On The Web

Today, I created my first Facebook application. And it wasn't too hard to do! They've got a decent API and it allowed me to do what I wanted.

One thing I don't like about Facebook is the extremely limited paging functionality when you're going through a large list. All you have is "1 2 3 Next" or "Prev 2 3 4 Next". Can't I at least have a "Start" and "End" also? But since they don't, it takes forever to get to the end of any list.

So, I created an application that views all the members of the groups I belong to and can jump to any page directly. You can check it out at Group Viewer.

In addition to the financial storm, now we are in the midst of the global perfect storm in food also. Climate change, droughts, decrease in farming, increase in population, increase in biofuel production, increase in transportation costs, increase in oil costs, monetary inflation, and agriculture investment speculation - all these are resulting in agricultural inflation, or agflation. It seems like the only thing next is a plague of locusts.

Coverage:
Agflation coverage - Reuters

Terms:
Agflation - Investopedia
Agflation - Wiktionary

Articles:
The food crisis
"Agflation" is the New Buzzword
Food riots fear after rice price hits a high
Shoppers scrimp as food prices rise
Agflation

Videos:
The causes of 'agflation'
The fight over the world's food systems

Sites:
Stuffed and Starved

I've wanted a backup solution and I decided to go with a network hard drive. Microcenter had a good deal on one for $150 for a 500 Gig Iomega Network drive. It was simple to install. And I was backing up right away. And now any computer on my network can access it at any time. It's incredible how cheap this solution is. I believe I paid the same price years ago for a Zip drive just to store 100 Meg.

Here's what's happening to the US economy so that even a first grader can understand it:

Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall.
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.
All the king's horses and all the king's men
Couldn't put Humpty together again.

As I've mentioned before, we are undergoing the most severe US economic downturn that will occur in my lifetime. This one will make it into the economic books and be studied in detail. We see highly unusual actions (read desperate) moves by the FED and the government to try to contain this. (Didn't Bernanke state last year that it was already contained?) But, I'm afraid that it's not going to be able to put Mr Dumpty back together again.

The US has reached it's economic apogee. We have held the position of the economic powerhouse of the earth for awhile. And someone else will be coming up to bat. We'll probably end up being an England or a Germany, strong but not a global leader.

The permabulls have not all given up yet. They all keep saying we've reached the bottom. But, unless fundamentals change, the argument that 'we've gone down so much already it can't go down much more' is not very convincing.

What am I doing with my portfolio during this time? Being aggressively defensive. Inverse ETFs, gold, oil, international stocks, money market, income bonds. Everything except having long positions in US stocks.

Here's a free way to rip a DVD to a Zune. Use DVD Shrink to rip the DVD to an ISO file. Then use Handbrake to convert the ISO file to a .m4v file. Some directions on how to do that is here. Then use the Zune software to move it to Zune player.

Links:
DVD Shrink
Handbrake
Ripping to Zune instructions

I've finally decided to play around with subscribing to podcasts ever since the latest Zune software upgrade. And it's pretty cool. The Zune software is pretty limited, but functional. I wish I could specify how many episodes to keep per subscription, but it's either 1 to 10 or everything. And I can't figure out a way to edit the feed urls. But, the good thing is that it works. I just start it up, plug in the Zune, and it downloads and syncs up automatically.

Here are the feeds that I've subscribed to so far:

60 Minutes
APM: Marketplace
APM: Corner Office
BBC: Material World
BestOfYouTube
Larry King
CNN News Update
PBS Dragonfly
Ecogeeks
FOX News Sunday
FOX O'Reilly
ID The Future
Serge Melnyk Chinese Lessons
MSNBC: Meet the Press
PBS: NerdTV
PBS: Nova
Religion and Ethics
NPR: CarTalk
Face the Nation

Content Providers:
NPR
PBS
FOX News
CNN
BBC
MSNBC

Audio Directories:
podcast.com
mediafly

Video Directories:
podcast.com
vodstock.com
podguide.tv
videopodcasts.tv

During the past several Sunday evenings, I gave four talks at church on the "Creation of God". It was the first time that I've ever given a series on Creationism. Since everyone pretty much believed what I believed, it was an easy talk to give. The only time people seemed to be at odds with what I was saying was when I said I believed in the Big Bang. But, after I went into more detail about it, people seemed to accept my version of the Big Bang, or more correctly, the White Hole Model.

Afterwards, Pastor Jonathan said I should give this talk to the surrounding churches. And I'd be open to it. And I'm also now starting to contemplate about trying to write a book on this.

Here are the talks that I gave:
Creation of God - Universe
Creation of God - Earth
Creation of God - Life
Creation of God - Flood

This past weekend, we had enough snow to build a decent sized snowman! Kinda rare in Atlanta. And actually, I don't ever remember having this much good quality snow before.

Here are the pictures: Snow 2008

I have a prediction. The economic situation that we are currently going through will ultimately end up to be the worst US financial crisis of my lifetime. We are getting two knockout punches in a row. It's hitting the biggest asset of consumers - housing. And it's hitting the biggest private sector of the US - financial institutions. And I can't imagine what can happen that will be worse than this.

This crisis is also affecting practically everyone in US society. High energy, food, and commodity prices. Increase in defaults of all loan types. Tightening of loans. Drop in stock prices. Drop in dollar value.

We might technically not be in a recession where we have 2 consecutive quarters of negative growth, but the economy sure isn't looking pretty. People are still talking about if we will be going into recession. To me, there is no debate, we're already in a recession. Now what I'm wondering is how long and how severe it will become.

One possibility is that it could be a long drawn out period like in Japan. However, our massive debt and negative savings will most likely make our crisis more pronounced than in Japan.

We are seeing a simultaneous injection and disappearance of money from the economy. The FED is injecting billions, but at the same time, companies are losing billions. But one difference is that the injections are only temporary injections. As far as I know, there has not been any permanent injections of money into the system yet. I think once we start seeing that, inflation will accelerate.

People are relying too much on the FED to solve the problem. Especially when it was the policies of the FED in the first place that contributed to the problems. Giving more beer to a drunk going into withdrawal is not the solution.

There is no single group that is the cause of the problems. But many parties are guilty - mortgage companies, people overextending themselves, rating agencies, investors, FED. To me, the root problem is greed. Those who are greedy will eventually get burned.

I'm glad that SWF are bailing out companies instead of the US government (taxpayers). However, I'm not so glad that ownership of US companies are being handed over to foreign governments.

Unemployment will naturally go up as companies are squeezed in profitability with higher costs and lower consumer purchasing power. And when we start having high unemployment, then that will be the final straw on the camel's back. If we start seeing massive layoffs, then chicken little will be able to justify crying the sky is falling.

One last prediction, I think that Bernanke will be at the helm of the next depression.

During the first week of 2008, our family went to visit the Virgin Islands. We stayed at a condo on St Thomas. But we spent most of the time on the beaches at St John.


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