I suggest that evolution makes women attracted to men who are capable of doing violence.
Standing outside the glass-domed headquarters of his Plano, Texas, bank in March, D. Andrew Beal presses a cellphone to his ear. He's discussing a deal to buy mortgage securities. In just a few minutes, the deal's done: His Beal Bank will buy $15 million of face value for $5 million. A few hours earlier he reviewed details on a $500 million loan his bank is making to a company heading into bankruptcy--the biggest he's ever done. A few floors above, workers are bent over computer screens preparing bids for chunks of $600 million in assets dumped by two imploded financial firms. In the last 15 months, Beal has purchased $800 million of loans from failed banks, probably more than anyone else.
Andy Beal, a 56-year-old, poker-playing college dropout, is a one-man toxic-asset eater--without a shred of government assistance.
....
Then came a shocker: Amid one of the most reckless lending sprees in history, regulators focused on the one bank that refused to play along. Beal's moves confused and worried them, and so they began to probe him with questions. "What are you doing?" he recalls them asking. "You're shrinking yet you're raising capital?"
WE RISE in a banking curve of pure velocity
over fallow fields and grids of neighborhoods,
arcing over ponds painted with the slick scum
oozing from the oil pans of countless sunken cars,
from punctured sacks of toxic trash, from fleshless jaws
of unsolved murders, of missing persons filed in muck.
Give it a chance, on the other hand, and they can say "Well, at least we tried" if it fails, or, you never know, it might surprise everyone and, SHOCK HORROR: actually work!
"I believe that computers have taken over the world. I believe that they have in many ways ruined our children. I believe that kids used to love to go out and play," Nicks says in her famously smoky voice.
"I believe that social graces are gone because manners are gone because all people do is sit around and text. I think it's obnoxious."
"We have a rocket launcher in the office today. I love my job."
Humanity will enter into space to make the universe the playground of the last revolt: the revolt that will go against the limitations imposed by nature. Once the walls have been smashed that now separate people from science, the conquest of space will no longer be an economic or military “promotional” gimmick, but the blossoming of human freedoms and fulfillments, attained by a race of gods. We will not enter into space as employees of an astronautic administration or as “volunteers” of a state project, but as masters without slaves reviewing their domains: the entire universe pillaged for the workers councils.
"It wasn't a bow. He grasped his hand with two hands, and he's taller than King Abdullah," said an Obama aide, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
"I think he bent over to shake his hand."
Even a rich society cannot afford nuclear bombs, supercarriers, foreign aid, five million new cars a years, long-range bombers, the highest standard of living in the world, and a million new rifles.
Admittedly, somewhere you have to cut and choose.
ah, PHP. All the charm and elegance of walking through an open sewer into an abbatoir.
If the President actually knew the Austrian term for wheeling-and-dealing, our economy would rebound exponentially. http://tr.im/isJq
Ryssdal: So we just get stressed. When we see all that money on the line, we just get stressed, and our performance goes down.
ARIELY: That's right. And this is not the worst of it. We did one more thing in the beginning of the experiment in India. We tried to get people very stressed, the most stressed we could with this amount of money we had. So for some people we gave them the money upfront, and we said, "Look, this is your money. If you don't perform well, we'll take the money back from you." Now with one subject he was shaking the whole time, he couldn't do anything, he was so stressed. Then we went with another guy, who was not as shaky. But he, when he didn't make the money, he ran away with all our money in the end, we couldn't catch him he was so fast.
After Chesty Puller helped lead his regiement out to Hungnam, a Time magazine reporter had asked him what the great lesson of the battle was. "Never serve under Tenth Corps," Puller had immediately answered.
Your result for Freaky But True Test...
You have scored 80% for Freaky_Radar.
As you can see there are many strange and yet wonderful things in our world. It is what makes life interesting and sometimes puts a smile on your face.
Keep smiling!
Lord Byron said, "For truth is always strange; stranger than fiction."
Take Freaky But True Test at HelloQuizzy
We are not anarchists.
We are not Far-Right or Far-Left. We are the seventy percent in the middle.
We are not Capital “L” libertarians, although we do have sympathies with their platform.
We are neither bitter clingers nor conspiracy nuts.
Now is the time to make it stop.
Ludwig Minelli described suicide as a “marvellous opportunity” that should not be restricted to the terminally ill or people with severe disabilities. Critics said that the plans highlighted the risks of proposals to legalise assisted suicides in Britain for people in the final stages of a terminal illness.
The Dignitas clinic in Zurich claims to have assisted in the deaths of more than 100 Britons. The Zurich University Clinic found that more than a fifth of people who had died at Dignitas did not have a terminal condition.
Mr Minelli said that anyone who has “mental capacity” should be allowed to have an assisted suicide, claiming that it would save money for the NHS.
Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz has a great deconstruction of the Geithner toxic asset plan in the NY Times. If you want to see how the new corporate state works, where the government works with a small group of powerful insiders to the benefit of those insiders and the detriment of everyone else, this is a great example.
Stiglitz walks through how the Geithner plan will operate, and I want to do so as well. I have added a few tables to help illustrate his example a bit better.
The paper mill on the Potomac is furiously spewing up new money. According to the manager of the mill, as indeed according to the Quantity Theory of Money, this should stop prices from falling and the economy from contracting.
In this article I present an argument why this conclusion is not valid. On the contrary, I shall show that new money created on the strength of a flood of new debt, is tantamount to pouring gasoline on the fire, making prices fall and the economy contract even more. The Obama administration has missed its historic opportunity to stop the deflation and depression inherited from the Bush administration because it entrusted the same people with the task of damage-control who had caused the disaster in the first place: the Keynesian and Friedmanite money doctors in the Fed and the Treasury.
For the day's climax, we sealed our gasmasks and lined up to enter a room where they'd demonstrate the masks' efficacy. Inside that room, some fragrant incense was lit, and if you could smell it, it meant your mask was not secure. In a wartime situation, that would mean you were dead. Of course, none of us smelled the incense until it was our turn to take the mask off. Then, smelling the scent, we were assured of how the masks would have saved our lives if that room had been filled with mustard gas instead of incense.
Actively looking for an educator position. I'll work in a classroom, on outreach or the museum floor or grounds. I love to teach and to learn. Willing to relocate and to travel. I can work well with animals of all kinds and people of all ages. My experience is with history and natural history both.
