California Dreaming

http://tinyurl.com/272bj4q




California is trying to service obligations and a population in fiscal year 2011, with a workforce last seen in the year 2000. That is grim.

.
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California government: Brown wants to complete budget agreement in 60 days - latimes.com:  

California State Treasurer Bill Lockyer

'So far, I've heard good ideas about how to spend more money. Great. It ain't there. It's time to make cuts, I believe deep cuts,' Lockyer said. 'I'd do the 25% across the board and just say those who wanted less government, you're going to get your wish.'

On the other hand

In 1952, Noah S. “Soggy” Sweat, Jr., a member of the Texas House of Representatives, was

asked about his position on whiskey. Here’s how he answered:

If you mean whiskey, the devil’s brew, the poison scourge, the bloody monster that

defiles innocence, dethrones reason, destroys the home, creates misery and poverty, yea,

literally takes the bread from the mouths of little children; if you mean that evil drink

that topples Christian men and women from the pinnacles of righteous and gracious

living into the bottomless pit of degradation, shame, despair, helplessness, and

hopelessness, then, my friend, I am opposed to it with every fiber of my being.

However, if by whiskey you mean the oil of conversation, the philosophic wine, the

elixir of life, the ale that is consumed when good fellows get together, that puts a song in

their hearts and the warm glow of contentment in their eyes; if you mean Christmas

cheer, the stimulating sip that puts a little spring in the step of an elderly gentleman on a

frosty morning; if you mean that drink that enables man to magnify his joy, and to forget

life’s great tragedies and heartbreaks and sorrow; if you mean that drink the sale of

which pours into Texas treasuries untold millions of dollars each year, that provides

tender care for our little crippled children, our blind, our deaf, our dumb, our pitifully

aged and infirm, to build the finest highways, hospitals, universities, and community

colleges in this nation, then my friend, I am absolutely, unequivocally in favor of it. This

is my position, and as always, I refuse to compromise on matters of principle.

|| Dummy Text Generator | Lorem ipsum for webdesigners ||

|| Dummy Text Generator | Lorem ipsum for webdesigners ||: "Far far away, behind the word mountains, far from the countries Vokalia and Consonantia, there live the blind texts. Separated they live in Bookmarksgrove right at the coast of the Semantics, a large language ocean. A small river named Duden flows by their place and supplies it with the necessary regelialia. It is a paradisematic country, in which roasted parts of sentences fly into your mouth. Even the all-powerful Pointing has no control about the blind texts it is an almost unorthographic life One day however a small line of blind text by the name of Lorem Ipsum decided to leave for the far World of Grammar."

Seth’s blog » Blog Archive » Chinese Economics Joke

Seth’s blog 

Person A to Person B: “See that piece of shit? If you eat it I’ll give you 100 million yuan.”

Person B eats the shit.

But Person A doesn’t want to give him 100 million yuan. He says to Person B: “How about I eat shit too? Then we’ll be even.”

Person B agrees.

Person A eats some shit. “Now we’re even,” he says.

They have just increased GDP by 200 million yuan.

TSA is still fighting hard see you naked, but ....

http://tinyurl.com/28rly57: "But even more scary than that is the article notes that the TSA admits that it's really bad at finding weapons, saying that the 'failure rate' of tests is reaching 70% at some major airports and at some airports 'every test gun, bomb part or knife got past screeners.' So, while scanners are looking at or touching your crotch, they're apparently not bothering to look for guns. Comforting."

theory ages badly.

When a theory of aging ages badly.- PubMed result:
Lapointe J, Hekimi S.

Department of Biology, McGill University
According to the widely acknowledged mitochondrial free radical theory of aging (MFRTA), the macromolecular damage that results from the production of toxic reactive oxygen species (ROS) during cellular respiration is the cause of aging. However, although it is clear that oxidative damage increases during aging, the fundamental question regarding whether mitochondrial oxidative stress is in any way causal to the aging process remains unresolved. An increasing number of studies on long-lived vertebrate species, mutants and transgenic animals have seriously challenged the pervasive MFRTA.

Neighbors

A Russian peasant's cow died suddenly  The great spirit came down from heaven and granted the peasant one wish in compensation.  The peasant said, "Let my neighbors cow die too."

Coffins Go High-Tech

Coffins Go High-Tech With Touchscreens For Full Customization

Must be grim work, assembling coffins in a factory that churns out 1,100 daily. That's a lot of dead bodies.Batesville Casket Company, in Manchester, Tennessee, offers touchscreen computers to customers for choosing from 22 colors, plus all the trimmings.

The Big Picture

The Big Picture: "Google Maps Foreclosure Listings

1. Punch in any US address into Google Maps.

2. Your options are Earth, Satellite, Map, Traffic and . . . More. (Select “More”)

3. The drop down menu gives you a check box option for “Real Estate.”

4. The left column will give you several options (You may have to select “Show Options”)

5. Check the box marked “Foreclosure.”"

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

"When asked how certain he was that QE2 would work, Bernanke replied: '100%!'

Czeslaw Milosz's The Captive Mind:

'When someone is honestly 55% right, that’s very good and there’s no use wrangling. And if someone is 60% right, it’s wonderful, it’s great luck, and let him thank God. But what’s to be said about 75% right? Wise people say this is suspicious. Well, and what about 100% right? Whoever say he’s 100% right is a fanatic, a thug, and the worst kind of rascal.'"

New NASA model: Doubled CO2 means just 1.64°C warming • The Register

NASA says that current climate models predicting global warming are far too gloomy, and have failed to properly account for an important cooling factor which will come into play as CO2 levels rise.

According to Lahouari Bounoua of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, and other scientists from NASA and the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), existing models fail to accurately include the effects of rising CO2 levels on green plants. As green plants breathe in CO2 in the process of photosynthesis – they also release oxygen, the only reason that there is any in the air for us to breathe – more carbon dioxide has important effects on them."

Did Bernanke Pull a Fast One Last Night?

"The fact is that the Fed is buying something quite tangible – Treasury securities – with something that they create with the simple press of a key and, while this may not have been such a big deal over the many decades that it took to buy the first $800 billion in U.S. debt, the thought of continuing to do this to raise their total holdings to over $3 trillion in a stretch of a little over two years is what really has people freaked out."


http://goo.gl/pnDXg

The Government's Extralegal Pursuit Of Wikileaks Is A Blow To Democracy

"The leaders of Myanmar and Belarus, or Thailand and Russia, can now rightly say to us “You went after Wikileaks’ domain name, their hosting provider, and even denied your citizens the ability to register protest through donations, all without a warrant and all targeting overseas entities, simply because you decided you don’t like the site. If that’s the way governments get to behave, we can live with that.”"

http://goo.gl/SX1XT

Massive war rodents 'like to lick your finger'

US ARMY prepares force of GIGANTIC BOMB RATS
Massive war rodents 'like to lick your finger'
By Lewis Page
Posted in Science, 25th November 2010 11:08 GMT

US military combat rodent operations, Pentagon considering deployment of crack units composed of highly trained, enormous bomb rats .
The rats in question - African Giant Pouched Rats- are highly trained to sniff out explosives. They have an advantage over the sniffer dogs sometimes employed on such tasks as, typically weighing less, they aren't as prone to set off mines and booby traps as they work.

I'll just confuse them.

Eisenhower knew he had to say something ..., but he meant to convey as little as possible. His press conferences, notorious for obfuscation and mangled syntax, were not so artless .... his Press Secretary James Hagerty asked what he would say about the sticky Formosa Straits issue. Eisenhower: "Don't worry, Jim. If tha...t question comes up I'll just confuse them.

Christmas Tradition

“The one thing I remember about Christmas was that my father used to take me out in a boat about ten miles offshore on Christmas Day, and I used to have to swim back. Extraordinary. It was a ritual. Mind you, that wasn't the hard part. The difficult bit was getting out of the sack.” John Cleese

Study: No Reason to Pay Realtor Commissions When Selling a House - It's Your Money - TIME.com

There's an assumption that the 6% typically paid in realtor commissions on a home sale is worth it because the seller will command a higher price than if he'd gone the "for sale by owner" route. But a trio of academics who researched years of home sales says that this assumption is false. In fact, they discovered that owner sellers got higher sales prices than owners who involved—and paid a commission to—real estate agents.

One of the researchers, Aviv Nevo, a marketing professor at the Kellogg School of Management, econ professor at Northwestern, offers this main eye-opening conclusion:

"Our key finding is that Realtors do not offset the cost of their commission; they do not get you a higher price."

http://goo.gl/NF62k

Prescience of a 1953 TV Ad - Ptak Science Books

http://tinyurl.com/2an6e73

The Myth of the Rational Voter: Why Democracies Choose Bad Policies

Caplan asserts voters are not simply ignorant but irrational, and this is predicted by  economic theory. Voting is not like shopping - it is more like making use of a commons, because the costs of a "bad" vote are borne by the public at large, and the chance of an individual casting the deciding vote is tiny. Therefore, people will vote for what makes them feel good without bothering to find out whether it really is good.





Amazon.com: The Myth of the Rational Voter: Why Democracies Choose Bad Policies

www.amazon.com
Amazon.com: The Myth of the Rational Voter: Why Democracies Choose Bad Policies

Flattery gets people what they want, and research proves it.

Despite negative connotations, studies suggest no office compliment is too great. Jennifer Chatman of UC Berkeley set out to find a point at which flattery became ineffective, but she couldn't find one.  

Financial Times' Lucy Kellaway put this theory to a test:

"I picked on six colleagues, each of whom had recently written something that I admired, and plied them with praise in increasing quantity.

"I waylaid my subject, and started: “I much enjoyed your piece on ‘xx’,” and then proceeded to phase two: “I mean it was incredibly clever/original/funny/fascinating,” and from there to: “In fact it was by far the best thing that I’ve read in the newspaper – or anywhere – ever.” I finished off with: “I just don’t know how you do it. You are a total genius.”"

As the compliments increased in intensity, her colleagues' smiles grew wider.  Half even returned the compliment; Kellaway was shocked to find herself "inexplicably willing to take them at face value," even though colleagues were just being polite.

"I can, therefore, confirm that the theory is resoundingly, astoundingly true. If it works with cynical journalists, whose job it is to spot false notes, it will work with anyone," Kellaway writes.

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/the-line-between-sucking-up-and-complimenting-there-isnt-one-2010-10#ixzz12xGGXXv4

Ooops

At de Gaulle’s funeral, Nixon remarked, “This is a great day for France.”

"Somebody broke into my house!"

Renters in a Florida home apparently in foreclosure came home from the beach to find the locks changed -- and some of their possessions stolen. And a Sarasota landlord, the Herald Tribune reports, said Bank of America tried to change the locks on her condominium three times, even though she said the building wasn't even in foreclosure -- an often lengthy process that usually involves a default notice, a scheduled auction and, finally, a bank repossession.

As the Herald Tribune notes, the legal action against lock-changers has been civil, not criminal, because lawyers cannot establish that the banks have criminal intent. Still, it appears that the banks' agents take illegal liberties: In the rented Florida home, lock-changers reportedly stole a laptop, an mp3 player and six bottles of wine.

The Postal Service’s ability to lose mail is legendary:

Last week the American Postal Workers Union had to postpone their national election of officers because so many of the ballots were lost in the mail.

Hard Puzzle.:)

Polar Bear In A Snowstorm Puzzle

The Toronto Zoo worked with Lowe Roche to create these polar bear puzzles, available for $7 in their gift shop.

The candle makers demand trade protection

Frederic Bastiat's 'Petition of the Candle Makers'. The sun's 'unfair trade advantage' needs to be curtailed !

We are suffering from the ruinous competition of a rival who apparently works under conditions so far superior to our own for the production of light that he is flooding the domestic market with it at an incredibly low price; for the moment he appears, our sales cease, all the consumers turn to him, and a branch of French industry whose ramifications are innumerable is all at once reduced to complete stagnation. This rival, which is none other than the sun, is waging war on us so mercilessly we suspect he is being stirred up against us by perfidious Albion (excellent diplomacy nowadays!), particularly because he has for that haughty island a respect that he does not show for us.”


Hat tip to Mish

"The evidence doesn't matter, the proof doesn't matter, due process doesn't matter"

When Jason Grodensky bought his modest Fort Lauderdale home last December, he paid cash. But seven months later, he was surprised to learn that Bank of America had foreclosed on the house, even though Grodensky did not have a mortgage.

http://goo.gl/FSVv

modern day bread lines

a stunning admission by none other than the CEO of Walmart on what modern day bread lines look like. To wit:

 

Profits And Baby Formula – Our pal, Rich Yamarone, over at Bloomberg picked up an eye-opening statement made by the Wal-Mart CEO last week.

 

I don't need to tell you that our customer remains challenged…You need not go farther than one of our stores on midnight at the end of the month. And it's real interesting to watch, about 11 p.m. customers start to come in and shop, fill their grocery basket with basic items – baby formula, milk, bread, eggs – and continue to shop and mill about the store until midnight when government electronic benefits cards get activated, and then the checkout starts and occurs. And our sales for those first few hours on the first of the month are substantially and significantly higher.

Talk about shopping only for necessities. The mid-night trip for baby formula says it all.

Smart Greek Dude

"A nation that makes a great distinction between its scholars and its
warriors will have its laws made by cowards and its wars fought by
fools."
—

Thucydides


"Some legislators only wish to vengeance against a particular enemy.
Others only look out for themselves. They devote very little time on
the consideration of any public issue. They think that no harm will
come from their neglect. They act as if it is always the business of
somebody else to look after this or that. When this selfish notion is
entertained by all, the commonwealth slowly begins to decay. "
—

Thucydides

"In general, the men of lower intelligence won out. Afraid of their own
shortcomings and of the intelligence of their opponents, so that they
would not lose out in reasoned argument or be taken by surprise by
their quick-witted opponents, they boldly moved into action. Their
enemies,on the contrary, contemptuous and confident in their ability to
anticipate, thought there was no need to take by action what they could
win by their brains."
—

Thucydides

Groucho for President

Wives are people who feel they don't dance enough.

I remember the first time I had sex - I kept the receipt.

I find television very educating. Every time somebody turns on the set, I go into the other room and read a book.

Greg Mankiw The Problem with Biofuels

Some people who oppose Pigovian taxes, such as a gasoline tax, say we should reduce our gasoline consumption by subsidizing substitutes, such as biofuels. A new CBO report estimates how expensive that is:

The costs to taxpayers of using a biofuel to reduce gasoline consumption by one gallon are $1.78 for ethanol and $3.00 for cellulosic ethanol.

Given the magnitude of that number, isn't it far better to tax gasoline and reduce income taxes than to subsidize biofuel, which in turn requires increasing taxes to pay for it?

Remembering George Carlin's "Stuff" Routine

Here's Why The Price Of A College Education Makes No Sense Anymore

“How can that be?” Hough asks rhetorically. “College degrees bring higher income, but at today’s cost they can’t make up the savings they consume and the debt they add early in the life of a typical student.”

As a well-heeled Manhattanite quipped recently, “Hey it’s gonna cost me $250,000 to send my kid to an Ivy League school. I’d rather just use the money to buy him a business, and let him figure it out in the real world.”

http://tinyurl.com/2w2uaek

Buying Green Makes You Do Bad Things

Buying Green Makes You Do Bad Things
The market for “green,” environmentally-friendly products is big and getting bigger. Buying these products certainly seems to make a segment of the buying public feel good about itself. But even aside from the debate over whether green products are truly good for the environment, there’s something else about all this do-gooding that just feels… bad.

Do green products really make us better people? Does engaging in a virtuous act of consumption build on itself, making us more socially-conscious, in turn encouraging virtuous behavior in other areas of our lives? Or does buying these products make us feel better — but, in reality, make us act worse?

According to a new study, set to be published in the journal Psychological Science, the answer is — unsurprisingly for those of us with a cynical disposition toward human nature — the latter. While mere exposure to green products may “prime” us to think about social consciousness and perhaps improve our behavior, if we actually buy a green product, we appear to take it as license to act like jerks.

http://www.smartmoney.com/spending/deals/buying-green-makes-you-do-bad-things/?hpadref=1

Why Throw Away Money On A Mortgage When You Can Rent?

http://goo.gl/5hUC


Consumer attitudes are changing on the “rent vs. buy” debate. When Mr. Twist and I sold in 2005 and moved into a rental, the usual response when we told friends was “Are you guys doing O.K.?” Now the usual response is “You were so smart to get out when you did.”

There is a far-reaching change occurring now which threatens housing markets around the country. A survey conducted by Harris Interactive for the National Apartment Association in May 2010 found that 76% of those surveyed now believe that renting is a better option than buying in the current real estate market, up from 71% in 2008. Especially sobering was the fact that 78% of those surveyed were homeowners.

physical attractiveness and a happy marriage

January 27, 2010

How important is physical attractiveness to a happy marriage?:

Physical appearance plays a crucial role in shaping new relationships, but does it continue to affect established relationships, such as marriage? In the current study, the authors examined how observer ratings of each spouse's facial attractiveness and the difference between those ratings were associated with (a) observations of social support behavior and (b) reports of marital satisfaction. In contrast to the robust and almost universally positive effects of levels of attractiveness on new relationships, the only association between levels of attractiveness and the outcomes of these marriages was that attractive husbands were less satisfied. Further, in contrast to the importance of matched attractiveness to new relationships, similarity in attractiveness was unrelated to spouses' satisfaction and behavior. Instead, the relative difference between partners' levels of attractiveness appeared to be most important in predicting marital behavior, such that both spouses behaved more positively in relationships in which wives were more attractive than their husbands, but they behaved more negatively in relationships in which husbands were more attractive than their wives. These results highlight the importance of dyadic examinations of the effects of spouses' qualities on their marriages. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2009 APA, all rights reserved)

Strip Mining the U.S. Economy :)

Guest Post: Strip Mining the U.S. Economy  naked capitalism

Aug. 6 (Bloomberg) -- Carrianne Howard dreamed of designing video games, so she enrolled in a program at the Art Institute of Fort Lauderdale, a for-profit college part-owned by Goldman Sachs Group Inc.

These days, Howard, 26, makes her living in a way that doesn’t require a college diploma: by stripping at the Lido Cabaret, a topless club in Cocoa Beach, Florida. “I didn’t know what else to do,” she says. “I’ve got a worthless degree. It’s like I didn’t attend school at all.”

BlindType - Touch typing the way it should be

BlindType - Touch typing the way it should be: " It is a revolutionary system that:

Eliminates touch typing frustrations

Allows for super sloppy typing

Constantly adjusts to the user's 'perceived' keyboard and typing style

Just type the way you are used to - no gestures, nothing new to learn!"

Lightening Kills Woman During Wedding Proposal Atop a NC Mountain

June 10th, 2010 - 8:47 pm ICT by Angela Kaye Mason -

After hiking to the top of North Carolina’s Max Patch Bald, Richard Butler took and engagement ring out of his pocket in preparation of asking Bethany Lott to marry him. Before the ring was out of his hand, however, a bolt of lightening zipped down from the skies, and instantly killed the bride to be.

Associated Press Interactive: AP Economic Stress Index

Associated Press Interactive: AP Economic Stress

ID-Ten-T Error

ID-Ten-T Error (also seen as ID10T and ID107) is a term often used by tech support operators and computer experts to describe a user error, a problem that is attributed to the user's ignorance instead of a software or hardware malfunction. It is a masked jab at the user: when ID-Ten-T is spelled out it becomes ID10T ("idiot").

Free Audio Books Online

free-books-audio

Please check out the Gizmo site- http://www.techsupportalert.com/  - for quality free software and services on the web.

• Free Children's Books Online
• Free Science Fiction & Fantasy Books Online
• Free Horror, Ghost & Gothic Books Online
• Free Romance Books Online
• Free Computer & Internet Books Online
• Free Mystery, Detective, Thriller & Crime (Fiction) Books Online
• Free "Westerns" Books Online
• Free Cooking Food & Wine Books Online
• Free Religion & Spirituality Books Online
• Free Health, Fitness & Medicine Books Online
• Free Biography, Autobiography & Memoir Books Online
• Free Travel Books Online
• Free History Books Online
• Free Business Books Online

Noble Lie

In politics a noble lie is a myth or untruth, often, but not invariably, of a religious nature, knowingly told by an elite to maintain social harmony, or the social position of that elite. The noble lie is a concept originated by Plato as described in The Republic. However, the concept has far greater scope and has been used by many commentators to talk about much more modern issues in politics (see Modern views, below). A noble lie, although it may benefit all parties, is different from a white lie since a white lie does not cause discord if uncovered whereas noble lies are usually of a nature such that they would do so.
The "noble lie" (also translated as "magnificent myth"[1]) is a fictional account that Plato gives for the origin of the three classes in his proposed republic. He talks of a stratified society, where the populace is told a tale of how all people are brothers born of the same mother-earth, but different kinds of people are constituted of different types of metal.[2]
Rulers have gold, auxiliaries have silver, and farmers have bronze and iron. Most children of rulers have gold, but some will have silver or bronze and would be demoted to lower classes, whereas some farmers or auxiliaries would be born with silver or gold and promoted.
Plato claimed that even though this tale would be literally false, if the people believed it, an orderly society would result as it would explain the origin and importance of the three classes. Thus it would serve the same function as other creation myths. This is his noble lie "gennaion pseudos" (although this two-word expression does not appear explicitly).[3]

YouTube - Robot learns to flip pancakes

YouTube - Robot learns to flip pancakes

Overconfidence Trick

All of us have a bias that reinforces a false belief in the certainty of what we believe to be true. It’s called the overconfidence effect. Basically, we construct a mental map in our minds of what is probable and what is improbable. Over time, these beliefs harden and become what is certain and what is certainly not. I got a true test of this in business school.

My professor asked us some off the wall question like how much does the earth weigh. After we wrestled with the question and wrote down our answers, he then asked us to put a 95% confidence interval around the answer. He said give me a range of numbers that you believe the earth’s weight is 95% certain to be in. We mulled this over and answered. Result? Our 95% confidence interval was wrong something like 40% of the time within the class. Why?

Basically, by asking us the first question: how much does the earth weigh and giving us a chance to think about it, our professor was secretly giving our little pea brains a chance to become overconfident. By the time he asked us the second question, we had become anchored to the first answer. Essentially, he asked us to think outside the box and the mix of our overconfidence and anchoring caused us to make catastrophically wrong answers.

That’s how humans work. And this was a 10-minute exercise. Just think if you spend your life looking at economic events and making predictions. The likelihood of your being anchored to a specific prediction is that much greater. Eventually, you become so overconfident about this prediction that you are willing to bet the farm on the outcome.

Read more: http://www.creditwritedowns.com/2010/03/michael-mauboussin-on-investor-psychology.html#ixzz0uMw8Cq1j

Silly Forecasters

The three types of forecasters about the the future of  financial markets, politics, or climate.

1. Those that don’t know.
2. Those that don’t know they don’t know.
3. Those that know they don’t know but get paid money to pretend they do.

The Trouble with Economics

http://pragcap.com/whats-wrong-with-economics

"Late one Friday night he was going down Broad Street and he saw this respectably dressed young man searching around under a street light. Curious, Trevor asked what was the problem. The fellow said that a Sir Grantley had slipped out of his wallet, and he was trying to find it. After a further minute or so of futile searching, Trevor said to the young man: “Let’s do this thing logically; exactly where were you standing when the $100 bill fell?” The young man pointed off into the darkness, 20 metres away."

Dumbfounded, Trevor asked the obvious: “But if the money dropped over there, why are you searching here?”

“Because this is where the light is”.

This, I submit, is how we often do economics. Our theories can’t deal with reality, so we ignore the real world and spend our time “testing” our theories.

High Cholesterol Food May Reduce Blood Pressure

Egg-Irony:
Researchers in Canada are reporting evidence that eggs - often frowned upon for their high cholesterol content - may reduce another heart disease risk factor - high blood pressure. They describe identification of egg proteins that act like a popular group of prescription medications in lowering blood pressure. The report appeared in the Feb. 11 issue of ACS' Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, a bi-weekly publication.
Read more »

Pick your favorite stormy music - Stormy Monday - John Mayall with Albert King

Pick your favorite stormy music - Stormy Monday Eva Cassidy

Pick your favorite stormy music - Etta James - Stormy Weather

Pick your favorite stormy music - T-Bone Walker - Call It Stormy Monday

Pick your favorite stormy music - Billie Holiday - Stormy Weather

Simply Simplistic

The terms artsy, arty and artsy-fartsy have negative connotations. If you don't want to insult writers, painters and artists, don't use the terms. Artistic is a better choice.

artsy –adjective, art·i·er, art·i·est. Informal .
1. Characterized by a showy, pretentious, and often spurious display of artistic interest, manner, or mannerism. 2. Showily or affectedly artistic.

These Foolish Things

Pick your favorite version and comment.

Etta James Version

Sinatra Version

Billie Holiday Version

Nat Cole Version

Ella Version

Self Portraits

Pick you favorite and comment.

Picasso

Kahlo

Van Gogh

Lotto

Velasquez

Durer

Rembrandt

Wall Street Business :)

Gender differences in response to a cheating threat

In a study of 300 heterosexual men and women, half the participants were primed for cheating by imagining a flirtatious conversation with someone they found attractive. The other half just imagined a routine encounter.

Afterward, the study subjects were asked to complete fill-in-the-blank puzzles like LO_AL and THR__T.
The word fragments were a psychological test to reveal subconscious feelings about commitment.

No pattern emerged among the participants who imagined a routine encounter, but differences among men and women who had entertained the flirtatious fantasy. The men were more likely to complete the puzzles with the neutral words LOCAL and THROAT. But the women who had imagined flirting were far more likely to choose LOYAL and THREAT, suggesting that the exercise had touched off subconscious concerns about commitment.

The pronounced difference in responses led the researchers to think women might have developed a kind of early warning system to alert them to relationship threats.

Did Plato predict our fate?

The excessive freedoms granted to the citizens of a democracy ultimately leads to a tyranny, the furthest regressed type of government. These freedoms divide the people into three socioeconomic classes: the dominating class, the capitalists and the commoners. Tensions between the dominating class and the capitalists causes the commoners to seek out protection of their democratic liberties. They invest all their power in their democratic demagogue, who, in turn, becomes corrupted by the power and becomes a tyrant with a small entourage of his supporters for protection and absolute control of his people.

The answer is?

Pin

Calculating the Rent Ratio

 Ilyce Glink | 

Calculating the Rent Ratio

The rent ratio is calculated by taking the purchase price of a home and dividing it by the annual rent of a home of similar size, shape and amenities, and located in the same neighborhood.
“In a market where a 3-bedroom home costs $500,000 to buy but $24,000 per year to rent, rent ratio is 21,” she explains.
“Experts vary in opinion where the tipping point is, but most agree its around 15. If the rent ratio is 15 or below, it makes more sense to buy a home rather than rent from a purely financial perspective,” she said. “The higher the ratio, the higher a housing price spike is needed in future years to justify the purchase price.”

The answer is . . .

The human mind cannot grasp the causes of phenomena in the aggregate. But the need to find these causes is inherent in man’s soul. And the human intellect, without investigating the multiplicity and complexity of the conditions of phenomena, any one of which taken separately may seem to be the cause, snatches at the first, the most intelligible approximation to a cause, and says: “This is the cause!”

-Leo Tolstoy

How to find red flags for possible fraud in plain sight

In order to find fraud, you have to spot "patterns of inconsistencies" in a company's public disclosures found in SEC filings, earnings conference calls, media interviews, trade journals, and other forums. In an interview with Fortune Magazine published on December 17, 2007, I listed the following rules:

INVESTOR BEWARE
Sam E.'s five rules for spotting potential fraud in public companies.

1. Study SEC filings yourself.
External auditors, audit committees, and Wall Street analysts cannot protect you from most fraud. Analysts often do not ask the important questions and are too quick to accept management's representations.

2. Read the footnotes first.
Tiny things can be huge. In the Crazy Eddie fraud, the change of a single word (from "purchase discounts and trade allowances are recognized when received" to "recognized when earned") allowed Sam E. to inflate the company's earnings in fiscal year 1987 by about $20 million.

3. Watch for inconsistencies.
If the CEO tells the press, "We are profitable," make sure the figures in the 10-Q back up the statement.

4. Always crosscheck disclosures.

5. Compare Management Discussion & Analysis in the current report with MD&A sections in past 10-Qs. Look for any changes in disclosure language.

Sound like too much work?

If you don't have the time or expertise to do the above, don't buy individual stocks. Stick with index funds.

Three questions

In his essay You and Your Research, Richard Hamming suggests that you ask yourself three questions:

1. What are the most important problems in your field?
2. Are you working on one of them?
3. Why not?

The question is

"When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean -- neither more nor less."
"The question is," said Alice, "whether you can make words mean so many different things."
"The question is," said Humpty Dumpty, "which is to be master - - that's all."

Sony shutting down Japanese floppy disk sales

Sony shutting down Japanese floppy disk sales

By Vladislav Savov 

Believe it or not, Sony managed to shift 12 million 3.5-inch floppy disks in Japan last year -- presumably to die-hard old schoolers. Alas, time waits for no one, and the venerable data transporter that started its life way back in 1981 is going to all but cease production by March of next year. ........... Ah well, the diskette goes the way of the cassette, guess that was predictable.