Well-Laid Plan

A well-laid business plan is no guarantee against the disappearance of the industry on which it is based.

-- Tim Cavanaugh, American libertarian writer and editor, Reason Online, May 2003

Grieving

People are grieving. There was a death. Their money died.

-- Barbara Goldsmith, semiretired psychotherapist in Delray Beach, Florida, New York Times, 13 November 2008

Greed

Politicians never accuse you of "greed" for wanting other people's money -- only for wanting to keep your own money.

-- Joseph Sobran (1946-). American journalist and writer

Graffito

Seen November 5 On a Handmade Sign in West Philly

Rosa had to sit so Martin could walk,
Martin had to walk so Barack could run,
Barack had to run so our children can fly.

-- Scott Paul, in The Washington Note blog

RIP Studs Terkel

My epitaph, I hope, will be, "Curiosity did not kill this cat."

-- Louis "Studs" Terkel (16 May 1912 - 31 October 2008), American author, historian, radio personality, and actor, 1999 National Public Radio interview

Don't Have To Think

The whole reason we have elected officials is so we don't have to think all the time.

-- Homer Simpson

People Might Remember

It is dangerous for a national candidate to say things that people might remember.

-- Eugene McCarthy (1916 - 2005) American politician, poet, and 22-year member of the US Congress (D-MN)

Victory, Not Truth

Like a lawyer, the human brain wants victory, not truth; and, like a lawyer, it is sometimes more admirable for skill than virtue.

-- Robert Wright, author and journalist (b. 1957)

Lahde Duh

Today I write not to gloat. Given the pain that nearly everyone is experiencing, that would be entirely inappropriate. Nor am I writing to make further predictions, as most of my forecasts in previous letters have unfolded or are in the process of unfolding. Instead, I am writing to say goodbye.

I was in this game for the money. The low hanging fruit, i.e. idiots whose parents paid for prep school, Yale, and then the Harvard MBA, was there for the taking. These people who were (often) truly not worthy of the education they received (or supposedly received) rose to the top of companies such as AIG, Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers and all levels of our government. All of this behavior supporting the Aristocracy only ended up making it easier for me to find people stupid enough to take the other side of my trades. God bless America.

On the issue of the U.S. Government, I would like to point out the obvious flaws, whereby legislation was repeatedly brought forth to Congress over the past eight years, which would have reined in the predatory lending practices of now mostly defunct institutions. These institutions regularly filled the coffers of both parties in return for voting down all of this legislation designed to protect the common citizen. This is an outrage, yet no one seems to know or care about it.

With that I say goodbye and good luck.

All the best,
Andrew Lahde

-- Andrew Lahde of Lahde Capital Management, farewell letter (abridged) on his retirement (age ~38) after his fund earned 866% return in 2007 betting on the collapse of the subprime mortgage industry, Financial Times, 17 October 2008

Cinderella At The Ball

The line separating investment and speculation, which is never bright and clear, becomes blurred still further when most market participants have recently enjoyed triumphs. Nothing sedates rationality like large doses of effortless money. After a heady experience of that kind, normally sensible people drift into behavior akin to that of Cinderella at the ball. They know that overstaying the festivities -- that is, continuing to speculate in companies that have gigantic valuations relative to the cash they are likely to generate in the future -- will eventually bring on pumpkins and mice. But they nevertheless hate to miss a single minute of what is one helluva party. Therefore, the giddy participants all plan to leave just seconds before midnight. There's a problem, though: They are dancing in a room in which the clocks have no hands.

-- Warren Edward Buffett (30 August 1930-), American investor, CEO of Berkshire Hathaway, Berkshire Hathaway 2000 Chairman's Letter

Lack

I'm glad I didn't have to fight in any war. I'm glad I didn't have to pick up a gun. I'm glad I didn't get killed or kill somebody. I hope my kids enjoy the same lack of manhood.

-- Tom Hanks

Knife Fight

At the end of the day, campaigns are campaigns. In the last five days, it always comes down to a knife fight in a telephone booth.

-- Chris Lehane, Democratic political consultant, New York Times, 7 October 2008

Nothing Is Illegal

Nothing is illegal if one hundred businessmen decide to do it.

-- Andrew Young, author, civil rights activist, US congressman, mayor, and UN ambassador (b. 1932)

Bad Horsemen

Politicians are like bad horsemen who are so preoccupied with staying in the saddle that they can't bother about where they're going.

-- Joseph Schumpeter (1883-1950), Austrian-American economist

Corporation

Corporation: n. An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility.

-- Ambrose Bierce, author and editor (1842-1914) "The Devil's Dictionary"

T-Shirts

When considering what a police state might look like, I never imagined it would include commemorative t-shirts.

-- Commentor "izz" at RawStory.com, regarding a story on T-shirts produced by Denver's police union -- "We get up early, to beat the crowds," the shirt reads, followed by "2008 DNC." The words flank a grinning police officer holding a baton and wearing a hat with a crossed-out number "68," presumably making reference to activist organization Recreate 68, which staged several anti-war demonstrations during the convention.

http://rawstory.com/news/2008/Denver_cops_get_Tshirts_that_mock_0928.html

Old Fashioned

We make money the old fashioned way. We print it.

-- Art Rolnick, former Chief Economist, Minneapolis Federal Reserve Bank

Musical Chairs

Investors are like hyperactive first graders playing musical chairs.

-- Sam Stovall, of Standard & Poor's Equity Research, on a downward spiral affecting the shares of financial companies, New York Times, 14 September 2008

Newspapers

A newspaper is not just for reporting the news, it's to get people mad enough to do something about it.

-- Mark Twain, pseudonym of Samuel Clemens (1835-1910), American writer and humorist

LHC Day 1

Don't cross the streams.

-- Harold Ramis as Dr. Egon Spengler, Ghostbusters, 1984

--

You can think of each experiment as a giant digital camera with around 150 million pixels taking snapshots 600 million times a second.

-- CERN's Ian Bird, who leads the LHC Grid project, a network of 60,000 computers to analyze what happens when protons are hurled at each other

--

If you can read this, then the Large Hadron Collider did not create any earth-consuming black holes today.

Whose Problem?

If you owe the bank $100, that's your problem. If you owe the bank $100 million, that's the bank's problem.

-- J. Paul Getty (1892-1976) American industrialist

Surreal

When I started Oracle, what I wanted to do was to create an environment where I would enjoy working. That was my primary goal. Sure, I wanted to make a living. I certainly never expected to become rich, certainly not this rich. I mean, rich does not even describe this. This is surreal.

-- Lawrence J. Ellison (born 1944), CEO and founder, Oracle Corporation, from Smithsonian Institution Oral and Visual Histories


Java Developer's Journal (28 August 2008) adds: Technology's highest paid CEO currently is also America's highest paid CEO, namely Larry Ellison of Oracle - who with a fiscal 2008 pay package of $84.6M is the top earner at any of the Standard & Poor's 500 companies. Noting that annual pay totals are "based on salary, bonuses, incentives and perks," the Associated Press reports that Ellison's pay in 2008 was 38% higher than the $61.2M pay package he received in 2007.

Some Murder Or Other

If once a man indulges himself in murder, very soon he comes to think little of robbing; and from robbing he comes next to drinking and Sabbath-breaking, and from that to incivility and procrastination. Once begun upon this downward path, you never know where you are to stop. Many a man has dated his ruin from some murder or other that perhaps he thought little of at the time.

-- Thomas De Quincey (15 August 1785 - 8 December 1859), English author, "Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts" (1827)

Bypassing Trouble

If I had a formula for bypassing trouble, I wouldn't pass it around. Wouldn't be doing anybody a favor. Trouble creates a capacity to handle it. I don't say embrace trouble. That's as bad as treating it as an enemy. But I do say, meet it as a friend, for you'll see a lot of it and had better be on speaking terms with it.

-- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. (1841-1935), American Judge

Don't Invade

In the Twenty-first Century, nations don't invade other nations.

-- Presidential candidate Senator John McCain, 13 August 2008, on Russia's invasion of Georgia

Real ID

Do you want our government to have the ability to track where you went, how you went, how you got there and when you got home? It would be naive for someone to think this information will not be abused in the future. Virtually every decade these kinds of files have been used to violate people's privacy.

-- Montana Governor Brian Schweitzer, in a letter to DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff, explaining why Montana will not participate in Real ID, reported in Canada Free Press, 31 July 2008

--

More from the article: After Chertoff called the governor and told Schweitzer that Montana residents would be banned from airplanes, or subjected to severe, time-consuming inspections at airports, Schweitzer replied, "How about we both go on 60 Minutes a few days after the DHS starts patting down Montana driver's license-holders who are trying to get on the planes and both of us can tell our side of the story." Chertoff backed down. As of the May 11 deadline for implementation, no state is in compliance with the Real ID Act.

Paris For President?

Hey America, I'm Paris Hilton and I'm a celebrity, too. Only I'm not from the olden days and I'm not promising change like that other guy. I'm just hot. But then that wrinkly, white-haired guy used me in his campaign ad, which I guess means I'm running for president. So thanks for the endorsement white-haired dude ... I want America to know that I'm, like, totally ready to lead.

-- Paris Hilton, in a mock campaign ad in response to McCain's attack ad comparing Barack Obama to Paris Hilton & Brittney Spears

Mistakes

Mistakes are a part of being human. Appreciate your mistakes for what they are: precious life lessons that can only be learned the hard way. Unless it's a fatal mistake, which, at least, others can learn from.

-- Al Franken, "Oh, the Things I Know", 2002

Knock Yourself On The Head

Do not think of knocking out another person's brains because he differs in opinion from you. It would be as rational to knock yourself on the head because you differ from yourself ten years ago.

-- Horace Mann, educational reformer (1796-1859)

Fairly Straightforward

When I was young American politics were fairly straightforward: conservatives let you keep all your money in return for telling you how to live your life, while liberals let you live as you pleased in return for all your money. Now the only difference is whether they want your money or your life first.

-- D.A. Ridgely, positiveliberty.com

No Chaste Minds

There are no chaste minds. Minds copulate wherever they meet.

-- Eric Hoffer, philosopher and author (1902-1983)

Lost Our Collective Minds

Back before we lost our collective minds and began shrieking with horror at the thought of kids having fun on their own (as in not part of an official league or otherwise organized activity), they used to do things like find a vacant field, turn it into a makeshift diamond and spend glorious hours in the summer sun.

-- The Greenwich Time newspaper, in an editorial in support of youths who built a wiffle ball field on an empty, city-owned lot in Greenwich, CT, 9 July 2008

RIP Bozo The Clown

We didn't have satellite, syndication and networking like today. So, I created my own network of local clowns and productions, a cross-country operation that kept me on the road for 50 weeks a year for decades.

-- Lawrence Weiss (2 January 1925 - 3 July 2008), American entertainer better known by the stage names Larry Harmon and Bozo the Clown, on training 200 actors to portray the clown for local TV stations and other programs franchised around the country

Asterisk

Bonds' 756th homer ball lands in Hall, finally
By Ben Walker, AP Baseball Writer

NEW YORK (AP) -- Now branded with an asterisk, the ball Barry Bonds launched for his record 756th home run nearly a year ago landed Tuesday night in the Hall of Fame.

[snip]

Fryer Grease

Fryer grease has become gold. And just over a year ago, I had to pay someone to take it away.

-- Nick Damianidis, an owner of the Olympia Pizza and Pasta Restaurant in Arlington, Wash., on grease thefts, New York Times, 30 May 2008

Code For The Maintainer

Always code as if the person who ends up maintaining your code is a violent psychopath who knows where you live.

-- From theC2 Wiki Page, http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?CodeForTheMaintainer

RIP George Carlin

I love and treasure individuals as I meet them; I loathe and despise the groups they identify with and belong to.

-- George Carlin (12 May 1937 - 22 June 2008), Grammy-winning American stand-up comedian, actor, and author, "Ready or Not, Here Comes Another Book", Georgecarlin.com, 2007-01-19

Windshield Vs. Bug

Some days you're the windshield, some days you're the bug.

-- Captain Phillip Ash, commander, Company K, 3rd Battalion, 7th Marines, Ramadi, Iraq, New York Times, 23 October 2005

Eight To Twelve Minutes? No Way

The Unhealthiest Drink in America
Baskin Robbins Large Heath Bar Shake (32 oz)
2,310 calories
266 g sugar
108 g fat (64 g saturated)

Let's look at America's Worst Drink in numbers:

73: The number of ingredients that go into this milkshake.
66: The number of teaspoons of sugar this drink contains.
11: The number of Heath Bars you would have to eat to equal the number of calories found in one Baskin Robbins Large Heath Bar Shake.
8-12: The average number of minutes it takes to consume this drink.
240: The number of minutes you'd need to spend on a treadmill burning it off, running at a moderate pace.

-- Mens' Health Magazine, via health.yahoo.com,
19 May 2008

Earlids

The best thing about radio is that people were born without earlids. You can't close your ears to it.

-- Anthony Schwartz (19 August 1923 - 15 June 2008), American sound archivist and advertising creator, best known for the controversial Daisy TV ad for the 1964 Lyndon Johnson campaign

Oh No!

I've been doing everything I can to kill him off for 30 years, but he seems to be coming back.

-- Walter Williams, on Mr. Bill, the character he created for "Saturday Night Live" who will appear in a MasterCard ad campaign, New York Times, 3 June 2008