The Distant Future. The Distant Future.

According to this, we are only 6 years away from the chronological setting of RoboCop:



Amazingly, Detroit is ahead of schedule on the dystopian future front:

Skynet Daycare II: Road Trip

So given my post from a few weeks ago, and my wife's love of strollers, how can I NOT buy one of these?

The Bomo Baby Carriage is essentially a Roomba with a seat for a baby on its back. There's no way this'll ever go wrong!

It'll follow you around with the kid in tow, avoiding obstacles as it goes. It can also be set to rock the baby to sleep. But the real brilliance is in manual mode, which lets the kid control his or her own destiny by driving using the pedals and steering wheel. It claims to still avoid obstacles in this mode, but I don't know if it senses the top of the stairs as an obstacle.

If there was actually a Roomba in the bottom that would be even sweeter. Although it seems like we're getting close to this pretty fast:

(L-R): Future Baby Chair, Future Roomba, Future Baby Chair

Very Cool

Parse That Headline V

A $20 Billion Give-In? GM And Unions Finally Reach A Retiree Healthcare Deal (GM)

or

Union-Owned GM Agrees To Write Themsleves Some Post-Dated Cheques From Their Account At Imaginary Bank Of Pretendland

Economics in the Weekly Torah Portion

I actually thought about this just-posted bit of Freakonomics when I was preparing for my leining of the last 7th portion of this past week's Torah reading.

One of the better-known biblical passages, Leviticus 27:1-7, lists the value of pledges of silver to the temple based on the value of a person: 50 shekels for a man between the ages of 20 and 60, 30 shekels for a woman of the same age, 15 shekels for a man over 60, and 10 shekels for a woman over 60. Hourly wage rates of workers in the U.S. in 2008 differed greatly from the ratios implied by Leviticus. The average female worker between 20 and 60 years old earns, per hour, nearly 80 percent of a male worker the same age, not 60 percent; and the average older male worker earns nearly as much per hour as the average male worker between 20 and 60.

Most older men and women don’t participate in the labor force, and fewer 20- to 60-year-old women work than men that age. Take all U.S. citizens in each age/sex group, whether or not they work, and assume that men aged 20 to 60 earned 50 shekels per time period in 2008. Then women aged 20 to 60 earned 34 shekels, men 61 plus earned 14 shekels, and women 61 plus earned 7 shekels. Once we ignore differences in labor-force participation, the earnings ratios are not that far from what was expected 3,000 years ago.

I'll bet if you adjust for lifespans (say 60->85) and number of children (forced time out of the workforce) these ratios would be still pretty accurate. It's interesting that these values are clearly not an attempt to NPV future earnings since a 20 year old is treated the same as a 59 year old.

Parse That Headline IV

Authorities probe insider trading at SEC: source

Ouch! That one doesn't even need to be re-parsed. If I were at the SEC, I'd be covering my shorts and going long calls to my lawyer.

Skynet Daycare

I recently purchased a Woot-Off Roomba 530 and it actually does an admirable job of light vacuuming/sweeping.

Unfortunately my 2-year old daughter is terrified by the thing (she's always been sensitive to the sounds of electric shavers, hairdryers and the like) so we are pretty much constrained to using it overnight. She is so scared of it that the mere mention of the word 'roomba' or 'robot' in connection to a mess will cause her to burst into tears and ask for a cuddle.

I've only occasionally harnessed this fear as a motivating factor for her to clean up/behave/stay out of where she's not supposed to be.

As far as dystopian futures go it's not quite the Terminator or the Matrix, but I like to think I'm doing my little part to make my own little Futurama. I wish I still had my Mobile Armatron so I could drive it into her room at night and steal her fuzzy pink blankie while cackling maniacally.

Parse That Headline III

Alberta's Oilsands Royalties Fall 97%

Or

Ed Stalmach: "Crap, Crap, Crappity-Crap-Crap!"

Parse That Headline II

Courtesy of Bloomberg's crack team of writers and the rocket scientists at the IMF: Middle East Growth to Fall by 50% This Year, IMF Says

or

Oil Now Cheap As Borscht, Middle East Can't Produce Much Else (Except Terrorism and Failed States)

It's a good thing Israel isn't considered part of the Middle East. Not that Western Europe is looking to fare much better.

New Feature: Parse that Headline

Pound Down Sharply As BOE Expands Quant Easing

or

British Pound Worthless Because The Government Is Willing To Give You Free Cash For That Crap Sitting In The Giveaway Pile In Your Garage

Gamma Sector, Here We Come!

Looks like scientists believe we're closer to getting our warp on:

Some physicists say the faster-than-light travel technology may one day enable humans to jet between stars for weekend getaways. Clearly it won't be an easy task. The science is complex, but not strictly impossible, according to some researchers studying how to make it happen.

...

One reason this idea seems credible is that scientists think it may already have happened. Some models suggest that space-time expanded at a rate faster than light speed during a period of rapid inflation shortly after the Big Bang.

Sorry Mitt, it looks like Obama, Bernanke, Geitner and Co. are just doing their best to herald a new golden age of deep space exploration.

Yahrtzeit

Yesteday was the unveiling of my grandfather's tombstone and this Friday is the first Yahrtzeit since his passing last year. The following is the eulogy I gave at his funeral:

As an adult, I came to understand my grandfather’s many admirable qualities, but as a small child I would have simply told you that my Apu was fun. We never lived in the same city as our grandparents, and a trip to visit them or a visit from them was the highlight of each year. Apu was the driver who would take us to the park or to a carnival or to his cabin in the country. It was Apu that would make us laugh with jokes on the border of good taste and spoil us with treats and gifts. Apu was always ready with a silly game or activity, like Chipi Choka, a traditional Hungarian nursery rhyme that even he didn’t quite know the words to. I remember spending hours rubbing my fingers on his face, waiting for him to snap his head and try to catch my fingers in his mouth. The games would always end with a tickle or a cuddle or something of the sort.

And the stories. Apu wasn’t much for plot. I don’t think he ever successfully wrapped up a story before we were called to the table or, begrudgingly, sent off to bed. But that was probably because he used so many characters that he literally had to use our toes to keep track of them all. This little one is the baby princess, and this long one the brave knight, this one the astronaut, and this big one the troll under the bridge. Involving toes was probably also a good excuse for more tickling and cuddling.

...

As I got a little older, I began to appreciate more about my Apu. The camping and the boating and the fishing. The way he could work with his hands fixing any broken toy and making repairs around the house. I could tell my Apu was tough. His mind was practical and sharp; his hands were skilled and strong. His face was stubbly and rough.

It was the weekend of my Bar Mitzvah. I remember sitting at the table with my grandfather. With great difficulty he told me his personal story of the war years. The upheavals. The separation from his family and loved ones. What he did to survive. The magnitude of his loss. How he and my Grandma came together to rebuild from the ashes.

He also told me the escape from the oppression of communism 10 years later. Of the difficult flight across the border during that brief opportunity. Once again forced to leave loved ones behind.

And of the journey to Canada. And a fresh start as an immigrant in a strange land. And of his hard work and perseverance and success.

My Apu was tougher than tough. God and time have taken a soul that triumphed over the evils of Nazism and Communism and over the challenges and travails of life. And he showed my that no matter how tough life could be, I could be tougher.

...

I am grateful that Apu had the chance to meet and interact with all three of my children and that they got to enjoy him. While they got the chance to play a few games of Chipi Choka and hear a few elaborate toe stories from their Apu, these memories will, sadly, likely not last in their young minds. But we will show them the pictures and home movies and retell the stories to them; the silly stories and the tales of tragedy and triumph and toughness. And I am sure that their uncles will be able to tell a few of his off-coloured jokes.

Although my own children will not get to experience the same wonderful authentic Apu experience that I did, I can see how everything has shifted a generation. While my wife and I are now focused on details and responsibilities of the daily grind, it is our parents that have become the fun ones. As a parent, I can now appreciate the patience and effort it takes to tell a made up story to a 6-year old for 20 minutes, and I see my father doing just that on the way home from synagogue every week, I now know how trying a simple car trip or rainy afternoon in can be with children in tow, and it is my mother taking the children to the library or undertaking projects like making chocolate lollypops on a day off from school.

So while I feel Apu’s loss, for myself and my children, I see Apu in my children’s Savta and Saba and their uncles. And within myself. And forever with all of us.

My Dog Ate Your Phone Number

I have a feeling that OrthoJews and vegetarians are the only one who will be able to dig up their old contacts if these ever become popular. I'm sure they will eventually make kosher versions that are three times as expensive and half as delicious.

Bring on the Gyros

Well, according to the latest research, the Mediterranean diet is the healthiest. As soon as Matzahtime is over and we are back in H-town we're going to have to pay Super Pita a visit. 

Boo Freaking Hoo

Cry me a river. If he were being paid in CAD, I might feel a twinge of empathy.

And boo freaking hoo to the NYT too.

Damn You Kosher, Damn You!

Eating contests of various sorts are a traditional trade floor activity. My personal claim to fame is 17 Krispy Kremes in 30 minutes (I actually maxed out after 15 minutes or so after wolfing down a dozen in under 5). I guess times are tough because the latest industry eat-off was 3 cans of cat food in 30 minutes. To be fair, I did mine for free (donuts) and according to the trader at Wachovia that the guy to my right was IMing, this guy made $700 for his efforts.

This sounds more intriguing: eating one of each item in the vending machine over one day. This guy failed, but his machine looks like it has more non-gum stuff than the one in our office. I just counted 12 bags of chips (and chip bag-sized things ), 16 chocolate bar (and similar shaped things), 4 packs of cookies and 5 types of gum in ours. Unfortunately only about 50% kosher. At least we don't have pork rinds.

Grade A Extra Large

A bit of trivia that has me even more excited to celebrate Human Achievement Hour instead of Earth Hour:

Ah, spring! You know it’s here when drugstore shelves fill up with marshmallow eggs and pink Peeps. But few people realize that real chicken eggs used to be as seasonal as their candy imitators. Even fewer know that the egg was once a speculative tool as controversial as credit default swaps are today.

The egg’s seasonality made evolutionary sense, since chicks hatched in spring stood the best chance of survival. It also made sense to eat, paint, roll, and otherwise revel in eggs when they were most abundant and cheapest. In mid-19th century New York, there were 72 times more eggs arriving on markets in May than in January.

Yay modern farming and refrigeration!

I guess this helps explain the egg on the Seder plate and all of the eggs that get eaten over a typical Passover.

There's An "R" In March, Right?

It's like an alternate version of my life where: (i) I looked slightly more like Dwight from The Office; (ii) I was less lazy; (iii) I was 30 years younger older and worked in NY; and (iv) I had even a remote clue what the heck you were supposed to do with Oysters.

You Wouldn't Cry Too If It Happened To You

Read through the comments on any blog post about AIG bonuses, Rahm Emmanuel's Fredie Mac gig, or any other aspect touching the high pay in Finance, and you will see that on both sides of the political spectrum, there is an underlying disbelief and disgust that anyone could possibly justifiably earn these large amounts ($1M/year). Now, I am not going to argue that specific people earned their dough, but it irks me that so many people refuse to consider the possibility.

In one of his books Nassim Taleb recounts the advice he was given when selecting a career path, "pick something that scales." Burger flippers, bus drivers, auto assemblers and scientists can only earn so much with their 40 hours a week (even with steady raises and some overtime). With luck they will get relatively wealthier over time and retire nicely, but they will never get rich via their day jobs without a lawsuit being involved. Doctors, dentists, accountants, engineers, plumbers and the like can make a nice living billing a few hundred dollars an hour, but there are only so many hours in a week, and after expenses and long hours these professionals can themselves only expect to earn a comfortable, but not super-rich, low- to mid-six figures.

To get truly rich in these jobs you need to be able to leverage your time. This can be done either by taking a cut of other peoples time (dental practice with technicians, plumber with assistants, engineer as partner in a firm). As you add more and more people underneath you, you can get good and rich. However, at this point you are making your money as an entrepreneur not as a doctor, dentist, etc. To a large extent, this is how high-level managers earn their keep too (and explains part of why executive pay has grown as a ratio to median pay as organizations get bigger).

The other way to get rich through your job is to work with a lot of money. This often translates to a lot of other people's money. If you make decisions that add and subtract significantly to the value of $100M transactions on a regular basis, your employer has incentive to pay someone to do a good job in your role. If you give them reason to thing you (will) do a good job, they will be willing to pay you for a portion of the value you add. Again, I'm not saying that everyone deserves what they get, just that it's possible to deserve that much. When you are structuring a $100M deal and you are able to turn it into a $110M deal, or even just eliminating $20M of risk, you are doing the equivalent of flipping a lot of burgers (or performing a lot of root canals).

Now, due to the declining marginal utility of money, you have to keep paying the good people more to stay. Rahm Emmanuel made $16M in his first few years on Wall Street. If you won $16M in the lottery tonight, how easy would it be for your employer to keep you on? Would you stay for your current salary? What if they doubled it? What if they quadrupled it and said you only have to work 1 day a week? You might be willing to do a few hours of work over 14 monthsfor $20K and a bunch of stock options (again, I'm not arguing that Rahm did a good job or was worth it, just that it would be reasonable for him to require that level of motivation for that level of work).

Even without 7 figure bonuses, as the returns on folk's savings approach and exceed their annual income, a significant focus will shift from the day job to the investment portfolio. Anyone who works in an office environment will have noticed that prudent and responsible mid-forties professionals with ~$1M+ net worth and low-six-figure incomes spend a lot of time staring at their brokerage in that Internet Explorer window that's always hiding behind their TPS report (if not permanently plastered on their second monitor).

Are You Pure Enough To Chuck A Squirrel?

South Park is like the Simpsons in that when you look back to the first few seasons when it was huge in popular culture, the show itself was pretty lousy. I've only caught a few episodes since then (Smug Alert!, Cartoon Wars I & II) and they have all been great. I guess the quality of a show is inversely proportional to lunchbox licensing sales.

This week's episode addresses the current economic crisis and its solution through analogy with the life of Jesus. Trust me, it works. Also, I appreciate the shots taken at the Margaritaville blenders I keep seeing at Bed Bath and Beyond (I guess it qualifies as Beyond?), William Sonoma, and the like. I've always wondered why anyone would need a huge plastic blending machine that cost seven times the price of a regular blender and is the size of a small car. That extra $300 buys a lot of Tequila and limes (which average 8 for a buck in Houston).

I Wish I Knew How To Quit You

It would have been better written on a cake, but today's letter to the NYT is pretty powerful. Mr. DeSantis working in a profitable unit of A.I.G.-F.P. agreed to take a symbolic $1/year salary to stay on and work on the sale of his profitable commodities unit (pending to UBS). According to him Liddy made 3 reassurances on bonuses in his first month (proving he knew about them them) and even prepaid a portion in December. Reducing/returning the bonuses was never discussed until just before the congressional inquisition.

As most of us have done nothing wrong, guilt is not a motivation to surrender our earnings. We have worked 12 long months under these contracts and now deserve to be paid as promised. None of us should be cheated of our payments any more than a plumber should be cheated after he has fixed the pipes but a careless electrician causes a fire that burns down the house.

Many of the employees have, in the past six months, turned down job offers from more stable employers, based on A.I.G.’s assurances that the contracts would be honored. They are now angry about having been misled by A.I.G.’s promises and are not inclined to return the money as a favor to you.

The only real motivation that anyone at A.I.G.-F.P. now has is fear. Mr. Cuomo has threatened to “name and shame,” and his counterpart in Connecticut, Richard Blumenthal, has made similar threats — even though attorneys general are supposed to stand for due process, to conduct trials in courts and not the press.

Mr. DeSantis has generously agreed to donate his entire post-tax bonus (post-"real tax" value of $742k) once that actual amount has been determined. He admits to having had a long and successful career that enables him this luxury; most of his coworkers have not .

I wonder how the UAW feels about workers being paid $1 for a year's worth of 12 hour days. Maybe the organizers can descend on Wall Street once Card Check gets pushed through.

I hope those holding torches and pitchforks feel at least a twinge of shame.

Who Moved My Cheese?

(Apologies for the lameness of this first post, but the title was inspiration enough to motivate me to just get blogging)

Well, I ordered a case of the special kosher-for-Passover run of OU-certified Cabot Sharp Cheddar. In my case it was UPS that moved my cheese in what turned out to be a surprisingly long 7-day standard shipping delivery. I highly doubt that my $83 of cheese was refrigerated for much of that time but it seemed to arrive OK and hasn't killed any of my kids yet, despite my having used them as guinea pigs.

It's definitely sharper than the other 'real' non-jewy brand kosher cheddar, Tillamook's Medium Cheddar, and a world ahead of Miller's, HaOlam and the other kosher brands. Nicely sharp, firm but not crumbly, and grated well with my parmesan microplane into a modified Roasted Garlic and Cherry Tomato Penne.

You should be able to find 10%-off or free shipping coupon codes online. At about $4 shipped per 1/2 pound stick in case lots it's much cheaper than any of the decent cheeses available at the supermarket here in Houston (and probably most places).