Fires in Greece

I was sad to see the forest fires happening in Greece this last week. In all of my travels I really enjoyed Greece. It is exotic without being overwhelming, laid back without being boring, and best of all, inexpensive.

My wife and I spent about 6 weeks in Greece, a few days in Athens, then to the islands of Hydra and Aegina. After that we visited the Peloponesian peninsula, mostly the pretty town of Nafplion. Nafplion is an old Venetian city and the architecture looks more Italian than Greek - lots of red tiled roofs.

After that we took an overnight ship to Crete, where we stayed at the really cool old city of Hania. It is an old town with winding narrow alleys and a perfect little port with a great waterfront. There is a great wide sandy beach.

Then we travelled by bus through the picturesque mountains of central Crete to the South coast, to some rocky little beach towns with hidden nude beaches strung along the coast. We spent the next 2 weeks like this, moving to a new little town every few days.

Finally we left for Santorini, where we spent 4-5 days, and celebrated Linda's 40th birthday. Santorini is one of the most spectacular settings in the world, and a great place to finish our Greek vacation.

Credit Crisis

Watching the stock market meltdown over the last few weeks has been interesting but too not too disturbing (as long as I don't check my 401-k balances).

I did hear a good analysis of how it happens that over-rated mortgage backed securities can cause such a drop in the DOW. Banks lend to each other over night, and the collateral they use can include large bundles of mortgages that have been sold on the market. Since everyone knows they have been historically overvalued due to mortgage credit being extended to subprime borrowers, as the housing market softens the lending banks start to get nervous about loaning to other banks with such collateral. Not being able to borrow overnight means banks cannot lend as much, putting upward pressure on interest rates, and making businesses nervous.

Many European banks have invested in these mortgage backed securities, which spreads the fun internationally. Eventually these securities will become properly valued and credit will return to the markets. However there will be spasms of overreaction, both market level and regulatory, causing continuing upheaval and inefficiencies in the markets.

Construction Project

They finally laid blacktop on my street yesterday after a six month project. They replaced water lines, storm sewers, sanitary sewers, cement roadway, sidewalks and driveway aprons. What a mess that was! We had to park on the next street over and walk for a few weeks while they were tearing it up in front of our house.
It was noisy and very dusty but now it is a brand new street. We really had needed new sidewalks. Next year the city is going to plant trees along the tree lawn. They had to rip out a couple of old trees to do the work.
My daughter was endlessly fascinated by the huge machinery and giant holes in the road.

Glad this is over!

Things I don't care about

American Idol (or any amateur hour type show)
I-Phones
Harry Potter
The Simpsons Movie
YouTube (and the YouTube debate nonsense)
Text Messsaging
MySpace

How to Earn $1 Million by Not Watching TV

I saw this article on Yahoo finance. The headline touted "How to Earn $1 million by Not Watching TV". Intriguing enough, so I read it.

What a bunch of BS. After several paragraphs of dubious arithmetic, you have to read almost the whole article to find out that that 80% of the money you will "save" is the money you would have spent due to the influence of TV commercials.

This article was from thestreet.com, a site supposedly dedicated to financial education.

There are a lot of good reasons to limit TV watching, but not the expectation that you are going to end up with $1 million in your pocket.

The Seven Wonders of The World

The seven new wonders of the world were chosen by popular vote recently and, having visited several of the nominees, it is clear the vote was one of popularity, not an objective ranking of the sites. The final 7 chosen are:
Chichén Itzá, Mexico
Christ the Redeemer, Brazil
The Great Wall, China
Machu Picchu, Peru
Petra, Jordan
The Roman Colloseum, Italy
The Taj Mahal, India.

Of these, I have visited Chichen Itza, Christ the Redeemer, The Great Wall, Macchu Picchu and the Taj Mahal.

My first observation is that any list of wonders that does not include the temples at Angkor Wat is fatally flawed. I consider Angkor to be the #1 wonder of the world I have seen (never saw the pyramids of Egypt). Angkor far surpasses Chichen Itza and Christ The Redeemer in its powerful beauty and scale. Clearly the Brazilians and Mexicans cast more votes than the people of Cambodia.

Next, I cannot understand why the manmade rice terraces of China and Central Bali would not be considered a great wonder of the world. It is a truly awe inspiring sight. Not a monument to the greatness of a regime like the others, but an active work of communal architecture that supports the lives of millions of people.

Lastly, the Great Wall: I am fully in agreement with this one.

Scooter Libby

It makes perfect sense for George Bush to commute the sentence of Scooter Libby.

There really isn't anything Bush could do to diminish his reputation even further, so why not do something to shore up the hard core conservative base of the Republican Party? What's the downside: Democrats and moderates will lose respect for Bush? They already have no respect for him.

Bush could pose nude with Ann Coulter and a penguin and the conservative base would praise him for it. On the other hand he could personally behead Osama Bin Laden and the Democrats would find fault.