Regruntled.com

Great movie! Great scenery, good music. The screenplay is based on a book, which is based on a magazine article, which is based on the true story of a young man who goes off into the Alaskan wilderness and dies there. The story of his death is intercut with his adventures on the way to Alaska. It’s a road movie. The ending is tragic, but he meets the obligatory offbeat characters on the way, and we get a glimpse of some unusual locations. Slab City is a real place, and so is Salvation Mountain.

I find it difficult to watch a movie about foolish youthful dreams through risk-averse middle-aged eyes. On the one hand, I see a kindred spirit, a fellow seeker of regruntlement in a way. On the other hand, I see an idiot, who does one stupid thing after another, until he finally does something so stupid that it kills him.

Alex, the young man, burns his remaining cash in the desert, to what, set himself free? Later we see him making fries in a fast-food kitchen. The manager tells him that he will have to start wearing socks, and he walks away. This establishes him as a man of principle. But what exactly is the principle? That he will take a minimum-wage McJob to replace the money that he burned, but he won’t wear socks? Wouldn’t it have been smarter not to burn the money in the first place? But that would deprive us of two dramatic scenes: the money burning in the desert, and the confrontation over the socks.

I don’t know how true to life the movie is. It’s not a true story, it’s “based on” a true story twice removed. The socks incident and Slab City are not in the magazine article. On the other hand, there are things in the article and book that didn’t make it into the movie.

The movie business is about drama, not logic, and sometimes characters have to do stupid things to move the story along. Maybe there’s a lesson here. Maybe Alex thought his life was a movie, and his story would be more dramatic if he did some really stupid things.

A Complaint
You of the brilliance, with a mind full of thought Twisted and tricked and trapped to compliance That all is commerce and happiness is bought Wigged-out and drugged by diagnosis and shame Your transcending thoughts are totally to blame Thoughts that you are both human/humane Expressed with self-doubt when outside the frame

Congressman Ron Paul of Texas is running for the Republican nomination for President. I’d estimate his chances at approximately zero. Intrade gives his chances at 7.5%. Intrade is an online prediction market, the modern equivalent of a bookie. There are people betting for Ron Paul, and people betting against him, and 7.5% is where the market clears. Of course, this is a new millenium and we don’t talk about making bets, we talk about buying and selling contracts. It amounts to the same thing.

The trade is obvious: sell Ron Paul short at 7.5 and cover at 0. Can it really be this easy? It’s a short sale, and Intrade requires a margin that doesn’t earn interest. The contract runs through August 31, 2008, after the Republican convention. The trade works out to about 9% annualized. For all intents and purposes, the nomination will be over by the end of January, after Iowa and New Hampshire, so I can probably cover then, if not at zero then close to zero. I wouldn’t be surprised to see a 20% annualized return on this bet, I mean investment.

Or I could look at this in a “Wisdom of Crowds” sort of way. The people at Intrade know something that the mainstream political pundits don’t, and Ron Paul really does have a snowball’s chance in hell of getting the nomination. Nah… I don’t think so. Al Gore has a better chance of getting the Republican nomination. I think there are libertarians and conservatives at Intrade who are betting on what they want to happen, not what they would rationally expect to happen. However, there is a lot of enthusiasm on the internet, and you can read “Ron Paul Can Win” for the Paul supporters’ case.

Or I could look at this as psycho-financial arbitrage. I like Ron Paul. I’d like to see him get the nomination. I voted for him when he ran for President as a Libertarian in 1988. So I sell him short at Intrade. If I’m right and he doesn’t get the nomination, I make some money. If I’m wrong and he does, I have the satisfaction of seeing him run and voting for him in the general election. If I bet, I mean invest, the right amount, on balance I come out ahead either way. Such a deal.

I have $250 of edutainment money on its way to Intrade. If Ron Paul is still at 7.5% when my account is cleared to trade, I will sell him short.

In a recent episode of House, a man in a hospital bed, in pain and hours from death, wishes he could just get it over with and go to heaven. Dr. House, of course, tells him that there is no heaven. Dr. Wilson says to House, “why did you do that? You don’t know for sure that there is no afterlife. What harm does it do for this man to have a few hours of hope?”

Eloquently put. And yet… aren’t we all terminally ill, and in pain? Maybe not so much pain, and maybe we have decades left instead of hours, but aren’t we in the same existential position? What harm does it do for us to believe in heaven, or in reincarnation, or something else.

I think this is the wrong question. We are constantly bombarded with messages from advertisers, schools, governments and religions that seek to modify our behavior. The messages range from innocuous to misleading to malign. A lack of critical thinking puts a person at such a disadvantage in life.

I say focus on the critical thinking. If critical thinking leads you to warm fuzzy feelings about an afterlife, good for you. I find it does not. I see multiple belief systems that can’t all be true at the same time, and a lack of evidence from which to judge which belief system is more likely to be true. Overly analytical perhaps, and not very comforting, but the flip side is that being less deluded than most gives me an advantage in the here and now. Your mileage may vary.

Department of Synchronicity: just before posting, I found yet another modern restatement of Pascal’s Wager in an email:

“I would rather live my life as if there is a GOD, and die to find out there isn’t, than live my life as if there isn’t, and die to find out there is.”

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Is there a podiatrist in the house?

I’ve only been blogging for 4 days, I have maybe half a dozen readers, and one of them really does have Godzilla feet in her closet!

“Actually, I have the Perfect Godzilla’s feet in a box in my closet.”

OK, I’m convinced. Seeing is believing. St. Anselm’s argument is valid.

A snippet from a recent commercial: a young woman is at the office and her boss asks her, “How can you afford those brands on what I pay you?” The answer being “Burlington Coat Factory“.

This is just wrong on so many levels. First, the emphasis is on the brand, not the coat. A brand is totally intangible, a status symbol, a piece of information… as opposed to a coat, which might keep a person warm and dry. It’s assumed that the woman, her boss and the viewer all recognize the brands and acknowledge their status.

Second, there’s the word “afford”… the brands are not ranked by utility or appearance, but by price. It’s assumed that a more expensive brand has more status.

Third, there is a power relationship here, mediated by money. The boss sets the woman’s salary, and sets it low enough to keep her in her place. But wait! By being a smart consumer, by “affording” a higher-status brand than the boss thinks she is entitled to, the woman is challenging the hierarchy! Two alpha consumers are battling it out for dominance, and Burlington Coat Factory is on the side of the challenger.

Then there is the assumption that the boss is actually impressed, instead of thinking “Jeez, what an ugly outfit! Where does she shop, Burlington Coat Factory?”

Finally, the commercial assumes that the office is the real world, that the job is real life, that employment is an authentic human relationship, and that impressing the boss is something that a normal person would bother with.

A Voluntary Simpleton would work just long enough to buy a nice warm coat at Wal-Mart, and that would be that.

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Clarification: the boss is a woman. The coat picture is from the Burlington Coat Factory web site, not from the ad. If someone can find me a video of the ad itself, I’ll link to it.

Plum Creek Timber (PCL) owns 8.2 million acres of timber in 18 states. Divide the market cap by the acres and you get about $900 per acre. Cheap land, professionally managed, 4% dividend. Land and timber are hard assets, so they should stay even with inflation, plus GDP growth. You’re diversified across 18 states, so there’s less risk from natural disasters.

But wait, there’s more! If the price of lumber goes down (can you say “real estate bubble”?), management can always just… do nothing. The trees will keep growing, and when the price of lumber goes back up, the trees will be bigger. As opposed to corn, which will rot in the fields if it isn’t harvested. The only downside is that there is no specific acreage that you can walk on, no actual trees that you can hug.

All in all, and over the long term, virtual timber should provide a return comparable to that of stocks. PCL, a single company, is riskier than a broad-based index like the S&P 500, but a little bit of PCL should reduce overall portfolio risk.

Disclosure: I do own a few acres of virtual timber.

Please bear with me while my blog gets a makeover. Meanwhile, let Snowball the Cockatoo perform for you!

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