Aka funny math with words.

Just found this awesome site called New Math that has some really funny math equations.

Here are just a few of my favorites:
Filing = paper - entropy
Handball = racquetball - racquet
Infomercial = Information + commercial +Wait, there’s more
Pirate = thief + boat + bandana - leg
Easter bunny = Santa Claus - breaking and entering
Backyard = manifest destiny + fences

Check out the site because there’s a bunch more, including an RSS feed that I’m now following in Google Reader.

I occasionally run into the problem of being a few dollars short of qualifying for free shipping when buying products from Amazon. Fortunately, I found a cool site that finds “fillers” to add whatever amount you need to qualify for the free shipping. http://www.superfiller.com/

Basically you end up getting a low priced item for “free.”

I was glancing through the subjects in my spam email folder to make sure nothing good was getting deleted. I was fortunate to do this because I almost missed my good friend Andrew, the Chairman National Audit at Barclays, which according to Wikipedia, is actually true. He has a proposal that I cannot afford to ignore. According to the email header details, he must have sent this from his secondary office in Kiev, Ukraine (I’m thinking he’s on vacation.)

Here’s the email. It was quite an entertaining read and someone really put a lot of thought into it.

Dear Friend,
I am Andrew Likierman, Chairman National Audit at Barclays.I am contacting you concerning a deceased customer William Nathan,and an investment he placed under our banks management.I would respectfully request that you keep the contents of this mail confidential and respect the integrity of the information you come by as a result of this mail.
I contact you independently and no one is informed of this communication.I would like to intimate you with certain facts that I believe would be of interest to you.
In 2005, the subject matter came to our bank to engage in business discussions with our private banking division. He informed us that he had a financial portfolio of 2.35 million British Pounds Sterling, which he wished to have us turn over (invest) on his behalf.I was the officer assigned to his case, I made numerous suggestions in line with my duties as the de-facto chief operations officer of the private banking sector, especially given the volume of funds he wished to put into our bank.

Read the rest of this entry »

Here are some funny quotes that I’ve found:

“(of Ronald McDonald) I know he’s a fictional character but if such a man existed, it would be the duty of social services to warn the local parents that he had come to live in the area.” —- Jeremy Hardy

“I thoroughly disapprove of duels. If a man should challenge me, I would take him kindly and forgivingly by the hand and lead him to a quiet place and kill him.” — Mark Twain

“It’s fascinating to think that all around us there’s an invisible world we can’t even see. I’m speaking, of course, of the World of the Invisible Scary Skeletons.” — Jack Handy

—-
“I have a bunch more where those came from. I’ll have to put them on here sometime.” — this one is me

Under the president’s plan, spending will top $4 trillion this year alone, and consume 28.5% of our nation’s economy. His plan would mean a $1 trillion increase to the already unsustainable spending growth of our nation’s entitlement programs — including a “down payment” toward government-controlled health care and education; a $1.5 trillion tax increase to further shackle the small businesses and investors we rely on to create jobs; a massive increase in energy costs for families via cap and trade. Moreover, the Obama plan would result in an exploding deficit, a doubling of the nation’s debt in five years, and an increase of that debt to more than 82% of our nation’s GDP by the last year of the budget. This approach will ultimately debase our currency and reduce the living standards of the American people.

Instead of doubling the debt in five years, and tripling it in 10, the Republican budget curbs the explosion in spending called for by the president and his party. Our plan halts the borrow-and-spend philosophy that brought about today’s economic problems, and puts a stop to heaping ever-growing debt on future generations — and it does so by controlling spending, not by raising taxes. The greatest difference lies in the size of government our budgets achieve over time (see nearby chart).

Continue to read on The Wall Street Journal Opinion Article

This article is written by Mr. Paul Ryan, from Wisconsin, who is the ranking Republican on the House Budget Committee. It talks about the Republican’s alternative plan to Obama’s “European-style big government” that “works to accomplish four main goals: 1) fulfill the mission of health and retirement security; 2) control our nation’s debts; 3) put the economy on a path of growth and leadership in the global economy; and 4) preserve the American legacy of leaving the next generation better off.”

I decided to try the whole Twitter thing. Here’s my page. Scott’s Twitter. I can’t promise much updates yet (until I get my iPhone). It’s been fun to follow Lance Armstrong on his biking come back. But, the best one that I’ve found is Christopher Walken’s page. He is hillarious! Some examples:

I spent $40.00 on a bag of food for a dog that eats extension cords. That’s still probably cheaper than a bag of extension cords I suppose.

I buy a bottle of Green Tea with ginseng nearly every day but I don’t remember why. I don’t like tea and can barely taste the ginseng.

I posed for dozens of photos in California last week. I closed my eyes or made a face in nearly every one. Sorry. I amuse myself this way.

A curious man asked if I was waiting for something as I stood on the curb. I said, “No. I’m ice fishing.” Oddly enough he accepted that.

I lost my trusty old Minolta G400 that I had for quite some time. Over the years it sure took some great photos from all over the world. I’m still hoping to find it somewhere… Recently, I’ve been using my Canon Digital Rebel XT (lenses: Canon 28-135 f3.5-5.6 EF IS USM, Canon EF 50mm f1.8 II, Canon 18-55 f3.5-5.6 EF-S USM). However, it would be nice to get a compact camera. I started looking at point & shoots again last night when I saw that Amazon was selling the Canon PowerShot SD770IS 10MP Digital Camera for about $160. I’ve been very happy with the quality and performance of my Rebel XT so knew that I could trust the quality of the SD 770IS. It is the most popular P&S on Amazon and has gotten terrific reviews. I think it has okay manual controls (or as close to manual as you can get with a P&S, meaning independent adjustment of shutter speed, film speed, and aperture). However, after reading the more technical discussions on the dpreview forums, it became apparent that the camera is good but not that wide. I’m also a little weary of companies continually bumping up the megapixels without changing the technology behind the underlying sensor. Packing more megapixels into the same sensor just means that there will be more noise. Fortunately, the SD 770IS does come with a newer, faster processor than my Digital Rebel so it is able to fix problems with noise quite well. I was almost thinking about going ahead and buying the SD 770IS since Amazon is offering it at that price until it is sold out. That camera, I think, has a very stylish body, is compact, and has traditional Canon quality. However, I value picture quality and improvements in underlying sensor technology rather than just strict megapixel improvements. For example, a 6MP DSLR will take better photos than a 12MP standard point & shoot because the sensor is much larger. See here and here.

FujiFilm gets this: “There is strong demand in the digital camera market to increase the number of pixels on a sensor, which, all too often, is used as a convenient yardstick for image quality [...] As the photodiode gets smaller, the problems of increased noise, blooming and clipping increase.”

Fujifilm has unveiled the FinePix F200EXR digital compact, incorporating its new 1/1.6” Super CCD EXR sensor. The camera is the first to use the company’s EXR technology that can use the sensor in three different ways to optimize resolution, dynamic range or low-light performance. The F200EXR has a 3.0″ LCD, 5x optical zoom, dual image stabilization and HD (stills) output. An EXR Auto mode lets the camera select which of the three sensor modes is used or the user can make that decision themselves.

Here’s FujiFilm’s introduction of the FinePix F200EXR. Here’s a description of how the Super CCD EXR sensor works. Youtube has a video of it. It is has a pretty nice looking body too and is still compact. However, it is pricey; Amazon has it for pre-order at $399. However, good quality + solid construction means that it will last me a long time. I’m hoping the price drops so that I can get it as a birthday present in July.

The Found on Smugmug blog had a great entry called “See Spray” that showed beautiful pictures of sailboats in the San Francisco Bay.

Shadow Government has a very good interview with the Kori Schake, the author of this new book. Here is what she says about this book in her own words:

It’s a book about American power: why it’s so predominant in the international order, whether it’s likely to remain so, and how current practices can be revised to reduce the cost to the United States of managing the system. Despite clarion calls about the end of the unipolar moment and the demise of American moral, financial, military, and diplomatic power, the United States remains the defining state in the international system and is likely to be so for at least several more decades. If there were a market for state power, now would be a great time to buy futures in American power.

Here’s the first question of the interview:

SG: How does the United States end up so successful in this round of globalization?

Schake: The resilience with which Americans have found new professions as manufacturing migrated to cheaper labor markets contrasts favorably with revanchist efforts by other wealthy states to artificially preserve the eroding economic order rather than encourage and shape change. It helps that the U.S. economy is an engine of job creation, but that is a result of explicit choices about labor market flexibility. The signature advantage of the U.S. economy is the risk tolerance of its work force: the economy sheds and create jobs, and people mostly accept that the nature of economic activity is uncertain.

The adaptability of American workers mirrors the general malleability of the country. In a globalizing order in which many societies are attempting to shield their traditions from external influence, American culture voraciously seeks out and incorporates new elements that further broaden its appeal. Americans are so accepting of change and risk that we have come to exemplify what others fear: globalization is often equated with Americanization.

Click here to read the rest of the interview…

Here’s a very insightful quote that poses fighting terrorism as a luxury that most other countries don’t have: “Compared with the ravages of HIV/AIDS on the labor force, managing food scarcity caused by environmental change, or establishing basic governance and education, America’s preoccupation with terrorism appears a luxury. It is therefore in our interest to devote more attention to solving the problems we are not afflicted with but that are essential to securing the assistance of states whose help we need.” Make sure to read the whole thing!