Indecision, failing thought,
Samuel Morse: "What hath God wrought?"
Life's a question left unasked,
the answer sought within your past.
To find query should be our goal!
But the pursuit of most just goes to show
that people search for answers to
questions that they never knew.
Monday, April 30, 2012
Sunday, April 29, 2012
Marco Rubio and Goldman Sachs
Recently, Marco Rubio was fined $8,000 for $210,000 of illegal campaign contributions.
Goldman Sachs was fined $22M for illegal 'huddles,' which are from what I can tell, collusion between stock analysts and traders. According to the WSJ, that's about 7 hours of profits for them. Neither is this the first time I've seen them fined fractions of a permil for what they earned on their activities.
From what I can tell, the profits that GS made on their illegal collusion could have netted them billions. I have no solid figures, but with the volume of trades they process, $22M is obviously a pittance.
Rubio's fine of $8K on $210K... I don't know how much his lawyers charge him, but that $8K was a settlement, not a verdict. Seems like everyone's time was worth more than the fine, which is why anyone with money would settle a lawsuit.
This is insane. What's the incentive for any monied entity to act legally?
Goldman Sachs was fined $22M for illegal 'huddles,' which are from what I can tell, collusion between stock analysts and traders. According to the WSJ, that's about 7 hours of profits for them. Neither is this the first time I've seen them fined fractions of a permil for what they earned on their activities.
From what I can tell, the profits that GS made on their illegal collusion could have netted them billions. I have no solid figures, but with the volume of trades they process, $22M is obviously a pittance.
Rubio's fine of $8K on $210K... I don't know how much his lawyers charge him, but that $8K was a settlement, not a verdict. Seems like everyone's time was worth more than the fine, which is why anyone with money would settle a lawsuit.
This is insane. What's the incentive for any monied entity to act legally?
Saturday, April 28, 2012
Cereal
Wake up in the morning, stumble out of bed, maybe don a robe, maybe just head to the bathroom to shower or splash some water on your face.
You go to the kitchen, put on the coffee, you find a bowl, you then fill it with cake and cover the cake in milk.
That's right, cake, not cereal. That is, you may as well have cake.
On a calorie-per-gram basis, there's absolutely no difference between your standard breakfast cereal and a box of prepared cake mix. I'm not even talking about the ones that are demonstrably analogs of desserts, but also the supposed 'healthy' cereals.
Kellogg's Rice Krispies Treats Cereal or generic bran flakes, either way you may as well just bake some cupcakes and serve those to your children, or just give them $5 and point them toward the nearest Dunkin' Donuts.
The calories present themselves to one's system in the same way as well. Low-fiber, high-refined-carbohydrate foods give you a short burst of energy, but that wears off well before lunchtime, leaving you dragging.
So, what should I have for breakfast?
A balance of protein and carbs attacks the later-in-the-day sluggishness from a different front, as it takes more time for the body to break down protein into something useful, meaning that eggs or lean ham combined with perhaps whole wheat bread or even rice would help with the midday sluggishness and give you a good jumpstart for when the sugar in the coffee wears off. Problem with this though is hydration - a meal like that gives no extra benefit when it comes to the necessity of keeping hydrated.
Of course, there is another option: Salad.
Breakfast Salads are an idea whose time has long since come. Something without dressing, a mix of greens and fruit would also attack the body's energy deficits throughout the day. The sweetness of fruit represent sugars, carbohydrates easily used by the body. Fruits and vegetables are special in that they combine carbohydrates with fiber.
The fiber is largely undigestible in the human body, and that's what makes it special! Fiber can slow the absorption of both sugars and water, acting as sort of a time-release vessel in the body. Because of that, the other carbohydrates and starches also take longer to digest, meaning that a morning meal of fruits and vegetables - a breakfast salad - will keep you hydrated and well-fed well into lunchtime.
If you're not eating some kind of plant in the morning, you may as well drink cake batter. The choice is yours, I'm not judging!
You go to the kitchen, put on the coffee, you find a bowl, you then fill it with cake and cover the cake in milk.
That's right, cake, not cereal. That is, you may as well have cake.
On a calorie-per-gram basis, there's absolutely no difference between your standard breakfast cereal and a box of prepared cake mix. I'm not even talking about the ones that are demonstrably analogs of desserts, but also the supposed 'healthy' cereals.
Kellogg's Rice Krispies Treats Cereal or generic bran flakes, either way you may as well just bake some cupcakes and serve those to your children, or just give them $5 and point them toward the nearest Dunkin' Donuts.
The calories present themselves to one's system in the same way as well. Low-fiber, high-refined-carbohydrate foods give you a short burst of energy, but that wears off well before lunchtime, leaving you dragging.
So, what should I have for breakfast?
A balance of protein and carbs attacks the later-in-the-day sluggishness from a different front, as it takes more time for the body to break down protein into something useful, meaning that eggs or lean ham combined with perhaps whole wheat bread or even rice would help with the midday sluggishness and give you a good jumpstart for when the sugar in the coffee wears off. Problem with this though is hydration - a meal like that gives no extra benefit when it comes to the necessity of keeping hydrated.
Of course, there is another option: Salad.
Breakfast Salads are an idea whose time has long since come. Something without dressing, a mix of greens and fruit would also attack the body's energy deficits throughout the day. The sweetness of fruit represent sugars, carbohydrates easily used by the body. Fruits and vegetables are special in that they combine carbohydrates with fiber.
The fiber is largely undigestible in the human body, and that's what makes it special! Fiber can slow the absorption of both sugars and water, acting as sort of a time-release vessel in the body. Because of that, the other carbohydrates and starches also take longer to digest, meaning that a morning meal of fruits and vegetables - a breakfast salad - will keep you hydrated and well-fed well into lunchtime.
If you're not eating some kind of plant in the morning, you may as well drink cake batter. The choice is yours, I'm not judging!
Friday, April 27, 2012
Weather Weirding
It's 42 degrees or so and windy in Brooklyn. Colder in the shade outside the fire escape window of the apartment I share with my wife and in-laws.
Global warming is real. Is it man made? Man certainly didn't do anything to slow it, that's for sure, but the Earth is always in a constant state of flux, on the geologic scale. Regardless of man's involvement, it IS happening.
Global warming doesn't mean that the whole planet gets hot in the winter; as far as my lay understanding goes, the sea and the average global atmospheric temperatures have risen by as much as 2 degrees over the past hundred years. This is, in effect, a MASSIVE amount of free energy in the atmosphere. Add energy to a system, any physics 101 student will tell you, and you change the entire problem. All that added energy's gotta be expressed somehow.
We saw some extra energy expressed very recently with the massive number of tornadoes ripping through the midwest. I'm guessing at a catastrophic hurricane season this year, but oddly enough, not in the Atlantic.
Storms will be more severe from now on. More rain will be transported to more odd places than before. This will result in mudslides from unaccustomed geology and flashfloods in other places.
The world is becoming much more interesting...
Once again up all night, trudging through Netflix and trying to bludgeon all thought out of my skull through internet-based video games. Star Trek Online now, with bouts of Tetris Attack and Fruit Ninja Frenzy. Hey, at least I kicked my crippling World of Warcraft addiction.
If you check my other blogs, I haven't posted to them in 6 years.
6 years.
For most people, that's a long time. For me, somehow, 6 years vanished in the blink of an eye.
6 years ago, dubya was still in office.
6 years ago, Andy Zaltzman and John Oliver were doing stand up gigs, and their phone conversations had not yet been recorded and presented in podcast format. That is to say, The Bugle did not yet exist.
In 2006, Paul, my favorite Beatle, turned 64, just like his song. My wife and I are holding a consecutive days streak. Linda, we miss you...
2006 was the International Year of Aspergers. As-per-ger-s is how I spell this disease with which I am afflicted.
Other handy mnemonics:
To determine the correct usage of 'who' versus 'whom,' try to convert the statement into an answer: "To whom it may concern..." becomes "It may concern hiM," with emphasis on the 'm' to match hiM with whoM, as opposed to "Who broke the lamp?" is "He broke the lamp." He is to Who as Him is to Whom.
Wednesday - Wed-nes-day. Wed nintendo entertainment system day.
February - Feb-ru-ary - Feb Roooo Airy.
She is better thAn him. He will arive thEn.
They're their there - They're parking their cars over there.
So what am I doing here? A valid question. This blog is for me. It's my current (sleep deprived, granted, but still a step in the right direction) intention to write something here every single day.
It may be that the most interesting thing about me is that I know all about the meaning of life (more on that in future posts).
See, I consider myself a writer of sorts. I'm sitting on a number of book ideas, I've got a scifi novel waiting for publishing, and that whole 'meaning of life' thing is something I really want to flesh out.
Jumping headfirst into anything, especially after such a prolonged idle period, can destroy. What I'm saying is that, I'm a runner, and this is my stretching routine.
If you're reading this, feel free to browse. Hey, I might even stick with it.
jj
Global warming is real. Is it man made? Man certainly didn't do anything to slow it, that's for sure, but the Earth is always in a constant state of flux, on the geologic scale. Regardless of man's involvement, it IS happening.
Global warming doesn't mean that the whole planet gets hot in the winter; as far as my lay understanding goes, the sea and the average global atmospheric temperatures have risen by as much as 2 degrees over the past hundred years. This is, in effect, a MASSIVE amount of free energy in the atmosphere. Add energy to a system, any physics 101 student will tell you, and you change the entire problem. All that added energy's gotta be expressed somehow.
We saw some extra energy expressed very recently with the massive number of tornadoes ripping through the midwest. I'm guessing at a catastrophic hurricane season this year, but oddly enough, not in the Atlantic.
Storms will be more severe from now on. More rain will be transported to more odd places than before. This will result in mudslides from unaccustomed geology and flashfloods in other places.
The world is becoming much more interesting...
Once again up all night, trudging through Netflix and trying to bludgeon all thought out of my skull through internet-based video games. Star Trek Online now, with bouts of Tetris Attack and Fruit Ninja Frenzy. Hey, at least I kicked my crippling World of Warcraft addiction.
If you check my other blogs, I haven't posted to them in 6 years.
6 years.
For most people, that's a long time. For me, somehow, 6 years vanished in the blink of an eye.
6 years ago, dubya was still in office.
6 years ago, Andy Zaltzman and John Oliver were doing stand up gigs, and their phone conversations had not yet been recorded and presented in podcast format. That is to say, The Bugle did not yet exist.
In 2006, Paul, my favorite Beatle, turned 64, just like his song. My wife and I are holding a consecutive days streak. Linda, we miss you...
2006 was the International Year of Aspergers. As-per-ger-s is how I spell this disease with which I am afflicted.
Other handy mnemonics:
To determine the correct usage of 'who' versus 'whom,' try to convert the statement into an answer: "To whom it may concern..." becomes "It may concern hiM," with emphasis on the 'm' to match hiM with whoM, as opposed to "Who broke the lamp?" is "He broke the lamp." He is to Who as Him is to Whom.
Wednesday - Wed-nes-day. Wed nintendo entertainment system day.
February - Feb-ru-ary - Feb Roooo Airy.
She is better thAn him. He will arive thEn.
They're their there - They're parking their cars over there.
So what am I doing here? A valid question. This blog is for me. It's my current (sleep deprived, granted, but still a step in the right direction) intention to write something here every single day.
It may be that the most interesting thing about me is that I know all about the meaning of life (more on that in future posts).
See, I consider myself a writer of sorts. I'm sitting on a number of book ideas, I've got a scifi novel waiting for publishing, and that whole 'meaning of life' thing is something I really want to flesh out.
Jumping headfirst into anything, especially after such a prolonged idle period, can destroy. What I'm saying is that, I'm a runner, and this is my stretching routine.
If you're reading this, feel free to browse. Hey, I might even stick with it.
jj
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