QOTD (that I heart)

"Every morning in Africa a gazelle wakes up. It knows it must run faster than the fastest lion, or it will be killed.
Every morning a lion wakes up. It knows it must run faster than the slowest gazelle, or it will starve to death.
It doesn't matter whether your are a lion or a gazelle.
When the sun comes up, you better start running."
- African proverb

run faster... yow, bill

Labels: qotd

I heart the WSJ. They fileted Robert Rubin on the front page today:


The best part of Rubin's fileting (fileted, fileting... why doesn't Firefox think these are words?) is that they just quote some stats and Rubin himself:

• Rubin's slice of the pie: $115M since 1999
• Citi's investors: At $8/share, they're down more than 80%... or, if you bought at $4, you've got a double, he he!
  
• Rubin was directly involved in the board's decision to ramp up Citi's risk profile in 2004-2005. Nice timing, Bob.
  
• Rubin sites a consultant report to the board that recommended additional risk-taking at Citi. Then, he throws up his hands saying that the board "can't run the risk book of a company."
  

QOTD

"Maybe there are things, in the context of the facts we knew then, we should have done differently."
- Robert Rubin on Citi... cha, ya think?

Rubin adds "Nobody was prepared for this." It'll be interesting to see history assign blame... W? Greenspan? Bernanke? Paulson? Capitalism? Greed? Sigh. Is there a more vacuous argument than "everyone is greedy" or "everyone is stupid".

Hey, capitalism is an adolescent, if that. Shit, democracy too, right? We're still tinkering. Capitalism, democracy, technology, modern life... we're just getting started. Freedom has its price. So, in that respect, I agree with Rubin... nobody was prepared and it's a difficult problem. So let's fix this up and make a different mistake next time. Done.

And can you smell the fear, the desperation?
Carl Icahn raises his stake in Yahoo

Nice call, Carl... catch that falling knife, buddy.
I wonder if any of these billionaires will actually lose everything... or enough to hurt more than just their pride.

QOTD2

"Everything looks the same."
- Peggy Noonan, on our "Great Depression 2" in Turbulence Ahead

It is eerie.
You turn on the tube, and it's depression, bailout, collapse...
You walk down the street and nothing...
We shall see.
I keep daydreaming of The Castle chockful 'o down-and-out friends and family... lots of penny ante Texas Hold 'Em. He he!
yahoo... yow, bill

Labels: investing, qotd

QOTD

"Anyone? Anyone?"
- Ben Stein in "Ferris Bueller's Day Off"

Movie: "Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed"
Review: 3 bill-stars (out of 5)... worth seeing
Site: www.expelledthemovie.com

This is old Ben Stein's movie about intelligent design and academia's intolerance. I knew that going in and hey, I'm on board that train. The movie reaches way beyond that though.

I enjoyed Stein asking scientists to explain how the first living cell popped out of the goo and watching them struggle and stammer. That's entertainment!

I also thought his emphasis on the loss of academic freedom in our system was excellent as well. He highlighted a number of scientists who have lost their gig due to a mere mention of intelligent design.

I really didn't like all the reaching though. Go:

1. The ominous "Be Very Frightened" music in the background, ala Frontline or Michael Moore. That sends the bullshit-o-meter right off the charts. I remember a ridiculous PBS/Frontline "documentary" on Cheney where they had this "Halloween 13" music in the background and Cheney is in the dark with the video paused as he's making some menacing facial gesture. Crap!
   
2. Why the hell is the movie so dark? Is that a money thing... they couldn't afford post-production or something?
3. Stein ends the movie by extrapolating darwinism to social darwinism to atheism and ultimately to things like nazism and eugenics. I guess, but that's exactly what the other side of the argument can say about religion. The extremes on both sides are horrific, so it's not very compelling argument.

This is a documentary in the fashion of the times... an attempt to exploit more than educate. I would rather have heard more tasty science stuff about intelligent design and irreducible complexity and intolerance in academia, etc.

I will give Ben Stein this leeway... the crackpots on the other side get a full airing and they do the same type of exploitation. Some guy named Dawson wrote "The God Delusion", and boom... he's on every talk show, selling a million copies of the thing. Stein interviews the guy, and he's foaming at the mouth. He's a self-parody. So, I see how Stein feels entitled to use similar tactics, but that doesn't mean I like it.

QOTD2

"Anything to belong"
- Marilyn Manson, "Rock is Dead"

Intolerance. Join the herd or pay the consequences. These are dominant themes in academia these days. I'm with Michael Crichton on this one (see his book "State of Fear"). Maybe it always has been... I don't know. The rabid reaction to anything "not evolution" is a carbon copy to today's zealous support of anything global warming. Opposing voices will not be tolerated. Same with politics.

Alas, I still have reading to do on evolution; this has been on my TODO list forever. I have to read more to cut through the noise. I certainly don't understand how evolution addresses things like irreducible complexity. For example, how the heck does a ladybug get this crazy retractable hardtop and the up and flies off with the thing: Awesome ladybug video

I know bullshit when I hear it though. I agree with a lot of what Stein says, but I didn't like his Michael Moore-esque methods of saying it. You lose credibility with me when you do that.

I hope (gulp) that, in the long-term, reason is a more powerful argument than emotion. I hope.
ladybug... yow, bill

Labels: 3stars, movies, qotd

Click on the nice chart below to see how many calories are burned during one hour at each exercise/activity:


Source: www.mayoclinic.com/health/exercise/SM00109

Of course, I'm smiling at that #1 calorie-burning activity... 986 calories for 1 hour of running at an 8 min/mile clip.
Smile!
run faster... yow, bill

Labels: marathon

I owe ya Moz... gol dang best flippin' video ever:




sooby sugar... yow, bill

Labels: fun, video

QOTD

"Pray as though everything depended on God.
Work as though everything depended on you."
- St. Augustine, quotdb.com link

Thanks for the help, Auggie.
peace... yow, bill

Labels: qotd

This is an absolutely dead on Quote-Of-The-Day for these turbulent economic times.

QOTD

"The way the system is supposed to work... people get into trouble, and the competent people then take over the assets from the incompetent people. And then you start over from a strength in the base, and you build again.

This time what they're doing is they're taking the assets away from the competent people, giving them to the incompetent people, and saying to the incompetent people, 'OK, now you can compete with the competent people... with their money!'

I mean this is terrible economics; this is outrageous economics... and you're weakening the whole system."
- Jim Rogers on capitalism and our (4 interview videos with the FT)

One more from Mr. Bow Tie on commodities: "That's the only place where you're going to make a lot of money in the next few years." He predicts big problems with inflation after the current crisis. He says that we've never had all the banks around the world printing money, in a coordinated fashion, like they are now.

Well, I'll be watching the trend, Mr. Bow Tie... looking for a wave to ride, baby.
buy high, sell higher... yow, bill

Labels: investing, qotd

QOTD

"Normally, people of your limited physical appeal makeup for it with an actual personality."
- Old school Cheers quote, Frazier to Lillith

he he... yow, bill

Labels: fun, qotd

Remembering John
John Sullivan was killed in Iraq 5 years ago today:

• www.williamt.com/johnsullivan/index.htm - a memorial page I did with John's brother Michael
  
• www.militarycity.com/valor/256917.html
• www.fallenheroesmemorial.com/oif/profiles/sullivanjohnr.html
  

John was Felecia's nephew. All I can say is John was a sweet guy; I remember and I won't forget.

It's eerie to my marrow how Iraq and Afghanistan aren't even on the radar these days. It wasn't even a blip during the election. Dang, man. We just elected a guy (Obama) who wanted to just pull out and lose. We just re-elected a senator in Illinois (Durbin) who bashed our own guys (story and video). And the dem leader in the Senate (Reid) declared "this war is lost" (story).

Shit. How did I ramp right into rant mode there? That's not the point.
The point is... I salute John for serving and losing his life in defense of our country.
I also salute W and General Petraeus for figuring it out (the "surge") and getting us on track to winning the war in Iraq.

Zombie Community

QOTD

"...big homes are sitting around unsold, turning America's shoreline drives and gated golf estates into zombie communities."
- WSJ today

With Castle BillSkull not selling, does that make me a zombie? Or is just the house a zombie?
Speaking of zombie communities...

You get it... crappy photo = impressionistic art shot. Ha!

Stock Market Woes
Well, on to what everyone is talking about... the crappy stock market, Great Depression 2, or whatever. The stock market numbers are as of today, Nov 15, 2008.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA or Dow 30) total return year-to-date (YTD) is -36%.
The low for the year is about 4% below where we are now. So, we were down 40% just a couple blips ago.

According to my excellent homey Yale Hirsch, godfather of the Stock Trader's Almanac:

• Since 1901, the worst year for the DJIA was 1931 at -52.7%
  
• 2nd worst year was 1903 at -37.7%
  
• Since 1950, the worst year was 2002 at -27.6%
• Just for grins, 4 of the top 10 worst years for the DJIA are related to the Great Depression: 1929 -23%, 1930 -33%, 1931 -53%, 1932 -22%, 1937 -33%
  

How do you like that "little dip" from 1929 to 1932? Here's a table for you (I wish blogger did tables)... let's say you've got a tidy stash of $10K in 1929, what would you have left at the end of 1932?

Year	Return	$10,000
1929	-17.2%	$8,280
1930	-33.8%	$5,481
1931	-52.7%	$2,593
1932	-23.1%	$1,994

So, your $10K was turned into $2K in 4 years, an ugly 80% clip. I don't know what's worse... the 80% haircut or that it was a 4 year-long haircut. He he. Remember these are year-end numbers, and I believe the bottom in 1932 was down 90% for the period.

The analysis is a little less, um, glum if you include the bookend years around those 4 crappy years. The bookends, 1928 and 1933, were really good years. In fact, 1928 and 1933 were the #3 and #2 best years, respectively, for the DJIA since 1901. Go time:

Year	Return	$10,000
1928	48.2%	$14,820
1929	-23.1%	$11,397
1930	-32.8%	$7,659
1931	-52.7%	$3,622
1932	-21.7%	$2,836
1933	66.7%	$4,728

So, that's about a 50% b-slap over 6 years. Much better... cough.
I don't have inflation/deflation numbers though, so I wonder how much deflation took place over that 6 years. I sort of assume $5K was worth more in 1933 than it was in 1928... but maybe not and probably not worth a lot more. I don't know.

Point #1: If we end up down around 40%, then this will be the 2nd worst year for the stock market in over a century.
Point #2: What goes down doesn't necessarily go right back up. I'm not digging up Japan's market numbers for you, but I believe that if you bought Japan 25 years ago, you're still underwater today.

Me? I'm in major investor education mode and trading my ass off.
I'm learning to be nimble, or "agile" as we say in the software biz.
Yes, agile. I like that. Buy high, sell higher. Short low, cover lower. F buy and hold.
and thank you john... yow, bill

PS - Almost forgot... movie review!

Movie: The Savages
Review: 3 bill-stars (3/5 bill-stars = worth watching)
Website: www.imdb.com/title/tt0775529
Notes: This is a tiny, little film. It stars Laura Linney and Phillip Seymour Hoffman, who are both excellent. It's about being middle-aged (gulp) and dealing with a parent ending up in a nursing home. So, it's not exactly a great date movie. Ha! It was just OK. While the acting was good, the whiny, complaining, anti-depressant snarfing main characters were very 2-D to me.

Labels: investing, movies, qotd

QOTD

"Complete crap"
- Washington DC school czar, Michelle Rhee, to those who say inner-city minority kids can't achieve in school

Michelle Rhee (over there to the right) is a hero (and pretty hot too), and someone who's efforts I really admire. She is trying to fix the Washington DC public school system... firing bad principals and teachers, fighting the teacher's union, and battling the feds and, well, seemingly everyone.

And maybe the most unique thing of all about Michelle Rhee... she actually sends her kids to school in the system she's trying to fix. Someone asked President-elect Obama where his kids would be going to school in DC... cha, not the public school system to which he is so fond of sending other people's kids.

This is a good WSJ story on her today: DC School Chief Scores Gains, Ruffles Feathers

QOTD2

"Only about 6% of the sophomores can read or do math on grade level"
- Washington DC high school performance (from above WSJ story)

6 percent performing at grade level! 6 percent!!!
Can you give me a fucking break and round that to zero?!?!

Of course, if you gave parents $10K to spend on any school they wanted, then you wouldn't need heroics. The problem of poor education (and violence) in our cities would be gone in a generation. It's called competition. It's called personal freedom and responsibility.
amen... yow, bill

Labels: politics, qotd

QOTD

"Everyone has an agenda. Except me."
- Michael Crichton

Michael Crichton died last week... here's his de facto/bland/generic obit in the WSJ: He Brought Science to Life. The WSJ can make any dead guy boring.

Crichton was success personified... author of a zillion books, "Jurassic Park", "ER", blah blah. My favorite Crichton books were "Andromeda Strain", "Disclosure", "Rising Sun", "Next", and "State of Fear". He had obviously figured out what would sell... rinse and repeat. I also read his autobiography "Travels"... a worthy read, but nothing astounding.

In "State of Fear", he focused on the woeful state of science these days. The state of fear or crisis is necessary these days (always?) for scientific research to be funded. Related, he also was passionate about exposing global warming: Aliens Cause Global Warming. I love that... aliens. He he.

QOTD2

"Environmentalism seems to be the religion of choice for urban atheists."
- Michael Crichton

I read Crichton
yow, bill

Labels: globalwarming, obit, qotd

That weird little dude up there wrote this about global warming in today's WSJ:


Man, read it.
You can read the emotional, overwrought other side as well: The Other A New Dawn

It's odd.
If that weird little dude can just convince a few people, start swaying public opinion toward the correct, scientific solution, and just get people to ask a few questions... then millions and millions and millions of people live.
If not, they don't.

Just read it, man.
There are too many "Quote of the Days" in there for me to choose.
qotd o plenty... yow, bill

Labels: globalwarming

QOTD

"Why did you add 'yow' to your dictionary?"
- Ty

Silly billy... I didn't add "yow" to my dictionary... it's already in there: dictionary.reference.com/browse/yow

My favorite definition of yow: "exclamation, with various meanings". He he!
that's right... yow, bill

Labels: fun, qotd

The sheer volume of President Obama inanity and ninny-fication is beyond calculation.

In the name of sanity and positivity, I'm not posting any Obama-mania stuff.
It's all too over-the-top.
non post... yow, bill

PS - It's funny how all f'ed up the www.positivitypassiton.com web site is. He he!

Labels: politics

QOTD

"We talkin' about practice.
We ain't talkin' about the game.
We talkin' about practice, man."
- Alan Iverson

Here's Alan Iverson's wonderful practice rant... www.youtube.com/watch?v=eGDBR2L5kzI

It's wonderful because it's a guy trying, trying desperately, to communicate. I can relate.

Obama win.
Jeez, if I could communicate... three things:

1. No Daddy - There ain't no Daddy. A zillion people in Grant Park last night... the cult of personality. Sorry, Obama is a pol... just like every other one in the bunch.
   
2. Lefty intolerance - It's uncomfortable to say, but there is a difference in the left, the dems, the media. It's a meanness... a callow attitude... an intolerance... it feels like, like high school for Christ's sake. There are the popular kids and those not. There's the manic hatred of W: The Treatment of Bush Has Been a Disgrace. There's someone so beautiful and accomplished and unique as Sarah Palin, and she is instantly ridiculed... not her policies or proposals or whatever... her, personally. There is no analog on the flip side of the coin... not Bill Clinton, not Hillary... certainly not Obama. None of these have been treated with this level of personal attack. This intolerance is a symptom of entitlement.
   
3. Personal freedom - I wish there was a candidate that sponsored and believed in personal freedom and responsibility: smaller government, lower taxes, school choice, euthanasia, gun ownership, abortion rights (up to viability), and smoking a gol dang cigarette in a bar might be nice as well.
   

Maybe I'm underwhelmed that black guy is president because I know that America is less racist today than she was yesterday... rinse and repeat. Get it? Yes, there's still racism out there. More importantly, we are approaching, in the limit, a society with no racism. This is a done deal... minority leaders abound and the middle class thrives and this trend continues unabated.

America's racial problem is so localized to the inner city. Why? Minority crime and poverty is a function of the poor schools in inner cities. If people in "the hood" could choose their schools, then education would improve and this problem would be gone in a generation.

Of course, Obama is against school choice. Sigh.

As Steve Martin said, "Roll the crap."
And I heart Alan Iverson.
peace out... yow, bill

Labels: politics, qotd, video

QOTD

"John McCain and Sarah Palin... they call this socialistic. You know I don’t know when, when they decided they wanted to make a virtue out of selfishness."
- Obama on higher taxes

Ah, the virtue of higher taxes... the selfishness of keeping your own stuff... down the rabbit hole we go. I don't believe that any of this crap will happen (raising taxes, personal and cap gains) in the middle of a gut-aching recession, but we'll see.

My favorite description of Obama, here the day before the election, is "cipher". It's sort of a misnomer, and maybe enigma would be better, or unknown. I don't know. I mean the media, after all this time, digs up Obama's aunt this weekend and she's living in the projects in Boston, an illegal alien. Obama's take: I think he shrugged. Maybe he's a cipher to himself. He he.

I have a couple of browser tabs of ridiculous media bias and shenanigans. Fuck it. www.newsbusters.org does a good job. Does this election establish a new, unreachable low for media coverage? A bottom? It's hard to imagine that this isn't as low as we'll go, but who knows?

On a positive note, great idea from Kim39 to take Ty with me when I vote tomorrow. I prefer to vote early before any lines, but it is a great idea. Ty's the perfect age (nine) for something like this. Tomorrow's votes:

• Prez: Palin/McCain... I'll be searching for the option where Palin is at the top of the ticket, he he
  
• Senate: not Dick Durbin... there's no greater testimonial for term limits, that Durbin can trash our army guys in the middle of a war and still breeze to reelection
  
• Congress: not Judy Biggert... term limits faker
  

Book: "Night of Thunder" by Stephen Hunter
Review: 1 bill-star
Website: www.stephenhunter.net

I got this book as light reading for my CA trip. The cover said it was a thriller with Nascar as a backdrop. OK, that sounds like the flipping definition of "light".

Ay carumba! The book was a little too light. It was slow and boring and 2-D. Half full: I read it very quickly. He he.

That makes two 1 bill-star books over vacation... that's gotta be a record. Onward and upward.
crash... yow, bill

Labels: books, politics, qotd