Bank Fees

I like conspiracy theories. Sometimes they are just entertaining, sometimes they offer a surprisingly perceptive explanation of what the hell just happened. So, without further ado, here's my theory on the great bank fee imbroglio.

First, a basic explanation of how banks work. Banks make money by making loans. They get the money that they lend out from some great pie-in-sky outfit called the Fed. The Fed lends them the money at some rate that they pulled out of a hat. However, they will not just lend a bank as much money as they want. The Fed insists that the bank have some collateral, some actual cash on hand. You know, to keep up appearances, so they don't look like complete shysters. So the bank takes in a dollar in deposits from you or me or grandma, uses that as their good faith token, then borrows 5 or 10 or however many dollars the Fed will lend them, then lends that money out to businesses (mostly), who pay the bank interest. The bank uses the interest they receive to pay for their fancy building with the marble floors and gilded lilies, the exorbitant bonuses that go to their executives, the pitiful salaries for the tellers, and lastly to pay you and me and grandma some negligible interest on that token deposit on which this whole elaborate contraption is based.

But now times are tough. Banks are having a hard time finding customers who look like they might actually be able to repay their loans. So they aren't lending out so much money, which means they don't need to borrow as much from the Fed, so they don't need as much collateral in the form of deposits. Banks don't really want customers. They are a nuisance. They come into the actual building, take up space, and take up teller's time with their niggling little requests. The only reason they put up with customers is so they can get those deposits. But now they don't need as much in the way of deposits, so they don't need so many customers, so they came up with this scheme to drive them away. First by charging fees for things that used to be free, and second by goading / hiring some rabble rousers to make a big stink about it. The whole point is to drive away small, nit-picky customers, the ones who are liable to cost them more money than they are worth.

The only problem with this theory is that all those bank customers are moving to Credit Unions who seem to be glad to have them. I really don't have an explanation for why Credit Unions would want all these annoying customers, other than maybe they can use a big influx of deposits.

Deadly Dangerous Copra

Back when I was a kid in school, teacher learned us about copra. It's really important, and it's made from coconuts. I've never actually seen any. Then this morning Tam put's up a post about the guano islands, which leads to a reference to copra, and since I never found out just why it was so important, I have to go look it up, which leads to this:

"Copra has been classed as a dangerous good due to its spontaneously combustive nature."

Spontaneously combustive nature!?! That was something they learned us in shop class about oily, turpentine soaked rags. And here I had just found out how acetylene can spontaneously decompose and explode. That's two really cool burny things in one year!

Oh yeah, copra? They make coconut oil out of it.

The Fourth Man

I'm of two minds about this movie. On one hand, the main story line is kind of intriguing. We've got an alcoholic, bisexual Dutch writer who is apparently given to vicious daydreams and / or hallucinations, so you aren't really sure just what's going on. But all these incidents are kind of a sideshow to the main plot line, but they keep recurring, so maybe this guy is a little bit psychic. The main story is kind of weird too. This semi-creepy writer dude hooks up with a rich, young, beautiful woman, who you would think would be enough for any man, but he finds she has a connection with this other dude, who he is lusting over. Geez, this guy really is a waste. Anyway the story winds on, and there are enough weird little things going on so you are wondering just what the story is. Are we going to have a murder? Espionage? But then they get to the climax and the whole thing collapses in farce. Perhaps if they had been a little more deft in their portrayal it would have been better, but all when all signs are pointing to one thing, and the one thing turns out to a plastic flower that spits water in your face, well, maybe they couldn't have done it any better.

Internet Movie Data Base page.

Costco Executive Membership

I went to Costco the other to pick up a few items. When I get to check out, a woman employee starts telling me how I should sign up for an Executive membership, how it's a really good deal, how if I was an Executive member I would be eligible for another $75 in rebates (these are actual cash money rebates, not some nebulous coupon fluff), which is more than the extra fee for Executive membership would have cost. I decline, and she goes on, and the cashier chimes in. It was quite a spiel, but I still declined.

It might actually be a good deal, and I might still sign up, but the way they are pushing it bothers me. If it is such a great thing, why do they have to promote it so heavily? From the looks of it, it will cost them money. I pay a small fee now, and in a year I will get double my money back. What possible advantage is there for them? The only advantage I see is that they offer you more "services", which allows them to get their hooks deeper into you, which means they capture more of your business, and thereby make more money. I don't expect to use any of these other services, but I am afraid of being inundated with offers. The only offer I am interested in is a job. As long as it isn't testing. I hate testing.

Still, I suppose I should sign up. Money for nothin' is pretty attractive. I am already adept at discarding spam, whether it is the electronic or paper variety, so a small increase in volume should not have a big impact on my mental health. I just find it odd that Costco would find it worthwhile to promote this thing that apparently costs them money. Those hooks must be really valuable.

The Masses Versus Useful

After I put up my post about the movie Hanna, I thought that maybe I should have included a picture of the Nazi wind tunnel, so I went looking for one. I remember seeing a whole photo essay about the place, lots of really cool pictures with lots of abstract shapes, kind of science-fictiony. I found bupkis. Oh, I found a few photos, but the only ones that looked anything like what I remembered were stills from the movie Aeon Flux.


OK, I'm old, and memory is not totally reliable, and supposedly it gets worse as you get older, but this is just wrong. Did those pictures, the ones I am thinking about, just vanish? Did someone take them down? That would be weird. And then I noticed that most of the pictures Google was returning were pictures of celebrities, or of people anyway. Has the people's penchant for pictures of other people taken over Google's search engine? I mean their photo organizer Picasa is totally centered on people. It can even identify the people in your pictures.

But this is not what I want. If I have one picture of people I know, that is plenty. I don't really understand why you would want more than one, and I certainly don't need any pictures of celebrities, I don't even know them. Yes, I realize that pictures of celebrities can be found on my blog but I believe it is always in relation to a movie, and those posts are about the story, not the actor.

Then I got this email from High Performance Computing this morning and I realize that the mass market is now feeding on itself. The amount of gossip is growing so fast we now are dedicating an entire industry to studying it. This looks like a giant case of GIGO to me.

So while the mass market has led to mass production of fiendeshly clever devices, the application of these devices has now become almost totally focused on gossip. Any useful application of modern computing/communications only exists on the fringe of this giant chatroom, and is apparently subject to being pushed off the edge whenever the volume of chatter gets a little too loud.

Hanna

Movie website.

A pretty interesting movie, especially the first half when you don't really know what is going on. After a while it becomes apparent that we have an evil agent working for an evil government agency that is out to kill our two heroes in order to eliminate any evidence that the evil agency, whoever they are, were ever involved in some reprehensible scientific research, or whatever they were doing. Cate Blancett plays the role of evil agent, and she plays her role well. She pulls out this West Texas accent whenever she want to convince someone of her good intentions, which I did not understand. Is that accent supposed to be folksy and downhome? Wouldn't a pleasant tone of voice do as well? Why use the Texas accent, unless we are trying to pass along the message that maybe you shouldn't trust someone just because he has folksy, downhome accent?

The longer the movie plays, the less things make sense. When Hanna is initally captured she has no trouble killing everyone within sight, but soon after that she starts letting people off. Some are reasonable, they were no immediate threat, had not harmed her, and did not appear they would be able to hurt her. Others were obviously bad guys, they were a serious threat, she had the means to take them out, but she lets them go. As near as I can tell, this was only to prolong the chase scenes. And then there's the old sneaking up while the camera isn't looking business. I hate that shit. Once in a while, it's okay, especially if it is believable, but you only get to do it once per movie. You pull it more than once and you are being a jerk.

And then there's the denouement. Cate in dress shoes (at least they weren't spike heels) and business dress chasing a teenager around an abandoned amusement park, and she catches her? Who are you kidding? At that point it has pretty much fallen completely apart, but don't fret, it's almost over.

The first part of the movie, set in some snow bound woods, was really good. The parts with the hippiesque family were pretty good. We don't find out what happens to them, but given how evil these evil agents have been up to this point, it's probably not good. There was a chase sequence in some concrete tunnels that I think may have been shot in the old Nazi wind tunnel in Berlin. That was kind of cool.

Update October 2015. Replaced movie site link, replace missing picture.

Quote of the Day

"They really should allow guns on planes. If you're going to need one at school, in church and wherever, why wouldn't you need to defend yourself in the air? Besides, to be really second amendment-y, they should just hand out guns at check-in. You never know when someone wants to snatch your freedom." - Dave in a comment on Burro Hall.

Handing out guns at check-in is one way to deal with the threat of potential terrorists. Only problem is I am pretty sure a majority of air travelers would not know how to handle a firearm which would lead to a profusion of accidental discharges, which would not be a good thing. I wonder how many people in your average plane load do know how to handle any kind of gun, much less some random government issued handgun. I suspect the numbers would be pretty low, like zero, which means the terrorist, if there was one on the plane, would win, if he could outshoot the crew.