TGIF

Yes, thank goodness its Friday. It's been a long week and will be a longer weekend.

Had class last night, the students are becoming less motivated then before and their respect for the Prof has declined. I think the Prof senses this and understands we are not hanging on his every word. He spent more time on topic last night, but still only covered one point out of 3 and that took almost 4 hours, instead of going off into philosophical naval gazing so guess its getting better. No class next week, prof is out of town and the week after that will have two negotiation simulations. It will be interesting to see who has prepared and who is just winging it. It should be easy to tell.

This weekend have to finish reading one book, finish one paper and make a decision for our next quarter.

Finally, talked with several folks from the other Strategy class, the class we were told to get into if at all possible. Boy am I glad I'm not in that class. The Prof does not allow computers in class (afraid the students will surf or IM each other instead of hanging on her every word) and they are only doing the simulation on the SIM weekend. My class has already done 8 quarters of the SIM. Its hard to have a good SIM if you never have time to think or reflect on your decisions, otherwise its just a game, like 670B was. That was a weekend SIM using the same software, the difference between 670B and Strategy is an international component and Strat is supposed to be more realistic.

Spouse is at a conference Thur - Sun, has to leave at 6am to get there and doesn't get home till after 7pm. She took my car today, a Prius so she can use the HOV lanes and save time on her commute.

On to the news.

The coming global cooling. By 2020 we won't care about warming but cooling per the folks that study the sun and it is the cause of weather change on earth.

Giuliani will cut the spending in Washington? We can only hope that and some major surgery to the tax code.

What to do about Gaza and the Palestinian Authority. Seal the border is a good start, but I would not allow any aid through, if we accept that people are responsible for their actions, the people elected Hamas so they should be the ones to remove them and no food until then, they can always grow their own, if they hadn't spent so much time shooting up the greenhouses or building bombs etc. Oh and Israel should say publicly, for every rocket fired from Gaza into Israel, 20 155mm shells will be fired back, the shells being fragmentation shells and will be fired randomly over Gaza because every person in Gaza is their brother's keeper. No, I'm not too sympathetic to the folks in Gaza, they made a dog's breakfast out of a fair opportunity and should now suffer the consequences of their actions.

And finally Bloomberg doesn't like democracy because it is a very inefficient form of government because every group is fighting all the time and we don't automatically do what the leaders say to do without much debate and discussion.

Have a good weekend and thanks for stopping by.