Spend It or Lose It

Quotes of the Day: Seth Klarman

"One day a physicist, a biologist, and an economist were sitting at a café across from an apparently empty building. They watch two people enter and then, later, three leave. The physicist says, "Apparently there was some error with our measurements," while the biologist says, "Obviously, they reproduced while in the building." Then the economist observes, "If another person were to enter the building, it would once again be empty."

~ Seth Klarman

"Leverage is always a double-edged sword, and in 2007 excessive leverage at all levels of the economy had eroded our nation's margin of safety. When things went wrong in 2008, we' had nothing to fall back on. There was no room for error, little cushion to give us time to refocus and rebuild. Today, with massive deficits and even higher government debt, we have less margin for error than we did four years ago. What might we do instead of today's unsuccessful, misguided, and dangerous programs? Jim Grant, in a CNBC interview several months ago, had one suggestion: perhaps we should try capitalism. Let's allow markets to operate freely; let's allow the invisible hand to work its magic; let's once again permit failure."

~ Seth Klarman

What A Deal for US Taxpayers!

Maritha Nelson's $240 in food stamps has run out, leaving her $9 in cash and seven people to feed. The 50-year-old single mother, who entered the U.S. by swimming across the Rio Grande, has government funded housing, medication, and $700 a month in Social Security. She's been on assistance for 20 years, and wants others to know that help is available. Florida is teeming with food stamp recruiters...who have a goal: increase federal aid to Florida by $1 billion a year.

The Beauty of Space Photography

Quote of the Day: Ben Graham

I blamed myself not so much for my failure to protect myself against the disaster I had been predicting, as for having slipped into an extravagant way of life which I hadn't the temperament or capacity to enjoy. I quickly convinced myself that the true key to material happiness lay in a modest standard of living which could be achieved with little difficulty under almost all economic conditions.

~ Ben Graham

A Simple Fix for Getting Amazon Instant Video to Play on Linux Mint

I've been a happy Amazon Prime customer for several years, and an unhappy Windows 8 customer since I mistakenly purchased a license for that product. I've made the decision to cut my losses with Windows 8 and move exclusively to Linux Mint. One snag I hit with this plan was in playing amazon instant video. Instead of the video starting as expected, I get a dialog box stuck on the "Updating Player."

To fix this problem, I installed the hardware abstraction layers packages hal and libhal1 for my distro using the command:

sudo apt-get install libhal1 hal

And now magically, I have Amazon Prime videos streaming on Linux Mint 14.

The Anti-gravity 3-D Printer

Yet Another Doomsday Prediction Headed Toward the Dumpster

Thank you, Lord Monkton (http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/05/20/monckton-challenges-the-ipcc-suggests-fraud-and-gets-a-response/)

Even the BBC has now joined the party:  http://BBC.co.uk/news/science-environment-22567023.