What a couple weeks!

As many of you know Sam's birthday was last Sunday. We originally planned to have his party last Saturday, but on Friday night Abby came down with a horrible stomach flu making a party for him at our house something of a dicey proposition. We were going to postpone the party for a week, but unfortunately, moving to the following weekend would have meant that only 2 guests could come. Luckily, Lynne very graciously offered up her house as an alternative venue, and we (well actually Cindy) were able to have the party, which as I will get to later turned out to a good thing. According to all involved a good time was had by all at the party, as games were played, cake was consumed, and Sam got a slew of really cool presents. We are very much in Lynne's, Jeff's, Erica's, and Natalie's debt. As I understand Sam and Natalie got a long very well, as you can see in the picture below.


So while Sam and Cindy were enjoying his party, Abby and I remained at home. I tried to study a bit while she mostly slept. On Sunday, however things started to get dicey for me, as I came down with some sort of normal flu bug. Normally that wouldn't be so vexing, except that last week was finals week at Ohio State and I was supposed to take an Econ (Ag Econ to be precise) final on Tuesday morning. I immediately emailed my professor and told him of the situation, and he graciously offered to let me take the final after the fact if I wasn't better by Tuesday morning, which as it turns out I wasn't.

In the meantime, Abby recovered from her stomach flu but caught my flu bug, and missed a couple days of school, and still isn't really back to 100%. Not to miss out on the action, Sam came down with the stomach flu a couple days ago and it seems have affected him a lot worse than it did Abby. I'll spare you the details, but just note that for about a day or so Sammy couldn't keep anything down, and is still somewhat leery of eating. In a lot of ways it was a good thing that we didn't move the party to yesterday.

Cindy, as you may have inferred, is still healthy but scared to be around the rest of us. I've no idea why.

A few random thoughts:

• Normally I'm somewhat upset if I get a B in a class, but this time not so much. As I mentioned earlier this particular class had a basis in Calculus, which 20 years ago kicked my behind. In some ways I view this B as vindication. I also want to go and punch my former calculus prof in the nose.
• I'm a bit torn on the auto bail-out. In principle industries should rise and all according to merit. And indeed, obsolescence and failure are fundamental to engendering progress in capitalism. Hence protecting industries from going under strikes me as fundamentally un-capitalistic. On the other hand, it's inarguable that letting the Big 3 go down would have dramatic and potentially hugely damaging effects on the economies of mid-western states, particularly Ohio and Michigan. So there is an equity concern involved as allowing the Big 3 to go down could have multiplier effects across various sectors. Allowing the Big 3 to declare bankruptcy would, I suspect, seal their doom since I find it unlikely that many would jump at the chance to buy a car from a bankrupt company. I've seen analogies drawn to the airlines many of which survived bankruptcy, but I'm unsure why that analogy would hold here. They are fundamentally different industries with differing externalities if they fail. At worst a customer of a bankrupt airline is out several hundred to a few thousand dollars if they fail, but otherwise is no worse off. A customer of a bankrupt automaker is stuck with an asset which will be harder to maintain, as suppliers go out of business, and even harder to sell when the time comes. In other words, in the short-run the former may be worse off, but can certainly recover, but in the long-run the latter is worse off since he will have a worthless asset. But then again that is the nature of capitalism, and there are reasons why Japanese automakers are doing well.
• Related to the above, I wonder if this isn't a time to think more strategically about transportation. It strikes me that auto travel is, in the aggregate, very inefficient. I don't particularly see why we can't utilize more economical means of moving people, especially on long trips. Each quarter when we make the trek from Columbus to Indy and back I wonder why we lack a sound rail system that would presumably use less fuel while moving more people across the country. What I'm driving at is whether we ought to consider alternative means of transportation in light of the precarious nature of the American auto industry as well as energy and environmental concerns.