John Keat’s is not one of my favorite poets by a long shot. But his poem When I have Fears that I may cease to be is what came to my mind when I read this week’s Essay of the Week.
Poem of the Week: 7/29/07- 8/4/07
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Monthly Archives: July 2007
Rant of the week: 7/29/07- 8/4/07
Tanta has little patience for rich smart men who love the free market when it makes them rich and want the government to take care of them when the market burns them. She also does not seem to care all the much for the New York Times. Throw the two of those things together and you get a lovely rant.
Essay of the week: 7/29/07- 8/4/07
A blogger who goes by the name of ambulance driver was asked for advice on how to deal with the grieving relatives of a dead person. This is the response he gave.
Reading is necessary for life, but writing is a luxury.
I have not been writing lately because I have been short on time. For one thing, I have been doing too much sleeping. But I always make time for reading even if I have to cut out on the sleeping.
I figure that since I have not been writing I might as well share some Click Here to continue reading.
These dogs have the agility of cats
This is a video of the French police training their attack dogs. I am surprised by how agile the dogs are. They practically fly.
We Have Met the Customer, and He is Us
This is going to get technical, and also not make much sense. Proceed with caution.
One of the first things I had the privilege of working on when I came to the shipping department was intra-company orders. In a very small way I helped make this an issue that our plant needed to deal with. In Click Here to continue reading.
Portrait contrast appreciation
Seeing as I saw this linked to off of a message board, in all likelihood 98% of the civilized world has already seen this, but, for the last poor deprived 2%:
Right around the time of Matisse and all the others who pretend they don’t know how to draw, you almost might as well stop watching. But before that, watching each face fade into another heightens their differences and especially their emotions. The movements of the features as the form from one expression to another makes every thought more powerful. It’s also very eerie, because as the faces are in mid-shift, you could almost swear you see glimpses of someone you recognize. I think this feeling is most powerful right before it solidifies into new face.
I wish that it cycled through slower, but I have a feeling it’s as effective as it is precisely because it doesn’t give you time to stop and think, and your imagination has to fill in so much of it.
Cat expert at predicting death
Just about everyone has probably seen this. I actually meant to post it a while ago. But for those have not, here it is…
Oscar is better at predicting death than the people who work there, said Dr. Joan Teno of Brown University, who treats patients at the nursing home and is an expert on care for the terminally ill.
She was convinced of Oscar’s talent when he made his 13th correct call. While observing one patient, Teno said she noticed the woman wasn’t eating, was breathing with difficulty and that her legs had a bluish tinge, signs that often mean death is near.
Oscar wouldn’t stay inside the room, though, so Teno thought his streak was broken. Instead, it turned out the doctor’s prediction was roughly 10 hours too early. Sure enough, during the patient’s final two hours, nurses told Teno that Oscar joined the woman at her bedside.
Doctors say most of the people who get a visit from the sweet-faced, gray-and-white cat are so ill they probably don’t know he’s there, so patients aren’t aware he’s a harbinger of death. Most families are grateful for the advance warning, although one wanted Oscar out of the room while a family member died. When Oscar is put outside, he paces and meows his displeasure.
No one’s certain if Oscar’s behavior is scientifically significant or points to a cause. Teno wonders if the cat notices telltale scents or reads something into the behavior of the nurses who raised him.
I have to think that if the cat is better at predicting death then the staff then he is not picking up information from the staff. But that is just me.
Also, here is an essay in the New England Journal of Medicine about the cat.
Is Monday going to be a day of major pain in the financial markets?
There was this little press release that came out Friday at around 10 PM. It says….
American Home Mortgage Investment Corp. (NYSE: AHM – News) announced today that its Board of Directors has decided to delay payment of its quarterly cash dividend on the Company’s common stock and anticipates delaying payment of its quarterly cash dividends on its Series A Cumulative Redeemable Preferred Stock and Series B Cumulative Redeemable Preferred Stock in order to preserve liquidity until it obtains a better understanding of the impact that current market conditions in the mortgage industry and the broader credit market will have on the Company’s balance sheet and overall liquidity. The disruption in the credit markets in the past few weeks has been unprecedented in the Company’s experience and has caused major write-downs of its loan and security portfolios and consequently has caused significant margin calls with respect to its credit facilities.
Now when I first saw this on Calculated Risk, I did not think much of it. Lots of companies are having problems because of the sub prime crisis. What’s one more? Besides, Calculated Risk’s only comment in his blog post highlighting this press release was “I can’t recall a declared dividend being “delayed”. This can’t be good.”
This seemed to me to be a no duh statement. Of course a dividend being delayed is not good. But apparently Calculated Risk is one of those dudes who is prone to understating disasters. It became clear in the comment section that Calculated Risk regarded this development as a major disaster.
In one of his first comments he professes to be speechless. Replying to another commentator who argued that there was less than 90 days left until people woke up to the carnage Calculated Risk said….
y.s.wayne, 90 days? How about Monday?
I’ve served on the board of a public company, and I can’t imagine declaring a dividend and then delaying it. That is simply incredible … but I’ve also never had to put out a press release worded like that one: “major write-downs” and “significant margin calls”.
And I’ve never been with a Company that felt compelled to put out a press release in the evening on a Friday either. That had to be an ugly BOD meeting.
Now I have never seen Calculated Risk sound alarmist or predict the short term movement of the market. Normally he is very careful to hedge his bets. For him to talk about carnage coming on Monday was unprecedented. It made me sit up and take notice.
But I still did not understand why this of all things should be such a big deal. Luckily Calculated Risk’s co-blogger Tanta put up a post of her own on the subject titled Saturday Rock Blogging: Speechless. The post itself is just a clip of a rock band playing a song without words, but in the comments section Tanta illuminates the problem for ignorant souls such as me.
All of her comments on the post are worth reading(here, here, and here, for starters), but this one basically sums it all up…
bofiz, to me it’s not just that. It’s that AHM’s stock took a bad tumble a week ago, apparently on a rumor that Lehman was pulling a warehouse facility. Per published reports AHM actually denied that rumor to a reporter. The stock recovered a lot of value (although not all of it) the next day. A week later, we find out they don’t have enough cash to pay dividend.
Surely everyone already knew you don’t cancel a dividend you affirmed 30 days ago on a Friday night at bedtime. I think the problem is that nobody’s going to believe that a lot of companies still have functional access to credit markets unless they fax their bank statements to the WSJ. We’re all wondering what a dividend affirmation means in this climate, not really whether it’s legal or not. (Although I for one suspect that they did it because the clear alternative was even more illegal.)
I feel sorry for a certain elderly gentleman that I know who has most of his retirement savings tied up in Real Estates REIT’s. After all I have read on Calculated Risk, I have a feeling that he is not going to have a fun Monday.
P.S, for extra giggles, read this comment.
Update:7/29/07
Ape Man asked for (and received) Marco Man’s opinion on the matter here.
Calculate Risk has a new post on the subject here.
And the issue has just made Google News. Which means the story is starting to hit a large number news outlets right about now. It is going to be an interesting Monday.
Under the Microscope
So in my previous ramble, I talked about this book called Woven into the Earth. I kind of expressed my uncomfortableness with having my work taken under the microscope, as the work of the women of Greenland was literally done. And I also mentioned another book, a kind of mock-up (in more ways than one) Click Here to continue reading.