'Disease' in the best sense of the word

Life is a fatal sexually transmitted congenital disease.

- paraphrase of Professor Sam McConkey, Royal College of Surgeons Ireland

You know, it's true. Yet, it still seems to be a gift.

Circular Insurance

The Federal Deposit Insurance Company (FDIC) is broke after doing its job - covering our bankrupt American banks for up to $250,000 per depositor. The FDIC needs a loan and guess where it's thinking of getting the money?

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/22/business/22bailout.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=fdic%20broke&st=cse

Yep, it's going to take a loan from healthy American banks. It seems odd to me that the FDIC is going to take a loan from the same pool of money that it insures.
Consider:
Would I borrow money (paying interest) from the millionaires living in the hills east of LA in order to be able to provide them home hazard insurance at an affordable (i.e. discounted) price? Would I do this even when each summer the Santa Anna winds of those hills blow by the 'Fire Risk' signs with the dial pointing to red? And what if I actually had just recently loaned the millionaires some of the money that they are loaning back to me so they can meet their cost of living in those homes. And what if the money I loaned the millionaires so that they could loan it back to me so that I could insure their fire imperiled homes was money I borrowed from an unborn generation.

Sorry, maybe that's a bad analogy ..

but to continue, Maybe there is something more important than trying circuitous paths that attempt at our previous direction, one of complex financial tools and transfers used to make it impossible to know who is left holding the bill. Maybe we should make more of an effort to live according to our means. And maybe we shouldn't have homes in fire infested hills.

Owners of strollers

On a recent morning while walking I passed a neighborhood cafe. Sitting outside on the sidewalk adjacent to the entrance was a stroller in which sat a young child. She was probably a girl or a particularly cute boy who must have been less than two. There was a woman walking from the direction of the stroller who I naturally thought was mom or guardian, that is until she decided to cross the street without looking back. Thankfully the wheels of the stroller were perpendicular to the slope of the sidewalk, though as I passed I couldn't see some sort of leash that would secure the stroller. She looked up at me as I passed. I couldn't help but think 'I hope her owner comes back soon.'

I'm only going to say this once ..