Marching Illini
I'm an alum of the University of Illinois Marching Illini: www.illinoisalumniband.org.
The real/current Marching Illini are at: http://bands.illinois.edu/MI/

What a great time and great memories... here are two of my fave photos of me and Gram from 1980, click to see a nice "big" 3x5 photo from back in the day:

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These last two, 1980 again, are the band running out of the tunnel to start our pregame, and then our "UI" formation at the end of pregame.

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Funny how my college photos look like some archival restoration project from the history channel or something. NOT! He he.

QOTD
"Ungawa!"
- Marching Illini at attention

Healthy Bribes
A better health care idea: rewarding people for healthy behaviors. Forbes has a nice story.

Healthy Bribes

Of course, with nabobs at the wheel, this so quickly gets flipped into punishing and controlling people... it's tough to design a solution when the administrators of said solution are so, well, lame.

As for following the European, socialist model...

QOTD
"I like Europe as well as anyone - as a place to drink delicious coffee and loaf around."
- Rich Karlgaard, Forbes op-ed
China Plays
Following the Forbes motif here, a nice, short story on investing in China, China Rocks.
ETF plays related, directly and indirectly, to China:
  • CUT - Global Timber index, betting on China's continued demand for paper/wood resources.
  • TAO - China real estate
  • FXI - the most popular direct China play... the author doesn't like this one because of its 50% reliance on financials
  • PGJ - another China play that hold US stock that derive the majority of their revenue from China... the author likes these better than FXI
  • PCY - emerging market bonds
ungawa... yow, bill

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