Recent comments by Mook
Happy New Year to all - and may we continue to live in interesting times.
In honor of another year of HCN, it's time for me to mix up a Doom Cocktail:
It's now officially 2013 EST ... and I'm going to bed.
And no apocalypse. So we have that goin' for us. Which is nice.
Yep, it's quarter of 10 and I'm hitting the sack.
3 hours' sleep + 11 hours' work + 1 bottle Arrogant Bastard Ale + 1 bottle Incredible Hop =
I'm in serious danger of not outlasting my 4-year-old.
Mein Gott.
sporkfed wrote:
They love BBQ
pizzaanything in Memphis. Not my choice.
The first person who figures out how to make a palatable BBQ-flavored ice cream will become a Memphis millionaire.
Not that there's anything wrong with that.
lawyerliz wrote:
What are the minimum specs for a thing to be a pizza?
I was gonna say, "Flat dough. Mozzarella." Then I thought about how someone like, say, Eric would take me to task about the "flat" part.
In related news, kinda misses his ball gag.
lawyerliz wrote:
And where is everybody?
We're all rushing to put down payments on beachfront condos, don'tcha know? They're hot, hot, HOT again!
Yeah, we had to pay 10% over listing price but it's worth it because, ummm, real estate only goes up.
Rajesh wrote:
Thousands of Georgia jobs and millions in revenue are at stake if the dock workers with the International Longshoremen’s Association walk away from their posts along the Savannah River at midnight December 29.
They have unions in Georgia? Who knew?
FD: I lived there for two years and you could have fooled me.
ResistanceIsFeudal wrote:
It's for the children! Regardless who we choose, or the cost or quality, though, it's imperative that we protect the children by ensuring every public school in the nation has an armed guard.
But that would lead to internecine battles as to whether the thousands of pages of legislation governing their existence should be administered by the Department of Education, or the Department of Defense, or Homeland Security, or ...
Oh, I know! Let's give School Defense its own Cabinet-level position and a few thousand associated government functionaries to manage and administer it.
And eagles framing the entrance to the new School Defense Building in Washington. Eagles ... clutching an apple in each talon. Ah, symbolism!
Yancey Ward wrote:
You would need a tax at the source, but the politics are never going to allow this tax to be punitively high.
Frog and warm water. How high were the first cigarette taxes as a percentage of total cost per pack? What are they now? I haven't crunched the numbers but I'd bet the latter is 5x the former.
People won't accept a $100 or $200 per gun tax now or a 5-cent-per-shell ammo tax now. They might in 25 years.
Yancey Ward wrote:
That was not Dryfly's proposal. You might put a hefty excise tax at purchase, but the politics are never going to allow it to reach the punitive levels the gun control advocates desire.
He said "legal, regulated, taxed" - there are many ways of getting there. My response to you was before he put a specific proposal out there.
There are pros and cons to treating 'em like liquor - sin taxes paid up-front - or like cars - registered and taxed on an ongoing basis. If you're serious about registration you almost have to go the latter route, but you can regulate something without a registration component - just regulate the sources of supply heavily.
Yancey Ward wrote:
It is very difficult to tax things on an ongoing basis that are easily concealed after purchase.
Why would you need to tax on an ongoing basis?
Sin taxes are generally collected only once, at point of first purchase, and they seem to be doing their intended job pretty well.
Rob Dawg wrote:
California had a statistically insignificant change in total employment Oct to Nov but the headline U-3 dropped from 10.2% to 9.8%.
Magically, another 35,000 people disappeared from the civilian labor force in your region last month.
Boy, you'd think that with the economy so obviously improving that there would be folks getting up off their couches and banging down the doors looking for work.
I'm putting the over/under on the number of posts (in this thread about unemployment rates) before the first rhetorical question about at 7.
MaryAnn wrote:
Whats wrong with putting an armed security guard at every public school in the Nation with a fenced in campus so children can have freedom to roam and run instead of being drilled for Freaks coming to kill them.
It's a good thing that schools are the only place in our country where groups of small children gather, thus leaving deranged homicidal maniacs with absolutely no other options if they're set on killing them.
Seriously: these sorts of arguments are akin to asking why we couldn't just zero out drunk driving by posting a Breathalyzer at the front door of every bar in the country - surely people won't find other places to get drunk!
ResistanceIsFeudal wrote:
If you can crap in it, it's a commode!
Does that mean if you can trickle down it, it's a urinal?
If so: Coming soon to a near you, the new and improved, -plated "Middle Class" model urinal!
justaskin wrote:
thanks mook...clpped that one for my SO's B-school cohort....
Make sure (s)he changes the "i.e."s to "e.g."s. Not enough this morning.
Mary wrote:
You are not at liberty to say what industry you company is engaged in?
It's consumer products generally, and pharmaceuticals if the term is used in its broadest "subject to regulation by the FDA" sense rather than the narrower definition favored by talking heads.
I'm hesitant to reveal more, as it would result in bridging what small leap of logic might be required to name the specific company.
I'm starting to get a little concerned about . No way should I be able to string together that many words on a first post before he jumps in.
Hmm ... they always say animals sense impending disaster before humans ...
Consumer sentiment on the decline, but total gross spending on the rise.
It's almost as though some small percentage of the population were spending freely and disguising a pullback by the rest.
: nah, nothing to see here; all is well; move along
ResistanceIsFeudal wrote:
2 degrees here!
Don't worry - you've still got plenty of cheap natty around to keep you toasty warm.
Five winters from now, perhaps not so much.
shill wrote:
If You Bought Greek Bonds in January You Earned 80%: Euro Credit - Bloomberg
Ah, but only if you bought at the bottom and sell now.
Because why settle for 80% when you could reach for 100%, or 150%, or ...
Mary wrote:
What type of industry is your company engaged in? dryfly may need to know in order to render his expert analysis of OEM investment and revenue goals.
He already does, to the extent he needs to - which, you may be surprised to learn, isn't that great.
Unless you're in an industry that's hugely cyclical, i.e. oil and gas, or one that's dependent on gub'mint largesse, i.e. aerospace and defense - the size of the manufacturer generally matters more than what exactly they're producing.
The economic drivers of employment and investment decisions for a 1,000-strong ag equipment supplier in IA and for a 1,000-strong consumer products manufacturer in PA probably have about 80% overlap - once you strip out seasonality, if any, it's probably more like 90%. And the two move far more in lockstep with each other than the former would with Caterpillar, or the latter with Unilever.
Penguin wrote:
Does this mean we
nowhave had a one-party system for the past 20 years?
Jackdawracy wrote:
Same here, but we obviously don't know very many people in the lower 80% that express more how lucky they are to have employment, than the raises in pay they're getting.
Our company laid off about 80 people last week. 5% of the regional workforce, give or take.
Eight months ago they were moving full-steam ahead on hiring, to the point of execs reshuffling departments in order to create open positions. Now, all of a sudden, you can hear the grinding of the gears as the transmission is thrown into reverse.
Industry buzz is that we're not the only ones going this route - be interested to hear dryfly's take on things when he pops in.
:quintiles:
Seriously, CR's chart shows personal income up, what, 3% year-on-year? I don't know a single person in the bottom 80% who can make this claim personally.
Vonbek777 wrote:
So as far as I can tell, these end of the world events are like any other big party...get drunk, hook up, forget about tomorrow...so I assume we'll be having them more and more often. Am I right?
As we get ever closer to the Singularity, I see no reason why we shouldn't just hold one continuous party. As usual, however, Douglas Adams has beaten us to the punch.
Life, the Universe and Everything, by Douglas Adams at American Buddha
Online Library“The longest and most destructive party ever held is now into its fourth generation and still no one shows any signs of leaving. Somebody did once look at his watch, but that was eleven years ago now, and there has been no follow up.
“The mess is extraordinary, and has to be seen to be believed, but if you don’t have any particular need to believe it, then don’t go and look because you won’t enjoy it.
“There have recently been some bangs and flashes up in the clouds, and there is one theory that this is a battle being fought between the fleets of several rival carpet-cleaning companies who are hovering over the thing like vultures, but you shouldn’t believe anything you hear at parties, and particularly not anything you hear at this one.
“One of the problems, and it’s one that is obviously going to get worse, is that all the people at the party are either the children or the grand children or the great-grandchildren of the people who wouldn’t leave in the first place, and because of all the business about selective breeding and recessive genes and so on, it means that all the people now at the party are either absolutely fanatical partygoers, or gibbering idiots or, more and more frequently, both.
“Either way, it means that, genetically speaking, each succeeding generation is now less likely to leave than the preceding one.
“So, other factors come into operation, like when the drinks are going to run out.”
yagij wrote:
Ewww. Did you at least add sugar to it?
Don't look now but the box has taken a quantum leap in the past decade. It ain't all Gallo territory any more.
I'm drinking Banrock Station Shiraz, $16.99 on sale at the local liquor mart. $4.25 / bottle equivalent and I'd put it up against 90% of the mass-market bottled Shiraz selling for thrice the price.
Plus no more wasted wine those days when the wife doesn't feel like partaking.
Former Idealist wrote:
Time to slam another....
I'm into my second glass of box wine as I type.
Nothin' but the best for Pre-Apocalypse Day!
poicv2.0 wrote:
The bastards removed the complimentary jelly beans before wrapping it up.
Now that's a real " you" if I've ever seen one.
poicv2.0 wrote:
I got an authentic Hello Kitty ceramic jelly bean dispenser
Could you ask whoever brought it in where they bought it?
I'd very much like to know what store to avoid the next time I'm out shopping with my 4-year-old daughter.
Rob Dawg wrote:
Way back in the late past circa late 1990s and early 2000s it was assumed that inorganic chemicals and mechanically stressed metals were the best way to store energy for projectile weapons.
SOPApedia informs me that these "crude, barbaric, and ineffective" weapons were often owned by individuals, under the protection of a long-ago set of decrees whose names are rightfully consigned to the dustbin of history. Historical research has suggested the possible use of the label "Bill of Rights" and the term "Second" (exact reference unknown, perhaps referring to the second iteration of said document), but in any case such a name, and concept, would have been outmoded by the Doctrine of Limited Citizen Privileges that forms the basis of our current government.
Blackhalo wrote:
Intrade - The US debt limit to be raised before midnight ET 31 Dec 2012
So sorry that, as an American, you can't participate any more! Rest assured it's for your own good, citizen.
$300 trillion in unsecured derivatives held by the TBTF: nothing to see here.
Random schmoes plunking down $50 bets on current events at Intrade: TEOTWAWKI!!!1!1!
Why NYSE-ICE deal is likely to be approved - MarketWatch
They spent 800 words explaining what any HCN'er could have with one icon:
EngineerJim wrote:
Plowing competition ?
That's an extra, sold only with the "Clinton package" to O's inauguration.
poicv2.0 wrote:
What happened to
I can't have been the only one who saw that question and thought he was asking about the owner of the with the ball gag.
Blackhalo wrote:
Google is going to eat them alive.
It absolutely couldn't happen to a nicer bunch of .
picosec wrote:
"As incomes come down, cable and Internet both look like pretty good values."
Cable is a colossal rip-off priced only to satisfy cash-flow justification for billions in previously-wasted capital and dole out for intellectual property of dubious value.
Internet access is so integral to modern-day society that it should be treated as a regulated public utility.
It says a lot about our corporate overlords that they commonly group the two, much less deign to consider them the polar opposites they've become.
ResistanceIsFeudal wrote:
I was just a little shocked to see an honest profession like escort was leveraged into becoming a real estate broker. What is this world coming to?
Best unintentional double entendre ever.
ResistanceIsFeudal wrote:
You just can't make this sh!t up anymore.
BTW, it's articles like this that make me want to go up to Bloomberg HQ myself and start Tasing their writers.
After a 20 percent down payment and not counting taxes and maintenance fees, his monthly bill would be $2,443. At the 18.25 percent rate he paid for his first house 30 years ago, payments would have been $8,309.
No, it wouldn't, God Do U C Y?!?!?!
Mike in Long Island wrote:
Fed’s $4 Trillion Rescue Helps Hedge Fund as Savers Hurt - Bloomberg
But hey, even the average Joes who don't run mortgage-bond funds are benefiting from Uncle Ben's largesse! Well, OK, those subset of average Joes who are in the market for Greenwich real estate:
Mortgage borrowers, on the other hand, have never had it better. Bob Miller, who bought a 2,100-square-foot condo in Greenwich, Connecticut, in September for $680,000, got a 3.5 percent rate on his mortgage. After a 20 percent down payment and not counting taxes and maintenance fees, his monthly bill would be $2,443. At the 18.25 percent rate he paid for his first house 30 years ago, payments would have been $8,309.
The difference helped Miller, 57, and his wife, now empty- nesters, pay for re-carpeting and painting their new place, which overlooks a pond where they plan to take their 3-year-old granddaughter to feed the ducks. Miller is also in the market for a big-screen, high-definition television.
Repeat from earlier thread, but I'll say it again: All this good news in such a short timeframe means that the Fed will any moment now begin to embark on a cycle of rate tightening and balance sheet reduction.
Right?
ResistanceIsFeudal wrote:
Was judgment of singing ability independent with respect to BAC? A couple of troublesome feedback possibilities if not
Yeah, the introduction of that additional statistical variable was quite a challenge. I'm somewhat to admit that we used a double-blind approach by which we labelled each of our performances using a random number, with the intent to re-evaluate each of them the next day under conditions of supposed sobriety.
Of course, we never got around to that last part.
ResistanceIsFeudal wrote:
I can belt out some Who, u2, foreigner or bad company at a high level
impressive
Two fellow engineer buddies of mine and I once spent an entire night sitting around a table with a couple of bottles, a karaoke machine, and a voice recorder, meticulously plotting our respective ability to carry a tune (as judged by the other two) as a function of BAC.
Mine was the only graph that was upward-sloping at any point. :pride:
HCN is about the only group of people in the world with whom I'd voluntarily share that story.
poicv2.0 wrote:
Tom Stone tops you cause of his flaming hot Hawaiian shirts and lizard boots.
Who else read this and immediately had a Broward flashback?
Tom Stone wrote:
Look for the house with all the pretty girls, I'll be inside playing the piano.
Now, just wrap those girls in BACON and you'd have combined the best of both your fantasies.
ResistanceIsFeudal wrote:
Fast food is really high in sodium in general
Gross margins on soft drinks are in the 90% range. It really is that simple.
And from the "Least Surprising News I've Heard All Day" file, courtesy the BEA release:
Domestic profits of financial corporations increased $68.1 billion in the third quarter, in contrast to a decrease of $39.7 billion in the second. Domestic profits of nonfinancial corporations decreased $14.1 billion in the third quarter, in contrast to an increase of $27.8 billion in the second.
Real GDP keeps getting revised up. Corporate profits keep getting revised up. U-3 keeps falling.
So I suppose this means we should expect the Fed to embark on their rate tightening and balance-sheet reduction efforts any day now, then?
ResistanceIsFeudal wrote:
Depending on your definition of "rolls", we may still be talking about Fed monetary policy here.