I’m running a contest over at my hiking blog.
Mangan’s memoirs
47 and counting
I had another of those birthdays yesterday. My operative approach to getting old is simple and familiar: Every day above ground is a good one, or at least presumably better than the alternative. The other day it occurred to me what an extraordinary time we’re living in. That was before Barack Obama very predictably was elected president (go back as far as you can count and you’ll find pretty much every time: the better candidate with the better campaign wins. My eyes misted up a bit at John McCain’s concession speech on election night — I figured after all...
Where’s my 7 percent a year? A stock market lament
Right after I moved to California, I bought a sliver of the Vanguard Growth Index Fund for $33.66 a share and invested it for “the long haul” in a 401(k) rollover account. If stocks had returned their alleged 7 percent a year, shares of the fund should be trading for about $60 a share (compounded). Today, nine years and a couple weeks later, VIGRX closed at $23.20, well under half of what it “should” have earned and, most painfully for yours truly, 31 percent below what I paid for it. I reshuffled after the tech stock crash and had...
Why it’s pointless to be a global warming skeptic
My take on global warming is intuitive rather than scientific, based on information readily available from my brain. It goes like this: A) There is a fixed amount of carbon on the planet. B) Burning stored, high-carbon materials releases carbon into the atmosphere. C) Petroleum is basically the world’s carbon bank — compressed biomatter from jungles that existed on earth hundreds of millions of years ago. D) In the past 100 years, a very large percentage of all the petroleum that our planet has ever produced has been burned, and ALL that carbon has been released into the atmosphere....
Planetary musings
Life is what happened when the planet was busy making other plans. I’m not sure anybody knows exactly how or why non-living bits of matter became self-replicating bits of living organisms that eventually evolved into us. Whatever it was, we’re grateful. One thing I’ve figured out since I started spending more time outdoors: we’re just one more species on a planet teeming with them. Earth has no regard for our minor hopes and petty ambitions. It’ll live on long after we’re gone. A lot of humans fret over the damage we’re inflicting on the planet. I have a hard...
Confessions of a debt hater
There might be a $200 balance on my MasterCard. It gets paid automatically every month. My car is 18 months old and paid off. I don’t have a mortgage because the payment on condos as nice as my apartment is almost double what I pay in rent — and it’s somebody else’s job to mend the roof, replace the carpet and repair the fridge. Strikes me as pretty good deal. I used to think my dad was a skin-flint because when we were kids, getting money out of him for toys, ice cream and candy was like pulling teeth....
Scenes from downtown San Jose
I had occasion to be downtown on Sunday morning and decided to squeeze off a few frames. Among the highlights: Thats the skinny tower of the Marriott Hotel reflected in a water puddle on Market Street. Down the street a ways, a Ferris wheel stands as part of the local Christmas in the Park festivities. Nothing happening this early in the morning, of course. The city’s central park is full of cheesy Christmas displays and gazillion Christmas trees decorated by local school kids. The best parts are the animatronics, which look variously vapid and diabolical. To wit: Somebody’s cake’s...
Evel Knievel is dead
An icon of my childhood, one of the most important men alive in the 1970s (after Muhammad Ali), has passed at age 69. Age did what gravity and his utter fearlessness could not. Farewell to a daredevil.
Marin Headlands
Marin Headlands, originally uploaded by busybeingborn. Pretty pic from a couple months back.
What I do
| Abide in Clemmons, North Carolina.
| Accompany one wife, one cat.
| Sling nouns, adjectives, interjections at VerbNerd.com
| Blog for fun.
| Hike for exercise.
| Read the New Yorker and the Atlantic Monthly.
| Watch movies from Netflix.
| Listen to tunes on XM Satellite Radio.
| Drive to the mountains and the sea in my Honda Element.
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