Song of Songs-Hebrew Bible-translated by Marcia Falk

Stamp me
into your heart,
Upon your limbs,
Sear my emblem
deep
Into your skin.

For love is strong
as death,
Harsh as the
grave.
Its tongues
are flames,
a fierce
And holy blaze.

Endless seas
and floods,
Torrents and
rivers
Never put out
love’s
Infinite fires.

Arrogant Conceit

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2008/12/arrogant_conceit.html

Barack Obama wants to use the recession to remake the U.S. economy.

Jon Stossel
"Painful crisis also provides us with an opportunity to transform our economy to improve the lives of ordinary people," Obama said (http://tinyurl.com/67x8ec).

His designated chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, is more direct: "You never want a serious crisis to go to waste" (http://tinyurl.com/5n8u58).

So they will "transform our economy." Obama's nearly trillion-dollar plan will not merely repair bridges, fill potholes and fix up schools; it will also impose a utopian vision based on the belief that an economy is a thing to be planned from above. But this is an arrogant conceit. No one can possibly know enough to redesign something as complex as "an economy," which really is people engaging in exchanges to achieve their goals. Planning it means planning them.

This is not the first time a president chose reform over recovery.
Franklin Roosevelt did it with his New Deal, and the result was long
years of depression and deprivation. Roosevelt's priorities were
criticized not just by opponents of big government but by none other
than John Maynard Keynes, the British economist whose theories
rationalized big government. Before FDR had been in office a year,
Keynes wrote him an open letter(http://tinyurl.com/9f8hb4),
which was printed in The New York Times.

Not Exactly

January 10, 2007 - After bottoming in the fourth quarter of 2006, existing-home sales are forecast to gradually rise through 2007 and into 2008, while new-home sales should turnaround by summer, according to the latest forecast by the National Association of Realtors.

Another Bride.....

The following nouns can be used for creating your own personalized wedding vows.

BEAUTY: attractiveness, charm, elegance, grace, loveliness

CHARM: attraction, fascination, glamour

CONSORT: companion, comrade, mate, partner, soul-mate, spouse

DELIGHT: enjoyment, gladness, happiness, joy, pleasure

DEVOTION: affection, attachment, fidelity, loyalty, dedication

DIGNITY: elegance, grace, stateliness

FOREVER: always, eternity, perpetuity

HAPPINESS: bliss, cheerfulness, contentment, delight, joyfulness

HOPE: faith, optimism, reliance, belief, desire, wish

JOY: bliss, delight, elation, gladness, happiness

LOYALTY: allegiance, constancy, devotion, faithfulness, fidelity

MARRIAGE: matrimony, nuptials, wedding, wedlock, bond, union

PROMISE: pledge, vow

RENEWAL: enlivenment, invigoration, regeneration, revival

RESPECT: admiration, appreciation, esteem, favor, honor, regard

SACRIFICE: dedication, devotion, offering

SINCERITY: candidness, candor, frankness, genuineness, honesty,

SPIRIT: being, heart, mind, psyche, soul, energy, life, verve

WISDOM: wiseness, insight, judgment, knowledge"

Somebody said this?

"Fanaticism consists in redoubling your efforts when you have forgotten your aim."

"Memory itself is an internal rumour; and when to this hearsay within the mind we add the falsified echoes that reach us from others, we have but a shifting and unseizable basis to build upon. The picture we frame of the past changes continually and grows every day less similar to the original experience which it purports to describe."

"There is no cure for birth and death save to enjoy the interval."

"Religions are not true or false, but better or worse."

All you need is love

"I am reminded of a comment made by the Buddhist teacher Guru Amrit Desai, when he looked out of his car window and saw that he was in the midst of a gang of Hell's Angels. After studying them in great detail for a long while, he finally exclaimed, 'They really love their motorcycles.' There was no disdain in this observation. Guru Desai was truly moved by the purity of their love for the beauty and power of something that was outside themselves."

Dorothy Parker

Razors pain you;
Rivers are damp;
Acids stain you;
And drugs cause cramp.
Guns aren't lawful;
Nooses give;
Gas smells awful;
You might as well live.

Dorothy Parker

Jim Rogers

"McChesney Martin was the guy who said the job of a good central banker was to take away the punchbowl when the party starts getting good. Now [the Fed] - when the party starts getting out of control - pours more moonshine in."

Learn to be a Psychic in 10 minutes

Psychic readings and fortune telling are an ancient art a combination of acting and psychological manipulation. While some psychics are known to cheat and acquire information ahead of time, our ten tips will focus on what is known as “cold reading”—reading someone "cold" without any prior knowledge about them.

For a complete guide from Skeptic-

http://www.skeptic.com/downloads/10_Easy_Psychic_Lessons.pdf

How to Admit a Mistake

Pimco's Bill Gross (http://tinyurl.com/5azy8t) says he was wrong:

Gosh it was only six years ago that I cemented my place in stock market history by predicting that the Dow would fall from 8,500 to 5,000, instead of going up to 14,000 where it peaked in October of 2007. Well, I could use the standard set of excuses: 1) No one else saw it coming, 2) I was misinterpreted, and taken out of context, 3) I was tired, overworked, and had family problems, or 4) I had just come out of rehab. But these days what really works is a full confession. I mean, like, uh, it was totally my fault and I take full responsibility. The fact is I was only off by 9,000 points. That’s my story, and I’m stickin’ to it.

Fire and Ice

Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I've tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if I had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.



by: Robert Frost

Frisky Dogs

http://www.thinkgeek.com/geektoys/japanfan/9c89/

summary-

Harley and Duke are naughty dogs. They have a peculiar naughtiness. Whenever they spy a free USB port, they... "go to town." And they won't stop until you separate them from the source of their affections.

Why are they like this? No idea. Oh, and don't worry - if the kids ask what the doggie is doing to your computer, just say, "He's trying to jump over the computer, but he got a little stuck," or "The computer is giving him a piggyback ride." Either will suffice.

Oscar Wilde quotes

"Whenever people agree with me I always feel I must be wrong."

"But what is the difference between literature and journalism?
... Journalism is unreadable and literature is not read. That is all."

"A little sincerity is a dangerous thing, and a great deal of it is absolutely fatal."

"America is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without civilization in between."

Coffee and Biofuels

Researchers in Nevada are reporting that waste coffee grounds can
provide a cheap, abundant, and environmentally friendly source of
biodiesel fuel for powering cars and trucks.

In the new study, Mano Misra, Susanta Mohapatra, and Narasimharao
Kondamudi note that the major barrier to wider use of biodiesel fuel is
lack of a low-cost, high quality source, or feedstock, for producing
that new energy source. Spent coffee grounds contain between 11 and 20
percent oil by weight. That's about as much as traditional biodiesel
feedstocks such as rapeseed, palm, and soybean oil.

Growers produce more than 16 billion pounds of coffee around the
world each year. The used or "spent" grounds remaining from production
of espresso, cappuccino, and plain old-fashioned cups of java, often
wind up in the trash or find use as soil conditioner. The scientists
estimated, however, that spent coffee grounds can potentially add 340
million gallons of biodiesel to the world's fuel supply.

To verify it, the scientists collected spent coffee grounds from a
multinational coffeehouse chain and separated the oil. They then used
an inexpensive process to convert 100 percent of the oil into biodiesel.

The resulting coffee-based fuel — which actually smells like
java — had a major advantage in being more stable than
traditional biodiesel due to coffee's high antioxidant content, the
researchers say. Solids left over from the conversion can be converted
to ethanol or used as compost, the report notes. The scientists
estimate that the process could make a profit of more than $8 million a
year in the U.S. alone. They plan to develop a small pilot plant to
produce and test the experimental fuel within the next six to eight
months.

What Bernanke said about subprime mortgages in 2007

From http://www.econbrowser.com/archives/2008/12/finding_the_exi.html

Fed Chair Ben Bernanke in 2007 attributed this increase in access to mortgage borrowing to technological improvements in the lending process:

the expansion [in subprime mortgage lending was] spurred in large partby innovations that reduced the costs for lenders of assessing andpricing risks. In particular, technological advances facilitated creditscoring by making it easier for lenders to collect and disseminateinformation on the creditworthiness of prospective borrowers. Inaddition, lenders developed new techniques for using this informationto determine underwriting standards, set interest rates, and managetheir risks.

Presumably one of the things we can agree upon today is that Bernanke's analysis on this matter was incorrect. These new loans weren't smarter and better, but stunningly stupid.

Do dieters seem dumb?

A new study from the psychology department at Tufts University shows
that when dieters eliminate carbohydrates from their meals, they
perform more poorly on memory-based tasks than when they reduce
calories, but maintain carbohydrates. When carbohydrates were
reintroduced, cognition skills returned to normal.

"This study demonstrates that the food you eat can have an immediate
impact on cognitive behavior," explains Holly A. Taylor, professor of
psychology at Tufts and corresponding author of the study. "The popular
low-carb, no-carb diets have the strongest potential for negative
impact on thinking and cognition."

While the brain uses glucose as its primary fuel, it has no way of
storing it. Rather, the body breaks down carbohydrates into glucose,
which is carried to the brain through the blood stream and used
immediately by nerve cells for energy. Reduced carbohydrate intake
should thus reduce the brain’s source of energy. Therefore,
researchers hypothesized that diets low in carbohydrates would affect
cognitive skills

Washington Bailout Moves from Dumb to Dumber

From Net Gain Real Estate

http://tinyurl.com/5qguu4

It’s official: On December 1st, 2008 (one year late), The National Bureau of Economic Research, said the United States economy has been in recession since December 2007......

Meanwhile, executives who’ve mismanaged their corporations can look forward to the federal government providing tax dollars to bail them out. Additionally, those individuals with questionable credit who overextended themselves with mortgage debt can look forward to the federal government providing tax dollars to bail them out. Not to worry - the politicians who are overseeing all this tax money being used for bailouts are the same politicians that are responsible for the biggest monetary losses in the history of the planet.

Currently, the government appears to have a three-pronged approach to kick-start the economy: (1) Provide cheap mortgages to avoid foreclosures. (2) Keep poorly run companies afloat to avoid increased unemployment. (3) Provide government supported jobs to fix America’s infrastructure. All warm, fuzzy, feel good programs. Meanwhile, there is no mention of creating civilian jobs supported by well run companies that make products which are in demand.

Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening

Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound's the sweep
Of the easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark, and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

by: Robert Frost

Loopy - Web Personalities

Loopy's messages are incomprehensible to all but himself. Loopy is easily aroused and exuberant in battle and fearlessly flings himself at any Warrior - even Kung-Fu Master. Loopy's main weapons consist of a disarming array of nonsequiturs, tautologies, and bizarre metaphors, which can often gain him an advantage in the initial stages of an attack. Combatants very quickly realize, however, that Loopy is a certifiable nut case and generally avoid further engagement. Jerk and Evil Clown revel in egging Loopy on for their own amusement. CAUTION: Loopy cannot be defeated with conventional weapons - any response to his attacks will provoke a fusillade of incoherent messages, so Loopy is best left undisturbed.

Being High Maintenance, not Bitchy -Where it's more about class, than titties and ass

http://highmaintenancewoman.blogspot.com/

High maintenance site on economizing:

Holiday season is full of parties and chances to dress up. However, buying a new holiday party dress can be quite expensive and fill your closet with dresses that you only wear once a year. Instead of splurging this year on yet another fancy Christmas and NYE dress, why not spruce up one of your go-to dresses with some new jewelery? Accessorizing is the classic way to revamp that old LBD, or to glam-up semi-formal clothes into something special.

About the High maintenance blog writer:

I like shopping, clubbing, doritos, skirts with pockets, Pookie from Garfield, waffles, sleeping till noon, the ocean.I dislike morning people, line budgers, celery, nylon, ugg boots, and camel toe.


The good news: she doesn't have your charge card.

"A Change is gonna come!"

From Reggie Middleton (http://tinyurl.com/6bejzb):

Tribune filed for bankruptcy today. This, by a very smart man who sold his $12 billion commercial and residential real estate portfolio at the very tippy top of the CRE bubble, only to be sucked into another bubble bursting. The Tribue Cos. have sold off a lot of assets, fired a lot of professionals and cut back on a lot of production....they are much lesser a producer of actual original content and will shrink further as time goes on.

....the advertising model (as it stands) is flawed with the advent of free flowing information on the Internet and extreme cycles in our economy that are bound to introduce significant volatility in ad spending and revenues (I'm sure Mr. Zell can attest to that). I believe it is time to retool in order to create content that people are willing to pay for, but that content has to be A) truly useful and value added, or B) truly entertaining, and not a bunch of stereotypical fluff.

People are still willing to pay for things, even with the Internet in full boom. They pay to go to the movies, they pay for my blog, some of us even paid to get Bush out of office. People will pay if they believe they are getting true value for their dollar. I have paid for Calculated Risk ...Roubini's site, and ignore the ads. I pay .... because I believe they offer quality content that is worth more than I am paying.

Chapter 11 is the right road for US carmakers

Financial Times By Joseph Stiglitz

http://tinyurl.com/5z89kj

The debate about whether or not to bail out the Big Three carmakers has been mischaracterised. It has been described as a package to help the undeserving dinosaurs of Detroit. In fact, a plan to bail out the carmakers would benefit shareholders and bondholders as much as anybody else. These are not the people that need help right now. In fact they contributed to the problem.

Financial markets are supposed to allocate capital and monitor that it is used to good effect. They are supposed to be rewarded when they do that job well, but bear the consequences when they fail. The markets failed. Wall Street’s focus on quarterly returns encouraged the short-sighted behaviour that contributed to their own demise and that of America’s manufacturing, including the automotive industry. Today, they are asking to escape accountability. We should not allow it.

What needs to be done is to help the automakers get a fresh start and allow them to focus on producing good cars rather than trying to juggle their books to meet past obligations.

Rebel without a Clue - Web Personality Types

Rebel Without a Clue's deep seated and infantile hostility to authority motivates his random and seemingly gratuitous attacks on list owners, Admins, Nannies or anyone else who attempts to maintain order and civility in discussion forums. Differing markedly from Rebel Leader, he is unattached to any cause other than petulance for its own sake, and will therefore seldom inspire general insurrection. In his frequent and ineffectual attacks on the established order he will often cite the Bible, or the US Constitution to support incoherent arguments. Rebel Without a Clue NEVER reads forum FAQs , and loudly decries as fascism any enforcement whatsoever of forum rules.

Cheech and Chong Indicator

Cheech and Chong are a dope-smoking comedy duo from the 1970s.

As it turns out, there's a pretty strong correlation between Cheech & Chong's career arc and structural and cyclical bear markets. So it should come as no surprise that Cheech & Chong recently announced that, after 25 years, they're reuniting for a tour and a possible new feature film. There you have it: The Minyanville Cheech & Chong Indicator says the market has not bottomed.

http://tinyurl.com/5qgbd8

The Worst Car in Creation

Competition is tough for The Worst Car in Creation, but the Yugo easily trumps the others for unadulterated incompetence and unintentional hilarity.

The subcompact car was based on the Fiat 127 and 128 - not a good move it you intend to build a car for the ages, or even just something with 4 wheels and an engine. You might say the only thing wrong with the Yugo was everything.

Callers to “Click and Clack," the Tappet Brothers' radio show on NPR, summed up the Yugo experience like this:

“The Yugo’s first stop after the showroom was the service department: ‘Fill ‘er up and replace the engine!’”

Another caller said, “I once test drove a Yugo, during which the radio fell out, the gear shift knob came off in my hand, and I saw daylight through the strip around the windshield.”


www.minyanville.com/articles/index.php?a=18395

Cutting back on expenses? Perfect Generic Therapy Substitute

Do you suffer from boredom,
depression, anxiety, malaise, stress and/or fatigue? If so, you could
benefit from a daily dose of Toy Therapy. Hang the package up in your
home or office and when you feel one of the symptoms, simply tear open
the corresponding area on the package and be temporarily distracted by
the small novelty prize inside. Cheaper and more fun than actual
therapy! Six plastic prizes in each 7-1/2" x 10-1/4" package.

Meatball Bubble Gum - Gift for Idea for Xmas

These meatball-shaped, bubble gum flavored gumballs are super tasty and
extra chewy. If you don’t believe us, just look on the back of each
package where Manny the Meatball proclaims, “Atsa chewy meatball.” How
can you doubt the emphatic assertion of a talking meatball?

http://www.mcphee.com/items/11898.html

Web Personality Types -Therapist

Discussion forums on the web have created new kinds of bizarre behavior. Flaming is the most obvious example. Flaming is the hostile and insulting interaction between Internet users.

Therapist can be a highly annoying and therefore very effective Warrior. Instead of making a frontal attack, Therapist attempts to shift the focus of the conflict to the combatants' psychological motivations and problems. He will freely speculate about other Warriors' insecurities, personalities and relationships, but he will almost never directly engage the subject of the dispute.

http://redwing.hutman.net/~mreed/index.htm

Unintended Consequences of "Worthy" Laws

In the New York Times, Stephen Dubner and Steven Levitt offered a few potent examples. One study that examined the effect of the Endangered Species Act found that property owners who suspected their land might attract protected species rushed to clear-cut the trees (despite low timber prices) to avoid losing their investments.

Another study found that employment of disabled people actually fell after the Americans with Disabilities Act was adopted, because employers -- afraid they wouldn't be able to discipline or dismiss an incompetent worker who happened to be disabled -- stopped hiring them altogether. This isn't to say these weren't worthy laws, only that they can engender unintended results.

from Laura Rowley

http://tinyurl.com/6bcyqv

Advice: Don't go to a nightclub with a gun.:)

Giants wide receiver Plaxico Burress will face weapons charges after shooting himself in the leg at a nightclub Friday night. Burress is one in a long list of professional athletes making news in the last few years that contained the words nightclub and gun. These situations happen so frequently that it must almost be statistically significant.

If these guys removed their gun from the equation I suspect there would be less shooting. If they did not go to the nightclub, then the odds of gun trouble would diminish greatly. But for some reason they want to go to nightclubs, and when they go they want to take a gun. Maybe they can't help themselves?

Market participants do things in their portfolios that are the equivalent of going to a nightclub with a gun. This can include intentionally lopsided bets, panicking out at the bottom, panicking in at the top, getting talked into doing something by reading an article or listening to someone on TV.

Everyone goes to a nightclub now and then, but if you don't go often and you don't
take your gun with you, you're probably going to have fewer problems in your portfolio.

R. Nusbaum

http://tinyurl.com/59txyr

Dowdification

Dowdification defined by www.samizdata.net

Used as noun or verb. The willful omission of one or more

words so the meaning of the statement is no longer understood but that
the statement suits the needs of the writer in launching an ad hominem
attack whether or not the construction is truthful or grammatically
complete.

Named after Maureen Dowd, based on her manufacture of a quote attributed to President Bush in her May 14, 2003 column (as first reported by Robert Cox on TheNationalDebate.com).

The term and the practice are often found in the Blogosphere.

(Coined by James Taranto)

Graphing Malware

Graphing Malware - Netsky.AD vs Buchon
Author(s):
Ero Carrera, Gergely Erdelyi
Institution:
F-Secure Corporation
Year:
2004
URL:
http://tinyurl.com/58o24
Project Description:
Windows binary malware has come a long way. Today's average worm is often tens or hundreds of kilobytes of code exhibiting a level of complexity that surpasses even some operating systems. This degree of complexity, coupled with the overwhelming flow of new malware, calls for improvements to tools and techniques used in analysis.

Tree

tree
Author(s):
Christian Riekoff
Institution:
(unknown)
Year:
2004
URL:
http://www.texone.org/tree/tree.php?id=applet
Project Description:
tree is a translation program. the simulation of real space by software as a starting point and basic question characterizes the search for an algorithm (design specification) which illustrates a real tree. tree interprets each html page as a design specification; the html space determines the algorithm and generates the visual world of the translation beyond simulation.

visualcomplexity.com | Ecotonoha

Ecotonoha is a project to nurture a virtual tree collaboratively, and at the same
time contribute to the actual environment to cope with global warming.
As one makes Ecotonoha's leaves, by leaving a message on the virtual
tree, it keeps on growing. And as Ecotonoha grows, real trees will be
planted by NEC.


.