Geek Soap Box

I am always amazed by the incredible array of information about the history of humanity that scientists, archaeologists, and other highly trained professionals are able to pull from simple artifacts and treasures long ago buried by the sands of time.  Learning about where we came from is so integral to the knowledge of who we are and where we are going on this crazy roller-coaster of a planet ride through the universe.

That being said, what if its all wrong?  What if all of the hard work, the speculation, the inferences, the piecing together of clues, was all a bunch of bunk?

While riding the train back and forth to/from our nation’s capital the past two days, I could not help but notice how many office parks scatter the landscape of this great country, and also how many of them are adorned with all sorts of decorative modern-art statuary.  Now, while this certainly seems to be the norm, I think I speak for most everyone when I say that nobody aside from perchance the originating artist really gives a damn about those ridiculous pieces of twisted metal and/or painted concrete.  Urban art is prolific, but is it truly representative of any sort of historical or cultural significance?  Isn’t it just a form of blight?

See where I’m going with this?

What if all of the “stuff” we dig out of the earth on every expedition is just the old-school counterpart to modern-day office sculpture?  What if it all was just some crap that the tribe reject did in his spare time, and all of the other hunter/gathers or later more-refined City-State residents laughed and mocked his work?  Wouldn’t be some sort of amazing meta-irony if, thousands of years later, those cultures are now recorded in the annals of history based upon those very crappy works of art they once rebuked because our experts believe them to be “representative samples?”  Maybe even Stonehenge or the Easter Island heads were once the focus of a civic group looking to end prehistoric blight!

How would we ever even know?

Back in April, the Current Television Network made waves in the new biz community by boldly soliciting agencies to respond to an RFP for an account review via Twitter, the popular upstart social-networking site usually filled with 140-character comments on what users had for breakfast or other pithy commentary.

What made the move so innovative, though, was that it forced agencies to embrace their inner digital selves and admit that they were either already engaged with new media – thereby in the loop enough to receive the RFP – or they weren’t with the times.

Beyond this development, though, it’s becoming clearer and clearer that social networking is fast becoming a staple of the average New Business professional’s toolkit, if it hasn’t already.

For instance, did you know that there was a growing and passionate community of users on Twitter dedicated to discussing agency new business best practices and sharing their own experiences? A quick search indicates several dozen tweets from the past week alone, all marked by the hashtag “#adagencynewbiz” (for the uninitiated, “hashtags” are Twitter’s simple means of sorting and aggregating content on a particular topic, acting as real-time keywords).

In addition, whole blogs and other social communities have arisen in pursuit of the perfect pitch, such as Michael Glass’s Fuel Lines and – of course – this very blog you are reading right now. Even Facebook has a group dedicated to “Ad Agency New Business,” although it’s languishing away with only eight members currently.

What about you? Are you currently utilizing the resources of the Internet Business Development Community to strengthen your own proposals and strategies in these rough economic times? Share your own best experiences and favorite sites in the comments to this post!

(Cross-posted at the 4A’s Business Development Blog)

Browsing through the usual chatter on Twitter this AM, I was struck by random speculation and questions everyone has related to what is currently happening in Iran, and how/if the United States should respond.

Let’s start with the Middle Eastern nation itself: while I have not yet seen Jimmy Carter personally step forward and endorse the reelection of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as fair and accurate (thereby confirming that shenanigans took place), I am going to go out on a limb and speculate that the impressive landslide results were a tad manipulated and fraudulant. So what does that mean?  So far, with nearly all forms of social media currently blocked within the state, we are reduced to rampant guesswork and assumptions.  Perhaps the people are finally fed up and rioting for a real version of hope and change, or maybe they aren’t.

What I’d love to see, though, is for the citizens of an oppressed, impoverished nation to actually take it upon themselves and do something about it.  Yes, the United States should always embrace and even help to sow the seeds of freedom and democracy throughout the world, but it should be a secondary role that builds upon the tangible actions of locals.  Imagine how much better the world would be if the oppressed everywhere — from Iran to Zimbabwe to Palestine to Venezuela — just said “enough” and overcame their horrifying leadership.

Of course it’s not that easy.  And maybe even some people don’t want to enact change.  But it’s still something to think about.

Meanwhile, I’ve seen some on the right up in arms because President Obama decided to go out and play a round of golf today.  The contention, I assume, is that he should be hunkered down in a War Room somewhere with top advisers monitoring Iran, the economy, and whatnot with every waking breath.

I’m sorry, but do you really want this?  I personally feel that it would be best if Obama and his team spent as little time as possible governing.  Obama’s attention to issues leads to government take overs of the means of production, rampant deficits, and ticked-off allies the world over.  So, please stay on the links, Mr. President!  It’s probably for the best!

Meanwhile, this also begs the question: how should the United States deal with oppressive regimes and undemocratic troublemakers?  How about, unless they are rapidly militarizing nuclear stockpiles (North Korea comes to mind), nothing?  In fact, open up the channels of diplomacy and commerce!  Why should the citizens of Iran, Cuba, etc. suffer because some douchebag is in command?  Perhaps — and again, I’m just spitballing here — by embracing a little bit of glasnost we can accomplish a few tasks:

• Less potential for excuses that the United States, through sanctions and pressure, can be blamed as the “Fall Guy” or “Great Satan” causing the plight of foreign citizenry
• By perhaps opening up relations a little, foreign citizens can see for themselves what they are missing and want to embrace a little homemade hope and change.

Again, who really knows what the real solutions to world tensions will be.  Perhaps an increasingly global economy will result in a giant, one-world philosophy by default.  But, for now, I have to wonder if the way the US plays its hand might not be the most productive.

I usually read Hope n’ Change mostly to chuckle at its pithy, on-point cartoon critiques of the follies plaguing the current presidential administration. Today’s content, though, chills my bones and makes me ponder terrible thoughts.

And though the media keeps saying that the (ahem) former terrorists will be in Palau’s “custody,” the men will NOT be going to prison. No, the President of Palau says that (after a brief stay in a halfway house) they will be enjoying “a place of refuge and freedom.” In other words, an all-expense paid permanent vacation…for training with Al Qaeda. THAT should put fear into future terrorists!

This situation feels absurdly farscical. The United States will pay approximately $12 million per detainee for a very small foreign nation to take and house a handful of likely unrepentant terrorists — and not even jail them, but attempt to reform them.

Maybe it’s just me, but I am highly skeptical that this “rehabilitation” will prove successful, and even if it did, we still managed to reward a bunch of would-be killers with an all-expense-paid life in a tropical paradise.

Generally speaking, I am very much in favor of protecting the sanctity of life and all that such entails. However, at this point, wouldn’t it have been better if, say, those individuals instead just “accidentally disappeared” from the face of the earth?  Like, a “whoops, our machine guns somehow went off” and now those fighters are taking a dirt nap?  Is it really worth hundreds of millions of dollars to take no action whatsoever and do nothing to make our nation safer? Isn’t that the true crime in this day and age?

Again, not saying I’m for just eliminating everyone at Gitmo, but wouldn’t that at least make more sense in a way than what we actually are doing?

Absolut Vodka has positively taken over NY’s Grand Central Terminal lately with countless advertisements touting the brand’s new campaign, “In an Absolut World…”

Look, I know I occasionally have a filthy mind, but surely I can’t be the only one that sees a not-so-subtle vaginal/clitoral theme to these images right?  I mean, what else can that be?

Either someone’s subconscious got the better of them at Absolut’s advertising agency, or this was a deliberate campaign choice.  So, that then begs the question…what is the logic or rationale behind the Freudian psychology?  Does that kind of stuff still work in a day and age where the general public has become positively desensitized to sexual imagery?  Nowadays, I don’t look at that and think, “gosh, if I just drank more vodka I might get laid.”  Instead, I think, “wow, that’s really blatant and immature.”

What’s next, a choo-choo train wailing and chugging through a deep, dark tunnel?  For a business so renowned for its creative that whole Web sites have sprung up in tribute, this just screams weak.

Gay marriage!  Playboy “Hate Fuck” Lists!  Racist Latina Supreme Court Nominees!  Federal Ownership of the Means of Production!  

There’s so much going on these days I’m almost inspired to put some borderline-coherent thoughts together on a few topics.

Almost.

I love to joke around and play games; I call myself the Sad Clown for a reason.  But sometimes I guess jokes can go too far.

Very rare that a short flick like this can make me shout “Oh My Fucking God!” two times in rapid succession.  Brilliant work!

Thanks to the gorgeous teejaycee, who also haz a bukkit I hear.

Sometimes I love my adopted career path.

Stolen shamelessly from Jonathan MacDonald.

It probably started off simply enough — after two relative disappointments in Donkey Kong 3 and Mario Bros., but with the quarter-sucking success of the original Donkey Kong merely a short memory away — Nintendo developer Shigeru Miyamoto and his team got together to create a new game featuring the popular plumber from Brooklyn for the company’s Famicom Disk System.  What happened next forever changed the landscape of popular culture throughout the world.

Super Mario Bros. not only captivated a worldwide audience, it single-handedly ended the two-year drought brought on by the Video Game Crash of 1983 and made “Playing Nintendo” a branded verb to the same extent that “Google-ing” is now for searching the Web.  In the process, it also became the second best-selling game of all time (behind only recent phenomenon Wii Sports) and inspired legions of colorful platforming games to follow for decades.  Mario did it all, combining perfect physics (you can determine the strength and timing of your character’s movements based on how long you held buttons down), incredible music (you know the SBM theme by heart, admit it), innovative gameplay (large, scrolling worlds filled with varied environments, power-ups, Easter eggs, and puzzling labyrinths), and just enough complexity (Worlds 7-1 and 8-3, with their unending waves of hammer brothers, still give me nightmares).

Still, that being said, Miyamoto and company seriously had to be on some good shit when they planned this game out.  For starters, it takes place in a world of GIANT MUSHROOMS, some of which are large enough to walk on.  Other ’shrooms grant our hero the ability to grow to twice his original size (thereby openly defying the First Law of Thermodynamics), while even others have grown FEET and a bad attitude and ominously and silently march towards you as infantry in a demented LSD army.  Then there are the giant, man-eating plants, walking turtles. tooth-like happy-face clouds, and water-soluble bouncing fireballs.  Dude, that’s just freaking weird.

Dude, that’s a giant mutant turtle king who throws hammers, has a spiky shell, and breathes freaking fire.

Is it the greatest game ever?  Well, it might be the most accessible, or the most played or popular, but “greatest” is a tough distinction to make when others have proven so capable of providing tens of hours of fully immersive, complex worlds utilizing the latest in modern technology.  Instead, let’s just call it what it is: the one that every other video game that followed it aspired to be.  And damn, if it didn’t fully recapture my interest and enthusiasm again so many years later on the Wii’s Virtual Console.

Official Geek Soap Box Score: 10 out of 10

I was working on a blast HTML e-mail for work, and good old Dreamweaver decided to be extra helpful and tell me the following:

It’s an error box that says “No error occurred,” in case your resolution is too small to read the text.

Good to know!  Thanks Dreamweaver!

So, a few weeks back, I had to attend a conference in Miami with one of my beloved coworkers.  Since we were flying there together out of Newark Liberty International Airport, we decided it would be best for me to head over to her place in Lodi, near the airport, and leave my car there so I could more easily get home upon returning.

Unfortunately, unbeknownst to your humble blogger, Lodi has one of those arcane requirements that, to park on the street at certain hours, you have to be a certified resident of the borough or else be subjected to the unmitigated evil otherwise known as the parking ticket.  Apparently, it even says so on the Lodi PD Web site.

All residents parking vehicles on any borough street must have a residential parking sticker affixed to their vehicle or will be summons under ordinance 194-16. This ordinance applies to the hours of 11:00 PM to 5:00 AM on all days unless otherwise suspended by the Lodi Police Department.

Well, that’s great, thanks for telling me now…too bad it isn’t obvious that one must visit the local municipal Web site anytime one travels anywhere outside the confines of the home.  And not as if the regulation is posted anywhere on the street where I left my car.

So a big, fat $50 ticket awaited my return.  And — figuring that it was unlikely I’d be back there anytime soon — I quickly disposed of it in true “flight the power!” fashion.

Big mistake.

This weekend, a stern warning from the Lodi Municipal Courts made its way into my mailbox, threatening all sorts of nasty punitive actions ranging from suspension of my license to being held in contempt of court and having a bench warrant issued for my arrest.  A bench warrant?  For a parking ticket?  Really?  In the largest parking jurisdiction in the world, the entity for which I used to work didn’t even go that far.

Is my $50 (now $60) really worth all of that effort?  Is such a series of laws, from the unposted requirement to arrest, really necessary?  What is the rationale behind the residency requirement, anyway?  Is it a byproduct of older, morale laws about having evening visitors in the home?  Is it to keep parking spaces open and available (not that you could actually go anywhere really once parked in the middle of nowhere)?  Or, is it just another means for the government to lord over and squeeze every last taxpayer of every last drop of revenue possible?

I relented and paid the ticket, but Lodi can take that payment and stick it where the sun don’t shine, as far as I’m concerned.

Stolen shamelessly from The Big Picture.

Apparently, my fair and jealous New York City had quite the week while I basked in the warm and inviting glow of the California sun.  For starters, after years of controversy and repeated postings by your humble author, Department of Finance Commissioner Martha Stark resigned from her position.  Hopefully, the halls of the fine revenue agency have been uplifted and reinvigorated, now free from the mannish hands of an allegedly corrupt tyrant.  But just for shits and giggles, the New York Post threw in one last happy recap of Stark’s long history of allegedly questionable behavior on the way out:

The mayor had asked the city Department of Investigation and Conflicts of Interest Board to investigate after the Post reported that Stark is romantically involved with ex-assistant commissioner Dara Ottley- Brown.

Post reports also said that Stark:

* Hired three of her own relatives.
* Gave a job to Brown’s ex-husband, Jodie.
* Secretly served as a director of a real-estate firm while she was commissioner. She resigned from the company, Tarragon Corp., after a Post report in March.

Meanwhile, though, the Queens County Republican Party opted to ignore the litany of overdevelopment and underfunding that have long plagued the forgotten borough and instead bent over to take it up the ass once again, endorsing Mike Bloomberg for an unconstitutional third term in office.  Unanimously, no less!  And that, my friends and loyal readers, is why the GOP is all but dead in the American Northeast.  Without a sliver of principle and driven only the desire to fill up at the teat of patronage and naked political ambition, the party that once stood for fiscal discipline and keeping power in the hands of the voter is no more.  Kudos, at least, to the Manhattan GOP for telling Mike to take a hike and not making it a clean sweep of the City.  Make no mistake, though: Osama Bin Laden could run on the Democratic ticket for Mayor right now and get my vote; I will NEVER vote for Bloomberg, under any circumstance.

Finally, we had quite the scare in Lower Manhattan, as an erratically low-flying airplane terrorized office workers and area residents before being revealed as an aircraft that also occasionally is known as Air Force One, on a “photo op” mission around the Statue of Liberty.  What a truly inspired decision to keep the flight under wraps until long after it was over, too!  I can only imagine the sheer feeling of horror that must have overcome witnesses at the World Financial Center and nearby Wall Street.  You know, despite not voting for him, I actually had a sliver of hope that President Obama would govern with a degree of reason and intellect.  Instead, with one stumble after another, instead one cannot help but ask: is this the most dangerously incompetent administration in US history?

Remember last year’s 4A’s Leadership Conference?  The facilities were awesome, and everyone worked hard to create a great program as always, but there was a definite undercurrent of uncertainty plaguing attendees and casting a shadow over the show.  What was happening to the business?  Were agencies going to be shut out of  “digital” (intentional use of scare quotes there), or would they learn how to successfully transition to a new era of interactive, rich media and content?  And what of diversity and inclusion?  It was still very much “old school” in a sense.

As Chairman Tom Carroll remarked at the close of the conference yesterday, look at how far we’ve come in just a year.

On the community side, the re-branded “4A’s” is looking to expand its wide array of membership services to international professionals and academic institutions and students all over, while next year’s mash-up of the Media and Leadership Conferences will get everyone in the business together and onto the same page.

Meanwhile, phenomenal speakers such as Cyriac Roeding and David Pogue extolled the virtues of — and took to the next level — the worlds of Mobile and Web 2.0.  In a serendipitous coup, we caught Tim Armstrong just as he makes the controversial transition to AOL and got to have Jonah Bloom ask him just what he’s thinking.  David Jones reminded us all about how we need to put CSR at the heart of our business models, not sequestered in silo. And not one but three specific panels/events — including Dan Weiden’s impassioned plea — focused not just on diversity but truly on bringing new talent and voices into the industry.

Things aren’t perfect.  The economy is still giving everyone fits of anxiety, but maybe they really are starting to look up a bit.  If you are familiar with me at all — either at work or via my other blog — you know I am one of the world’s biggest pessimists at heart, so to come out of an event feeling a bit uplifted is a bold statement indeed.   Now let’s roll up our sleeves and get back to work!

Cross-posted at the 4A’s Events Blog

Does it chill anyone else out there to the very bone that NASA has started a program it tongue-in-cheekly refers to as “Singularity University?”

In a spare one-room office at Nasa’s Silicon Valley campus, a small band of futurists is plotting to save the world. The means are not a revolutionary technology or a new world order (though both may be byproducts). Rather, a new, pseudo-academic institution called Singularity ­University is going to solve our grand challenges: poverty, hunger, energy scarcity and climate change. Among others. Through a combination of techno-optimism, wide-eyed idealism and belief in the perfectibility of human beings, these well-connected geeks are creating an institution meant to legitimise their most extreme thinking.

[...]

During the first three weeks of the programme, students will receive an introduction to the school’s 10 main areas of study, including artificial intelligence and robotics, biotechnology and bioinformatics, and futures studies and forecasting. In the same way that a liberal arts education delivers an overview of literature, history and social theory, Singularity University intends to give students a crash course in subjects such as neuroscience and “human enhancement”. The second three weeks of the programme will give students a chance to study, in-depth, a subject new to them. An expert in nanotechnology, for example, might take on energy and the environment. “The biggest innovations in the world happen when you cross two disparate fields,” Ismail says. “[Johannes] Kepler looked at the moon and the tides and thought they may be connected. Today, people are doing 3D ‘printing’ of human organs using stem cells.” Linking early astronomy to stem cell technology is a bit of a stretch, but sure, intellectual cross-pollination can spur on innovation.

Sounds a lot like a plotline lifted right from the groundbreaking, philosophical mecha anime thriller Neon Genesis Evangelion: a group of rogue government thinkers and scientists look to end human existance by forcing its eventual “completion” in some meta-scientific grand scheme involving the Lance of Longinus.

Ahem, seriously, it’s great that NASA is rededicating itself to ingenuity, learning, and innovation, things it seemingly has lost its way with in recent times (witness the demise of the Space Shuttle system with no successor waiting in the wings to take mankind to the heavens).  The idea of a macro-view post-graduate program is also most intriguing, considering how focused on one specific element higher education often ends up.

But perfecting humanity?  Lofty rhetoric, but ultimately a futile endeavor in this imperfect existence.  Doesn’t mean you cannot try though.

Let’s face it, times are not good for the Grand Old Party.  We are ostensibly shut out of the federal dialogue other than as a crumudgeonly voice of opposition, and many states have similarly fallen to the dark side of Democratic (capital “D”) rule.  Meanwhile, the party continues to tear itself to pieces over what constitutes a “good” Republican and what does not — with the debate including everyone from the sage old wizard Rush Limbaugh to the more-inexperienced Meghan McCain.

So at least there might have arisen a small glimmer of hope, as Jim Geraghty reports that New Jersey Governor Jon Corzine now boasts the largest disapproval rating in state history, coming in an election year no less.  Can the GOP finally recover a seat at the Governor’s table and perhaps start to turn this thing around?

I don’t buy it.  Corzine’s lack of popularity is likely a product of the sagging economy and general feeling of hopelessness that currently plagues the entire nation.  When push comes to shove, though, I remain skeptical that Jersey voters will actually chose to throw the former Goldman Sachs CEO out on his ear; we’ve been teased too many times by the Garden State’s flirtation with conservatism, hearing over and over that “this” will be the year the state goes red.  It still hasn’t happened, and probably won’t this year either.

The GOP needs a deep period of introspection and an end to the bitter and oftentimes ugly infighting currently underway.  What does former US Attorney General Chris Christie have in his platform that will truly distinguish him as a prominent leader?  Will it be a package based on reasoned, sound fiscal and tax policy or will he merely define himself by what he is not (Corzine), a negative platform that will likely result in further heartache?  Time will tell.

I do what I can to contribute my fair share to the global resource crisis.

Stolen, of course, from the always-awesome someecards.com.

I don’t know about you, but if it ever comes to pass that I need to be cut wide open and have my insides poked and prodded by a trained specialist, I want to be freaking out cold when it happens and remember nothing upon awakening.

In India, though, some revolutionary new techniques involve keeping the patient alert and awake during many major surgeries.

As the patient was chatting away, Vivek Jawali and his team had nearly completed his complex heart bypass. Because such “beating heart” surgery causes little pain and does not require general anesthesia or blood thinners, patients are back on their feet much faster than usual. This approach, pioneered by Wockhardt, an Indian hospital chain, has proved so safe and successful that medical tourists come to Bangalore from all over the world.

This is just one of many innovations in health care that have been devised in India. Its entrepreneurs are channeling the country’s rich technological and medical talent towards frugal approaches that have much to teach the rich world’s bloated health-care systems. Dr Jawali is feted today as a pioneer, but he remembers how Western colleagues ridiculed him for years for advocating his inventive “awake surgery”. He thinks that snub reflects an innate cultural advantage enjoyed by India.

Unlike the hidebound health systems of the rich world, he says, “in our country’s patient-centric health system you must innovate.” This does not mean adopting every fancy new piece of equipment. Over the years he has rejected surgical robots and “keyhole surgery” kit because the costs did not justify the benefits. Instead, he has looked for tools and techniques that spare resources and improve outcomes. [emphases added]

So yeah, let’s focus not upon the weirdness of actually being awake and hollow simultaneously, let’s instead look at that last paragraph.  When constrained by resources, doctors amazingly gained the incentive to develop new techniques and cut costs while improving efficiency.  That, my friends, is called the “free market.”  It’s not a catch-all for every single problem and situation we face as we look more closely at our own healthcare systems, but it might be an interesting starting point.

Now that April 15th has come and gone, let us turn our attention not to the unjust and coerced tithing of the American citizenry but rather towards our favorite and most humble civil servant and tax collector, the Commissioner of the New York City Department of Finance.

When last we left Martha Stark, she had abruptly resigned from her lofty and lucrative seat on a major national real estate board after fair-minded individuals questioned how one could represent the property and property-tax industries simultaneously.  Now, she is once again under fire for allegedly using her public authority to promote her lesbian lover to the highest ranks of government service while doubling her salary at the same time.  She might have also dabbled in the world of nepotism to boot.

The Commissioner, of course, maintains that this is all an innocent case of coincidence and bad timing, and that if she dabbled in the sapphic pleasures, it wasn’t until after her former trusted assistant commissioner was long gone.  Of course, for all of the events to have unfolded as she said, it would also have had to been the most serendipitious and perfect chain of coincidences in human history.  Stranger things have happened, I suppose…

This is just par for the course chutzpuh from an administration that considers itself upon the petty concerns of the masses.  With zero accountability and transparency, it’s little surprise that the head of a taxing jurisdiction larger than several states–and even whole nations–and her underlings might engage in all sorts of allegedly nefarious, immoral, or perhaps even criminal activity.  No doubt the many hard-working and fine employees at NYC Finance are watching this story closely…one of life’s great ironies is that the people you abuse on the way up may be the ones you run into on the way down, ain’t it?

Of note, though, is the rather unusual and tepid reaction from our esteemed lord and master, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg himself.  Mayor Mike seems positively purturbed by this latest turn of events and has actually promised a thorough investigation rather than the usual knee-jerk “shut up and listen to me, I know best” schtick.  With the man attempting to win reelection under the most questionable and unconstitutional of circumstances, one cannot help but wonder how much longer it will be before he throws Poor Misunderstood Martha under the bus for good.

Maybe it’s just because I always seem to have gambling on the mind, but I’ve always loved the classic Foxwoods commercials featuring the smooth jazz singer and his dulcet tones praising “the wonder of it all.”  If you live anywhere in the Northeastern United States, you likely remember it as well.  It was a classic, memorable clip that did a great job getting the (at the time) upstart hotel/casino into the public consciousness.

Now, though, with Foxwoods ads seemingly nowhere to be found, its main rival down the road, Mohegan Sun, has blasted the airwaves with its own unending series of ad campaigns.  And hot damn, the latest one for some reason just completely reeks of awesomesauce.  To the tune of Toto’s “Hold the Line,” it’s “At the Sun!”

I sit at my cubicle at work singing that tune all day long. Don’t get me wrong, I’d still rather go to the Borgata, but kudos to the Mohegan ad team for hitting a homerun.

Three interesting little tidbits from the world of celebrities and gossip that I’m too lazy to post individually:

Gwyneth Paltrow has underway a campaign to fill the earth with smelly, greasy-haired pregnant women.  Apparently, according to an article in the rail-thin Madonna BFF’s online magazine allegedly authored by the celebrity herself, the magical elixir known as “shampoo” contains all sorts of nefarious toxins that poison babies in utero and increase the likelihood of cancer and asthma in the future born.  And here I thought those things were caused by cell-phone and wireless Internet signals. Surely, though, this must be true, because if we cannot trust the judgment of a woman who named her child “Apple” who can we trust?

But it’s all good.  After all, Paltrow isn’t as bad off as former playmate and 3rd-in-line-for-Hef paramour Kendra Wilkinson.  Kendra, sadly, never learned that utilizing the United States Postal Service to send parcels from one party to another required the use of stamps.  No, really!  What’s sadder: this poor lost soul’s feeble stupidity or the fact that she’s laughing all the way to the bank as we give her free press and watch her vapid programming?

Finally, the television world was positively aflutter Monday night after the shocking suicide of Lawrence Kuttner, the Indian protege of Dr. Gregory House who bares an uncanny resemblance to a certain Kumar.  Seems as though the actor playing the role, Kal Penn, has opted to leave the world of acting and its riches to work as a lowly staffer in a nondescript corner of the Obama Administration.  On some level, you have to applaud Penn’s dedication to serving his nation but at the same time DUDE, is wandering the halls filled with lusty young DC interns really any better than the sunshine-filled coast of LA filled with even bustier, lustier wanna-be actresses?  Oh, and that “In Memoriam” site built by FOX (thankfully since taken down)?  Bad form, guys.  Hope you didn’t pay your ad agency a lot of money for that concept.

The political world remains transfixed on a small, otherwise nondescript region of upstate New York; there, a hotly contested race for state’s seat in the 20th Congressional District remains too close to call, as Republican Jim Tedisco and Democrat Scott Murphy remain deadlocked in this highest of stakes.

Really?  One meager seat out of 435?  Methinks that the pundits and prognosticators scattered across the network and cable news, blogs, and Twitter need to really get the heck over it.  It might currently be the only game in town, but it’s springtime; go out and enjoy a little sun and maybe catch a ballgame instead.

At a conference last week, I listened to a fascinating example of the difference between the Baby Boomers and their successors in Generation X.  Bill Gates has made more money than practically any other man on the face of the earth, and doesn’t rest a day without spending countless hours and millions on various charitable institutions all over the world.  Meanwhile, one Gen X’er (regrettably, I’ve forgotten his name) made a fortune in the Dot Com Boom.  He went back to his hometown and set up a charitable trust for his high school, where every student that meets certain academic requirements (not particularly rigorous or impossible requirements, either) earns free tuition to state college.

So, the question is: who is really making the difference?  Gates is concerned with no less than the very top-line issues that affect humanity, the environment, and world politics.  But where is the return on his investment?  The unnamed Gen X’er, though, tangibly improved the lot of scores of kids who might have otherwise not had a shot at school and a real career or would have been burdened with monumental student loans upon graduation.

I guess what I am saying, is maybe instead of everyone worrying about the national implications of every minor race and obsessing endlessly over meaningless returns and projections, we should all spent a little more time focused on our own smaller lots and locales, from a block in the middle of bustling Midtown Manhattan to the most bucolic of small towns.  Look at your own Congressman and representatives.  Are they truly voicing your views and doing the best they can for your hometown?  People always say that they dislike Congress, but love their own Congressman; this is a logical and rhetorical paradox at best that fails with any level of inspection.  Are you actively engaged in the local community and working to make it the best place it can be?  Maybe if we all worried a bit more about our own problems and did something, the world would actually be a better place.  In the meanwhile, please leave my state, thanks.

Am I just impossibly naive or foolishly idealistic?

No doubt spurred into action by my scathing post from last night, New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo announced today that a large array of AIG senior managers have graciously agreed to return their not-so-justly earned bonus compensation in the name of the greater good of the citizen taxpayer.

Attorney General Andrew M. Cuomo of New York announced late Monday afternoon that 9 of the top 10 bonus recipients at the American International Group were giving back their bonuses.

He also said 15 of the largest 20 bonus recipients in A.I.G.’s financial products division had agreed to give back the money, for a total that he estimated at about $30 million. “Those bonuses will be returned in full,” Mr. Cuomo said during a conference call with reporters.

The attorney general noted that about 47 percent of $165 million in retention bonuses was awarded to Americans, accounting for nearly $80 million. All told, Mr. Cuomo said, A.I.G. employees have agreed to return about $50 million in bonuses.

Mr. Cuomo acknowledged that some bonus recipients declined to give back bonuses, especially those overseas who are outside the jurisdiction of New York State.

He said he did not think it would be in the public interest to release the names of those who gave back their bonuses.

Cooler heads prevail, and at least a start of rationality returns to our fair city and nation.

Meanwhile, Bill Wilson and the Americans for Limited Government movement have unleashed their own take on the matter, and I dare say I love it to death:

Americans for Limited Government President Bill Wilson today sharpened his call for President Barack Obama and members of Congress to return campaign contributions received from the bailout-recipient firm American International Group, Inc. (AIG).

“There is no question that President Obama must return the $104,332 he received from AIG during the 2008 election cycle,” declared Wilson. “And so must the members of Congress who took massive campaign contributions from cocktail-circuit cronies at the very institutions they were supposed to be overseeing. The American people are outraged—and rightly so.”

According to a Rasmussen Reports poll released earlier today, 67 percent of Americans believe that politicians who received campaign contributions from AIG should return the money.

“The American people were already hopping mad about the bailouts for failed companies like AIG. And now, when they learn that company bigwigs donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to politicians in 2008, their anger is also rightly directed at the political elite,” Wilson added.

Last week, Wilson sent a letter urging President Barack Obama and members of Congress to “return the $4.37 million they received in campaign contributions from AIG since 1989, including the $644,218 they received in 2008.”

According to OpenSecrets.org, AIG gave some $644,218 to candidates for federal office in 2008. According to Wilson’s letter, “[I]n return, it received from the Federal Reserve some $173 billion in taxpayer-guaranteed loans. That represents nearly a 27 million percent return on their 2008 ‘investment’ into politicians’ loyalty.”

Beautiful, but I say take it one step even further: use all of the combined campaign contributions to help fund the Troubled Assets Relief Program (aka TARP), rather than taking the cash from the American taxpayer. It’s only a small drop into a infinitely larger financial bucket, but it would be a pretty spectacular show of courage and…dare I say…hope and change.

Somewhere, Mike Taibbi must be swelled with paternal pride.  While elder Mike has toiled over the years at network broadcast affiliates — doing the occasional snow report and/or covering Groundhog Day festivities for the local news — his son Matt has gone all “Cameron Crowe” and gets to write for Rolling Stone.  Meaning, lots of profanity and long-winded left-leaning investigative journalism into paranoid conspiracy theories and good old-fashioned America bashing.

Still, there are some interesting and useful nuggets to be gained from Taibbi’s recent piece, “The Big Takeover,” a closer look into how a giant insurance corporation such as AIG managed to wind up in broke-ass poverty and begging at the government teat for bailout after bailout.

I already covered the derivatives and mortgage-backed securities aspect in great detail; what this article does is take the scenario farther, into how AIG became caught up in credit-default swaps and how one man — AIG Financial Products Chief Joseph Cassano — can be found at Ground Zero of the disaster.

In its simplest form, a CDS is just a bet on an outcome. Say Bank A writes a million-dollar mortgage to the Pope for a town house in the West Village. Bank A wants to hedge its mortgage risk in case the Pope can’t make his monthly payments, so it buys CDS protection from Bank B, wherein it agrees to pay Bank B a premium of $1,000 a month for five years. In return, Bank B agrees to pay Bank A the full million-dollar value of the Pope’s mortgage if he defaults. In theory, Bank A is covered if the Pope goes on a meth binge and loses his job.

When Morgan presented their plans for credit swaps to regulators in the late Nineties, they argued that if they bought CDS protection for enough of the investments in their portfolio, they had effectively moved the risk off their books. Therefore, they argued, they should be allowed to lend more, without keeping more cash in reserve. A whole host of regulators — from the Federal Reserve to the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency — accepted the argument, and Morgan was allowed to put more money on the street.

What Cassano did was to transform the credit swaps that Morgan popularized into the world’s largest bet on the housing boom. In theory, at least, there’s nothing wrong with buying a CDS to insure your investments. Investors paid a premium to AIGFP, and in return the company promised to pick up the tab if the mortgage-backed CDOs went bust. But as Cassano went on a selling spree, the deals he made differed from traditional insurance in several significant ways. First, the party selling CDS protection didn’t have to post any money upfront. When a $100 corporate bond is sold, for example, someone has to show 100 actual dollars. But when you sell a $100 CDS guarantee, you don’t have to show a dime. So Cassano could sell investment banks billions in guarantees without having any single asset to back it up.

Secondly, Cassano was selling so-called “naked” CDS deals. In a “naked” CDS, neither party actually holds the underlying loan. In other words, Bank B not only sells CDS protection to Bank A for its mortgage on the Pope — it turns around and sells protection to Bank C for the very same mortgage. This could go on ad nauseam: You could have Banks D through Z also betting on Bank A’s mortgage. Unlike traditional insurance, Cassano was offering investors an opportunity to bet that someone else’s house would burn down, or take out a term life policy on the guy with AIDS down the street. It was no different from gambling, the Wall Street version of a bunch of frat brothers betting on Jay Feely to make a field goal. Cassano was taking book for every bank that bet short on the housing market, but he didn’t have the cash to pay off if the kick went wide.

Call me naive — after all, I only got a C+ in Intro Corporate Finance because I could not wrap my brain around all of the derivative bullshit — but that sounds like a risky damn plan if there ever was, especially since a mere cursory look at the housing market would make it abundantly apparent that the incredible boom we witnessed in the past decade could not last.  So the market goes bust, every big better with a CDS calls in their bet, and AIG is left holding an empty yet bottomless bag.

Which brings us back to the issue of the bailout, and the use of the funds to at least in part pay off massive bonuses to the executive staff that created the financial mess in the first place, all on the taxpayer dime.  It is the worst of the worst in terms of public perception, and bad policy to begin with.  Why reward a business and executives that so clearly merely made very poor investment and other business decisions.

So, despite knowing all along that the bonuses were included as part of the bailout plan, Congress this week sought to impose a 90% tax on income derived from those bonuses.

Today, the House of Representatives passed a bill, 328-93, that would put a 90% tax on bonuses from financial firms receiving bailout funds, such as AIG. One of the bill’s cosponsors, Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-Manhattan), who proposed a 100% tax earlier, said, “I’m proud that the House has taken action to return these bonuses to the federal treasury… It would be morally reprehensible and fiscally irresponsible to allow millions to go to those who cost our country billions. Bonuses should be based on creating value, not destroying it.”

Well, in purely rhetorical/moral terms this would be a rare instance where I completely agree with Ms. Maloney.  These guys stink at basic business theory and should not be rewarded for their actions ever under any rational point of view.

Of course, that being said, imposing this sort of plan after the fact reeks of a CYA maneuver by both the legislature and President Zero that is chilling in its utter lack of constitutional understanding and potential future ramifications.  I have no doubt that other more scholarly constitutional experts have already discussed the “Bill of Attainder” concept and how this law it in fact patently illegal under any circumstance.  On a more philosophical level, though, it’s downright horrifying to think that the government could impose a specific tax of any sort on a handful of individuals as it sees fit, a sort of punitive quick-fix for any messy scenarios that political figures find themselves ensnared in that completely avoids the concept of due-process at the same time.

So what do we do?  I have no easy answers, the matter is now so intricately tied into the fiber of our government and economy that it’s hard to turn around now and just let the biggest insurance firm in the world go belly up.  But without addressing some key issues — increased transparency from the Federal Reserve and resolving the conflicts of interest that arise from the repeal of Glass-Steagall — it’s hard to know if we won’t just wind up back in this situation again in a few years, at increased expense.