Hi; Remember Me?

Well, based on my recent posting schedule I'd say its time for my April post.

Yes, that is supposed to be self-deprecating humor. Or the truth; you pick.

The real truth is that the last few months have been... crazy. I had a son get married, have had some serious changes at my real job- some good and some bad- and have had some other personal issues to bring under control.

When push comes to shove we need to find out which activities have the short straw. It may not always be the activity we want to delete from our daily routine, but sometimes we don't have the level of control we would like.

And there was very little I really felt like blogging about.
Some things have eased, and I am trying to get back to a daily post. It may take a few weeks to ramp back up to my former schedule, but that is my goal.

So; what brought me back to the table today?

This video; found at one of my guilty pleasures, The Borderline Sociopathic Blog For Boys.

What can I say, but WOW.

Science, destruction, cool video shots and hot glass. What more could you ask for in a 6 minute video?

Cool, ain't it?

But, a component of this video is a good example for some other things.

Like the Housing Bubble.

Random activity creates stress in a system. Other random activity will dissipate that stress. Or intensify it.

Take for instance the beginning of that video; the hammer blow to the bulb did not cause the destruction; it was the vibrations set up by the blow, reacting in the other end of the drop that caused the drop to disintegrate almost as a single unit.

The Housing Market disappeared in almost the same way. Things like a weak job market created stress in the market. Folks who bought more house than they could afford added another stress. Folks with loans they couldn't/wouldn't repay added another. Folks owing more than the house was now worth was another stress on the system. Any one of these stresses could have been easily dissipated; a rise in home values; additional jobs being created; the ability for lenders to 'redline' areas or borrowers.

A lot of random actions by a group of random people could have shifted the stress and stopped the meltdown.

Or made it worse.

And, like in the video, sometimes the obvious things are the real cause of the result; there are things going on that we can't see, either because they are well hidden, or because they are happening too fast to separate the cause and effect properly.