Memory or Lack Thereof

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I'm infamous in my family for having what can most generously be described as a crappy memory.  What?  Oh right, memory.  My biggest weakness is a memory for names, followed closely by scheduled events and/or anything I've been asked to do more than five minutes ago.  Just this morning I was in a meeting and I was talking to someone who lives in a neighborhood near a bunch of people I know and we were trying to figure out who we both may be acquainted with.  I could easily pull first names, but last names were hard to come by, and these are people I've known for years.  Of course later while driving to the office I could remember all of them, but at crunch time they eluded me.

My one saving grace is I've always been able to remember faces, and usually in what context I know those faces.  I can be in the grocery store and see someone from my gym whom I've never spoken to and know that's where I recognize them from, and often after only seeing them one or two times.  This was borne out when I took the Cambridge Face Memory test and scored an 89% (average is 80%).  Nothing to write home about, but when compared to the rest of my memory I'll take it.

I will say this in my own defense: as far as I know I've never forgotten my anniversary.  It's the least I could do for the woman who has lived with my forgetting everything from buying food for the dogs (my excuse is that they're too fat anyway), to forgetting to pick up <fill in the blank here> on the way home from work on an almost daily basis.  She's a great gal.  Now if I could just remember her name…

Field Reporting from the Wilds of Greensboro

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Former Charlotte mayor and '08 Republican gubernatorial candidate Pat McCrory spoke to my Rotary Club at lunch today.  He did a nice job, and during the Q&A he indicated that at this point he's definitely planning on running for governor again in '12.  Not exactly news, but if nothing else it has me already thinking about what should be an incredibly active campaign season over the next two years.

Real World Impact of Crappy Journalism

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From David Cay Johnston at Tax.com:

When it comes to improving public understanding of tax policy, nothing has been more troubling than the deeply flawed coverage of the Wisconsin state employees' fight over collective bargaining.

Economic nonsense is being reported as fact in most of the news reports on the Wisconsin dispute, the product of a breakdown of skepticism among journalists multiplied by their lack of understanding of basic economic principles. 

Gov. Scott Walker says he wants state workers covered by collective bargaining agreements to "contribute more" to their pension and health insurance plans.

Accepting Gov. Walker' s assertions as fact, and failing to check, created the impression that somehow the workers are getting something extra, a gift from taxpayers. They are not. 

Out of every dollar that funds Wisconsin' s pension and health insurance plans for state workers, 100 cents comes from the state workers.

How can that be? Because the "contributions" consist of money that employees chose to take as deferred wages – as pensions when they retire – rather than take immediately in cash. The same is true with the health care plan. If this were not so a serious crime would be taking place, the gift of public funds rather than payment for services…

The collective bargaining agreements for prosecutors, cops and scientists are all on-line. 

Reporters should sit down, get a cup of coffee and read them. And then they could take what they learn, and what the state website says about fringe benefits, to Gov. Walker and challenge his assumptions.

Wisconsin Governor Got Punked?

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The video below is apparently a conversation between the editor of The Buffalo Beast, who is pretending to be one of the billionaire Koch brothers, and the governor of Wisconsin.  If it's real, and according to Salon.com it is, then I have to say I'm shocked that the governor or his staff didn't do a better job of vetting the caller before doing all the talking.

 

Proud Parents

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MichaelFinanceAcademyRecognition
Our oldest is hitting the home stretch of his high school career and last night featured one of what I think will be many landmark events for him over the next few months. In the picture to the left he's receiving a certificate and handshake from the WSFCS Board of Education chair Donny Lambeth.  The occassion was the recogntion of Michael and his classmates who participated in the Finance Academy at West Forsyth and East Forsyth High Schools.  

At the end of his freshman year Michael attended an orientation session about the Finance Academy and he decided then to commit to a three year program that integrates the principles of finance and business with the students' core curriculum.  It also provides the students an opportunity to intern at local businesses the summer after their junior year, and last summer Michael was able to intern downtown with the city government. 

As Chairman Lambeth said last night, the news is full of kids doing the wrong thing, so it's nice to see kids being recognized for doing the right thing. It was definitely a proud moment for Michael's parents.

Pictorial Proof

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I’m posting this mainly to prove to my friends and family that I did what I did today. You see, if you looked up “car guy” in the thesaurus I’d be the picture next to it’s antonym and my friends and family know this. So I need to document the fact that I spent the day working on my ’87 Dodge pickup with my neighbor. Here’s a sampling of what we did: took off the old two barrel carburetor and intake manifold to replace them with new ones; took off the water pump to replace it; took off the timing chain to replace it and broke the cam shaft in the process; made an unexpected trip to the store to order a new cam shaft; cleaned and painted a bunch of parts so we’ll be ready to put it all together when the cam shaft comes in on Monday.

Big shout out to my neighbor Mark for taking this on. Before we started today I couldn’t have identified anything under the hood that wasn’t the battery.

BTW, nice weather today huh?

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Awesome Baby!

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I hope this NY Times article about my alma mater's men's basketball team doesn't carry the same kind of jinx that appearing on the cover of Sports Illustrated does.

But the Final Four spotlight has gradually faded, and the players from that team have moved on. This season, the Patriots have flourished by reclaiming the program’s preferred role as a midmajor team with major dreams.

Their faces are not on magazine covers or bobblehead dolls, but the Patriots were 22-5, riding a team-record 12-game winning streak entering Saturday’s game at Northern Iowa. George Mason is No. 20 in the Ratings Percentage Index, ahead of teams like Villanova, Louisville and U.C.L.A., and it will probably receive an at-large bid to the N.C.A.A. tournament bid if it does not win the Colonial Athletic Association tournament.

“The Final Four team had their time, and what they did was great,” the junior forward Mike Morrison said, “but now we’re trying to make our mark.”…

“All of a sudden they’ve got a lot of guys on the floor with a great deal of experience and a great deal of confidence,” Virginia CommonwealthCoach Shaka Smart said. “They don’t get rattled.”

And perhaps that is how this team most resembles the one that reached the Final Four. With each win and each day that draws March closer, it becomes more apparent that when the N.C.A.A tournament begins, George Mason could become this year’s George Mason.


 

Winston-Salem Boxer on the Front Page of the Other WSJ

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A front page article of the Wall Street Journal features a Winston-Salem boxer Jonathan Haggler fighting for the World Boxing Council's Baltic heavyweight title, which covers Poland, Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania and the eastern half of Scandinavia.  The fight's in New Jersey.  It's boxing so whaddayagonnadoaboutit?

Meanwhile, if Mr. Haggler is successful this weekend, Winston-Salem will boast one of the Baltic region's top heavyweights.

In 26 professional bouts stretching back to 2000, Mr. Haggler has fought only a handful of times outside North Carolina, once at a Radisson hotel in Morgantown, W. Va., another time in a nightclub in Nashville.

He says the opportunity to fight in New Zealand three years ago was his way to fast-track a career. In addition to the pay, he was told the WBO Oriental heavyweight title would vault him into the top 15 of the WBO rankings, and presumably more lucrative paydays…

It wasn't until Mr. Haggler saw the banner for the fight, announcing "WBC Baltic Heavyweight Championship," that he realized he'd be fighting for a foreign title. "That just made it that much more important for me," said Mr. Haggler.

The North Carolina heavyweight, who works with at-risk youth and their families, admits he doesn't know anything about the region other than a few facts about the Baltic Sea that were in a recent email. He admits, too, that fighters like himself are seen as stepping stones. Still, he thinks he can win the fight if he can pace himself.

If he does prevail, he'd like to fight another Pole—two-time world champ Tomasz Adamek, though a trip to the Baltics is unlikely. "I'd be the people's champ from a distance," he said.