I've tried reading White's twaddle a few times. Never could get through an entire book without completely losing interest or flinging it across the room. Now I have zero interest in his latest "me me me!" tome.

Oh, and the main reason he can "get a man" still is, he's wealthy. Kudos, you!

...is a "mind map" and why do I need one? I already know my way around the noggin.

Canning was for when we didn't have freezers and you needed safely-preserved food through the winter. Obsolete now, and the people who've jumped into it under the guise of saving money are bad at math. Probably a fun hobby esp. if you have a prolific garden, but don't kid yourself that it's economical.

Oh god, not again.

You might have a better case if you, despite all the reading, could spell "stimulus."

The ARRA is too recent to discount is as a failure. But I don't see how a second cash enema is going to do much. I'm more angry at the Fed, Treasury, and the outgoing administration's insistence (remember?) that everything was going to crash and burn within hours if Hank Paulson didn't get almost a trillion dollars to hand out to his Goldman &c. buddies on Wall St. plus sink 350 billion into AIG to prop up their crimes.

Too big to fail? Try it, Hopey. And yeah, I'm pissed that the Obama response is no different than the Bush one: just keep throwing money at it, esp. to those who need it the least.

And while I was just hired after being laid off since mid-February, it resulted from the only interview I managed to score after sending out hundreds of resumes and applying for as many specific jobs. This was a fluke. Nobody I know who was let go has found a new job. If there is a recovery on paper (and in the accounts of giant industrial investors) it's quite likely to be another jobless one a la post-2001.

Yes, quelle pastoral, but what's missing is Kessler's actual source of income. He alludes in the end that he's not living on whatever income his goats provide.

Since everyone's so preoccupied with the iPhone: selling a SIM-ready unlocked iPhone means it can be used pretty much world-wide. In the US, this gives you the option to use it on T-Mobile (as I do now) where the rates are much lower than AT&T. The AT&T plan equivalent to the one that I pay T-Mobile $70/mo is over $150. The AT&T signal here is also much weaker than T-Mo's -- I know this because a number of former colleagues at my old job in the office park across the street could not use their (AT&T) iPhones in the office, where mine had at least 3 bars.

Apple will never make a CDMA version. Verizon is too grabby and they couldn't sell it anywhere else except in parts of Asia where there is already GSM coverage. Also, Verizon will be transitioning to the next-generation of GSM service aka LTE in the US at some point.

http://consumerist.com/328914/verizon-to-go-gsm

I guess it's easy for the author to be optimistic because, hi, you still have a job.

The pace of layoffs may have slowed, but please get through your head that there are NO JOBS OUT THERE that pay more than what I'm getting on unemployment. I have no incentive to take a job that pays less or even the same.

A similar incident as in the Qantas A330 occurred in a 777, and they will occur again in any aircraft type that uses the same system.

And yay! Didn't take long for the TWA800 kooks and composite-rudder hysterics to stir. I suppose the latter will never fly on a 787 then.

There was some bizarre movement in the /ES futures at close on Friday. Either it was a forced liquidation/margin call or someone was willing to lose a few million trying to goose the cash SPX for whatever reason.

Slow news day, again.

The mortgage-interest tax credit is a fucking cruel joke foisted on people who are bad at math or who at least believe everything they're told. You cannot take the credit if it is less than your standard deduction that everyone who files already gets and you can only take as much as your tax rate e.g. if you are in the 28% bracket, you take 28% of the interest paid that year as your vaunted tax break. Oh, and obvs, this amount goes down every year.

Taking out a mortgage for the tax break is idiotic.