OK, so I think I've pretty much covered all of the beginnings of the new year, whether it's The Eve, The Closure of the First Month or today's Asian holiday. And with all this fanfare, I'd really like to get things moving!

One of the initiatives I need to bring to the forefront is my move away from news media. I don't discuss politics on my website because what we think politics should be about, is not what it is at ALL. I grew up believing politics is about optimized societal management; or to put it in this way: in its basic form, what is the most effective fuel mixture between freedom and management to achieve the greatest outcome for society? In practice, however, while politics takes on the sheepskin of my naiveté, it is the wolf of football; it is only the competition for power with an added layer of complexity involving principal-agent dilemmas. Politics is not about doing the right thing, but making the moves necessary to maximize power. If this lust for power attainment is not true, then politics is about rounding up the most idiots in a suit that can fit underneath a rotunda.

It is FRUSTRATING for me to look in from the outside and see that no one wants to do the right thing. I get it: knowing the right thing to do is difficult, doing it is even harder. But, it's not about the right thing and unfortunately, the news media basically covers this competition ALL THE TIME as no asks the question, "why?" You can count me out.

And at the end of the day, the subject is immaterial and irrelevant to me. Yes, I am a tax payer, but what does that even mean? The value of the currency that comes to me has only the value that politics imparts upon it. It cannot be taken away simply because the value of money does not exist apart from this fragile social agreement of an entity that shapes this particular parameter on our lives. But, we all agree that a dollar is a dollar though it wasn't a dollar a year ago.

We know this; we know that the value of currency changes all the time through societal forces. In fact, the value of money is so volatile that we make trades all the time between different currencies as we game the system. Those who are in power choose to assign whatever value they wish on currency and I find that paying taxes is merely the theater of buy-in imparting a false sense of control. The only true value is what we do with our hands.

While fundamentally, the stock market is the selling of a chance to wear Mr. Monopoly's top hat so that a company can build a larger furnace for people to shove in more cash, can we with any seriousness think that the stock market, in of itself—brand value be damned, creates wealth? Isn't it from a trading perspective, a zero-sum game? For every seller, there is a buyer; for everyone who makes money, someone is going to lose value. Are we collectively reflected accurately as the stock market rises? The DJIA for the past ten years has increased by a factor of 3. Can you say the same for society? Is beef three times better? Are friendships three times better? Is your happiness three times better? So, what's really going on here: is it really wealth creation or wealth concentration? Or, is it even real? Could currency be just a narrative to frame a facade to make us think we have power?

Who cares? Let's get back to wolfball on TV.

Well, enough with that rant...

Physically, I remain in shutdown mode. For whatever reason, my right hamstring has been tight on me today. It's frustrating, especially as I'm amped up on Kerrygold butter coffee! I feel like I'm just in a holding pattern for external events. So many times my younger self lacked the motivation or couldn't jumpstart a dead program. It's easy, of course, to blame younger me, though I suspect his diet was to blame. Like everyone else of the era, I had bought into a low-fat, high-carb approach, that insipid, "Rice is a health food" dogma. If rice was a health food, I would have already turned into one lean, mean fighting machine!