Friday night notes
bolly 92.3fm – all of a sudden a strong preference for this over say jazz
Oil Changers – Even oil change has been disrupted in CA: oil change in 10 min and you are inside the car the whole time. part theme park ride, part car service. the thrill of riding onto a ramp with a pit right under was worth the $20 extra
Corner of 73rd and MacArthur
As of Friday morning the NE corner of 73rd and MacArthur was a Kingdom Builders Christian Fellowship – a church; and a SE corner a Cash Advance place advertising that it accepts bitcoin. The church did not actually look much like one, though I missed that clue for a good 6 months. At the back of the parking lot and at the corner of the building the tall banner-on-a-stick signs covered by a barely see through black drape read ‘Washington Mutual’. That’s WaMu, one of the baddest subprime dealers and one of the biggest banks to fold in 2009.
As of Sunday evening the bank, I mean the Church is still there. The cash advance place burned most of Friday night down to a shell with a conveniently nearby fire station hosing it down with two trucks for hours. Gone as well is the insidious Habbas and Associates ad which not long ago took place of a sign pleading for leads in the murder of a young white Berkeley grad.
High Standards … an East Bay guitar-organ-drums trio. Nice groove. Young players who can channel Grant Green’s funky 70s sound as perhaps here Live at Club Mozambique
The Clayton Act and the Dow settlement
This made the headlines today. The staggering sum of 1. ish billion made me look just a bit further. Apparently there’s something called ‘treble’ under the Clayton Act (of 1914!) which allows the judge to triple the fine for anti-trust violation. $400 worth of damages were estimated by the buyers of the urethane from the price-fixing cartel which included Dow. About $200 mil has been already returned to the plaintiffs from other members of the cartel (including BASF and Bayer). The lawsuit was originally filed in 2004 and has since gone through appeals and was in the holding pattern at the supreme court ( ‘urethane antitrust litigation’ ).
To see a 100 year law in action makes me delight in continuity of the legal system in the US. The 10-12 year time frame from suit to settlement is sobering and indicative of how enforceable this law is today. To think that I almost ended up in Midland, MI about 4 years ago …
No Context is Required:
the sweet ring of the American ethos: “you’d probably be best to always look after your own interests first and foremost”
this has existed in opposition to a much more lasting, also through and through American, “The fact is the sweetest dream that labor knows.” Courtesy of Robert Frost in “Mowing”
knowledgebythepound 