Author Archives: Jon Lowder

This Will Shock Celeste: Apparently I’m a ‘Doer’

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BlogTypelizer
I heard about this site called Typealizer that gives you a Myers-Brigg type score by analyzing your blog.  So I tested it and apparently I'm a "Doer" or in the Myers-Brigg vernacular I'm an ESTP.  Click on the image to the left to see the results.

While most of the description does seem to accurately depict me, I think that anyone who knows me would disagree with the whole "doer" moniker.  I'm more of a "think about doing" kind of guy, unless of course the doing helps me avoid real work.  I'm great at doing things like avoiding yard work, avoiding chores, avoiding washing the car, etc.  If that's what they mean then they're dead on.

Think You Know the Third World? Think Again

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Below is a fascinating presentation by Dr. Hans Rosling at the TED conference in 2006.  It's fascinating for two reasons: First, it debunks a lot of the pre-held notions most of us have about the third world. Second, his presentation of the data is absolutely mind blowing.  Not a lot of bells and whistles, just really compelling and easy to grasp.  It's worth the 20 minutes to watch it.

Now There are Three That I Know Of

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I've had a Google Alert set up for "jon lowder" for a while now, and usually it doesn't return anything other than a blog post I've written or something related to work.  Every once in a while I do get alerts that cause me to sit up and pay attention.  One came last year when I apparently hit a home run in a high school baseball game in Oklahoma or some such place.  Ends up there's a high school kid who's a pretty good athlete that shares my name.

This morning I got an alert that I'd lost my job.  Of course that perked me right up and I quickly clicked through to the article referenced in the alert.  It appears that there's another fella with my name who's about five years younger than me and living in Colorado.  He lost his job over the summer and he was being interviewed on CNN about the presidential election.  So, while I feel for my namesake I'm glad to know that I have my job for at least another day.

Live from the Courthouse

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I have jury duty today and it's just a bucket of laughs.  Interesting thing, though, is that the Winston-Salem Journal's local columnist Scott Sexton is in the same jury pool with me.  There are two cases today and a bunch of us got called into the courtroom for a drug trafficking case.  Luckily my name wasn't one of the 18-ish that were called to fill the 12 spots on the jury.  Sexton's was, though, and it offered a little comic relief when the assistant DA asked everyone questions like, "Do you know anyone in law enforcement?" or "Do you know anyone in the District Attorney's office."  FYI, the DA accepted Sexton but the defense attorney dismissed him.  What a surprise, huh?

Now I'm back in the jury waiting room.  We won't be excused until either the second case has it's jury selected or 5:00, whichever comes first.  At least they have free wi-fi here.

While walking back from lunch I ran into an older gentleman who was looking for the early voting location.  It's a couple of blocks from the courthouse, but I couldn't really help him because I still don't know downtown Winston-Salem like a native.  We ended up asking a street vendor and he pointed the gentleman in the right direction, but during our stroll the gentleman and I figured out that we both spent the majority of our lives in the metropolitan DC area. He'd mentioned that even though he'd grown up in Winston everything had changed during the 50+ years he'd lived in DC. We compared notes about our neighborhoods (he lived in NW DC, and I lived in Northern Virginia) and agreed that it had changed for the worse. 

I thought it was kind of cool that two people with a common background (if you negate the 30 years difference in age) met each other in the course of fulfilling their various civic duties.  It really made my day.

How I’ve Come to Hate Elizabeth Dole

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Below is a video I created to show how many robocalls and direct mailers we've gotten from various politicians over the last few weeks.  The vast majority of calls came from or on behalf of Elizabeth Dole, and they're all negative.  I have no idea what she's like as a person, but after the last two weeks I can tell you that I hate her guts as a politician.  What's interesting to me is that we haven't received one robocall from a Democrat, but a lot of the mail came from Democrats.  Anyway, enjoy:

John Daly Passed Out Drunk at the Hooters in Winston-Salem

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JohnDalyMugshot
Pro Golfer John Daly, Mr. Grip It and Rip It, got sloshed at the Hooters on Hanes Square Circle and passed out in the restaurant.  The EMTs and police were called and after Daly refused to go to the hospital and the police realized he didn't have a ride they took him to the drunk tank for a 24-hour sober up session.  I have to ask: what was Daly doing in Winston-Salem? It's a great town, but it's not exactly a tourist mecca.  Also, how did he end up at Hooters without transportation?  I'm guessing whoever drove him there ditched him, but who knows.

Really sad.  I remember watching him fight a case of horrible DTs during one tournament and then watching the profile of him on 60 Minutes when he said that he was under control because he'd cut out hard liquor and was a beer-only guy now.  I guess that isn't working so well. 

Bellwether for Newspapers. Anyone Want in On the W-S Journal Dead Pool?

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The Christian Science Monitor is leading the way to what is probably going to be the future for most daily newspapers:

'Christian Science Monitor' To Cease Daily Publication
Signaling a fundamental shift in the publishing industry, The Christian Science Monitor
today announced plans to shift from daily to a weekly print publishing
format. In turn, the national newspaper plans to invest heavily in its
Web presence.

"We're the first national paper to
switch to a web first strategy," said John Yemma, editor of the
newspaper, which is more than 100 years old and has won seven Pulitzer
Prizes. "We need to make it first rather than secondary, so we can make
it more of a go-to destination."

Anyone want to start a dead pool for various print dailies?  Not that the whole shebang will die, just the daily printed version.  I'm going to go short on the Winston-Salem Journal and say that they have 18 months before they take similar action.  They may not go to printing once weekly, but I can easily see them down to Wednesday through Sunday by then. 


Cuban: Entrepreneurs are the Future

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I'm a fan of Mark Cuban's, and not because I think he's a great sports franchise owner.  I like him because he speaks his mind, and he shares his thoughts with the world via his blog.  Here's a great example:

You can cut taxes for 95pct of Americans and raise taxes for the
rest. You can cut taxes for businesses and retain the Bush Tax Cuts.
You can increase or decrease the capital gains tax 5 or 10pct either
way.  Under both programs the deficit for the country will increase, 
we will borrow and print more money.  5 or 10pct variance either way,
given the big hole  our economy is in wont matter.

The cure for what ails is us the Entrepreneurial Spirit of this
country.  We are a nation of people who encourage , support and invest
in those of any and all age, race and gender who will use their
ingenuity and come up with a new idea.

Its always the new idea that re energizes this country.  Industry,
manufacturing, transportation, technology, digital communications, etc,
each changed how we lived and ignited our economy and standard of
living. Tax policy has never done that.  The American People have.

Entrepreneurs who create something out of nothing don’t care what
tax rates are. Bill Gates didn’t monitor the marginal tax rate when he
dropped out of Harvard and started MicroSoft (btw, it was a ton higher
than it is today). Michael Dell didn’t wonder what the capital gains
tax was when he started PC’s Limited, and then grew it into Dell
Computer.  I doubt that any great business or invention started with a
discussion or even a consideration of what the current or projected
income or capital gains tax was or would be.

It doesn't hurt that I often agree with him, but even when I don't I appreciate his putting it all out there.  It's almost as much fun as watching him get all the other NBA owners' panties in a twist two or three times a season.

Where’s the Bailout for the Policy Holders?

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David Hoggard is a small business owner in Greensboro who also happens to be a blogger.  He recently posted his insurance costs for the last year and asked how it is that insurance companies need a bailout.  Here are the numbers:

  • Life insurance -  $7,548.00
  • Personal Disability -  $2,830.00
  • Health policy -  $8,100.00
  • Homeowners – $1,349.00
  • Personal Umbrella – $550.00
  • Personal Auto – $3,098.00
  • Worker’s Comp – business – $31,689.00
  • General Liability – business – $2,687.00
  • Inland Marine Cargo – business – $2,847.00
  • Fire and Casualty – business – $365.00
  • Auto – business – $5,650.00
  • Additional Liability – business – $565.00
  • Unemployment (Fed/state) – business – $2,165.00

All told, that is a whopping $69,443.00 paid to insurance companies by me and my little business within just the past twelve months.  And they are the ones in need of a bail out??????  Puleez.

Now add the amount in bailout money we individual taxpayers are on the hook for and you'll get the true number.  If all were right with the world the people who perpetrated this mess would end up wearing bracelets and eating institutional food for years to come, rather than being allowed to scurry to their 12 bedroom second homes to lament the fact that they're now worth millions instead of billions.  Obviously it ain't gonna happen.

Meanwhile to pay for this fiasco the true business builders in this country, like Hoggard, will be facing premiums and deductibles in the future that will make today's numbers look positively reasonable by comparison.  Happy, happy, joy, joy!

Understanding The Bailout. Correct Me If I’m Wrong

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I'm not the sharpest knife in the drawer, especially when it comes to things related to money, so its taken me a while to get my head around this whole credit default swap thing and how it led to the big government bailout.  I began to understand when I was in San Francisco and I heard a speaker describe the market as a game of poker and CDS as everyone who was watching the game betting on the outcome on the side.  The game itself is worth $1,000,000 and the side bets are worth $80,000,000.  That analogy helped, but it didn't quite get me all the way to comprehension and I couldn't quite put my finger on the reason why.

Then yesterday I was watching 60 Minutes and they did a story on CDS, the second story on the subject they'd done just this fall which has to be some sort of sign about how big this mess is.  Anyway, one of the people interviewed used the side bet analogy, but he also pointed out that the bets were made by people who didn't have any money.  AHA!  Now I've got it.

So let's stick with the analogy.  Say you went to play in a poker tournament and you lost early in the night, but instead of going home to get nagged about losing you decide to stick around and see if you can make up some of your losses by betting on the side with the other losers.  You've got $50 in your pocket, but you're so sure you know that your best buddy who's won every basement game you've ever played is going to win the thing that you bet the chump next to you $1,000 that your buddy's gonna win.  The very next hand your buddy goes all in with three of a kind and gets hammered by an inside straight.  He's done and you now owe the guy next to you $1,000 and all you have in your pocket is $50.  You're looking at getting a severe ass-whooping if you don't come up with the other $950.  What do you do?

Well, you could sell your car but you just lost it in a game last week.  You could sell your house, but  you've already used it for collateral on several dozen work-at-home ventures.  You could borrow it from your buddy, but he's tapped out along with every other friend you have.  Besides, you borrowed money from him last week and now he's worried that not only will he not see any money he gives you now, but he has serious reservations about the money he gave you last week. In fact your whole group of friends is in hock to each other but nobody knows who has what, or who owes whom, so no ones lending any money at all.

What's left is your parents.  They've always been good for a bailout, and if you ever needed one now's the time.  So you call up Mom and Pop and they ain't happy.  They're still paying down the second they took on the house to pay for your lousy college education and now you're asking them to go dipping into their home equity one more time.  Luckily they have an open line of credit at the bank that even came with a convenient little check book. So they ask you to come over and sit at the kitchen table while they bitch slap you for 15 minutes, call you all kinds of dirty names and then ask you how much you need.  You think on it for a minute and decide that instead of aiming low and asking for $1,000 you'll see if you can't get them to give you $5,000 so you can pay off your debt and then have some left over for expenses.  They think about it for a while, and they say something about giving it to you if you'll agree to some conditions that they'd like to have their lawyer put into a contract, but you tell them that if you don't get the money tonight the guy you owe is going to kneecap you.  They think a little longer and then say they'll write you a check for $5,000 if you agree to sell them a stake in your house and if you "cross your heart and hope to die" promise that you'll take whatever is left over to help your buddies out.  After all they've always thought your buddies were fine young men, and if you help them out then maybe they'll pay it forward and everyone will start doing better.

Two weeks later you call call your parents from the Caribbean.  You've paid off your debt, filed for bankruptcy protection for your non-gambling creditors and now you're getting a little R&R on your favorite beach in the whole world and you just wanted to thank them.

Glossary:
You and your buddy = Investment Banks
Your house = Mortgage Backed Securities
Your side bet = Credit Default Swaps
Your parents = US Government
Your parents house = US Treasury
Your parents' debt = The US Debt