capitalism *is* fun :-)

I open today’s Wall Street Journal. On the front page, there is some article about oil. On the second page, there is another article about oil … and China. This is happening on every news site. There is a fixed set of items, such as: oil, China, Iraq, Obama and some more. Everything is somehow related to these things.

Why aren’t there any articles reporting about the advances in studying swearing in Latin? Or something else? It’s the same crap, fed by the media, every day. Oil has become a major word in everyone’s dictionary. I think that every issue that occurs somewhere, has a simple answer: "You know mate, I think it’s because of the oil"

Oil prices are down. Please enjoy and engage in useless driving, gouging up as much fuel as possible, paying for it with a credit-card, like there is no tomorrow. Please do it with a big engine, not some little white van or some 4 wheel can called eco-friendly car. There are no environmentally friendly cars. Telling people to drive a car that is environmentally friendly, is like asking a child to smoke a cigarette because it’s healthy.

With a staggering 1025.9 Euros per square meter! You have to sit on a pile of crude oil or natural gas, to be able to afford those prices.

but a good indicator
I wanted to do something different tonight. I made a nice Win32 console application. The code takes the historical data for a blue chip stock, and tries to predict it’s price based on past performance. The application simulates trading based on these predictions (buying and selling).
Here is the outcome:
Initial portfolio: 25 USD - the price of 1 share (1 share in the portfolio)
Final portfolio: 166 shares + cash, with a total value of 68.91 USD
The timeframe is 10 years. That’s 275.64% of the initially invested amount

The stock is a pretty volatile one, and the 10 years include several price corrections, etc.
When I get some time, I am going to try this with different share values.

The math behind all this is pretty simple, and it’s based on some abstract theories

I stopped at a gas station while driving home, to buy some juice. When I am about to pay with my Visa Gold credit-card, I noticed that some of the plastic started to get damaged around the edged. I guess I have been wiping it too much lately. It’s then, when I realized why the American Express Centurion card is made from titanium. It’s the only metal that can withstand the great amount of wiping it endures. Plastic can withstand a few wipes a year, however

Once again,  Mercer Consulting has elected Zurich (Switzerland), as the number one city in the world, to live in.
Well, I have been there and all I can tell you, is that they are 100% right.
The mix of old building, swiss banks and overall welfare, it’s truly an expression of capitalism, in it’s purest form.

I love the morning news on Bloomberg. "The dollar declined against the yen and euro after Iran’s state television network said the nation test-fired a long-range missile capable of reaching Israel." I guess they can’t yet reach Japan or the European Union, so they are safe. If Iran wipes Israel off the face of Earth, this will seriously hurt the dollar and the US economy. Why don’t they "relocate" Israel to a safer place? It worked for the first time, so why not do it again? Let’s find some decent land, claim with the bible in one hand, and call it Israel. The South Pole looks safe from here

This is Jonny Gladwell from Auckland New Zealand.
He is special. He is the world’s first owner of an Apple iPhone 3G. It just brakes my hearth to see the guy having camped outside the Vodafone store. Doesn’t this guy have a job? … yes he does … he has Steve Jobs!

I bet he spent the time in his tent, watching porn on his MacBook Air, while waiting. He could have made a better deal by simply putting a jar outside the tent, with a tag: Spare 1 dollar (NZD that is) to save up towards my iPhone 3G.

Somebody please give me one serious reason for camping outside a store to get an iPhone, as soon as it’s released? It’s a great phone … but what’s with the desperation? Is he hoping to get laid?

This is so sad…

Well, I have been following the G8 summit for a while. Until it was all over the news, the menu that was served to them during the meeting. And off course, people rushed to blame their meal as the main cause for the global "food crisis".

What food crisis? Really? I haven’t heard of any famine in any of the G8 countries. Ok, prices went up by nobody is dying of hunger. As for the other countries, they could simply get their act together. I wonder if they would have been served the cheapest food possible … would that have made any difference?

Perhaps the big problem is that the G8 nations stopped disbursing huge quantities of food to countries to busy with corruption, civil wars and other crap? Oh well … it’s just capitalism

Dan informed me that 28.57% of the days in a week, are weekend days. Ever wondered why the weekend has 2 days? Why not 1? Or 3, or 1 and a half … or 4 days?
The fact that the weekend has 2 days is not an arbitrary fact. It has been precisely calculated. Let me tell you why.

Ever noticed how Saturday is different from Sunday? You get to see this entire rush on Saturday. You have stay in line almost everywhere. At the gas-station, at the carwash, at the mall, etc. But not on Sunday. 2 days is the maximum amount you need for exactly 2 purposes:
1. (Saturday) - go out and spend whatever amount of money you can, and you haven’t spent it during the week. Noticed that almost nobody is relaxing on Saturday?
2. (Sunday) - for rest. If people don’t rest, they are unable to work. And we can’t have that … can’t we?
Those are the exact reasons why the weekend has 2 days.

To let you in on some more info, have you ever noticed that all important price hikes are made during the week, and never in the weekend? Take gas prices for example. They are raised during the week. You assimilate that information but you don’t have much time to think it over, because you are probably late for work, while reading that news. By the time you get to fill up your car (in the weekend probably), you already know this and it’s not a shock when you see the price at the pump.

Perhaps it’s the fun of working 7 days in a week, is that you don’t have any weekends and have the opportunity to make the above mentioned observations.

Enjoy your week

Two things made me wonder and laugh this morning:
- The only 2 places on earth where it’s forbidden to take photos or zoom in from a commercial satellite, are Area 51 and the entire country of Israel.
- The government of Bosnia only has about 200 Euros left in their account.