September 2008
“There has been a century of scamming, and we’re not allowed to control it because the Wall Street guys always appeal to the American spirit of freedom and innovation. But lo and behold, sometimes they screw up and we begin to suspect that it’s all just a big cover for the fact that they want to make extraordinary profits.”
—G. William Domhoff, professor of psychology and sociology at the University of California, Santa Cruz
Turns out Damascus blades unknowingly employed nanotubes.
Play
“Perfect execution of a second-rate strategy is better than second-rate execution of a perfect strategy. It’s very easy to sit in corporate headquarters and pontificate about strategy when someone is eating your lunch.”
—Jamie Dimon, 2006 Interview.
“It gets dug out of the ground in Africa, or someplace. Then we melt it down, dig another hole, bury it again and pay people to stand around guarding it. It has no utility. Anyone watching from Mars would be scratching their head.”
—Warren Buffet on gold.
The painting of my building is the bane of my existence.
God’s gift to the election occurred this week.
Cool invention helps tired players bounce back →
sfgate.com
A rapid cooling “glove” cools players from the inside out by cooling blood pulled to the palm. Results (and potential) are dramtic!
“In your hand the G1 feels good. Solid and all-plastic, but not nearly as clunky as the blurrycam photos showed. Getting used to the controls takes a little bit—babies can’t pick up and instantly know their way around, like on the iPhone. Because control wise it suffers from a bit of schizophrenia—with a trackball, touchscreen, candybar mode and flip-out QWERTY, there’s a lot going on at once.”
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Keep in mind, the Giz is a heavy talk audience, so these kinds of flexible controls might make for an awkward reception from a mainstream audience. It’s like Linux: huge flexibility and customization — mainstream confusion. But rest assured: it will play doom.
Conclusion? Go buy Apple now. It’s a steal at $130 with liquid assets in the bank of over 11 billion. Google isn’t a threat and RIMM will take a hit from the lack of financial clients.
“After you’ve been shooting for two hours you see everything as a target.”
—Krystal
“
A nose job in a hospital with a private nurse in attendance had been something of a rite of passage for Joan Asher’s children.
But when her fourth and last child was ready for her own rhinoplasty recently, Ms. Asher asked her to postpone it. The financial markets were simply more out of whack than her 16-year-old’s proboscis.
“The other noses were more prominent,” the stay-at-home mother from a tony New York City suburb in Westchester County told her 16-year-old daughter. She could get hers done when things settled down.
” —As Times Turn Tough, New York’s Wealthy Economize - WSJ.com
“
The leverage party’s over for the masters of the universe. Shed a tear. When you trade pieces of paper for other pieces of paper instead of trading them for real things, one day someone wakes up and realizes the paper’s worth nothing. And Lehman Brothers, after 158 years, has gone poof in the night.
We’re witnessing the passing of more than a venerable firm. We’re seeing the death of a culture.
” —Cohen writes about the potential end of Money and Me. Well done.
Dim Lights, Big City - For Young Financiers, Risk Hits Home →
nytimes.com
Ivy-League grads and top 20 MBAs no longer can seek the guarenteed refuge of I-Banking. The Times forgets to ask if there’s any need to mourn.
“The average income of Wall Streeters last year was about $280,000, or nearly five times as high as the average of all other workers in the city. Those outsize paychecks have allowed workers on Wall Street to support many other businesses, like restaurants, luxury auto dealerships and interior decorators. Economists in the state comptroller’s office estimate that each job on Wall Street creates three other jobs in the metropolitan area.”
—City and State Brace for Greater Demands on Diminishing Resources - NYTimes.com
