Next week Mary and I will be going to Burning Man. Though it seems all of our friends have gone for years, this will be our first time, because we were finally able to arrange babysitting for the girls.  (Mary’s mom’s coming up to Three Meadows for the week.)

We’ll be staying at the world-famous and ultra-cool Camp Nose Fish with experienced burners who we’ll try not to burden too much with our newbie incompetence.

Odds are pretty good I’ll be incommunicado for the week, though apparently there’s intermittent net access for the first couple of days, before the crowds overwhelm the wifi.

I bought this stock (MRH) at $33 dollars per share back in April 2005.  In August Hurricane Katrina hit, and left Montpelier holding the bag, having to cover enormous losses.  Since then, the stock has been in the doldrums, doing absolutely nothing.

The company seems to be doing fine.   They seem to have earnings of about $2.50 a year, which is pretty good for a stock running around $16.  They pay OK dividends, and have been steadily repurchasing stock.  The tangible assets has gone from $1 billion to $1.6 billion over the past two years, while the market cap hovers around $1.5 billion.

They do have considerable risk.  They should make nice steady profits year in and year out, until a mega disaster (like Katrina) hurts ‘em bad.  I think global warming increases the probability of nasty hurricanes, but I think insurance companies have priced their hurricane insurance quite a bit higher for that reason.

I personally think a serious economic downturn could be horrible for insurance companies.  It’s possible that a certain number of property owners who owe considerably more on their real estate than it’s worth might find their buildings mysteriously burning down, and that could get nasty for their insurers (and the economy as a whole).

It’s poor strategy to allow anything to be insured for more than it’s worth.  The incentives become misaligned.

I recently bought more — it’s now my fourth biggest holding.  It’s boring, but it looks likely to double over the next two years.  Of course, I thought the same thing when I bought it in 2005.

I passed a smoker in the grocery store today.  Though they weren’t smoking at the time — or even in the last ten minutes, probably — their stench managed to stick to me so much that a half hour later, at home, I’m going to have to change clothes and take a shower to get rid of it.  Yuk.

I love in movies when people sneaking a smoke quickly put out their cigarette and wave the smoke away, so nobody will know.  Right.

Yesterday my two daughters (8 and 10) watched a movie at the mall and took the bus back to our home.  This was their first time riding the bus by themselves, and was to be an exciting adventure.

While they were waiting at the bus stop, an off duty police officer saw them and stopped by to make sure they were OK.  I appreciate this — it’s nice to have people watching out for the welfare of kids.  As it turns out, these questions from a strange man unnerved the kids, and their instructions not to talk to strangers were in conflict with their natural inclination to be polite.  They asked if they could call me, and he told them he was calling to wait until the police arrived.  This scared them.  Though they were doing nothing wrong, they weren’t 100% certain of themselves.  (One of their friends in preschool, years ago, had their father arrested for leaving his son in the backseat of the car while he was inside a 7-11.)

After two cars arrived, the officers agreed to allow her to call me.  I was just across the street at a Denny’s.  Though this was to be an unsupervised adventure, I didn’t want to be too far in case they needed help.  My daughter was crying and frightened, and said, “The police are here.”  I hopped in the car and drove right over, arriving approximately 3 minutes after being called.

Upon arrival, I showed the officers my ID, and gave my daughters’ names and birthdates.  They started asking lots of questions.  Nothing good for me could possibly come from answering them, so I gave them, “I’m going to remain silent.  Am I free to go?”  I know that neither I nor my daughters had done anything wrong, but my wife has two lawyer parents, and it’s been drilled into my head to keep my mouth shut, no matter what.

It turns out I wasn’t free to go, and neither were my girls.  “We need to figure this out,” said the officers.  “Just wait here.”  I took out my camera so I could take a picture of the officers’ badge numbers (#27 and #9), and both became very defensive.  “I’ll tell you my badge number, but you can’t take a picture of my badge.” This is obviously absurd, but it’s rarely a good idea to argue with the police, so I took notes, instead.

I asked again if I was free to go, and again was told that I was not.  The officers moved away (the two uniformed officers and a third without a uniform — not the same as the off duty officer who started the incident) and huddled.  While I couldn’t overhear the officers, it seemed likely to me that they were trying to think of something to charge me with.  Every ten minutes, I approached them to ask if I was free to go, and they continued to tell me that I was not, but would give no reason for this detainment.

When I pointed out that they were forcing me and the girls to stand around without shade in the hot sun (it was 101 in the shade), and suggested we move into the mall, they responded negatively.

After 28 minutes of detainment, it seems that the officers could come up with no reason to arrest or hold me, so they said I was finally free to go, not without a few critical comments of my parenting.

Not wanting the girls’ adventure to end that way, I put them on the next bus home, anyway.  They got on and off by themselves without further incident.  Overall, they were pleased with their adventure — though it was more exciting than they had hoped for — and were proud of themselves for handling the situation well.

Must we be so protective of our kids that their greatest fear is their parents being arrested for child endangerment?

When I think of political issues, I try to avoid thinking of them in moral terms when possible.  Morals are subjective, emotionally charged, and tend to blind one to good solutions.

Many people think that rich people should be taxed more than the poor because it’s morally wrong for them to have so much when others have so little.

It’s in the best interest of the rich to ensure that the poor have enough. It doesn’t matter whether having ten loaves of bread while your neighbor has none is right or wrong — it’s impractical.  You don’t want him to be so hungry that he kicks your butt and steals your bread.  Far better to give him a loaf to keep other hungry people away.

We call that guy “the police.”  Or possibly “the army,” depending on which hungry people you’re keeping at bay.

OK, like any good nerd I love all things Joss Whedon.  And Mary likes all things musical theater. And everybody likes Neil Patrick Harris.  So there you go.

The whole family (dog included) is taking a road trip to Missouri to visit relatives.  Internet access will be sketchy.

I bet my iPhone battery runs out way too fast.

Wish us luck.

One of the televisions at the gym features Fox News.  My iPod saves me from having to hear the inane discussion, but the captions still catch my eye.

Today I first say the term “homicide bomber,” as in “homicide bomber kills 50 in Iraq.”  Turns out that the bomber also killed herself, and the news organizations I found on the internet pretty much exclusively called it a “suicide bombing,” avoiding the redundancy. I’m guessing Fox wants it to sound more menacing and less tragic, but it still seems odd.

Another headline: “McCain  becomes sharper in attacks on Obama.”  To me, that sounds like about the only way they could get the phrase “McCain becomes sharper” out there.

Also, I learned that the jerk who shot up a Unitarian church apparently did so because of his hatred of liberals and gays. Much as I despise Fox news, I must admit that they did not seem to express admiration for this behavior. Neither did they condemn it or express outrage, near as I could tell.  In addition to hating liberals and gays, he was mad because his food stamps were being reduced.  Damn those food stamp cutting liberals!

Since my iPhone was stolen (did I mention that thieves suck?), I took the opportunity to get a new iPhone.

The archive of my web site seems to be all messed up, so I couldn’t go over my original review of the iPhone from last year, so I’m going to go over my complaints by memory.

#1: Slippery! The first thing I did with my original iPhone was have it squirt out of my hands like a bar of soap and clatter on the floor.  The new one, while equally smooth, isn’t slick.  Solved.

#2: No GPS. The solved this reasonably well already with the old one in software, but the new one seems to have true GPS.  Solved.

#3: Limited software. Seems to be solved, though the selection sucks for now.

#4: Low speaker volume.  The 3G’s a little better.  Could be better yet.

#5: Stupid speaker jack that doesn’t work with normal earphones.  Solved.

New problems?  The battery life seems substantially reduced.  Instead of 5 days of non-use per charge, I only get 2.  Pretty big difference.  Also, even though I don’t do text messaging, it offends me that they’d want to charge me $0.20 to do it now.  What, 2 MB emails are free, but a 12 byte SMS costs money?  Stupid.

The camera is good, but it’d be neat if it did video.  And had a flash.

If you’re already on AT&T, I can’t think of a good reason not to have an iPhone.  It’s sweet.

I haven’t checked these numbers (boring!), but according to the Tax Policy Institute, Obama’s tax plan is going to hork you — if you make over $227,000 per year.

If you make under $112,000 per year, your taxes will decrease under Obama’s plan.

McCain’s plan reduces taxes for everybody (especially the super-rich), unless, of course, you count the dollar collapse from the giant deficit as a tax.