The Economist stories for the week of 31 December 2009

Asian carp advance on Chicago
So much for the engineering wonder that connects the Great Lakes and Mississippi River basins.

House prices and mobility
This, among other things, is a wonderful argument for young people to rent and not own.

Mobile-phone culture
Good comparison and contrast with cell phone use around the globe.

Obituary: Oral Roberts
I can't tell whether the obituary writer was being genuine or sarcastic...

This is the year to get Sugar Bowl tickets

If at the beginning of the season you had told the folks at the Sugar Bowl that they would get matchup of #3 versus #5 they would have been estatic. However, comma, one team (Cincinnati) lost their coach and plays in a stuadium seating 35,000, while the other team (Florida) lost a chance at the national championship.

You can get tickets directly from the Sugar Bowl for $110 or from StubHub for as little as $50. I might see if I can get in for $40 from a scalper Friday night.

Pithy quote time

This week at the hotel several students are here from George Mason University. A pair of them came in and we talked a little while. One of them had transferred from Emory & Henry, in my hometown, and we managed to exchange a couple of stories. The other kept peppering me with "do you know this person" and "well this family was important" about people from northern Virginia, which was well away from me.

That second person was very flustered that he wasn't able to impress me, and it reminded me of people I have run across from time to time whose entire identity is based on their accomplishments growing up or who they used to know. Not an original thought, I know, but I sum it up and christen this Pithy Quote:

"For some people the most depressing day in their lives is the one where they find a person who does not care what they did when they were growing up."

Merry Christmas!

No Economist for this week. Merry Christmas!

Is this the sign of an intelligent dog?

My fiancee and I have an eight-year-old West Highland terrier. I just found it curious that as I walked him this morning he just happened to wait until he got next to a Jay Batt for Council sign before he decided to poop!

Too bad I had to play Mr. Responsible and clean up after him...

The Economist stories for the week of 17 December 2009

Reproductive biology
This one's for the girls; a study shows that stress induces mothers to spontaneously abort male fetuses.

Banks: Goodbye, or see you again?
Everyone's paying back TARP money. Not coincidentally, those that don't do so before the end of year can't give out mega-bonuses.

Spain's El Gordo lottery
I've always wondered how this thing works!

Direct democracy: The Tyranny of the Majority
California's constitution is even longer than Louisiana's; at least we can blame civil code.

Bird and Mike go bowling

It's almost time for the first bowl games to start - Southern Miss and Middle Tennessee play in the New Orleans Bowl on Sunday - so Bird and Mike wanted to talk about their New Year's plans.

Hi everybody! After Uncle Jam/Daddy sings his concerts we get to watch bowl games. We like the ones with actual name names like Orange Bowl and Sugar Bowl because when our teams are in them it means they did well. We think the Chick-fil-A Bowl that Bird's team is in is especially bad cause Bird doesn't want people to eat other birds.

We saw this thing where sometimes schools lose money even though they have teams go to bowls. This is poopyhead! We think that at least if someone like the San Diego County Credit Union wants to name a bowl after themselves they should at least give enough money for the schools to break even.

Merry Christmas! -Bird and Mike

----------

James here again. There's actually two legitimate reasons the San Diego County Credit Union has the advertising budget to sponsor a bowl - they are the largest bank-type institution based in San Diego; yet, they face immense competition from, among other places, the largest credit union in the world. I can't give the first person who gives the right answer anything but a pat on the back, but I'm interested in seeing if any readers know the answer without looking it up on Wikipedia...

Messiah Thursday and Friday nights!

I'll be singing with the Symphony Chorus of New Orleans as we and the Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestra present Handel's The Messiah at 7:30 PM on Thursday, 17 December at First Baptist Church New Orleans and the same time the following night at Holy Ghost Church in Hammond.

Tickets for both concerts are still available here and here and start at $15. The concert lasts about 2 1/2 hours including intermission.

At least for the New Orleans concert, I'm in the middle row just about center stage. Can't miss me; I'm just about the only young tall guy with glasses in the whole group. Hope to see you there!

How not to empty a trash can

At the hotel we have a couple of commercial garbage cans that SDT services every morning. At the Tuesday 4AM pickup, SDT puts the trash in the dumpster and puts the bins back on the sidewalk...with the lids open. As you may recall, we were in monsoon phase at that point so, naturally, the 96-gallon kunks filled up with water.

Here's a hint: don't grab the handle a try to tilt it on its wheels to take it to the storm drain. You guessed it - Aspie boy did just that, not realizing the thing was so full that the water immediately rushed out on all sides, soaking my socks and shoes. At least I found anohter hold on the other can and tilted it away from by body.

So, I get to spend the rest of my shift in my bare feet while the socks and shoes dry at the fireplace. Oh well.

Is it ever going to stop?

It seems like we're getting at least 2 inches every other day with no signs of stopping. It reminds me of that great quote from the computer game Civilization:

Rain, Rain, more Rain! Noah predicts. 

The forgotten minority group

When I talk with other people here and someone asks me to descibe myself, I like to (jokingly) point out that I'm in two minority groups here; I'm not a native New Orleanian, and I'm a Methodist. The large Catholic proportion of the population and the influence of the Archdiocese in everyday life make New Orleans unusual if not unique among Southern cities.

I bring this up because this Slate article talks about the increasing religious homogeny among the Supreme Court justices and how this may or may not influence the court's thinking. It would be an interesting exercise over the coming weeks to think about things we take for granted or don't notice down here that are influenced by the area's religious tradition.

Economist stories for the week of 10 December

The Red Cross movement: How much evil can you not see?
There are very few organizations in the world that can truly call themselves completely neutral. The day will come when the IFRC has to give up its neutrality as well.

Public-sector unions: Welcome to the real world
The battle over preservation of pension plans is the holy grail of public sector unions; in recent months this issue held up the long-expected privatization of New Orleans' public transport management.

Softly softly, charming Huckabee
I don't know whether my more progressive friends should be happy or concerned about his future prospects. Comments please!

Better ways to collaborate
Lest people forget, people even had shared Interne discussions before mass email. Anyone remember Usenet?

It's sad when you have to say "Which shooting?"

We had two shootings in town overnight, here and here from WWL-TV. A couple of other news outlets had one story but not the other on the front page, or vice versa. Maybe they were trying to sugarcoat our problem and not give us all the bad news at once?

In any case, now the cab drivers who pick up fares at the hotel are up on edge and I'm going to have to pay for parking next time I go see the LPO. Ugh...

Surprise, surprise: Mitch is in

Fox 8 WVUE among others is reporting that Mitch will officially join the mayor's race tomorrow. Why couldn't he have done this a month ago so we could just deal with 4 or 6 people's commercials instead of 9?

A hero steps up for Dr. Tiller's memory

Dr. LeRoy Carhart, who in the past spent some time working at the late George Tiller's late-term abortion clinic, has expanded his own clinic in Nebraska to take the patients who would have formerly gone to Wichita.

I am not nearly as militantly pro-choice as I used to be. I can sum up my position in two sentences:

1. I will not make my agreement with a politician's or judge's stance on abortion a necessary or sufficient condition to vote for her or him.
2. Judicial and legislative fiat are not my preferred means to reduce the incidence of abortion.

I congratulate Dr. Carhart for the courage to stand up to his convictions; pray for safety of him, his employees, and his patients; and continue to hope that people who disagree with him do so by civil means.

Saints fans make themselves known many ways...

Virginia Tech's student newspaper notes in this story that in Bud Light's ongoing campaign to sell team-colored cans, that the most popular combination is black and gold, "color for Purdue, Central Florida, and West Point". They forgot one thing:

Geaux Saints!

You can vote for black and gold yourself here.

This week's The Economist stories

Electricity generation: No pinch of salt
First there was learning by osmosis, and now this.

Rwanda's laptop revolution: Upgrading the children
Soon India won't have the world's cheapest computer engineers anymore.

Banyan: The world's forgotten fair
Yup, the world's fiar is still around-we even have an exhibit this time.

The Panama Canal: A plan to unlock prosperity
Now if only we can get more of this increased traffic.

Now that Tiger Woods has done his mea culpa...

...my opinion of him really hasn't changed.

In case anyone has been living under a rock for the past couple of weeks, the National Enquirer wrote an actual researched, fact-based story about Tiger having a tryst with someone other than his wife. This was followed by digging more dirt by the Internet media and relative ignoring by traditional sports information sources such as ESPN. Then, the morning after Thanksgiving he is involved in an auto accident and goes to the hospital with facial injuries that could have come from eith the accident or an argument with wife. After days of trying to blow off everyone looking for him to admit that he wasn't Mr. Perfect with his family, smoking-gun evidence shows up and he finally puts out the "I'm sorry I hurt my family, now leave me the f*ck alone" press release.

Now why does this not change anything? Basically, Tiger Woods is four things, in about this order:

1. Probably the best golfer ever known to humankind.
2. Someone who cares very much about his family - first his father and now his children.
3. A corporate shill.
4. A person so hell-bent on being the three things above that he will not let the media or the public get in his way.

None of this affected 1 whatsoever. When Nike said they were behind him no matter what happened, and his other sponsors lined up and took care of 3. That leaves 2 and, people, don't you think the hell he is going through with his wife is a lot worse than anything tabloid journalism can do?

Be careful next time you go to Destin

Image from Lagnaippe Mobile

A TV station in Mobile put up a billboard with pictures of their anchors next to live Twitter feed. Hopefully WDSU will keep this picture in mind if they decide to do the same thing with theirs.

Yay Bird's and Mike's teams!

LSU survives Arkansas comeback bid, 33-30 in OT

Williams, Hokies run past Virginia, 42-13

We are very happy that our teams won! We are especially glad that Mike's team learned from their mistakes and figured out how to read the clock and make it stop. We hope Buzz's team (Georgia Tech -ed.) wins next week so that Bird's team doesn't have to go to Atlanta again and maybe (in my dreams -ed.) they play here in the sugary game instead.

Uncle Jam wanted to talk about CavMan's team needing a new coach so we will stop talking. -Bird and Mike

_____________

Every newspaper in Virginia already has their piece ready for when their coach, Al Groh, is fired. Much as I liked seeing them lose, football at Virginia Tech would be even better if their principal rival were competitive, so I make the following statements as constructive criticism.

There are a few inherent disadvantages that make it difficult for UVa's football team to succeed in the long term, no matter who the coach is. Tonight at the hotel where I work I ran across one UVa fan who blames everything on UVa not wishing to make any exceptions in their academic admission standards to accomodate athletes.

The nearest parallel I could draw to schools that have a structural difficulty recruiting some athletes were the service academies. I think that UVa could overcome their limitation most easily if they went away from a pro-style, athlete-vs-athlete approach to playing and adopted a "college" strategy-vs-strategy method. Paul Johnson showed at Navy and now at Georgia Tech that a disclipined ball-control offense can make up for having fewer star athletes. Since he's presumably not available I'd go after Navy's new coach, Ken Niumatalolo, who has at least kept Navy up to the point where they were able to drive the decisive nail in Charlie Weis' coffin.

Hallelujah indeed!

Silent monks and the Hallelujah chours

HT: Symphony Chorus of New Orleans blog, though they show a different group

This week's Economist stories

Since you all liked the story from The Economist about the mayor's race I put up last week, I've decided to start linking to a few stories from them every week. They spit out their RSS feed on Thursdays.

We are all Belgians now
If you thought it was difficult to build a coalition to govern in this city, imagine the mess of the European Parliament.

The retiree's autopilot
A useful reminder of why only government entities and unions have pensions anymore, and a novel way that one group is trying to make people's plans for retirement match what they do in their 401(k) plans and the like.

Camden's crisis: Ungovernable?
A reminder of what can happen in New Orleans if we don't get things right.

Loathing Joe Lieberman
Get to know #60.

The job search stops after 30 days!

Apparently my handwriting was good enough! I start my trial period tomorrow (yes, Thanksgiving) evening at the hotel. As an added bonus, this is the night shift so I can still sing in the chorus and even do taxes when the time comes.

Thanks to everyone for their support during this time.

Introducing my alter ego

Allow me to introduce you all to my nephew HokieBird (or just Bird for short). As you can tell, he is an incredibly cute stuffed Care Bear-like version of Virginia Tech's mascot. He lives with his mommy (my sister), his cousin Mike the Tiger, and several other stuffed animals up in Virginia.

Bird and Mike have wanted their own blog so they could talk about football and other things that interest stuffed animals with the minds of ten-year-olds. Unfortunately, they have a hard time using a computer, since Bird can only type with his beak and Mike chases the mouse because he thinks it's an actual mouse. When they found out I finally started my own blog they danced like in the Charlie Brown cartoons! When one or both of them want to say something they're going to tell me and I'll type for them. With that said, it's time for me to turn the proceedings over to Bird!

Hi everybody! I'm glad I get to talk to all of Uncle Jam's friends now. I actually got to say something on the Internet a few months ago, when the New York Times previewed my team. For that I had to learn Pig Latin. Next year if I do a preview there maybe I'll move up to real Latin. Anyway, Mike and I are sorry that Mike's Coach Hat acted like a poopyhead at the end of their game last week. We know a lot of Uncle Jam's friends in New Orleans like Mike's team so we try to watch them whenever my team isn't on.

Anyway, I also wanted to wish everyone a happy Thanksgiving! But please, don't eat turkeys like me; but feel free to eat ham from pigs like the team Mike plays this weekend.

Volunteer opportunity on Thanksgiving

Each year, the Orleans Parish Criminal Sheriff's Office sponsors a Thanksgiving dinner at the Morial Convention Center. The announcement for this year's event is here. I called the office and the person answering the phone said volunteers were welcome.

If you wish to volunteer, free parking is available across from Hall I; a shuttle will then take you to sign-in at Hall D, from whence you will be assigned to a station as needed. The OPCSO asks that volunteers check in between 9 and 9:30; the meal itself lasts until 1:00.

Hope to see you there.

My handwriting? Oh boy

I went earlier this morning to interview for a front desk/night auditor position at a French Quarter hotel. This was actually the second time I had interviewed at this same place, having done so for a part-time position while I was still at the law firm. Just basically a short conversation, and then the manager asks me to write down my name and phone number, even though he already has it!

What can this mean? Most likely he's checking my handwriting/printing skills. Oh boy...

What's your council district?

With the mayor and city council elections coming during the spring, it's a useful civics lesson to remind yourself what council district you live in. Thank goodness we don't have to worry about assessor districts anymore! A map of the districts (borrowed from the city council's website) follows:

As an aside, I'll be quite interested to see how these districts get redrawn after next year's census. Just a guess, but probably:

• District E goes all the way west to Franklin Avenue
• District A gains District B's space between Carrollton and Broad
• District D takes District C's Marigny, FQ and Treme sections

The Economist on the mayor's race

The Economist discusses New Orleans' mayor's race here. One thing I didn't mention the other day was that New Orleans has a rather stringent residency requirement: you have to have lived here five years in order to run. That disqualifies the otherwise good possibilities of James Carville and Brad Pitt. Yes, Brad Pitt. If I don't have to vote tactically in the election, I'll write his name in anyway.

Not great on the job front, but...

...if there's still nothing after Thanksgiving, it looks like the tax place will take me for training. It'd be only 4 months of work at best, but oh well.

If it's November, Mitch must be running for something, and what I want for the city

Mitch writes on the Chicory is this post that he received a call asking about whether he would consider voting for Mitch Landrieu should he run for mayor. Unless he plans on being lieutenant governor the rest of his career he needs to run for something else now; he can't accomplish anything else where he his. Every Democrat with a pulse is looking at Joseph Cao and saying "open seat", so there will be less competition for this mayor's election than any other in recent memory.

All I want for this city is for the same vendor who has the traffic cameras maintain the crime cameras; at least the former are working.

This week's job hunting

Job hunting is never a pleasant thing, and I figured one thing that would spur me along and actually follow up on leads is if I let everyone know what I'm looking for as I'm searching.

Last week I had a second interview with a company that was looking for inside salespersons; I got a rejection letter from them yesterday.

These leads all came from the 15 November edition of the Times-Picayune:

A job fair for veterans on Tuesday, 17 Nov
Websites for openings at a staffing company, two local colleges and a television station
Data entry clerk, alarm dispatcher, and timekeeper positions for which I am to email my resume
A phone number referring to a tax preparation firm
A retail location seeking entry-level management

I'll be using other tools such as craigslist and Monster and, of course, word of mouth. Wish me luck.

Me in summary

Allow me to introduce myself. If you have any good leads please let me know!

James O. Wicht

816 Arabella St. Apt. B, New Orleans, LA 70115

jameswicht@gmail.com

facebook: jwicht

Objective:

I wish to obtain a paid position in the greater New Orleans area consistent with my skillset that is suitable for a person who has Asperger's syndrome; alternatively, I wish to volunteer my time in order to obtain new documented skills such as Web publishing, QuickBooks, mentoring, teaching, or management so that I can later obtain a paid position in the above fields.


Skill Set Summary:
Typing (50-55 wpm); computer software including Microsoft Office, AS/400 emulators, and relational databases; PC, printer, and small server hardware maintenance and installation; software installation; IP phone system administration; supply and file clerk; customer service call center.


Education, Training and Certifications:
Limestone College, Gaffney, South Carolina (BS in Liberal Studies)
US Navy Sonar Technician (Submarine) “A” School
A+ Certified Computer Technician

Experience Summary:

Goins Aaron, A Professional Law Corporation
New Orleans, Louisiana (Nov 2008-Oct 2009)
Performed a variety of tasks for the firm, including but not limited to serving as an on-site information technology assistant, cataloging and keeping track of file locations, data entry, search and retrieval of existing file data, physical preparation of briefs (i.e. copying and binding), court running, and document retrieval in court record rooms.

Home Automation Inc. (HAI)
New Orleans, Louisiana (Jul 2006-Jun 2008)
In a call center handling customer service and technical support for everyone on the supply chain from employee sales representatives to wholesalers to homebuilders to homeowners. Call data and resolutions were catalogued and analyzed. Member of team which created an online database of solutions based on call content and feedback.

Northrop Grumman Ship Systems
Avondale, Louisiana (Nov 2005-Jun 2006)
As electronics technician was assigned to the interior communications systems of a ship under construction. Duties included troubleshooting, repair, electrical installation and blueprint reading. Also communicated with outside contractors and other departments involved with Northrop Grumman.

Other previous experience
Computer technical support – 2 years as contractor for IBM; 1 year as contractor for then-BellSouth
Retail sales – 3 years as a grocery store cashier; 1 season as a tax preparer; insurance agent for AFLAC
(Recipient of Fast Start award at AFLAC)
US Navy – Submarine Sonar Technician (Received honorable discharge)

References will be given upon completion of an interview.