Kramer on Bear Stearns
Before:
Although it has been suggested that he was referring to brokerage accounts held with the firm and not its stock.
After:
Before:
Although it has been suggested that he was referring to brokerage accounts held with the firm and not its stock.
After:
People either drink tap water or they don’t. There’s no middle ground here. 
Some of us are brave enough to drink the local tap water in countries as exotic as Burundi and some of us won’t drink tap water certified to be germ free by the local government. Some of us drink only bottled water with fancy names such as Evian or Pellegrino. I have been brave (or foolhardy) in trying out tap water in most places I have traveled to. But when one is depending on the Lonely Planets and the Rough Guides for guidance to countries one doesn’t know much about, eventually one succumbs to the marketing hype and plow down for the bottled variety of the essential liquid.
Today, at a bar here in Colorado, I overheard the bartenders discussing how the French named Evian, the famous bottled water company, as such: spelled backwards it’s N-A-I-V-E. Yikes!
Though this is not entirely true, it does give one pause.
Quite a few of my friends have Visa Signature credit cards. So, I thought it’d be good to publicize a good benefit from them for those planning to visit the wineries of Sonoma Valley. Visa is now having a promotion that allows Signature card holders to get complimentary tastings at some prominent wineries in Sonoma. See here for the full list. I was up in Sonoma last Saturday and enjoyed this benefit as well as up to 20% discount on wines purchased. Enjoy.
As I have learned over the years, photography is an expensive hobby. The fancier your camera, the more additional expense you are likely to incur. You need lenses for all occasions (the Safari zoom shot, the flower bloom shot in Death Valley, the wide angle skyscraper shot, the magical portrait shot of your friend’s child, etc.). You will need to invest in a decent tripod and ball head and get rid of your Ritz camera cheap crap. You’ll need UV and Polarizer filters for the various lenses you own (most of them of different diameters). And just when you have amassed all this, it’ll be time to upgrade the body to the latest and greatest.
As one of those people belonging to the tribe of married people, it’s not easy to justify all of the above with the powers that be. So, one has to make compromises. My recent find to avoid unpleasant discussions at home of the financial kind, is a tiny company called Borrowlenses.com. Based in the Bay Area, they specialize in renting lenses, tripods, and even camera bodies to those of us who have to make do with limited photography budgets. I recently rented a super wide angle lens (12-24mm) for a two week holiday and the experience was so smooth and the results (from the lens) were so extraordinary that I thought it’ll do good to give them a plug here. You don’t have to live in the Bay Area to rent from them. They’ll ship the items to you wherever you are based in the US but of course if you live here, you have the option to go pick up the lens in person from a camera store in San Mateo and thus save on shipping costs. Check them out before you decide to go splurge on a fancy new lens (or even a new SLR).
That reliable source of news for those of us tired with the war and subprime credit crunch, The Onion, has a bit on outsourcing childcare to India and other emerging nations.
This may be in jest but quite a few people I know (including my own extended family members) have been doing this for ages by sending their children to India to their grandparents and such.
[via Saja Forum]
There has always been the perception that Americans generally work many more hours than their European counterparts (the Italians have their siestas and the French have their August vacations). While most of this is because Americans are loathe to take actual time off work (vacation balances often max out and managers have to force their employees to take some time off lest these expire). But some recent analysis done by a team of economists and sociologists are finding that Americans are working less hours than their ancestors did in the sixties. This analysis is based on conducting what’s known as a time-diary survey in which the respondents have to answer questions on how much time they spend on various activities such as core market work (time at your desk), total market work (adding the commute), core non-market work (housework), obtaining goods and services, and childcare. The results are recounted in an article inThe Boston Globe.
I found the following not so surprising:
A depressing finding is what we do with our alleged extra time: mostly, watch TV. Hobbies are flat while reading and socializing are both down.
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Yesterday, when I rolled into an In-N-Out Burger drive-thru, the line didn’t seem long. There was a guy waiting near the menu board wearing the familiar red and white uniform taking orders. I should have been out of there in five minutes max under normal circumstances. But for some unexplained reason, it took me more than 15 minutes (no exaggeration) to get through.
During this long, impatient wait for a burger with onions (protein style!), I noticed that the minivan in front was covered with stickers touting eco-responsibility and warning against global warming and the extinction of penguins, whales, and baby seals. There was also a faded “Gore/Lieberman 2000″ sticker. I couldn’t help but chuckle at the hypocrisy of its occupants. Fifteen minutes of idling in a minivan that probably has a mileage close to the SUVs that the environmentalists love to bash. If you are so much for saving the environment as clearly the minivan occupants were, why drive a minivan? And why go through a drive-thru on top of that? Can’t you park the car and go inside and order thus saving fifteen minutes of harmful emissions from idling?
(Read more…)
Mike Peters, author of the daily cartoon “Mother Goose and Grimm” had this as his daily cartoon yesterday:
Even Gandhi is not spared these days.
[via SAJAforum]
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