One of the things I don't like about my Blackberry is that it encrypts image files, and the only way I've found to transfer them to my computer is to send them to myself via e-mail. I've tried other methods, like Bluetooth and installing the proprietary Blackberry software on Mr_Aloysius, but none of that works at all. In perusing the photos on ( Read more... )

I have a tendency not to follow in great detail much of the news, but I know enough to know that the news is telling us that a volcano exploded in Iceland (I've seen a picture, for what it's worth), and that there's a great ash cloud which is preventing people from flying into or out of this island. (But at the same time, talk about a government ( Read more... )

Over our ribs and pork dumplings, Josh and I talked about what his government would be like--global and basically socialist, Brazil without the dysfunction (insurgency is a sign of governmental inefficiency). Weak opiates would be produced in large quantities to take the edge off. He'd control it, but naturally he'd have to govern in fairly broad ( Read more... )

I've got new amortisation tables in place, and my debt is very much yesterday's news. Of course, that assumes that there is something else today to replace the story or that, perhaps, there had been another story all along and I've been using the debt to hide more interesting stories, sort of what swine flu has been doing these days. Wouldn't it be ( Read more... )

When I first got Laurie Anderson's 1989 album Strange Angels in 2002, I got a kick out of the fact that the following excerpt from "Babydoll" (a song about Laurie talking to her brain) was potentially still true ( Read more... )

Last Monday it would have been big news for Merrill Lynch to have been acquired by Bank of America if Lehman Brothers hadn't filed for chapter 11 and AIG hadn't been on the brink of doing the same. Each day brought a new fluffy layer of financial armageddon and this Monday has brought us a new sprinkling of intrigue with Goldman Sachs and Morgan ( Read more... )

So, this woman escaped from prison in Michigan in the mid-70s and was found this week in California. She's like fifty now, and when she escaped from prison she was serving 10 to 20 years for selling heroin in Saginaw. When they found her, she was living in a big house in a swank suburb of San Diego with a husband and three kids ( Read more... )

OK, I love taxes more than the next guy. The fact that I have to drop six digits in the name of HM or Uncle Sam doesn't do me a heck of a lot of grief. I believe in a system of taxation, and as a general matter I think taxes should be higher, for basically everybody. But to send Blade to PRISON for THREE YEARS for MISDEMEANOR tax charges is ( Read more... )

Things are going fine, but I am probably in a standard winter funk. It's perhaps not as pronounced as it would be if I lived in a place that was gray and cold ( Read more... )

See the subject--I'm not even using SUBJECTS any more! The law has made me into such a shell of my former self.

I'm learning all about commercial paper tonight. It's new to me, and I definitely needed a model to help me through the examples:


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