MyATMPinIs1234

2009-11-21T23:22:00.001-05:00

My idea for an iPhone app: Turn your iPhone into a scale. Of course it wouldn't actually do that, I just want to see how many people I can trick into stepping on their iPhone.

2009-10-29T19:32:00.003-04:00

Guy standing in front of my building: Hey are you from Landmark Realty?

Me: No, Sorry.

Couple in lobby clearly waiting for same Realtor: Hey are you from apt 6D?

Me: 6D! Thank goodness no. A real shame what happened to that lady. It took 3 weeks to clean up the crime scene.

2009-10-26T11:04:00.002-04:00

Just in case you need another reason to not ruin a perfectly good Jack Daniels and a perfectly good Coke by mixing them together....

"When fructose reaches the liver," says Dr. William J. Whelan, a biochemist at the University of Miami School of Medicine, "the liver goes bananas and stops everything else to metabolize the fructose. (via)"

The last thing you need when taxing your liver with alcohol is a heavy dose of high fructose corn syrup.

2009-10-03T18:58:00.003-04:00

"Roughly 47 percent of households, or 71 million, will not owe any federal income tax for 2009, according to estimates by the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center. That's good news for most of us."

In other news, CNN.com copy editors think 47% is "most of us."

2009-08-24T14:43:00.002-04:00

Did you know that in the space travel industry there is a wide gulf between "haves" and "have nots?" Only a handful of employers provide space travel to their employees, and even they reserve this benefit to certain high level employees.

I find it curious then, that Obama apparently wants to privatize space travel. I mean to some extent it makes sense. Here we have an industry driven by complicated science and bleeding edge technology that has the ability to extend the life of our species, so opening up the industry to the free market would dramatically increase the quality and slash costs.

But what about the millions of Americans who don't have space travel options and would have to then negotiate with greedy corporations? Are they no less worthy of avoiding the next asteroid strike?

I think that is the wrong approach to take. Instead we can learn from what I'm sure will be his highly effective plan for the healthcare industry. First, we should upgrade the information technology currently in use in the space program. The flight systems on the space shuttle were installed in 1990 and have one MB of storage!

Second, we need more research into what works and what doesn't work. Currently we waste too much money on items pushed by lobbyists from Lockhead Martin without knowing if they are indeed the best.

Third, we need to focus on prevention. This doesn't really apply to space travel, but since it doesn't make sense for healthcare either I'm leaving this one in.

Once these measures have been implemented and trillions of dollars have been saved, the government will be able to provide space travel to everyone. This will be way better than private companies, who have no incentive to help consumers, other than needing to repeatedly provide something that these consumers are voluntarily willing to hand over their hard-earned money for.

2009-08-12T12:07:00.001-04:00

I think the government should start with an easier problem than giving out healthcare. For example, they could try starting with issuing people cards that give them the authority to drive a car. That should be pretty easy. Once we see how well they handle that we can give them more responsibility.

2009-07-24T15:30:00.002-04:00

Listen, we all want cheap, high quality healthcare that everyone can afford. But trying to repeal the laws of economics to get us there is about as effective as trying to repeal the laws of gravity to reduce hip fractures in the elderly.

2009-07-16T15:50:00.001-04:00

Timing

I bet David Blaine is pissed he wasn't born 2010 years ago...

2009-07-15T15:53:00.001-04:00

Why are there fat people at pet stores? How big IS their emotional void?

2009-07-14T13:12:00.003-04:00

This post combines two of my favorite things, the insanity of the current consensus belief on nutrition, and the massive ignorance of most journalists.

Seriously crazy stuff. Even if the journalists know nothing about nutrition or science or medicine, shouldn't they, being journalists, be able to do a little research and find someone on the other side of the story? Or know that perhaps they should compare the outrageous meal to a normal meal instead of a fasted state?

This is why TV & Newspapers are in trouble. Why get a story from someone who knows nothing about the subject but who is a "trained" writer when you can get the same story from a blogger who is a subject matter expert and writes almost as well and sometimes better?

BTW, ABC reporter Yuji de Nies does the ridiculous journalist voice they make fun of on the Simpsons.

Dr. Michael Eades should be Surgeon General. Or Secretary of HHS. Or both. Obama should make that "change."

2009-06-17T17:09:00.003-04:00

I was recently favorably impressed with the meal options on a domestic flight in Croatia, on Croatia Airlines.

Asian Vegetarian
Baby Food
Bland
Child
Diabetic
Fruit Platter
Gluten Free
High Fibre
Hindu (non-veg)
Kosher
Low Calorie
Low Fat
Low Protein
Low Sodium
Moslem
Non-lactose
Oriental
Low Purine
Raw Vegetarian
Seafood
No Special Meal
Vegetarian (non-dairy)
Vegetarian (lacto-ovo)

2009-06-01T11:54:00.003-04:00

Hi. I'm a Democrat.

I think it's a bad idea that the government is taking over General Motors, because political interference will make it hard to make good business decisions and the government is generally really bad at running things.

Oh, and I also think that the government should take over health care, because the government can do a better job running things than those profit-seeking capitalists -- and don't worry, tough decisions won't be handled politically, and there won't be rationing or price controls.

2009-05-21T10:33:00.002-04:00

I can't figure out whether to file this in the "What could possibly go wrong" folder, or the "We're from the government, and we're here to help" folder.

A few projects are decidedly low-tech. Take the plan to flood the border with a particular breed of wasp with a taste for Carrizo cane, a massive weed that grows in dense stands along the Rio Grande, providing cover to smugglers. Ms. Duong's scientists, working with the Department of Agriculture, tracked down the wasps in Spain and have spent two years watching the critters in a secure greenhouse -- gauging their appetites, assessing their role in a swampy ecosystem and finally breeding them into a swarm suitable for deployment on the Texas border.

2009-05-19T14:56:00.002-04:00

Nobody begrudges a starving man who desperately seeks food.

Nobody belittles a man dying of thirst who will do anything for some water.

So why is it the sleep deprived man who endeavors to catch up by sleeping late or taking naps is scorned and viewed as lazy?

The complete lack of sleep will kill a person well before starvation and only slightly behind dehydration.

Skipping a night of sleep will hamper mental and physical performance way more than skipping a few meals.

Chronic sleep deprivation might be more detrimental to your health than a crappy diet.

So next time your employee is late to work because his alarm clock didn't go off -- rather than looking down upon him, give him your admiration as you would someone who drinks 8 glasses of water a day or eats many servings of fruit and vegetables.

2009-05-15T11:22:00.003-04:00

Peter Orszag, Obama's Director of OMB, has the whole healthcare crisis figured out. In today's WSJ, he lays out his plan.

How can we move toward a high-quality, lower-cost system? There are four key steps:

1) health information technology, because we can't improve what we don't measure;

2) more research into what works and what doesn't, so doctors don't recommend treatments that don't improve health;

3) prevention and wellness, so that people do the things that keep them healthy and avoid costs associated with health risks such as smoking and obesity; and

4) changes in financial incentives for providers so that they are incentivized rather than penalized for delivering high-quality care.

If this is the plan, we are all fucked. If you think about these points for 5 seconds, you realize:

1) Ah yes computers. It's actually brilliant. They'll solve the healthcare problem just like putting them in classrooms fixed our public schools.

2) First of all, HMOs tried to do this and got pilloried by politicians. Also, doctors don't recommend things that don't improve health because they don't know any better, they do so because if they don't run every test and perform every procedure the trial lawyers that fund the Dem party will sue them.

3) The US Government has a pretty dismal record getting involved with prevention. The blew the single most important contributor to good health -- diet. By spending 20 years recommending people avoid fat at all costs and eat like 57 servings of grains, they f'ing caused the obesity epidemic they are now whining about. I shudder to think how they'll screw it up next.

4) The free market would accomplish this goal very easily. Incentives to deliver high quality at low prices are exactly what happens when you have to convince people to trade their money for your particular service over someone else's. But I doubt this is what Orszag has in mind. I'm sure it's some kind of monstrous technocratic jumble of taxes and subsidies that will only cause more distortions.

2009-05-13T10:41:00.004-04:00

Detroit

I have a plan for fixing the auto industry. Make every member of Congress transfer their retirement savings into a mutual fund holding GM, Ford, and Chrysler stock. I have a feeling the myriad rules and mandates that are now crushing the industry would vanish as quickly as you can say "ha ha we were totally kidding about that ridiculous electric car."

2009-04-09T13:50:00.002-04:00

Am I the only one who is tempted to fill out wedding invitation reply cards like this?

Person Name :
_x_ will    __ will not        be attending

_3_   steak
_0_   fish
_1_   vegetarian

2009-04-06T21:43:00.003-04:00

Advertising FAIL

The following is an actual transcript of an Apple iPhone commercial currently running:

"What's great about the iphone, is that if you want to check snow conditions on the mountain, there's an app for that.

If you want to check how many calories are in your lunch, there's an app for that.

And if you want to check exaactly where you parked the car, there's even an app for that."

So basically, the iPhone target market is people who can bail from their job to "shred" when there's good powder on mountain, then hit the lodge for some skinless chicken breasts for lunch, and then can't remember where the fuck they parked their Prius. Where is the app for the BLACK FUCKING TURTLENECK SALE with goatee trimming instructions and Gossip Girl updates!?!

Unfortunately, I just want to toss a football around, and I don't care how many calories are in my bacon cheeseburger, and my mental acuity is better than a Alzheimers patient... so at this point the AD WIZARDS have not really done a good job making the case for me to purchase an iPhone.

2009-03-29T14:26:00.002-04:00

"Out of the Office" automatic email replies should be, for the most part, extinct. It's 2009, and you should have an iPhone or Blackberry at this point.

If you are even remotely diligent about your work ethic, you will respond to important emails at night, on the weekends, when you are on business trips, when you are on vacation, etc.

When I get an OOO message, I assume the person:

1) Doesn't have a phone that can read email. This is a FAIL person.

2) Thinks "work" occurs at a physical location during a set time. FAIL person.

3) Neither 1 or 2, but still does OOO messages because that's what people used to do and they never re-evaluate whether certain processes are necessary. FAIL person.

2009-03-24T18:21:00.002-04:00

Not the Preferred Nomenclature

I can't believe I have to tell you people this, but apparently I do. When you are using a document versioning system based on creation date, it is imperative that you use the following format for the date portion: yyyy-mm-dd.

If you don't put the year first it won't be sorted properly if it lasts more than one year. And if you don't zero-pad the dates less than 10, it'll put October before February.

TPS-Report_10-01-2025.xls
TPS-Report_10-02-2009.xls
TPS-Report_2-01-2009.xls
TPS-Report_4-01-1999.xls

2009-03-20T10:20:00.002-04:00

If you look at who is currently residing in the White House you'll realize that our country has come a long way with tolerance. Because even as far back as 10-20 years ago, whole books were written about how people like this are sneaky and evil. Back in the 1950's these people were systematically sought out and blacklisted from certain careers. Yes, I'm talking about the fact that we can have a girl with a Russian name, Natasha (Sasha) Obama, living in the White House, is truly progress. F you Joe McCarthy.

2009-03-19T12:44:00.002-04:00

Ratings Agencies [i.e. skip this post]

Some of you know that the ratings agencies (Moody's, S&P, the other one) pretty much caused this whole financial disaster. A combination of incompetence and conflicts of interest caused them to rate garbage bonds as AAA, without which investors wouldn't have bought them, thus banks wouldn't have created them, thus mortgage brokers couldn't have made insane loans, and thus housing prices would've stayed sane.

So the question is what to do now. Obviously having bond issuers pay for the ratings doesn't work. There are some other proposals being floated around to have a big pool of money from the buy side pay for "independent" ratings. This is an even worse idea, for the same reason that there is no good credit analysis coming out of Cuban financial firms.

So here's my idea:

Keep the status quo, whereby issuers pay the ratings agencies, but add a clause to all the bonds creating a put option requiring the ratings agencies to buy it back from the investor if certain accuracy metrics are not met. The put option could be capped at maybe 5x times fees collected by the ratings agency in the first place, so they would still have some incentive to issue a rating, but this would counter-act the conflict of interest with an even stronger incentive to hire smart people and do a good job.

2009-03-14T21:50:00.002-04:00

Facebook, When You're in Your 30's

Is half a diary of your friends' unfortunate ability to breed, and the other half a journal of people desperately trying to convince others they are still cool.

All in all -- pretty sad. But I can't get enough of it.

Seriously though, I don't really want to see pics of your kid, or updates on your parenting mishaps. I also don't want to see what cool bar you're DJing at tonight.

2009-03-10T16:45:00.003-04:00

Liberals Believe

A higher cigarette tax will encourage people to stop smoking.

A carbon tax will encourage people to shift away from carbon-emitting, and toward "green" energy sources.

An increase on the tax for charitable giving will reduce the incentive for donations.

and also...

A higher tax on the outcome of capital investments will not stop people from investing in the future of our means of production and employment, and even if it did those are rich people who can afford it.

A higher tax on the most valuable work being done in our economy (as set by a free market) will not cause those people to shift their time away from this work and towards leisure.

and therefore...

taking money away from the fruits of the most valuable capital and labor in our economy, and spending it on things we wouldn't even approve when the economy was booming, will actually somehow increase our country's output.

Hope that helps clear up any confusion.

2009-03-05T11:19:00.003-05:00

General Motors' auditor expressed doubts over the auto maker's survival. Apparently having full access to their books and management made Deloitte & Touche the LAST TO FUCKING KNOW THAT.