An old profession offers new opportunities … Arrrgh

Tom Sawyer would be happy to see the present-day possibilities in the pirate trade. There is piracy all over the globe, though most commonly off the Horn of Africa and on into the Indian Ocean. Here is a Slate story about the Brits negotiating with Somali pirates who've grabbed a British couple.
And here is the Weekly Piracy Report from ICC Commercial Crime Services.
And if you want to see the geographical distribution of piracy, here is a map of pirate attacks. You can click on the pointers and get details of attacks. A lot of it sounds like petty thievery carried out in port.
Better future in piracy than print journalism, plus there remains some public regard for pirates.

Well, Col. Travis, use your cell phone to call for reinforcements

The results of hiring callow, cheap help are often really funny. The Vicad's Erica Rodriguez writes about the theater in Ganado, "Alvin Svoboda never thought a job as a 15-year-old video projectionist would play out this way." Swoboda is – get this – 71 years old, which is to say he started running movies more than fifty years ago. Poor little Erica doesn't know that a half century ago, movies were on film and running a projector was a skilled job. Read here. An editor should have caught something like this, but …

In case you lack a natural talent for bad writing …

An old-and-dear sends along to me a link to a blog called How to Write Badly Well. Written by a Brit named Joel Stickley, it's a grin or two. Under the heading Always use a thesaurus:

She manipulated the garment in a cogitative mode.
‘Hmm,’ she vocalised. ‘This attire is verifiably marvellous. What is it constituted from?’
‘From the most meritorious velveteen,’ defined her interlocutor, simpering coincidentally.
‘Is it?’ iterated the party of the first part. ‘That’s felicitous.’

And on further in that vein. It's got various samples of bad writing. Read it all here. I don't know how far he can stretch this gimmick, but it might be worth checking back occasionally.

Not just bad weather here

From Yahoo News:

Figures released Monday by the Audit Bureau of Circulations show that average daily [newspaper] circulation dropped 10.6 percent in the April-September period from the same six-month span in 2008. That was greater than the 7.1 percent decline in the October 2008-March 2009 period and the 4.6 percent drop in the April-September period of 2008.

Read all here.
I saw Alfalfa there at the Vicad claiming a 50-50 advertising-to-editorial ratio. Perhaps he is innumerate, like so many editors, or perhaps he doesn't understand that full-page ads placed in the Vicad by the Vicad aren't actually revenue-producing pages.

Weather, &c

There's a cloud to the south that fills up the sky, and we had a little rash of thunder and lightning earlier. Wunderground has us at 100% for rain tomorrow. You don't see that very often. It's still nicely cool, though muggy. Cooler weather brings certain joys, including the pleasure of stews and pot roasts and such. Occasionally of late, H-E-B has had whole pork loins, all bagged up for a buck a pound. I snap one up every time they do that; pork goes for something less than half of comparable cuts of beef. When I'm at the meat counter I like to mutter 'swine flu - swine flu- swine flu' under my breath. Just want to keep the price down. One of my top-five meals is a stew made from pork and turnips. It came from the NYTimes about ten years ago and calls for lovage, celery leaves, or parsley, and white wine, chicken stock, or water. I like it best with celery leaves and wine, though I've never tried it with lovage. For the recipe, go here. Try it … it's really great. Pork gets nice and tender and the turnips are sweet when browned and braised.

Socialism for the Realtors

Saw a Victoria real-estate guy on TV this week arguing that the $8k tax deal for first-time homebuyers should be kept on.
From the Big Picture econ blog:

A recent Brookings Institute analysis (found via Barrons) demonstrates persuasively that the $8,000 subsidy actually costs $43,000 per extra house sold; worse yet, the new $15k tax credit will ultimately cost $292,000 per home.

Read it all here. What the real-estate business needs is to let house prices find their proper level, not bloodsuck gummint money to hold on to glory days now gone. Lot of people that holler a lot about the free market and the oppressive gummint are first in line when the gummint's handing out cheese.

Dead souls

Paul B. Farrell, who writes on MarketWatch, has come to be one of my favorite Web commentators, mostly because he sees the existence of a strong moral factor present in our unhappy financial situation. Faber writes:

Jack Bogle published "The Battle for the Soul of Capitalism" four years ago. The battle's over. The sequel should be titled: "Capitalism Died a Lost Soul." Worse, we've lost "America's Soul." And worldwide the consequences will be catastrophic.

This piece was published on Oct. 20; it's titled "'Death of Soul of Capitalism' Bogle, Faber, Moore." Look here. The unhappy truth is that most of our present problems are attributable to ugly and unfettered greed as practiced by a bunch of amoral greedheads in the financial sector of the American economy. Not denying the role of mindless acquisitiveness in the general public, but the heaviest guilt lies at the doorstep of the Wall Streeters, who are still grabbing it with both hands and glibly justifying their greed as a just reward for their great work. Someday the people of this country will snap to what's been done to them by the bankers and hedge-fund managers. I hope things get vengeful when they do snap.