November 2009
48 posts
hiatus mark 2
Having just cleared out my queue, I’m going to be gone for a while. Again. Bye!
let us ponder this
Richard Lawson (of Gawker and reality fame):
I’ve been watching all this Palin craziness over the past few days with probably too much fervor, but I’ve learned one really interesting thing: It’s completely OK to call people who trend toward the Left ‘East Coast elites’, and godless, and selfish, and out of touch, and mean, and snide, and (gulp) educated, and...
supply, demand
“Tonight, Tonight”:
Dayton and the production crew initially had problems locating costumes for the video because the movie Titanic was being shot at the same time in Los Angeles.[19]Titanic director James Cameron rented nearly every turn-of-the-century prop and costume in the city, leaving the “Tonight, Tonight” production crew little to work with.[19] Directors Dayton and...
phrases like this are so disingenuous
Populist anger has been fanned by a growing perception that the Treasury has lavished generous bailouts on Wall Street institutions while neglecting ordinary homeowners — this, in the midst of double-digit unemployment, which is daily sending more households into delinquency. (#)
“Populist anger has been fanned by” = “People like me have written articles with the intention of...
failures of materialism
My eight-year-old son, Joel, comes into my office to ask if there’s a worse swearword than fuck. “No,” I say.
There’s a silence. “You’re lying,” he says.
“There’s none worse than fuck,” I say.
Joel narrows his eyes. “I know you’re lying,” he says. He leaves the room. (#)
I love this story to death, in part because...
seriously, this is the most sinister-sounding shit...
Michael Mann, from one of the stolen climate emails, via Seth Roberts:
[B]e a bit careful about what information you send to [NYT reporter] Andy [Rivkin] and what emails you copy him in on. He’s not as predictable as we’d like.
ugly America
Intern Juli, a little while ago:
According to this extremely patronizing CNN story—in which Jacksonville, FL. and Rochester, NY are essentially characterized as nothing more than some dirt paths strewn with human bones, maybe six trailer homes and a Starbucks—the GR Tour will instead be hitting mid-size cities in more traditionally conservative parts of the country.
“Some dirt paths strewn...
a useful reduction
Eliezer describes “intuition” as “subcognitive black boxes giving us advice”.
U.S. Bancorp is the best company, for realsies
Without doubt, [U.S. Bancorp CEO Richard Davis] said, there were “some bad actors” in the financial industry, and he apologized “for some of the horrible things that happened.” But not all banks are equal, he said. And bankers aren’t the only ones who should share the blame, he said. There also were “billions and billions of dollars” that consumers and...
revenge of the nerds
“Jock tax” is a colloquial expression referring to the trend among tax authorities toward levying state and local income taxes on traveling business professionals, particularly visiting professional athletes. Jock taxes require that traveling professionals pay income taxes in every state where they earn income or have an “economic nexus.” Some states have extended jock taxes to...
go ahead and rub it in, you autistic bastard
Tyler Cowen:
If you’re feeling a little down today, and looking for something to be thankful for, be thankful you have not lent money to Dubai. Unless, of course, you have lent money to Dubai.
We lost $60 million to these fuckers yesterday. Real talk.
“Ye gods! It’s almost as if there was a *person* inside the machine. Indeed...”
– MM
bunch-of-guys theory, vol. CXXIII
The November 12 document is especially revealing not only for its omissions but also for the seemingly random tweaks Bank of America executives made to it as part of their internal deliberations about whether to make an announcement before the shareholder vote on December 5. At the bottom of a page described as “Merrill Lynch & Co. 4Q’08 Forecast,” Bank of America’s...
a little late to the party, eh, New York Times?
Selling Cupcakes
The small-business world is going cupcake-mad. But is it a viable business? (#)
Update: buried lede:
In 2006, selling 20 kinds of cupcakes, Tiffany Bacon, a former software entrepreneur, opened Toot Sweet Cupcakes in Austin…
“a sad but true attractor in the evolutionary psychology of most aliens”
– a phrase found in a recent Less Wrong post by EY, which also uses the term “orgasmium”
“An ironic/funny tat can come in many forms: a piece of bacon, old Nintendo...”
– SWPL
"It's a joke!"
Via MR:
Racial attacks like the ones behind the arrest of 32 suspects in Denver are part of a trend spreading across the country, gang experts said Saturday.
As part of the trend, black gang members videotape the assaults in trendy tourist districts and sell them on the underground market as entertainment.
“They knock a young white guy out with one blow to see if his knees will wobble...
“You [Malcolm Gladwell] shouldn’t be in awe of David J. Berri, Associate...”
– SS
I'm just going to quote myself here
Me: You know what's going to be the worst thing if it ever happens?
Mrs. K., diligently cooking sausage: What?
Me: Buying a car.
Mrs. K.: Yeah...
Me: We have to study how cars work for like six months before we can even start to look at different kinds.
Mrs. K.: Yeah...
Me: Hopefully by then there'll be a space elevator or something to get around.
Mrs. K.: Yeah...
Me: Or maybe the roads will be so choked with dead bodies that we won't even have to drive.
a fine line
sunplusnightplusjess:
while i wouldn’t want to profit off of doom, i wouldn’t mind being a prophet of doom.
I’m already the second, and I’m certainly trying to do the first!
intern Juli does it again
Swiss scientists are gearing up to make another particle sacrifice to the Large Hadron Collider deity. (#)
apparently a slogan
“Nothing’s more real than Reddi-wip.”
this zing is like that zing
Pinker on Gladwell:
He provides misleading definitions of “homology,” “saggital plane” and “power law” and quotes an expert speaking about an “igon value” (that’s eigenvalue, a basic concept in linear algebra).
Tanta (RIP : () on WaPo:
…I introduce the MTI, or Mortgage Telephone Index. I’m sort of hoping this will be the only entrant into the series, but you never know. The MTI...
all this has happened before, and all this will...
Time, Apr 23, 1934:
[The] Frazier-Lemke Bill would give U. S. farmers a release from heavy mortgage charges. It proposed to have the Government take over the $9,000,000,000 of U. S. farm mortgages. The Government would pay off these mortgages in cash. The farmers would give the Government new mortgages for the same amount but bearing only 1½% interest. To this would be added a 1½% amortization...
I'll bet
Defining who is and who is not too tangential for the U.S. to kill can be difficult. (#)
guys all the way down
Yesterday I heard the CEO of Capital One talk about his outlook for the credit-card business. As he discussed various macroeconomic issues — the coming resumption of home-price declines as a result of rising foreclosure inventory; the unusual difficulty workers are having in finding new jobs by moving, because the recession is so widespread and because people with underwater mortgages...
great moments in employment
After falling asleep last night with the lights on, I woke up late. Then I fell asleep on the subway so deeply that I missed my stop and had to walk many blocks. The CEO saw me slinking in a bit tardily, but he didn’t seem to care. We walked together (in silence) to the kitchen, where I got a cup of coffee. I immediately spilled the entire thing on the carpet, right in the center of the...
zing
boss [out of nowhere, via email, presumably referring to a spreadsheet I made]: What the hell kind of font is Verdana???
me [via Blackberry because I am "off-site"]: A normal and standard one designed for on-screen readability at small sizes
me: Also what ikea now uses
boss: Um I don't shop at Ikea too much nowadays
“Nor, on the other hand, does Waldfogel consider the best available defense of...”
– Tyler Cowen
a veritable H of Ls
Another On Power quote, noted down four months ago:
In 1814 the France of the departments seemed to the Duc d’Angoulême a much easier country to govern than the France of the old provinces, “which was a veritable hedgehog of liberties.”
a hell of a compliment
George Saunders can “convert his sorrow about mankind into exquisite comedies of disappointment.”
“There certainly are times when it’s appropriate to experience cognitive...”
– EY
“Examined in the light of science, human behavior looks to be susceptible of many...”
– Bertrand de Jouvenel, On Power, p. 393-4.
is it out of line
to wonder whether stupid people can experience love?
“Due to a mistranslation, Soviet reports on Enrico Fermi claimed that his work...”
– Wikipedia via Kottke. Russia! Also: pumpkin cloud?
these sorts of stories are still out there
Welcome to Biscayne Landing:
Instead of a bustling new community, there are just the two towers with 373 condominiums. Where the retail town center was planned, weeds have sprouted amid mountains of dirt. Forget the promised pool and the spa. Only a hole was dug, and now it’s filled with mucky water. Plus, there’s the smell from the old landfill and the Miami-Dade sewage treatment...
“Risk appetite is back, so it is time to worry about the improbable again. Risk...”
– WSJ, “Heard on the Street”. I am not overly impressed by the conclusion drawn.
“Q. Do you believe the conspiracy theories about 9/11?
A. Every theory about...”
– Ran Prieur, “9/11 FAQ” (courtesy of Mortgagez). (Next sentence: “The dominant theory says that it was a conspiracy of Islamic extremists acting independently…”)
"at the very least"
Today at work I received a small package containing a self-published financial-advice book entitled Tax-Free Retirement. I did not ask for this book, but sometimes I get dumb stuff, so I didn’t think too much about it. A few hours later, I realized that someone had inserted a letter between two of the pages of the book:
Dear [Keyholez],
Congratulations on your marriage to [Mrs. Keyholez]....
intertemporal intrapersonal game theory
Keyholeznow is inordinately pleased that Keyholezyesterday spent all that money at Ikea before the new Keyholez-and-Mrs.-Keyholez budgetary system came into effect, because it’s easier to believe that said expenditures “didn’t count”.
Stupid, or, given the (likely) nature of time (i.e. it’s not really real), fiendishly clever?
(Stupid.)