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4th Grader Explains How to Become Wealthy

House full of finance truisms
That’s from ptMoney.

January 9th, 2010 | Category: Financial | Print This | Leave a comment

Favors from Terrorists

Since terrorists always fly without luggage perhaps airlines should make sure we can take all we want.

That’s from editorial cartoonist Ted Rall

January 9th, 2010 | Category: Bicycling | Print This | Leave a comment

Welcome to 2010

I’m starting the year with bread.

Loaf of bread made for New Year's Day breakfast

How about you?

January 1st, 2010 | Category: Food, Life | Print This | Leave a comment

Airline Terror Odds

This graphic from Jesus Diaz based on analysis by Nate Silver makes me wonder about the TSA. May make you thankful for the TSA.

Odds of being harmed in flight by an act of terror? 1 in 10,408,947

Lottery ticket anyone?

December 30th, 2009 | Category: Life | Print This | Leave a comment

Known By My Critics

Today I’m being called an arrogant prick. That link is to a Slashdot comment thread. In a poll asking In 2009, I’ve donated (or will donate) to charity … a full third of the respondents chose Zilch.

sigh My response on seeing that was to post:

For those of you who donated zilch – go read Peter Singer, perhaps starting with Practical Ethics, and reconsider your life. Or perhaps come up with a counter argument as to why you believe he is wrong.

I’m hoping to reach a few people and not alienate any. Hoping.

December 28th, 2009 | Category: Ethics | Print This | Leave a comment

Apprehension

More than one person has observed I do things backwards in the cycling world. I start a ride program in the fall or winter instead of the late spring. I optimistically “plan” for long rides and pedal them pessimistically.

Today’s ride … is a ride that no one should do without being in shape and thinking about the conditions. I felt pretty apprehensive before I started.

The weather forecast said winds from the east at 13mph, temps in the upper 30s. That means headwinds and cool but not cold conditions.
Checking the temps right before the ride they were closer to mid 30s
After my first return to commuting commute the fatigue was already in the thighs.

Getting dressed I was thinking of a cold, wet ride with a moderate headwind. No problem, I’ve done plenty of these before. Well, with at least 10 pounds less fat and hundreds of recent miles in my history. Kent’s pessimism for planning translated into warmer gloves, a wish that I’d had time to swap out my studded tires for something smoother rolling and a departure half an hour earlier than normal. How did the ride work out?

Temps were a degree above freezing.
Winds from the east at 23 mph gusting to 33. I kept looking to see what was rubbing against a tire. Something had to be making all that drag.
The extra half hour went into a massively slow ride.
Hands stayed warm!

The wind forecast is the same for the rest of the week. I hope it gets to be more accurate. As soon as I warm up and get some calories into my bloodstream I’m going to feel a whole lot better.

December 15th, 2009 | Category: Bicycling | Print This | Leave a comment

Coach Commute

Kent Petersen has Three Coaches that collectively keep him a lean enduring cyclist. Today I’ve hired one of them to help me lose weight and get back in shape. Coach Commute. Kent uses Coach Long-Commute. My route to work is only 11 miles, so I’m signing on with Coach Commute.

Today the Coach instructed “it’s better to have a slo go than a no go.”

December 14th, 2009 | Category: Bicycling | Print This | Comments (2)

Midnight Candles

A cold wind from the future blows into my nighttime bedroom, more often than not during those midnight hours when fear dominates and hope retreats to a netherworld. This wind is a spectre, an oracle of darkness and eventual death, not easily dismissed. Once merely a whisper, its decibels intensify with the advancing years. It will be heard, this reaper – this grim reaper, yet in the nights when it howls the loudest I fight back, silently screaming for it to get out, to leave me alone, to let it all be a bad dream. It never is. Shakespeare’s Macbeth expressed it more subtly: “Out, out, brief candle!” Yet the finer words provide no solace; the final act is always the same.

So Bill Gross begins Midnight Candles. Is this a horror story? Perhaps a bit of fantasy fiction? Neither. Midnight Candles is the November 2009 installment of Investment Outlook from PIMCO, home of the world’s largest bond fund.

If you’ve thought investment writing is stuffy, jargon laden, put you to sleep reading you may wish to read the monthly column from Bill Gross. It’s very readable and highly informative. As the lead paragraph shows, he knows more than the numbers of finance.

October 31st, 2009 | Category: Financial, Life | Print This | Leave a comment