Author: geoff

Uncanny prescience

Congress approved landmark legislation today that opens the door for a new era on Wall Street in which commercial banks, securities houses and insurers will find it easier and cheaper to enter one another’s businesses.

The measure, considered by many the most important banking legislation in 66 years, was approved in the Senate by a vote of 90 to 8 and in the House tonight by 362 to 57. The bill will now be sent to the president, who is expected to sign it, aides said. It would become one of the most significant achievements this year by the White House and the Republicans leading the 106th Congress. […]

The opponents of the measure gloomily predicted that by unshackling banks and enabling them to move more freely into new kinds of financial activities, the new law could lead to an economic crisis down the road when the marketplace is no longer growing briskly.

“I think we will look back in 10 years’ time and say we should not have done this but we did because we forgot the lessons of the past, and that that which is true in the 1930’s is true in 2010,” said Senator Byron L. Dorgan, Democrat of North Dakota. “I wasn’t around during the 1930’s or the debate over Glass-Steagall. But I was here in the early 1980’s when it was decided to allow the expansion of savings and loans. We have now decided in the name of modernization to forget the lessons of the past, of safety and of soundness.”

From the New York Times issue of November 5, 1999. I guess that Republicans will complain that Dorgan was grossly inaccurate, because his prediction was a whole year off. You can see Rachel Maddow’s recent interview with Dorgan here.

Encore une fois

Back on April 8, 2006, I wrote about how I was tackling life after Sun:

First, information gathering. I’m going to talk to many colleagues — ex-Sun, still at Sun, never at Sun — about the state of the computer business: who’s hiring, what’s hot, and how they see things shifting between on-shore and off-shore, US and international, full-time and contract, in-house and consulting, and so forth. At this point, I’m trying to keep an open mind about almost everything. As part of this, I’m flying out to California for a few days at the end of the month.

And three years later this is what I’m doing again. I’m in the middle of two weeks of extensive discussions with friends, colleagues, and contacts here in the Seattle area; then on March 30th I’m flying down to SFO for a week of networking in Silicon Valley. If you’d like to get together while I’m down there, drop me a line….

Time to dump the New Scientist

I’ve always thought that a few British journals were outstandingly good at conveying complex ideas in an accessible and well-written manner. The Economist did it for economics – even if they have lurched to the right politically – and the New Scientist did the same for science.
How have the mighty fallen.
The once-respected New Scientist has gone completely off the deep end. First, they ran their misleading/pandering “Darwin was wrong” issue. Next they run – and then censor – a perfectly sensible piece on the agenda of pseudo-scientists. And now they’re trying to use their recent “image” as part of their self-promotional material – to say, in effect, “this is who we are”. As Jerry Coyne suggests, it’s time for a boycott to register our disapproval. PZ agrees:

When New Scientist ran their misleading “Darwin was wrong” cover, we hammered at them and pointed out that they were doing us no favors — they were giving ammunition to creationists who would never read the contents, but would wave that cover at school board meetings. And they did. We chastised the editor, Roger Highfield, and we had the impression that he was penitent, but it turns out we were completely wrong.

New Scientist is now using that same cover again in their promotional material to flog magazines.

Paperwork

Today is a day for the making of lists. For checking lists. For arranging to get hold of hard copies of all the documents that I used to keep in electronic form on my work-supplied laptop.
Here’s a useful hint: save PDF copies of all of the output from your company’s on-line self-service tools – payroll, benefits, stocks, etc. – and email them to your home system. I was pretty careful about this, but not as scrupulous as I should have been. Mea culpa. Never mind.
A head-scratching item. I’m a book lender – I always have been. And I don’t bother to keep any records of what I’ve lent to whom; someone comes by my office with a question, and I grab the right book from my shelf and say, “Read this – let me have it back when you’re done.” Sometimes they do, but people are forgetful. And there’s no real rush, is there? So when my office is cleaned out, and my books are brought down the hill to me, I know that there will be half a dozen missing. Oh, well.
And now I must run off to have coffee with a colleague. A lot of people want to talk….

Decisions, decisions

Well, 24 hours after my unexpected departure from Amazon, things are looking pretty good. I’ve been talking (generic term for communications via telephone, email, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, blog, and old-fashioned face-to-face speech) with many people, and there are a number of interesting prospects on the horizon. I’m still trying to decide what I want to do and when I want to do it. Should I plunge straight in, or take a break and then hope that the opportunities will still be there? Take a vacation? (I can’t remember the last one.) Full-time or consulting? Write a book? Stay in Seattle, or move?
(I’m irresistibly reminded of the lyrics from the Pet Shop Boys’ “West End Girls”:

Too many shadows, whispering voices
Faces on posters, too many choices
If, when, why, what, how much have you got
Have you got it do you get it
If so how often
Which do you choose
A hard or soft option
(How much do you need)

Too many choices. I hope that’s not an illusion….)
Never mind; there’s no rush. In the meantime, thanks to all who have wished me well, requested my résumé (an interim version of which is here), and asked to stay in contact. If you’re in Seattle, drop me a line and we’ll have coffee. (I tend to hang out at the Starbucks by Union Station; they know exactly how I like my quad espresso macchiato with extra non-fat foam.)