the Corvette, of course, but it still gets up and goes when you punch it, with the engine revving happily up into the orange warning area between 6500 and 7000 rpm. Gas mileage was just under 24 mpg--which considering the speeds that I was driving is pretty decent.
What Would Obama Do?
You have probably seen the bracelets that say WWJD. (What Would Jesus Do?) It's a common method of reminding people that have embraced Christianity that every action of their lives needs to be measured against the standard that Jesus set. We aren't perfect, and to expect Christians to conform perfectly to Jesus' standard is unrealistic, but having this as a goal is certainly valuable.
We've made fun of Obamessiah during the campaign--but the idol worship continues, as this December 13, 2008 Washington Post article explains:
Now, don't get me wrong. I think President Obama might be a good example to many young black men. There are vast numbers of young black Americans who do the right thing: they go to school; get good jobs; marry; and raise families. But there are also a lot of young blacks who take the path of least resistance, and buy into the idea that studying and preparing for school is "acting white." Obama can be a positive example that yes, "acting white" can get you a decent job in America.
Still, I look at the adulation that Obama is enjoying, and I shake my head at the parallels to the twentieth century's cult of personality leaders. Michelle Malkin brought this amazing story to my attention.
