Make a Donation to Uncle Sam.:)

https://www.pay.gov/paygov/forms/formInstance.html?nc=1271991815942&agencyFormId=23779454

Sound like too much work?

 http://whitecollarfraud.blogspot.com/p/advice.html

From White Collar Fraud by Sam Antar:


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's rules for spotting potential fraud in public companies.

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.

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.

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

Always crosscheck disclosures.
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.

USA - A Banana Republic With No Bananas

Experts on third world banana republics from the IMF and the Federal Reserve have said the U.S. has become a third world banana republic .

Are they right?

click A Banana Republic With No Bananas

Do you know where your weiners are?

Rising Threat of Infections Unfazed by Antibiotics

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/27/business/27germ.html


By ANDREW POLLACK

A minor-league pitcher in his younger days, Richard Armbruster kept playing baseball recreationally into his 70s, until his right hip started bothering him. Last February he went to a St. Louis hospital for what was to be a routine hip replacement.

By late March, Mr. Armbruster, then 78, was dead. After a series of postsurgical complications, the final blow was a bloodstream infection that sent him into shock and resisted treatment with antibiotics.

Herbert Spencer

"A jury is composed of twelve men of average ignorance."


"The ultimate result of shielding men from the effects of folly, is to fill the world with fools."


"Objects we ardently pursue bring little happiness when gained; most of our pleasures come from unexpected sources."

Overlooked Reason

A Frequently Overlooked Reason for High Health Care Costs
JANUARY 22, 2010 · BY AUSTIN FRAKT ·

Last week I received a call from my physician’s billing office. They wanted to know why they hadn’t received my balance of $5. I explained that the answer was quite simple. I had only received the bill two weeks prior, and the balance wasn’t due for another two weeks. This is information they should have on file.

Nevertheless, I had already sent the check. Were they to patiently wait until it was actually due they would likely find that they had already received it.

Then I asked why they were bothering to follow up on a $5 payment. “Just procedure,” I was told, “We’ll send you another bill.”

And I will ignore it. If this is the effort taken to collect a balance that isn’t overdue, to what lengths, I wonder, will they go to collect $5 that hadn’t actually been paid. Now I almost wish I hadn’t mailed that check just to find out.

The perverse incentives of hospital bill collection…

often capricious and arbitrary

It is true that memory is not an automatic reckoner. Above all, it is never disinterested. Not infrequently it expels or drives into a dark corner episodes not convenient to the vital instinct that controls it—usually ambition. But this is a matter for “psychoanalytic” criticism, which is sometimes very ingenious and instructive, but more often capricious and arbitrary.

L.T.

final wishes

"Iceland's last wish: to have its ashes scattered all over Europe" -- market analyst

roethke

The river turns on itself,
The tree retreats into its own shadow.
I feel a weightless change, a moving forward
As of water quickening before a narrowing channel
When banks converge, and the wide river whitens;
Or when two rivers combine, the blue glacial torrent

The indecent foreign dance called the Waltz was introduced ... at the English Court on Friday last ... It is quite sufficient to cast one's eyes on the voluptuous intertwining of the limbs, and close compressure of the bodies ... to see that it is far indeed removed from the modest reserve which has hitherto been considered distinctive of English females. So long as this obscene display was confined to prostitutes and adulteresses, we did not think it deserving of notice; but now that it is ... forced on the respectable classes of society by the evil example of their superiors, we feel it a duty to warn every parent against exposing his daughter to so fatal a contagion.

- The Times of London, 1816

Take the issue of money--always a good place to begin with things American.

What do professors want?

Thomas C. Reeves

http://www.mercatornet.com/articles/view/what_do_professors_want/


The shady groves of academe have cachet as a home address, but the pay is lousy, the prestige is negligible, and the power is derisory.

Polls and studies have shown consistently that professors, especially in the humanities and social sciences, side with the Left in political and cultural matters. So do public schoolteachers, whose unions are major contributors to the Democratic Party. This bias contrasts sharply, of course, with the dispassionate search for truth that scholars and teachers claim to revere. There are many reasons, no doubt, for the bent shown by professors in the humanities and social sciences, but the most obvious, it seems to me, is envy. A history professor for 40 years, I have felt this prominent member of the Seven Deadly Sins myself, many times. Let us consider three aspects of this thesis.

Money

A team of thieves that broke into an abandoned missile silo not far from the Russian city of Kostroma in search of nonferrous metals was shocked to find the shaft packed with Soviet money bills, Regnum news agency reported on Tuesday.

a white parasol

"A fellow will remember a lot of things you wouldn't think he'd remember. You take me. One day, back in 1896, I was crossing over to Jersey on the ferry, and as we pulled out, there was another ferry pulling in, and on it there was a girl waiting to get off. A white dress she had on. She was carrying a white parasol. I only saw her for one second. She didn't see me at all, but I'll bet a month hasn't gone by since that I haven't thought of that girl."

From Citizen Kane

The black bird

Kasper Gutman: You're a close-mouthed man?
Sam Spade: Nah, I like to talk.
Kasper Gutman: Better and better. I distrust a close-mouthed man. He generally picks the wrong time to talk and says the wrong things. Talking's something you can't do judiciously, unless you keep in practice.
[sits back]
Kasper Gutman: Now, sir. We'll talk, if you like. I'll tell you right out, I am a man who likes talking to a man who likes to talk.
Sam Spade: Swell. Will we talk about the black bird?

Film Noir

Joel Cairo: You always have a very smooth explanation...
Sam Spade: What do you want me to do, learn to stutter?

Sunset Boulevard

Betty Schaefer: I've been hoping to run into you.
Joe Gillis: What for? To recover that knife you stuck in my back?

Movie dialogue

Quinlan: Come on, read my future for me.
Tanya: You haven't got any.
Quinlan: What do you mean?
Tanya: Your future is all used up.

Paradise?

From http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2010/04/explaining_soci.html

I'm now finishing up a new introduction for a reissue of Eugen Richter's Pictures of the Socialistic Future.  In writing it, I identified three distinct answers to the question: "How could a movement founded to liberate workers from capitalist oppression end up shooting them in the back when they tried to flee the Workers' Paradise?"

1. The Actonian "power corrupts" story

2. The Hayekian "worst get on top" story

3. The Richterian "born bad" story

Cost effective wireless medicine?

Remote Health Care: Body Parts Make Phone Calls
Facing saturated markets, cellular carriers are jumping into the revolution of mobile technology that identifies and acts on medical problems

By Kerry Capell

An estimated 60% of health-care expenses go toward treating diseases such as diabetes or heart failure, says Donald Casey, CEO of West Wireless Health Institute, a nonprofit medical research group in La Jolla, Calif. "These diseases can be better managed through the use of simple wireless sensors that are inexpensive to manufacture," he adds. Congestive heart failure, the leading cause of hospital admission in the U.S., is an example. Poor control of the disease, the New England Journal of Medicine found last year, means that some 27% of patients are readmitted to hospital within 30 days of treatment, costing $10 billion annually. By monitoring patients at home using mobile technology, doctors can spot irregular heart rhythms and adjust treatment, potentially avoiding rehospitalization.

http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/10_15/b4173054256568.htm

Epictetus (55 AD - 135 AD)

First say to yourself what you would be; and then do what you have to do.

If you do not wish to be prone to anger, do not feed the habit; give it nothing which may tend to its increase.

Make the best use of what is in your power, and take the rest as it happens.

Falls Among the Elderly: Key is Prevention, Not Detection

Audrey Kinsella reports:

Falls are the greatest risk to good, maintained health for millions of elderly Americans living at home today. Figures on numbers of fractures, debilitating episodes, and very high costs for all of these incidents speak volumes about this widespread problem. One response: the occasional fanfare about wellness programs for seniors, and exercise and Tai Chi classes, among other self improvement classes marketed for them as if they were young and nimble adults.

Yes, these help. But keep in mind: program participants are among the 5500 Americans who turn 65 years old each day, many of whom also need a watchful eye and other assistance to live safely in their own homes—hands down the preferred place of residence by the elderly.

Click link for complete article:


http://www.informationfortomorrow.com/community/0310Falls.htm