Beer And Self-Doubt

"There was a big city businessman who once went on holiday to a faraway beach. One day he walked past a local fisherman who was lazing around, with his fishing rod in the water, enjoying the sun and a beer.

The city man’s mind went to work immediately. The fishing spot was a gold mine, and a serious fishing business would thrive in the area. 'Why are you so stupid?' he asked the fisherman. 'Get some boats, hire some extra hands, and in a few years you will turn your little shop into a million-dollar business!'

The local man asked him. 'And what would you do once you have a million dollars?'

The city man stared back blankly. 'Why, I would have so much free time I could sit around in the sun all day and drink beer!'”

There It Is...Plain English

C'mon...gimme fiddy cent....

"But banks holding those mortgages, not wanting to book huge losses on their holdings, have often refused to sell for less than 60 cents on the dollar.

The result has been a paralyzing impasse. Banks, unwilling to sell their loans at fire-sale prices, have had less capital available to make new loans. Mortgage investors, unable to leverage their investments with borrowed money, have been unwilling to pay more than fire-sale prices.

To break that impasse, the government’s crucial subsidy is meant to provide investors with the kind of low-cost financing that has been utterly unavailable in today’s credit markets."

No User Serviceable Parts Inside

This post is great. The circumstances are slightly different but it completely summarizes my youth getting thrown across the room by an ungrounded grocery store conveyor belt system I was using/playing with, my undergrad experiences wiring and rewiring (and failing at) liquid air generators and a low-MeV particle accelerator (yeah, the author - he knows it, you can smell the ozone created by a wicked electron discharge) and finally the disdain one faces when you either can't or don't care enough to fix a relative's obnoxious printer/CD-ROM drive/wireless keyboard/USB drive/etc.

Patent Idea

Great quote on Groklaw:

"Could someone please patent what Wall Street just did to the economy, and then refuse to license the "invention", so as to prevent those dudes from ever doing it again? Or just patent flaming greed, will you, somebody? Do the rest of us a favor and get it off the table or at least constrained."