Mumble along with me... "I heart Shaq, bro."



And here's some wonderful end of the year global warming nonsense:

This is a nice connective QOTD... smushed between some global warming nonsense (and asserted wisdom, see QOTD below) and my book review.

QOTD

"Wisdom, itself, is often an abstraction associated not with fact or reality but with the man who asserts it and the manner of its assertion."
- John Kenneth Galbraith, "The Great Crash 1929"

Book: "The Great Crash 1929" by John Kenneth Galbraith
Review: 5 bill-stars (out of 5)

Of course, my review is influenced by these dark times. Sue me.

The book is an economic history treatment of the 1929 market crash and, to a lesser degree, the ensuing Great Depression. And yes, there are haunting similarities to today's situation complete with over-leverage, speculation, fraud on a massive scale, stupid regulation and government intervention, etc. It was absolutely striking to read something about 1929, written in 1955, and have nearly all the same shit apply today 50+ years later.

The book is very well-written with many quotes and references and stories from the day. It was very entertaining. The author's style if very readable and replete with perspicacity. (He he... I learned a "big word" in his book)

One of the ruinous creations in the 1920's were investment trusts. Investment trusts were a little like our mutual funds or ETF's except that they were publicly held stocks themselves. Well, the trick was that the investment trust would buy its own stock, on margin. Investment trusts would also buy the stock of other investment trusts. So, you had this whole virtual corporate structure on top of real corporate America for the sole purpose of market speculation. When the bubble was popped these investment trusts kept borrowing and buying their own stock... all the way down to zero.

We've had a stock market crash in 2008, no doubt. Will this lead to a depression (one definition I've seen: 4 consecutive quarters of negative GDP with a cumulative decline of at least a 10%) here in 2009? I don't think so. Pause. But we sure did repeat a lot of mistakes when it came to the market crash, so who knows.

Here's a last cheery QOTD for 2008:

"The singular feature of the great crash of 1929 was that the worst continued to worsen. What looked one day like the end proved on the next day to have been only the beginning. Nothing could have been more ingeniously designed to maximize the suffering, and also to insure that as few as possible escaped the common misfortune."
- JKG, "The Great Crash 1929"

Cha!
Anyway, an outstanding book and great read!
happy new year... yow, bill

Labels: books, globalwarming, qotd

QOTD

"Fortune favors the brave."
- Virgil

Huzzah!
yow, bill

Labels: qotd

QOTD

"Mr. President, Brian was proud to be a Marine. And he carried within him the same light that you do -- a faith in God, in America, and in the dignity and worth of every man, woman, and child on this earth."
- Marine mom to W, from The President Comforts a Marine Mom

There was another great WSJ article last week (that I can't summon) about how W has personally met with something like 2,800 families of troops killed in action... all without political or media attention.

Super-interesting article: New Research Shows Why Every Week of Pregnancy Counts



Merry White Christmas.
let it snow... yow, bill

Labels: medical, politics, qotd

QOTD

"Arab leaders gave Rice $300K in jewelry, inventory shows"
- Yahoo headline of AP story

The "Rice" above is Sec of State Condoleeza Rice, BTW.
The AP story is here: news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081222/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/rice_gifts

QOTD2

"Arabs lavish jewels on Secretary of State Rice"
- AP headline

I read that and scratched my head because I thought the fed couldn't receive gifts.
Yeah, the AP story confirms that about 8 paragraphs into the thing.
So no, Condi Rice wasn't lavished with zillions of dollars of rubies from "Arabs".
And yeah again, just like Sarah Palin wasn't lavished with $100K worth of clothes.

My "home page" in the browser is igoogle and yahoo. I use Yahoo Finance a lot. It's very nice. The yahoo news headlines are ridiculous, but what the hell can I do. Oh, I got it... I'll start out in Yahoo Finance, rather than just regular yahoo.

Done.
Hey AP. Fuck you, OK.
Yeah, yahoo... fuck you too.
Idiots.
yow, bill

PS - There's a whole website devoted to this bullshit anti-reporting: www.newsbusters.org
PPS - Look. I know she's not, um, "interested"... wink wink. But yes, Condi Rice is hot.

Labels: politics, qotd

QOTD

"It does pay to be a hot chick... my neighbor plowed me out last night.
You know what I mean."
- Some hot chick after this week's show storm

Ho ho ho,

Here's this year's boffo Christmas card... front, then the message inside.

Holly knows this year's card is a fraud... of course, what isn't, right! It's almost a redo of a sassy card Holly and I did when she was even younger than Ty. We were wearing sunglasses and looking, um, impatient. Where is that photo?

Anyway, also in the spirit of this wonderful season... swear to God, I saw these two games right next to each other on the shelf last night at Toys R Us:

I'm pretty sure that you play "Feed the Kitty" first, and then "Toss Your Cookies".
Pretty sure.
merry christmas... yow, bill

Labels: fun, qotd

QOTD

"Singing in the sunshine, laughing in the rain
Hitting on the moonshine, rocking in the grain
Got no time to pack my bags, my foots outside the door
Got a date, I can't be late, for the high hopes hailla ball."
- Led Zep, "The Ocean"

Some asshole (Iraqi journalist, I guess) threw a shoe at W today in Iraq:
http://edition.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/meast/12/14/bush.iraq/

You know how Yahoo headlines this attack on our President: "Surprise protest at Bush visit". The linked AP story is equally smarmy and undeserving of the effort of a hyperlink.

It's not everything, I know. But it is something. There's something to be said about the company you keep. It's a warm blanket to not be a part of the crowd that hates W and loves Obama. The crowd of hatred and raw, surging emotion. I will side with reason over this emotion... not hating and certainly not loving some politician, not being a part of the mass hysteria in either direction. Yes, it's a wonderful, warm, rational place to be.

QOTD2

Singing to an ocean, I can hear the ocean's roar
Play for free, play for me and play a whole lot more, more!
Singing about good things and the sun that lights the day
I used to sing on the mountains, has the ocean lost it's way.
- Led Zep, "The Ocean"

I heart the WSJ.
Fitzgerald Should Keep His Opinions to Himself

I listened to Patrick Fitzgerald on the radio. I had the same queasy feeling. Why is this officer of the court (and the FBI guy with him) giving his personal opinion of the morality of a case? Why the need for hyperbole? Fitzgerald reminds me very much of the excesses of Elliot Spitzer... we'll see how the Fitzgerald story ends?

QOTD3

Sitting round singing songs 'til the night turns into day
Used to sing on the mountains but the mountains washed away
Now I'm singing all my songs to the girl who won my heart
She is only three years old and it's a real fine way to start.
- Led Zep, "The Ocean"

Merry Christmas!
oh so good... yow, bill

PS - This is the big ole Christmas tree in Geneva, IL (snarfed from some other blog)... saw it this weekend with Kim39. The tiny Geneva downtown is beautifully done for Christmas!

Labels: music, politics, qotd

One of the funniest WSJ articles ever:


He he...

• A failure of Santa poses a "systemic risk".
• Pelosi promises bailout money only if Santa promises to "go green"
• Oprah as the "Christmas czar"

QOTD

"They call me Heat Miser
What ever I touch
Starts to melt in my clutch
I'm too much!"
- Heat Miser

he he... yow, bill

Labels: fun, qotd

QOTD

"A young musician of unhealthily sensitive nature and endowed with vivid imagination has poisoned himself with opium in a paroxysm of lovesick despair."
- Berlioz description of his "Symphonie Fantastique"

So, in 1830, Berlioz gets hammered and writes a half hour symphony for some hot chick. He was 26 at the time... one year older than Hol.

My next (excellent) CSO experience in a couple weeks (I'm going with Holly) features Berlioz's "Symphonie Fantastique". Excellent.

QOTD2

“For 37 years I've practiced 14 hours a day, and now they call me a genius”
- Pablo de Sarasate, violinist (quote)

peace... yow, bill

Labels: music, qotd

QOTD

"What a way to go out
Out like a sucka"
- Rage, "Housin"

Who would you rather see spend your money?
Let's pick a number, say half a trillion dollars, $500,000,000,000.
OK, who would you rather see spend $500B?

1. Us... the American people, that is
   
2. The feds
   

If you answered #1, then you should want P-E Obama to cut taxes to juice up the economy.
If you answered #2, then jeez... fucking WAKE UP!

It's all academic, of course.
The horse is out of the barn.
It was a fundamental marketing mistake to call the TARP a "bailout" or "spending". It isn't.
The (infamous and toady) AIG boys came out today saying they expect the feds to get back every dollar they put in, plus some.
Of course, the only people more toady (?) than AIG execs are the feds... nice symmetry.

Rage would want taxes raised.
f rage... yow, bill

Labels: investing, qotd

QOTD

“A computer would deserve to be called intelligent if it could deceive a human into believing that it was human.”
- A Turing from www.thinkexist.com/quotes/alan_turing

Follow the links, if you like.
What's cooler than the Turing Test?
The kitty is a (paltry) $100K in the so-cool Loebner Prize for Artificial Intelligence.
They announced the results of this year's competition: 2008 Loebner Prize Competition Results
The winner was a program called Elbot. If you go there, you can talk to the winner, Elbot.

The good news: According to ACM, 25% of the judges at Loebner thought that Elbot was human. That's the highest rating ever.

The bad news: If you go talk to Elbot, it still seems really, um, kinda dumb. In fact, here's the transcript from Elbot's (winning) showing at Loebner: www.loebner.net/Prizef/2008_Contest/Elbot.pdf... which again doesn't seem "all that."

The really good news: It'll happen. Chop chop. What... 10 years?
ACM also had an article about robots taking over service industry jobs.
This stuff is too cool, and then someone will do it, and it'll be poo-poo'd... like computer chess programs.
And then onto the next coolest thing ever.

QOTD2 (en homage to Holly)

“Mathematical reasoning may be regarded rather schematically as the exercise of a combination of two facilities, which we may call intuition and ingenuity.”
- A Turing

smath... yow, bill

Labels: qotd, technology