Mitt liv som Tobin

Are you at all suspicious? Does it sound too good to be true? Here we are, plunging into a recession. The proximate cause is irresponsible mortgage loans made to people who can't pay the money back. The deeper cause is, at least in part, years of too much borrowing and spending by Americans, both as individuals and collectively through the government. But behold: there is—oh, joy!—bipartisan agreement on a solution. Although quibbling over the details, everyone—Republicans and Democrats, the White House and Congress, all the presidential candidates—agrees that what we need is a "fiscal stimulus."

In other words, the government should go out and borrow even more money and pass it around for us to spend. The experts caution that for maximum stimulus effect, we must be sure to spend it immediately. No squirreling it away for a rainy day. In drinking circles, they call this hair of the dog: to cure a hangover, you have another drink.

I almost never remember my dreams, but this morning after silencing my "It's time for Metric Differential Geometry!" alarm at at 07:15 (uurgh), I clearly dreamt that easwaran, ankaerith, and I ran into none other than our would-be-president Howard Dean and some of his family on the BART train. We were on the way to or from some soiree, but Mr. Dean sat back in a relaxed fashion on the bench-seats of this limo-like BART car. He seemed in a contemplative state, resigned to losing the presidency, yet all of us were trying to think of what X to put in for "Call me up if you ever need help with X as President."

Back to the real world, CNN is telling me ``Howard Dean to announce today that he will stop campaigning, but will leave his name on ballot, campaign source tells CNN.'' What's that supposed to mean, and how did this happen, anyway? In a sense I blame the media for putting forth the campaign that Mr. Dean would not be 'electable,' that his campaign `peaked too soon.' Neither Kerry nor Edwards inspires me the least bit. My vote will be to Dean or Kucinich. Dean's quitting before his supporters have had a chance to vote.

CNN also tells me ``Teen finds his picture on missing children's Web site - The teen discovered he was allegedly abducted after finding his childhood picture on a missing children's Web site. - LOS ANGELES, California (AP) -- Authorities arrested the mother of a 17-year-old boy who saw his picture on a missing children's Web site and discovered that he was allegedly abducted from Canada 14 years ago.'' Ehh?

I called AT&T Wireless customer service yesterday. A seven-of-nine computer voice answers and it's supposed to answer your queries. You're supposed to ask pointed questions, like "How do I pay my bill?" I demanded, ``I want to speak with a freakn' human being!'' ``I can't do that, Dave,'' was the machine's cool reply.

They've been crank-calling me, lately. My phone rings with an 800 number in the caller ID. I answer it. Heavy static, nothing else (the machine equivalent of heavy breathing?). I Googled for the 800-number involved (wondering whether it was some implicitly-accepted-collect-call-from-the-caribbean type scam) and up came AT&T as the guilty party.

I'm glad about the aquisition of AT&T Wireless by Cingular. Maybe Americans will get the GSM network they deserve — or maybe, perversely, we already have it.

Something about grad school belongs in this space. For some reason I think I'm most excited about visiting North Carolina. Anyway, instead I will leave you with a poll.

Robert S. McNamara came to campus last week. I went to the reception at the Chancellor's House, but I was shooed away before I could grab my first martini. (I suppose I should have answered "Yes, of course" when asked, "Do you belong here?") I felt out of place anyway, with all these sophisticated smoozing types who looked like they belonged in New York City.

It was, they said, his first public appearance here since he graduated — in 1937. The evening began with a small Intellectual Property SNAFU — apparently Sony Pictures Classics denied permission to show the film The Fog of War in its entirety, and, instead, about half of the film was shown, an editing job that could easily be described as vastly more 'effective' — or 'prejudicial' — than the released cut. They cut out the context and put in the war scenes. The firebombing of Toyko comes across as utterly mesmerizing. A team of Chinese peasants harnessed to a giant roller, crushing rocks to make a B-29 runway somewhere (is it Mongolia?) — the surreality continues. And you're thinking, "Did this really happen?" at the same time you suddenly feel disgust at being American.

So in this context it's a rather strange happening. The film clip ends and we realize that the Chancellor, the Producer, the Professor, the Millionaire, and the self-described War Criminal are all sitting together in the wing. And then McNamara shrugs off the pointed questions of the Professor, instead addressing the audience with all his might, shaking his fist in the air: "YOU'VE GOT TO DO SOMETHING!"

It's up to us, he says, to make sure history doesn't repeat itself. But he takes no blame for making that history happen the last time around. ("I've not going to appl y these lessons to the Bush Administration. That's for YOU to do!")

The question now is, who is responsible for the talking-head waving-arms McNamara-doll at http://www.sonyclassics.com/fogofwar? That person should be prosecuted immediately.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger issued a 2004-05 state budget proposal Friday with $372 million in cuts for the University of California system. The proposed cuts would reduce student enrollments, raise student fees, scale back student financial aid, reduce spending on faculty, eliminate K-12 outreach, and make deeper cuts to research, administration, and other programs. UC President Robert Dynes, in a newsletter to UC employees, calls the cuts understandable in light of the state's deficit, but notes that they will have "a very real impact on what this institution is able to accomplish for the people of California."

Whatever headline writer wrote ``millions of americans to stay home this election day'' probably did not have in mind the irony we saw in the headline. Our housemembers, all 30-odd eligible voters, had only to walk into the living room to vote, as our house is itself a polling location! Numerous housemembers voted in the convenience of their pajamas as they ate their morning meal, and two even took the liberty of voting naked -- hey, why not? Yes, this is Berkeley, and it shows.

Alameda county now uses computerized touch-screen voting apparatus. Despite my trepidations about computerized voting, I have to say it went incredibly smoothly. And we were able to print out the aggregated voting results from our machines after the polls closed at eight. I present them to you here. From here in the Nation's liberal fringe (see map), we can only feel sorry for the misjugement of the rest of the country, and, for that matter, the state.

After the election we Berkelites retreated to our hot tubs knowing that we did our part and fantasizing about a Green victory (come on, wouldn't a Green attorney general be fantastic?). But it's quite sobering to see that the Democratic candidate won by a margin of only 5% this year when compared with the solid 20%-lead trouncing in 1998.