For my divemaster class, I did my, “teach a scuba review” today, and I passed. It is hard to get used to getting that close to the “students” while they do their skills, but our instructors threw us curve balls today to emphasize how to maintain control of a student, responding to issues as they arrive and preventing panic.

I also did my skindiver course again…the instructors that did it with me in the past forgot to sign the sheet, and it was just easier to do it all over again than to keep trying to track them down.

The only thing (besides a little paperwork) I have left is “supervising a Discover Scuba in open water”, and I have that scheduled for the weekend after next.

So excited to be finishing this project!

Regina, Bradenton Beach, Florida

Note: this file is not released under Creative Commons.

As many of you know, I am 33, and I want to go back to school for my PhD in Economics. To prepare, I am taking math courses, beginning with Linear Algebra this semester. I was afraid when I started that it has both been too long since I was last in school, and that I was too old to do the heavy lifting in math. I struggled the first two weeks of class, showing up for all of my professor’s office hours.

Well, last Thursday, and again today, when I went after the homework, I got it, and more quickly than the other people in my class. The brain still works, despite my seven-year neglect.

The proofs are coming especially easily to me now.

What has changed, being older, is the wisdom…I now know when to shut up and listen to what other people tell me. This is making a HUGE difference in my performance in class.

I have gained in wisdom, but not lost the wit, and this is awesome!

To all you young people (as if 33 was especially old) out there, this does not mean, “put off until tomorrow”. Rather, I want to remind you that 33 is not too late to pursue that life you wanted.

In conclusion, Age and Guile beat Youth, Innocence, and a Bad Haircut.

PS: I stole the title from P.J. O’Rourke.

I am sitting at my computer, working on a website, untangling a crappy database, dreaming of campfires and music.

I passed my diver rescue for my Divemaster class on Saturday…all I need now is the openwater Discover Scuba Diving (which must be simulated) and a Scuba Review…and a bunch of paperwork.

Still have that cold…loopy on the pseudoephedrine.

Well…back to the work.

“I long to hold you tight,
so I can feel you.
Sweet lady of the night,
I shall reveal you.

Turn it up! … little bit higher … radio”

My dive site map, “needs alteration” because I did not show the beach…like the map needs more sand on it, and as if the diver cannot figure out that the beach is just past the area where the depth is two feet!

There is a legend about Ernest Hemingway claiming he could write a short story in six words. While I do not know if this is true, I have seen several six-word-short-story threads on various boards I frequent. I offer the following six-word contributions:

He wrote, read, sighed, tore, wrote.

Sisyphus sat, calling, “penny for Guy”.

Six word stories: easier in Latin.

…then Buffy staked Edward. The end. (This comes off a jinx.com tee shirt.)

I also present to following, six-word one-act play:

Elysium
Sisyphus (sitting): Penny for Guy.

Yes it is in PowerPoint…I hate PowerPoint, but I was told to learn the new version, so…

However, in the long-term, they did the wrong something.

In the long-term, Europe has created a worse moral-hazard than the bank bailouts in the United States caused with its financial bailouts: a clear signal has been sent that politicians can bargain their way to political power by writing blank checks to public unions and other rent-seeking interests, and there will be no day of reckoning. Worse, the signal has been sent that, if you are a responsible, Prussian government that controls wage inflation, you will be forced to pay for the spend-thrift irresponsibility of your over-mortgaged southern neighbors. The lesson is clear: savers are suckers.

Europe should have looked at how the United States handles bad local governments…let them go bankrupt. By letting bad local governments go under, local governments in the United States can get out from under the bad decisions of previous governments and restart under firmer footing. Indeed, as Alabama has shown in recent years at the county-level, the threat of a bankruptcy by a local government is usually enough to bring creditors to debt restructuring, saving the county from needing to file.

By contrast, Greece’s government now lacks the power to force its creditors, particularly its government unions, to renegotiate its debts, since Germany and France stand ready with an open checkbook to bail them out.

The responsible course of action would be to let Greece default, or partially default, while protecting the somewhat more tenable positions of Portugal and Italy. Germany could have credibly said, “Greece lied; Portugal did not; we will protect honest governments.” Given the fungibility of the term, “honest government”, this would have been a position that would have made an example out of Greece while preventing a, “spread of the debt contagion”.

Europe has traded the long-term future of the Euro for short-term financial stability, and punted a much-greater day of reckoning some five to ten years down the road. Proponents will (mis)quote Keynes and say, “In the long-run, we are all dead.” I once heard Prof. Garrison quote another economist, “Keynes is dead, and we are stuck in his long-run.”

If I could have a cell phone that had a laser projected keyboard and a Pocket Projector, so that I could sit the cell phone down on an empty desk, type on a full-sized virtual keyboard, and see the interface displayed on the desk behind the phone or on an 8 1/2 by 11 piece of paper I taped on the wall.

That would be really cool.