Petey's Pipeline E-zine

Issue #48

March 19, 2007

Contents

Business First Market Mayhem
Random Ramblings & Miscellaneous Musings National Security—Safe or Sorry: Border Security
Write Thinking Punctuation – the Marks of Professionals (The Dash)

Business First (Editorial)

Market Mayhem

In issue #22 (January 2, 2006) I warned what would happen to real estate investors if the real estate market suddenly went south. Well, the real estate market is heading south, and what I predicted to happen is happening.

Countrywide Financial, the nation's largest mortgage lender, reports that some 20 percent of sub-prime loans are now more than 60 days late, and that throughout non-sub-prime mortgage markets the frequency of late payments is on an upward trend.

When sub-prime mortgagees get hit with increased monthly payments they can't afford, they're at serious risk of losing their homes. While I don't have the actual figures that reveal the number of people adversely affected by the real estate market downturn, I suspect that the number is substantial.

How might this affect the overall economy?

Look for downturns throughout the construction industry. As purse strings tighten, look for diminishing retail sales and cutbacks in manufacturing, which in turn will lead to rising unemployment. Look for even more mortgage defaults. Look for rent increases due to higher demand for available rental units.

And finally, look for more homeless people—coming soon to a neighborhood near yours.

• • •

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Random Ramblings & Miscellaneous Musings

National Security—Safe or Sorry: Border Security
by Phil Hanson

The downside to living in a democratically governed nation that touts personal freedom as its crowning achievement is that—by intent and design—the nation's borders remain relatively open compared to those of nations governed by more oppressive/repressive regimes. However, freedom comes at a price, and the price is paid with money, with personal sacrifice, and with elevated risk to one's personal safety. The sad realities of freedom and security are that neither of them live up to the hype; we are neither as free nor as secure as we imagine.

U.S. citizens, since 9/11, have grown increasingly more concerned about their personal safety than they are about their personal freedom, and many would gladly sacrifice their privacy and much of their freedom for what they suppose are larger measures of safety and security. The truth is that life is inherently risky—you can never be 100% safe.

No matter how tightly you seal the borders, no matter what safeguards you put in place, a sufficiently motivated person can find a way around, under, over or—yes!—even through them. There has never been a security measure that a combination of imagination, time, technology, money and planning couldn't breach.

Only by considering the total length of U.S borders can you begin to understand the enormous difficulties associated with defending those borders against terrorist incursions. The U.S. shares the world's longest border between countries with Canada—about 4000 miles of mostly rugged, desolate terrain. To the south, the U.S. Mexico border—at about 2,000 miles in length—is also rugged and desolate. Now, add in more than 12,000 miles of Arctic (Alaska), Atlantic, Gulf and Pacific coastlines and you begin to fully appreciate the range and scope of problems posed by border defense.

That terrorists might arrive via air, land, or sea further complicates the problem of defending borders, as do forged documents and false identities. It would seem that, with so many options available to them, terrorists have the upper hand, but that's not necessarily the case. Good intelligence and good communications are keys to a good defense. Advanced technology, superior weaponry and highly trained personnel complete an effective national defense package.

Some will argue that the best defense is a good offense, but aggressor nations aren't always looked upon favorably by their allies—and certainly not by their foes. Preemptive strikes are the hallmarks of cowards and bullies, and completely unwarranted where a threat is less than imminent.

A case in point is the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq, a misadventure that's draining the national treasury, dividing the country, and creating ill will around the world. Lacking coherent strategies for winning or for extricating ourselves from that mess, we seem to be in it for the long haul. Only oil companies and war profiteers can hope to profit from it; everyone else loses.

A better post-9/11 strategy would have been to beef up security at airports, shipping ports, rail terminals, critical infrastructure, and vital industries. For what we've spent on the Iraq debacle, we could have funded a larger, well-equipped Coast Guard, border guards, and a fully prepared National Guard ready to defend this country here, not deployed as an ill-prepared assault force in the Middle East.

Perhaps we won't win the hearts and minds of the Arab peoples by extending the hand of friendship through diplomacy, economic incentives, and better foreign policy, but it's worth a try. We Americans see ourselves as the good guys, but—trust me on this—many of the world's people see us as the bad guys. They don't hate us for our freedoms, as President Bush has claimed, they hate us for what we do with those freedoms.

Maybe if we put aside our plans for world domination and spent as much time and money perfecting our own country as we do trying to perfect other countries through military intervention, political manipulation and economic exploitation, there'd no doubt be more people trying to emulate us and fewer people trying to blow us up.

Coming in issue #49: When Terrorists Strike

Copyright © 2007 by Phil Hanson
All rights reserved.

Write Thinking

Punctuation – the Marks of Professionals

Getting punctuation right is critical to making your writing intelligible and coherent. As with misspelled and misused words, misused or missing punctuation takes your message off track and confuses your readers. To help you avoid the avoidable, the next few installments of Write Thinking deal with punctuation marks, in all their many forms, with example sentences provided for clarification.

Em Dash ( — ) and En Dash ( – )

The em dash—so-called because it's the approximate width of a typeset capital M—is the most commonly used of the various types of dashes. It sets apart parenthetic material in the same way that commas, colons, and parentheses do, often substituting for them when writers desire less formality and/or more emphasis in a particular piece of writing.

Although personal preference largely determines which marks are used, dashes should not be overused. Too-frequent use is indicative of muddled thinking or poor writing skills.

Because the em dash signifies an abrupt departure from the logical progression of a writer's thoughts, it's used to introduce parenthetic statements or amplifying elements into a sentence; it's also used as a "quick-and-dirty" device for untangling the tangled syntax of poorly constructed sentences—not a great idea.

If the parenthetic material comes in the middle of a sentence, use two dashes—one preceding and one following—to set apart the material. If the parenthetic material comes at the end of a sentence, use only a single dash to separate it from the main part of the sentence—just as I've done here.

The em dash is also used as a mechanical device to denote interrupted speech in dialog, to precede a source or author name following a quote, or to precede items in a vertical list.

The en dash—longer than a hyphen but shorter than an em dash—is used only in typeset material, where it often replaces the hyphen in applications that denote range or span of time. In the following examples, the en dash is equivalent to "up to and including":

Other common instances where an en dash replaces a hyphen is between a prefix and an open compound, as a substitute for to between capitalized names, and to denote linkages (borders and boundaries, treaties, partnerships, or adversarial relationships):

Copyright © 2007 by Phil Hanson
All rights reserved.

Disclaimer

The articles appearing in Petey's Pipeline E-zine are based on information believed to be true at the time of publication. Neither Perfecttext.com, Petey's Pipeline E-zine nor their publisher assume any liability or responsibility as to the accuracy or efficacy of any information, products or services that are submitted, advertised or rendered by contributors to Petey's Pipeline E-zine. While we make every effort to screen out scam artists and bogus offers, you should still do your homework. Caveat emptor!

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