This idea I've been having

I've been having this idea about gas prices. They need to be higher, much higher, to encourage people to find ways to use less gas. But in America, everything from our urban environments to the lack of good public transportation in many places to the size and locations of our grocery stores are dictated by the reality of decades of cheap gasoline, so it would be ruinous to simply implement a tax on the scale of the one here in Germany, where gas currently costs about $6.22 a gallon.

My idea is this: Every taxpayer gets a government-issue credit card that gas stations are obliged to accept. At the end of every month, a bit of the gas tax money is taken off the top to pay for the system's administration, and the rest redistributed equally to the gas cards. When you file your taxes at the end of the year, any balance on your card counts as a refundable tax credit. In this system, anyone using less gas than the average person gets a subsidy, and anyone who uses more pays a fee. This would have the desired effect of creating a large incentive to use less gasoline without being ruinous to people who use only an average amount.

Thoughts?

A return to awakeyness

I'm finally back home, and after a few days of jetlag- and winter-induced depression, I finally am feeling wonderful about being here and am ready to write again.

I hate my depression more than any other aspect of my existence. There are simply periods of time, usually no more than a day or two at a stretch but sometimes as much as several weeks, when I am profoundly unhappy and no stimulus can change my mood. This phenomenon reminds me a few times every year that huge parts of what I consider to be my personality and my identity are really just artifacts of my brain's chemistry. And if I know that feelings of misery and profound anger and sadness can be essentially chemical accidents, then so can be my feelings of happiness and joy at other times. How, then, can I ever trust that how I feel is really a product of what I am experiencing? And how can I ever trust that I am perceiving the world with any kind of accuracy, when my interpretation of events can be so drastically altered by the simple accident of my mood on the day those events take place?

These questions are the worst part of depression for me. Because, although I only experience the depression itself a week or two out of each year, I doubt the reality of my feelings constantly as a result.

I am back, though, and yesterday and today I feel really, really good. I'm headed to the university to confer with my professors about the status of my master's thesis, so by tonight I may very well know my graduation date! The rest of the day will be spent working on said thesis and getting my resume circulating. If anyone out there is looking for a Japanese and German speaking computer programmer, drop me a line!

BRB

I woke up this morning to pictures of millions of people celebrating our new president's inauguration in DC. What a beautiful sight. Congratulations, America.

I'm dropping off the planet for the next two days, and when I groggily reemerge into the light, I will be home again in Düsseldorf. See you then!

Literary criticism

In his latest column in the New York Times, discussing the economic stimulus package, Thomas Friedman complains that, in the good old boom times, "...too many people were making money from money, or money from flipping houses or hamburgers."

Hamburgers. Really. An overabundance of fast food hamburger restaurants has contributed to America's economic woes? Well, I'm not an expert like Mr. Friedman, so maybe he's got a point. Let's check the tubes... Nope. As it turns out, McDonald's is one of only two companies used to compute the Dow Jones industrial average (the other is WalMart) whose share price increased in 2008; they've had 55 months of non-stop same-store sales growth.

This kind of thing ticks me off. It seems pretty obvious to me that this is just a silly little throw-away line that he came up with because he thought the "flipping" construction sounded cute. And it does, but when your voice is amplified by dint of its being published in the editorial pages of one of the world's most influential newspapers, it behooves you to stick to cute constructions based in actual reality. There's certainly enough misinformation floating around out there about the recession without this sort of silliness.

Not that this sort of thing is out of the ordinary for Friedman. The man evidently has a unique knack for the mangling of metaphor.

Over the next couple of years, two very big countries, America and China, will give birth to something very important. They’re each going to give birth to close to $1 trillion worth of economic stimulus... But a lot is riding on these two babies. If China and America each give birth to a pig — a big, energy-devouring, climate-spoiling stimulus hog — our kids are done for... If they each give birth to a gazelle — a lean, energy-efficient and innovation-friendly stimulus — it will be the opportunity of their lifetimes.

The mind boggles. Two countries are giving birth to economic stimulus plans that will either be climate spoiling pigs or an innovation-friendly gazelles? Wow.

Friedman's point, though, is well taken. As the ship of America takes on heavy water, I, too, hope that Obama and Congress create an economic stimulus plan that will... I wish I were joking... "bail us into prosperity."

The Umlaut Returns

My noble plans to blog regularly during my weeks home in America bore little fruit in the end. It turned out that I spent practically no time connected to the tubes while I was away, and it turned out that that was exactly what I wanted. I needed a break in the physical sense; a clean partition between me and the past. The winter is unkind to me, spiritually and emotionally, and this winter was no exception. My vacation had its desired impact, though, and I feel recharged and again ready to face the world with the vivacity for which I am known the other nine months of the year.

The last two days I've made very solid headway on my thesis. My intention still stands to bring my pontifications on the subject of my studies to this blog from time to time. At the moment, however, I am mostly focused on my literature review and the history of the senmin. The former being of little interest to anyone not researching the same topic as I and the latter already having been discussed here, I'm left with no option but to beg patience of any of you who are interested in that part of this blog.

Re-reading what I've just written, I realize that my voice is a bit different than usual. The reason is that I've read three Isaac Asimov books in the last week (Foundation, Prelude to Foundation and Robots and Empire), and the rather professorial rhythm of his writing has, I've discovered, imprinted itself on my brain. This happens to me whenever I read an author for a long stretch. Or watch him, for that matter - I suspect I drive my poor wife to distraction with my wise-cracking when I've been watching Aaron Sorkin for long stretches. Fortunately, the style of prose that I've been infected with suits my thesis perfectly, so I'll just let it be for the time being.

This rambling post has little if any point. America was grand; thank you for your company if you were there to share it with me, and my apologies to those of my friends who were missed. I had intended more extensive travels, but the weather simply refused to cooperate. I fully intend to throw a party to celebrate my wedding on my next trip home, though (what with the average marriage lasting some seven years, I figure we're good for at least twenty-one if we celebrate three times), and I hope that this will give me the chance to catch up with everyone I've missed.

Look forward to my further ramblings and thoughts at a later date.

No post for this day

The author of this blog, Benjamin Stürmer, must be incredibly stupid. Why do I say this? Because he, in his epic moronity, pre-set this text, which is entirely dedicated to the subject of his intellectual incompetence, to publish every day of 2010. And then he forgot to replace it with real content! What an idiot!