Author: ssegraves

This Week’s Links | April 3, 2009

ssegraves

I dropped the ball last week and did not post any links, mostly because I had been out of town and did not bookmark anything. This week’s links will try to make up for it.

  • Four Fannie Mae Execs to Get Big Bonuses – There seems to be some disconnect between the media and this story. AIG execs get bonuses and they are essentially burned at the stake, but a government backed agency gives out bonuses and the story is a blurb. People should be more up in arms about this than the AIG debacle.
  • Colleges Duck Tough Cuts, Keep Hiking Pay and Tuition – An interesting and, in my opinion, necessary opinion piece in USA Today about the cost of college tuition continuing to rise all while schools give out raises. We’re taking something that we claim should be the “right of everyone” and turning it into a corporation. There is little reason to cut spending when the money flows in, except for the fact that federal money is dwindling.
  • The Pioneer Woman Cooks! – I was browsing some food blogs during lunch (the best time to do it, to avoid the hunger it causes) and came across The Pioneer Woman. Her writing is interesting and she makes Texas favorites look easy.
  • Why to Startup in a Bad Economy – This was posted in the latter half of last year but I think it is just as relevant today as it was then.
  • Facebook Fallout: Is it time for Zuckerberg to go? – I’ll admit that I am not as big of a user of Facebook as I was in college. My interest peaked and now I only occasionally look up old friends and see what they are doing. After multiple redesigns and the usability taking a nosedive, I just lost the desire to visit the site. Maybe it is time for Mark Zuckerberg to go.

Leave a comment with your thoughts!

What Do the Europeans Want?

ssegraves

Angela Merkel and Nicolas Sarkozy seem to be dead-set on getting their way at the G20 summit in London. Gordon Brown, the British Prime Minister, and President Obama have sort of joined forces to push their agenda for economic recovery, which includes more bailouts. Merkel, the German Chancellor, has said multiple times that she wants nothing to do with bailouts on a global scale. The French President, Nicolas Sarkozy, has also echoed those sentiments.

This is an impasse of sorts. Both Germany and France have experienced government intervention in the free market and have first hand knowledge of the effects of economic socialism, yet both Brown and Obama are not taking notice. Merkel seems to be jumping up and down and waving her arms at a person across the room while the person just stares past her. Her qualm is not with doing more socially, it is with taking money from healthy companies and markets and injecting it into dying companies. It is a form of evolutionary ethics and no one is taking notice.

Europe also has its own best interest at heart. If the Obama plans for more government healthcare and less military bases abroad actually come to fruition, the European way of life takes on a completely different form. For years Europe has been dependent on U.S. bases abroad to subsidize their domestic policies, if the money was to significantly reduce or dry up, the governments would be forced to make cuts and in some places completely remove programs that people rely on. This is not a cut and dry issue by any means, but Merkel and Sarkozy are trying to make it obvious that the path Obama is proposing is not the correct one. What Obama decides to agree on puts in motion what happens next here in the U.S.

This Week’s Links | March 13, 2009

ssegraves
  • It Was 20 Years Ago Today: The Web – It has already been 20 years since Tim Berners-Lee authored his paper on Information Management for CERN and started the ball rolling developing what is now the internet.
  • Michelle Obama’s Message – Eat Fresh Food – I mentioned this idea in a post about grocery shopping and while it is not a new idea, I am glad that the First Lady is making it a publicly visible issue.
  • Skeptics Dispute Climate Worries and Each Other – Just because the climate change crowd appears to be on the same page does not make them right. It seems that dissension is only welcome when it is dissension that matches up with the beliefs of the other guy. Since the disagreements here are among the climate change skeptics, they must be wrong. Give me a break.
  • The President Lays Out His Education Ideas – He calls for merit pay, longer school years and hours, and getting kids into better schools. At the same time, his budget bill has all but completely killed the Washington Scholarship Fund. “The earmarks can stay, but what’s this scholarship thing for underprivileged kids? Get rid of that”
  • Naughty and Not So Nice: Celebrity Chefs in Firing Line (from Jessica) – Celebrity chefs are getting into hot water because their recipes contain high amounts of fat.
  • Google Voice is Launched – Google has launched Google Voice, their follow-up to GrandCentral. It allows you to use a single number for your land line, cell phone, and work and get voicemail online.
  • Geithner, With Few Aides, Is Scrambling – The Treasury Secretary and the aides as a whole are having trouble keeping up with all of the things they a promising and trying to deliver.

This Week’s Links | March 6, 2009

ssegraves

This week’s links are a real hodgepodge of different stories.

  • Marine F/A-18 Pilot Had Chance to Land Before Crash – A disturbing article on the F/A-18 that crashed near San Diego, California and killed four members of a family. The investigation has revealed that the pilot had a chance to land the aircraft before the crash but continued on to Miramar. There is no reason he should not have landed.
  • Hot Doug’s in Chicago, IL – I bookmarked this so I would remember to visit when we are there in April. The Duck Fat Fries sound amazing.
  • Why the Kiddie Food Movement has got to go – I think it is great that kids are involved in cooking and reviewing food but the author is spot on in noting that children do not have refined palettes. The appreciation of food flavors can take place when one is young but the body has not fully developed taste buds or the brain power to understand depth in food.
  • Let’s Get Real About Renewable Energy – Robert Bryce takes a closer look at hydrocarbons and energy consumption in the U.S. He comes to the conclusion that simply moving to renewable energy is not something that is attainable in the short term.
  • Burying Power Lines Proves Costly as Hurricane Protection – This has been a heavily debated topic in Houston and other Gulf Coast areas. I knew that burying power lines was expensive but I did not realize it was this expensive. To bury the lines in Houston, it would cost $28 billion. The damage caused to the grid in the last ten years by tropical weather has only been $1.8 billion. Sure, they should bury some lines that are necessary to keep large portions of the city with power, but overall, leave them overhead, I’ve dealt with no power for two weeks, I can do it again.

Consuming Differently

ssegraves
IMG_4590
Wal-Mart in Dallas, originally uploaded by Stephan Segraves.

I believe I have asked this question before but the point needs to be raised again. The economy is in the toilet and people and businesses are suffering, but does the fact that some of these companies were created out of bad habits mean that they deserve to fail? If a company is losing money is it not the company’s responsibility to change that fact? Sure, there are arguments out there that claim the government should step in, which it has in some cases, but my thesis is more focused on companies that have come to fruition out of our seemingly incessant need for “stuff”.

Looking at some examples is probably the best way to make the issue clear. Wal-Mart is a great example. They have built a business out of a false need for all kinds of, what some people would call, junk, and not just any old junk, cheap junk. Sure, they stock produce, meat, electronics, and other useful items but there are whole rows of consumer demanded garbage. If Wal-Mart is concerned with surviving through the economy, would not the smart thing to do be getting rid of waste? It seems obvious but for some reason it is not a priority.

Part of this is consumer habits, we are a nation of junk consumers. I’m guilty and I am pretty sure you are too. The difference between now and 20 years ago is that now we want our junk at a lower price, even if it means cutting jobs here. Maybe our culture needs to think back to 1950s lifestyle and look at pictures from era Life and Time magazines, home and work life were simpler. And what is wrong with that? The struggle is digging ourselves out of hole when the mentality is, “why get out, we’re already here”.

What if U.S. culture moved back from the mega-store to the local store, from the Lowe’s to the local hardware store? What if Target and Wal-Mart downsized and stopped carrying junk? For one thing, the green movement would rejoice in the street for weeks, but there would also be some semblance of simplicity. Do not get me wrong, I am not suggesting a stop in consumption, I am advocating consuming differently, focusing on what’s important, and reversing a trend that has been ingrained in our minds by culture. I think it will help the economy in the long run and I think people will flourish from it. The flip side is that companies who cannot adjust to the change in consumption behavior can and will fail, and maybe they should.

The notion of quantity over quality has been a growing phenomena, with pockets of resistance everywhere, but for the everyday Joe, it’s life. It is time to focus a little more on quality, even if it means cutting consumption somewhere else, because such behavior would stimulate growth in small businesses that specialize in quality products. Simplicity and quality, I do not see the negative. Do you?

This Week’s Links | February 27, 2009

ssegraves

Not a large number of links this week. There were some political and budgetary things I was going to share, but I figure everyone has heard enough about that.

The Economy’s Impact on Grocery Shopping

ssegraves

With the economy heading nose first for the pavement there has been an increase in stories about people feeding their families on the cheap. One story last week discussed a family of five living on $100 worth of groceries a month. The family bought a lot of canned goods, frozen vegetables, and stocked up on meats when they were cheap. On the surface there is nothing wrong with this, but when health and sustenance are taken into account, the family’s plan does not sound so great.

A Google search for multiple terms did not bring up the exact story but something that did pop up was an eHow article titled “How to Spend $100 on Groceries and Eat Well For a Month“. It is basically a shopping list for an entire month and though it contains dried fruit, a majority of the items are heavily processed and/or salt heavy. By no means am I a doctor but the list looks like a terrible diet, there is barely any fiber, there is a ton of starch, and most of the starches are bleached white flower.

The family on television had a similar list and apparently shopping for so little money is becoming a trend. This leads me to my question, is sacrificing diet for cheap food a good idea? Are there not better things to knock-off of one’s budget to allow for more spending on food, a vital piece of life? I am not suggesting that everyone should be shopping at Whole Foods or upscale stores, I just think that what we feed our bodies should be more healthy than a loaf of white bread everyday.

The way that Jessica and I budget is that we figure around $80-$100 per week for food. We usually sit down one night and go through cookbooks and make a menu for the next week, the whole process takes 30-minutes. Jess writes down all of the ingredients and then compares that to what we have in the pantry and the fridge and marks things off that we already have. We then go to the grocery store together and buy as much as we can for as little as we can. Lately we have been looking at shopping at an extra store to get things that we know will be cheaper at one place, especially with meat products.

One glaring observation I have made from shopping with Jessica is that vegetables are cheap, as long as they are in season. The amount of green leafy vegetables that can be had at a low price is amazing and it does not end with them, there are tons of options ranging from avocados to leeks. Fruit is a little trickier but grapes and apples are usually available year-round and at a decent price.

The trick with all of this is to actually eat the food that is bought. Dinner is made every night and the leftovers are taken to work the next day by both of us. Some dinners last two or more lunches (soups and sandwiches). Doing the math, I figured that our daily cost for eating a meal is around $2 each. Now I am sure the families that eat on $100/month are down in the pennies per meal, but does that really matter when the meals are not necessarily healthy?

What do you think? How much do you spend a month on groceries?