Butterfly Effect

Maybe I am too cynical and this is why I see some conflict between the photo and the commentary.

I always felt that there was something fishy about the sudden spotlight  Joe, the plumber received during this election season. He emerged as a folk hero of a self-made man who cannot advance his business because of high taxes.

My recent encounter with a particular plumber got me thinking that decent plumbers are usually hard to find, and plumbers, in general, don’t have a great reputation as reliable, helpful type of professionals. Reliable plumbers are hard to find and you have treat them as divas to get the job done.
Since I have not found a reliable plumber yet, I keep trying different folks based on recommendation. The last plumber I called is supposedly one of them. Well, he came once, but could not finish the job that day.
He promised to finish the job the following week. Since he did not call to reschedule, I left him a voicemail.
He did not return my call.
Then I e-mailed him.
He responded to my e-mail finally, blamed his phone issues for not returning my call and promised to schedule an appointment with me.
He did not call.
I bumped into him a few days later, because he was working at another house in the street. He could not avoid me and wanted to come to my place right away, because he was done with the other job. Well, I was on my way out and my wife was taking a rest after a difficult night with our newborn.
The he promised to come later that week.
He did not come.
He did not send me an e-mail.

I have had enough of this plumber. I guess I have to keep looking or fix the problem myself.

Joe, the plumber could not be a hero to me, I guess, even if I agreed with his critics of the tax policies of the incoming president. There is probably a better profession out there that could be a flagship of any movement about “punitive” taxation.

I bet you won’t find many posts about too low gas prices. I wish there was a way to punish those who waste it without any regard to the environment or to their fellow countrymen who are thousands of miles away trying to stabilize a region so rich in oil.
I am sitting in the waiting room of a karate training center. My daughter has been taking lessons here for a while. There is plenty of room still left in the waiting area, ambient music fills the air and there is WiFi for those who can’t go unplugged for long. All in all, it is a pretty relaxing environment. I usually bring my laptop and catch up with work or just the browse web.
For some folks, though, this is not a good enough I guess. There is a lady just sitting in her Nissan Murano while her kid is in class. It would be fine if her premium-gas-consuming SUV had not been idling all through this 30-40 minutes. She may not realize that her engine will suffer from extended periods of idling, too.

There is a little angel (my newborn son, Oliver) keeping us up at night. I am doing my part helping his mom to get through the period where we adjust our schedules and work on the baby’s schedule. He is 2-week old today, and these first 14 days have been truly amazing. I guess I forgot how small and cute newborns are, and how much joy they bring to the family.

I am not sure it is possible to prepare for the unique experience of witnessing a baby’s birth. I must have been in denial during the labor and did not really believe that there is actually a baby in my wife’s belly. I was obviously worried about my wife (Judit), and yet I was not supposed to show my concerns before the delivery. I was very excited at the same time, but yet it did not quite feel appropriate jumping up and down in my excitement in the labor/delivery room when the love of my life was going through pain that I would never experience. The relief came only when the baby was finally out and I got to cut the umbilical cord. What a journey this has been so far.

I was browsing the showtimes of the Alamo Drafthouse when I noticed something unusual. The last round of presidential debates is scheduled for tonight, and these movie titles juxtaposed with the live broadcast of the debate - for some reason - make me nervous: Heaven help us, Body of Lies, Blindness, How To Lose Friends and Alienate People.

My neighbor’s daughter is approaching the age where she could start driving herself to school. (Since - as I was told - it’s not cool to take the bus when you are in high school. That topic would probably make another good blog entry).

Anyway, the point is that parents are - for a good reason - worried about their younglings’ safety first and foremost. Many people, unfortunately, believe that the bigger the vehicle is, the safer it is. In my neighbor’s case, the choice is a Ford F-150 - one of the most popular light trucks in the US.

Besides that the Ford F-150 is not known for its fuel economy (13 mpg or 18 l/100km in city), it is not even safer than the “sub-compact” Honda Civic. Some years ago The New Yorker published “Big and Bad” by Malcom Gadwell that provides excellent points about why the perceived safety of big SUVs is a myth. The reader also gets to read about the history of SUVs in the US. The statistics in this article also show that - contrary to popular belief - less people are killed in smaller cars (like the Honda Civic or Toyota Corolla) than in the Ford F-150. On the other hand, accidents caused by Ford F-150s kill several times more people than accidents caused by smaller cars.

To be honest, I have not much respect for those getting into fights at sport events. I find it even more troubling the chanting of Nazi slogans after Germany’s soccer team defeated Poland in the Euro 2008 finals. Isn’t it really stupid considering that both goals were scored by Lukas Podolski, a player born in Poland. In Germany’s second game (against Croatia), Podolski was the only scorer from the German team.

Perhaps those lunatics chanting Nazi slogans should also look at this list to see who else in the German team has non-German ancestors:
David Odonkor - born in Germany to a German mother and a Ghanaian father
Oliver Neuville - born in Switzerland to a German father and an Italian mother
Kevin Kuranyi - born in Brazil to a German-Hungarian father and a Panamanian mother
Piotr Trochowski - born in Poland

No, I would not do that. I would not do that for any politician. This Slashdot post suggests though that the McCain campaign is encouraging activists to campaign on left-leaning blogs.

I am surprised how out-of-touch McCain is about immigration. You would expect that a long-time senator from a border state, where immigration is obviously on everybody’s mind (and on his constituents’ mind), he would have a reasonable stance on these issues. After that $50 / hour lettuce picking offer, I have lost all my hope that he would ever make any sense when it comes to talk about immigration.

Of course, I am very disappointed that the House and Senate could not pass legislation about immigration reform. I am one of those lucky guys who arrived in this country just about the time when the Internet bubble burst and have had the same job since then. Last year I finally became a permanent resident. The immigration process is often a several years long, unpredictable, frustrating and comes with all kinds of paperwork, limitations on travels, and of course, it ties you to that same employer during that process.

I find it disturbing that lot of politicians (including McCain) support the idea of building border fences. Fences … in the 21st century?! Is this America’s Iron Curtain?! (Are we going backwards?!?)

Shouldn’t politicians think about dealing with the cause of illegal immigration instead of spot treatment of the consequences?

I am still worked up about that article in The Wall Street Journal. Especially because some folks think that as long as they can afford driving gas guzzlers, it is only their business and it does not impact anybody else. This is where they are completely wrong. Anybody with some basic understanding of economics can explain what supply and demand is all about and oil is no exception to that rule either.

The same day that The Wall Street Journal was published, there was a segment about soaring European diesel prices in the Morning Edition program of NPR. If you listen to the show, the narrator at about 4 minutes 45 seconds in the program is talking about the effect of these high prices on a driver from Marseilles, France. Quotes: “… says he [the driver] thanks God his small Renault sedan gets 60 miles to the gallon …”.

60 miles to the gallon! Oh, my God! And he is referring to a regular car, not a hybrid, and not some super expensive all-electric roadster. Where can you buy a car like that in the US?

Are the folks at The Wall Street Journal out of their mind? Or they just don’t have any decency or any moral standards to comply with. This article published today talks about how it may make sense to buy large SUVs in the world of high gas prices.