And that's just my living room...

The drill hall, Park Avenue Amory, NYC.

Does he really exist?

Summer Thoughts!

Bailout 2009

The bailout is now costing more than the following combined:

• Marshall Plan: Cost: $12.7 billion, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $115.3 billion
• Louisiana Purchase: Cost: $15 million, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $217 billion
• Race to the Moon: Cost: $36.4 billion, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $237 billion
• S&L Crisis: Cost: $153 billion, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $256 billion
• Korean War: Cost: $54 billion, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $454 billion
• The New Deal: Cost: $32 billion (Est), Inflation Adjusted Cost: $500 billion (Est)
• Invasion of Iraq: Cost: $551b, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $597 billion
• Vietnam War: Cost: $111 billion, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $698 billion
• NASA: Cost: $416.7 billion, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $851.2 billion

TOTAL: $3.92 trillion

BAILOUT: $4.6165 trillion (INCLUDING CitiBank)

Depression 2009

"... early last month, the English bookstore chain Waterstone's reported a 200 percent increase in the sales of books on keeping chickens." What might a 2009 Depression look like?

History is now and America

I just had to use this photo again, with this quotation from Newsweek's Fareed Zakaria:

"Some of us—especially those under 60—have always wondered what it would be like to live through the kind of epochal event one reads about in books. Well, this is it. We're now living history, suffering one of the greatest financial panics of all time. It compares with the big ones—1907, 1929—and we cannot yet know its full consequences for the financial system, the economy or society as a whole."

My father always preached the Ten Commandments (see below) in a way that many people found strange. He said that no one could ever expect to keep all ten commandments, all the time. Even "the thought of foolishness" is sin, according to Proverbs 24, verse 9. So instead, we were all meant to look at the Ten Commandments and realize that we could never reach God's exacting standard. Then we would know that only Christ's death for all sin was our way of escaping from being judged by that unreachable standard.

This is an unorthodox interpretation of the Ten... I can't help feeling that Wall Street and the economy would not be in such a mess if people had been less covetous, if they had not worshiped the US$ as a god, etcetera.

Keith Haring's Ten Commandments

I went to see Keith Haring's Ten Commandments at the Deitch Gallery in Queens, NY. Haring painted these enormous and mysterious 26-feet-tall canvases in Bordeaux, and until now, they have never been seen in the U.S.

I use the word mysterious, because as one views Haring's representations, it becomes difficult to understand which painting represents which commandment. Haring did not say which is which; some commandments, for example, 'Keep the Sabbath holy,' are more abstract than others, such as "Thou shalt not steal." This latter commandment is shown as someone stealing, the opposite of the commandment. Go see this show, it is wonderful.