A Ridiculous Hypothetical Cross-Atlantic Conversation

Europeans and Canadians have a snooty air when it comes to measurement standards.  (Maybe, I don't know, just go with it.)  They tout the superiority of the metric system to the standard system used in America and they are right.  Metric is based on 10, a foot is 12 inches.  A kilometer is 1,000 meters, just like the name implies.  Most Americans probably don't know there are 5,280 feet in a mile.  Even Celsius is makes more sense.  Water freezes at 0 and boils at 100.  Thirty two and 220 for Fahrenheit.  But, my response would involve frame of reference.  Yeah, metric is superior, but if you tell an American it's 38 degrees outside they will put some gloves on.  If you say you something is 17 kilometers away, well, you'll just be met with a blank stare.  We grew up with the standard system; we think in terms of that framework.  Say, for instance, a third person were to join this ludicrous straw-man conversation.  In his land, they've worked out a system where there are 100 minute hours. If he told you it was 8:72, you would probably call him an asshole even though it's systematically a better system than base 60.  You can recognize the supremacy of it without knowing what the hell it means alright!

-K

How to Draw a Husky

Northeastern University has a terrible logo.  To understand the state of this latest atrocity, we must look at its genealogy.  How have we gone from the home of Reggie Lewis, NCAA tournament bids and Beanpot glory to a list-obsessed university trying to hack away any visages of its co-op uniqueness to become a standard university Barbie doll?  It's clearly the logos.

A deeper thinker studying Art History (i.e, future apartment realtor) might say the present logo, in place the last few years, represents NU's self-flagellation from trying to become just another generic 4-year college. Amid rumors of dropping its co-op program and ultimately offering a 4-year option for students, NU hurt itself and tried negating its primary identity, the co-op program.  The red eyes representing the deal with the devil President Freeland made with that tempting mistress, U.S. News and World Report, to get into the Top 100. 

But, I know what you are thinking.  The person that gave that poor vampire dog a bowl of magma and melted his snout should be hanged.  But, nay, this was drawn of purpose!  They even put it on the hockey jerseys.  Imagine trying to instill fear into your opponent while wearing a maimed canine on your sweater.  The hockey players must never cease getting crap for this. I would never stop taunting an NU player if I played for BU. "Hey, nice cleft-lipped demon dog, clown."  This is probably why we never win a 4-team tournament.  (You have to win 2 games in a row and you WIN the tournament!  Haven't done it since '88.)  Imagine for a second NU won the men's basketball tournament of the league we are the most northern member by far of, the CAA.  NU is in the NCAA tournament and CBS does a 3D spinning image of that monstrosity while Jim Nantz downplays the graphic showing NU getting out-rebounded 34-8 by number one seed UNC.  Even South Dakota State's looked good on TV and they are 500 miles from any metropolis.



This primary logo, rolled out in 2004, represented a small heyday for NU.  It's actually isn't that bad; representing the resurgence of the basketball team led by Puerto-Rican parade getting, Miss Universe dating, NBA Champion, Jose Juan Barea.  We were flying high, invited to the NIT and almost beat Uconn.  The wordmark logo looks professional and has the Boston skyline on it.  It's a solid update on the previous triangle logo.  However, how would the husky eat without a lower jaw especially with its new set of human teeth?  What the previous logo did get right was a set of real canine teeth.  If you are going to show a dog growling, at least make it look like it can bite you not grind plant matter down like a Brontosaurus.  Both of those logos are a mouthful to put on a jersey or a hat though.  So, they were reserved for letterhead and official websites while a more ubiquitous image was displayed.

The logo when I was in college and still in place some places, the red and black "N".  Oooh.  It reflects simplicity and the bold stance the university takes in the middle of an urban landscape.  The two distinct colors represent the dichotomy of the modern student-athlete or the two sides of the student and the co-op...all of which is probably the same crap whoever pitched it came up with.  Points for simplicity, but one is the actual logo, one is something I made on Microsoft Paint in 90 seconds.  It is especially not impressive when put on athletic conference websites next to other logos that were created by real graphical artists not some stoned Mass Art student who laughingly took $100 from Northeastern to create the SYMBOL OF THE ENTIRE UNIVERSITY.  The logo screams "I have nothing to say.  I will get my degree, try to get a good job and move on with my life having no attachment to my alma mater."  I guess it was a simpler time before Mr. and Mrs. Husky gave birth to Paws.

We end with the graphical representation of NU from 1987-1998.  A proud husky mounting Nebraska's logo and dominating it into submission.  But again, human teeth.  Eh, our best try.  A throwback to being a commuter school with Jim Calhoun as the basketball coach, NU's own Reggie Lewis playing for the Boston Celtics, Beanpot victories and the YMCA serving as "on-campus" housing.  The birth of our best cheer - chanting "safety school" to Harvard - perhaps? 

Alas, we have gone from Proud Husky to Melted Snout, just as Northeastern has gone through it's disjointed growth with some misfires yet more successes.  It's too bad our logo doesn't reflect that.  But, I don't want to be one of those people who complains without having solutions.  A better image of my alma mater is out there.  It is used by an university that has N and U in its acronym, its colors are red and black, AND they are the huskies.  Ladies and gentlemen presenting Northern Illinois Northeastern University's new logo:

Go NU!

-K

Greek Debt 20x

For all of you degenerate gamblers who thought "I wish I had a better grasp of the Greek debt situation", I thought of an analogy for you.
There is a guy who owes a lot money to a bunch of different bookies. We’ll call him, Mike the Mush (Greece). He owes about 10 Gs to a heavy hitter (European Central Bank) and another 10 Gs spread around to another 20 or 30 smaller time guys (private bond holders). The heavy hitter knows they are going to get screwed unless they keep letting Mike gamble, but he has no money. So, his plan is to tell Mike he can call in some more 100 timers if he tells the rest of the small time guys he’ll pay them half of what he owes at half the vig. Unsurprisingly, the small time guys have collectively responded “Go F yourself.” 

The ECB needs a Sharon Stone from Casino type to keep Greece alive and gambling before the chips on the blackjack tables are worthless.  It is unclear whether Angela Merkel is a capo or underboss in this scenario.

Lock of the week:
Teaser (Giants money line and private bond holders getting 500 basis points)

-K

Xbox Live

Modern Warfare 3 came out and, for me, that means delving into the contemporary perma-adolescent psychological milieu your average young adult male exists in especially when it comes to video games, oh and smoking noobs.  This mind-state can be no better experienced than on XBOX Live and its PS3 equivalent.  Imagine a world where boys ruled, only might is not measured by muscle density, but by digital kill count, all with the sweet freedom of anonymity.  I've learned a few things about the male psyche in between trying to avoid throwing my controller through the TV.  We are marginally evolved.  We will fight any feeling of insecurity with racism, homophobia, and comments about one's mother.  And, a 12 year old can make you blind with rage.  At least Lord of the Flies had a semblance of order before devolving into a near-cannibalistic state of primal humanity.  In online gaming, the boys would've shoved the conch shell up Piggy's ass and kicked him off the cliff. 

If the online world of video games were viewed as it's own society, an outsider might make these following observations.  They LOVE weed.  There are thinly-veiled references to it in the games they play and blatant references to it in the names they use.  Any female voice shall not be met with a "hello," but an "are you hot?"  If the answer to the latter question is no, they have no use for her...unless she's better than them.  Accents are ALWAYS funny especially the Brits.  If a person's cadence is different from their own, it's hilarious and eminently mockable.  Do not expect them to recognize the distinct advantage of virtual invisibility when saying racist, odd, and pompous things.  Apparently the mass of them, especially the ones with Southern accents, have some distinct views on race relations, homosexuals, and immigration in America.  The commentary on alternative lifestyles seems to be at odds with the fact that there is a supermajority of gay people online.  It's either that or everyone just calls everyone else a fag.

I will, however, continue to immerse myself in this world of stunted maturity much to the chagrin of my fiance because it's fun.  But, wow, it just adds to the degradation of my faith in humanity.  Play on future backbone of society!

-K

Rin Tin Tin

I just wanted to take a minute to let you know that a biography of a dog is number 12 on the New York Times Bestseller List.  It's. A. Dog. How did his sign his life rights contract with a paw print?  I have not read this book, it could very well be Pulitzer material filled with elegantly scripted prose on the human experience written in iambic pentameter.  But, IT'S ABOUT A DOG.  How can there be any internal monologue other than "Is this food?" or "What was that noise?"  How can there be internal monologue, IT'S A DOG! AAHH. 

This is wrong on two levels; why America is finished and how crazy dog owners are.  Enough learned folk have eschewed the infinitely more compelling tales of a human's life to read about a German Shepard that was on TV.  I am going to guess many of these people are Dog People.  Dog People are the ones who hesitate when asked this question: Your home is on fire, you can save a human stranger or your dog, who do you take?  Actually most of them wouldn't hesitate to say "my dog."  I mean some people spend tens of thousands giving dogs cancer treatments!  This is why there is no more dog track in Mass. and why America is finished in general.

From Amazon: "So begins Susan Orlean’s sweeping, powerfully moving account of Rin Tin Tin’s journey from orphaned puppy to movie star and international icon"

Indeed.

-K

Pay Your Fair Share!

The mantra of fiscal liberals recently has been for the rich to "pay their fair share."  After a plethora of soundbites with that same ethos, but with no data to explain what that means or plan to address it, I decided to look at the numbers.  What I found was that we as a country better not hope the rich pay their fair share because then, we are really fucked.  They need to keep paying the completely obscene share they do now.

First, a note on data manipulation.  The link to the IRS data I used can be found here. It is in the first group of data, Table 3.4, tax year 2009.  I combined the income tax and capital gains rows to get a total for each tax bracket.  I eliminated the zero and five percent data from the graphs and calculations because they had a minimal impact.  Everything was under 1%.  It also reflects the rates people pay on their paychecks which seems more intuitive.  The tax brackets on the pie charts are for someone filing Single status on their return. 

Critics of the American capitalist system always decry the income inequality between the rich and the poor, while little is said of the tax inequality.  Granted, it's hard to feel bad for someone who made over $373,650 a year, but what exactly is the "fair share" that group should pay?  The people who qualified for the top marginal tax bracket, a scant .76% of all taxpayers took in 13.3% of all the income, but paid 29.5% of all the taxes.  So, if the omnipresent yet faceless 1% of mythic old white men pay more than double their share of income in taxes, how much is enough?  50%? 75%? F-- it, why should anybody making under $100,000 have to pay taxes?  That wouldn't lead to a horrible bifurcated Entitled versus Financier dichotomy among citizens.  To achieve any kind of fiscal restraint, you need to have an ownership society.  Such a culture can't exist when people have little or no money on the outcome of government's performance.

We can see by the pie chart version of the data that the green slice, $34 to $82 thousand, the middle class, are the only ones paying the definition of their fair share.  Their portion doesn't change size much from the income to tax charts.  The orange slice - evil rich people who use the poor as pawns in their plans for world domination - spreads out quite a bit, while the blue slice - said pawns - nearly disappears.  

Our tax system breaks down to this essentially, the top 2% of taxpayers take in just under 20% of the income and pay just over 40% of the taxes.  If nothing, that seems resoundingly fair to me, probably too fair.  Free market America has quite the socialist tax system. 

Even if you look at effective tax rate which includes all of the deductions, credits, loopholes, advantages of tax attorneys and wealth managers, men with pipes and brandy snifters; the more money you make, the higher taxes you pay.  The only people who get a break are the middle class again (voting works!).  But, my guess is that if I did some more research (I won't), that dip in effective tax rate would be due to the mortgage interest deduction.  When you hit the middle class, you can achieve the American Dream of owning a home.  That is, of course, unless the federal government implicitly guarantees the debt of multiple NGOs that buy increasingly horrible loans, thus incentivizing investment and retail banks into pumping out increasingly dubious mortgages to marginal borrowers, securitizing them, and finally insuring them until everyone with a fake copy of a paycheck has a 5/1 ARM with no points, but can't make even the first payment on the $300,000 house they just bought and the whole thing collapses...but, that's a whole other story.  I mean where is Warren Buffet's secretary?  She was supposed to be paying a higher tax rate than Warren, but if she was, it seems like she was making some substantial donations to the IRS.

Liberals want to claim the rich are ripping off the country with offshore accounts, trust funds, LLC tax avoidance entities, but the numbers don't seem to bear it out for me.  This brief skim of some tax stats is not exhaustive by any means.  I didn't look at multiple-year trends or use any other division of income than tax bracket.  I'm sure some more detailed analysis could possibly invalidate my thesis, but it seems if the rich were getting away with something, it would show up in this cursory view of income and taxes.  It's hard to feel sorry for people that make a sizable income, but hey professional athletes get sympathy when framed in context.  Why can't we just say that the rich, the very rich actually, pay an inordinate amount of their share of taxes.  A percent more than acceptable to be considered reasonable.  This is not a soundbite after all, this from the IRS's website.  These are hard numbers.  So, the next time someone says the rich should "pay their fair share" point them to Table 3.4, tax year 2009 of the IRS Statistics of Income and ask them what that means exactly.


-K

Why I Can't Live In Cambridge

The city home to world-renowned universities, excellent beer bars, and a slew of sites of historical significance is just not for me. The People's Republic of Cambridge houses such disdain for a system that has allowed many of its residents' (parents) to succeed it is impossible for an avowed capitalist to stomach. Cambridge is home to Dirty Hippies, Hipsters, and Crunchy Gays. These types are the ones who worship at the alter of Socialism and all of the utopian rainbows and communal ideals it brings. It's why Martha Coakley gets 88% of the vote over the Mass. Ave. bridge. (The Green Party siphoned off a few percentage points.) It shocks me that in the same place where Harvard, MIT, and Le Cordon Bleu Culinary College reside, people believe that de-incentivising hard work, giving people money, and central government planning is a good idea. There is a mountain of evidence to the contrary: USSR, Cuba, North Korea, Greece, many African countries, the slums of Mumbai, the Native American community, the prevalence of bums in your little slice of Marxist heaven, yet the Catabragians still want rich people to pay because it's government's fault or "these corporations" or rich people themselves or the World Bank. OK, fine, the profit-motive is equal to ten Hitlers, we get it. I have a feeling though that you don't really think collectivism would work in practice, you just hate the "mainstream". And, nobody hates mainstream more than Cambridge biggest plurality, the Hipster.


I am convinced most Hipsters, while smart, don't know Friederich Engels from Peter Engel. One thought the Capitalist machine was oiled with the blood of the worker, one was the executive producer of Saved By The Bell. In fact, most Hipsters probably watched Saved By the Bell when it was on, enjoyed it, later hated it because more than 5 people liked it and now watch it because it's retro and we all know retro = cool. You've seen the Hipster out and about, he looks like this guy. A quick breakdown of their appearance: skinny jeans always, always, skinny jeans, a wool hat or weird asymmetrical haircut - bonus points for odd facial hair, a scarf no matter the season, a flannel or retro T-shirt from Goodwill, Chuck Taylors and non-prescription glasses because they are so much smarter than you. The Hipster hates the mainstream and it's physical embodiment, the Frat Boy. Even whoever wrote the Urban Dictionary definition of Hipster COULD NOT help himself from taking a shot at his oft-thought of intellectual inferior. A paradox has arisen, however, as the Hipster will frequently use the Frat Boy's urge to "get some brews" and beer-drinking in general as a mark of his marginally evolved brain, yet Hipsters invade beer bars. I guess when it's craft-brewed in small batches and served in cool glassware that makes it OK. Christ, slap "organic" on ANYTHING and it seems it has passed through Alternative customs. (I personally cannot wait until the Hipster love affair with craft beer wanes because I actually like the stuff and PBR tastes like shit and I want to be able to get into the Public House again. I hope they show a Duvel commercial during the Superbowl.) The Hipster is ultimately a hater, they don't actually "like" anything, they just choose to indulge in whatever is the opposite of mainstream. If Little Wayne gets enough suburban white kids to rock skinny jeans, the Hipsters will drop that style faster than when LL Cool J tried to rock the one-pant-leg up look. So, Cambridge, we understand, making money is evil, George Bush is a war criminal, and sports are dumb just stop being a hater. Don't OccupyBoston, occupy Porter Square and leave us alone, besides someone needs to subsidize your lifestyle.


-K