Years of Poems and Spirits

Heard the news that Caroline Kennedy is going after Hillary Clinton’s Senate seat.

The Kennedy clan’s history is at the same time a tragedy and a mockery of American democracy. When Ted ran for his brother’s Senate seat at age 30, his opponent bitterly complained, “Sir, if your last name is anything but Kennedy, you would have been finished … Your credentials is a laughing stock.” (History Channel’s documentary on the Kennedys) As if to prove his opponent right, Ted won the election, committed several scandals–including one where someone got killed and another one got raped, grew a large brain tumor, but remained to this day the beloved chosen representative of the people of Massachusett.

And he is among the lucky Kennedys who survived the Natural Selection. In other words, several other Kennedys felt so certain that no man-made law could touch them that they challenged God but lost.

Yet year after year, a Kennedy is going to Washington.

Reminded me of what Shakespeare said about Julius Caesar (through the mouth of Cassius while trying to talk Brutus into killing the tyrant of the Republic):

Now, in the names of all the gods at once,
Upon what meat doth this our Caesar feed,
That he is grown so great? Age, thou art shamed!
Rome, thou hast lost the breed of noble bloods!
When went there by an age, since the great flood,
But it was famed with more than with one man?
When could they say till now, that talk’d of Rome,
That her wide walls encompass’d but one man?
Now is it Rome indeed and room enough,
When there is in it but one only man.

Having trouble with my two web hosts recently.

ePowHost.com: they lost my files. I don’t know whether it was a mistake, or someone hacked it or what. Searched Web and saw others had similar problem with other hosts. I wonder whether they are all resalers of the same vendor?

Anyway, ePowHost is now just playing dead: they never replied to any of my inquiries, including how to get a refund.

dot5hosting.com: the site that I host terra-bonita.com. Terribly slow and downs all the time during the summer. It is clear that they are not capable of running this business: everything was behind.

Finding a new host is not fun: I need at least 200G space, MySQL 5, DB remote access and 10 or more addon domains. It is just incredible how hard it is to find a site with all those features. A couple of candidates (awardspace.com, bluehost.com, fastdomain.com) were so close, but in the end I gave up because of others reviews, some of which painfully reminded me of what I have now.

Just some interesting facts:
1. The big three at first asked for $34 Billion loan. Congress ready to dish out $15 Billion. Their total market cap? $14 Billion.
2. The big three’s manufacturing capacity is 17 million cars. In 2007, Americans bought only 14 million cars (domestic and foreign).
3. Ford pays, on average, $71 an hour to its workers. The Japanese U.S. plants pay $49/hr. Source see NYT.
4. The auto sale declined the most when gas price peaked after summer. Recently, there is a sales rebound despite poor economy. Trucks rebounds the most. Small cars may actually declined.

Thoughts:
- Undoubtedly the auto industry will shrink and restructure. However,
- The current difficulty is largely due to past sins. In terms of cost structure, the auto industry may be on the rebound. (in Ford, new employees are paid $53/hr)
- The auto industry lacks the vision and business foresight? Well, how about blaming “the American Dream” for a change? How many Americans can stand up and say, “I had nothing to do with this”?

Said a lot more yesterday. But I’d better stick to what I know