Category: Politics, Religion & Money

Self-Regulation Self-Deception

Brooksley Born was one of the authors of the official government report on the 2008 financial crisis. I bet it was Born who insisted on putting this knock against Alan Greenspan in the preface.

FINAL REPORT OF THE NATIONAL COMMISSION ON THE CAUSES OF THE FINANCIAL AND ECONOMIC CRISIS IN THE UNITED STATES
January 2011

“More than 30 years of deregulation and reliance on self-regulation by financial institutions, championed by former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan and others, supported by successive administrations and Congresses, and actively pushed by the powerful financial industry at every turn, had stripped away key safeguards, which could have helped avoid catastrophe.”

Speaking of banks, I am the victim of attempted fraud. A check I had mailed to the contractor replacing the deck was stolen somewhere between the post office and the contractor’s office. It was modified by the crook, who deposited the check in an ATM. Thanks to the notification settings on my account I caught it in time. Any withdrawal over $100 shows up in e-mail and as a text message. Lots of stress and hassle getting it all straightened out this week.

There’s No App For That

When my father was in an assisted living facility, I was taking care of his house during my many frequent trips to Phoenix. His answering machine was constantly getting automated messages from CVS, saying he had prescriptions ready for pickup.

I’m now having the same problem with my cellphone. There is no option in the CVS app to stop the calls, let alone turn off automatic refills. So I resorted to Facebook.

So an old-fashioned phone call is what it’s going to take? I’ll give it a try on Monday.

In Defense of Audio

Something from today’s Washington Post:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/08/18/bidens-bogus-claim-that-afghanistans-military-was-larger-than-nato-allies/

“Roughly 40% of the total [300,000 security forces] consisted of Afghan National Police (ANP) whose forces varied sharply in quality, were largely conventional police and could not play an effective paramilitary role or properly hold even supposedly secure areas,” writes Anthony Cordesman of the Center for the strategic and International Studies in a report published this week on the Afghan military’s collapse.

Someone named Anthony Cordesman also wrote this:

https://www.theabsolutesound.com/author/anthony-cordesman

To the extent that new surround recordings exist, they now seem to consist largely of SACDs from a few leading U.S. audiophile recording firms like Reference Recordings and a number of European firms that have helped keep SACD alive after Sony largely abandoned it, and that are now beginning to experiment with other methods of surround recording.

Coincidence or the same guy? Same guy. This is a question that’s been asked and answered in audio circles for decades.

Mask On!

The epidemiologists were right about Delta-Covid creating another pandemic wave. Incredibly, the Trumpy simpletons continue to insist they know more than communicable disease experts, and that masks are completely useless. Some masks are, sure, because they’re just a piece of cloth, or proper masks that have been overused. What’s really concerning for public health are the anti-maskers who are also anti-vaxx.

I like this clever faux Winsor McCay cartoon by Peter Kuper in The New Yorker, from early in the pandemic, April ’20.

Click to enlarge

I’m going to assume Kuper worked from an actual McCay cartoon. For reference here’s a Little Sammy Sneeze.

Here’s another McCay creation, Dream of the Rarebit Fiend, featuring an early appearance of Gertie the Dinosaur. Gertie appeared the following year in an animated cartoon by the prolific McCay.