Infinito

Chuck Norris puede contar hasta infinito… dos veces.

Bookshelves

I’ve got at least 300 books in my house.

Number of childrens books in the American home:

White households: 83
Black households: 41
Latino households: 33

In 2005, 3.1 billion books were sold in the United States, roughly 28 per household. Therefore, the average number of books in a home must be somewhere over 100.

How many books do you have?

On a side note, I strongly recommend you use Shelfari or LibraryThing and catalogue the collection of books you’ve read, or want to read. It will suggest books for you, and you can see your friends’ bookshelves, rate books, et cetera.

Year 2000 National Survey on Childhood Health
2005 Book Industry Study Group

Ashley Biden Caught Coked

Reports indicate there is a hidden-camera video being shopped around to media outlets for some $400,000 that shows Joe Biden’s daughter Ashley doing cocaine at a party in Delaware.

This makes no sense. Cocaine in Delaware? I mean, Miami, New York, L.A., The Hamptons — sure. I’ll believe that. But Delaware?

Video alleged to show Joe Biden’s daughter snorting cocaine – Telegraph.co.uk

Memphis Bleek – Is That Your Chick (MTV Version)

I love orchestral strings, whether it’s in a Brahms concerto or a Jay-Z-helmed rap record. Jay-Z is rapping at 1:27 in, and some violins pop in. There’s some bowed string bass in the background the entire song, and some rich keyboard-synth brass (tuba) as well, to mix it up. Catchy beat for sure.

Kudos to my cousin Katelyn for turning me onto this track.

Apocalyptica – Nothing Else Matters

Thanks to Nick and Nate for introducing me to this song years ago.

Final Countdown, Orchestral Version

I really like orchestral/piano versions of modern music. Recently, I’ve been perfecting some Timbaland on the piano. I love Apocalyptica, a cello metal band — they sound pretty similar to this group.

Prohibition and Violence

Alcohol did not create Al Capone’s gang violence in the hometown of our current president. Prohibition did.

Marijuana does not create murderous drug cartels in Mexico. America’s War on Drugs does.

The War on Drugs is No Laughing Matter – Reason

Dogbert: Ponzi Scheme

Via The Big Picture.

Madoff: Humanity’s Paramount

Psychologists wonder why people are endowed with the ability to learn the part of Hamlet or understand calculus when neither skill was of much use to mankind in the primitive conditions where his intellect was shaped. [...] The solution: we use our intellects not to solve practical problems but to outwit eachother. Deceiving people, detesting deceit, understanding people’s motives, manipulating people–these are what the intellect is used for.

Perhaps Bernard Madoff, as the glorious product of human evolution that he is, should be praised for having outwitted others to the tune of billions of dollars.

Tully’s Get’s a Lifeline, Death Sentence

Tully’s Coffee, a regional (Western USA) chain of coffeeshops based in Seattle, is a failure. Its CEO, Tom O’Keefe, has always pursued growth when he should’ve been pursuing profitability. Tullys’ has been unprofitable (operationally) every year since it was founded in 1992. Its retail expansion has been fueled by debt, which has often been provided by business partners — partnerships that eventually failed.

Recently, O’Keefe has pushed a deal to sell Tully’s only profitable operation, its wholesale coffee arm, for some $40 million in order to pay off their old business partner in Tully’s Asia, Mr. Ueshima, and give Tully’s extra cash to revitalize its retail business. If the deal doesn’t go through, O’Keefe says, Tully’s will go out of business, and investors will be left with nothing. Shareholders have voted, and, unsurprisingly, have gone along with Mr. O’Keefe’s plan to sell the wholesale business. They’ve robbed Peter (or rather, themselves) to pay Paul.

Though the deal benefits Tully’s cash position, it does nothing about the company’s real problem: its leader.

Tom O’Keefe has done anything in his power to maintain control over Tully’s. His leadership ensures that Tully’s will continue to throw away money toward growth in the future, and fail to pursue profitability today.

Tully’s is inevitably going to fail.

The only possibility the business had of continuing as a going concern was to reorganize in bankruptcy court. Bondholders would’ve come out the other side of reorganization as equity holders, leaving Mr. O’Keefe high and dry. Those bondholders could hire a new management team that would institutionalize profitability via cost-savings. A local employer would stay in business. Instead, power been consolidated by the dreamer, the man who couldn’t find sustainability if it was tattooed to his forehead.

Tully’s Coffee shareholders approve sale of wholesale business – Seattle Times

Outbreak

NEW YORK—A new study published in The Journal Of Pediatric Medicine found that a shocking 98 percent of all infants suffer from bipolar disorder. “The majority of our subjects, regardless of size, sex, or race, exhibited extreme mood swings, often crying one minute and then giggling playfully the next.” Gregory added that nearly 100 percent of infants appear to suffer from the poor motor skills and impaired speech associated with Parkinson’s disease

98% Of Babies Manic-Depressive – The Onion

Inheritance

Everything can be inherited except sterility.

-Matt Ridley, The Red Queen, page 5.

I’m in love

Her name is Rebel T1i.

Distracted

The latest bailout came as AIG admitted to having just posted the largest quarterly loss in American corporate history — some $61.7 billion. That’s $465,000 a minute, a yearly income for a median American household every six seconds, roughly $7,750 a second. And all this happened at the end of eight straight years that America devoted to frantically chasing the shadow of a terrorist threat to no avail, eight years spent stopping every citizen at every airport to search every purse, bag, crotch and briefcase for juice boxes and explosive tubes of toothpaste. Yet in the end, our government had no mechanism for searching the balance sheets of companies that held life-or-death power over our society and was unable to spot holes in the national economy the size of Libya (whose entire GDP last year was smaller than AIG’s 2008 losses).

The Big Takeover – Rolling Stone

Cherry Ginger

Tastes like Cherry Coke with a hint of sweet orange.

1 oz. Southern Comfort
1 oz. Disaronno Amaretto
Ginger ale to taste
Juice of 2 lime wedges

Strain over ice. Enjoy.

Kudos to the barman at Lucky Strike Lanes at the MIT Enterprise Forum event last night for the concoction.