a midway bikelog

I’ll just start by saying that i’m not an economist. I don’t even like to balance my checkbook. But it’s increasingly difficult to listen to the endless repetition in the various media using the stock market as some sort of valid economic indicator.

Again, i’m no economist, but it seems pretty safe to say that because it’s inherently a secondary market (trading company shares and futures rather than actual goods and services) that it’s somewhat removed from the reality of the economy. The very nature of the stock market is speculative, and the rise and fall of the market is only in part due to the success or failure of any given company or market sector; the rest is entirely the optimism (or lack thereof) of the people participating in the market.

You’ve probably already seen the video of John Stewart tearing down Jim Cramer on the Daily Show from last week; it was the culmination of many days of public squabbling between Stewart and various folks from MSNBC, the self-proclaimed financial news network that Stewart has rightly been taking to task for its lack of responsible coverage. However, watch this segment again, and pay particular attention to the couple of minutes starting at 1:12, then again at 6:08, based on a 2006 interview of Cramer. Then come back.

He’s talking about manipulating the market (in this case, with Apple Computer stock) by spreading lies – false rumors about upcoming products, here – for personal financial gain. This is a perfect illustration of not only the attitude from these guys that regulations are barely more than suggestions, but the greed and short-sightedness that seems pervasive in the industry. These are the people we’re trusting with our life savings and the very possibility of retirement. It’s really hard to argue with Stewart’s point that we (as the investing public) are capitalizing a game played by people whose sole motivations are personal wealth.

Even at its best, the market system is a house of cards built with confidence and momentum. Regulation can solidify things somewhat, but that also requires an atmosphere of compliance, which doesn’t seem to exist. As an inherently skeptical gen x-er, i’ve long assumed that Social Security would collapse long before i was able to take advantage of it. The solution we’ve all been sold for the last decade and more is to manage our own money, to join with the stock market, and join those rich folks and their annual returns. I can only imagine that kids coming of age now (whatever they’ve been tagged) are going to have the same healthy skepticism of the stock market, and that’s totally ok.

Maybe it’s age, maybe it’s just the times talking, but i’m finding a lot of wisdom in the simplicity of save & pay for it, money in the mattress, and the Muslim aversion to debt. I’m a beneficiary and victim of the new American way, and i’m not all that happy about it. Contraction can be a very good thing, and in our case, it’s overdue.

Truly, this is the golden age of communication, what with the intertubes and all. But really people, can’t we do better than this?

Permium – is that some sort of new element they’re printing tickets on these days? No wonder TicketMaster charges so much.

This was just a random find – any others worth sharing?

Fantastic season closer episode of The Bike Show this week. Mick Murphy is a fascinating story, someone needs to produce a movie about him.

We also tell the story of possibly the greatest legend of the Rás: ‘Iron Man’ Mick Murphy, the blood-drinking, fire-eating hard man who won the 1958 race in quite extraordinary circumstances.

He built his own weights of iron bars and concrete to train, getting his rides in while traveling from town to town as a circus performer. At the end of the second stage of the ‘58 race, after he walked away from the pack to finish with a commanding solo lead, he went out for a 30-mile spin during which he stopped to lift stones for an hour and fill up his water bottle with cow’s blood from cattle grazing in a field.

Also required listening: the Peter Woods radio documentary about Murphy

From the New Yorker

My favorite is the Bloody Maria Bartiromo

When people outside of Minnesota complain about Minnesota weather, they’re generally talking about the deep cold of January or the piles of snow or maybe the sometimes suffocating humidity of late July. They’re all wrong. March is the worst month of the year.

March is a tease, giving us a glorious clear day of sun and rapidly melting dirt/snow piles, then smacking us back down with a foot of snow or freezing rain. We know we’ll come out of it and it’ll be glorious, but it’s like weathering a breakup; that middle period is awful. March is our meteorological ‘it’s not you, it’s me’. The rollercoaster of weather and the month-long thrashing of our weather-pinned hopes against the craggy rocks of the tenacious winter beats us down so that first day in just a t-shirt hearing a robin singing is like being reborn. But we still have to get through March before we’re there.

I’ve tried simple optimism, even taking the studded tires off my bike last week, but the reality is that they should probably go back on for another month. Damn that stubborn freezing point! Optimism and hope for spring are not enough, so i’m turning to the healing power of ska.

Yesterday’s bike commute to work was my first ride of the year back on slick tires. It was so great to ride over 14mph that last night i took the studded tires off of the commuter bike and put slicks on there too. Feel free to blame me if we get a week of ice storms now.

RIP, Paul Harvey. I was a real fan of his little news stories and homey, midwestern delivery. Amidst the snark and venom of most modern radio, ol’ Paul was a reliable source of sincerity and wonder at the world.

It’s fitting, in a way, timing-wise, that we’re on the verge of TD Mischke’s return to a webcast version of his radio show. After being unceremoniously fired by KSTP shortly before Christmas, the City Pages announced that Mischke was joining their staff to write for the paper and produce a week-daily show broadcast online.

Even though Paul Harvey was often the butt of some hilarious jokes and mash-ups on the Mischke show, in a lot of ways Mischke is the heir of Harvey’s radio legacy. Mischke’s take is more overtly wacky, but no less sincere in his wonder at the world or the drive to make some sense of it all. He could spent an hour talking baseball or music just as easily as he could dispatch a drunk caller or interview a professor or author. It was the sheer range of topics plus the humor and intelligence he brought to the show that made it one of my favorites.

It’s a portentous step for both Mischke and for radio, with the move to an webcast version of the show. The radio market is an inherently conservative business in the sense of sticking with profitable material, and Mischke was an acknowledged odd fit at the politically conservative KSTP. Politics aside though, it was clear that there is really no good radio home for a show like Mischke’s locally, and difficult to find even nationally. With the exception of Paul Harvey, there seems to be little interest in a modern version of the old time radio variety and call-in show, and even ol’ Paul was reduced to a 5-minute bit.

Even more than the Howard Stern move to satellite radio, with the instability of that business, Mischke’s move to webcasting is an experiment testing the viability of the webcasting model. Podcasting has proven to be a perfectly viable and popular delivery model for a shit-ton of content, and a wonderfully democratizing platform for content producers. I don’t know of any other radio personalities with that sort of (not large, but dedicated) following that have left radio entirely for the web world. Lots of radio shows are also available by podcast, but to make the switch entirely may be a new thing.

To be fair, i’ll bet that Mischke would have been happy to make an online presence while keeping the steady radio gig, but this City Pages deal looks pretty sweet. It’ll be interesting to see what sort of direction the show takes creatively, as he hinted in the short CP piece, especially given that the show was reigned in somewhat after his move from the late night to mid-day time slot on the air. It’ll also be interesting to see some numbers of how much of the audience tunes in during the live show -vs- listening by podcast. At 2-4pm, he’s in prime-time at-work listening time for those of us who are connected and can listen at work, but with increasing restrictions on streaming content and the inevitable interruptions, i’ll mostly likely join the podcast side most of the time.

I know i’ll be listening, come March 4th. It’s just too bad that ol’ Paul couldn’t have made it a few more days to pass the pickle.