Alibi

[by Tom Lokovic, circa 2007.]

Two weeks after his twenty-seventh birthday, Mel framed himself for a murder which he didn't commit. He did this to win the favor of the victim's widow. That is, she became a widow in the process, but she wasn't one at the time, and in any case he didn't even know she was married.

This may take a bit to explain.

Mel lived alone in a rent-controlled apartment in Lower-East Side Manhattan. He'd been unemployed for six months now, having found that Loan Officer was a job ill-suited for a man of his ambition. At least, that's how he thought of it. The real problem had been the ambition of Mel's manager, who had orchestrated a certain amount of fraud through the agency. Mel's coworkers were complicit in this, and Mel was thought to be, though in reality he had trouble following all the winking and whiting-out of numbers. The manager had finally let him go, offering a tiny bribe in exchange for Mel's promise of silence. Mel assured him that he couldn't explain what had been going on if his life depended on it.

Spinola's Bake Shop

Our friend Stacey has opened a wonderful bakery in our town, Murrysville PA. Spinola's Bake Shop has cakes, cupcakes, cookies, pastries, candies, and (soon) fresh baked bread.

I'm not unbiased, since I created the website for the bakery. But everything I've eaten there is amazing. Highly recommended.

http://www.spinolasbakeshop.com/

Fix my Flat

Fix my Flat

I'm like George Washington in those old-timey fighter jets he flew
as he fought to shed the imperial yoke of the British in World War Two.
Like me, George knew the painful truth of Power and Oppression
as his musket fire, raining down, taught Tyranny a lesson.
I know today how Georgie felt as he took on the Crown;
I'm stranded in this parking lot so late Starbucks closed down!
Look,
George didn't give his life against those Zeppelins on that fateful day
so I could wait an hour and a half tonight for AAA!

--Tom Lokovic

MIDI for C# / .NET

I've just released an open source library for MIDI support in C# / .NET. The Google Code page is here:

http://code.google.com/p/midi-dot-net/

This is my first foray into C#, .NET, and Windows programming in general. That's right, I've been programming for twenty years, professionally for twelve, and I've never written any software for Windows until now.

I wanted to do some MIDI programming and assumed that Windows would be the best OS for it. Then I figured I might as well learn one of Microsoft's more recent offerings, so I looked into C#. Then I found out that there is no direct support for MIDI in .NET, and so I proceeded to wrap the Win32 bindings. It turned out to be cleaner and better documented than the alternatives I saw, so I figured I should share it with the world.

Not exactly the most efficient way to get some MIDI programming done, but it's been fun.

A Physical Asymptote

This is the coolest art piece I've seen since the Wooden Mirror...



From the description:

This machine was inspired by dreaming about gear ratios and considering the unexpected implications of exponential powers.

Each worm/worm gear pair reduces the speed of the motor by 1/50th. Since there are 12 pairs of gears, the final speed reduction is calculated by (1/50)12. The implications are quite large. With the motor turning around 200 revolutions per minute, it will take well over two trillion years before the final gear makes but one turn. Given the truth of this situation, it is possible to do anything at all with the final gear, even embed it in concrete.

Little Haiti

Little Haiti

Look around--it's paradise!
Exotic spices ride the breeze
through tropic sun and sidewalk
vendors haggling in foreignese.

I'm visiting a far-off land
today. It cost a dollar eighty
on the bus through Chinatown,
past Wal-Mart here to Little Haiti.

A portly tattoo-covered lady
fortune teller draws my eyes
with signs: "I Do Do Voodoo" and
"Large Medium, Small Price."

She scatters shells, a chicken foot,
some roots and seeds, then draws a breath--
"Your future holds adventure! Travel!
Acid reflux! Love, and death!"

Amazed, I ask for more. She looks
around, alert, and draws me in.
"The key to growing wealth is--
do you have a lucky bank card PIN?"

"I hope so--is mine lucky? I
use Fifty-Seven-Eighty-Two."
She frowns. "It's not too bad, but you
should have me charm your bank card too."

She's been away a while--it must
be a complicated spell.
But when she brings it back,
my luck is changing, baby. I can tell.

-- Tom Lokovic

From 1999: Foreshadows of the Economic Crisis

From Flutterby, a 1999 New York Times article about the passage of the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act. This act removed some of the safeguards put in place after the Great Depression. (Some claim that this was a significant contributor to the current crisis. Others disagree.)

Sen Phil Gramm (R-TX) arguing for the repeal:

We have a new century coming, and we have an opportunity to dominate that century the same way we dominated this century. Glass-Steagall, in the midst of the Great Depression, came at a time when the thinking was that the government was the answer. In this era of economic prosperity, we have decided that freedom is the answer.

Rep Jim Leach (R-IA), in favor of the repeal:

This is a historic day. The landscape for delivery of financial services will now surely shift.

Sen Bob Kerrey (D-NE), in favor:

'The concerns that we will have a meltdown like 1929 are dramatically overblown.

Now for the dissent:

Sen Dorgan (D-ND), arguing that it removes safeguards that could lead to a financial crisis:

I think we will look back in 10 years' time and say we should not have done this but we did because we forgot the lessons of the past, and that that which is true in the 1930's is true in 2010.

Sen Paul Wellstone (D-MN), against:

[Congress] seemed determined to unlearn the lessons from our past mistakes.

Wow.