Vehicle vs. Pedestrian, Redux

Today, I'm writing about a simple change in behavior that will save hundreds, if not thousands, of human lives each year.  It requires no change in the law, and no government or private money to implement.

Here it is:  Show some humility when crossing a street at a non-electronically controlled intersection, look both ways, and yield to the traffic instead of thinking it should yield to you.

I actually touched on this idea in a blog post about six years ago.  Unfortunately, it hasn't caught on.  I'm constantly amazed at how many people enter nonchalantly into uncontrolled (or not stop-lighted) crosswalks, seemingly without regard to the thousand pound steel cannonballs converging on them.  It just happened to me the other day, when a fat man and his dog crossed in front of me without so much as a glance.

Maybe it's just me (it isn't), but when I'm driving, I'm not paying that much attention to a poorly marked pedestrian crossing.  It's just another set of faded white lines.  I'm a lot more worried about the other vehicular traffic around me.  Hell, I'm at least as worried about avoiding potholes, which is in essence me saying I care as much about pavement conditions as I do about crosswalk conditions.

Sure, I know that a pedestrian supposedly has the right of way in a crosswalk.  But in the end, that is a specious argument.  What does that matter?  If my vehicle accidentally hits a clueless pedestrian, I might get a ticket, perhaps worse, but they might be permanently disabled or dead.  Who made out worse?

Given the no-win nature of this outcome, why do pedestrians continue to think it's OK to cross a street without taking the minimal precaution of looking both ways?  I know people aren't raised that way, so what makes them change?

Perhaps this is too broad of a conclusion, but I think today's 'look at me, I'm important' reality show / social media-based culture plays at least a minor role.  You know, the culture in which I'm supposed to care more about what you're doing than I am about what I'm doing.

Please.  In the meeting between vehicle and pedestrian, vehicle always wins.  Do yourself a favor, show some humility, and look both ways before crossing any street.

Coffee And Doughnuts (And Terrorists)

I don't understand coffee and doughnuts.

Oh, I know what they are, I just don't understand the people who are willing to buy and consume them.  Let me explain.

I recently met a colleague at a local Starbucks (his choice, not mine, I don't drink coffee).  I got there around 10am, and during the next hour, I observed a steady stream of customers walk through the door.  There were men and women of all ages, some dressed for work, some clearly not working.  If I had to categorize them under one group, I suppose I'd say they were upper-middle class Caucasians.

These customers all had one other thing in common:  They were perfectly willing to pay several dollars for a cup of heavily sweetened, coffee bean-flavored hot water.  No doubt, this same thing was going on in thousands of other coffee shops in America, and perhaps every other country in the developed world.

This is why the terrorists hate us.  We live in a society where people are willing and able to spend hundreds / thousands of dollars every year on foo-foo coffee.  In the meantime, there is human suffering occurring in the U.S., and especially in the rest of the world.  Make no mistake, the terrorists don't intend to lessen the suffering, they simply want everyone else to suffer like them.  (Oh, and there's that religious thing, too.)

I don't blame Starbucks for any of this.  They are branding geniuses, able to get consumers to not only feel good about paying a lot for something unhealthy, but to also get those folks to waste the equivalent of many hours per year to stand in line for it!  As a capitalist, I say props to them.

I observed this same sort of hypnotic consumer behavior a few days ago at another brand name juggernaut, Krispy Kreme.  They were giving away free doughnuts on National Doughnut Day (yup, that's a thing), and the line reportedly when around the block for hours.  All of this for an unhealthy, warm, super-sugary blob of dough.  At least people weren't paying for it that day, which accounts for why I presume the crowd to have been made up of all economic classes and ethnicity.

So let's recap.  Starbucks and Krisy Kreme = admirable brand name juggernauts.  Their customers = free-spending hypnotized calorie consumers.  Coffee and doughnuts = super-expensive comfort food.  Terrorists = still and always a-holes.

About A Funeral

My dad passed away last week.  He had cheated death for 89 years, spending the final 70 smoking Lucky Strike or Marlboro cigarettes, at least when he wasn't using Red Man chewing tobacco.

I'm not going to eulogize him here.  There was plenty of that done last week by others, and I wouldn't be that good at it anyway.  By the time I was a teenager, my dad was in his 50s, and there's a lot I don't know well about his earlier years.

But I do want to write about my observations of the visitation and funeral, and what I think my dad would have thought about what went on.

The presentation of the casket and the memorials were very nice -- almost too nice.  It was all very calming, and the flowers/plants/statues are good for both the receivers and the givers.  But while I think my dad would have liked that, I think he would have hated the cost of the jewelry box-looking casket.  There's no good alternative short of cremation, but he was a frugal man.

The visitation was an exercise in stamina for the family.  With an immediate family that included my mom and all nine children and assorted spouses, there were a whole lot of visitors who made their way through the receiving line.  There was no break from 4-8pm.  I think my dad would have been surprised, and pleased, at all of the relatives and friends who were there.

The funeral service was respectful, and traditional, and unnecessarily sad.  My dad was a traditional man, a military veteran, someone who I think would have liked the formality of the service.  For me, it was fine except for the music.  So slow and somber.  A funeral is supposed to be a celebration of a person's life, right?  Shouldn't the music be more celebratory?  Makes no sense to me.

The short time at the burial site in the cemetery was difficult for some, but not all.  After the final words are spoken, it's apparently become a thing for mourners to stay and watch the casket be lowered into the vault, and then into the ground.  I suppose it's an attempt at closure for some, but it seemed to me to just prolong their grief.  I didn't stay for that, and I think my dad would have wondered what the hell we were still doing there by that point, and why we weren't doing something more productive.

All in all, I felt sad through my initial viewing of the body prior to the visitation, and again near the end of the funeral mass.  It was especially difficult seeing other family members having a hard time.  But other than that, I mostly felt calm inside.  It was much, much  easier than the prior week, when the immediate family came home to say a final goodbye prior to his death.

My dad lived a good long life.  It was very tough to see him go, but his health was failing, and his quality of life was getting poor.  He went to church the entire way through, praying that he might go to heaven.  He knew as much as anyone that you can't get there if you're still living.

Dear Graduating Class of 2015

If it's the latter part of May, it's again time for my annual advice to graduating seniors.  I have both a college undergraduate and graduate student this year, so I'm going to say it with more meaning.

This year, I only want you to remember three things:

Challenge authority -- sometimes.  You've probably been taught to respect authority, and that's what you should do.  However, the racial tensions we're seeing now related to police actions against black citizens ought be enough to keep you from respecting authority without question.  The best way for anyone to avoid confrontations with authority is to follow the rules/laws.  Having said that, remember that absolute power corrupts absolutely.  To borrow half of a phrase from the late Ronald Reagan, respect, but verify.

Challenge religion -- mostly.  You've probably also been taught to be a God-fearing Christian, or Muslim, or Jew, or some other religion (but probably Christian).  There is more good about that than there is bad.  However, you should be wary of organized religion -- the kind that people use to justify all sorts of crazy, damaging ideas and actions.  Do you really want to live your entire secular life based on the rigid, non-secular, white-male interpretations of scripture supposedly written over 2000 years ago?  Instead, remember the words of Galileo Galilei: "I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use."

Challenge group-think -- always.  If too many people think the same thing, and those people only talk to each other, they think everybody agrees with them.  What other excuse is there for all of the far right candidates running for the 2016 republican presidential nomination, most of whom have no more chance than I do of becoming president?  On a related note, this is an overarching problem with all of today's politicians, who lack the courage and/or conviction to take a stance contrary to that of the dogma of their own political party.  You would do well to always remember the old saying, "Sometimes the majority only means that all the fools are on the same side."

Now, go out there and try to never move back in with your parents!

Berky Meeting Nuggets 2015

After a one-year absence due to a family wedding, I attended the Berkshire Hathaway annual meeting in Omaha last week.  So this year, I'm back to my own very limited summary of what Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger had to say.  And even though the former is now age 84 and the latter is age 91, it was another great time:

On current stock market valuation:
Buffett noted that any valuation measure of the stock market is skewed now by very low interest rates.  Corporate profits are worth a lot more if the government bond yield is 1% as opposed to 5%.  Is short, the market is undervalued if you assume interest rates will remain low, and slightly overvalued if you assume interest rates will return to something more historically normal.

On economists and forecasts:
Responding to a question about the direction of interest rates and the economy, Buffett used the opportunity to swipe at economists, suggesting that “any company that employs an economist has one employee too many.”  Munger noted that neither he nor Buffett predicted the current, prolonged low interest rate environment, and since they got that wrong, why anyone would want their opinion now?  Later, Munger added that the problem with [economist] pronouncements is that eventually they think they know something and “it would be better if they just said they were ignorant.”

On raising the minimum wage:
Buffett noted the problem of income inequality in the United States, but said that he didn’t see how raising the minimum wage cold make a big impact on it, because it would come at the cost of too many lost jobs.  He said increasing the earned income tax credit was a much better way.  Munger noted that he was a republican, but he agreed full with his democratic counterpart.  He considered raising the minimum wage to be counterproductive and “massively stupid.”   On the other hand, the earned income tax credit rewards and helps people who work.

On the behavior of activist investors:
Buffett said he didn’t see Berky ever being an activist investor target, even after he gave all of his shares to charity, because the whole would always be greater than the sum of its parts.  He went on to say some activism is stupid, particularly when activism results in stock repurchases.  That’s when things get silly, because often the buybacks occur when stocks are overpriced.  Munger was his typical blunt self, simply stating he couldn't think of any activist he’d want to marry into the family.

On making friends:
When asked about how to meet people and make a lot of friends, Munger unusually jumped in first and said that the only way he was able to get people to like him was to be very rich and very generous!  Buffett said to look at other people and determine why you admire them, and then reflect those qualities that you like.  He also noted that Munger often said the most important thing in finding a spouse is to “look for someone with low expectations!”

Post #300

This is my 300th blog post since I started it around six years ago.  As with post #200, let's take a look at some of what I wrote about over the past 100 posts spanning about two years:

I wrote with more practical, real life advice for high school and college graduates.

I wrote about a variety of investment issues, client-approved of course.

I wrote about how a political lackey masquerading as a university president ended VEISHEA.

I wrote more about the best songwriters and lyrics from yesteryear.

I wrote about how pop culture should start ignoring Lolo Jones, well before pop culture came to the same conclusion.

I wrote about major cities I visited.

I wrote more about taxpayers getting fleeced, and the primary non-profit fleecers.

I wrote about how medical doctors are self-centered, not patient-centered.

I wrote about what turning 50 years old meant to me, in a mostly non-philosophical way.

I wrote about a variety of ways that people / politicians / governments refuse to accept the evolution of social issues, such as how dumb it is to oppose both medical marijuana and decriminalization of marijuana, and how dumb it is to allow 2,000+ year-old religious doctrine control all of their secular decisions.

I wrote a little bit about a lot of other things, all in the name of getting things off my mind.

LieSpotting

I recently watched a most popular TED talk with the same title as this post.  Roughly the first half was about how often people lie, while the last half was about how to spot those lies.

I was more interested in the first half, because it verified my somewhat cynical belief that most people lie, and lie often, when they talk to you about something.  Many of these are of the 'little white lie' variety, the kind you tell to make someone else feel better, or to maintain a social grace.

However, a lot of these lies are exaggerations, to make the liar look better than he or she really is.  Some of these are couples/relationship type of lies, but the ones I'm referring to come from the stories that others tell about something they did.  You know the ones -- so-and-so did something crazy, or saw something crazy, and the story gets crazier (and a little bit different) every time you hear it.

Of course, this type of lying is common among pre-teens and teens, where it's almost a rite of passage.  In the past I've suggested you should only believe 75% of half of what they say!

But I feel like it happens more often these days with adults.  It's as if baby-boomers are in a contest among themselves to better whatever another person says.  Like the Dilbert character Topper, except not always in an office environment.

In this context, I suppose it's harmless.  It's isn't like I'm going going to make a bad decision based on this inaccurate information.  It just isn't good form.