The Great Depression and how we got out of it..

There's been a lot of discussion about how to get out of the Recession and how we got out of the Great Depression.

A lot of focus is on the New Deal and Government spending. Others say it was the War that jump started the economy.

I've read some on it and I think there's a perspective you hear sometimes, but doesn't get enough play. The US economy in the late 30s was terrible and getting worse. The economy in the 40s was better by some measures. Sure, GDP went way up, but we were building tanks, planes and ships. Standard of living was terrible during the War as you would expect.

What happened to the economy when the War ended? In '46-'48 there was high inflation and then a bad recession hit with high unenployment. It appeared that the Depression might have come back. What happened then? The economy picked up as markets started opening world wide for US goods.

I'm no economist, but could it have been the case that it was the destruction of world-wide productive capacity (primarily Europe and Far East) during the War that accelerated the US economy out of the duldrums? Perhaps this continued until the bad economies of the late 60s/70s? Not sure what happened during the 80s/90s, but I think maybe we've been living on debt during that period and the basic realities of the economy haven't changed.

It's cautionary. If we have another Great Depression, will there be pressure for us to use our status as the only Superpower to start or encourage the start of a Great War? A War that would diminish world productivity to our benefit?

Madoff and those who invested

I've been reading some articles on the Madoff scandal and I haven't heard this opinion stated, so here it goes.

I think that some (many?) of the people who invested with Madoff thought they were benefitting from a network of connected people. With his secretive investment strategies, his reputation and his consistent returns the investors could assume that Madoff was getting inside information from other investors that they couldn't act on themselves, but could reap reciprocal rewards from other insiders who similarly helped guide Madoff's investments.

It was just insider trading, once removed. It was a scam on Madoff's part, he wasn't brave enough to actually DO that, but that's what I think he was selling. Whenever you look into what he said he was doing to make such consistent returns, it didn't make sense, so "smart" money would assume he was doing something he couldn't talk about.

Insider trading is such a complex subject. I think, more and more, I'm coming around to the view that we should abolish insider trader restrictions. I read an opinion piece on insider trading in the WSJ a few years back that took this stand. I was suprised to learn a few years back that they are a fairly recent invention, going back only to the 60s. Used to be, CEOs were rewarded by insider trading, but their trades were all public (still are), so you could follow them. Sure, they were front runners, but shouldn't someone who worked hard and came up with a winning strategy be rewarded? Note that in this world, the CEOs (and other well-connected people) typically made money only when they did well for their companies. Now, we have these arrangements where CEOs make many millions whether their companies prosper or not.

Getting back to Madoff, here's my takeaway. The "smart" money, the big players who were investing with Madoff knew (or should have known) that they were involved in risky business and they got what they deserved. The little guys who were hurt in this were either conned by their advisers or shouldn't have been involved with Madoff at all. I do think that there should be criminal penalties for not just Madoff but advisers who were directing money into what should have been viewed as a risky investments.

Text to speech tools, The Creed and other things

Saw this list of TTS tools on doggdott.us.

I've been playing with them and the one I like the most right now is Spokentext.

As a recent Catholic convert, I find myself stumbling through the Creed. I made these recordings with Spokentext to help here. I'm currently using a recording I made using VozMe.com, which is very easy to use and doesn't embed the ad in the recording, on my iPod. I set the iPod to repeat the same song and listen to it and talk along while in the car. I think I've about gotten it down.

Anyway, I've posted the Spokentext recordings. And he made them, Male and Female. Sorry, I couldn't resist.

With Spokentext, you can upload arbitrarily long texts, like Spe Salvi, for example. I've recorded this, but I can't post that, because it's copyrighted material.

NaNoWriMoReView

As I reported last, I "Won" this year's NaNoWriMo.

It was a wonderful experience. It was the first fiction I ever wrote and it certainly showed. I like the ideas behind the story I wrote and I may rewrite it someday, but until then, it won't see the light of day.

There are a few things I would do differently now.

First, I would have studied writing I admired more for structure. I wrote like I talk, lots of odd digressions and rambling. My story was very challenging because it was had a lot of back-story to get out and I'm not satisfied that I did get all the back-story out very well (or did anything very well, actually).

Then, the pacing was poor. I had 40,000 words (the NaNoWriMo goal is 50K) and less than half the story told. Perhaps I should have followed the advice of the FAQ Entry and did my 50K without finishing my story, but I felt that was cheating somehow. So, I decided which scenes and facts from the story arc were absolutely necessary and rushed through them and got out the complete story. I'm somewhat glad I did, although the result is scary bad.

It was a very positive experience. I'd recommend it to anyone, but I will warn you that it is more work than you think it'll be. Especially if you hadn't written before, like me.

Now, I think I'll focus on some short stories. I've got a story idea that's been kicking around for awhile that I might just throw together. I'd be surprised if I could do more than 20K words on this story, but that's a good size short story. 50K is really short for a Novel. I think I could easily take my story and flesh it out to 150-200K, which is more typical of the length of a Novel. I'm concerned that I don't have the skills necessary to do justice to my story ideas, but we all suffer with our limitations and I don't know why my stories shouldn't suffer with my limitations.

I'm going to try and read more, also. I think I'll read what's at hand rather than any great plan. Right now, I'm going through C.S. Lewis' The Chronicles of Narnia. I'd never read them before. They are fun but not as interesting as I thought they'd be. I'd read some of Lewis' other works years ago, stuff for adults like Screwtape and I thought they'd have more observations like I found there. Well, they are for children, so I should give them a break, I guess.

I'm back, perhaps for a limited time only

After that last post, I just didn't feel like writing any more.

I'm seriously considering deleting the last post, about my friend Margaret Patton. If you do a Google Search for Margaret Patton, I believe it's the first link. I know that Google customizes results based on information it keeps about you, so your mileage might vary, but I'm not comfortable with my reminisces and the broken link to the news article being the Internet Record of Margaret Patton's life. If you read this and have an opinion, one way or the other, I'd love to hear it. As always, it's Jordan dot Henderson at gmail dot com.

The problem, for me, with blogging is that the things that really interest me have aspects that are too personal to share on a blog. I see a lot interesting blogs out there, they talk about their lives, people they know are carelessly insulted or criticized in public. I don't feel comfortable doing that.

I think it is possible to blog, be interesting and be charitable at the same time. It's harder to do it right, but that's no reason not to try.

Let's see. A lot has happened since I last posted. I don't think I ever wrote about my weight loss. When I posted my last, I was still working on it. I was down by 110 pounds at one point. Now, I'm back up about 20, but I think I'll fight my way back to where I want to be.

I was accepted into full communion in the Roman Catholic Church, April 7th, 2007 at St. Francis of Assisi Church.


Just last night, I finished my novel and became a Winner of the 2007 NaNoWriMo.

Margaret Patton, 1960 - 2005

Patton: A wonderful woman, teacher remembered

[Note: The above link no longer works. I recognize this and I've emailed the source for it, in hopes of getting the text to post here and permission to post it here. In the meantime, imagine a newspaper article full of remembrances of a wonderful High School teacher. You'll not catch some of the personal flavor of this article, but it's the best we can do. - added July 3, 2006]

I knew Margaret Patton, this sounds like her.

It's been a long time. My guess is that I last saw her 25 years ago, around 1980, in Bloomington, Indiana. We both went to Indiana University there.

I do distinctly recall having a phone conversation with her a few years later, after I'd left the area. I probably looked her up when I was in town. She had a memorable voice and I remember that voice from a phone conversation where we talked about some things that happened after I'd left Bloomington. But I can't place that phone conversation in time exactly.

How do I remember Margaret? I remember beautiful long hair, seasonally more or less blond depending on the effects of the sun on it. Her favorite outfits included denim overalls. Her voice, that's someting you can't forget. Throaty and expressive, I remember she made a great explosion sound from the back of her throat. She'd say something like "...and then things just went PPEGHHH!" She had an infectuous laugh which usually followed one of these explosions. Her smile and laugh just made everyone around feel good.

I'd completely lost track of her over the years. I'd meant to look her up, find out what's happened in all those years, but I never did.

I don't know how close you would judge us to be. We hung out quite a bit one spring and early summer. There was a time when we were part of a group of kids who did theater in Bedford and somehow, the others all went different ways, leaving it just down to us for one spring. We'd take walks and talk about things and just hang out, listening to music in her great old limestone house in Bedford, very near the old high school. I remember first hearing a Steve Martin comedy album there. It was really funny at the time. Remember the bit, "How to make a Million Dollars and never pay any taxes?" I think I heard that first at Margaret's house.

That would have been the spring and early summer of 1978. I was a freshman, going on sophomore, at IU at the time, still living at home in Bedford and commuting to school in Bloomington, but I was moving to Bloomington for the summer semester. Margaret would be starting at IU that fall also. During my freshman year, I'd done some theatre in Bedford and that was fun, but that was over. That spring and summer, neither one of us had jobs or cars, so we just hung out. I remember spending some time at a donut shop near her house.

I don't remember what we talked about that spring, not very much. I would have been 19 and those would have been the days when I knew everything. Surely I've forgotten a lot by now.

I remember gossiping a lot about people we knew well, nothing that's of interest to anybody now. I can be pretty brutal when talking about other people, but I remember Margaret turning it aside, softening it into observations about the humor you can find everywhere.

We'd known each other for a few years at this point. We'd first met my junior year in high school, when we were both in the cast of You Can't Take it With You. I was Paul, the father, and I believe that Margaret played one of the daughters, not the romantic lead daughter, but the other one, but it's possible that Margaret played Paul's wife. You can get to know people quickly working in a cast together and Margaret and I and a few others clicked. [update 09/19/2005 - In reviewing an old press clipping from those days, it appears that Margaret was not in the cast. I do recall Margaret was around while we were rehearsing and running the play. I believe she worked in the crew, the lights and the like. I guess my memory isn't what it used to be]

But, my junior and senior years of high school, we didn't hang out that much, really. She was involved in a lot of things that I wasn't and I had my separate interests. Margaret was working pretty hard those days on becoming a good clown. Her dream was attending Clown College in Florida. She worked hard in all the skills necessary to being a good clown and I could tell you, from where I sat, she was pretty good. She could juggle well, knew how to do the makeup, was an excellent mime... She was good at acrobatics, too, but she busted her elbow really badly one day - I remember she was in a cast for many months - in practicing her tumbling and then maybe she lost her nerve to do much tumbling after that. She told me that she gave up the dream of Clown College, because the entry auditions were very selective and she thought she needed tumbling skills to succeed.

I think she spent some time then looking for a new dream. From what the kids are saying from Anderson High School in the link above, she found it and lived it.

We hung out some at IU together, but not too much. A running joke was how I dragged her over to the computer center one night to print out her biorhythms on a line-printer. Neither one of us believed that biorhythms meant anything, but we were both geekily fascinated by the process of producing them on a computer, a big honking super-computer from the late 60's.

I know she loved animals, I remember cats and I seem to recall and old dog around her house in Bedford. I vaguely remember that there were cats there even though someone was allergic to cats. She reporting having a lot of fun working at Girl Scout Camp one summer. At IU, I met her one day outside the apartment of a guy I knew to be into biology, so I would guess she was going in that direction back then, but we never really talked about biology. We were growing apart pretty quickly after her freshman year just as a natural process of finding our own interests and groups of friends.

Oh, and there was always music around her house. I remember her older brother was the best trombone player in the high school band when I was the incoming worst freshman trombonist. I quit before my freshman year, I just wasn't that interested in it to work hard enough to make up for my lack of aptitude. The Pattons were a musical family. Margaret played several instruments, I believe, but she was more interested in theater and becoming a clown.

Well, that about wraps up everything I can say about our past. Maybe I haven't said enough, but there's no way I could say enough.

I think a lot of what you might find about Margaret will be said by her students. I thought that this perspective might be good for some of those students. It's hard to imagine an adult, an authority figure, being your age, but they were, of course.

I've missed her in my life for all these years without doing anything about it. I'm sure my loss would be much greater had I renewed contact, but I regret not renewing that contact just the same. I don't mean to compare my loss to that of those who were close to her now. My heart goes out to all of you out there.

I didn't attend the funeral. I just learned about her death last Friday. It's strange. I was at work, just a few miles away from the stretch of highway where it happened. I'd heard about a terrible accident, involving a semi-truck carrying food oil, but I didn't read the press reports. On Friday morning August 12 - 9 days after the accident -for some unknown reason, I did a google search for "Margaret Patton" and the first hit began "Margaret A. Patton Margaret A. Patton Jan. 22, 1960 - Aug. 3, 2005". That sent a chill through me, I realized that the birthdate would be about right, so I clicked the link to find what had happened. I guess I'd heard somewhere that she'd married and had children, but I knew no more than that. I had no idea she was a school teacher or lived in Anderson. Someone at work was talking about the bad accident and said that two people from Anderson, Indiana had died and I commented that I was born in Anderson (hadn't been there since I was 3). It's all so odd and eerie somehow, like a dream.

(I posted an earlier version of the above, but I recalled some small details better and I edited it on 8/17. Added a further revision on 9/19, noted above).

Still alive

I'm still alive out here.

I'm sick of politics and the media. I don't think I'm going to write much about that. Maybe meta-observations only. I think the media is spinning us up all the time for their own purposes and writing about that is serving their purpose. I wish people, including bloggers, would show responsibility and just ignore those things that are unhealthy or bad for our society. There's so much to be done and so little time for purposeless outrage.

I'm trying to learn Haskell. I wasn't happy with Scheme. I just wasn't pleased with the balkanization of the Scheme community, how software has to be ported to implementations. I'm concerned that Haskell has some of that also, but I am attracted by the purity of it all. I'm also very impressed with what Autrijus Tang has done with Pugs in a relatively short time.