It’s the kind of day you expect the last week before rent day in Florida. I have my basket of free bakery goodies to last until Tuesday AM. The scooter is tanked up. I can afford to run the A/C full blast. All bills are ahead of schedule, so I got all the routine maintenance done on the eBike and scooter, then headed for Barnes & Noble.Their offerings [books] were so bad I didn’t even spring for the customary coffee. I read for free and split. That place has really gone downhill. Twenty books on how to name your cat, nothing on hobbies. They failed to keep their business model up to date. They keep raising prices while the economy falters. That’s dumb, just ask HP, who are eliminating another 27,000. Think of the tragedy when so many people with zero transferable job skills get the axe.
I reviewed the videos of last night’s session with Cowboy Mike. It was so bad, I deleted the files. Mike, you guys were absolutely terrible, you really disappointed the room and you disappoint me. I realize today the staff wasn’t kidding when they made all those snarky comments. It’s not my gig, but that’s no excuse for a third-rate performance. I’m glad I showed up late.
Things were slow for a major holiday weekend. I was going to read more of “Fifty”, but I’ll take a break for a few days. Too much data at once. The author doesn’t stress the point about religious dominated countries, though he is far too intelligent to have missed that point. Only sovereign nations can purchase major armaments (tanks, planes, missiles) but we’ve entered an era where religious fundamentalists are now in firm control of several “sovereign nations”. And they are on the warpath.
Ford has another Mustang on the market. At $52,000 it isn’t for beginners. I think they blew it ever discontinuing the original concept in 1973(?). I saw one outside El Presidente, all plastic and paint. Not at all the muscle car you’d expect for that hefty an outlay.
It’s trivia time, since that is mainly what there is to read at the Barn any more. How about a 150 sq ft house the architect claims is eco-friendly? He did a dumb thing, quoting the price of the prototype. The on-line community is far too stupid to know the cost will drop with quantity production. The only green they see right now is the $75,000 price tag. (That crowd, known for their massive IQs and ferocious bargain-hunting behavior, could pick up an S-380 for about nine grand.)
Or how about the hopefuls who wasted their cash on the FaceBook IPO? Chances are they didn’t check to see that every last of the company owners, the ones who make the real money, were all filthy rich before they invested in Facebook. You don’t think the Winklevii got into Oxford on their good looks, do you? Even MicroSoft has a billion-dollar slice of the pie.
Richard Leaky, the fossil man, predicts that enough evidence will be uncovered in the next 30 years to completely end the debate on evolution versus creationism. He may be a genius scientist, but he sure doesn’t understand human nature. One does not assume those who are ignorant by choice are going to change their viewpoint over little things like facts. Being stupid is like being on welfare. Sooner or later, too many people find out how easy it makes things for them.
Or how about the media claiming the Florida real estate mess is over? People, they are trying to sell newspapers. House prices are probably the most manipulated statistic in existence. Every graph omits a chunk of the problem because neither the lenders or borrowers want anyone knowing the extent of the damage. So the “big improvement” they are trumpeting is not a true gain, rather a slowdown in the foreclosure rate.
Total foreclosures are still climbing. Think of it this way. As you speed up in your car, the rate at which you speed up gets slower. But you are still speeding up. All they need to do to pretend the rate is zero is to stop foreclosing for a month. The biggest lie is the stats don’t include the hundreds of thousands of houses in 90-day default. The homeowners have become nothing better than squatters. Hell has yet to be paid.
And I see Google is again trying to squeeze all users for a phone number under the guise of "increased security". Fellow citizens read my lips, do NOT give Google any personal information.
