Noblesse Oblige

Arizona Bridge

A bridge, probably somewhere between Lake Havasu and Laughlin.

Posted in Art, Blogging | Tagged arizona, bridge, havavsu, jpg, lake, laughlin, photo, picture | Comments Off

Simplex, Complex, Multiplex

Few things are simplex, most are complex – and when it comes to the current financial meltdown, the failures go beyond complex to multiplex. No depression coming, but a serious recession – here’s a lecture that enumerates the multiple sources of the multiplex stall we are in.

H/T LittleOldLady at Little Green Footballs

* My wife has a quibble with the statement on underwriting standards – she says in the bigger institutions the underwriting standards were there, but were too often over-ridden by Regional Managers to hit volumes. If regulators don’t pay attention to who can over ride an Underwriter’s “NO way in Hell!” as well as the securities risk managers, then we will just be back here in a few decades.

Posted in Blogging | Tagged bond, crisis, fannie, financial, freddy, housing, junk bonds, market, masters, meltdown, of, regulators, risk, riskier, securities, systems, the, universe | Comments Off

Dr. Horrible’s Sing Along Blog

Posted on February 1, 2009 by Thanos

Dr. Horrible’s Sing Along Blog

Joss Whedon is one of the best if you like cutting comedy in a SF/Fantasy vein that’s current. He’s most famous for the Television series, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and the recent movie Serenity. His latest offering is Dr. Horrible, and the DVD is now out.

It’s a hilarious musical send up of comic book villians and heros starring the fellow who used to play Dougie Hauser, as well as the lead from Serenity. It’s a brilliant bit of cutting edge comedy insanely bordering on the verge of camp and kitsch without falling into a pit. I originally subbed to the whole series on my Ipod, but now want to see it large screen.

Posted in Art | Tagged blog, comic, dr. horrible, dvd, hero, joss, sing-along, villian, whedon | Comments Off

Here’s the Change You’ve Been Waiting for…

Posted on January 31, 2009 by Thanos

aiiiiiiiiieeeeeeeeeeeee

H/T Charles at Little Green Footballs

Posted in Blogging | 3 Comments

Saturday Thoughts

Posted on January 31, 2009 by Thanos

The Winter of our Discontent

In the blogosphere news there’s been a meltdown at Pajamas Media in the face of sinking revenue, more about some of the fallout over at Protein Wisdom.

I don’t depend on ad revenue, and the “non pro” bloggers are not going to be affected by the implosion of ad revenues seen at Huffpo and PJM. This is my journal, diary, daybook…. it’s neither a news source nor a snark factory, so I’m rarely topical but sometimes ahead of the crowd – you won’t find me pumping and pimping posts for hits. I try to influence without trying to be controlling or directive – there’s some general directions out there that we should head in, and we should have fun while doing so.

The Republican party implosion has also been interesting to watch. We will wade out of swamp, wander out of the desert, and find our way sometime over the next year, but I will say that the acrimony and back biting is getting old. Trying to toss out one faction or another is a ridiculous proposition on it’s face, on the other hand trying to exert control over 100 percent of the platform or message by any one faction is a ridiculous proposition as well.

I recommend that folks take a couple weeks off, go have some fun, get some fresh perspective. I keep saying we are in a bold, bright new millenium and things are going to start changing faster than we can comprehend, but that message hasn’t sunk in yet. The future is happening faster than you think, so either ride the wave or head to shore and hunker down.

Meanwhile I’ve been fiddling with a contact form since the old method sent email to some dummy accounts that I never quite got around to reading very often. Now it comes blind direct to me, so there’s a contact form at the bottom of my About page that seems to work.