It's all in the details!

From Casey's Daily Dispatch

A young monk arrives at the monastery and is assigned to helping the other monks in copying the old canons and laws of the church by hand.

He notices, however, that all of the monks are copying from copies, not from the original manuscript. So, the new monk goes to the abbot to question this, pointing out that if someone made even a small error in the first copy, it would never be picked up! In fact, that error would be continued in all of the subsequent copies.

The head monk says, "We have been copying from the copies for centuries, but you make a good point, my son."

He goes down into the dark caves underneath the monastery where the original manuscripts are held as archives in a locked vault that hasn't been opened for hundreds of years. Hours go by and nobody sees the old abbot.

So, the young monk gets worried and goes down to look for him.

He sees him banging his head against the wall and wailing.

"We missed the R! We missed the R! We missed the R!"

His forehead is bruised and he is crying uncontrollably.

The young monk asks the old abbot, "What's wrong, Father?"

With a choking voice, the old abbot replies,

"The word was......................

CELEBRATE

(Of course I know that it’s spelled “celibate,” but it’s funny nonetheless.)

Good One!

From Marginal Revolution

Picture

Girl Falls In Mall Fountain While Texting (BuzzFeed.com)

"Friends don’t let friends text and walk"

Eliminating Stress & Frustration :-)

THOUGHTS FOR THE NEW YEAR

From Ed Steer's Gold & Silver Daily

Throughout the rest of 2011...May you always make the right move.


May your cup runneth over with love.


May you always find shelter from any storm.


May you remain good looking and looking good!


May you find the perfect diet for your soul.
[If this face doesn't make you want to stop eating sausage, nothing will.]


May you find perfect balance in the company you keep.


May you have as much fun as you can, before someone makes you stop.


May the worst thing that happens to you come in slobbery pink and furry tan.


May you manage to make time for a siesta.


May all the new folks you meet be interesting and kind.


May your accessories always harmonize with your natural beauty!


Should your mouth be bigger than your stomach, may you have a chewing good time!


May you always know when to walk away...and know when to run.


And may your friends always bring you joy!


MAY YOU HAVE A WONDERFUL NEW YEAR FILLED WITH LOVE, HAPPINESS...AND HOPE

The New Yorker: What the Science of Human Nature Can Teach Us

" 'I guess I used to think of myself as a lone agent, who made certain choices and established certain alliances with colleagues and friends,' he said. 'Now, though, I see things differently. I believe we inherit a great river of knowledge, a flow of patterns coming from many sources. The information that comes from deep in the evolutionary past we call genetics. The information passed along from hundreds of years ago we call culture. The information passed along from decades ago we call family, and the information offered months ago we call education. But it is all information that flows through us. The brain is adapted to the river of knowledge and exists only as a creature in that river. Our thoughts are profoundly molded by this long historic flow, and none of us exists, self-made, in isolation from it.'

'And though history has made us self-conscious in order to enhance our survival prospects, we still have deep impulses to erase the skull lines in our head and become immersed directly in the river. I’ve come to think that flourishing consists of putting yourself in situations in which you lose self-consciousness and become fused with other people, experiences, or tasks. It happens sometimes when you are lost in a hard challenge, or when an artist or a craftsman becomes one with the brush or the tool. It happens sometimes while you’re playing sports, or listening to music or lost in a story, or to some people when they feel enveloped by God’s love. And it happens most when we connect with other people. I’ve come to think that happiness isn’t really produced by conscious accomplishments. Happiness is a measure of how thickly the unconscious parts of our minds are intertwined with other people and with activities. Happiness is determined by how much information and affection flows through us covertly every day and year.' ”

Read more @ What the science of human nature can teach us : The New Yorker

Uh-Oh!!

"...if China, which currently has one tenth the number of cars per capita as Americans, was to reach par with the US, we would need, by one estimate, seven more Saudi Arabia’s to meet their needs."

Read more @ buisnessinsder.com:

Funny Cartoons ...

4 Laughing Babies

Amazing Video: RNAi (14min)

A wayward petunia leads to the discovery of modest little molecules with enormous medical promise. Aired July 26, 2005 on PBS.
Link to Video.

Economics, the dismal science

Fidelity's former manager Peter Lynch:

"There are 60,000 economists in the U.S., many of them employed full-time trying to forecast recessions and interest rates, and if they could do it successfully twice in a row, they'd be millionaires by now ... As far as I know, most of them are still gainfully employed, which ought to tell us something."

Matters of Principle

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.

3 techniques used by CIA analysts to see alternative perspectives

From Simoleon Sense :

Click Here To Read: 3 Techniques Used By CIA Analysts To See Alternative Perspectives

Excerpts (Via Office Hero Headquarters)

From the book Psychology of Intelligence Analysis, “Several techniques for seeing alternative perspectives exploit the general principle of coming at the problem from a different direction and asking different questions. These techniques break your existing mind-set by causing you to play a different and unaccustomed role.”

Thinking Backwards. One technique for exploring new ground is thinking backwards. As an intellectual exercise, start with an assumption that some event you did not expect has actually occurred. Then, put yourself into the future, looking back to explain how this could have happened. Think what must have happened six months or a year earlier to set the stage for that outcome, what must have happened six months or a year before that to prepare the way, and so on back to the present.

Crystal Ball. The crystal ball approach works in much the same way as thinking backwards. Imagine that a “perfect” intelligence source (such as a crystal ball) has told you a certain assumption is wrong. You must then develop a scenario to explain how this could be true. If you can develop a plausible scenario, this suggests your assumption is open to some question.

Devil’s Advocate. A devil’s advocate is someone who defends a minority point of view. He or she may not necessarily agree with that view, but may choose or be assigned to represent it as strenuously as possible. The goal is to expose conflicting interpretations and show how alternative assumptions and images make the world look different.

Click Here To Read: 3 Techniques Used By CIA Analysts To See Alternative Perspectives

How to be a Skpetic

Video Link

This poem was nominated by UN as the best poem of 2008, Written by an African Kid

When I born, I black
When I grow up, I black
When I go in Sun, I black
When I scared, I black
When I sick, I black
And when I die, I still black

And you white fellow
When you born, you pink
When you grow up, you white
When you go in sun, you red
When you cold, you blue
When you scared, you yellow
When you sick, you green
And when you die, you grey

And you calling me colored????? !!

The Cambridge Handbook of Thinking & Reasoning

From 'The Cambridge Handbook of Thinking and Reasoning

"we do not claim that thinking is inherently rational, optimal,desirable, or even smart. A thorough history of human thinking will include quite a few chapters on stupidity."

Game Theory Joke

From Mind Your Decisions via Simoleon Sense

“Bless me Father, for I have sinned. I have been with a loose girl”.

The priest asks, “Is that you, little Joey Pagano ?”

“Yes, Father, it is.”

“And who was the girl you were with?”

“I can’t tell you, Father, I don’t want to ruin her reputation”.

“Well, Joey, I’m sure to find out her name sooner or later so you may as well tell me now. Was it Tina Minetti?”

“I cannot say.”

“Was it Teresa Mazzarelli?”

“I’ll never tell.”

“Was it Nina Capelli?”

“I’m sorry, but I cannot name her.”

“Was it Cathy Piriano?”

“My lips are sealed.”

“Was it Rosa DiAngelo, then?”

“Please, Father, I cannot tell you.”

The priest sighs in frustration.

“You’re very tight lipped, and I admire that. But you’ve sinned and have to atone. You cannot be an altar boy now for 4 months. Now you go and behave yourself.”

Joey walks back to his pew, and his friend Franco slides over and whispers, “What’d you get?”

“Four months vacation and five good leads.”

On the Imprecision of Words & Language

"In all languages, words can have more than one meaning, so reading involves making choices. When the context of the original composition is very different from the reader's context -- long ago or far away, or both -- the choices made may steer the text away from the author's intent. In one episode of The Twilight Zone, earthlings discovered only too late that the Holy Book brought by extraterrestrial visitors, titled To Serve Man, was not, as initially assumed, a philanthropic manifesto; it was a cookbook." - The Evolution Of God P. 191

Obama Speech to Students

From 'Mobs, Messiahs and Markets'

"When you are born, you are full of life. It is all ahead of you: years of energy and excitement. But you use them up; you trade them off for experience, wisdom, money.

Little by little, day by day, year by year, your life gets used up, until you are all experience, all wisdom, all memories, and no life left. That is when your life is behind you ... and nothing is left in front.

We are, as Sophocles put it, nothing but a 'deathward going tribe,' after all." -- P.386

"...you have to be suspicious of what people say to you, even when they call them facts. More importantly, you have to be suspicious of what you say to yourself!

... the older we get, the less we know about anything; the more facts, opinions, and ideas we collect, the less sure we are of any of them.

Besides, we get more and more experience with facts that turn out not to be so."
-- P.384

"... in the modern western world, arranged marriages have given way to deranged ones.

People are expected to fall in love with each other-- that is, they are expected to take leave of their senses, and while in this addled state, they are not only allowed, but encouraged, to sign a contract that is meant to last a lifetime.

It is no wonder that half of them end up anting out of the deal. What is amazing is that the other half stick with it." -- P. 24

Life Lessons From A Dog

From Casey Research Daily Dispatch:

Lessons from a Fallen General

Recently I had to bid farewell to my longtime companion, General Beauregard Piddle. Not to worry, I have no intention of using this space to wax emotionally on his passing.

The simple fact is that General had an incredible life, stretching over 92 human years, or roughly 17 years for a dog, which he was. Given that I found him on death row at the local pound, and he subsequently accompanied us on lengthy explorations of Bermuda, Chile, and Argentina, and was well looked after throughout his many years with us – there can be no regrets about his death, anymore than his life.

So, rather than getting all morose about his passing, I thought I would share the tangible life lessons I learned from General, and they're not many (he was a dog, after all).

Lesson number one: Always wag your tail vigorously upon meeting a stranger. General had friends literally around the world, a consequence of his exuberant greeting ritual. This ritual included smiling widely, wagging not just his tail but his entire rear end, followed by rolling over on one side and waving a front leg at his new acquaintance. I can confirm with certainty that this display never once failed to evoke a warm smile, a friendly rubbing, and a lasting affection in response.

Likewise, when meeting another human being, either for the first time or any time thereafter, the more vigorous you are in your greeting, the better. You know what I'm talking about – a greeting like my friend Pierre-Andre executes so well, a big smile, heart-felt compliments, and a vigorous handshake or, if you are a woman, a hug and a kiss on both cheeks. Now that's how to make a good impression, not with a limp hand and a muttered “Nice to meet you!”

Lesson number two: Don't forget to duck. General was run over twice, and I'm not talking about a little run-over but a full-fledged proper running over – the sort that leaves visible tire tracks across a wiry hide. Yet, other than being stiff for a day or two, there was no noticeable damage. How did he manage it? Well, in the instance I witnessed, upon looking up and seeing the car bearing down on him, General just lay down and assumed a posture familiar to speed bumps. While I’m not conversant in the exact physics of why that position can promote survival, I do know that taking a bumper straight on would have been the end of him.

The lesson? There are times in this life where you can decide to take a firm stand against an onrushing force and pay the heavy consequences or just get low and survive. To provide a more tangible example, faced with a marching army of socialists in one country, one can decide to scrap it out while being bled dry or set up a nest in a more accommodating locale.

Lesson number three: Enjoy the privileges of advancing age. As General grew older, he also grew increasingly bold in his most annoying habit, that of regularly tipping over the household waste receptacles and helping himself to whatever caught his epicurean fancy. In his younger days, this behavior might have earned him a quick but not overly hard smack on the snout. However, as he aged, the extent of his downside was pretty much limited to being the target of a hard look and a muttered swearword. In the human analogy, all too often I find that as people get older, they tend to become increasingly timid, in many cases almost apologetic for their presence. I hope against hope that when I get to be of an advanced age and the dulcet tones of the choir invisible are heard faintly in the distance, I’ll be more, not less, brash. Because, like General, really, what do you have to lose?

There are probably more lessons I can derive from the life of General, but one doesn't want to overdo these things. He had a good run and will, of course, be remembered.

Lightening Interrupts Outdoor Sex

From www.metro.co.uk

A lightning quick sex session in a bush during a storm ended in a flash when a bolt of lightning struck the ground nearby making the earth move for the lovemaking couple.

Jens Gottlieb, 36 and his 28-year-old girlfriend Lisa Gruhn had pulled into a parking space on the busy A44 motorway in the state of North-Rhine Westphalia, western Germany, and after kissing and cuddling decided to get out of the car and head into the nearby bushes to make love.

Because the nearby service station near the town of Werl was relatively busy they went a short distance into the wooded area and hid themselves in a bush where they stripped naked.

They were so carried away that they didn't stop even when thunder and lightning started to rip through the air - until a bolt of lightning struck the ground nearby.

The terrified pair ran out of the bush naked and fled in a torrential downpour that followed the lightning strike.

They lost their way and were spotted blundering around in the dark by another motorist in a parking space who called police.

Officers who arrived a short while later managed to find the naked and shivering pair and help them into dry clothes and took them home.

Time for another visit to Amsterdam? from 'cow tipping' to 'car tipping'

From DutchAmsterdam.nl:

Amsterdam, July 25, 2009 [DutchAmsterdam.nl] — Amsterdam police is deeply concerned about a new craze in which vandals toss parked cars from the Smart brand into the city’s canals.

The so-called ‘Smart tossing’ takes place mainly during the weekend, when many youths are out for a night on the town.
...
The Smart cars are small enough to be parked with head or tail pointing to the water.
...
Alongside most canals a low guard rail helps prevent cars from taking a dip, but the Smart car is small enough to be lifted and tossed.

Wealthy pensioners kidnap and torture financial advisor who lost millions

From the Sydney Morning Herald

A group of wealthy pensioners has been accused of kidnapping and torturing a financial adviser who lost about $4 million of their savings.

The pensioners, nicknamed the "Geritol Gang" by German police after an arthritis drug, face up to 15 years in jail if found guilty of subjecting German-American James Amburn to the alleged four-day ordeal.

Two of them are said to have hit him with a Zimmer frame outside his home in Speyer, western Germany, before he was bound with duct tape, bundled into the boot of an Audi A8 and driven 300 miles (483 kilometres) to a home on the shores of a popular holiday lake in Bavaria.

During his alleged confinement in an unheated cellar, Mr Amburn, 56, claims he was burned with cigarettes, beaten, had two ribs broken, was hit with a chair leg and chained up "like an animal".

The incident began on Tuesday last week as he made his way home after enjoying a drink at an outdoor cafe with a friend.

Mr Amburn, the head of an investment firm called Digitalglobalnet, was allegedly attacked by two men aged 74 and 60 as he entered his apartment building.

"I had no reason to be afraid," he said. "But as I went into my home I was jumped from the rear and struck."

He was left bleeding from his eyes, nose and mouth, he said.

"Then they bound me with masking tape until I looked like a mummy. It took them quite a while because they ran out of breath.

"When they loaded me into the car I thought I was a dead man."

After being driven through the night he arrived at the home of one of his captors and his 79-year-old wife, in Chieming on the shores of Lake Chiemsee.

As he was bundled into the cellar, another couple, retired doctors aged 63 and 66, arrived to join in the alleged torture and humiliation.

"I was led into the cellar," recalled Mr Amburn, who also has a home in Florida.

"I saw a folding bed and a WC reserved for me. They immediately went on about their money. I told them what I had told them before, that due to market conditions, unfortunately it was gone.

"I was struck. Again and again they threatened to kill me. The fear of death was indescribable."

He then told them that he could pay them back if he sold some securities in Switzerland and they agreed to let him send a fax to a bank there.

He scribbled a plea for help on the bottom of the paper.

"It was disguised as a policy," he said. "I wrote 'call. po-lice' and they didn't notice it."

Not knowing whether his message would work, he attempted to escape when he was allowed out of the cellar on Friday for a cigarette break.

He ran down the street pursued by his captors in the Audi, and was seen by several people.

But one of the pensioners shouted "He's a burglar!". Passers-by held him and he was dragged back to the cellar.

In the meantime, an employee at the Swiss bank spotted the message and telephoned police in Germany.

Armed commandos stormed the house in the early hours of Saturday morning. Forty police, accompanied by a doctor in the light of the captors' infirmities, found Mr Amburn in his underwear.

Volker Ziegler, chief public prosecutor in nearby Traunstein, said the pensioners were angry because they had invested money in properties in Florida and had lost it all.

"This was black money; they hadn't declared it to the revenue authorities in Germany," he said.

The pensioners face charges of illegal hostage taking, torture and grievous bodily harm.

London Telegraph

Are we in control of our own decisions? by Dan Ariely

RSS Subscribers Click Here for Video

Deaths that made even top doctors wonder

This case happened in a hospital's Intensive care ward where Patients always died in the same bed and all on Sunday mornings at 11a.m,regardless of their medical condition.

This puzzled the doctors and some even thought that it had something to do with the supernatural.

No one could solve the mystery as to why the deaths took place at 11 AM. So a world-wide expert team was constituted and they decided to go down to the ward to investigate the cause of the incidents.

So on the next Sunday morning, a few minutes before 11 a.m. all doctors and nurses nervously waited outside the ward to see for themselves what the terrible phenomenon was all about.

Some were holding wooden crosses, prayer books and other holy objects to ward off evil........

Just then the clock struck 11...

and then......

Bedilu Chala, the part-time Sunday sweeper from Ethiopia, entered the ward and Unplugged the life support system & plugged in the vacuum cleaner!!!!!!!!!!

Are men really this easy to manipulate?

From the book Nudge, Page 3:

"... the power of small details comes from focusing the attention of users in a particular direction. A wonderful example of this principle comes from, of all places, the men's rooms at Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam. There the authorities have etched the image of a black housefly into each urinal. It seems that men usually do not pay much attention to where they aim, which can create a bit of a mess, but if they see a target, attention and therefore accuracy are much increased. According to the man who came up with the idea, it works wonders. 'It improves the aim,' says Aad Kieboom. 'If a man sees a fly, he aims at it.' Kieboom, an economist, directs Schiphol's building expansion. His staff conducted fly-in-urinal trials and found that etchings reduce spillage by 80 percent."

The 401-Keg Plan

From the 4/10/2009 Daily Pfennig

“If you had purchased $1000 of shares in Delta Airlines one year ago, you would have $49.00 today.

“If you had purchased $1000 of shares in AIG one year ago, you would have $33.00 today.

“If you had purchased $1000 of shares in Lehman Brothers one year ago, you would have $0.00 today.

“But… If you had purchased $1000 worth of beer one year ago, drank all the beer, then turned in the aluminum cans for recycling refund, you would have received $214.00.

“Based on the above statements, the best current investment plan is to drink heavily and recycle. It’s called the 401-Keg Plan.”

HAHAHAHAHHAHAH

British PM Gordon Brown Gets Smacked

Filling the Soaring Demand for Black Friends :-)

Black Friend Finder
Now that Obama is President, everybody wants a black friend.

Video at FunnyOrDie.com

AIG Executive Vice President's resigntation Letter

From the New York Times:


The following is a letter sent on Tuesday by Jake DeSantis, an executive vice president of the American International Group’s financial products unit, to Edward M. Liddy, the chief executive of A.I.G.

DEAR Mr. Liddy,

It is with deep regret that I submit my notice of resignation from A.I.G. Financial Products. I hope you take the time to read this entire letter. Before describing the details of my decision, I want to offer some context:

I am proud of everything I have done for the commodity and equity divisions of A.I.G.-F.P. I was in no way involved in — or responsible for — the credit default swap transactions that have hamstrung A.I.G. Nor were more than a handful of the 400 current employees of A.I.G.-F.P. Most of those responsible have left the company and have conspicuously escaped the public outrage.

After 12 months of hard work dismantling the company — during which A.I.G. reassured us many times we would be rewarded in March 2009 — we in the financial products unit have been betrayed by A.I.G. and are being unfairly persecuted by elected officials. In response to this, I will now leave the company and donate my entire post-tax retention payment to those suffering from the global economic downturn. My intent is to keep none of the money myself.

I take this action after 11 years of dedicated, honorable service to A.I.G. I can no longer effectively perform my duties in this dysfunctional environment, nor am I being paid to do so. Like you, I was asked to work for an annual salary of $1, and I agreed out of a sense of duty to the company and to the public officials who have come to its aid. Having now been let down by both, I can no longer justify spending 10, 12, 14 hours a day away from my family for the benefit of those who have let me down.

You and I have never met or spoken to each other, so I’d like to tell you about myself. I was raised by schoolteachers working multiple jobs in a world of closing steel mills. My hard work earned me acceptance to M.I.T., and the institute’s generous financial aid enabled me to attend. I had fulfilled my American dream.

I started at this company in 1998 as an equity trader, became the head of equity and commodity trading and, a couple of years before A.I.G.’s meltdown last September, was named the head of business development for commodities. Over this period the equity and commodity units were consistently profitable — in most years generating net profits of well over $100 million. Most recently, during the dismantling of A.I.G.-F.P., I was an integral player in the pending sale of its well-regarded commodity index business to UBS. As you know, business unit sales like this are crucial to A.I.G.’s effort to repay the American taxpayer.

The profitability of the businesses with which I was associated clearly supported my compensation. I never received any pay resulting from the credit default swaps that are now losing so much money. I did, however, like many others here, lose a significant portion of my life savings in the form of deferred compensation invested in the capital of A.I.G.-F.P. because of those losses. In this way I have personally suffered from this controversial activity — directly as well as indirectly with the rest of the taxpayers.

I have the utmost respect for the civic duty that you are now performing at A.I.G. You are as blameless for these credit default swap losses as I am. You answered your country’s call and you are taking a tremendous beating for it.

But you also are aware that most of the employees of your financial products unit had nothing to do with the large losses. And I am disappointed and frustrated over your lack of support for us. I and many others in the unit feel betrayed that you failed to stand up for us in the face of untrue and unfair accusations from certain members of Congress last Wednesday and from the press over our retention payments, and that you didn’t defend us against the baseless and reckless comments made by the attorneys general of New York and Connecticut.

My guess is that in October, when you learned of these retention contracts, you realized that the employees of the financial products unit needed some incentive to stay and that the contracts, being both ethical and useful, should be left to stand. That’s probably why A.I.G. management assured us on three occasions during that month that the company would “live up to its commitment” to honor the contract guarantees.

That may be why you decided to accelerate by three months more than a quarter of the amounts due under the contracts. That action signified to us your support, and was hardly something that one would do if he truly found the contracts “distasteful.”

That may also be why you authorized the balance of the payments on March 13.

At no time during the past six months that you have been leading A.I.G. did you ask us to revise, renegotiate or break these contracts — until several hours before your appearance last week before Congress.

I think your initial decision to honor the contracts was both ethical and financially astute, but it seems to have been politically unwise. It’s now apparent that you either misunderstood the agreements that you had made — tacit or otherwise — with the Federal Reserve, the Treasury, various members of Congress and Attorney General Andrew Cuomo of New York, or were not strong enough to withstand the shifting political winds.

You’ve now asked the current employees of A.I.G.-F.P. to repay these earnings. As you can imagine, there has been a tremendous amount of serious thought and heated discussion about how we should respond to this breach of trust.

As most of us have done nothing wrong, guilt is not a motivation to surrender our earnings. We have worked 12 long months under these contracts and now deserve to be paid as promised. None of us should be cheated of our payments any more than a plumber should be cheated after he has fixed the pipes but a careless electrician causes a fire that burns down the house.

Many of the employees have, in the past six months, turned down job offers from more stable employers, based on A.I.G.’s assurances that the contracts would be honored. They are now angry about having been misled by A.I.G.’s promises and are not inclined to return the money as a favor to you.

The only real motivation that anyone at A.I.G.-F.P. now has is fear. Mr. Cuomo has threatened to “name and shame,” and his counterpart in Connecticut, Richard Blumenthal, has made similar threats — even though attorneys general are supposed to stand for due process, to conduct trials in courts and not the press.

So what am I to do? There’s no easy answer. I know that because of hard work I have benefited more than most during the economic boom and have saved enough that my family is unlikely to suffer devastating losses during the current bust. Some might argue that members of my profession have been overpaid, and I wouldn’t disagree.

That is why I have decided to donate 100 percent of the effective after-tax proceeds of my retention payment directly to organizations that are helping people who are suffering from the global downturn. This is not a tax-deduction gimmick; I simply believe that I at least deserve to dictate how my earnings are spent, and do not want to see them disappear back into the obscurity of A.I.G.’s or the federal government’s budget. Our earnings have caused such a distraction for so many from the more pressing issues our country faces, and I would like to see my share of it benefit those truly in need.

On March 16 I received a payment from A.I.G. amounting to $742,006.40, after taxes. In light of the uncertainty over the ultimate taxation and legal status of this payment, the actual amount I donate may be less — in fact, it may end up being far less if the recent House bill raising the tax on the retention payments to 90 percent stands. Once all the money is donated, you will immediately receive a list of all recipients.

This choice is right for me. I wish others at A.I.G.-F.P. luck finding peace with their difficult decision, and only hope their judgment is not clouded by fear.

Mr. Liddy, I wish you success in your commitment to return the money extended by the American government, and luck with the continued unwinding of the company’s diverse businesses — especially those remaining credit default swaps. I’ll continue over the short term to help make sure no balls are dropped, but after what’s happened this past week I can’t remain much longer — there is too much bad blood. I’m not sure how you will greet my resignation, but at least Attorney General Blumenthal should be relieved that I’ll leave under my own power and will not need to be “shoved out the door.”

Sincerely,

Jake DeSantis

Are we all Religious?

From 'The Road Less Traveled' by M. Scott Peck Pages 185 - 193

"...among the members of the human race there exists an extraordinary variability in the breadth and sophistication of our understanding of what life is all about.

This understanding is our religion. Since everyone has some understanding -- some world view, no matter how limited or primitive or inaccurate -- everyone has a religion. This fact, not widely recognized, is of the utmost importance: everyone has a religion.

We suffer, I believe, from a tendency to define religion too narrowly. We tend to think that religion must include a belief in God or some ritualistic practice or membership in a worshiping group. We are likely to say of someone who does not attend church or believe in a superior being, 'He or she is not religious.' I have even heard scholars say such things as: 'Buddhism is not really a religion' or 'Mysticism is more a philosophy than a religion.' We tend to view religion as something monolithic, cut out of whole cloth, and then, with this simplistic concept, we are puzzled as to how two very different people can both call themselves Christians. Or Jews. Or how an atheist might have a more highly developed sense of Christian morality than a Catholic who routinely attends mass.
...

Usually a person's religion or world view is at best only incompletely conscious. [People] are often unaware of how they view the world, and sometimes may even think they possess a certain kind of religion when they actually are possessed by a far different kind.
...

How do people's religions develop? What determines a person's particular world view? There are whole complexes of determinants, and this book will not explore the question in depth. But the most important factor in the development of religion of most people is obviously their culture. If we are Europeans we are likely to believe that Christ was a white man, and if we are African that he was a black man. ... We tend to believe what the people around us believe, and we tend to accept as truth what these people tell us of the nature of the world as we listen to them during our formative years.
...

To develop a religion or world view that is realistic -- that is, conforms to the reality of the cosmos and our role in it, as best we can know that reality -- we must constantly revise and extend our understanding to include new knowledge of the larger world. We must constantly enlarge our frame of reference.
...

Most of us operate from a narrower frame of reference than that of which we are capable, failing to transcend the influence of our particular culture, our particular set of parents and our particular childhood experience upon our understanding. It is no wonder, then, that the world of humanity is full of conflict. We have a situation in which human beings, who must deal with each other, have vastly different views as to the nature of reality, yet each one believes his or her own view to be the correct one since it is based on the microcosm of personal experience. And to make matters worse, most of us are not even fully aware of our own world views, much less the uniqueness of the experience from which they are derived. Bryant Wedge, a psychiatrist specializing in the field of international relations, studied negotiations between the United States and the U.S.S.R. and was able to delineate a number of basic assumptions as to the nature of human beings and society and the world held by Americans which differed dramatically from the assumptions of Russians. These assumptions dictated the negotiating behavior of both sides. Yet neither side was aware of its own assumptions or the fact that the other side was operating on a different set of assumptions. The inevitable result was that the negotiating behavior of the Russians seemed to the Americans to be either crazy or deliberately evil, and of course the Americans seemed to the Russians equally crazy or evil. We are indeed like the three proverbial blind men, each in touch with only his particular piece of the elephant yet each claiming to know the nature of the whole beast. So we squabble over our different microcosmic world views, and all wars are holy wars."

Is it Possible Global Warming is Full of Hot Air?

“The masses have never thirsted after truth. They turn aside from evidence that is not to their taste, preferring to deify error, if error seduce them. Whoever can supply them with illusions is easily their master; whoever attempts to destroy their illusions is always their victim.” -- Gustav Le Bon

"...you have to be suspicious of what people say to you, even when they call them facts. More importantly, you have to be suspicious of what you say to yourself! ... the older we get, the less we know about anything; the more facts, opinions, and ideas we collect, the less sure we are of any of them. Besides, we get more and more experience with facts that turn out not to be so." Mobs, Messiahs and Markets, P.384

Interesting Videos Below ...

We're right, We're right - We are all right!

From memo to Oaktree Clients

"My mother used to tell a story about the shtetls – villages – in the old country where disagreements were settled by the rabbi.

In one, an argument was raging with no possible grounds for compromise. The villagers brought the two parties to the rabbi. “Tell your side,” the rabbi said to one fellow, and he did.

“You’re right,” the rabbi declared.

One of the bystanders piped up: “You can’t tell him he’s right, rabbi; you haven’t heard the other side of the story.”

So the rabbi told the other party to tell his side, and he did. His story was the polar opposite of the other party’s.

“You’re right,” said the rabbi.

“Hold on, rabbi,” a villager said, “the first guy told his story and you said he was right. Then the other guy told his story – different in every regard – and you said he was right. They both can’t be right.”

“And you’re right,” said the rabbi.

The current disagreement over bank nationalization shows that (a) there can be valid arguments on both sides of an issue and (b) it can be hard to figure out who’s right."

Economic Conundrum

From memo to Oaktree Clients

"The impossibility of reaching into the economic toolbox for that one perfect tool is easily illustrated with a list of some of the challenges present today. For a learning exercise,skip today’s Sudoku or crossword puzzle and take a crack at resolving these dilemmas:

• Consumer confidence and spending are weak. We want to stimulate, but we don’t want to replace weakness with hyperinflation.


• We’re willing to drop fiscal discipline in favor of stimulus through deficit spending,but we don’t want to scare away offshore investors from the Treasury securities we’ll issue to fund our deficits.


• We’re willing to distribute stimulus checks, but we seem unable to make frightened individuals spend the money rather than save it.


• In fact, we know consumers got into trouble by spending more than they earned, and now they should build some savings. But whereas in the recent past consumer spending grew faster than incomes, a rising savings rate means spending would grow
  slower than incomes, just at a time when incomes are falling and spending is needed.


• Likewise, with tax revenues down, states and cities have to balance their budgets. One way to do so is to raise income tax and sales tax rates, but this will further depress local economies and increase the burden on their beleaguered citizens.


• We want to recapitalize the banks, but we don’t want to reward past mistakes.


• We’re thinking about buying the banks’ “toxic” assets. But if we pay above-market prices, that’s a subsidy to the reckless (see above), and if we pay market or belowmarket prices, that will further erode bank capital through write-downs.


• We know suspending mark-to-market accounting would end write-downs, but doing so might also reduce confidence in balance sheets and postpone the day of reckoning needed for our financial institutions to reach bottom and recover.


• We want the banks to lend, but we can’t – and shouldn’t – make them extend loans to non-creditworthy borrowers.


• We want to reduce the incidence of home foreclosure, but we don’t want to reward people who speculated by buying multiple homes or lied on mortgage applications. And we’d rather not treat people who bought more house than they could afford better than those who acted prudently.


• We want to make mortgage relief available to those who are unable to service their mortgages, but we don’t want to give people incentives to stop making payments.


• We’re considering letting bankruptcy judges reset mortgage contracts, but we don’t want to tell lenders that loan contracts are no longer sacrosanct, which certainly would deter them from making new loans.


• We don’t want the depressant impact of auto companies going bankrupt and suppliers and dealers following suit. But we also don’t want to pump money into the industry unless we’re confident it can produce good cars at competitive prices.


• We want to see the auto industry “rationalized,” but that means seeing people lose their jobs or have their paychecks reduced, which would spread pain, put stress on benefit funds, and cut into GDP.


• We want taxpayer-supported automakers to use American steel, but (assuming it’s more expensive than imported steel) that will either (a) raise car prices, making cars more expensive for hard-pressed buyers and making the Big 3 less competitive, or (b) require the companies to eat the difference, making it harder for them to achieve profitability.


• We want to curb speculation in derivatives, but we don’t want to make it harder for businesses, farmers, insurers and investors to legitimately hedge risk.


• In fact, we want to prevent excesses on the part of business, but most people don’t think it’s a good idea to nationalize companies or have the government tell them how to operate.

It’s abundantly clear from this list – and it’s only a partial list – that solving the current problem will require compromises and a combination of disparate elements. Some will work, while others will fail and have to be replaced. And some will work with regard to one facet of the problem but aggravate another. Lastly, no one should think that even a wise combination will produce quick results."

Finally ....

... a President who can dance.

Arthur Miller on Mark Twain & America

"I wonder whether in him is some kind of symbolization of the American character.

There is so much boasting going on; that always goes on. Great country for self advertising - we are god's country, we're a big success.

And he had that about him. He was not hiding his light under a bushel. At the same time, underneath there, you smelled suffering.

And of course that's the American dilemma - we are all great successes, and if you push a little bit, you can reach the anguish that's underneath it all."

--- Ken Burns' Mark Twain

A Great Book by Helene Cooper of the New York Times

The House at Sugar Beach: In Search of a Lost African Childhood

"About 150 years before Eunice came to Sugar Beach, two men set in motion the series of events that would lead to the day that I, a privileged almost-eight-year-old Congo girl, acquired my new sister, Eunice, a not-so-privileged eleven-year-old Bassa girl.

The chain started by those two men would eventually separate me from black people in America, and at the same time separate me from most black people in Africa. Their names were Elijah Johnson and Randolph Cooper. They were my great-great-great-great-grandfathers. At the turn of the nineteenth century in pre-Civil War America, they both belonged to that nebulous class of freed-blacks-once-removed from southern plantations.

When presented the choice between America and Africa, they chose Africa. Because of that choice, I would not grow up, 150 years later, as an American black girl, weighed down by racial stereotypes about welfare queens. Nor would I have to deal with the burdens of a sub-Saharan girl, with a life expectancy of about 40 years, yanked out of school at the age of eleven so I could fetch water and cook over a coal pot and bear babies barely younger than myself.

Instead, those men handed down to me a one-in-a-million lottery ticket: birth into what passed for the landed gentry upper class of Africa's first independent country, Liberia. None of that American post-civil war/civil rights movement baggage to bog me down with any inferiority complex about whether I was as good as white people. No European garbage to have me wondering whether some British colonial master was somehow better than me. Who needs to struggle for equality? Let everybody else try to equal me" P. 29

HA HA HA HA: Ford to be profitable in 2011:

From Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

"Ford sees at least breakeven in 2011

In what has to be the joke of the day, Ford sees at least breakeven in 2011.

Ford Motor Co said on Tuesday it expects overall and North American automotive business pretax results to break even or be profitable in 2011.
* Says submits business plan to Congress
* Says plans electric vehicles
* Says will sell its corporate aircraft as part of overall cash improvementplan
* Says asking for access to up to $9 billion of bridge financing
* Says does not anticipate a liquidity crisis next year, barring a bankruptcy of one of its domestic rivals
* Says hopes to complete its transformation without accessing government loan
* Says company plans call for investment of about $14 billion in the US on
advanced technologies and products for fuel efficiency over next seven years

Ford To Break Even in 2009

Flashback May 22, 2008: Ford To Break Even in 2009

Ford said Thursday it likely will not hit its target to be profitable in 2009, but will just break even, due to the deteriorating economy, soaring gas, steel and other commodity prices and a dramatically shifting consumer preference toward fuel-efficient cars and crossovers from more lucrative trucks and SUVs.

Ford CEO Alan Mulally in a statement issued by Ford Thursday morning. "Overall, we expect to be about break-even companywide in 2009 -- with continued strong results in Europe and South America."

Ford To Be Profitable in 2009

Flashback November 8, 2007 Despite $380 million loss, Ford is optimistic

Ford said it was on track to meet its goal of being profitable in North America and in all of its automotive operations by 2009.

Ford To Be Profitable in 2008

Flashback Jun 22, 2006 Ford on track to be profitable in 2008

Ford Motor Co. said it was on track to meet its goal of making its North American auto business profitable by 2008 and remained committed to that target.

Mark Fields, Ford's president of the Americas, announced the company's upcoming vehicle line-up and a push to offer more fuel-efficient vehicles.

Forgive me for not believing a damn thing Ford says."

Richard Pryor: The 1st Black President

Click to Play Video

BBC on McCain

'As the Republican pollster Frank Luntz put it in an interview recently (less charitably than me): "Stevie Wonder reads the teleprompter better than John McCain." - BBC News

Green in America?

"The nature of the North American political reality is that everybody wants to drive a car and everybody wants their neighbor to conserve." -- Rick Rule

Obama Bio from theOnion.com

Key Senate Achievement:
Being elected to Senate after Iraq War already started

Favorite Way To Mollify Supporters:
Nodding solemnly while gripping podium

Political Experience:
(2005–) Junior Senator from Illinois. Working directly under Senior Senator Richard Durbin himself, duties included fact-checking and copyediting the 2006 highway appropriations amendment bill. Member, Illinois State Senate (1997-2004)

Odds Of Pop-Locking During Inauguration:
1 in 12

Personal Best For Getting Digits:
32 seconds

Difficulty Catching A Cab:
Moderate

Issues:
Pro-hopes, also supports dreams

People Who Have Influenced Him Most:
Handsome devil who greets him in the mirror every morning

link

On the Typical Investor (Including Moi)

“The typical investor in public markets has no idea what he is doing.

Putting his money into a stock or a mutual fund brings him a temporary happiness. He sees himself as Kirk Kerkorian making a bid for General Motors or Warren Buffet shrewdly moving on an insurance company.

‘I bought Google,’ he tells his wife. His chest expands. He feels a crown of authority on his head and imagines his most private part growing.

For he has mastered the most sacred and all-powerful rite of our time; with a single gesture he has joined the Knights Templar, the Freemasons, and the local country club.

He is in. He is with it. He gets it. He is one with all the other swells who make up this wondrous modern economy. He has gone to Wall Street like Sir Galahad to Camelot.

He does not realize the misery awaiting him.

Only later, much later, does he discover that he is not a hero, but just a chump--- an insignificant speck of dust on Wall Street’s white shoes.”

-- Empire of Debt P. 309

Palin on the Bailout

Click to play video

Palin, the Russia Expert

Click to play video

The Onion: Portrayal Of Obama As Elitist Hailed As Step Forward For African Americans

A video showing how black people in America have finally arrived. :-)


Portrayal Of Obama As Elitist Hailed As Step Forward For African Americans

The Onion Reports: Obama's Hillbily Half-Brother

Obama's Hillbilly Half-Brother Threatening To Derail Campaign:
Barack Obama's once-commanding lead in the polls slipped to two points Monday, continuing a month-long slide that many credit to the recent appearance of the Democratic candidate's heretofore unknown half-brother, Cooter Obama.

California Sewage Plant to be named after Bush?

From Newsday 7/7/2008

'A California group submitted a proposal Monday to rename a sewage treatment plant after President Bush, calling the initiative a fitting tribute to the outgoing chief executive and the "mess" he'll leave behind.

The Presidential Memorial Commission of San Francisco wants to switch the name of the Oceanside Water Pollution Control Plant to the George W. Bush Sewage Plant.

Supporters hoping to put the issue on the November ballot turned in more than 10,000 signatures to San Francisco election officials, organizer Brian McConnell said. The measure needs just over 7,000 valid names to qualify and McConnell expects to find out later this month whether they made it.

Proponents of the renaming plan see it as fitting tribute to a president they contend has plumbed the depths of incompetence.

"We think that it's important to remember our leaders in the right historical context," said McConnell, a member of the group that was formed after friends came up with the renaming idea.

"In President Bush's case, we think that we will be cleaning up a substantial mess for the next 10 or 20 years," he said. "The sewage treatment facility's job is to clean up a mess, so we think it's a fitting tribute."

The "mess," as supporters of the plan see it, includes the aftermath of the Iraq war and what they see as a neglect of domestic economic issues.

"What we're really doing is symbolizing the fact that as he leaves office, we'll begin the process of basically repairing damage and rebuilding our country's reputation," he said.

The chairman of the San Francisco Republican Party has promised to fight the measure if it does make the ballot.'

Want to be a Billionaire?

"The average worker's salary in Zimbabwe is 15 billion Zimbabwe dollars per month. The poor fellows are billionaires, every one of them. But it takes 19 billion Zimbabwe dollars just to buy a pack of 10 cookies - if you find it. A pound of margarine is 25 billion."

From Daily Reckoning 7/3/2008

The Old Man and the Dog

Once there was a man.

The man found himself in a new town and wanted to get to know the people.

So he went to the town square to see what he could see. He soon came upon an old man. The old man was whittling, turning a stick into a smaller stick.

On the ground near the old man’s feet sat a German shepherd. The dog bared his teeth and made a low noise from deep inside his solid frame as the new man approached.

The new man stopped and looked down at the dog with some trepidation. He asked the old man, “Does your dog bite?”

The old man kept whittling, and never looking up, replied, “Nope.”

The new man in town was relieved. He reached down to pet the animal.

The dog lunged at him and would have taken a chunk of flesh out of the arm of a slower man. As it was, the new man recoiled quickly enough that his coat sleeve was the only casualty.

Examining the shredded coat, the new man said with emphasis on each word, “I thought you said your dog doesn’t bite.”

The old man stopped his whittling. He looked up for the first time, wearing a toothless, wizened grin.

The old man said with just as much emphasis on each word, “That’s what I said. My dog doesn’t bite,” and returned to his whittling.

Taken aback, the new man motioned to his torn coat and said, “Well…?”

The old man stopped whittling again, looked up, motioned to the dog with his knife, and said, “That ain’t my dog.”

The moral of the story: Ask the right questions.

From Stansberry Research

Hookers Accepting Stimulus Checks

From the 5 Minute Forecast 6/13/2008:

"... we notice that even the oldest profession is doing its part to keep the U.S. economy afloat. The Moonlite BunnyRanch, perhaps the country’s most “famous” legal brothel, has unveiled the “more bang for your buck,” program. Stroll into the Carson City hooker house with your economic stimulus check in hand and the proprietors promise you twice the, well… you get it. We hear they’ll reimburse you $15 for the baggage fee if you have your American Airlines ticket in hand too — no kidding."

Graduation advice by Mary Schmich

"Wear sunscreen.

If I could offer you only one tip for the future, sunscreen
would be it. The long-term benefits of sunscreen have been proved
by scientists, whereas the rest of my advice has no basis more
reliable than my own meandering experience. I will dispense this
advice now.

Enjoy the power and beauty of your youth. Oh, never mind. You
will not understand the power and beauty of your youth until
they've faded. But trust me, in 20 years, you'll look back at
photos of yourself and recall in a way you can't grasp now how much
possibility lay before you and how fabulous you really looked. You
are not as fat as you imagine.

Don't worry about the future. Or worry, but know that worrying
is as effective as trying to solve an algebra equation by chewing
bubble gum. The real troubles in your life are apt to be things
that never crossed your worried mind, the kind that blindside you
at 4pm on some idle Tuesday.

Do one thing every day that scares you.

Sing.

Don't be reckless with other people's hearts. Don't put up with
people who are reckless with yours.

Floss.

Don't waste your time on jealousy. Sometimes you're ahead,
sometimes you're behind. The race is long and, in the end, it's
only with yourself.

Remember compliments you receive. Forget the insults. If you
succeed in doing this, tell me how.

Keep your old love letters. Throw away your old bank
statements.

Stretch.

Don't feel guilty if you don't know what you want to do with
your life. The most interesting people I know didn't know at 22
what they wanted to do with their lives. Some of the most
interesting 40-year-olds I know still don't.

Get plenty of calcium. Be kind to your knees. You'll miss them
when they're gone.

Maybe you'll marry, maybe you won't. Maybe you'll have children,
maybe you won't. Maybe you'll divorce at 40, maybe you'll dance the
funky chicken on your 75th wedding anniversary. Whatever you do,
don't congratulate yourself too much, or berate yourself either.
Your choices are half chance. So are everybody else's.

Enjoy your body. Use it every way you can. Don't be afraid of it
or of what other people think of it. It's the greatest instrument
you'll ever own.

Dance, even if you have nowhere to do it but your living
room.

Read the directions, even if you don't follow them.

Do not read beauty magazines. They will only make you feel
ugly.

Get to know your parents. You never know when they'll be gone
for good. Be nice to your siblings. They're your best link to your
past and the people most likely to stick with you in the
future.

Understand that friends come and go, but with a precious few you
should hold on. Work hard to bridge the gaps in geography and
lifestyle, because the older you get, the more you need the people
who knew you when you were young.

Live in New York City once, but leave before it makes you hard.
Live in Northern California once, but leave before it makes you
soft. Travel.

Accept certain inalienable truths: Prices will rise. Politicians
will philander. You, too, will get old. And when you do, you'll
fantasize that when you were young, prices were reasonable,
politicians were noble and children respected their elders.

Respect your elders.

Don't expect anyone else to support you. Maybe you have a trust
fund. Maybe you'll have a wealthy spouse. But you never know when
either one might run out.

Don't mess too much with your hair or by the time you're 40 it
will look 85.

Be careful whose advice you buy, but be patient with those who
supply it. Advice is a form of nostalgia. Dispensing it is a way of
fishing the past from the disposal, wiping it off, painting over
the ugly parts and recycling it for more than it's worth.

But trust me on the sunscreen."

How come Amazon.com is selling Web Services

5 Minute Jeff Bezos Video:

BumpTop Desktop: The next generation UI?

Ethiopian joke from back in the socialist days

"... an Ethiopian teacher instructing his elementary school class in Marxism-Leninism enthusiastically tells them that their mother is Russia and their father Lenin. The teacher then asks what the children want to be. They answer, in chorus, 'orphans'."
-- Ethiopia the United States and the Soviet Union P. 102

Fishy Economic Numbers

From the Daily Reckoning - 05/16/2008:

"Last month, the price of gasoline went down 2%, says the Labor Department.

Wait a minute. Do you remember gasoline prices going down in April? We don't. As we recall, oil prices were soaring…and so was the price of gasoline.

We're beginning to sniff something funny in the air…a rat.

...

Generally, we don't trust numbers. Who can trust a 5 after all - with a bottom like a communist sickle and its top nicked from a swastika? Who can trust an eight - wandering back and forth and never getting anywhere? And what about the zero? What does it mean? You put it in front of a number and it means nothing. You put it behind…and all of a sudden you've got 10 times as many. So, let's look a little more at those numbers - that is, at the crooked 4s, the slick 6s, and the empty 0s - put out by the feds.

Getting back to the price of gasoline, we check the records from NY gasoline futures trading and find the price actually rose 12% in April. How come the feds put it down as minus 2%? Turns out, they made a 'seasonal adjustment.' But turning plus 12 into minus two sounds like more than an adjustment; it sounds like either magic or major surgery…like turning a prince into a frog or a fat man into a slim woman.

Elsewhere, we find the feds working their magic on all the primary numbers. The IMF, for examples, says food prices rose 43% last year. Yet, after the feds waved their wands, U.S. food costs were up only 5.1%. And import costs rose 15% year to year - according to the numbers when they first got off the boat. But by the time the Labor Department statisticians had finished 'adjusting' them, they were down to only 0.2%.

Only investors, of course, are gullible enough to believe the government numbers. Consumers believe the numbers they see at the checkout counters and the pumps. What they see is sharply rising prices."

No Wonder Bear Stearns Failed

A memo sent to Bear Stearns employees last December:

Date: December 13, 2007
To: All 24th Floor Male Employees
From: Jeanne Orgon, R.N.
Subject: Infection Control & Hygiene

In order to prevent the spread of infection and disease, here are a few reminders you should follow to protect yourself and others:
• Flush the toilet and urinal after use.
• Do not use the urinal for disposal of solid matter.
• Clean up after yourself.
• Wash your hands with soap and warm water.

It's the nature of our business to want to rush through things to get back to our desks. However, it is the responsibility of everyone to use the fundamental rules of good hygiene and do their part to ensure that the restroom is kept clean and disease-free.

scanned Image of Letter

Dave Barry's Take on Government Rebate Checks…

Q. What is an Economic Stimulus Payment?
A. It is money that the federal government will send to taxpayers.

Q. Where will the government get this money?
A. From taxpayers.

Q. So the government is giving me back my own money?
A. Only a smidgen.

Q. What is the purpose of this payment?
A. The plan is that you will use the money to purchase a high-definition TV set, thus stimulating the economy.

Q. But isn't that stimulating the economy of China?
A. Shut up.

The Groupings of Life

From the book 'Your Inner Fish: A Journey into the 3.5 Billion-Year History of the Human Body' P. 7 - 9.

"That a column of rocks has a progression of fossil species probably comes as no surprise. Less obvious is that we can make detailed predictions about what the species in each layer might actually look like by comparing them with species of animals that are alive today; this information helps us to predict the kinds of fossils we find in ancient rock layers. In fact, the fossil sequences in the world's rocks can be predicted by comparing ourselves with the animals at our local zoo or aquarium.

How can a walk through the zoo help us predict where we should look in the rocks to find fossils? A zoo offers a great variety of creatures that are all distinct in many ways. But let's not focus on what makes them distinct; to pull off our prediction, we need to focus on what different creatures share. We can then use the features common to all species to identify groups of creatures with similar traits. All the living things can be organized and arranged like a set of Russian nesting dolls, with smaller groups of animals comprised in bigger groups of animals. When we do this, we discover something very fundamental about nature.

Every species in the zoo and aquarium has a head and two eyes. Call these species 'Everythings.' A subset of the creatures with a head and two eyes has limbs. Call the limbed species 'Everythings with limbs.' A subset of these headed and limbed creatures has a huge brain, walks on two feet, and speaks. That subset is us, humans. We could, of course, use this way of categorizing things to make many more subsets, but even this threefold division has predictive power.

The fossils inside the rocks of the world generally follow this order, and we can put it to use in designing new expeditions. To use the example above, the first member of the group 'Everythings,' a creature with a head and two eyes, is found in the fossil record well before the first 'Everythings with limbs.' More precisely, the first fish (a card-carrying member of the 'Everythings') appears before the first amphibian(an 'Everything with limbs"). Obviously, we refine this by looking at more kinds of animals and many more characteristics that groups of them share, as well as by assessing the actual age of rocks themselves.

...

The order of fossils in the world's rocks is powerful evidence of our connections to the rest of life. If, digging in 600-million-year-old rocks, we found the earliest jellyfish lying next to the skeleton of a woodchuck, then we would have to rewrite our texts. That woodchuck would have appeared earlier in the fossil record than the first mammal, reptile, or even fish--before even the first worm. Moreover, our ancient woodchuck would tell us that much of what we think we know about the history of the earth and life on it is wrong. Despite more than 150 years of people looking for fossils--on every continent of earth and in virtually every rock layer that is accessible--this observation has never been made."

Does Certainty exist?

"I am certain there is too much certainty in the world." -- Michael Crichton

"The most educated person in the world has to admit he or she knows less and less ... but knows less and less about more and more." God is Not Great- how religion poisons everything P. 9

"The more I know, the less I understand
And all the things I thought I figured out, I have to learn again" - Don Henley

"… the world is funnier than you think. And the more you think about it, the funnier it gets. Close inspection reveals the ironies, contradictions, and confusions that make life interesting, but also frustrating.
...
The more man thinks, the slower he moves. Thought uncovers the limitations of his plans. Exploring the possibilities, he sees yet more potential outcomes, a greater number of problems … and he increasingly recognizes how little he actually knows.
" - Financial Reckoning Day P. 2

“You don’t know what tomorrow will bring. Every day you research and strategize about your next move. Just when you think you have a handle on things, something turns your plans upside-down. When that happens you realize you know nothing.” Oil on the Brain P. 137

Do Deficits Matter?

"I read a report by David Walker, the former Comptroller of the United States, where he was explaining the depth of the fiscal budget alone. He estimated that balancing the Federal Budget by 2040 would require actions as large as: 1. Cutting Total Federal Spending by 60%, or 2. Raising taxes to 2X today's level.

He also states, "Closing the current long-term fiscal gap based on reasonable assumptions would require real average annual economic growth in the double digit range every year for the next 75 years.

Keep in mind that: During the 1990's, the economy grew at an average 3.2% per year. So… "As a result, we cannot simply grow our way out of this problem."

Well… Now that's something to help wake you up, eh? But deficits don't matter; so don't worry about what the former Comptroller of the U.S. says… HA! You won't catch me taking that bait! David Walker is a very smart man, and has been the Lone Ranger in the Government when it comes to pointing out the problems with these deficits."

Chuck Butler in The Daily Pfennig of April 16, 2008

Obama smacks down Hillary & McCain

Taxman by the Beatles

"Should five per cent appear too small,
Be thankful I don't take it all.
'Cause I'm the taxman,
Yeah, I'm the taxman.

If you drive a car, I'll tax the street
If you try to sit, I'll tax your seat
If you get too cold, I'll tax the heat
If you take a walk, I'll tax your feet"

Proof that Women are more Responsible

"Sperms and eggs contribute equal numbers of genes, but eggs contribute far more in the way of food reserves: indeed, sperms make no contribution at all and are simply concerned with transporting their genes as fast as possible to an egg. At the moment of conception, therefore, the father has invested less than his fair share (i.e. 50 per cent) of resources in the offspring. Since each sperm is so tiny, a male can afford to make millions of them everyday. This means he is potentially able to beget a very large number of children in a very short period of time, using different females. This is only because each new embryo is endowed with adequate food by the mother in each case. This therefore places a limit on the number of children a female can have, but the number of children a male can have is virtually unlimited. Female exploitation begins here." The Selfish Gene P. 142

On Taxes

"People who complain about taxes can be divided into two classes: men and women." - unknown

How do we KNOW the things we believe?

“Each of us has life view. For most of us, our view results more from where we were born, who our parents were, and what schools we attended than a careful examination of issues. Yet our life view influences every thought we have, every word we speak, and every action we take.” - The Man in the Mirror P. 38

"That illustrates what the psychoanalysts so much emphasize -- the immensely stronger hold upon us that our very early associations have than those of later times." - Bertrand Russell

"Systematic thinking is apparently a comparatively late development in human experience; it has not played any great part in human life until within the last 3,000 years. And even today those who really control and order their thoughts are but a small minority of mankind. Most of the world still lives by imagination and passion." A Short History of the World, H.G. Wells P. 37

"We want to stand upon our own feet and look fair and square at the world -- its good facts, its bad facts, its beauties, and its ugliness; see the world as it is and be not afraid of it. Conquer the world by intelligence and not merely by being slavishly subdued by the terror that comes from it. ... We ought to stand up and look the world frankly in the face. We ought to make the best we can of the world, and if it is not so good as we wish, after all it will still be better than what these others have made of it in all these ages. A good world needs knowledge, kindliness, and courage; it does not need a regretful hankering after the past or a fettering of the free intelligence by the words uttered long ago by ignorant men. It needs a fearless outlook and a free intelligence. It needs hope for the future, not looking back all the time toward a past that is dead, which we trust will be far surpassed by the future that our intelligence can create." - Bertrand Russell

Depressing? Maybe! Maybe Not!

"... if you accept the ordinary laws of science, you have to suppose that human life and life in general on this planet will die out in due course: it is a stage in the decay of the solar system; at a certain stage of decay you get the sort of conditions of temperature and so forth which are suitable to protoplasm, and there is life for a short time in the life of the whole solar system. You see in the moon the sort of thing to which the earth is tending -- something dead, cold, and lifeless.

I am told that that sort of view is depressing, and people will sometimes tell you that if they believed that, they would not be able to go on living. Do not believe it; it is all nonsense. Nobody really worries about much about what is going to happen millions of years hence. Even if they think they are worrying much about that, they are really deceiving themselves. They are worried about something much more mundane, or it may merely be a bad digestion; but nobody is really seriously rendered unhappy by the thought of something that is going to happen to this world millions and millions of years hence. Therefore, although it is of course a gloomy view to suppose that life will die out -- at least I suppose we may say so, although sometimes when I contemplate the things that people do with their lives I think it is almost a consolation -- it is not such as to render life miserable. It merely makes you turn your attention to other things. " - Bertrand Russell

If I were a woman ...

... I would NEVER wear high heels.

and that's all I have to say about that.

Things that make you go hmmm...

"It is now widely accepted that the Universe we inhabit emerged from a hot, dense fireball called the Big Bang. In the 1920s and 1930s, astronomers first discovered that our Galaxy was simply one island of stars scattered among many similar galaxies and then that groups of these galaxies were moving apart from one another as the space between them stretched. This idea of an expanding universe had actually been predicted by Einstein's general theory of relativity, completed in 1916, but it had not been taken seriously until the observers made their discoveries. When it was taken seriously, mathematicians discovered that the equations exactly describe the kind of expansion we observe, with the implication that if galaxies are getting farther apart as time passes then they must have been closer together in the past; and long ago all the matter in the Universe must have been piled up in a dense fireball.

It is the combination of theory and observation that makes the idea of the Big Bang so compelling; clinching evidence in support of the idea came in the 1960s with the discovery of a weak hiss of radio noise, the cosmic background radiation, that comes from all direction in space and is interpreted as the leftover radiation from the Big Bang itself. Like the expansion of the Universe, the existence of this background radiation was predicted by theory before it was observed experimentally. By the end of the twentieth century, the combination of theory and observations had established that the time that has elapsed since the Big Bang is about 14 billion years, and that there are hundreds of millions of galaxies like our own scattered across the expanding Universe. The question cosmologists are now confronting is how the Big Bang itself occurred -- or, if you like, how did the Universe begin?"

-- The Origins of the future: ten questions for the next 10 years P. 51-52

YouTube - 2008 Job Market

Funny!

On Human behavior ...

“[Humans] are perfectly capable of holding rational ideas and arguing, rationally, any point that suits them. One day, their reason leads them to positions that seem irrefutable; the next, the opposite opinion may seem just as irresistible, or even more so.

What is more remarkable is that they can hold an idea, and even cherish it, while doing something that is completely at odds with it.”

– Financial Reckoning Day P. 159

“People do not always act as they ‘should.’ Other people seem ‘irrational’ to us – especially those with whom we disagree. Nor do we always follow a logical and reasonable course of action. Instead, we are all swayed by tides of emotion … and occasionally swamped by them.”

- Financial Reckoning Day P. 1

“The world never works the way people think it does. That is not to say every idea about how the world works is wrong, but that often particular ideas about how it works will prove to be wrong if they are held in common. For only simple ideas can be held by large groups of people. Commonly held ideas are almost always dumbed down until they are practically lies …and often dangerous ones.”

- Financial Reckoning Day P. 3

“Public knowledge has its own peculiar character, for it must be dumbed down to a level that can be absorber by a mob.

A learned and thoughtful man may speak before a crowd and get no positive reaction whatsoever. A real demagogue, on the other hand, will distill his thoughts into a few simple-minded expressions and soon have enough admirers to run for public office. Readers who have wondered why it is that politicians all seem to be such simpletons now have their answer: It is a requirement for the job. For, en masse, mankind can neither understand complex or ambiguous thoughts nor remember them.”

- Financial Reckoning Day P. 168

“Democracy has a lie at its very core --- that you can cheat, murder, and steal as long as you get 51 percent of registered voters to go along with you. People are perfectly happy to vote their way into other people’s bank accounts --- and feel morally superior doing so. For they always do so in the name of some high-minded chutzpah, whether it is concern for the environment or the poor --- or making the world free!”

- Financial Reckoning Day P. 175

Lest I forget I'm an Immigrant

"The violent upheavals of the twentieth century have made millions of people homeless in one traumatic uprooting after another. Exile, is of course, not simply a change of address. It is also spiritual dislocation. Anthropologists and psychologists tell us that displaced people feel lost in a universe that has suddenly become alien. Once the fixed point of home is gone, there is fundamental lack of orientation that makes everything seem relative and aimless. Cut off from the roots of their culture and identity, migrants and refugees can feel that they are somehow withering away and becoming insubstantial. Their world – inextricably linked with their unique place in the cosmos – has literally come to an end.” - The Spiral Staircase, P.23-24.

Why I'm glad I'm not a Mantise

"... More well known is the macabre cannibalism of female praying mantises. Mantises are large carnivorous insects. They normally eat smaller insects such as flies, but they will attack almost anything that moves. When they mate, the male cautiously creeps up on the female, mounts her, and copulates. If the female gets the chance, she will eat him, beginning by biting his head off, either as the male is approaching, or immediately after he mounts, or after they separate. It might seem most sensible for her to wait until copulation is over before she starts to eat him. But the loss of the head does not seem to throw the rest of the male's body off its sexual stride. Indeed, since the insect head is the seat of some inhibitory nerve centers, it is possible that the female improves the male's sexual performance by eating his head. If so, this is an added benefit. The primary one is that she obtained a good meal." The Selfish Gene, P. 5

I Have a Dream - Part II

Amazing Stuff from science...

Proof that Human Beings are strange

Born-again virgins claim to rewrite the past
Through spiritual or surgical routes, women give their first time a do-over