Maybe I understand Zombies a little bit

My daughter lent me her kindle so I could read "World War Z".  I was pretty reluctant but now I think I'm getting the whole zombie thing at least a little bit.  The Zombies represent the worst of the government/politicians/police/generally stupid people that now are in charge of everything.  The people who actually do something are the ones fighting them off.  When the final battles are taking place, people are put into categories as far as being useful or not.  Not useful include casting directors, HR managers, executives of all sorts, politicians.  I think you get the idea.  Useful people include maids, mechanics, the people who actually do something. I wonder if the useful people will win out in the end, or even soon.

The best line in movie history

Graham Stark, long time Pink Panther co star died today.  He was in several of these films as Peter Sellers assistant or other related roles.  In "The Pink Panther Strikes Again"  he uttered these immortal lines:

"I thought you said your dog did not bite?" says Clouseau, to which Stark replies: "That is not my dog."

All this while Clouseau is trying to shake the little beast off his ankle.  RIP Graham.

Signal of the decline of civilization

I was thinking today about a marker for when civilization started going down the tubes. I decided it was when cars started to get antenna retractors. They got them of course because people were breaking off the sticks but why? It’s not that there was something worth stealing just a hatred that made someone want to just snap off the thing. The reaction from the car makers was to invent retractors. And we car buyers have been paying ever since for that meaningless hatred. And we keep paying more and more for these protective measures. Think about how much you pay for all this stuff that would not be needed in a different society?

Doctors advertising

Ran into this site from an outfit named "vitals" that rates Doctors based on patient feedback.  Sort of like a Yelp except for something important.   In this case it was Oncologists,  You know, cancer docs that you see when faced with imminent death.  Do you suppose dead patients will give out bad rankings?  Do you suppose people who just got lucky and survived will be more likely to give a good ranking?  The whole thing stinks.  I've noticed even TV ads for the "Cancer Center" in Arizona with nice looking rooms and happy people and hope for anyone stupid enough to give them a bunch on cash.  Sort of like the Malibu based "recovery center" where you can spend a weekend and get rid of all your problems.   This whole medical advertising thing is very very wrong.  It depends on stupid people, like the ones who watch TV all day, which is where these ads often are to fork over their bucks to the charlatans and they will get nothing in return.  Except occasionally someone will recover and then we can hear all about it.

BTW, why is my spell checker offering centre?  Didn't we win that war and kick out the Brits? 

Library furnishings

Rumours have abound about the extravagant furnishings in the library.  Two persistent  items have been:

• The chairs, supposedly $5k for Knoll Womb chairs.  Gee, they could have gotten fakes for only $800.
• The sinks, supposedly $5k for a pair like this one. 

I certainly feel cleaner using a sink like that.  I wonder how much these would have been.   

How much was the library going to cost

According this document, from the state, a 45k sq ft Walnut Creek branch library was needed before 2011 at an estimated cost of $25m.  You can check it out at the link here

We all know that the government lies all the time about costs, but I thought it would be fun to stare here.  Let's put a stake in  the ground at $25m and see where it leads to.

Where did the money go?

This is this first of maybe several entries about the state of my city's  finances.  First of all, the library.  Built for a reported $39m for 42,000 square feet.  I thought it would be interesting to compare to other similar constructions.

In 2000 the state's electorate passed prop 14 which established a $350m bond issue for building/upgrading libraries around the state.  Localities were able to submit grant requests to grab their share.  Walnut Creek's application was rejected, more on that if I can find out why, but in the meantime Look at this:

State's site on this process: http://www.library.ca.gov/grants/lba2000/

it is being administered by the state librarian.  I have yet to find Walnut Creek's application but I did find this interesting bit.  Look at what other libraries cost for similar square footage:

http://www.library.ca.gov/grants/lba2000/docs/CAPubLibBldgConstCosts.xls

Just picking off a couple obvious examples, I see:

•  Alameda main : 48k sq ft for $25m
• Camarillo main: 65k sq ft for $27m
• San Mateo main: 93k sq ft for $55m

I guess the San Mateo figure shows that people will spend a lot but the Alameda numbers are nearby and might be a better comp.

So why did the Walnut Creek library cost $39m?   And why did their application get rejected which lead the city to pay for it?  And where did they get the money. I'm looking.