Chinese acquisitions represent a first

The Hill is reporting that Chinese interests are taking over bank branches in this country after the Fed cleared the decks to make that possible. 

In other news, most lawmakers are strangely silent on this issue.

Should be fun to watch.

Bureaucracy at its finest, Part 1 of many

I know things are tough.  It's the end of the semester and you've spent all your time making the world a better place a few people at a time.  You're tired, probably suffering from end-of-the-semester catchup fatigue, and you just want some time to get your work done and turn it in.

Yet, no matter how hard you try, the weak of mind keep getting in your way. 

So it's three days before grades are due (not really, they're due at NOON on Monday) and those of us who teach online rely on BlackBoard to get to our tests and papers and SafeAssign to be able to assign grades.  Many of these things were turned in over the past three days, because we're generous and let our students turn things in late.

I go online this morning to work on grading and POOF - no BlackBoard. 

It gets better.

Not only isn't there a BlackBoard, but the Help Desk at school is closed for the weekend because of "Semester Break."

That's priceless.  Seems that someone forgot to figure out when "Semester Break" actually starts.

The problem:  UCT doesn't have anything due on Monday.  In general, UCT doesn't rely on BlackBoard to get work done.  They don't send email through Messages (with no attachments on Reply's, for example).  It's what we call an AGENCY PROBLEM.  Unfortunately in this case, we can monitor service levels almost perfectly and without cost, but the lack of incentives becomes the obvious problem.

The rest of the world is disappointed with President Obama

Actually, this one hacks me off on so many levels.  I thought the level of entitlement thinking in the US was bad, but evidently it's nothing compared to the rest of the world.  According to this AP article, there are some serious cry-babies out there. 

Whatever your opinion of our Prez is, you should be hacked off at the folks around the world who expect miracles from the US while alternatively cursing us for our lifestyle.  They hate our freedom, I think.

In Atlas Shrugged, Hank Reardon's family was dependent on him for everything while outwardly criticizing and mocking him, and relied on his sense of duty and obligation for their living.  He finally woke up.  I wish the US could wake up, too: Dr. Paul may be kooky on some things, but his isolationist tendencies have their attraction.

Aren't we all kooky on some things, after all?

I have faith that this article is politically motivated.

Well, that would fit with this article from the LA Times.

France's real enemy is "the financier," well, and spiders

The new chief of France, Inc. is Francois Hollande, who declares that his "real enemy" is the world of finance.

Maybe he can preemptively surrender and just save everyone the drama.  I'd suggest that France's real enemy is a little thing called "reality."  Sooner or later every social regime runs aground on the shoals of reality.  The wealth of the producers (or their heirs) runs out because there isn't enough money to allocate everything to everyone all the time.  This is especially true with the huge fiscal obligations to social programs in governments in such places as France and Greece.

As Gerald Ford said:  A government big enough to give you everything you want is a government big enough to take from you everything you have.

I think Franky should call up all those former execs from Freddie and Fannie and find out how they did it - and turn the "world of finance" (whatever that means) into his oyster.

M. Hollande is the first socialist leader of France in 17 years, evidently not counting all the other socialist leaders of France.

I other news, the markets are going nuts today.  Wonder why.

iPod sound quality, I knew it!

Turns out that older iPods DO have better sound quality.  I thought so.  I've been listening to a lot of music in the car, every day, and it seems that my old iPod 3rd Gen (with buttons) sounds much better than my 4th Gen. iTouch that's so much faster.

I recently replaced the battery in the old 15Gbyte iPod and it runs great.  Ifixit.com still sells stuff for those models, and they even through in the tools for free. 

After listening to the same old playlists for a few days, I noticed that the sound was so much richer, the bass was bassier, and I was hearing a lot more 3D and cross-channel dimension.  These old audiophile ears don't lie, especially when it's pumped into a car system.  Thank goodness I found this site b/c I didn't want to have to get out SoundForge and do the analysis myself.