When the wingnuts teabagged the communists,
I remained silent;
I was not a communist.

Then they teabagged the socialists,
I remained silent;
I was not a social democrat.

Then they teabagged the trade unionists,
I did not speak out;
I was not a trade unionist.

When they came to teabag me,
there was no one left to speak out for me,
they all had their mouths full.
– from a reader comment at TBogg

You know who I mean: John Maynard Keynes. He’s in vogue (again). Economists are like fashion, they have a thirty year cycle.

Mukund misquoted Keynes on Twitter today. He wrote:

If you owe your bank manager a thousand pounds, you are at his mercy. If you owe him a million pounds, he is at your mercy.

I responded with:

By the transitive property, if the bank owes you billions of dollars it owns you.

The actual Keynes quote is:

If you owe your bank a hundred pounds, you have a problem. But if you owe a million, it has.

As quoted in The Economist (13 February 1982), p. 11. Close enough. I think the transitive property can still be applied here. Obviously I’m referring to our government bailout of the banks. An FDIC intervention doesn’t sound so bad to me. Although, I’m not sure the FDIC could scale to the level required by Citi and Bank of America.

When confirming the quote I came across this unrelated Keynes quote I find especially agreeable:

Words ought to be a little wild, for they are the assault of thoughts on the unthinking.

Right on.

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• John Maynard Keynes: The Gay Economist (queercents.com)
• Economics blog (bbc.co.uk)

In the event you’re not familiar with StoryCorps, which means you’re not an NPR listener (and therefore lame 😉 , here is how they summarize themselves:

Our mission is to honor and celebrate one another’s lives through listening.

Since 2003, over 35,000 everyday people have shared life stories with family and friends in our StoryBooths. Each conversation is recorded on a free CD to share, and is preserved at the Library of Congress. Millions listen to our broadcasts on public radio and the web. StoryCorps is one of the largest oral history projects of its kind.

My family had a pizza joint just around the corner from the El Dorado when I was a young child.

I love the StoryCorps project. This is another great story captured by the project and it warms my heart in these anxious times.

For other great stories give The Moth Podcast a listen.

Gifts make me feel warm inside. Thank you Hannah for the slippers:

Also, thank you all for the stickers that now adorn my laptop (and the dozen in my backpack that will soon). And thank you all for the tshirts that have been mailed to me or left for me at the MindTouch booth during the Web 2.0 expo.

Gifts are good. 🙂 Feel free to mail more to:

555 West Beech St #501
San Diego CA, 92103

As always, you can email ErinL At MindTouch Dot Com your tshirt size and physical address and receive a MindTouch tshirt via mail. Sharing is good….

Here’s what I look like when I’m 40 pounds lighter and 10 years younger:

I intend to be back at that weight in the next year or so.

I’m still healing my left calf, which has had severely cramped muscles and tight tendons and also my right hip, which I threw out of place by not allowing my calf to heal 😦 so the last week was mostly biking and concluded with an 8 mile trail run in Escondido. The run was rough on me and I still have some healing to do, but the run was gorgeous.

I had acupuncture last Friday. This was my first time. It was amazing! I won’t go into the details, but suffice it to say I went in barely able to walk up stairs and left skipping (figuratively). While I still struggled with some pain, I could never have done the run on Saturday without the acupuncture. My neighbor is the acupuncturist and was kind enough to treat me for free, yay! She’s also completing her PhD in Eastern Medicine and was very knowledgeable across a range of disciplines including exercise physiology. Acupuncture == Awesome.

There was an article in the San Diego Business Journal (SDBJ) last month about MindTouch. I’ve had many people congratulate me on the article. I was somewhat perplexed because MindTouch was also recently in the New York Times and I’ve had more people congratulate me about this SDBJ article than I did when were in the New York Times or Wall Street Journal! I didn’t realize how well read SDBJ is locally. Then I learned yesterday the article was on the cover, above the fold. No wonder.

I don’t know what photo was used in the print edition. Probably the same above,. However, I hope they used one that doesn’t highlight my greasy forehead. 🙂 If anyone has a copy of the print issue please send me a copy.

I’ve had my photos used by the Wall Street Journal, Building.com and other less popular pubs. Here’s another of my photos in the wild:

In case you’re wondering, the article is about Israeli moms that have natural child birth after having had previous births by Cesarean. The subtitle for the image reads: “Weary but jubilant.” 🙂

My first 12 seconds video:

Hello World! on 12seconds.tv

While I’m sorting out this problem with my leg I’ve been biking a lot and taking it easy on the running. West Coast Roadrunners ran 10 miles today. I think I wisely decided to rest this one and opted for a 20 mile bike ride through San Diego. It was amazing. Hillcrest to Point Loma’s Liberty Station, along the harbor, looped shelter island, to Seaport Village, past the ballpark, through Balboa Park, past the Hillcrest farmers market and then home. It was a gorgeous day. I intend to do another 20 miles tomorrow, but this time I think I’ll head out to Pacific Beach ans. I’ll be sure to bring my camera.

I usually post this at the end of the week, which would have been last Sunday, but between the arrival of Roe and the stomach virus Tara and I were infected by last Saturday night 😦 I’m running a bit behind.

I ran 9 miles on Saturday. There were lots of hills on this course and my pace was a disappointing 10:26 (iirc). Hey, I still stoked ran 9 miles. This was my longest run ever.

I’m still having a lot of problems with my left calf. It’s a line that runs from the inside left ankle to the knee and it feels almost like a pinched nerve. It is sufficiently painful as to be capable of almost bringing a tear to my eye. I have no idea what’s causing the problem, but nothing I’ve tried to date is alleviating it. I’m going to check in with a doctor and a chiropractor ASAP.

My training this week:

Feb 21	Feb 22	Feb 23	Feb 24	Feb 25	Feb 26	Feb 27	Feb 28
9 miles	OFF	40 min (missed – vomiting 😦 )	12X30/30 (sprint intervals – I just ran 40 mins instead)	OFF (I ran 35 minutes)	45 min (I biked because of my left leg)	OFF (I plan to do 6+ miles biking)	10 miles