March, 2009 archive
Essential Being 0
Rush Limbaugh is a fundamentally nasty and hate-full man.
“He’s Got Issues” 0
But leave him alone . . . .
Changing Its Name to “Muddletown” 0
If at first you can’t succeed . . . .
Late Thursday, the Middletown Board of Elections ruled this week’s town election, delayed from Monday to Tuesday, was not legal because it lacked the 20-day public notice required by state law and town charter.
Stray Thought 0
How can I watch my Law and Order reruns when the location of the network port in this hotel makes it almost impossible to see the tee vee?
All Gone 0
Down the drain.
Bair acknowledged the new fees, announced Friday, would put additional pressure on banks at time of financial crisis and a deepening recession, but insisted they were critical to keep the insurance fund solvent and protect.
“Without these assessments, the deposit insurance fund could become insolvent this year,” Bair wrote.
Via Susie.
*Nix Humor 1
Some nice, mostly funny pictures here. (To understand some of them, remember that the Linux symbol is Tux, the penguin.)
My favorite is below the fold.
Gasp! 0
This means that historians and journalists will have to do work the old fashioned way: by actually talking to carbon-based life forms, going to archives and libraries, and looking at stuff that they can touch and feel and hold. Because there is a world outside of Google:
There is an idealized view of the Web that sees it as a storehouse of human knowledge, and in the sense of the breadth of what I can find with a random Google search, this is true.
But for all its openness, the Web has proven to be a leaky vessel for historical preservation, with much of its treasure trove lost in a maze of altered Web pages, broken links and deleted sites.
As much as I appreciate and enjoy the richness of the inner tubes, from email to Usenet to the World Wide Web, and as much fun as I have had messing about in that world, I try to remember that there once was and still is a world that exists outside of an ethernet cable.
Anyone whose horizon stops at the edge of a screen lives a small life indeed.
S&P: “Go to Your Room”? 4
Standard and Poors debates whether to kick some banks out of the Standard and Poors 500 (which is now on worth a dollar three-eightly anyway).
“In the S&P 500, four financials rank within the bottom 10 companies in the index,” wrote Melissa Roberts at Keefe, Bruyette & Woods in a research note.
(snip)
S&P says the (index) committee’s goal is to ensure that the S&P 500 is a leading indicator of U.S. stocks, reflecting the risk and return profile of large-cap shares. The committee also considers a stock’s liquidity and tries to limit turnover.
In plain language, this means that S&P is wondering whether the banks in question (Developers Diversified Realty Corp., E-Trade Financial Corp., Huntington Bancshares Inc., and MBIA Inc.) are so crippled that there’s almost no hope for them.
“Stand! And Deliver!” 0
So say the Masters of the Universe. They had to have their cuts, not just their tax cuts.
(snip)
The 14 firms named in the complaints are all “specialists,” trading firms that have a specific duty to maintain orderly markets by matching buyers and sellers and standing ready to conduct trades when buyers or sellers are scarce. They include units or subsidiaries of well-known Wall Street names, including E*Trade Capital Markets, Goldman Sachs Execution and Clearing, Knight Financial Products and TD Options.
Via the Huffington Post.
The Problem with “Everybody Does It” 0
Anybody who had a parent should know the rules of “everybody does it.”
-
Rule One: It’s not true. As your mother asked, “Who?” (Didn’t have a good answer, did you?)
Rule Two: It’s irrelevant. “If,” as your mother said, “everybody drove their cars off a cliff, would you do it too?”
Rule two doesn’t come into play with this. Because Rule One has already taken it out of contention.
Heh 0
Shamelessly stolen in its entirety from Josh Marshall:
During the campaign, McCain hammered away on earmarks as if it were the end-all, be-all of reform. Obama basically humored him, but pointed out that there were much more important things. Now that Obama won, McCain is blasting Obama for not keeping McCain’s campaign promises.
Deep Thought:
Did anyone mention to McCain that he lost?
Truth. No Reconciliation. 0
Sign Senator Leahy’s petition here.
On Cable Wars 0
In these and many other parts, Verizon and Comcast are locked in combat.
Verizon keeps pushing their FiOS; Comcast keeps reminding folks that, outside the house, their cables are fiber optic.
Escalation: My cable bill no longer says “cable.”
It now says, in bold, Digital Cable.
Duh.