Ticker GOVT would be a SELL

This started with finding a link to this poster for Geeks:

2008 Federal Budget in a Poster

If you were the government you would:
Be spending 110% of your income.
Be spending 10% of your income on debt interest (credit cards?)
Be 4 years of your salary in debt.
Suze Orman says you can declare bankruptcy if your are more than 1 year of your salary in debt.

Incase you don't spend as much time looking at this as I did here are some interesting notes:
Taxes from Corporate Profits -8%
Taxes from Income +7%
Corporation for Public Broadcasting -25% (was Amanda leaving PBS most of this savings?)
Int'l Labor Affairs -81%
National Science Foundation +3%
Housing for elderly -23%
Safe and Drug Free Schools -38%

Since I had never seen a poster like this, I have never thought about our government this way so I started thinking about a few things. I usually think in terms of my goals for retirement and that for other workers.

First Comment: This is a mess!

1. What would I cut to balance the budget?
This didn't get very far, I don't know enough about the Bureau of Land Management to know if $1.845 Billion was enough. But I can only assume there is a lot of inefficiency in every single department. But spending 25% of the budget on Military / National Defense seemed a bit much.

2. If I started over how would I allocate government money?
This would be a fun civics final project. In looking at the sources of revenue, most of it comes from individuals not companies (but where is sales tax and property tax lumped in?) so it seems to makes sense you would want people to be prosperous to have a lot of money to tax. In this case, I would think spending more money on education and maybe even free college would be a good investment for the government if you end up with well paid, educated people paying you taxes. The flaw in this game is who would ever say we should budget for road and bridge repairs (boring) but needs to be done. Which brings up a whole other topic that would be blogs onto itself...

3. What things should be privatized and what should be government regulated?
My latest book on CD (Thanks Zach) thinks too many things have been privatized for profit to companies in the name of capitalism (Iraq Defense / Blackwater, Charter schools to rebuild New Orleans, etc).
I won't go too much into this here but what things should the government control or overlook and what things are OK to outsource to companies for profit?
Health Care and Health Insurance are big topics now.
What about
Energy
Oil
PBS
Medical Research
Weapons Research
Food safety

4. What changes could we make to the current system?
#3 is a hot topic so what could we do to the current system (I'd need a lot of help from Jim on these)

A Encourage Companies to bring money into the US
I was surprised to see Corporate profit taxes were only ~10% of revenue and 1/4 that of income taxes. If you read my other blogs you'd know I'd say we need more corporate taxes. But it looks like that won't help much unless we double them, and then we'd need more data to see the effect of reduced profits on unemployment rates and salary. If we doubled those taxes tomorrow companies would certainly layoff some people or hold back salary or move out of the US, and that would take more money away from income taxes. SO, I think we need to encourage US companies to bring in money from outside the US. This would bring in more money to hopefully grow more US jobs to run these businesses and encourage the US to buy more companies (everyone seems to be buying our companies). Like w/ P&G buying Wella, we now need people in Cincinnati working on that stuff. How do we encourage them?

Have lower corporate tax rates on money earned from outside the US.
I think corporate tax rates are currently a flat rate (Jim?) so I'd have some amount of progressive tax w/ %profits so that companies have to focus on top line growth as well as bottom line growth to keep wall street happy, but constantly look for more money to bring into the company to hopefully be spread to more employees at higher wages.
The first obstacle I can think of would be to prevent companies from just buying a German company and letting them run it w/o US employees. In this case I would impose a social security tax on the corporations for payrolls outside of the US. Make it more expensive to the company to have foreign workers and help fix a US employee problem.

B Do not raise Capital Gains and Dividend Taxes.
These are easy political targets since they do honestly favor the wealthy. However, the big problem with this approach is that most of the money people have put away for retirement is in stocks etc that are subject to capital gains. Raising those taxes won't really hurt the super wealthy that much but it will really hurt avg workers who may have to work for years more to make up for that loss in retirement savings. This would put more strain on Social Security etc since people would have to rely on that even more in retirement.
If you want to stick it to the rich get them to pay more in income tax. To do that you have to make it more expensive for their companies to pay out a dividend to them. Tax the corporation for paying dividends so that it is more appealing to pay salary to the rich. This will hurt avg people a little too if companies pay less dividends in conflict w/ my goal above, but most benefit more from capital gains than dividends.

C Allow people to fund govt programs of their choice w/o the United Way allocation scam. This may only work in small tax increases.
Lock the federal budget, then allow people to pay some amount a tax to a specific agency of their choice. Ideally this would be direct and blind to the overall government so they can't pull the old switch-a-roo with general funds to make up for things getting too much money when they wanted more to go to wars etc.

This is a hard balance.
You need corporations to provide jobs to get income tax.
You need profits to keep wall street happy to give companies money.
You need capital gains on stocks to fund people's retirement accounts.

Thank You Writer's Strike

While I miss The Office (Chuck too, but it is moving too fast and will burnout), I am a big fan of the Writer's Strike. From my limited understanding, I believe most of it has to do with the fact the writers get little or no money from DVD sales of their shows. Seems fair to me that they should get a cut. But the bigger picture is that we (consumers) are getting by pretty well without NBC etc, and when the shows return they may come back to even fewer viewers than they had in Sept. NBC already had to refund some money to advertisers because they fell below their minimums for ratings, other networks are giving away free ads in the Spring (w/ myspace.com already jumping the shark, this could be a good "put" on News Corp later).
Here are some of the best lessons from the strike:

1. There is more TV out there than the "Big 3" and most of it is better.
I already love the History Channel, Nova specials and all that good stuff that satisfies my "Learner" Strength (which is really more of a need). But the strike forces me to look for more good stuff during primetime rather then setting the DVR and waking up to shows. It does amaze me when someone at work mentions a random special that I saw.
Here are some good recommendations:

"It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia" (on FX) - I'd like to thank Matt and Shannon for introducing this show to us. It is easily the funniest show I have started watching this year. It is kind of like The Office but the writers feel no need to protect the characters from anything. It should be on network TV (maybe it can't w/ some of the content). If I owned FOX, I would put the first couple of seasons of this show on FOX starting in January and then launch the new season on FOX next fall.

"Paranormal State" (A&E Mon at 10pm) - Wonderfully placed just after Intervention (one of Rachel's favorites). It is about Ghost Hunters, similar to the show Ghost Hunters (the TAPS guys) but so far much better.

2. There is much more to do than watch TV.
This year in general, I have been reading a lot more during primetime. Not as much recently with so much football on TV. I also do more research online to learn more things.
A couple of my new favorite sites that I started using only this year:
Wikipedia.org
Digg.com
Cracked.com

3. This is the future for these Networks.
With DVRs, Wii's, and the high speed internet it is silly for big networks to think that we will show up at 8pm every night and be fed 24 mins of commercials every hour for their shows. It is kind of like newspapers, you know the end is near but it will take a long time to get there.

4. It makes it even more crazy to pay so much for cable.
I hate Time Warner, I hope they are the last kid picked for kickball.

Fact: Worst Holiday Song

With all due respect to "I want a hippopotamus for Christmas," here is the little known winner of the worst holiday song (lights put to music on You Tube)

Forget the TV in the door

I am incapable of remembering what leftovers are in the fridge.
Today we had pizza leftover from our tree trimming party, I had no clue.
I keep saying we need a dry erase board on the fridge so I can remember what to eat.

Favorite Day of the Week?

What is your favorite day of the week?

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\/ (Here is an ascii scroll arrow crica 1995)

If I am right, you probably said Friday (If I am wrong I'll present some data in the chart on how you are actually wrong).

I agree, but why Friday? You have to work on friday? Is the promise of a weekend better than the actual weekend? It should be Saturday. Saturday is the only day you get to sleep in, do whatever you want, and not have to wake up to go to work.

There is a neat website called MoodyOrNot.com (Could be done better w/ Geo targeting etc) They take users mood data and colect it to see trends.



Saturday is pretty good, but for all the reasons above it should be a better day. And Sunday drops way off. I thought when I started working full time that I enjoyed Sundays more because I didn't have to think about when to start my homework. But if you ask Rachel, she'll say I get in a bad mood on Sundays (especially if I spend it in a mall).

I have trouble explaining it but when I am in a Mall on the weekend I feel like "They" are winning and I am losing (the same "They" from Elizabethtown - A+). I feel like it is a big scam to get people to work all week then build a strip mall near by to have them spend their weekends their giving all of their money to the stores (can't the stores go to work for me to cut out the middle man?).

So I guess I should focus on my "Strengths" from Strength Finder and spend more time on those things in my free time. Lets see how I have been doing:

Learner- A DVR is key for this. I wake up on saturday and I have some Modern Marvels or a Nova special. The other day I stayed up to 2am to see a WWII special and realized we did not learn enough about that war in school.

Focus- This one is tough for me, it means I would love to carve out most of a day reading 1 book but I tend to get distracted. Hence The Tipping Point still sitting on my Current Book list even though I have picked up Trading Up.

Futuristic-I've always worried about the future. I still think cell phone towers will disappear once a network of 300 million cell phones is powerful enough to transfer calls by itself (imagine the programming to find a path of cell phones from NY to LA to relay your call).

Intellection- Being married is great for this. Rachel and I talk a lot about the theories of things as we encounter them. I can't imagine being married to anyone else where we couldn't talk like this.

Analytical- Wikipedia is great for this. Academics may knock the accuracy, but I find people tend to include more of the important things you really want to know. I am working on the data of why there will never be a playoffs in Div IA football due to the Bowl money scams (Did you know the Big 10 gets to split about $34 million/year, while Boise St had to split their $9 million from their BCS game with 5 non BCS conferences)

I guess my point is as much as I look forward to time off for Thanksgiving and the Winter Solstice, I tend not to maximize the use of that time off (3 football games a day doen't help either).

Thoughts on being 30

Today I am 30 years old.

1.I don't feel 30. Maybe 25, but I still feel about the same as when I graduated college. I still even wear some of the same t-shirts.

2.The best part of being 30 is now it will be even more ridiculous when I get carded.

3.Turning 30 isn't a big deal to me.

4.I am really glad to be married and settled. Even if it means I now lose all my whip cream on any ice cream sundae.

5.It has been a really neat time to grow up. Kids now naturally have cable TV and the Internet. It was kinda cool to have V66 and a unix based email address. It helps you appreciate the access to information. I just paid my mortgage online, my grandpa used to drive his checks to the phone company etc. It amazes me that Rachel has so much access to nursing school online.

6.I wasn't always so interested in traveling. Seeing Alaska, St Lucia and Italy has been great, but seeing the Grand Canyon was the most impressive. You hear about it and know it so well growing up, but to actually see it is awesome.

7.Looking back, I am glad the Red Sox lost the '86 World Series. I would have felt very unattached to the Red Sox history had they won when I was so young.

8.There is something wrong with our educational system when at 30, I still wake up in fear of an overdue paper or book report. Last night I did try twice, to save my wife and dog from the ceiling fan falling on us. Only it wasn't, and they weren't as concerned as I seemed to have been in my sleep.

9.It's not even Thanksgiving and our neighbor has Christmas light up. I'm afraid to turn on the radio.

10.Spending a lot of time in Vermont, I grew up watching a lot of weird Canadian TV that no one else remembers (G Force, Force 5, The Boogaloo's, Secret Garden)

11.I have a need to keep learning new things. I would really enjoy going back to school for many subjects I didn't even consider at the time (economics, some psychology, business, accounting).

12."Oldies" stations have gone too modern (too much 70's, not enough 50's) hopefully the neo-retro movements will fix that.

13. 30 years and still not a coffee drinker.

14. I am glad to see classic board games show up in stores for the holidays. I don't think they are as popular now, but I love board games. Most these days are simple to learn and last an hour. I still prefer really complicated games (Monopoly, Risk, Axis and Allies)

Things that will make me seem old:
I showed up to college w/o a cell phone or an email address
I hate IM
I had a lot of cassette tapes
I got a 212 Mb hard drive for Christmas one year
I had a 2400 baud modem
I remember 386 computers
I remember paying under $1.00 for gas
I played Pac Man in the arcade
I had an Atari
The first VHS I saw was Splash
I went to college w/ 5 CDs

These sports teams have left their homes:
Montreal Expos
Hartford Whalers
Quebec Nordiques
Minn Northstars
Winnipeg Jets
Vancouver Grizzlies
St Louis Cardinals
Houston Oilers
Washington Bullets (name change)
LA Rams, Raiders
a bunch more...

Made to Stick

I really enjoyed this Book on CD (B+). I got it because Dale had talked about it, I was a little worried that it wouldn't be very concrete or actionable, but it was very insightful.

**From Wikipedia**
The basic outline of the book follows the acronym "SUCCES" (with the last s omitted), which is summarized on the back of the book. Each letter refers to a characteristic or tool that can make an idea "sticky":

* Simplicity—finding the core of any idea
* Unexpectedness—grabbing people's attention by surprising them
* Concreteness—making sure an idea can be grasped and remembered later
* Credibility—giving an idea believability
* Emotion—helping people see the importance of an idea
* Stories—empowering people to use an idea through narrative

Chip Heath is a professor at Stanford University. Dan Heath is a consultant and developer of innovative textbooks. They also write a regular feature for Fast Company magazine.
****
Even the outline doesn't really sound great, but the examples are really really good. They talk about how Jared became a Subway commercial star, how Southwest has made their vision for low fares crystal clear for every employee.

But the best for me was the discussion on how people vote for president. It turns out people do not learn about the issues and then vote for the person who would benefit them the most. They tend to vote based on the group association they put on themselves. Most people think "I view myself as this type of person, and this type of person would vote for so and so" even if they do not personally benefit from that candidates plans.

They gave a great example of Firemen. This company made a public safety video and called around Firehouses to ask if they would be willing get a free copy to preview. They almost all agreed. Once they agreed the company asked what type of free gift they would want as a "thanks" for watching the video. The response was very bad to that free gift because firemen do not view themselves as people who need incentives to view safety videos. Whereas most of us at home would probably accept a free gift for a subscription to a magazine or anything we were already interested in.

Probably explains why when we took Karen's quiz on the election issues, it turned up presidential candidates we had never even considered.

Great Commercial

Shopless in Seattle

We cruised through Seattle on our way to Alaska last year (not sure how the 5 hour layover on the way back counts as cruising through), it seemed like a nice city. And as everyone knows, it is the home of...Jones Soda, correct!

But I don't think I'd ever move there, or at least not buy a car anywhere near Seattle.

Here's why...

Typical Sports Team Story.
Starbucks guy sells the Seattle basketball team for $350 million.
Some guy buys it hopefully doing his homework to see if it was a smart deal.
Now the new owner demands the city build him a new $500 million arena so he can charge more for tickets and make more money off of the people of Seattle.
The city of Seattle using their brain power (very high density of PHD's, I hear) says no way will we use tax payers money to build you an arena so we can pay you more for tickets.
Owner does the adult version of "then I'm taking my toys and going home" by saying he will have to move the team to Kansas City to find a free arena.
New owner goes crying to his mommy (David Stern) who tells Seattle if the team is "forced" to move, Seattle will not get a new team anytime soon.

This happens in most cities (see Cincinnati in 2000) usually the city caves and we get a tax hike. But this is crazy for Seattle. We bought some things in the airport, while paying I was shocked at how much the sales tax cost (8.9%!)
I asked why it was so high and the guy said they had to pay for a light rail system and 2 new stadiums (Football and Baseball).

How much higher will it need to go to pay another $500 million for basketball?

It will be interesting to see what happens. But it brings up a good question. Fans all assume a team moving away is like losing a puppy, but is that really the case these days? With all of the sports packages you can be anywhere (even Ohio) and still follow your team (without paying for the stadiums).

Good Luck Seattle.

2007 Nobel Peace Prize

I am all for Al Gore and the IPCC winning the Nobel Peace Prize for their work on Climate Change.

There are some (on Digg and Fox News) that are against it but I am all for it.
They say:
"Historically" big political figures who mediate some peace treaty etc have won the award.

1.In a "Flat World" you will no longer have to be in a government position to have an impact on the world.

2. This isn't the fist time the award has stretched a bit beyond obvious conflict resolution.

1964 - MLK
1979 - Mother Teresa
1999 - Doctors without Borders
2006- Yunus and the Grameen Bank for micro credit lending to the poor (one my favorites)

And Al Gore using his semi celebrity status has had a huge impact on how people evaluate their values and priorities.

Books on CD Review

I finally fnished a batch of Books on CD. Let me know if you want to borrow any of them.

Social Intelligence: (A-) This is really good, similar to Stumbling upon Happiness it is more psychology and anatomy than most things I read. It talks a lot about how our brains were made to interact with others (unlike most animals). They discuss the importance of pre communication with babies on their development. The time in which they can't talk or even jesture their needs but can interact with their parents on a brain to brain level. They also discuss how we create tons of connections in our brains as we learn things but as we get older and have many many connections our brain starts to sacrafice certain connections to keep the ones we use more often. They say this explains why it is so hard for an adult to learn a new language and easy for children.
I wish I hadn't gotten the abridged version of this but I wasn't sure if I'd like it.

Status Anxiety: (Book on CD: C+, PBS special: A*) This has been driving me crazy for a while. This is a 120 min BBC special. It was on PBS in september. I watched it and it was really good, it talks about how freedom in america causes the side effect of not being happy. Because no matter how much you achieve, the oppotunity to go from poor to mega rich will always make you feel like you are underachieving. It was a great show w/ even talk of a French man who came to the US in 1815 or so and predicted this side effect.
The main problem is, I said this was a 120 min BBC special, *PBS only played the first hour and it ended with "now I will tell you how this affects our modern life at home and in the work place" and it ended. So I bought the book on CD which was not as good. A lot of great history but the author himself makes the PBS special very interesting. But for the book on CD they hired an award winning BBC voice and he is terrible. It comes out more like dramatic reading than a discussion.

The World is Flat: (First Half: C-, Second Half: B+) I had heard a lot about this so I got the unabridged version. 22 CDs and maybe 6 weeks of commute time to work. The first 12 or 13 CDs are interesting but not very insightful. Surprise, India and China are coming on strong with outsourcing! Who knew, so lets discuss this for 13 CDs. Not really that bad but it feels like it. The second half gets better with a look at the Dell computer supply chain etc. And he has some theories on how interconnected global economies makes the cost of war too great for modern day countries. He has the McDonald's theory from "The Lexus and the Olvie Tree" Dale has been reading. No countries whose middle class is adavcned enough to support having McDonald's has ever been at was with another country who has McDonald's. His Dell theory he says is even stronger. Any Asian county or anyone in the Dell supply chain won't go to war because the risk of being removed from dell's supply chain is too great.
He also looks at how terrorists are created by Islamic radicals. He says a lot of times it is educated people who leave the middle east only to see how much farther advanced the west is beyond the middle east. They feel humiliated because their belief is that they are the chosen ones. They also do not fit into the western values and use the internet to stay connected to the middle east and their beliefs. Terrorist leaders pray on their frustration and convince they they should become terrorists.

Next on the list:
Made to Stick

This I Believe...2

I do believe in Capitalism and Free Markets when they operate within a system that is designed optimize outputs that match with our values. We can't all ever agree on values and ideals so things are always in fluxx (sp. as a nod to the great card game).

I believe this is the 2 min example of how America has been working to be as great as we are today.

1.Employees are paid by companies to produce "stuff".
2.Companies sell the "stuff" for a profit to everyone.
3.Companies use their profit to buy other things from other companies.

* all of the above promotes a healthy stock market
If employees get a lot of money they will invest in markets for retirement.
If companies make a lot of profit their stock goes up.
When companies use their profits to buy things it helps the economy by giving other companies profits and other employees more jobs and higher wages.

When all this works, you get a virtuous cycle that keeps improving our quality of life and motivates companies and people to improve our standard of living.

I think Step 3 has recently been broken (or at least less efficient). And they are taking advantage of the entire system we have created, halting or slowing our virtuous cycle.

S&P 500 companies are making record profits. Not only record profits but those profits are growing at great rates. But these companies are all sitting on all of this money rather than reinvesting it into the economy. Last I heard I think all of the cash sitting in the S&P 500 is close to several trillion. Maybe I am off a bit but it is on the order of magnitude of our national debt.

If you listen to CNBC a lot you will hear the following phrase:

"the consumer is driving this economy"
"business spending is still very slow"

We (Step 1) have been trying our best to to keep the cycle going.
Consumer productivity is up.
Consumer spending is way up even to the point of personal debt being way up.

But companies are not doing their part. The point of giving companies tax breaks is so they can make good profits. They should use those "extra" profits to hire more people, pay their current employees more and spend money to help the economy.
This is not happening to the same degree as normal. As a result we feel the pain. If you company is growing profits at 10% shouldn't your salary increase 10% per year (or at least total compensation including benefits).

I am fine w/ profits if it keeps the economy and virtuous cycle going.
The need for profits without improving the economy results in:

1.Making ALL insurance more expensive.
You can see my comments on Dale's blog about Health Insurace. But also the Katrina issues with home owners insurance not wanting to pay people the amount they had insured because it hurts their profits. Aritlces then discussed the practices at All State (which I dumped) in that area as offering people very low payouts vs what they were entitled. If they faught the settlements then make it very expensive (i.e. lawyer fees) for them to come get their money.

2.Making college more expensive.
With limits on Financial Aid and Govenment loans it is bad when the "best" option for more money is Astrive.com who's 9%+ rate is touted as "cheaper than a credit card".

3.Giving you 3,000 calories per meal at Chilli's.
They get more profits for that $10 meal than the $9, 2,800 calorie meal they gave you last year. The extra costs of health affects of eating too much and eating bad is an external singularity because it is not paid for by the food comapnies it is paid for by everyone.

This is why even while a capitalist and economist I support local and private companies.

The current system makes giving money to companies (step 3) less efficient in keeping the economy going. It makes it more efficient to give it to individual owner or private comapnies.

I loved going to Madison's market in Glendale. It is a neat little grocer w/ Stewarts cream soda and great sandwiches (it was the last place I ate as a single man). It is now closed because people preferred to go to Kroger or Subway for groceries and subs. Even though those chains are less efficient at giving the money back to Glendale than even just the rent of Madison's.

What I did this weekend...

Online Poker Cheating

I took this from a Digg story:
Background: Someone won a big tournament and was suspected of cheating. The data provided by the poker website also suggests he may have known everyone's hole cards.


The Absolute Poker controversy keeps getting more wild by the day.

So when we last left you, Absolute Poker had issued a statement denying that anyone had access to a "superuser" account and that no one could see any hole cards. After poring over the hand histories and evidence, they said, they had found no evidence of any wrong-doing. They would continue to investigate though, they had said. I thought at the time that Absolute Poker would just go into ignore mode from that point on, and the issue would eventually be dropped.

Well hold on..

Apparently, "CrazyMarco" (the player who had come second in that now infamous tournament that was won by "Potripper") asked for the hand histories from this tournament from Absolute Poker.

Absolute Poker sent the hand histories. Unfortunately for them, they also included the hole cards of every player at the table, and not just CrazyMarco's hole cards.

After viewing just a couple of hands, you can come to the conclusion that Potripper was cheating. The evidence is overwhelming. It is just ridiculous, and I find it hard to believe that they didn't do a better job of hiding it. Always getting his money in good, and never putting in an extra chip when he is behind in a hand. Going over the top of a re-raiser of a board of 8d 6d 3s holding the Q 10 of clubs, when his opponents are holding K J and Q J. Holding pocket Jacks against an opponent holding A Q, and check folding on the turn when a Queen comes out. Playing almost every hand when his opponents aren't dealt a big hand, but folding when an opponent at the table is dealt a big hand. Open folding KQ one hand (when an opponent is dealt AA), but raising 2/6 UTG when none of his opponents at the table have big hands. Going through a stretch when he wins something ridiculous like 65 hands out of a total of 90 hands. You can go on and on; if you need to see for yourself, there is plenty of evidence on Pocketfives and Twoplustwo. The people on those sites have done a TREMENDOUS job in getting these hand histories out to the public. Who knows how many other tournaments on Absolute were won in this fashion?

Absolute automatically loses all credibility because they say that there was no evidence of a "superuser" account in the hand histories. Oh really?

The best part of this story is just being fleshed out right now though. Who was involved in this operation?

Absolute Poker not only made a huge blunder in sending out the hand history with all of the hole cards displayed, but they also included the email addresses / account id's / IP Addresses of everyone who opened up a table as an observer during this tournament.

Apparently an Absolute Poker account with an ID of 363 opened up Potripper's table two hands into the tournament and railed him the entire way. The ID number is significant because this would indicate that this account was one of the first accounts EVER at Absolute Poker, making it likely that this is a person with extremely close ties to the company (employee, owner, shareholder, etc.)

Potripper folds the first two hands of the tournament, then ID 363 opens up Potripper's table to observe, and suddenly Potripper starts going wild, winning practically every hand.

The prevailing theory in the poker community? Potripper was a dummy account, and ID 363 had access to hole cards, and was relaying them to "Potripper."

Taken from Digg etc:

Apparently the IP address of User ID 363 resolves to Costa Rica as well, which is home to Absolute Poker.

The story gets more interesting by the minute, and I am doing my best to keep up with it.

I feel that it's important to report on this story, as it has big implications for online poker as a whole. In the end, protecting players is much more important to me than burning a bridge with an online poker room. We need to do our part to get the story out there, so that everyone can figure out exactly what happened, and make sure that it doesn't happen again. Nothing can be explained away in regards to this situation, the cat is out of the bag..

Here are some of the details behind the data analysis

Weekend

This was a busy weekend.

Friday:
Amanda came down from Dayton and Rachel made her favorite spaghetti bake for dinner. It was really good then and when I had leftovers on sunday.
Then we went roller skating at Skateown USA after confirming they served Nachos (C+ for "bingo style" - a heated cup of cheese). Here are some pictures:


Saturday:
Amanda stayed over since we had to wake up at 6:30 am. We volunteered to be the victims in a Christ Hospital emergnecy drill. The situation was the Enquirer building caught on fire and collapsed. I picked an easy victim, I was a green tag, 19 yr old w/ chest pain, shortness of breath, and a history of bipolar. Rachel and Amanda were both DOA and went to the Morgue.
After a really long nap we went to Rachel's Mom's to see the OSU game and Rachel got her baby fix as Matt and Shannon were down with little Sam. Once the game was in hand we played Fluxx and 5 bazillion Rummy, as it is known in my family. My Rummy game was really off, but I was used to Grandma Sturgis throwing me an Ace or two when Grandpa wasn't looking.

Sunday:
Rachel and I went to Yellow Springs for the afternoon. We ate at Young's Dairy and walked around town. It is somewhat similar to Concord or Chatam with neat little stores. There were a lot of neat cars going through town including:

The red Ferarri every young boy had as a matchbox
A Bentley
A Tiumph 3 and an MG
An old 70's volvo wagon that someone near me really liked
Lots of motorcycles

Even after buying our house, Rachel still loves open houses, so we went to one for an old house in Yellow Springs. The front half was very old with original 1930's wooden floors and built in bookshelves in the library. In the back they added on a new kitchen which was nice, but didn't really fit the rest of the house. The back screened in patio felt more like Massachusetts with a really mature and grown in back yard with a lot of shady trees.

Monday:
We went to the Patriots game, Rachel's brother Robby was able to come on late notice so we picked him up at UC. The Pats won 34-13. At first the crowd was really into the game. They got a little down once the Pats went up 10-0. When the bengals finally scored you would have thought they won the super bowl the way the crowd went crazy and started talking smack. By the second half the crowd was quiet and even sat down. By the 4th quarter they started to leave since they "were getting screwed" on all of the calls.

I didn't have to say a whole lot since they were so down but my top comments were:

1. "This is just like the game against Cleveland"
2. "Oh No! Ocho No-catch-o"
3. "Randy Moss is amazing"
4. "Wow!"

Rachel had some good ones too for a couple of the annoying fans behind us, I'll let her post them.

Soda Review: Mt Dew Game Fuel

I don't drink beer, and I don't drink coffee. Both invite the discussion and comparison of various new versions or flavors. I do get 100% of my caffeine from soda. In college I was well versed in every knock off brand of soda that could be bought for under $.75 per 2 liter. When I graduated and got a job I told myself I would pay up to get real Coke etc.

I also don't play xbox 360 or Halo 3. But at Target today Zach and I decided to try the new Mountain Dew Game Fuel, a soda co branded for Halo 3 "Gamers".

It is ironic that it is for Halo 3 because I would give it a 3 on a scale of 1 to 10. That would put it just above Cott Black Cherry, which Vishad provided free to the Engineering lab as long as you were a member of the engineering society, AIChE. It will also put it just below "Splash it Up" (think 7 up) which I think was $.59 per 2 liter circa 1998 and almost as good as "Seventeen".

Based on my professional soda drinking expertise, I would say Game Fuel is 1/2 Mt Dew Code Red and 1/2 Mt Dew Live Wire. But they did seem to add some other necessities like glycerol ester of wood rosin and 73 mg of caffeine. It is so bad you probably need to run out and try it. With only 2 gone of our 12 pack, there is a good chance I will offer you some next time you are at the house. But don't panic the odd after taste is probably a result of the brominated vegetable oil.

I cannot confirm if this Limited Edition soda was just a process mistake like the rumors around OK soda back in 1994.

OK Soda Wikipedia

Global Dimming 3

So far, the Global Dimming blogs have been brought up quite a bit offline.
I enjoy knowing nothing about a subject and learning as I go (hence 'Learner' from my discover your strengths tests).

I need to learn more about photosythesis and what controls it:
A general equation for photosynthesis is:
6 CO2(gas) + 12 H2O(liquid) + photons → C6H12O6(aqueous) + 6 O2(gas) + 6 H2O(liquid)
carbon dioxide + water + light energy → glucose + oxygen + water

1. What impact does moisture, temperature, and light have on the reaction?
2. Most interesting and hard to learn about is how reversible is the reaction?

When the leaves fall, plants release CO2 back into the air. How efficient or inefficient is this? Converting the carbon into sugar seems like a good way to to get rid of it, but how does it re-release CO2 from the decomposition of the leaves? Does 100% go back into the air or 90%?

Another interesting affect that I found was Ocean Acidification.

Average surface oceanp pH
Pre-industrial (1700s) 8.179
Present-day (1994) 8.104
2050 (2×CO2 = 560 ppm) 7.949
2100 (IS92a)[3] 7.824

As we produce more CO2 and the ocean temperatures rise we will increase the solubility of CO2 in the ocean. This lowers the pH of the ocean.

"When CO2 dissolves, it reacts with water to form a balance of ionic and non-ionic chemical species : dissolved free carbon dioxide (CO2 (aq)), carbonic acid (H2CO3), bicarbonate (HCO3-) and carbonate (CO32-). The ratio of these species depends on factors such as seawater temperature and alkalinity."
- wikipedia


This is a plot (tanks wikipedia) of the change in CO3- concentration from 1700 to 1990.

What is interesting is if you look back at the Keeling Curves (CO2 plots). I ran some quick trendlines for the rate of CO2 increase at Hawaii and at the South Pole. The rate of CO2 increase at the South Pole is slightly less than that at Hawaii. This could be caused by the southern hemisphsere having more oceans than land (unlike the norther hemisphere) increasing CO2 absorption by the Ocean slightly decreasing the rate of CO2 increase in the south.

I'll post my plots at some point, they are currently on the Nursing School Laptop.

Beef Jerky

Global Dimming: Part 2

I have now been emailing the professor at Columbia back and forth.
Here are some of his comments:

Dear Dave,
This is very interesting! I have looked at some specific sites and the
effect of dimming on photosynthesis, but I have not thought about it the way you show it with the keeling curve. Did you try other years as well or did you choose 1960 and 2006 because they are the first and the last?
I am curious and will show it to my colleagues.
Thanks for helping us with our daily science struggle.

Dave,
It becomes more interesting. You may already know that the Keeling data from Hawaii represent Northern Hemisphere biospheric productivity because CO2 is well mixed in the Pacific air mid troposphere. Although major forest fires or extended droughts can affect one year but a general trend is indeed relevant for climate change. Current thinking is that the biological uptake of CO2 in a warming world is reduced which implies a positive feedback (more man-made CO2 produces even more natural CO2). But I have never seen anything with regards to the changes within seasons as you show it. I have to do some more literature search and think about it more carefully.
It is VERY intriging.

-----
As I dug in for more supporting data I found this:

Before 1980 the Month of the Min CO2 levels (trees start to die)
27% in Sept
73% in Oct

Since 1980:
77% in Sept
23% in Oct

Since 1987:
90% in Sept
10% in Oct

There is some possible data that the year after a big Volcano eruption the trees die earlier but I'd need to see daily CO2 values to really show a good chart.

But I did find some data on the New England Foliage season. It is only since 1999 but we have been talking for years that it seems like it comes earlier these days.

When Rachel and I went to Vermont a couple of years ago it was the first weekend of "Foliage Season Rates" at the B&B. But most of the area was at or past its peak.


OK only 7 years but it shows some earlier foliage. At least still interesting.

My next big question is if the leaves change a few weeks earlier than before, how does that impact the amount of CO2 trees could be taking out of the air?

Scientific Contribution

Another great Nova special on tonight about how pollution could be causing a dimming of sunlight reaching the earth, decreasing the impact of global warming and causing huge issues with weather patterns.

Global Dimming

It made me go back and look at a problem that has been bothering me since Rachel and I first watched An Inconvenient Truth (A+).


The Keeling Curve (wikipedia)



The Keeling Curve is the plot of the levels of CO2 in the atmosphere over time. As you can see it has gone up steadily since 1960 helping to lead to the idea that global warming can be caused by greenhouse gases.

You can also see the data swings up and down within a year. It hits its peak CO2 levels in the spring because that is when the all the leaves come out and start abosrbing the CO2 from the air (good work plants). And begins to rise in the fall when leaves begin to die and the decomposition releases the CO2 back into the air. An important note is that this trend lines up with our seasons here in the North (sorry Australia) because about 3/4 of the total land mass is above the equator.

What has bothered me since watching An Inconvenient Truth is a shift in the calendar year of when the peaks and lows are reached. I started plotting the data, laying the curves of an early year (1960) over top a later year (2006). I personally expected to see a shift in the seasons due to an increase in Global Warming. I thought we'd see the peak CO2 leves be reached earlier in the year (as it got warm earlier for plants to grow) and also the min to be reached later in the year as global warming extened the nice weather in the fall (how great has it been around Halloween?).

I was wrong. (Well only half right).



The Pink line is 1960 data and the Blue line is 2006 data.
As you can kind of see the peak shifts a bit to the left (earlier in the calendar year) going from 1960 Pink to 2006 Blue. This fits well with Global Warming causing an earlier snow melt up north (Canada) and starting the growing season that produces CO2 absorbing leaves.
What has driven me crazy for 6 months is the fact the I was wrong in the Fall. This shows that the Min of CO2 levels is also shifted earlier in time. This means despite possibly warmer weather, trees are losing their leaves earlier (my parents said the leaves are already turing in Boston).

How can this be?

This can be true because of 2 reasons.

1. I suck at biology.

Plants do not lose their leaves due to temperature. They lose their leaves due to a decrease in photosynthesis caused by reduced light. Normally the huge drop off in daylight should occur around Sept 21st (the equinox). But IF Global Dimming were true, this could occur earlier in the year due to pollution reducing light stopping photosynthesis earlier.

2. Global Dimming could be real.

I have seen another PBS special that says we can now measure pollution in Seattle that has made it all the way across the Pacific from China.

What is exciting to me, is that I may have found (am I the first?) pre-existing evidence of Global Dimming in historical data. In the Nova special it was presented as a theory with some evidence it may have decreased ocean temperatures enough to change rain patterns. I emailed some of my charts and thoughts to a professor from Columbia and one from U Wisconsin - Whitewater who were mentioned in the Nova special.

Is any of this legit? I don't know, but it was a lot of fun to work on. And I can sleep a bit better with at least a theory as to why the data drove me crazy for months.

Spree!

After a nearly 3 month drought, I found some Spree at a Speedway Gas.
I had to buy 3 rolls since who knows when I'd see it again.
Somehow one of my rolls disappeared at home, so I know everyone loves Spree!

Mortgage gone up? Call the Govt.

I have always had a thing for numbers, so I love the stock market. The last couple weeks have been brutal. Sometimes the best thing to do is walk away so you don't panic and do anything stupid. So I have stopped paying attention to the market which helps keep me focused on the long term and not get caught up in the short term.

But the only thing that can make a bad market worse is really bad politics. The market is tanking partly because of all these people that got stuck w/ super expensive houses with crazy ARM mortgages that have been going up for a while now. Not to mention the flippers who got stuck w/ 5 new condos in Miami that no one has ever lived in.

Several potliticians (Presidential Candidates) have suggested that the government step in and pay for a lot of these bad mortgages. I'm sure it is an easy position to take to gain public support and votes, but this is a terrible policy. There has to be risk w/ reward to prevent these things from happening. You can't allow companies to make a ton of money off of interest only loans, and then bail them out when, surprise, people can't afford to make payments when the loan adjusts. That will only create a bigger problem next time because people (both homebuyers and loan companies) will take more risk knowing that if it goes bad the government will come help.

This is like a kid going to a casino and having their parents say "call if you lose more than $1,000 and I'll come pay." How could you ever expect that kid to manage their money properly and know when to leave? If they are down $100, of course they will keep playing becasue they know their parents will fix it if they get into bigger trouble.

From an economic principle it is terrible, but also from an individual standpoint it is a bad deal for those of us who didn't get into this mess. Politicians have thrown out numbers a large as $200 billion to fix this. That is roughly $2,000 per household in taxes to pay for that. Why should we chip in $2,000 to pay for others mistakes? That means I would have been better off speculating in flipping. There is some chance I would have made a million and if I didn't someone else's taxes will help me out.

I would agree with spending tax money on this IFF (remember math proofs?) the government passes a law saying these ridiculous mortgages are illegal and make sure none of these companies can offer them again. If they say these people were victims of fraud and it was illegal then OK, but don't say it is OK to sell these silly loans and then pay them off when people get in trouble.

I really do feel bad for people who are trouble from an interest only loan or worse a negative amoritization loan, but they should be able to cut their losses and refinance into a 30 year fixed mortgage. And the fact is, if you cannot afford your house w/ a 30 year fixed mortgage, then you cannot afford to live there.

We need to be teaching personal finance in schools. Start w/ bank accounts and balancing a checkbook, work you way into credit cards, school loans, and mortgages.
Students need to learn that the job of any company is to maximize the profits it gets from you. And it doesn't matter if that includes you getting a school loan, buying a house or a car. Same w/ a casino, the job of each game is to make as much money as they can from you. And only through education can you tell what is a good bet vs a bad bet.

It will help students ask the right questions like:

"Why is the Gap telling me all the new clothes I bought last year are now out of style?"

"Why would a financial advisor tell me I need to sell all of my funds and let him pick the new ones?"

"Why do the realtors on House Hunters always ignore the comment and point out something great whenever someone says they don't like something."

No gnews is good gnews....

Reason #101 why I get all of my news online (special thanks to Amanda for finding this cinematic genius):

This would be great advice...except for the fact that it is terrible advice.

There is no one I know who appreciates the nuance of language more than my friend Kenny, so this blog is for him:

It has been almost 6 months since the last Vegas trip, long enough that I have recovered from the lack of sleep and am starting to look forward to the next trip.

So much so that I had to buy Hoyle Casino 2007 for my computer. Brief comment on the game, I had the 2000 version and loved it but the game play of this one is really slow. Waiting to get paid after a roll of craps takes longer than in an actual casino (true fact).

Anyways, the game came with a guide book that includes helpful hints on how to learn each casino game.

But, it also has a "Strategies" section which is a riot. I will write them below trying to recreate my best Kenny impression in text.

Roulette:

"It is however, a FACT that winning and losing often takes place in streaks. If you have a system and it's actually working for a period of time, stay in while it lasts, then get out AS SOON as it LOOKS like it's taking a turn for the worse."

Let it Ride (aka Ride or Die):

"Blind luck ASIDE, knowing whether to keep or recall bets is the key to sucess in Let it Ride. In this uncomplicated game, IN FACT, it's the only area in which strategy can make a difference."

Back to Basics

There was a great Modern Marvels on tonight about water. It had a good segment on the Bellagio water show:



Aside: Modern Marvels is now available for download on itunes. A coworker got an iphone and it is significantly more impressive than I thougtht (now if only that AAPL stock I just bought would go back up).

It reminded me of some things I have been thinking about since St Lucia. I really think most of the 21st century will be spent on getting the basics back in order (hopefully before any crisis). Access to water (I say just water because 1/2 the world doesn't have access to clean drinking water), power and food supplies etc.

Most of the 1900's and the industrial revolution solved most of these basic needs for us here in the US. The fact that Las Vegas exists and has drinking water is really amazing. Farmers became more productive, we had power plants built all over and managed to get water to the Bellagio water show. This allowed a great percentage of our population to diverge into other areas of work rather than the basics. Today, I personally produce zero food, zero water or power but trade my deodorant sticks for all my needs (effectively).

Growing up in New England, this would not have been allowed to occur during the age of the pilgrims, most had to bring in their share of the harvest and probably only a few doctors etc were exempt from this. But since 1900 we have "lost" or no longer needed 75% of the farming jobs due to advances in crop yields (the exact % is in Naked Economics).

As the population of the US in general and specifically the rest of the world has grown, we are eating up whatever buffer our technology has created. Today we have summer brown outs in California, and watering restrictions in dry parts of the country (only even numbered houses can water their lawns on certain days, Dale maybe you could start a carbon emission-like market for your 42 days w/o watering your lawn). I know the snow runoff west of the Rockies no longer produces enough drinking water to meet demand. And Modern Marvels showed the underground water table east of the Rockies (in the plains) is expected to be down to 20% the original capacity by 2020.

As of right now, I am not crazy worried about this (provided we start to get smart about these things) since our ability to diverge will allow us to use new technologies we may not have had. We may not have been able to look at solar power as much without the advances in silicon wafers and computer chips.

For the stock people, there is a good water index fund (PHO) that has everyhting from purification companies to sewer line manufacturing (just see the ripped up Glendale streets, a lot of us town need updates) etc it is up 33% since being introduced a couple years ago.

This I Believe...

NPR did a radio series (that is now a book) on famous people who write short essays that start with "This I believe..."

OK, I chose not to listen or buy the book, BUT I still like the concept and encourage others to write blogs about this.

I believe externally motivated people will never truly be happy in life because they will always sacrifice what they really want for what they think others want them to have (or do or be).

I believe this is one of the main reasons celebrities become total
disasters. At some point in life (usually before they even know who
they are) someone tells them they are special and everyone loves them.
Then they become some person that everyone loves. Overtime, they either
become unhappy with the person they have to pretend to be or lose their
15 mins of fame and are no longer loved by everyone (therefore losing their identity). Enter drugs and drag racing Lindsay Lohan.

I believe there are several distinct phases of life.
1. First you are very insecure with yourself.
2. The you slowly begin to define who you are.
3. Then and only then do you gain a real interest in having an impact on the world you live in.

The first phase occurs mostly in middle / high school. It is like the opposite of
Hungry Hungry Hippos, everyone is so insecure they do not want any
attention on them, so they deflect attention onto others.

The second phase occurs somewhere between college and 40 years old.
Somewhere in my mid 20's I became comfortable with getting more
enjoyment doing nerdy things than going to a bar on the weekend.

I think finding Rachel and getting married has put me into they third
phase. My life is so happy that I can start to look beyond my own
little world. I think that is why recently I have begun to have some
interest in economics, history and politics. It actually get ansy at times when I feel like I should be more productive towards whatever contributions I was meant to make, but I haven't figured them out yet.

This is all similar to when I started playing indoor soccer. At first when someone passed me the ball, all I remember seeing was my feet. Then slowly you begin to watch defenders and even predict where to pass it for your teammates.

I also believe Red Sox fans can finally move on with life after winning the world series.

I also believe Lucy sniffs my face to determine my emotional state.

Amazing TLC show

The Boy Who Sees Through Sound

TV-G

This program tells the story of Ben Underwood, a blind boy who has the most amazing self-taught ability to see with sound, but to reach his dazzling full potential he must face his own weaknesses; learn and grow.

Blind since age 3, Ben Underwood skateboards, shoots hoops and plays video games. How does he do it? Just like bats and dolphins

Ask people about Ben Underwood and you'll hear dozens of stories like this – about the amazing boy who doesn't seem to know he's blind. There's Ben zooming around on his skateboard outside his home in Sacramento; there he is playing kickball with his buddies. To see him speed down hallways and make sharp turns around corners is to observe a typical teen – except, that is, for the clicking. Completely blind since the age of 3, after retinal cancer claimed both his eyes (he now wears two prostheses), Ben has learned to perceive and locate objects by making a steady stream of sounds with his tongue, then listening for the echoes as they bounce off the surfaces around him. About as loud as the snapping of fingers, Ben's clicks tell him what's ahead: the echoes they produce can be soft (indicating metals), dense (wood) or sharp (glass). Judging by how loud or faint they are, Ben has learned to gauge distances.

The technique is called echolocation, and many species, most notably bats and dolphins, use it to get around. But a 14-year-old boy from Sacramento? While many blind people listen for echoes to some degree, Ben's ability to navigate in his sightless world is, say experts, extraordinary. "His skills are rare," says Dan Kish, a blind psychologist and leading teacher of echomobility among the blind. "Ben pushes the limits of human perception."

Kish has taught echolocation to scores of blind people as a supplement to more traditional methods, such as walking with a cane or a guide dog, but only a handful of people in the world use echolocation alone to get around, according to the American Foundation for the Blind. A big part of the reason Ben has succeeded is his mother, who made the decision long ago never to coddle her son. "I always told him, 'Your name is Benjamin Underwood, and you can do anything,' " says Aquanetta Gordon, 42, a utilities-company employee. "He can learn to fly an airplane if he wants to."

Ben plays basketball with his pals, rides horses at camp and dances with girls at school events. He excels at PlayStation games by memorizing the sounds that characters and movements make. "People ask me if I'm lonely," he says. "I'm not, because someone's always around or I've got my cell phone and I'm always talking to friends. Being blind is not that different from not being blind."

Ben was just 2 years old when doctors discovered his retinal cancer. Ben's first Braille teacher, Barbara Haase, believes the boy's ability to see during his first two years helped him develop "a sort of map of the physical world," she says. Growing up, Ben got help from his brothers Joe, now 23, and Derius, 19, and sister Tiffany, 18. (His father, Stephen, died in 2002.) "They taught him how to find the seams on his clothes so he puts them on right side out, stuff like that," says Aquanetta. "But they didn't overdo it."

Aquanetta sent Ben to mainstream schools, where professionals on staff gave him individual attention and taught him to overlook taunts from classmates who waved their hands in his face or snatched food off his tray. "The hardest thing for me to accept is rejection," says Ben, who starts ninth grade in the fall. "I can tell when someone rejects me in some way." At home his mother let him play with no restrictions. "If he fell, she would just say, 'Oh, he fell,' and he'd get up and try again," says his kindergarten teacher Ann Akiyama. "I've seen him run full speed into the edge of a big brick column and get back up. He was fearless."

Ben learned how to read Braille and walk with a cane, but when he was 3, he also began teaching himself echolocation, something he picked up by tossing objects and making clicking sounds to find them. His sense of hearing, teachers noticed, was exceptional. "One time a CD fell off his desk and I was reaching for it when he said, 'Nah, I got it,'" says Kalli Carvalho, his language arts instructor. "He went right to it. Didn't feel around. He just knew where it was because he heard where it hit." Haase took walks with Ben to help him practice locating objects. "I said, 'Okay, my car is the third car parked down the street. Tell me when we get there,' " she says. "As we pass the first vehicle, he says, 'There's the first car. Actually, a truck.' And it was a pickup. He could tell the difference."

Ben was 6 when he decided he wasn't going to use a cane – he calls it a stick – to get around. "You go to school and you're the only one with a stick, what's the first thing some kid's going to do? Break it in two," he says. "And then where are you? You're helpless." At times he was even able to come to the aid of people with normal sight. "I remember taking him to the park with my son, sister and my nieces, and it got dark," says Akiyama. "But Ben had figured out the park's layout, and he led the way out. He was in his element."

Still, Ben's zone of maximum comfort remains his family's three-bedroom stucco home – where he lives with his mom and brother Isaiah, 11 – and the quiet streets around it. Some professionals who work with Ben worry that his near-complete reliance on echolocation could hurt him when he finds himself in unfamiliar settings. Haase wishes he would use a cane to help him gauge, for instance, the depth of a hole. But Ben is sticking to his guns. "He's a rebellious traveler," says Kish, who despite teaching echolocation around the world still occasionally uses a cane. "Ben puts himself at risk."

Others believe Ben's remarkable abilities will make it easier for him to face new challenges and conquer new surroundings. "The world is not going to change for these kids; they need to adapt to it," says Ben's eye doctor James Ruben, a Kaiser Permanente ophthalmologist. "His mother understood that plenty of sighted people have miserable lives and plenty of unsighted people have happy lives."

Last month Ben widened his horizons even further. "The thing I'm most scared of is water," he says. "But if I had eyes, it's what I'd most like to see." So on June 25 he took a trip to San Diego's SeaWorld Adventure Park to swim with dolphins and hear how they use echolocation. Waist-deep in a saltwater pool, he immersed one ear as Sandy, a bottle-nosed dolphin, swam toward him. "Man," he said, "she clicks fast!" Ben spent 45 minutes playing with Sandy, touching her teeth and stroking her dorsal fin. Bob McMains, supervisor of SeaWorld's dolphin program, says that in his 23 years there, few people have listened so intently to the sounds the dolphins make. "He's got a gift with dolphins; he's truly unique," says McMains. "I told him, once he's 18 he's got a job here anytime."

McMains can get in line. Ben's world may be dark, but the most amazing surprises are just a click away. He might become a math teacher or a pro skateboarder – or, as his mother believes, just about anything. And wouldn't that make for a truly amazing Ben Underwood story? "I tell people I'm not blind," he says. "I just can't see."

The New 7 Wonders of the World

7 New Wonders web site

There was a vote on the new 7 Wonders of the World. They are:

Chichén Itzá, Mexico
Christ Redeemer, Brazil
The Great Wall, China
Machu Picchu, Peru
Petra, Jordan
The Roman Colloseum, Italy
The Taj Mahal, India

In general I am OK with them.
I can't believe the eiffel tower, the statue of liberty and the sydney opera house were even nominated. I would have cut them first.

I think a wonder of the world should be:
1. Several hundred to 1,000+ years old.
2. Amazing feat of work (design or engineering etc) for its time (and ours).
3. Some question as to why it was created (hence 'wonder').

Which brings me to my first gripe of the list. The Christ Redeemer in Brazil. It is a great icon for the country but not really a "wonder" that religious people would want a large statue. It is also very new (1931).

In its place I would really like to see the Statues of Easter Island and Stonehenge.

Which brings me to question #2. Can you really vote in Chichen Itza w/o keeping the Pyramids at Gaza as an original Wonder?

I agree the Acropolis should not be on the list mostly because it is in such terrible condition. With that in mind I'd almost bump the Colleseum for Stonehenge because having been there, the outside looks nice but the inside is really worn AND they now have to support one of the sides w/ scaffolding (an eyesore).

(I didn't take any pictures of the scaffolding because it ruined the... er ruin).

Although I agree with it, I felt like bumping the Taj Mahal after seeing how annoying their marketing and campaigning was for it.

Machu Picchu would be the next wonder on the new list that I would like to see.

Add your thoughts and note the 7 Natural wonders are next, any nominees? I bet the Great Barrier Reef gets a pass onto the list.

O Rly?

My friends from school use these images on their myspace profiles.

I have no idea why but I find these very funny.



Of course people had to take it way too far...

Things that need to be invented

(only the first 100 people can read this so I can still patent this stuff)

I really, really, need a cheap thermometer that will send the temperature
signal to my computer and plot it into excel to make temperature
charts of my house. Thermometers already send signals from outdoors and we have the plotting for pH meters at work, so this should be wrapped up soon.

The invention of that will lead to my Quality Sleep Alarm Clock

(This will exist someday, so don't laugh)

1. You will tell the alarm clock the latest you could possibly wake up the next day (let's say 7:30am).

2. At night you will wear a cigarette patch-like device on your arm. It
will record your body temperature and send it to your alarm clock.

3. When you fall asleep your body temperature drops a little bit (by
sweating which is why wearing an antiperspirant at night works super
well if you don't want residue during the day).

4. Once you fall asleep (some nights it takes me hours) the clock will know due to the drop in your temperature. It will then calculate how many full sleep cycles you can get in before you need to get up and set your alarm for that time.

One day you fall asleep easily at 10pm and (assuming 90 min cycles) the clock has you wake up at exactly 7:00am after 6 sleep cycles.

The next night you toss and turn and fall asleep at 12:30am and the clock wakes you up at 6:30am after only 4 full cycles. The theory being waking up after a full sleep cycle will leave you more awake than sleeping another hour and not getting another
full cycle in.

If you wake up during the middle of the night (luckily Rachel knows I never do this) it should be able to reset once you fall back asleep.

The clock could also be set to "Nap" mode if you want a 20 min power nap or a full 90 min nap.

Going one step further, if a husband and wife fall asleep at different times
(I try to minimize our gap by tossing and turning until Rachel wakes up
threatening me with a punch in the neck) you could have the alarm clock
use the new technology of Directed Sound (Google it) to only send the wake up alarm to one pillow.

Brookstone or Sharper Image?

What do you pay in taxes?

From CNN.com

Speaking to several hundred supporters of the U.S. Senator from New York, Buffett revealed his puzzlement that he was taxed at a lower rate than many of the lesser-paid individuals working for his company.

Buffett said he makes $46 million a year in income and is only taxed at a 17.7 percent rate on his federal income taxes. By contrast, those who work for him, and make considerably less, pay on average about 32.9 percent in taxes - with the highest rate being 39.7 percent.

To emphasize his point, Buffett offered $1 million to the audience member who could show that one of the nation's wealthiest individuals pays a higher tax rate than one of their subordinates.

"I'm willing to bet anyone in this room $1 million that those rates are less than the secretary has to pay," said Buffett.

Emergency

Someone alret Karen ASAP:

As a life long fan of candy, I have been shocked in the recent weeks when I could not find a single roll of original Spree.

Not at Kroger or Target.
Not at any of the following Airports:
Dayton
Atlanta
St Lucia

Nowhere! The best Rachel has been able to find for me is mini chewy spree (which will do for now).

If they have stopped production let me know and I'll raise some capital to buy Spree.

Game Over

You may notice a lot of single ladies crying this weekend...

Generation Debt

My latest book, Generation Debt by Anya Kamenetz is pretty good.

I didn't know it when I bought it, but the book was written by a 24 year old.
I couldn't believe she was only 24 and had already written a book.
Then I flipped over to the back to see that she was nominated for a Pulitzer for her work on Generation Debt.

The book is very organized, which makes it easy to skip to the next topic you
want to read. I never skip around in books but I had to on this one.
She starts out talking about how expensive college has become and has a
lot of great facts about it and the legal history that led to college
being so crazy expensive. But then she follows it up w/ about 5-6
personal stories, and after 2-3 you fell like you are being beaten over
the head. "I got it college is more expensive now, let's move on."

Best Fact from the book so far:
Part of Bush's "No Child Left Behind Act" involved a sneaky piece of
legislation that released the home phone numbers of all US students to
the military for recruiting.

I can't wait for the chapter called "Federal Rip-offs: Deficits, Social Security, Medicare"

Looks like I was right

Here is an actual conversation from work this week. (Len's name was changed to protect his identity for obvious reasons).

"Len": Hey, not to change the subject or anything but what do you think is the scariest monster?

Me: What?

"Len": You know like Vampires or Werewolves?

Me: I dunno, the Loch Ness Monster.

"Len": No, not the Loch Ness Monster, real monsters. I say Zombies.

Me: Zombies? But they are so slow.

"Len": Not in 28 days later...

The next day this article shows up.

Link to Article

Who's a real monster now?

Great Book

I love economics. Why was the stuff in school about supply / demand,
guns vs butter so boring and not applicable to the real world?

Here is a great book that I am almost done reading, Naked Economics by Chares Wheelan.

It has helped (maybe not moderate) but at least put some context around some frustrations with our government and politics.

A good example from Karen's recent blog, I love fettucini Alfredo. But I only order it if the servings are small (Fazzoli's etc). If the portions are too big (Macaroni Grill) then I get spaghetti and meatballs because it reheats better for the 2 extra meals I get out of it.

An absolute must read, he also does a monthly blog on Yahoo Finance. His most recent being why the post office should no longer be owned by the government.

The Verdict

Time for a serious blog.

Which Root Beer Stand is better?

The Jug, Middletown
vs
The Root Beer Stand, Sharonville

Location: The Root Beer Stand
For those living within 275 this may seem to be a no brainer but it is actually closer than you may think. The Root Beer Stand is just of 275 and Reading Rd, while the Jug is in Middletown. Both are well worth the drive.

Speed of Service: The Root Beer Stand
Granted the Jug was much busier when we went, but it was still over 30 mins before we got our food. The Root Beer Stand was under 5 mins but it is pre-cooked burgers.

The Root Beer: The Jug
Boy I hope the Root Beer Stand had a off night when we went, because the
root beer was not good. Flat, and tasted more like a cream soda. The
Jug had good root beer, on par with A&W (my favorite growing up).

The Food: The Jug
Both places have good burgers at good prices but the Jug used grilled rolls that are amazing.

The Atmosphere: Tie
Both have indoor counter seating or outdoor picnic tables (The Jug still has car hops). The Root Beer Stand does have a nice little grassy area in the back. The Root Beer Stand also has TVs inside which show The Price is Right during lunch...except they only face the workers so you can hear it but not see it (how cruel). Therefore it is a tie.

Web Site: The Jug
www.thejug.com is far superior than www.therootbeerstand.com, which looks like it was done as a class project (in 1997).

Overall Winner: The Jug
Both are a great summer stop, but you will crave The Jug.

Black Box Investing Update

Sorry this is a stock blog, if you don't like stocks it may be boring.

One day I was listening to CNBC on a report about how far behind the US was in Math vs the rest of the world. The person they were talking to happened to be from a company called Black Box Investing. They were saying how they were donating money to "Math for America" (or something like that). They hire a lot of PHDs in math to analyze stock charts and figure out when to buy and sell them. They say they have trouble finding enough PHDs to work for them so they do a lot of overseas hiring.

Net, I thought the idea was neat so I subscribed to their service. I monitor their suggestions about stocks I already watch but they issue warnings on what stcks you should buy each day so I decided to start a test to see how they do before I take any of their advice. What is neat is they do track historically for you how the stock previuously performed when these conditions have occurred before.

Test Design:
They reco stuff everyday, but I only keep track of things they suggest on friday after the close. I figure I am busy so I could have all weekend to do some homework on these companies and see which I really think will go up. I also take the following monday closing price as my first data point so that you have all day to get into the stock w/o worrying it will jump over the weekend before you can even buy any (see Mad Money).

I am 3 weeks into the test and here are the results of the first batch.

These are stocks that were suggested to be bought on Friday 4/13/07. They are broken into 3 groups based on 3 different models that suggested a buy.

Group #1

Background:
The Stochastic Oscillator is a momentum indicator that shows the location of the current close relative to the stock's recent trading range. The Oscillator is made up of 2 lines. The first is called the %K line which moves between 1 and 100, where 1 represents the bottom of the range and 100 represents the top. The second line, called the %D, is simply a moving average of the %K line. When the Stochastic Oscillator rises above the 80 level, the stock is considered "overbought" and when it falls below the 20 level it is considered "oversold."

Data:
On this day there were no 5 star "buys" so all of these are 4 stars (I will later track 3,4,5 star perfomance once I have more data).

After 1 week:
Average Gain: 5.2% (S&P 500 gained 1.1%)
Median Gain: 3.1%
High: 28.9%
Low: -3.0%

After 2 Weeks:
Average Gain: 4.2% (S&P 500 gained 1.7%)
Median Gain: 4.0%
High: 17.4%
Low: -3.6%

After 3 Weeks:
Average Gain: 4.8% (S&P 500 gained 2.5%)
Median Gain: 3.4%
High: 23.5%
Low: -0.8%

Not bad data but you'd have to do some research to find the 1 or 2 that will jump over 10% out of the 10 stocks I followed. On the plus side nothing got killed, so you could try it w/ low risk and bail if the stock does not move. You'd have to trade this model (and most) you really couldn't buy and hold hoping for a 10 bagger when the model is based on how far above or below the recent average the stock is trading.

I'll keep and eye on this as I anaylze later weeks data.

Group #2

Background:
Developed by John Bollinger, Bollinger Bands are an indicator that allows investors to compare volatility and relative price levels over a period time. The indicator consists of three bands designed to encompass the majority of a security's price action. The middle line is a simple moving average. The upper and lower bands are the moving average plus or minus standard deviations. Standard deviation is a statistical term that provides a good indication of volatility, ensuring that the bands widen or shrink according to the stocks current level of volatility.

Data:
I'm not going to summarize, these 10 stocks lost around 1-2% at each of the 3 weeks. Only 3/10 were up after 3 weeks. It's even worse when you see the S&P 500 gained 2.5% over that time.

Group #3

Background:
MACD stands for Moving Average Convergence Divergence. The MACD is the difference between two exponential moving averages, typically the 26 and the 12. Our Black Box System will often modify this setup to present a more accurate MACD signal. A second, exponential moving average, called the "signal line", is plotted on top of the MACD. A buy or sell signal is given when the first line crosses over the signal line.

Data:
Same as group #2, only 1 of the 4 made money after 3 weeks.

Overall I like the program, they do a lot of the technical work that I do not have to for. But it is a Black Box that treats everything as numbers so you have to do some "Jim style" research on your own to figure out which are good companies.

Velocity of Money

Here is another example of why large public companies aren't always the best for the economy (at least in my opinion).

Scenario #1
In Jan, Dave takes $10,000 Hula lessons from Hula Lessons Inc (probably ticker HULA.OB)
The company pays some expenses but the majority of what I pay them is
profit (or should be). The company socks the profit away for the rest
of the year so that at the end of the year they can say they made
another ~$10,000 in profit. The money is tied up.
The stock may go up a penny or two on the additional money but no one really benefits.
Their main goal is to take as much money out of the economy and into their
pots for score keeping. Kinda like playing Hungry Hungry Hippos

Scenario #2
In Jan, Dave takes $10,000 Hula lessons from Sanjaya.
In Feb, Sanjaya takes $10,000 Violin lessons from Dale.
In March, Dale pays Jim $10,000 to be his wing man during spring break.
In April, Jim buys $10,000 worth of duck paintings done by Karen.

In this case it is the same $10,000 that we pass between us. The net is it
looks like $40,000 on our combined W-2's at the end of the year. At the
end of the year we will all be taxed on it but for right now the money
is moving very fast through our network raising the annual earnings for
all of us.

This example is basic because the idea isn't 100%
efficient. If you notice we are all providing services not selling
actual products because the value of assets transferred makes it more
complicated.

The point is it is much more efficient to move money through people than it is companies. You can argue that the company does have some expenses because it pays some employees who then have some money to spend. But before those employees can spend the money the company must take out their profit, then any salary must go through withholding tax before the employees get any money to spend.

The other option is the company can choose to spend some of its profit. They usually do a few things:
1. They could increase the dividend they pay to investors (only helps shareholders).
2. They could start to buy some of their own stock back (very popular now, but also only helps shareholders).
3. They could chose to spend the money on things like new computers for
all employees etc. (This tends to be slow, does anyone use Vista at
work yet? I was lucky to finally get a flat screen monitor this past
fall).

Scenario #2 probably happened more often in the early
1900's as a mom and pop pizza place would buy cheese etc from the local
family owned cheese shop around the corner. Now a days you get Pizza
Hut (owned by Yum brands) buying bulk cheese from Kraft etc.

If you work out all the details in my 2 examples, the differences probably narrow but the impact of the differences in efficency is significant.

What does it mean for the future?
1. I am convinced more people will be able to work from home (population
growth and traffic congestion are good incentives to find a way).
2. People will also be less likely to need a large company to provide them
with a living since the flow of money will be more efficient if you can
work outside of their economy.
3. But I believe the majority of those who can stay home will provide some form of services / information (consulting) instead of selling products.

Right now 2% of the US population makes their living selling things on eBay. This works because you have 2% selling products
to the other 98% (or whatever % use eBay). If this becomes more popular
it won't work. How could 50% of the population convince the other 50%
to keep buying things from them on eBay. And where would people store
all the things?

Presidential Debate

I DVR'd the latest debate and watched a bit tonight.

The problem I have with the presidential campaign is that it is very similar to Survivor. In the end the winner is never the smartest, the strongest, or anything else remarkable.
On survivor the winner is often someone who stays quiet at first hanging onto others coat tails, then they backstab enough people to get ahead but not too many to be the jerk.

In the future our elected officials will have almost no power as their voting will be determind by text message votes like American Idol:

"If you think the previous motion should pass, text Idols01 to 53465..."

While he has no chance of winning, one guy I did like was Ron Paul, not only does he look like Ross Perot but he will give you real answers instead of buzz words when you ask why Iraq is such a mess.

Questons I would ask the next President during my bi-weekly:

1. What part of the Boston Tea Party convinced you we need more taxes?
2. Have you considered going on House Hunters to find the next White House?
3. Are you not interested in fixing social security and medicare because you know you get 40% of everything I own when I die?
4. Can we no longer half-ass Columbus Day? I don't care which way you go but make a decision. Me having to go to work but not get any mail isn't working.
5. Have you seen the HD special on the supervolcano under Yellowstone? Any thoughts on this?
6. Should a country with a huge debt be run by someone who spent millions to land a job that pays $400,000? Show your work.

Feel free to add your own

I was Tagged!

I was tagged!!!

So Karen has decided to tag me, which means I have to follow the rules.

The rules: each player starts with 7 random facts/habits about themselves.
People who are tagged need to blog about their seven things and post
the rules as well . At the end of your blog, you need to choose 7
people to get tagged and list their names. Don't forget to leave them a
comment telling them that they have been tagged and to read your blog!

1. When I was young, I had an irrational fear of bees and fire.

2. I am OCD about making sure I lock my doors. And I unplug anything that is not in use. Rachel's family calls me 'Safety Dave'.

3. I have some form of night terrors that recently involve making sure the
dog is breathing in the middle of the night. In the apartment I would
try to keep the ceiling fan from falling on Rachel.

4. Years later, I still have monthly dreams about sleeping through an exam in
school (last night). There has to be something wrong with our education
system when the fear of failing haunts you this long after graduating.

5. I was in the bathroom during the Janet Jackson Super Bowl half time show. Missed all of it.

6. I love board games! The more involved and time consuming the better. Risk, Monopoly, Axis & Allies, Cashflow, Hotels, Trump (the game), etc. I usually want to play again as soon as the 6 hour long game ends. Good thing they make computer games out of most of these.

7. I don't know 7 additional bloggers to 'tag'

I'll have to tag Rachel, Ken, Lucy, Missy...