Can anybody remind me? The dude with the idiotic smile and question marks on his jacket, offering a book on government programs that give you money for participating in qualifying programs. Think I'll pick up the book. That is if I can find it now. Most are small business programs. Figured out how to use last year's taxes to advantage - now I want to get something back from the year before. What about the 300 dollar rebate you ask? Funny. Really funny. Update: nevermind. Google found it for me.

Showing once again that only the indigent go to jail; REM's guitarist was acquitted of 'air rage' even considering the trial was after Sep. 11. The incident happened a year ago. So let's get this straight... It's OK to act like a madman on an international flight as long as you can prove you were taking drugs.

Paul Harvey reminds us that none other than Benjamin Franklin came up with the idea of daylight savings back in the late 1700's. This is the dude that flies kites in the rain trying to get zapped by lightning. It took over a hundred years before anybody took the idea seriously; which he proposed not so that kids wouldn't walk to school in the dark but rather to save energy; whale oil in particular (a scarce non-renewable resource controlled by foreign cartels). He's also the dude that coined the 'early to bed, early to rise' slogan which also now takes on new meaning. I doubt he was concerned with being healthy and wise. It was more likely a propoganda effort to get people to conserve energy and break the cartels. Wonder how many dead whales it would take to power New York City for an hour in 2002...

Recall all those interest rate hikes starting a couple of years ago and how they were intended to cool down the overheated economy so as to reduce inflationary pressures. Now the rates have completely reversed and the economy is in a coma. ...And the price of everything is going up. 'Splain that one to me.

No need. I'll tell you how it works. It was 'splained to me 30 years ago. You see, there are products and services which only the rich can afford and ordinary people cannot. During bubble times and periods of rapid innovation a lot of ordinary people can now obtain these things because there's more money floating around and also new ways to produce the same things at a lower cost. Inflation is nature's way of balancing stuff so that once again the finer things in life can only be obtained by a select few.

So why does this happen during (or more precisely about the bottom of) a recession? Isn't recession indicative of a drop in demand, which would lower prices according to classic economic theory? Not necessarily. The supply drops even faster as companies die out. At the same time people don't stop wanting stuff; they just can't afford it as their own incomes shrink. So everybody raises prices. The high ticket items rise faster because they're harder to supply in the first place and the high-end retailers were the first to go under on the way down. And... with people making more money from increasing their prices the demand soon goes up again.

Being Saturday I visited a local dive to wet my whistle before heading home to change some clocks and crash. It was about three minutes before I realized that every patron of the establishment was of European descent. Every last one of them. There were probably 60-70 people in the place. I haven't seen that many white folks in one place since the last time I went to church in Idaho. Don't ask. I felt strangely uncomfortable since I know the demographics of downtown Mountain View. White folks are a very small minority. Now whether or not you can call me white is up to interpretation. I'm not sure if that's the reason but I had to leave.

Hillary's out stumping for ... get this - Grey Davis. Yes I know I spelled his name wrong. Must've been some political deal agreed to long ago because Davis is toast. But it doesn't matter 'cause Hillary's only a coupla' notches higher on the popularity scale. Not enough to help.