Singapore is currently “debating” how much to pay its elected leaders. Singapore public servants are well paid by most any standard. According to the papers here the Prime Minister made SG$3,072,200 in 2010 (making him the highest paid politician in the world according to this article [money.ca.msn.com]). Three million dollars. But they are reducing that down to SG$2,200,000 this year. It recently took four pages of the paper to explain how they arrived at these numbers — base salary, annual variable component, 13th month bonus, individual bonus and national bonus… It’s all very complex stuff [salary.sg], just to justify overpaying already rich public servants; you know people who work for the voters, the vast majority of which do not make so much. In fact the average household income for Singaporeans in 2010 was SG$96,000 (according to a Singapore Statistics Department report here [singstat.gov.sg]). Then again, as many Singaporeans know its’ not a country its’ a corporation and the PM is the CEO. CEO’s every where are making astronomical salaries, on the BBC they other day I heard that the average CEO salary was 147 times that of their average employee. By that score Singapore Inc is not too bad at less than 23 times.

Anyway, there is lots of debate and propaganda about Singaporean politicians salary on the web. But the debate gave me an idea. Since politicians are elected and they work for the voters shouldn’t their salary be pegged to the average income of their constituents? I’d like to see politicians paid this way; if they manage to increase the income of their constituents then their salary would go up, if it goes down on their watch then they suffer equally. You want to make astronomical amounts of money so you can swim in it like Uncle Scrooge then work in the private (banking) sector. Politics is supposed to be about improving the public good and service. It should not be a career choice based on salary, I don’t know how to you can take the power trip aspect out of it but I think we should take the greed aspect out. Maybe you’d still have to be rich to run for office but at least it would not be a direct path to getting richer. Besides the perks make up for a low take home salary.

Serious cold calls for serious meds:

Most common side-effects [of Clarithromycin] are gastrointestinal: Diarrhea, nausea, extreme irritability, abdominal pain and vomiting, facial swelling. Less common side-effects include headaches, hallucinations (auditory and visual), dizziness/motion sickness, rashes, alteration in senses of smell and taste, including a metallic taste that lasts the entire time one takes it. Dry mouth, panic and / or anxiety attacks and nightmares have also been reported albeit less frequently. In more serious cases it has been known to cause jaundice, cirrhosis, and kidney problems including renal failure. Uneven heartbeats, chest pain, and shortness of breath have also been reported while taking this drug.

Clarithromycin may cause false positives on urine drug screens for cocaine.

Adverse effects of clarithromycin in the central nervous system include dizziness, ototoxicity and headaches, but delirium and mania are also uncommon side effects.

When taken along with some statins, drugs used to reduce blood serum cholesterol levels, muscle pain may occur.

There is also the risk of oral candidiasis, due to the increased yeast production in the body from the antibiotics.

Wikipedia entry on Clarithromycin

Senator Sanders proposes a new amendment to the constitution [senate.gov]… seems like a good one:

ARTICLE—

SECTION 1. The rights protected by the Constitution of the United States are the rights of natural persons and do not extend to for-profit corporations, limited liability companies, or other private entities established for business purposes or to promote business interests under the laws of any state, the United States, or any foreign state.

SECTION 2. Such corporate and other private entities established under law are subject to regulation by the people through the legislative process so long as such regulations are consistent with the powers of Congress and the States and do not limit the freedom of the press.

SECTION 3. Such corporate and other private entities shall be prohibited from making contributions or expenditures in any election of any candidate for public office or the vote upon any ballot measure submitted to the people.

Go fund this project [kickstarter.com] at Kickstarter. They are far from their goal and need some help funding their science. Evil. Mad. Science! Imagine: 10 story tall towers making lightning! “1.21 gigawatts!” style lightning. This project must be funded. For the sake of all evil geniuses out there. I mean, BOOM! Cezaakk! Pow! Lightning:

In fact I think Larry Ellison should just fund this project himself, on the condition that they build a second set, in his office! So he can use them to vaporize people who don’t like him. All evil super villains need two 10 story tall lightning generators.

Thirty corporations paid less than nothing in aggregate federal income taxes over the entire 2008-10 period. These companies, whose pretax U.S. profits totaled $160 billion over the three years, included: Pepco Holdings (–57.6% tax rate), General Electric (–45.3%), DuPont (–3.4%), Verizon (–2.9%), Boeing (–1.8%), Wells Fargo (–1.4%) and Honeywell (–0.7%).

DuPont and Monsanto both produce chemicals. But over the 2008-10 period, Monsanto paid 22 percent of its profits in U.S. corporate income taxes, while DuPont actually paid a negative tax rate of –3.4 percent.

Department store chain Macy’s paid a three-year rate of 12.1 percent, while competing chain Nordstrom’s paid 37.1 percent.

In computer technology, Hewlett-Packard paid 3.7 of its three-year U.S. profits in federal income taxes, while Texas Instruments paid 33.5 percent.

FedEx paid 0.9 percent over three years, while its competitor United Parcel Service paid 24.1 percent.

Robert S. McIntyre, Matthew Gardner, Rebecca J. Wilkins and Richard Phillips. Taken from Corporate Taxpayers & Corporate Tax Dodgers, 2008-2010

Stop having a tax or find some way of making companies pay it.

Interesting grassroots campaign to close personal bank accounts with the big Wall Street banks and move them somewhere… voting with your wallet — the only way to counteract the ability of big corporations to vote with theirs. I’d sign but I have never put my money in a big Wall Street bank; I’ve been a loyal Credit Union customer since my parents opened an account when I was 2. Through high school and college, through 5 jobs on three continents and I still consider my old Credit Union account to be my primary account.

One annoyance; the site does not offer any help on where to move your money, unless you sign the pledge. But only BAM, Citi and Chase banks are represented, what if you belong to a smaller banks but still want to move? What if you want the info about moving before you sign the pledge. Forcing people to sign the pledge will probably loose more signatures than generate additional ones.

Seems everything has a built-in lifespan these days of a-whole-lot-less-than-it-should-be. I got the Marshall Major Headphones less than a year ago. A week after I got them the little gold plate on the inside just above the left ear cup just fell off. Seems they are hot glued on and the glue is less than good:

The matching place on the other side fell off a month later.

And now, 10 Months into owning the headphones they have completely fallen apart:

When I pay US$100 for a pair of headphones I expect them to last more than a year. And not to single out Marshall here; it seems that every consumer electronics company is building their products with 12 or 18 months expected lifetimes. And it seems to be a relativity new thing. Time for some then and now, walk-uphill-both-ways-to-school, bitching…

Exhibit one: my Nokia 3310 and N95

Circa 2001 I got a Nokia 3310 as a cheap prepaid mobile when I moved to England. It was a brick. I used, and abused it all over Europe. Dropped it down the stairs of the London Monument. Dropped it in the snow in Amsterdam. Drop it, over and over around Europe. And then I dropped it over and over in the US, the phone was such a brick I used it for 3+ years as my daily phone, alarm clock and watch, in England, backpacking around Europe and back in the US when I had to get a job. I used it till my work furnished me with a blackberry and all kinds of color phones to testing MMS in late 2004. And you know what. I still have it. And; it still works. It’s a brick. And I mean that in a, very, good sense.

Then in 2008 my company got me a Nokia N95. It lasted 14 months. By the time I finished with it the battery cover was replaced twice, the screen flickered and you could not keep the dame thing open it would keep sliding shut if you didn’t hold it open. Piece of shit. It broke within weeks of the warranty expiring. Didn’t even make it to the 18 month average life expectancy of most users phones — a life expectancy based not on the item breaking but on it being replaced by a newer device. And I’m not a special case; all the guys in my office got N95s around the same time. They all broke to various degrees within the same timeline. Nokia has simply stopped making high quality handset and moved to cheap manufacturing designed to limp along just long enough so people could upgrade when their contracts allowed it. A cynic might say that Nokia was artificially inflating their sales by making a substandard product designed to break and be replaced by a new, Nokia, handset.

Exhibit two: Maytag washer and dryer made in Malaysia

Two months ago I had to replace my Maytag washer and dryer after less than 4 years. The dryer heating element died and the washer motor sounded like a jack hammer powered by a jet engine. I had the repair guy come out — which is the height of irony given how board and lonely we are all lead to believe the Maytag man is [YouTube.com]… — The repairman was quite nice and explained to me what needed to be done to fix the problems and how much it would cost. Then he advised me to buy a new set. He also advised against buying Maytag if I didn’t want to go though the same thing. He reason was that, while I was familiar, as an American, with the quality of Maytag washers and dryers, the ones I purchased in Asia were not the same, they were not made in the US or Mexico like the ones I was familiar with, they were made in Malaysia and had a life expectancy, in his opinion of not more than 5 years. I bought the Maytag’s based on my experience with Maytag. The ugly 70′s green ones that sat in my parent’s basement for most of my life and worked like dogs washing and drying 6 people’s cloths and bedding. I think the dryer died first when I was like 12 and the washer 5 years later. Which means they lasted 12 and 17 years or more (I don’t know if they were purchased when we moved in in ’78 or came with us…) This is the quality I expected paying the same price in Singapore. I got shit. So I replaced my washer and dryer with ones made in Europe, by Germans, I can only hope they are better.

Conclusion

Manufacturers are no longer worried about quality; they want to sell us the cheapest thing that will last just long enough that we will by from them again when it breaks. Short term, stock price planning at it’s best. Consumerism at it’s best — Buy and throw away.

Another year, another anniversary. I stick by my thoughts 9 years ago [confusion.cc].

Unfortunately, what constitutes normal in too many aspects of our day-to-day life have changed more over the last 9 years than they seemed to in the first year. The slow erosion of Liberties not just in the US but around the world, under the pretext of security is appealing — and the cost of that ‘security’ in the lives on non-Americas and American Armed Services Personnel is, in many ways, more tragic than the events which caused it.

“Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.”

Benjamin Franklin

The image below is from a screenshot of my iPhone home-screen the other day when I was on a plane. Why does it show a burned in ghost image of an operator logo, time and alarm setting? Especially why did it choose to show a ghost image of an operator that is not my home operator and that I have not been on in over a month?

Weird.

That’s what a 5.9 looks like for a hundred plus miles away. Guess the needle can’t go back and forth far enough.

The quake, which had it’s epicenter outside Mineral, Virginia, was close to where I grew up. How close? Lets see:

Kinda close. Like 15 miles close.

Well, everyone I know seems to be OK. My dad was at home, and apparently slept through the whole thing. How bad could it have been? I understand it was the strongest quake to hit Virginia in more than 100 years. But there have been at least two other noticeable quakes [confusion.cc] in my lifetime produced from about the same area. I got a concussion from one, but was far enough away in DC that I didn’t feel the second one. Then there was the sonic boom everyone thought was an earthquake when I was in college…