The Swine Decade

The strange saga of Mark C. Anderson may be coming to an end.  Anderson is facing life in prison on 19 criminal counts, including arson, mail fraud and tax evasion after torching perhaps as much as $200 Million in wine.

And it gets weirder.  Anderson ran a business storing wine, ran scams to sell it and when it came to a head (the storage facility was evicting him) he apparently set fire to cover his tracks.  Now he's trying not to spend the rest of his life in jail.

You read about these amazingly brazen scams that people were caught up in and at this point it's a bit overwhelming.  Why would you do that?  Why would you think that you could do that?  As we close out the first decade of the 21st Century, one of the things that we'll look back on are the elaborate, fail-tastic scams that people got caught up in.  From Enron to Worldcom to  Madoff to Ausaf Umar Siddiqui to Carrington to McConville.  The only common trait seems to be unfettered hubris.  The idea that it's okay to cheat - that you can get away with it and that there will be no negative repercussion.

And for all the guys who get caught, you have to accept that some get away.  Why else would you do it?

How Lazy Are You?

If you're a fan of Tim Ferriss' Four-Hour Work Week, you'll have heard about eliminating the errands and chores from your life so that you can focus on what your core competencies are.  It's an intriguing idea but then comes a story like this:

College Student Needs Personal Assistant To Help Him Be College Student

It's difficult to immediately argue the logic of something like this - if it helps him focus on his studies and he can afford it, why not?  Here's why:

Life is About Being Your Own Person, You Ninny!

You need to pay someone to schedule your life?  How much more work does it take to write out the errands for your assistant versus just doing it yourself?  Life is about standing in line, getting things done and the Zen that comes from the moments in which you are forced to just stop, stand there and listen to the wind blowing.

It would be difficult to contemplate what dating this guy would be like and I have the feeling he's in for a few big life lessons as public outrage starts pouring in on him.  What happens when he has to get a second assistant in just to deal with the hate mail?

Shut up, Michael Moore!

It's gotta stop.

Moore's upcoming release "Capitalism - A Love Story" is generating a lot of positive reviews and hopeful rhetoric that his movie will "get his viewers outraged and shake them out of their complacency".  Just like they were supposed to be shaken when he released Sicko.

And Farenheit 9/11.

And Bowling for Columbine.

And The Big One.

And Roger & Me.

Mike and others like him, releasing documentary after documentary highlighting the ills of the world and one single fact seems to escape their notice: Nothing's getting better.  Did you watch The Corporation?   Were you excited to see Noam Chomsky get on screen and talk about how the idea of a corporation has been used for all kinds of twisted ends?  Did you come out of the theatre feeling outraged?  How about Who Killed the Electric Car? or Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Prices?  Did you feel angry at Wal-Mart or wish for your EV-1?  Guess what?

Nothing Changed