Bank Horror Stories

Do you have a story about a bad occurence at your bank (or better yet, your old bank)? Everyone does . . . . well, Steve Lopez or the LA Times did a couple of articles on the subject. here is is latest piece . . . you go to this link and then follow the rest . . . . it's a great read. Steve Lopez

SEX.COM domain name sold . . . . don't you wish you had registered it?

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Representation Bias

That daily bar chart is a good example of the first heuristic, which everyone uses, called the "law of representation." What it means is that people assume that when something is supposed to represent something, it really is what it is supposed to represent. Thus, most of us just look at the daily bar and accept that it represents a days worth of trading . . . . in reality, it's just a line on a piece of paper - no more no less. I might add that depending on which source of data you receive, the bar can be correct or incorrect. Many times, I've looked at a daily bar that was very long only to discover that a bad tick occurred at some extreme end of the price distribution, which the data provider didn't correct. This error resulted in a bar that was incorrect. Why is this important? Because many indicators use the range of prices of the day to represent something, ie and moving average.

Judgemental Bias series

I'm going to post a series of articles describing the various biases that affect people and especially those trying to master markets (trade).

"We typically trade our beliefs about the market and once we've made up our minds about those beliefs, we're not likely to change them. And when we play the markets, we assume that we are consdering all of the available information. Instead, our beliefs, through selective perception, may have elinminated the most useful information." Van K. Tharp, Ph.D. and founder of IITM

If you dug a very deep hole somewhere . . . .

where would it come out? like on the other side of the planet from where you started. well, now you can find out. click on DIGHERE and give it a try

Kopi Luwak coffee

OK, I know that you've never heard of it . . . . that's why you check my blog, right? to learn about "interesting or what" stuff like this.

check out Wikipedia Encyclopedi

These coffees, from Jamaican Blue Mountain to Kona to Tanzanian Peaberry, command a premium price. But perhaps no coffee in the world is in such short supply, has such unique flavors and an, um, interesting background as Kopi Luwak. And no coffee even comes close in price: Kopi Luwak sells for $75 per quarter pound. Granted, that's substantially less than marijuana, but it's still unimaginably high for coffee. click here

Norman Vaughn climbed Mt Vaughn 3 days before his 89th birthday

Days before his 89th birthday he and his wife, Carolyn Muegge-Vaughan, returned to Antarctica and climbed to the summit of 10,320-foot Mount Vaughan, the mountain Byrd named in his honor.

"It was the climax of our dream," he told The Associated Press in a 2005 interview at his Anchorage home. "We had to risk failure to get there. We dared to fail."

Vaughan continued to seek adventure his entire life. His exploits included finishing the 1,100 mile-Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race six times after age 70. At age 96, he carried the Olympic torch in Juneau, passing the flame from a wheelchair, 70 years after he competed in the Olympics as a sled dog racer.

you learn more at the CNN.com article on his passing last month . . . . .

DARPA and the $2,000,000 un-manned vehicle award

you probably never heard of DARPA , the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency . . . . your tax dollars at work . . . . and I really think this is good stuff. DARPA is apart of the DoD . . . It manages and directs selected basic and applied research and development projects for DoD, and pursues research and technology where risk and payoff are both very high and where success may provide dramatic advances for traditional military roles and missions. The Grand Challenge website is where you can learn about the innovations around the US working to meet the challenge and create vehicles that will save lives and advance technololgy. $2,000,000 was awarded to the winner, Stanford's "Stanely".

According to Keith Richards . . . .

I've been reading my "Rolling Stone Interviews '67-'80" and just finished reading one with Keith Richards in 1971. He talks about Rolling Stones Records with the "Kali" tongue. We all know what that image looks like and it truly has become a brand image for the Stones but in this interview Keith knows that it will become this icon. Kali is the Hindu female goddess with 5 arms, a row of head , a saber in one hand, flames coming out the other and she stands there with her tongue out. So now you know where that image came from . . . . .

Friday the 13th

I've never had a problem with Friday the 13th. In fact tonight I'll be playing my first gig in town and am sure we'll have a blast.

But how about this for a Friday the 13th event : On Friday, August 13, 1982, the Dow had an historic breakout day, leaping 11 points to 788. (Eleven points is roughly equal to 153 points at today's elevation.) The market never looked back. That was the beginning of the Grand Bull Market that didn't end until the year 2000.

Sedan or Sudan . . . . ah, it was a mistake

I'm revisiting a note from my friend Dan Dominy who noticed this little piece last March . . . . transcribing is always a problem if no one is checking. If you're like me, you're pretty skeptical of the media . . .

from CNN writer Mike Ahlers

"WASHINGTON (CNN) -- There's an old saying that a lie can travel halfway around the world before the truth puts its boots on. Let it be known that mistakes can travel just as fast -- and just as far. Take the case of Rep. Ellen Tauscher, D-California, who at a hearing on Capitol Hill last week spoke about a 1962 nuclear test in the Nevada desert. The test was code named "Project Sedan." Tauscher's remarks were little noticed, until they were transcribed -- incorrectly -- in an unofficial transcript of the hearing. One letter was changed. The "Sedan" nuclear test became the "Sudan" nuclear test.

And the government of Sudan took notice. Less than a day after Tauscher uttered her words, and after they were incorrectly transcribed, Sudanese officials evidently were alerted to the transcript. The Sudanese Foreign Ministry summoned the U.S. charge d'affaires in Khartoum and demanded an explanation about the supposedly secret nuclear tests in the east African country . . . . "

you can read the rest of the story at here

A Million Little Pieces is a million dollar fraud

Over the holidays it seemed like everywhere you looked someone was reading Oprah's book of the month or whatever it was, called "A Million Little Pieces". Yep, my wife was reading it and so I decided to take a gander at it after she finished it. Lying by the pool in Mazatlan I quickly got the feeling that this was a hoax . . . . I mean, if the guy was that drugged out and boozed up for 20 years or whatever . . . he wouldn't have remembered his own name let alone the details of all the crap he wrote about but the real clincher for me was the part where he had 2 root canals without anasthesia . . . . huh? did you believe that part?? Yeah, I was cringing while I read it but all the time knew if was a bold faced lie . . . . . then I asked a dentist friend of mind why someone would have to go through a root canal without drugs because he was a drug addict. My friend said . . . . topical pain suppressants wouldn't cause a relapse or any problem . . . and then she said that she hadn't heard of anyone having a root canal without anasthesia. That satisfied me . . . the book was bull%#*^. I knew then the book was a hoax.

Now I feel vindicated as the whole world knows that it's a hoax. The publishing industry is now on notice that they cannot be trusted.

Most interesting point is that when Double Day first decided to publish it, the book was offered as fiction . . . . yeah. Then they decided no one was interested in it as fiction so they decided to publish it as non-fiction.

Oprah has a credability problem now too. And she's still standing behind the book's author. duh????

read about it in at CNN.com

check out thesmokinggun.com for more.

Howard Stern

talk about getting a boatload of money . . . . no CEO of a publicly traded company on the planet can match the Howard Stern bounty from Sirius Radio . . . first they sign up with a 5 year $500 million deal . . . . now they announce they're giving Stern and his agent 34,400,000 shares of stock - read about it here

iTunes selling at an amazing clip

Steve Jobs announced today at MacWorld that Apple is selling 3 million songs per day . . . . PER DAY. Wow. I've never purchased a song over the internet but I use iTunes everyday.

iPod Users Beware

Pete Townsend (the Who) is warning people to turn down the volume, I think his hearing loss is from years and years of fronting one of the loudest bands ever (also the best) not from studio headphones but you can read about it here

Denial

Three areas of denial: debt, age and law.
People deny they are in debt and add more
People deny they are getting older by medically trying to look younger and last longer.
People deny the law, breaking it with no compunction. Ever drive the speed limit and get run off the road?

People are denying today like they've never denied before. Think about it.

Common Cold Time

I came down with a cold right before New Year's Eve . . . . and I thought I was healthy. But that really has nothing to do with catching the common cold. Learn more at a great new website Common Cold

The Passenger

from a review by Jake Meany of Stylus Magazine . . .

"And then there's the simply stunning release, the consummation of both Locke's journey and that of the restless camera. As Locke flops down on a hotel bed to meet his end, the camera pans away and comes to rest gazing out through the barred hotel window. An apt metaphor, this prison that always awaits us at the end, no matter how much we try to escape it. Except, in a remarkable single tracking shot that must go on for a good eight or nine minutes, the camera begins a long slow glide towards the window, pushes through the bars and then makes a circuit of the barren town square just outside the hotel, as the girl wanders about confusedly, a young child throws stones at an old man, and cars arrive bearing the guerrillas, and then the wife and the police—and then it slowly curves back towards the hotel, back through the window, to find Locke dead on the bed. It's brauva filmmaking, as confident and exciting as the famous opening of Touch of Evil, and is probably the only way The Passenger could've satisfactorily answered its central conundrum in a way that wasn't totally despairing. In this shot, in this final release, this ultimate disappearance, this pushing out through the bars, Locke finally yields to the void he'd been trying to escape throughout the film, and only then does he find his salvation, closing the circle and vanishing into it—freedom, at last."

this is a must see film