…and a welcome to 2010!
(Note: originally written Jan 4-8; posted March 27)
To close 2009, we returned to Portland with some friends. I picked up a variant of the Monopoly board game (”Make-your-own-opoly”), since I’ve always wanted to create a version tailored to my workplace. 
The store seemed to specialize in custom Monopoly games: versions included Star Trek, James Bond, Seinfeld, Charles Schultz’ Peanuts, GI Joe, Transformers, and even a Beaverology (relating to Oregon State University; the beaver is their mascot). There actually weren’t any regular Monopoly board games to be had — maybe that’s due to the state of real estate down there. We also went to a Japanese food store, where, as is my wont, I passed the time checking out ingredients lists. Who’d've thought the main ingredient in Lipton Cup-A-Soup was high-fructose corn syrup? My favourite, though, was the Tuna Cube (a slab of frozen tuna) which consisted of tuna and carbon monoxide. Yum. (Carbon monoxide helps meat retain a fresh red-like colour… I guess it’s the 21st century version of using spices to make meat seem fresher. But fear not, carbon monoxide is a banned food additive in Canada.)
Since it was an Asian store, I also checked out the dairy section. There were literally eight cheese products on sale, representing a cumulative inventory of about twenty items! There were two options each for block cheese, sliced cheese, spreadable cheese, and what I’ll call “fancy cheese”.
In contrast, there was about half an aisle of soy sauces, dominated by products from Yamasa (established 1645) and Kikkoman (which goes back to 1603). Both companies started out in the same area of Japan — Chiba Prefecture — which means that in about thirty years, they’ll be celebrating four centuries of trying to put each other out of business! 
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In financial news, Iceland will soon hold a referendum on whether to pay back billions in debt it owes to a couple European countries. What happened was, Icelandic banks took deposits (borrowed) from European folks… and then defaulted. Thus the debts were taken on by the Icelandic government.
But by the time they pay those debts off (if ever) Iceland will have the climate of a tropical paradise. So the British and Dutch banks bailed out the citizens who banked with the Icelandic firms. The British government even used anti-terror legislation (!) to seize the assets of local Icelandic banks.
And that’s how the Icelandic, British and Dutch public-sector (governments) wound up haggling about who should pay for private-sector imprudence.
As it turns out, there’s a historical precedent for this, which favours Iceland. The birth of democracy in ancient Greece (Athens) is widely credited to a fellow named Solon, when he enacted a set of laws called the Seisachtheia, or “shaking off of burdens”. In a sort of financial “reboot”, he cancelled all debts, turned all debt-slaves into free people, AND gave them back the ancestral / familial land they’d had to sell to aristocrats to pay off loans. The impoverished masses also got the right to vote and serve in a jury, thereby earning the right to be judged by a jury of their peers.
In light of how deeply these reforms hit the ruling aristocracy, it is perhaps unsurprising that immediately after announcing them, Solon left the country. For the next ten years.