Naomi Wolf Memorial Footnote

How do you comment on an author's dust jacket picture? A word to the wise -- be careful to not wax effusive on the beauty of the author, which I did in a semi-ironical, post modern comment about Naomi Wolf, who had written The Beauty Myth. I suppose that my author/wife may be a little more sensitive to such comments due to the fact that I met her partly because I was pursuing a visual representation of her book cover, but that is another story.

I wasn't reading The Beauty Myth, but The End of America. The video below will fill in the gaps, but facists scare me. Vote and speak out to retain fundamental American ideals of freedom. Sign up to be stalked by the FBI and CIA here at http://www.americanfreedomcampaign.org/ .

The Kafka-ian pledge that will get you stalked is as follows:

We are Americans, and in our America we do not torture, we do not imprison people without charge or legal remedy, we do not tap people’s phones and emails without a court order, and above all we do not give any President unchecked power.

I find it incredible, yet necessary to agree with Ms. Wolf, regardless of what her dust jacket looks like.

Wall Street Blues Memorial Footnote

Prophets interest me, much like profits interest Wall Street. Charles Morris published a book at the first of the year called The Trillion Dollar Meltdown. After watching all the congressional shenanigans this week, I thought I should at least read his book to see just how right he was. He was pretty much right on. If you want to have a fun little romp through the acrimonious acronymity of CDO, SIV, CMO, MBS and CLO, I can't help but say you should read Mr. Morris's dead on predictions of the crash that was September 2008. (OK, he said the crash would happen mid-2008 and it was closer to the last quarter, but future gazing is a tough business.)

As an anecdote to Morris, I'd recommend Robert Shiller's The Subprime Solution. Shiller actually sounds the cry of hope about of the September rubble of our financial industry. Yes, everything collapsed, so Shiller recommends building something better and more Utopian. Three cheers for the democratization of finance.

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Franz Kafka Memorial Blog Footnote I

I'm obsessed with Kafka. Ever since The Metamorphosis in high school. Is life Kafka-esque or does Kafka simply reflect life? The Trial is masterpiece of the bureacracy of existentialism.

Negotiating Kafka is a lot like negotiating hyper-links.