Monday, September 08, 2014

Monday's Child

1.  Pole-ing firm.

2.  Predictions from people who don't know much about a phenomenon that no one understands.  My guess is that this is no better than The Farmers' Almanac.  Except for the sea-level rise predictions.  Those are at least objective (except the amount of the rise).

3.  Investors take long position in nuclear.

4.  For the health-conscious tail-gater.  Wait, Jell-O?  Never mind.  For the UNconscious tail-gater.   Jell-O shots!  Whooooooooooooo!

5.  All about speed humps and shaving.  But it's about traffic, not dating.
moremoremoremore....




6.  I bet all 43 of them were unmatched.  So THAT is where the socks go...

7.  This is a terrifying woman.  I actually think her desire to cover her face should be subsidized.  I'd contribute.

8.  In Soviet Russia, Sponge Bob watches YOU!

9.  Folks voted FOR police militarization before they voted against it.  And in fact, they STILL haven't voted against it.

10.  If you have to pay more money than the amount you will make, you are not actually making money.  It's an accounting identity.

11.  An ex-UberX driver, on why he's "ex."

12.  The unicorn state and "Net Neutrality."

13.  The Munger Test, in script form.

14.  These links are often odd.  But this may be the singlest oddest thing I have seen on the internet.

15.  Doctors can fix that.

16.  Art of Manliness:  1948 Back to College Guide.

17.  Walking on water....

18.  Surely this picture was doctored, or the angle is strange, or something.  Cause Neel looks like a Conehead.

19.  That ain't workin'.  That's the way you do it.

20.  This is fantastic, in every sense of that word.  But the best part is that this guy is trying to make profits by selling books.  Wheeeee!

21.  Who says econ is not a predictive science?  John Cochrane successfully predicts the existence of copatient.com....

22.  Oh...we thought you said JACOB Hacker wanted to look at it.  Our bad... 

23.  Football is a game.  A CON game.

24. To Protect and To Serve.  Actually just To Protect.  Really, just forget it and obey my commands.

25.  A prayer, a Thayer, and a player

Headlines:

Radioactive Wild Boar Roaming the Forests of Germany.  There's not much more to the story.

3 comments:

Tom said...

Predictions...

So, sea level will rise? Since sea level has been rising for the past 20,000 years, will this surprise anyone?

Yes, yes it will.

The chart has a panel on future change in crop yeild. Are we assuming that nobody will invent anything or discover anything in the next 70 years?

Yes, yes we are!

Mike said...

Re: Uber

These internet guys look at fragmented marketplaces and say to themselves, "I can cut out layers of overhead and bypass costly regulation with a little software. Just look at all the Benjamins laying (lying?) on the ground for me to pick up! Let's raise VC and get after it!"

I don't think they ever look at wages in the markets they want to conquer. I'm sure there is some Taxi King in places like NYC making money, but do they really think the run of the mill driver is raking it in?

I saw the same thing in the remodeling business. Lead generation services would approach me with all sorts of wild ass promises about the business they would generate for me. The calls were constant. But all of the models missed out on the personal aspect of the business: the worker and the customer having the opportunity to look each other in the eye as they contemplated a business arrangement. Uber is going to have the same types of problems as stories such as this make it to the mainstream. And the stories will too.

It will probably start with SWPL's complaining about the smell of the cars...

Oh, and the first thing these companies require from the small business: list them as additional insured and also indemnify them against any claims.

Hmm... I bet Uber is not requiring the additional insured thing. Just ask your typical Allstate agent to list someone as an additional insured on your auto policy that is not a member of your immediate family. He's not going to like that. It will move you to an entirely different class of insurance.

It's going to take just one bad accident to blow the whole thing up.

Unknown said...

The Munger Test, as a Perl script:

#!/usr/bin/env perl

use strict;
use warnings;
use utf8;

my $source = shift( @ARGV ) or die;

open my $fh, '<', $source or die;

my $unicorn = qr/(the\s+)?state|(((federal|state)\s+)?gov('t|ernment))/is;
my $reality = "Politicians I actually know, running in electoral systems with voters and interest groups that actually exist";

while( <$fh> ) {
s/$unicorn/$reality/g;
print;
}