Not Out Of The Woods

JP Morgan Chase reported today and it sure sounds like everything is coming up roses for the banking behemoth. Income is up 85% over last year at 74 cents a share compared to 40 cents a share a year previous. Revenue is up as well. Of course, as with most financial reporting these days, you …

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April 14, 2010 – 7:58 am | By Scotch Drinker | Posted in Economics | Comments (0)

Complexity

I sit on the Library Advisory Board for the City of Wylie and we had our monthly meeting last night. At one point in the discussions, it came up that a relatively minor technical problem had happened at the library and that it had taken almost a week to fix. In discussing this event, several …

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April 13, 2010 – 4:36 pm | By Scotch Drinker | Posted in Culture | Comments (2)

Bedroom Farce Review

K and I went to see Bedroom Farce last night playing at Theatre Three in Dallas. It’s written by Alan Ayckbourn, a celebrated contemporary British playwright. The Theatre Three staging is very well done and all actors seem to be well-cast. The story centers around 4 couples playing out pieces of the play in their …

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March 13, 2010 – 6:33 pm | By Scotch Drinker | Posted in Culture | Tagged , , | Comments (0)

And The Rich Get Richer. . .

There is currently a movement underfoot in Congress to recompense investors in the Bernard Madoff and R. Allen Standford Ponzi scheme debacles. It is couched in the terms of people having lost their life’s savings being fairly represented and treated but is actually a disgusting reminder of how those in power control much of our …

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March 10, 2010 – 10:17 pm | By Scotch Drinker | Posted in Economics | Tagged , | Comments (0)

Analyzing My Facebook Friends

Because I am weird (and because I only have 35 Facebook friends, making it possible to turn my weirdness into some data observations), I have spent the last 10 minutes analyzing how many friends my friends have. On average, they have 162.8857 friends (the person who is .8857th of a friend keeps showing up as …

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February 15, 2010 – 11:16 pm | By Scotch Drinker | Posted in Internet/Technology | Tagged , | Comments (2)

Gun Porn

Something at least 2 of my 4 readers can agree on. This is one bad-ass looking gun.

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February 9, 2010 – 6:30 pm | By Scotch Drinker | Posted in Random | Tagged | Comments (6)

Does Our Whininess Have No End?

Whole Foods is implementing a plan to give a bigger employee discount to employees that don’t smoke, have lower blood pressure and have a BMI under 30. Naturally, people are whining about discrimination. This includes one quote that I can’t possibly do justice to other than to reproduce it in full: “Why are you rewarding …

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February 7, 2010 – 3:21 pm | By Scotch Drinker | Posted in Random | Tagged , , , , | Comments (3)

Fear The Boom And The Bust

When they start making rap songs about dead economists, I think it’s probably a sign of the apocalypse. Still, this one is excellent and instructive.

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January 26, 2010 – 6:46 pm | By Scotch Drinker | Posted in Economics | Comments (1)

Baby Steps

This week, President Obama proposed regulatory changes that would limit big banks, implicitly those that received the guarantee of a government backstop during the crash last year, from investing for profits using their own hedge-funds or proprietary trading desks. This would be an excellent first step in reining in the power that the JP Morgans …

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January 23, 2010 – 5:56 am | By Scotch Drinker | Posted in Economics, Politics | Tagged , | Comments (4)

Jon Stewart Tells Keith Olbermann What For

Keith Olbermann is a prick, that’s really all you can say. But Jon Stewart says it far better than I ever could. The Daily Show With Jon Stewart Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c

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January 22, 2010 – 6:23 pm | By Scotch Drinker | Posted in Politics | Comments (2)