Tiger Woods at the Masters

Observing the Masters on TV with the usual extensive coverage of Tiger Woods, it's obvious he's changed, at least in physical appearance.  In overall demeanor,  he seems almost subdued, or at least not so arrogant or cocksure of himself as was once the case.  Second, he appears somewhat smaller, less muscular, slighter of build.  Years past when the camera followed him down the fairway from behind, he appeared heavily muscular, almost massive, like a serious iron pumper who spends hours in the gym each day.  As for the first observation, to many Tiger's aggressive fist pumps, hyper serious demeanor and all business all the time attitude was a little off-putting or maybe just a little too self centered and narcissistic.  While the new Tiger is certainly not as fan friendly as, say, Phil Michelson at this point, but he seems to have at least softened the hard edge a bit. This is all to the good since most people prefer the Arnold Palmer, Phil Michelson personality in their golf heroes. As far as the second observation, there are at least two possible explanations.  Either he has been working out a lot less these days or he no longer takes body building supplements or substances that have been banned in most sports since the baseball scandals of 20 years ago. As baseball fans know, home run production has fallen off precipitously since the banning of illegal muscle building substances.  Where the home run leaders of the past hit maybe 65 to 70 home runs per season, the record nowadays is more like 40 to 50.  No matter which it is, Obama now appears to have joined the rest of the field, at least physically. In an on camera interview preceding the third round of the Masters tournament, Nick Faldo made the observation that Tiger's world changed dramatically after his marital problem and its aftermath and that he has to deal with more issues than the old Tiger did.  This, according to Faldo, makes Tiger a different person than the old Tiger who cannot be seen in the same light as before since his mindset is now changed.  This analysis sounds about right.  It remains to be seen if he ever reclaims his dominance as the best player in the world.  Somehow that doesn't seem all that likely

Why Forbes thinks Obamacare goes down

As everyone knows by now, Obamacare is a 2,700 page nightmare of a law that would put the finishing touches on our national bankruptcy. Nevertheless, the liberals press on because, well, because they are liberals and Constitutionality and stuff like that don't count for them, 'cause they know best.  Forbes disagrees and thinks the SCOTUS will disagree as well and rule this monstrosity null and void.  This column explicates the reasons SCOTUS will strike it down, and the provides and further explains why it cannot be salvaged without the mandate.

Higher taxs on the 1% explained

Phil Graham, former Senator from Texas and the only economist in the Senate (and maybe even the Congress at that time) explains here exactly how debilitating the claim by redistributionists for "fairness" in the tax code is for the economy.  This is the rebuttal with hard facts to the Obama claim the 1 percenters  are not paying their fair share.  A quote to remember in this explanation:

 Will and Ariel Durant observed in "The Lessons of History" (1968), "freedom and equality are sworn and everlasting enemies, and when one prevails the other dies . . . to check the growth of inequality, liberty must be sacrificed."

Thermador product failure

We purchased a Thermador Professional, PRO-GRAND, gas range, (purchase docs below),  in September of 2007.  It was first serviced in July 2008, 10 months after initial purchase (receipt below) because the oven intermittently failed to ignite. While the service technician pronounced the range "operating normally" after the July '08 call, from then on the oven operated in what might best be described as a quirky manner, sometime requiring restart, sometime shutting down, sometime functioning okay. As empty nesters for many years there are only two of us, we tend both to eat out and travel frequently and consequently use the oven part of the range infrequently, less than once per month.  Having a Miele steam oven, microwave and warming drawer in our kitchen, we tended to overlook the irregular performance characteristics of the Thermador oven especially once the one-year warranty expired.   Without any real warning the oven ceased functioning altogether in mid-December 2010, three years and two months after purchase, two years and four months after the July '08 service call.  At that point in time the oven had been used no more than a couple of dozen times since purchase. Service technicians diagnosed the problem as a faulty "motherboard", and suggested a replacement motherboard at approximately $1,700 installed.  We then called Thermador at their Contact 800 number in March '11 and reviewed the facts of our purchase with a representative who informed us the case would be further reviewed by a committee and that we would be advised of their findings shortly.  Several days later we were advised in a brief voice message that the review committee disallowed our claim and the case was closed.

To review the facts:  We owned a $7,000 Thermador range that malfunctioned after 10 months requiring a major service repair.  The oven performed in a quirky manner until it failed completely three years and two months after initial purchase, and two years and five months after its initial major service repair.  Our claim to Thermador was disallowed after a "review" by a company committee.

A letter below letter to Reid's Appliances, from whom we purchased the faulty Thermador range provides additional context for this issue. Here is a link to Consumer Affairs website which lists nearly two hundred complaints about Thermador products, many about the same oven series as ours.  Clearly product failure is common to our oven series and Thermador is consciously ignoring it, possibly dealing with customers in a cynical manner.  Of particular interest among these many complaints is this one from a software engineer:

As a software engineer, I can tell that all these problems are from poorly written software. The behavior is characteristic of inexperienced developers and poor error handling. I contacted the Western US distributor director and suggested that he contact me if he wanted some objective feedback on the oven problems.

I had a conference call with Thermador engineers and they truly had no idea how an oven controller is supposed to work. They claimed that the oven knew better what temperature to use than the user and as such it never got hot enough. Apparently, it second-guesses the cook and decides on some other temperature based on a combination of sensor readings.

It is shameful for a large, successful consumer products company to not stand behind its products.

Letter to Thermador Review Committee

Letter to retailer

Service invoice

INFLATION IS COMING

Who among older Americans can forget the inflation the country experienced during the late 1970's?  Many enlightened companies, mine among, helped their employees cope with the invidious effects of inflation by giving automatic pay raises several times in one year.  It took the harsh medicine of high interest rates by the Fed under Paul Volcker,  in addition to the lower tax rates and other pro business votes by the Reagan Administration to get the economy back under control. Are we headed for another like period?  This article suggests we are.  Quite obviously the Fed is printing money as fast as it can, to what, stave off deflation, the big bugaboo of the 1930"s?  This appears to be the case.  It is distressing that there is so little discussion of what is going on in the media today.  It seems to to raise  far more interested i n the Trayvon Martin case and racism than the potentially disastrous effects of inflation now on the near horizon.  Seems like the only ones interested in this looming disaster are those who experienced  the 1970's and who now live on more-or-less fixed incomes.  They know full well how devastating inflation can be to their quality of life.  Others, who have the "protection" of working for companies with the ability raise prices and paychecks are insulated from the worst of this malady.  Fortunately there are more fixed incomers now than ever before and they may yet be able to create enough of a stir to at least slow the printing presses down.  Otherwise they're going to be on the as heap of bad times.