Massive Debt + Math Wrath = Insane Financial Fail.

I've heard a fair bit of conversation, and been involved in quite a bit of it myself, about the idea of the United States defaulting on its debts. I often hear it said that the United States “has never defaulted on a debt,” or that the strongest economy in the world “could never collapse” (much like the Titanic could not sink?).

No one learns about this particular subject in Civics class, but I think we all should. The United States has indeed defaulted on it's contractual obligations to pay debts, particularly as it pertains to paying them in gold, and one specific mention of such a default is the result of the Joint Resolution To assure uniform value to the coins and currencies of the United States, enacted June 5, 1933.

http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Gold_Repeal_Joint_Resolution

Once passed, this effectively told all creditors of the United States, most or all of whom previously had the legal right to have our debts be repaid in gold, that we repudiated the obligation to do so – that they would be paid in our national currency instead. Of course, at the time, our government (under President Franklin Roosevelt) was in the midst of the Great Depression and enacting policies that greatly devalued the US Dollar, making it an unattractive medium of exchange for investors (sound a little like what is going on today?). This resulted in lawsuits landing in the United States Supreme Court, where the law was upheld (barely), and set the stage for the complete abolition of the Gold Standard (or Gold Exchange Standard, as it might be better described after 1933) in 1971 under Richard Nixon.

Fact is, claims that the United States has never defaulted on a debt are false, and if it has happened before, it certainly can happen again. Today we see signs that the Federal Reserve is devaluing our currency (Quantitative Easing) and that, in particular, foreign investors are less interested in our currency as a major medium for trade. Of course, making your money less valuable makes sense when you owe 14 trillion dollars (not to mention the trillions of dollars in obligations that we are contractually obligated to pay over the next 50 years). Hell, our debt roughly equals our nation's Gross Domestic Product (the total market value of all goods and services produced in the country in a year). Everything I observe tells me that the United States government is not simply capable of defaulting on its debts, but that it will be forced to do so.

Now Playing: New Vegas

For the time being, I've decided to put my Civilization V back on the shelf and play Fallout: New Vegas for a while. Some of my friends may recall that I have played it a bit previously, but now that I have it properly patched (a grudging thanks to Steam) and, quite frankly, the game works a lot better now. Something in the first batch of updates that Steam downloaded must have optimized the game's performance with my video card (or some other such nonsense) and it simply plays better (less laggy) than before.

So far, since starting to play on Sunday, I've apparently logged a solid 6 hours in New Vegas (as opposed 79 hours that it claim's I've played Civilization V. Of course, Civilization is a turn-based game, which means I can leave it sitting whilst I do other things without cataclysmic events resulting in my loosing the game... so, adjusting for that, I'd place my actual Civ game time at a more respectable 50 hours.

But I digress...

As for Fallout, I've always been impressed with the story behind the games (the first two of which I have not played) and New Vegas seems to be no exception. Further, the music used for Fallout 3 was a wonderful break from real-life, present-day rubbish, and it was extremely fun to listen to while blasting enemies.

For New Vegas, the developers chose to incorporate a musical score that includes what I'd call “old country western” songs. While appropriate for the setting, I'll admit that I found the music from the Capital Wasteland a little more to my liking. Further, I have yet to hear the great multitude of different songs that I recall from Fallout 3 – meaning, I'm hearing the same songs with greater frequency.

Of course, as I mentioned earlier, I've only invested 6 hours in the game. Maybe there is a New Vegas equivalent to the “Galaxy News Radio” quest? I try to not read too much ahead of where I am in the game in fear of spoilers, so I don't really know.

In other news: Sunday was my 29th birthday, so I guess I'm starting to get old. Or not, but I sure feel old some days. My wife was kind enough to prepare some insanely thick cheeseburgers with fries and onion rings as my so-called “birthday dinner.” I suppose this is the only day of the year when she'll willingly put her hands into a pile of ground beef – otherwise it is my job.

Thing is, she cooks them better. Shame...

Also want to comment on our son's schooling, which is progressing nicely and exceeding the requirements (as usual). He will soon be undergoing the AIMsweb Benchmark testing (same thing he did in September) to see how he is progressing. I will try to make time to post those results when they are delivered to us.

And now I guess it is time for me to go to work.

Creative Play and Learning

This weekend I got back into an old “hobby” if you will... loom knitting. I created two hats, both of which I mandated that our son model for the camera:

The first one (left) was made merely to re-learn the process, and I dare say it turned out relatively well. It kept my head reasonably warm while I was outside a few times during the day on Sunday, but I don't know if it would have kept up with the frigid temperatures on Saturday. It took about two hours of work sporadically throughout the evening to complete... I believe Michelle and I watched several episodes of Kingdom Hospital and I played about 100 turns of Civilization V whilst I worked.

The second one, inspired by Old Glory (otherwise known as the American Flag) took about twice as much time (and yarn) to finish. Each “stitch” is comprised of two strands of yarn as opposed to the single strands utilized in the first one, adding weight and thickness (and presumably insulation). Ther was also the added complication of the 13 alternating red and white bands which I think I could do a little better if I made another one, but I doubt the difference would be visible from the outside.

While I worked on the Old Glory hat, our son decided he wanted to work on something of his own. My wife was kind enough to explain the process and, with some help, he has managed to get a lot further with it than I then expected.

In a feat of manual dexterity (at least for a six year old), he has completed 14 rows. With some mistakes, of course, but nothing that wouldn't make it possible for him to complete a cute hat for a stuffed animal if he wants.

So my weekend was filled with yarn and lazing around the apartment with the family.  What more could I really ask for?

First Ramble of Two Thousand Eleven.

I hope my friends are all having a decent start to 2011. I would say that I am, but I guess I can't report that a whole lot changed as a result of the Earth returning to the same orbital position [relative to the Sun] that it was at 365 revolutions ago.

Work has returned to a semi-steady pace, hovering around 4,000 orders a day. In spite of all the talk of being light on work, most everyone is working the standard eight hour day (or reasonably close). Of course, as is customary around the beginning of the year, the company is making sweeping reforms leaving many of us in the dark as to what the rules are on various subjects at any given moment...

For instance, on Thursday we were informed of a new policy regarding paid time off (vacation/sick time). In fact, we no longer have specific “vacation” or “sick” time, but it is all simply called PTO and we can use it for whatever reason we want. Of course, they haven't told us what attendance penalties we will be subject to for unscheduled call-offs, but they have said that that policy is changing too – We have been told to expect a new Employee Handbook in the first couple weeks of the year. I guess no one else seems to think it is terribly odd that these policies weren't all approved at the same time, but I don't see the logic in having a policy on paid time off while having no policy (or one that doesn't apply) on attendance...

At least I can take some satisfaction in the fact that on Monday I was asked to operate the turret truck for the first time in nearly six months – and that I actually remember how to do it. Was a nice change in the routine.

In other news, last week I posted about the NERF guns we have been playing with since Christmas. I left out the fact that I'm starting to see some improvement in my Civilization V game, especially since I have broken down and installed it through Steam, the only legitimate way to properly patch/update the game. Aside from my frustration with that, the patching seemed to help [a little] with my system resource problems, but the game still occasionally crashes in the end-game. I believe this has more to do with my graphics adapter than system memory, but until I get a new PC I think I'm kinda stuck with what I have.

You see, I have one of these “thin” towers, and very few graphics cards even fit in the thing. The one I have is not properly installed, actually, as a result of it being too tall, but it works. Further, the card pretty much maxes out the capacity on the power supply, and nearly everything else is even more power hungry. Lets just say that I'll spend the money on a new PC before I'll replace the graphics card [again] AND the power supply.

But I digress... as for Civ V, I've gotten to the point where I'm playing on Warlord level consistently and winning about half the time – and even managed a culture victory in my latest game. While the culture victory doesn't sound terribly difficult, it does seem quite taxing to keep the other civs from killing you while you build up culture for 400 turns. I did have the good fortune to have an abundance of gems to trade – I think that helped, but I have to wonder how this would have gone down on a higher difficulty level.

Alright... I've rambled on long enough for today I suppose.