The New York Times has an outstanding and lengthy article tracing the rise of the Madoff investment firm that, in the end, turned out to be (in Madoff’s own words) a $50 billion Ponzi scheme: The juggernaut began to sputter this fall as investors, rattled by the financial crisis and reaching for cash, started taking […]
Courtesy of The Daily Bayonet, who got it from Jammie Wearing Fool: Heh. UPDATE: And here, courtesy of Dave Barry, is striking scientific proof that white people — particularly Southern white people — are inherently rhythmically challenged: ..bruce w..
One of the proudest accomplishments of my adult professional life is that I actually supported myself and my family for a few years solely by writing. That was back in the late 1980s, when it wasn’t quite as easy as it had been in the 30s, 40s, and 50s. However, it was much easier to […]
No, I’m not talking about the current economic meltdown. It turns out that Bavaria has some interesting Christmas customs: The gallery of Bavarian Christmas photos explains: The troll-like Perchten or Krampus emerge when it gets dark. The gnarled and gruesome figures stomp through the Christmas markets of Bavaria, scaring children and sometimes even give women […]
For those of you who missed it, in this downward spiral we are now enduring, the amount of leverage (read, debt) is directly related to how fast your bank is going to go under. Now from a blog named Infectious Greed, comes this chart extracted from a Bank of Canada report: So according to the […]
I’m trying to figure out where I ran across the link for this report (PDF, 3.7 MB); it was sometime in the past few weeks and was most likely from one of the science blogs I review daily, but I just can’t remember where. The report (“A Review of Criticality Accidents”) details sixty (60) criticality […]
This news came as a bit of a surprise to me as I was scanning headlines tonight. First off, Ebola is a very dangerous hemorrhagic fever that is typically found in Africa. The two things that stand out about this story are that the infection is in pigs, and it’s in the Philippines. From the […]
As a former US Marine, the “Toys For Tots” program holds a special place in my heart. In the days when I was on active duty, our squadron (yes I was in the wing), VMFP-3, put forth a huge effort to ensure that we collected more toys than any other squadron on base. For us […]
In what has become a holiday tradition at our house, we have once again made several thousand Christmas cookies to send to friends, family and random people serving in far away lands. I come from a long line of cookie makers, with my mother and grandmother being high practitioners of the art. In years past […]
Having spent a bit of time in the UK, I can attest that in general the programming on television is just as mindless and annoying as the US has on average. But like the US, there are some patches of real brilliance. For example the below clip from the car focused show “Top Gear” where […]
