Over the weekend, you might have heard the government reveal news of a swine flu outbreak in Mexico. Of course, in every epidemic there are those who do not die, who survive and are left to pick up the pieces. So while I could talk about disease and mortality, cause and effect, I am left to talk to you about the banal, and the trite, and the (sigh) Real Housewives of Orange County.

Did you know that Bob Dylan released his new album on Tuesday? Duane sure did, and I found myself accompanying him to the closest Best Buy to the Crunk Factory to watch him acquire it before lunch. Now it might surprise you to know he’s a big…er….huge….er….crazy delicious Dylan fan…but he is. I don’t exactly share this devotion (it’s not the first time that’s happened) but it was a welcome diversion.

That evening I went over the visit Rita who had been feeling sick. I tried to get her to watch “Frontline” with me, but a documentary on the mental health standards of released prisoners wasn’t exactly romantic. The very next day however, I found out there was a program on Poincare’s Conjecture and the now reclusive mathematician who proved it. But did Rita watch this with me? Nope, she had to finish some schoolwork for her graduate program.

Of course, she did come in once or twice and facetiously shout “Nerd!” at me. I wasn’t exactly offended…but the documentary was actually as good as I hoped…talking at length about the various mathematicians who suffered personal loses to attempt to solve it. I’m always a sucker for shots of manicured lawns at various universities, crisply dressed academics, and understated musical scores. Of course, while I can empathize with those scientists…toiling in obscurity…but make no mistake…most of them said they did the job because it didn’t feel like work. There was also a great line about how the mathematicians lived in two worlds: one the tangible physical universe, and the one made solely of the mathematical constructs.

Hmm two worlds, one the tangible physical universe, and one made solely of constructs….that doesn’t seem to have any application to my life at all…

I don’t know when exactly in my life I became so popular with kids…but it must have happened a while ago. Either that, or something seriously strange happened this weekend.

On Friday night, Rita and Chey both had plans. As luck would have it, Chey’s plans included the kids who went along with him to the baseball game. That left me to enjoy my Friday night ritual of laundry and PBS. Later on, I found myself engrossed in the recruiting offseason in my NCAA 2009 Football dynasty on the XBOX 360.

Saturday, the plan was the same, except Chey was going with his new girlfriend to the baseball game and Rita and I were watching her younger ones. Although I’d say “watch” is a relative term. Instead, I’d use a more active verb, like “exhaust”.

Rita realized that the tots didn’t have a change of clothes with them and sent me to the store (the local Wal-mart no less!) to purchase a bib, diaper rash lotion, and some infant Tylenol. I took Julia with me (Rita’s daughter who is five) and got her out of the house, evening Rita’s odds. After some exploration…and the perverse realization of how cheap Wal-Mart really is…I got back and waited for Rita to cook dinner.

Not long after we ate, she was pooped and decided to lie down. That left yours truly to reign supreme and make sure each of them were prepped for bed. Armed with new NERF projectiles, none of them went quietly tearing up the apartment in a blaze of foam dart glory. I wasn’t sure how Rita could  manage to rest during the commotion, but at least she was able to close the door to her bedroom. (I might add that this occurred mere hours after her nine year old son Justin had gone under general anesthesia for a root canal. And don’t think he was lacking for energy…)

On went the bloodbath until finally it was 9pm and Rita decreed everyone must go to bed. I had to get tough and tell Justin and Julia to go to the bathroom and brush their teeth and go to bed. Eventually they compiled, and I turned off most of the lights in the living room where the two year old was going to sleep on the couch and the baby had his crib set up.

Someone apparently forgot to tell the little ones. Not only was the baby wide awake…but the two year old resisted my calls to lie down. Instead he sat up on the couch asking if he could play. Of course, that wasn’t going to fly with my hard nosed parenting. Eventually I had to admit defeat to Rita. While in her bedroom, the phone rang and Chey called to say he and the steady would pick her kids up later that night instead of the next morning.

Of course by the time they arrived, guess who was still asleep? Yes that’s right…the very same defiant tykes. I mean, sure it could have been worse. It’s not like I got a flat tire while driving into downtown to pick up my BFF from the bus station or anything with these charges in tow….

Last weekend was supposed to be about the local Culinary Festival. I had told Rita about it for weeks. And I had meticulous planned it out to have us savor the afternoon in gastronomic delight. But it wasn’t to be. The event turned out to be rip-off…with a ten dollar admission just to buy tickets for the samples. Unsurprisingly we didn’t stay long, and instead went to eat dinner at home. It was then my plan to take her to see “The Fast and the Furious”.

It was quite a revelation to learn that Rita loved the original “Fast and the Furious”. The film came out while we both undergrads at UCLA and didn’t know each other. As you can imagine over the years that we have known each other her love of Paul Walker et al. never came up…until now.

I was really dreading watching it, except for how happy I’d know it would make her. I pick the movies I do because I hate knowing how the picture will end 20 minutes in. Since adolescence…this has occurred a lot.

However, I had hope because “Fast & Furious” was directed by UCLA’s own Justin Lin. (Not that um, Tokyo Drift, was a masterpiece.) And I wasn’t disappointed. The movie was plenty entertaining and not as predictable as I would have guessed. It also has a racial and social conscious that Lin is probably responsible for. In fact, street racing almost comes off as a legitimate enterprise…if that’s possible.

What isn’t obvious watching the piece however, is that it’s actually not a sequel. Yes, that’s right…it takes place after the second movie but before the third. (And you thought Star Wars would never been topped in that regard). In addition, there is word a fifth installment is coming.

So as you might have heard, President Obama gave perhaps the defining speech of his career this week to a crowded auditorium at Georgetown University. In less than an hour, Obama detailed the reason for each of the five points to his overall strategy. Oh what’s that you say, all you heard about this week was how excited people like Rush Limbaugh were talking about teabagging? I mean, uh, anyway…I could comment on the tea-um-baggers but actually someone already wrote that book. It’s called “What’s the Matter With Kansas?”

Obama’s speech, meanwhile, was so incisive and remarkable mainly because he orchestrated all five points into a cohesive vision of the future. These goals are: stronger regulation of the financial sector (and really the economy), more investment in education, and more investment in new technology (including energy), health care reform, and paying down the national debt. (To watch a video of the speech go here: http://video.nytimes.com/video/playlist/business/cnbc/1194811622261/index.html.)

But before the President reached this climax, he revealed something heretofore that had been a secret. He explained that his decision not to order a nationalization of the banking system was not based on the cozy relationship of Wall Street and Washington, but instead because of cost. He said that while “preemptive decision action” is cheaper in the longer run than letting banks fail, that is not the case if such action is nationalization. It’s an interesting attitude to take: because as you must be wondering (along with those tea-bag, er, tossers), “More costly? More costly to whom?”

And there is the rub. For its no coincidence that Obama made this comment after the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) relaxed the “mark-to-market” rule for banks holding “toxic assets”. If you believe that there’s still value in the hundreds of subprime loans or credit default swaps then nationalization is a costly and unnecessary measure. But if you think that most of the “toxic assets” aren’t with the paper they are printed on then receivership can’t come soon enough. Problem is, with the “mark-to-market” rule suspended, all the banks will maintain they have grade-A portfolios that are merely suffering from a crisis of confidence. This is precisely the mistake that the Japanese made that initiated their now famous Lost Decade.

Meanwhile, it’s important to understand the real reason Obama has not issued the call for nationalization. Put mildly, people seemed frustrated with “the bailout” because it “privatized profits and socialized losses”.  The irony is that such an arrangement, not unlike the so called Tragedy of the Commons” is the rule in public policy, not the exception. Obama realizes nationalization, on the other hand, is crossing the Rubicon. And unlike Julius Caesar (or Lucius Cornelius Sulla for that matter) the President is content to bide his time for now, hoping that it won’t come to that.

Something tells me though, that like Lincoln issuing the Emancipation Proclamation or Roosevelt entering World War II, this issue isn’t going away and may define Obama’s legacy more than he would like.

Oh, Mr. Wizard…where are you now? Deceased, I’m afraid. For if you were still with us, I doubt that our society would be in such dire straits. After all, if Don Herbert was still there, showing us the impact of static electricity, would our children be suckered in by the promise of Glitter Eggs?!?!

When I was a strapping young lad, I remember using food coloring to dye eggs for Easter a myriad of hues. It was also the case that our family came to own a confectionary egg that was intricately designed and hollowed out, like a diorama. But never did we ever thing of doing the impossible….Glitter Eggs?!!

A while back, Rita’s daughter Julia noticed a Glitter Egg kit at Wal-Mart. It wasn’t particularly expensive, but when Rita looked at the instructions, she was overwhelmed. It was complicated on the order of a high school chemistry exam, and the perfect task for me.

As luck would have it, the instructions required warm eggs. That meant that Saturday morning, Rita began to boil eggs in a pot. But it soon became evident that they had cracked and most were unsuitable for painting. I went back to the Safeway and bought another dozen eggs, this time with a cardboard case.

Tired from cleaning her apartment the previous day, Rita proceeded to take a nap. It was up to Julia and I to take the now boiled eggs and design them as we saw fit.

The instructions had three facets: first the traditional coloring, then the application of the “Stickem” an edible adhesive, and last the Glitter Shaker. Now at this point you say…how difficult could these instructions be? Apparently pretty complicated.

For the dyeing phase, the instructions required me to use either glass or ceramic cups. It also insisted on five ounces of warm water to help completely dissolved the tablets. Certain colors, moreover, like yellow and orange, also required a tablespoon of white vinegar to augment the solution. The egg was required to sit in the cup for no less than five minutes.

It was just my luck that the glass measuring cup Rita had didn’t mark out five ounces. But it did reveal 2/3 a cup. So after tinkering with the sink to provide just the right temperature water, I ran off consecutive deliveries to the table and the various colors. (It should be noted that one of the pellets disappeared for reasons which we didn’t comprehend. The benefit to us was that with only five colors: yellow, orange, green, pink, and purple, we were able to make a special egg for both Rita and Chey (under Julia’s strict supervision of course.) Aside from these, we had two sets of each color.

That led me to suggest that we do one set as normal, and the second as a “rainbow”. The instructions warned us that without careful adherence to the directions, the eggs would all come out as a rainbow. That meant for the normal eggs doing the colors in a particular order, yellow, orange, pink, green, and then purple.

However, we were told to put half a cup of hot water with the Stickem, a sticky gelatin to dip the eggs that were now colored. After that, they were to be shaken in a special shaker provided in the box (that you had to assemble) with 1/8 a teaspoon of glitter. But instead of making telegenic, svelte Glitter Eggs, we watched in horror as the hot water broke down the yellow dye. (The instructions warned us not to refrigerate the eggs saying that cold temperatures would cause the dye to turn liquid.) Undeterred, I told Julia to shake the ovum, new blanched, in the Shaker and wait for it to do its magic. Instead, we noticed that the Stickem didn’t quite bond the Glitter, leaving half the egg sparkling and the other side empty. As it went on, the majority of the colors from the first set held fast (only the green eggs turned into a bluish shade). But the glitter still was paltry and nothing like what appeared on the box.

With the first set done, I told Julia now it was time to make the rainbow set. I took the rest of the glitter and poured it all in the Shaker. I then dipped the rainbow set in the Stickem, waiting and hoping for something good. Instead…we got…ummm….bird poop.

Yes, while Julia was quite content to slather glitter on the eggs in question, I watched in horror as a) no rainbow effect occurred and b) the glitter oozed on the shells like…slime. After two hours of following directions to the tee, we get twelve eggs bearing no resemblance to those on the box. Julia was ecstatic, I felt defeated.

How is it possible that I could be outwitted by a $1.88 package of Glitter Eggs from Wal-Mart. Mr. Wizard, why has thou forsaken me? And more importantly, if you can’t refrigerate and eat these eggs…why not just use glue?

There’s a delicious bit of irony that the Newspaper Association of America decided to have its annual convention during….(deep breath) Holy Week. But the victim of this week’s crucifixion wasn’t you local rag or anyone in the industry at all…it was…Google’s Eric Schmidt. He dared to tell the newspaper industry that Google was not an enemy but a friend.

Now, you inevitably have heard that print media is struggling. And they are, but it’s not because of the Internet. It literally can’t be.

See before the Internet came about in the mid-90s, there was only one way to read a newspaper: in print. That limited the scope and distribution of many periodicals but kept the advertising market for space stable. You paid by the inch or the line.

But then the Internet happened, and the local paper suddenly had access to the entire world. Now the whole world could read it, and since those customers were likely not to be captured by a regular subscription…most papers gave away their content for free. The Wall Street “Journal” didn’t and strangely made money.

Since that time, newspapers continued to build more and sophisticated websites and trying to underwrite it with their traditional subscriber base. So the thought is, from Schmidt, is that while most Internet consumers won’t pay for a subscription to the New York “Times,” media companies are not wrong to pursue such strategies.

But the debate never really arrives at why its so hard to make money at a newspaper today. Here are a couple:

1) Journalism is hard work. Good reporting requires talented writers and demanding editors. But it also requires a dose of stability. The longer a reporter stays on the beat, the more sources he or she acquires and the more individual stories can be. And stability means paying reporters more than $25,000 a year. Conversely, stuffing your paper full of A.P. wire stories isn’t going to help your publication distinguish its editorial content.

2) The media is consolidated. Laws that relaxed media ownership in markets largely has reduced competition for the news. If you are familiar with the so-called “Tragedy of the Commons”, then the explanation is fairly simple. It’s far more profitable to market content somewhere new than it is actually develop content in the first place. So the Chicago Tribune says, writes a story about President Obama it’s more profitable to put that story in all the other outlets the Tribune owns (like the Orlando Sentinel and until recently the Los Angeles Times) than have those paper spend money to cover the paper itself.

3) Craigslist. The lifeblood of smaller papers is small ads…unsurprisingly. Mr. Newmark has essentially killed them by offering to list various things for free. Of course, local papers have survived, but as states allow public notices to be done online.

4) Zipcodes are not the same as IP addresses. Believe it or not the most valuable part of a person’s subscription isn’t the money they pay for it…it’s the delivery location. Those zip codes were used to sell ad space by demonstrating which areas were particularly affluent or otherwise desirable. This is the main reason that papers have not been able to “solve” the problem of online advertising. Companies want to know who they are selling to more than even how much they have to pay. This was supposed to be solved by making people register for sites and give that information up regardless…somehow this hasn’t gone according to plan.

It’s official. After months, nay, over a year of holding out…the recession too has claimed me as a victim. I actually decided to spend this weekend…being productive.

Yes, I could have done many things on Saturday…but I … I decided to clean my apartment. (gasp). It all started with the revelation that some medications I had in my bathroom had gone bad. That caused me to think I had good reason to toss them, and before I knew it…I was onto the refrigerator, the stack of old bills, you name it. And then when that was complete, I took my laundry out and folded it.

Afterwards I decided to pay a call to none other than the infamous Tree Fiddy. He and I chatted for a good hour and a half before I got a call from Rita who was on her way with her sister to dinner in NorCal. I then went to return a movie to the video store and wound up renting a couple more flicks. My sister then called, so I didn’t start watching one of the films until about 10:30pm and preceded to fall asleep on the couch before it was over.

Sunday, I got up and ended up watching Fareed Zakaria’s “GPS” before running some more errands that culminated in a trip to the supermarket.

Zakaria, for those who aren’t familiar with him, has impressed me on occasion. For example, he invited the son of Hosni Mubarak on his show to talk about the Middle East. (Mubarak Sr. is of course the President of Egypt, rules in such a way to make Robert Mugabe look like an internationalist.) It is widely believed that Mubarak Jr. will succeed his father in the near future, as the President is over 80 years old. But as Zakaria points out, Egypt has tremendous influence on the region. Not only did the Egyptians help solidify Israel’s existence, but it is also the birthplace of the Islamic Jihad movement which eventually mutated into Al-Qaeda.

Poor Zakaria though, despite being Newsweek’s International editor at one point…and the managing editor of “Foreign Affairs” now, he can’t seem to get the US more excited about international news. Indeed, when I was younger, the block of time that GPS has on Sunday morning (and afternoon on the East Coast) was filled with “World Report” with Octavia Nasr and Richard Quest. They would introduce news stories filled from around the globe from Africa to Europe to Asia to South America. And for a while, DirecTV carried CNN FN, which simulcast CNN International at times.

But that’s all over now.

Thanks to the recession, Americans really don’t pay much attention to the world no more. I mean, after all Americans are taking the financial crisis pretty well. So far I haven’t seen any managers taken hostage by employees, any riots in the street, and anyone hoarding gold preparing for a run on their nation’s currency. Oh, and that’s just what is going in Europe, by the way…to say nothing of what they are up to in the developing world.

So to do my part, I decided to move toward sustainability last night and cook. I went back and forth between Hamburger Helper, and Lamb Chops, and shish kebob before settling on some good old Japanese curry. Indeed, I thought for a while I had ruined the recipe but after consulting some online troubleshooters, I realized I could thicken the sauce by cooking it longer. Now I have leftovers…for a little while at least.

It came to my attention that Rita had never been to a Spring Training game. Her level of interest was low…confined to the team of her youth…the San Diego Padres. Once upon a time (1969) the Padres could be found in March along the banks of the Colorado River, in Yuma. In 1993 however, the decision was made to move to a new stadium in the heart of Alta Sonora. And that is where I intended to introduce Rita to spring training baseball.

But the original plan fell through when I didn’t buy tickets soon enough and we instead reschedule for a weekend where we had the kids. The bonus was that for this game, tickets were available in the very first row just outside the 1 base box. And so you can imagine the delight that Rita and the kids had to see that all they could do was lean over and touch the infield. Or in Rita’s case, lean over and get a hug from none other than Jake Peavy.

But this stadium is not as atmospheric as where the Brewers play to be sure and I don’t know why. You would think the place would want to accentuate its Pacific ties (since the other tenant is the Seattle Mariners). Yet for now, that is an opportunity lost.

It also didn’t help that Chris Young was shelled in the early innings, letting the visiting San Francisco Giants open a 9-0 lead. (Yeah don’t even think I rooted for them.) At one point I had to go on a quite an odyssey to find Rita a Coors Light…because all the concession windows had different stuff on tap from Bud to Miller to something else.

I stuck to my guns though and wouldn’t let them leave early. I knew they hated the sun pounded down on them (even though there was a nice breeze). And sure enough, the Padres came back to win it 11-10 in the bottom of the ninth.

However, my normal week routine changed when Rita decided to visit her sister for a week and shaking up my otherwise sleepy schedule. First, I spent Monday night watching Bill Maher’s “Religulous”. Then, it was the final game (potentially ever) for the softball team as we were eliminated from the playoffs. And then Adam decided to send me word of a friend’s engagement on April’s Fools Day.

Now though it’s quiet…except for the winds gusting outside. Chey also left town, and Duane is busy watching the LDS General Conference this weekend. I don’t know what I’m going to do with myself, hehe.