I mentioned in my previous posts the planners and leaders who feel that it is normal to work overtime. They are the ones who, without having any authority over me, could drive me to work long hours. But they are also the ones who convinced me not to work so many, although I may forget Click Here to continue reading.
We continue working through Eliot’s Four Quartets with The Dry Salvages.
When Ape Man starts calling people stupid in print, it is best just to sit back and let him blow of some steam. In this rant he pours out scorn onto President Bush and the political leadership of China. Hopefully he will recover his sense of decorum soon.
This week’s essay of the week is not particularly profound. Nor is it particularly well written. Instead is just a story that some Newsweek reporters wrote. But it is a story that I think is well worth reading.
The emergency room is something that we all just assume will be there when we need it, but we rarely think about the people who have to work in those places. Or the cost to keep something like that going.
A recent post over at the Marginal revolution on Benford’s law was very educational. Here is a quote….
In many data series a surprising number of entries begin with the number 1, and the number 2 is also more common than a random distribution might suggest. This is called Benford’s Law. For instance about one third of all house numbers start with one. That may be a quirk of bureaucratic numbering psychology, but the principle also applies to the Dow Jones index history, size of files stored on a PC, the length of the world’s rivers, and the numbers in newspapers’ front page headlines. It does not apply to lottery-winning numbers, see the graph at the above link.
The law only applies if you are measuring or counting something. That is why it does not apply to lottery numbers. The interesting thing about this law is how it can be used to detect various kinds of fraud. Apparently, it is very hard to fake numbers (for financial results or voters tallies) and still comply with Benford’s law.
In America older people tend to vote more conservatively than the rest of the population. Apparently, the French are no different. According to this article in the in The Independent (h/t tompeters! and the Brussels’s Journal) Sarkozy would not have won the recent election in France if it were not for the over 60 crowd. Click Here to continue reading.
This guy took a video of himself skiing/paragliding down a mountain. Man, that’d be a fun way to go to work! I wonder how he keeps from being blown into the side of some of those cliffs?
MERRILL, Wis. — A service station that offered discounted gas to senior citizens and people supporting youth sports has been ordered by the state to raise its prices.
Center City BP owner Raj Bhandari has been offering senior citizens a 2 cent per gallon price break and discount cards that let sports boosters pay 3 cents less per gallon
Well, the title might be overplaying it a little bit. But I have been thinking about a financial product that I think I ought to be able to buy, but can’t (at least to my knowledge).
To start off, let me explain the problem that this product needs to fix.
To put it succinctly, I think that Click Here to continue reading.
This week’s poem of the week is East Coker. With this week’s essay and rant as well as other things I have been reading this week, it just seemed appropriate to continue working through Eliot’s Four Quartets.