Printing Money and Handing it Out isn't "Growth"

Instapundit blurb on GDP announcement: U.S. Economy Is Growing Once Again. But here’s a cautionary note: “But we don’t think that rate of growth is sustainable because it is distorted by all the government stimulus. The challenge here is to get organic growth – growth that isn’t helped by fiscal steroids.”
There was no "growth" in the economy. There was the government shoveling money out the door, which will have to be paid for later. In the mean time the "economic good news" is that things "are not bad as forecast" on unemployment, foreclosures, debt, housing, earnings, etc., etc.

What we basically have is a bubble being created by quantitative easing and government spending. When one or the other eases off all this magic GDP "growth" will stop.

Overseas Business Quote of the Day

I got this in an actual business email from Asia: Sales always chasing two rabbit at the same time.

I think the first part of this quote was originally Confucius say....

Kamchatka: How I Know Obscure Geographical Facts Thanks to Risk

As I pre-teen my buddies and I used to play Risk for hours. We would have sessions starting in the evening, and with lots of coke and snacks at hand we would play into the wee hours of the night. Every once in a while my friend's dad would join in for a few hours.

Risk was a great board game, which for some reason didn't translate well into a computer game. Maybe its lure was more about the personal interaction between opponents than formulating a strategy for conquering the world.

In any event, besides being fun, hours of Risk also embeded obscure geographical facts learned from hours of battle. For example holding Kamchatka was damn near impossible - it could be invaded from FIVE different locations! Try defending that piece of territory! (and thinking of this always reminds me of the Princess Bride quote about never getting involved in a land war in Asia).



Australia and Indonesia, on the other hand, were the best defensive positions on the map. You could put all your armies in Indonesia, which could only be invaded from a single spot, and just put token holding armies over the rest of Australia. So Indonesia was the site of many, many of my last stands, but I made my opponents pay.

Greenland was also very important as it was the only way to get across the Atlantic. So you had to take it eventually. Its Risk importance, and my musing here was brought up by this Tigerhawk blog link:

With such massive potential oil reserves, Greenland is poised to achieve a geopolitical importance it hasn’t had since the invention of Risk.

Well said.
Apparently over the years the map was changed and updated from what was around when I was a kid, plus no one plays this any more, so this particular way of learning geography is lost.

The Post Office Doesn't Sell Stamps?

Check out this picture. This is at a U.S. Post Office. It was the only machine in the place:


So this post office has PO boxes. There are mail slots to drop off mail. But, sorry, you can't buy stamps at this post office. At least off hours. If during "business hours" then you can wait in line and get one from a real person.

Who thought of this? Does the Post Office think that if you go to a real person the next day that will produce savings for the government? If they have done anything at all they shifted costs to the consumer - you have to spend extra time and effort to find and get stamps, and the government won't have to pay somebody to spend 30 minutes filling the machine every day.

Do we want these same people running our health care system?