Timmy

Profile here.

Facebook Brain Drain

College students who use Facebook spend less time studying and have lower grade point averages than students who have not signed up for the social networking website, according to a pilot study at one university.

More here.

From the 1st Earth Day (1970)

“By 1985...air pollution will have reduced the amount of sunlight
reaching the earth by one half”

The 1%'s Rage

here.

Do's and Dont's of Facebook

here.

25 Things I didn't want to know about you.

Links

1. Rage of the rich
2. Liar's Poker...no pun...
3. Life after business school
   

Reflexive Rebound

the famed reflexive rebound that occurs between the down-legs of the secular bear market, as so eloquently referenced in Rule #8 of Bob Farrell’s Market Rules to Remember (it goes like this – “Bear markets have three phases: sharp down, reflexive rebound, and a long fundamental drawn-out decline”). By “reflexive rebound” what is meant is a real bear market rally that can last between four to eight months and have the capacity to rebound between 25% and 50%, as opposed to the countless flashy but not particularly tradable rallies that typically last four to eight weeks and post a 10% to 20% bounce.

full post here.

The NBA's LVP

Who is the NBA's least-valuable-player?

Negative Interest Rates

WITH unemployment rising and the financial system in shambles, it’s hard not to feel negative about the economy right now. The answer to our problems, however, could well be more negativity. But I’m not talking about attitude. I‘m talking about numbers.

NY Times article here.

The Most Remote Place on Earth

Link here.

Weekend Links

1. Giant Spider Robot...Yes the Japanese did it again.
2. Parking Tickets
3. Beer Goggles are a myth?
4. Kids smoking Smarties?
5. The Ethanol Bubble
6. Top 10 Disaster Myths
7. Top 10 ways to save the world from financial cataclysms
8. Examining Talent
9. 9 Words derived from science fiction

Russia...Again

A Russian man survived after downing three bottles of vodka and leaping from a fifth floor balcony - twice.

Finally...

For the comfort and well-being of all customers aboard United flights, we have aligned with other major airlines' seating policies relating to passengers who:

• are unable to fit into a single seat in the ticketed cabin;
• are unable to properly buckle the seatbelt using a single seatbelt extender; and/or
• are unable to put the seat's armrests down when seated.

Full details.

Rap Lyrics Translated

Notorious B.I.G. here.

Healthcare

Surgeons in Russia thought they were going to remove a cancerous tumor from a 28-year-old patient – but instead they found a 5-centimeter tree growing inside his lung.

How the Government Spends Your Money

Enlarge Here

From the Depths of the Internet

1. Over 1,500 farmers in an Indian state committed suicide after being driven to debt by crop failure
2. Poop Powered Busses in Hershey (No Pun)

Dubai is NOT Where it is At.

"Before I came here, I didn't know anything about Dubai law. I assumed if all these big companies come here, it must be pretty like Canada's or any other liberal democracy's," she says. Nobody told her there is no concept of bankruptcy. If you get into debt and you can't pay, you go to prison."

Full story here.

"On the night of December 31, 2008 alone more than 80 vehicles were found at the airport. "Sixty cars were seized on the first day of this year," director general of Airport Security, Mohammed Bin Thani, told DNA over the phone. On the same day, deputy director of traffic, colonel Saif Mohair Al Mazroui, said they seized 22 cars abandoned at a prohibited area in the airport."

Full story here.

Lehman Does it Again

It's sort of odd that Lehman is "sitting on 500,000 pounds" of yellowcake uranium. Not because it is odd for firms not directly in the business to own an interest in the element. This is quite common actually as uranium futures are actually traded now. What is unusual is that Lehman would seem to have taken physical delivery- a scenario which would imply licensing and a host of regulatory headaches that seem silly when you can trade cash settled futures contracts if you really want to play the metal. In any case, Lehman acquired the stuff "under a matured commodities contract." (Read: The contract expired and they were forced to accept physical delivery). Now they are stuck with a pile of the stuff in Canada- where no one wants it, and in a down market.

Doh.

Story here.

Tax Freedom Day

As of April 13th, the average American has earned enough (including medicare, fica, Social Security, and taxes) to cover their 2009 tax burden. Theoretically, from April 14th and on is when you actually start earning money.

Link.

Facts About Marriage

Take two children, one growing up with married parents in the United States, and one growing up with unmarried parents in Sweden; which child has the higher likelihood of seeing his parents’ relationship break up? Answer: the American kid, because children living with married parents in the United States have a higher probability of experiencing a breakup than do children living with unmarried parents in Sweden. That’s how high our breakup rates are.

Full interview with Book Author here.

Book by Andrew Cherin here.

Spring

Did you know that in 1965 the U.S. Department of Agriculture planted a particular variety of lilac in more than 70 locations around the U.S. Northeast, to detect the onset of spring — in turn to be used to determine the appropriate timing of corn planting and the like? The records the U.S.D.A. have kept show that those same lilacs are blooming as much as two weeks earlier than they did in 1965. April has, in a very real sense, become May.

Book here.

Lobbying

In a remarkable illustration of the power of lobbying in Washington, a study released last week found that a single tax break in 2004 earned companies $220 for every dollar they spent on the issue -- a 22,000 percent rate of return on their investment.

The study by researchers at the University of Kansas underscores the central reason that lobbying has become a $3 billion-a-year industry in Washington: It pays. The $787 billion stimulus act and major spending proposals have ratcheted up the lobbying frenzy further this year, even as President Obama and public-interest groups press for sharper restrictions on the practice.

From Washington Post.

Trivia Question

What and when was the deepest economic collapse in any non-communist, non-wartime, fully industrialized country since the 1930s?

Answer here.

Crime and Illegal Aliens

Reason #1 You Don't Mess With 'Murica

Here.

Top 10 Movies This Summer

Here.

Zappos

Zappos has created a real time map showing what shoe is being bought and where.

Last 6 Books

1. Catcher in the Rye
2. Great Gatsby
3. House of Cards
4. American Psycho
5. The Great Contraction, 1929-1933: Chapter Seven of Monetary History of the United States, 1867-1960
6. The Brothers Karamazov
   

A Perishable History

Last week’s post talked about early-20th-century “egg gamblers” who bought eggs cheap in spring in order to sell dear in winter. Their kind of speculation proved not just controversial but also pretty risky, and ultimately doomed. Why?

Egg gamblers won only if they sold off their cold-storage stocks before fresh ones arrived in spring. They faced two major unknowns: housewives who sometimes protested egg “hoarding” with organized boycotts, and hens who might start laying earlier than expected. Because hens are acutely sensitive to shifts in daylight and temperature, all it took was a February thaw to set them off, sending egg prices plummeting.

Poultry farmers, meanwhile, just wanted to know how to get their own flocks to lay more eggs when fresh ones were scarcest and priciest. They knew that some chicken breeds laid a few more winter eggs than others, and that warm housing and a rich diet generally helped. But the most dramatic results came with the flick of a switch — literally. Read more…

The accompanying book.

Oh Those Rapscallions

U Penn, really?

Troubles for the Class of '09

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Where the Buck Stops

The Most Neurotic States

There is much more here on the geographic distribution of other major personality traits. The high conscientious people seem to cluster in the Plains. Openness is strong in the Pacific West, New England, Texas, and Florida. The upper Midwest dominates for extroversion.

Random Links

1. New Yorkers are drinking and urinating in public more...
2. Highest Paid Executives
   

Could Be the Best Board Game Ever

Read more here.

What North Korea Really Looks Like

Two Austrians recently entered the country by train, through a border crossing that has been closed to tourists since 1994, and took these pictures.

Really France?

Almost half of French people believe it is acceptable for workers facing layoffs to lock up their bosses, according to an opinion poll published on Tuesday.

Internet Perusing

That’s according to new research out of the University of Melbourne, which found that Workplace Internet Leisure Browsing (WILB) improves productivity by giving internet-centric workers a chance to refocus their minds between tasks. The increase is startling; workers who spend as much as 20 percent of their office time leisure browsing actually get more work done than workers who don’t.

Prehistoric Debate

Notice the Arrow, bottom right.

1 Trillion Dollars

Read more here.

Sham Pow

Vince Shlomi was arrested in Miami Beach last month after cops say he allegedly hired a hooker, whom he took back to his hotel. According to the arrest affidavit, obtained by The Smoking Gun, Shlomi began kissing the hooker when she allegedly "bit his tongue and would not let go."

Read more here.

Jay Leno

According to the government, GM's Rick Wagoner was forced to resign because of poor performance. That’s embarrassing. You run an organization that loses billions of dollars and then get fired by a guy who heads up an organization that loses trillions of dollars.