Month: September 2005

I’d wondered why my site stats showed an unusual number of searches for Opal Covey, Toledo’s resident crazy lady. I’d forgotten that she’s running for mayor again.
From a candidate’s debate Tuesday: “Ms. Covey opened by calling herself ‘a prophetess of God’ and closed by forecasting Hurricane Katrina-sized consequences if voters do not elect her. ‘I’m warning you,’ she said, in a speech that drew loud boos, ‘if you don’t change this government to God’s government, destruction will come, just as it did in New Orleans.’”
Also: “‘I want to give you the key that’s going to … put Toledo back on the map,’ Covey said. ‘[God] gave me a prophecy to read to you today…[Toledo has] fallen so hard and so dangerously that no man can bring you out, save God…I have shown my servant the miracle it will take to bring Toledo back to prosperity. This is the amusement park installment.'” That would be her grand plan, voiced before, to turn downtown Toledo into one big amusement park.
She’s also got a loose grasp on metaphor. From a written candidate Q&A with the local alt-weekly: “Q. What keeps you up at night? A. Nothing. I’m a sound sleeper.”
Yep, she’s a winner.
I used to be the city hall reporter for the Toledo newspaper, so campaign season back in Ohio is usually of inordinate interest to me. It looks like Carty Finkbeiner is a shoo-in winner. Which is good for local media. Carty was the mayor I covered, and he was enormous fun to deal with. “Colorful” would be the complimentary way to put it. (His let’s move deaf folks to the airport idea has taken on a life of its own.)
I have never been called more unprintable words by anyone else I’ve covered — maybe anyone else ever — but I have to admit, I like the guy. He’s the sort of energetic populist that you see a lot in Louisiana politics. And I’m not surprised he’s killing the competition in early polling, including the incumbent mayor.
By the way, it looks like Opal has a challenger as most crazy mayoral candidate this year. A fellow named Don Gozdowski thinks the key to ending urban poverty is improved hygiene for black people. He wants to be mayor so he can “end world hunger.” He wears flame ties. In the most recent debate: “Mr. Gozdowski quoted ’60s-era rock band The Animals and the actor Denzel Washington. He closed by donning black glasses and singing ‘I’ve Gotta Be Me.’” From the local college paper: “Gozdowski also said that though he’s never even been to a city council meeting, he has the ability to recognize and appreciate the heart of man.”
His all-purpose apology: “You’ve got to understand that what comes out of my mouth might not be what I mean.”

More debate about use of the word “refugee”:
– Scott Libin at Poynter, in effect, chickens out. “I see no easy answers to any of these questions,” blah blah blah. His disguised point seems to be: It’s silly to ban the word, but enough people have bitched about it that we might have to.
– The National Association of Black Journalists says it’s bad, falling on the silly backing that the U.S. Department of Homeland Security has a legal definition for the word that requires international border crossing. Well of course it does — that’s a legal definition tied to triggers in international law. Michael Chertoff doesn’t get to decide how we use language.
In any event, the appeal to international law is clearly not the issue here. That’s a front for the real reason people are opposed to the term — they view it as an insult. That’s why the head of NABJ calls it a “loaded” word. If it were just inaccurate in his mind, he wouldn’t call it “loaded.” He thinks it’s an insult to be called a refugee. I don’t think so. And I think that opinion is itself an insult to refugees around the world.
NABJ suggests, among other things, “survivor.” Ugh. This reminds me of the people who call the media whenever we refer to a “cancer patient.” They insist that, from the moment of diagnosis on, the correct term is “cancer survivor.” Look, call yourself whatever you want. But you can’t chip perfectly good words out of the English language because you want to play Orwell.
– Don Wycliff at the Chicago Tribune agrees with me. “I find myself astonished at the hubbub that has blown up around this particular word…if the implication is that Americans cannot be sent fleeing from fires, floods, famine and other disasters, natural or manmade, or from political oppression, then it is plainly untrue…It is particularly surprising to hear [Jesse] Jackson making the argument against ‘refugees’ in terms of American exceptionalism, because part of what has made him such an effective participant in this country’s political debates of the last few decades has been his ability to puncture notions of American exceptionalism.”
– This wire story details which news organizations have bought into all this. Killing “refugee” off: The Washington Post (disappointing), The Boston Globe, NPR. Keeping it alive: The New York Times, Associated Press.

Another way to help Katrina victims painlessly: Download this Pernice Brothers EP for five bucks. FYI for Dallasites, the Pernice Brothers are playing in Denton this Saturday.
After my earlier post about investing, Glenn pointed me towards Unconventional Success, a new book by David Swensen, the man who invests Yale’s $15 billion endowment and is, by most folks’ estimation, among the best at his job in America. He argues a lot of what I do in the crabwalk.com investing approach: Managed mutual funds are for chumps.
(This NYT article sums up his argument: “[H]e found himself horrified by what he saw — especially at the $8 trillion mutual fund industry, which is the primary means through which individuals invest in the market. Although his prose tends to be on the academic side, his outrage comes through on every page of ”Unconventional Success.” What is it about mutual funds that Swensen finds offensive? Just about everything. He hates the way the loads and all the hidden fees mean that the investor is always behind the eight ball…He thinks that it is criminal for fund companies to allow popular funds to balloon in size, making it nearly impossible for the manager to beat the market. He hates the way the industry pushes exactly the wrong fund at the wrong time — Internet-oriented funds at the height of the bubble, for instance…He notes, as others have before, that the vast majority of actively managed funds underperform. He uses phrases like ”invidious,” ”investor-damaging” and ”dirty scheme” to describe the general behavior of the industry…His core point, though, is that the for-profit fund industry has a fundamental conflict between its desire for profit and its fiduciary duty to its investors. And that the profit motive wins out every time.”)
He recommends a diversified portfolio of index funds — preferably purchased through non-profit companies like Vanguard or TIAA-CREF. That way you (a) get around their desire for profit clashing with your desire for strong returns and (b) get low expense ratios. His model portfolio calls for 30% domestic stocks, 15% foreign developed market stocks, 15% emerging market stocks, 20% real estate, 15% Treasury bonds, and 15% Treasury inflation-protected. For youngish folks like me, I still think 30% in bonds is too conservative; he acknowledges that he has only about 5% of Yale’s money in bonds, and I think when you’re looking at a 30-year timeframe, you can afford that sort of risk.
The thing I remember most about David Swensen is that he would never do interviews when we tried calling him in college.

Kudos to Yahoo for creating this metasearch of the various Katrina check-in sites. One place to search for a name that checks all the major web sites. Anyone who’s coming here looking for info on the late KatrinaCheckIn.org — alas, hosting could not be reestablished — should head to Yahoo.
Just 2 Guyz, having a good time.
Masters of Deception, a book on the art of optical illusion. Including videos of real iterations of impossible objects, like this cube or this utensil shadow motorcycle.
Insanely detailed (‘tho no doubt effective) backup strategy for OS X.

In the interest of self-promotion, I would like to point out that I have on only one occasion made a recommendation to you, The Reader, on where to invest your money. Back in April, I recommended the Hennessy Cornerstone Growth Fund, a fund in which a significant portion of my own money, limited though it may be, has been placed since 2003.
Ahem: Forbes magazine tells us now that said fund is now in the top 2 percent of all small-cap funds over the last 12 months, returning 34.8 percent.
In other words: Invest the crabwalk.com way, and beat 98 percent of the market.
I won’t make any iron-clad predictions here, but my money is only invested in two other places: iShares MSCI Pacific Ex-Japan — an exchange-traded fund that indexes the major Australasian markets minus moribund Japan — and Vanguard’s Small-Cap VIPER, another ETF. Both up 10-12 percent YTD, vs. less than 3 percent for the S&P.
Low expense ratios, low churn, and passionless picking: those are the keys to the crabwalk.com portfolio.

Great video for Jason Forrest‘s “Steppin’ Off.” The theme: a faux documentary of a mid-1970s rock tour, featuring a bearded dwarf and Led Zep-style occult dabblings. Includes a free visit to the Cave of Golgoth!
Forrest is one of my favorite DJs, despite the fact that listening to too many of his songs in a row leads to a terrible headache. (I mean that last sentence as both compliment and warning.) His new album comes out October 11.

Over the weekend, I got into a yelling match over the stupidest thing: the use of the terms “refugee” vs. “evacuee” in stories about Katrina.
(Blame it on the stress.)
A variety of folks have said that the word “refugee” is demeaning and inappropriate for Katrina victims. Jesse Jackson: “‘It is racist to call American citizens refugees,’ said Jackson, adding that the word connotes subhuman or criminals.” Well-meaning people (some of whom read this site!) have said it artificially puts distance between the reader and the affected people. My own employer — and we’re not the only ones — has decided we should use “evacuee” and not “refugee.”
Never mind that the dictionary definition of refugee perfectly fits these folks. They are seeking refuge; they have been forcibly removed from their homes by forces larger than themselves and are pursuing “protection or shelter, as from danger or hardship.”
My inner linguistic strict constructionist — the one who believes that words are useful in the communication of thoughts and shouldn’t be artificially limited by social norms — says it’s the best word. Or at the very least, it’s a good word that should be in our writerly toolbox.
But the most insulting thing I’ve heard is the idea (expressed by Jackson and others) that we shouldn’t call these people refugees because they’re Americans. Here’s someone named Lothario Lotho, an Oakland-based party planner : “He blasted some news reports that described the hurricane victims as refugees. ‘These are not refugees,” Lotho [said]. “These are displaced American citizens, and they need our love and support. They are Americans affected in an adverse way by a natural disaster that has never been seen before in this country.'”
Of course they deserve our love and support. Of course. I’m from Louisiana. This thing has wrecked me on a couple different levels.
But the underlying theme of many in the “they’re not refugees” crowd is: These are Americans. They’re not the trash we usually call “refugees.” I mean, does Jesse Jackson think that refugees in Rwanda, Angola, or the Sudan are “subhuman” and “criminals”? I hope not. I’ve always thought of them as incredibly unlucky people who, because of forces beyond their control, have had to leave their homes. Just like Katrina victims.

Jefferson Parish President Aaron Broussard on Meet the Press today.
Watching this makes me as angry as I have been in my life.

The opening moments of that New Orleans music comp I mentioned a couple posts back. (Theryl deClouet on vocals.) Strangely fitting.

I stay away from politics as much as possible here, but…
I knew that Michael Brown, the head of FEMA, had no disaster-related experience before coming to Washington. I even knew that his previous career had been head of the International Fucking Arabian Horse Association. [“Fucking” not technically being part of their name.] I even knew that his main qualification for the FEMA gig had been being the college buddy of Joe Allbaugh, the Bush buddy (himself with no disaster experience) who had been the first appointee as head of FEMA. I knew all that.
But I had no idea that he was apparently so bad at his fucking horse fucking job that he got fucking canned after being ‘an unmitigated, total fucking disaster.”