NoKo
How NoKo deals with athletic failure.
Thursday, June 30, 2011
I Don't Give A Shit
If we don't increase the debt ceiling.
Interest rates SHOULD go up. I just looked into CDs and the rate is .3% or something. Are you kidding me? On what planet should the interest rate be zero? We're still trying to live on funny money.
I guess it'll be violent if we hit this August 2nd date and suddenly the government can't borrow money and pay people, etc, so that is bad. But hey, maybe it'll shock them into doing something right? You never know.
If we don't increase the debt ceiling.
Interest rates SHOULD go up. I just looked into CDs and the rate is .3% or something. Are you kidding me? On what planet should the interest rate be zero? We're still trying to live on funny money.
I guess it'll be violent if we hit this August 2nd date and suddenly the government can't borrow money and pay people, etc, so that is bad. But hey, maybe it'll shock them into doing something right? You never know.
The Amazon Thing
Should we be worried about the State of California?
Worrisome.
Should we be worried about the State of California?
And the truth is, California legislators knew this would happen going in. They knew Amazon would kill the Associates program in the state, collect no income tax, and that the state would also be deprived of the income, and income tax, generated by the program. So why did they push this law through?
Did I mention that these people are leftists, greedheads, and wreckers? Let me add that they are also corrupt bribe-takers on a massive scale. They pushed this law through, and are more than happy to see the Amazon Associates program permanently shut down, because that is the goal the real backers of this law were after in the first place. It has nothing to do with sales tax collections. It is, in its entirety, designed to use the government as a club to shut down Amazon’s Associate Program in the biggest states in the country.
How so?
Big companies like Wal-Mart, (an out of state corporations itself) who have associate programs that are much less effective at driving sales than the Amazon Associate program is, can’t handle that competition head on by beefing up their own programs. Or at least they don’t want to. So what these sponsors were really after was not to collect additional sales tax for California, but to shut down the competition in the state. They got what they wanted. The politicians behind this bill will get what they want - more money and support (bribes) from companies like Wal-Mart. And the state will get nothing, in fact, will lose money.
Worrisome.
Aging Athletes and Nations
How America is going the way of Derek Jeter.
Well put. How can one disagree with the above?
How America is going the way of Derek Jeter.
The stumbling pattern of the aging athlete is reminiscent of the vacillation and weakness of today’s American leadership. The secret of success for those nations that are in their prime is that they do a few tasks confidently and well. They run a strong military to keep peace at home and to help stabilize matters abroad. They worry about the maintenance of a simple tax system with low rates, a system intended to create a certain and friendly environment that maximizes returns to capital and labor. They know the importance of the security of contractual transactions and the dangers that come from erratic efforts to jump-start an economy. They praise their inventors, authors, and innovators. They treat excellence as an imperative. They take care of their unfortunates, but do not easily accept excuses for poor performance.
Well put. How can one disagree with the above?
He Who Has Not Sinned...
To Catch A Predator's Chris Hanson caught cheating on his wife with hidden cameras.
Touche. I always hated that show, the way he self righteously humiliated these pathetic child molesters on live TV. Nothing shows a person's true character more than how they behave when they are in a position of power. He behaved like a self-righteous megalomaniac.
To Catch A Predator's Chris Hanson caught cheating on his wife with hidden cameras.
Touche. I always hated that show, the way he self righteously humiliated these pathetic child molesters on live TV. Nothing shows a person's true character more than how they behave when they are in a position of power. He behaved like a self-righteous megalomaniac.
Wednesday, June 29, 2011
Logging
Film: Brief Encounter
It depends how you watch this film...you could view it an exercise for the future filmmaker of Lawrence, Kwai, and Dr. Zhivago or the very must mumblecore movie ever made. I'm glad I watched it, but I doubt I'll just pop in from time to time to re-watch for fun or pleasure. One shot will always stick with me- when she goes back to the flat. A simple pan, but the objects in frame become like a prison for the character. Great. Compare it to the shot when Lawrence takes Akaba. Similar technique. Different story.
Film: Brief Encounter
It depends how you watch this film...you could view it an exercise for the future filmmaker of Lawrence, Kwai, and Dr. Zhivago or the very must mumblecore movie ever made. I'm glad I watched it, but I doubt I'll just pop in from time to time to re-watch for fun or pleasure. One shot will always stick with me- when she goes back to the flat. A simple pan, but the objects in frame become like a prison for the character. Great. Compare it to the shot when Lawrence takes Akaba. Similar technique. Different story.
In His Defense
Sheen was playing a baseball player, so taking the 'roids was just getting into the role.
Letterman and Leno will be doing better jokes than mine...it's just way to easy.
Sheen was playing a baseball player, so taking the 'roids was just getting into the role.
Letterman and Leno will be doing better jokes than mine...it's just way to easy.
Logging
Film: The Onion Field
In the past year, there are only two films that have blown my mind. The first was watching Burt Reynolds in White Lightning at the QT festival at the New Beverly. I think that movie could play alongside Badlands and hold its own. The second is The Onion Field, which I just watched on Netflix instant. The only movie I can remember structured in a similar way is Zodiac. The story revolves around a single incident in an onion field outside Bakersfield - a crime - and the aftermath and how the crime affects all the people involved - victims, families, the perpetrators, the system of justice. Just an amazing overall movie. Might be James Woods best performance as the creepy and smart low-level criminal. One of Harold Becker's first movies - the guy who directed Sea of Love, City Hall, and Malice. There is a movie of his called The Boost with James Woods that I will watch based upon how good this film was.
Part of me is saddened by only being blown away by older movies, but logically speaking, it makes sense. This year is competing against all the years before it minus the films I've already seen, which surely still amounts to vastly more films than new ones. I'm struggling to think of the last new movie that blew me away. It might still be No Country For Old Men. Is that possible? Game of Thrones blew me away. It is certainly the best new TV show.
Goes to show not all movies need to be constructed in the same way. For those who would focus on building through character want, this is an example about building around an incident. And the characters are so good, still.
Film: The Onion Field
In the past year, there are only two films that have blown my mind. The first was watching Burt Reynolds in White Lightning at the QT festival at the New Beverly. I think that movie could play alongside Badlands and hold its own. The second is The Onion Field, which I just watched on Netflix instant. The only movie I can remember structured in a similar way is Zodiac. The story revolves around a single incident in an onion field outside Bakersfield - a crime - and the aftermath and how the crime affects all the people involved - victims, families, the perpetrators, the system of justice. Just an amazing overall movie. Might be James Woods best performance as the creepy and smart low-level criminal. One of Harold Becker's first movies - the guy who directed Sea of Love, City Hall, and Malice. There is a movie of his called The Boost with James Woods that I will watch based upon how good this film was.
Part of me is saddened by only being blown away by older movies, but logically speaking, it makes sense. This year is competing against all the years before it minus the films I've already seen, which surely still amounts to vastly more films than new ones. I'm struggling to think of the last new movie that blew me away. It might still be No Country For Old Men. Is that possible? Game of Thrones blew me away. It is certainly the best new TV show.
Goes to show not all movies need to be constructed in the same way. For those who would focus on building through character want, this is an example about building around an incident. And the characters are so good, still.
They Realize He Isn't Shawn Ryan, Right?
Does Myspace think Justin Timberlake is actually the character he played in The Social Network?
Does Myspace think Justin Timberlake is actually the character he played in The Social Network?
Revealing True Colors
What Harvard did with it's money and what it is doing now that it is losing it.
Ouch.
What Harvard did with it's money and what it is doing now that it is losing it.
That's because the real priority of elite higher education, as the receding tide of money has exposed, is the greater glory of elite higher education and the administrators and faculty members who work there. That's where all the money went, and that's where, now that some of the money turns out to have never existed in the first place, it needs to come from.
Ouch.
Hitchens
Gotta love the guy. He calls out politicians for their feigned small town folkiness.
and this priceless one:
Man, gonna miss this guy when the cancer takes him. There isn't another who thinks or writes like him.
Gotta love the guy. He calls out politicians for their feigned small town folkiness.
Overall demographic impulses to one side, there is nothing about a bucolic upbringing that breeds the skills necessary to govern a complex society in an age of globalization and violent unease. We need candidates who know about laboratories, drones, trade cycles, and polychrome conurbations both here and overseas. Yet the media make us complicit in the myth—all politics is yokel?—that the fast-vanishing small-town life is the key to ancient virtues. Wasilla, Alaska, is only the most vivid recent demonstration of the severe limitations of this worldview. But still it goes on. Hence one's glee at the resulting helpings of custard.
and this priceless one:
Had John Edwards, who made John Mellencamp's song "Small Town" into his annoying campaign anthem, spent more quality time in the bright lights and the big city, he might not have fallen so abjectly for the first pickup line—"You are so hot"—tried on him by a desperate siren who was growing familiar when Jay McInerney was young.
Man, gonna miss this guy when the cancer takes him. There isn't another who thinks or writes like him.
Problematic
A strange byproduct of abortion technology and societies who value sons.
Now there are 160 million more men than women. Scary.
A strange byproduct of abortion technology and societies who value sons.
Thus far, female empowerment often seems to have led to more sex selection, not less. In many communities, she writes, “women use their increased autonomy to select for sons,” because male offspring bring higher social status. In countries like India, sex selection began in “the urban, well-educated stratum of society,” before spreading down the income ladder.
Now there are 160 million more men than women. Scary.
Tuesday, June 28, 2011
Supply and Demand
Two contrasting restaurant's treatment of dark and white meat chicken. At Aunt Kizzy's Patio in Marina Del Ray, white meat costs $2 extra for fried chicken. In contrast, at Savoy Kitchen in Alhambra, dark meat costs $2 extra for the Hainan Chicken dish. Chinese people like their dark meat. And the white and black folks seem to prefer white meat.
Two contrasting restaurant's treatment of dark and white meat chicken. At Aunt Kizzy's Patio in Marina Del Ray, white meat costs $2 extra for fried chicken. In contrast, at Savoy Kitchen in Alhambra, dark meat costs $2 extra for the Hainan Chicken dish. Chinese people like their dark meat. And the white and black folks seem to prefer white meat.
The Economy From The Ground Up
I saw some pictures this weekend taken with one of those fancy 5D or 7D Canon cameras. They are amazing. One could shoot a feature film with such technology and save millions of dollars in labor costs. This could also be translated to many future film crews having no work. It points to an ongoing theme about employment and technology that I like to explore and upholds my theory that we actually do not need people to labor anymore. Our society basically only needs 20% of our people to work and they can provide enough goods and services for everyone else to get by just fine. This presents a horrible social problem because employment is crucial to ones sense of self worth and well being and usefulness. Our current economic predicament is the early warning sign of this future disease - high unemployment is a mega-trend - something beyond cyclical or structural. And what's worse, no one wants to discuss this issue because it doesn't pay to. Politicians do not want to tackle a problem they cannot solve or blame the other party for political advantage. Citizens do not want to believe it because it is scary and puts many of their life long investments - career, savings, values - into question. But...instead of being such a naysayer and doomsdayist...I thought I'd try to look from the bottom up about ways we could find stuff for people to do.
In that spirit, I thought we start by looking at what I, a 33 year old single male living in Los Angeles, spends money on. This will show where there is room for economic growth and improvement (the dumbest thing we can do - but what we waste our time doing - is thinking about what our "passion" is or what we like to do for work as it that possibly translates to money or growth).
Without further ado
Yearly expenses:
Taxes (including car registration, etc)
Rent
Investments
Debt Service (including mortgage, car loan, student loan, etc)
Gas and Electricity
Cable and Internet
Housekeeping
Car Insurance
Health Insurance
Additional Health Expenses: Copays, Contacts, etc
Food/Drinks/Coffee/Etc
Movies
Books
Music
Clothes
Entertainment - non-movies - drinks, etc
Car Repairs and washes, maintain
Gas
Rare Big Purchases - one time things: Computer, Car, Bed, Furniture, Record Player, TV Set, etc.
Office Supplies and random business expenses
Parking
Exercise Facilities, ie soccer league, yoga, gym, etc
Donations and Gifts
Travel
I don't spend much on anything else outside of these categories. I'm sure people with different needs spend on a few other things, especially things like childcare and school expenses, but the idea is still the same. In order to suss out where we might find some growth, we need to break down these categories and see where improvements can be made in the things we buy. I will do this bit by bit over the next week or so.
I saw some pictures this weekend taken with one of those fancy 5D or 7D Canon cameras. They are amazing. One could shoot a feature film with such technology and save millions of dollars in labor costs. This could also be translated to many future film crews having no work. It points to an ongoing theme about employment and technology that I like to explore and upholds my theory that we actually do not need people to labor anymore. Our society basically only needs 20% of our people to work and they can provide enough goods and services for everyone else to get by just fine. This presents a horrible social problem because employment is crucial to ones sense of self worth and well being and usefulness. Our current economic predicament is the early warning sign of this future disease - high unemployment is a mega-trend - something beyond cyclical or structural. And what's worse, no one wants to discuss this issue because it doesn't pay to. Politicians do not want to tackle a problem they cannot solve or blame the other party for political advantage. Citizens do not want to believe it because it is scary and puts many of their life long investments - career, savings, values - into question. But...instead of being such a naysayer and doomsdayist...I thought I'd try to look from the bottom up about ways we could find stuff for people to do.
In that spirit, I thought we start by looking at what I, a 33 year old single male living in Los Angeles, spends money on. This will show where there is room for economic growth and improvement (the dumbest thing we can do - but what we waste our time doing - is thinking about what our "passion" is or what we like to do for work as it that possibly translates to money or growth).
Without further ado
Yearly expenses:
Taxes (including car registration, etc)
Rent
Investments
Debt Service (including mortgage, car loan, student loan, etc)
Gas and Electricity
Cable and Internet
Housekeeping
Car Insurance
Health Insurance
Additional Health Expenses: Copays, Contacts, etc
Food/Drinks/Coffee/Etc
Movies
Books
Music
Clothes
Entertainment - non-movies - drinks, etc
Car Repairs and washes, maintain
Gas
Rare Big Purchases - one time things: Computer, Car, Bed, Furniture, Record Player, TV Set, etc.
Office Supplies and random business expenses
Parking
Exercise Facilities, ie soccer league, yoga, gym, etc
Donations and Gifts
Travel
I don't spend much on anything else outside of these categories. I'm sure people with different needs spend on a few other things, especially things like childcare and school expenses, but the idea is still the same. In order to suss out where we might find some growth, we need to break down these categories and see where improvements can be made in the things we buy. I will do this bit by bit over the next week or so.
Bankrupt of Ideas
It is pretty surreal they are about to release a Mission Impossible 4. This remake series was tired after the first one, which was released...checking the internet...in 1996. Good lord. It could be the Godfather 2 of remake, reboot, sequels and still unwatchable for the sheer lack of imagination. But hey, I guess the studio is letting Brad Bird teach himself how to direct live action.
It is pretty surreal they are about to release a Mission Impossible 4. This remake series was tired after the first one, which was released...checking the internet...in 1996. Good lord. It could be the Godfather 2 of remake, reboot, sequels and still unwatchable for the sheer lack of imagination. But hey, I guess the studio is letting Brad Bird teach himself how to direct live action.
Logging
TV: Arrested Development Season 3
The least good overall season, but still mighty fun. Got a little too referential for me re: the show dying, etc. The title of the show works incredibly well, both being a description of the state of these characters who haven't reached adulthood, but also, a reference to the building business.
TV: Arrested Development Season 3
The least good overall season, but still mighty fun. Got a little too referential for me re: the show dying, etc. The title of the show works incredibly well, both being a description of the state of these characters who haven't reached adulthood, but also, a reference to the building business.
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