January 2012
15 posts
These people seem mean. →
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“Public companies will be required to provide their shareholders with a...”
– One of the things Dodd-Frank did was require banks to ask shareholders, every once in a while, how they feel about the boatloads of cash the company dumps on upper management. (A similar polite non-binding vote applies to golden parachutes.) Companies will then take shareholders’ opinion under...
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Do you know what Alternative Investments are?... →
fek:
Meet President Obama’s new chief-of-staff.
Where do CDS enter the picture? The Huffington Post article you link to makes no mention of credit default swaps. Also I think anyone can enter into a credit default swap agreement, not just hedge funds. Finally, credit default swaps are not inherently evil.
2 tags
fun with numbers
mortgagez: you know that rule "80% of contributions are made by 20% of people at arbitrary organization"?
mortgagez: if that was fractal (ie "20% of the 20% do 80% of the 80%")
mortgagez: then 0.8% of people do 50% of the work
mortgagez: and the #1 person in the us does ~7%
“Before 1998, the Japanese market for antidepressants was untapped. To the...”
– “Gentlemen, congratulations. You’ve successfully brought depression to Japan.”
December 2011
50 posts
2 tags
“Yet, mental illness is still taboo, especially in young women of dating age. And...”
– Sheila McClear. Investigate! Do not merely catalog!
dpdsprings:
One of the many things I don’t understand about Ryan Gosling’s fans on the Internet (besides which of his dud 2011 movies they saw that so inspired them) is: who wants to hear “hey girl”? Women who love being patronizingly addressed? Fag hags? Both?
I say “Hey girl” pretty often. Is that bad?
Top Thoughts of 2011
11) My favorite photograph of all time shows two friends sitting with their elbows on their knees. They look like they’re about to clink the beer cans they’re holding. Merry Christmas.
Top Thoughts of 2011
10) A certain type of person can tell a great story or throw out a killer one-liner in casual conversation, and that might be the best thing that person does all day, which is probably a fine use of his or her talents.
Top Thoughts of 2011
8) I went surfing with an economist this morning. He had just attended a friend’s funeral. This friend of his died very young and had had a promising life ahead of him. The economist remarked that many of the people who were at the funeral were high-powered big-achiever types with loads of potential, but many of them had decided to take jobs at big corporations where they made lots of money...
Top Thoughts of 2011
7) In New York this year I was at a bar trying out a half-assed theory about how children provide a way for young adults to transfer their narcissism onto someone else and that procreation might make certain young adults less self-centered. The woman I tried this theory out on said that that was an idea that only a certain type of privileged person might try out, and I said, “You’re...
Top Thoughts of 2011
6) For most people, it’s probably better to try to be good than to try to be famous, not least because being good, for most people, is probably less difficult.
Top Thoughts of 2011
5) Even though it is the most fun activity known to man, surfing is plagued with an entirely humorless culture. Except for the old coots who yell “Yahoooooooooie!” when they take off on waves, almost no one in a lineup ever smiles. I’m told my idea for novelty wetsuits that look like tuxedos would not succeed as a business.
Top Thoughts of 2011
4a) This next thing I’m about to describe is not always funny to me and in fact bothers me, but I’m going to describe it as funny anyway. There are two modes of expression in personal writing that bounce off one another in a sort of disgusting way. The first mode combines clipped, declarative sentences with unexamined depictions of fleeting emotions. It then adds enormous attention to...
Top Thoughts of 2011
3) I sometimes think it would be cool if 3-D printers got so sophisticated and cheap and everyone got so educated and rich that a person could just design his or her own high-tech device and use it to go on the internet — or do anything at all — without worrying about signing terms of use, or being marketed to, or being tracked in any way. But then I start to worry about this 3-D...
Top Thoughts of 2011
2) When I see some people make suggestions that would actually make the world a better place if everyone followed them, I get sort of mad. For example, someone wrote the other day that when people ask him for presents, he says, “Don’t give me anything. Instead, just make a small donation to charity.” Another guy wrote on Facebook, “If you’re wishing me a happy...
Top Thoughts of 2011
1) I often joke with my classmates that I’d like to work for an economic regulator so I could put bad capitalists in jail. This is unsettling to some of them because, for starters, we are in an MBA program. When they press me for details about why, I can’t really explain myself. This is partly because we’re usually drinking in a bar or surfing, but mostly because I remember...
Top Thoughts of 2011
9) The theme of some Greek tragedies, according to a class I took in college, is that sometimes you have to choose between love and duty. Nowadays, that can still be true, provided you love someone and also are morally obligated to do something.
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Careful with your Neti pot or amoebas will eat... →
keyholez:
seedz:
keyholez:
seedz reblogged a post from The Economist that began:
GENE MARKS’S blog post on Forbes.com, ostentatiously headlined “If I Was a Poor Black Kid”, didn’t actually offend me as much as it did many of the plethora of bloggers who’ve pilloried it over the past few days. As Forbes’s Kashmir Hill later posted, most of the vitriol seemed to be responding to the title....
“I understand that debates are not conducted in front of perfectly rational...”
– EY (via keyholez)
Wikipedia: List of Games With Concealed Rules →
“This was our fifth visit to Isla and one we looked forward to through the rough...”
– Chicago Tribune
What insensitive, brainless ding dong is running the Tribune’s travel wire? (Wait, is “editor” even still a job at the Tribune Company?)
This purported dispatch from Isla Mujeres manages to be utterly tone deaf, light on facts and full of cliches: call it the Tribune trifecta....
keyholez:
seedz reblogged a post from The Economist that began:
GENE MARKS’S blog post on Forbes.com, ostentatiously headlined “If I Was a Poor Black Kid”, didn’t actually offend me as much as it did many of the plethora of bloggers who’ve pilloried it over the past few days. As Forbes’s Kashmir Hill later posted, most of the vitriol seemed to be responding to the title. The post itself went...