Sunday, November 27, 2011

How many is a trillion?

The universe is about 14 billion years old.
There are 100 billion galaxies in the observable universe.
The Milky Way Galaxy contains 200 billion stars.
At 100 mph you could travel from one side to the other in 80 billion years.
The solar system is 4.5 billion years old.
There are about 150 billion meters between the Earth and Sun.
The moon averages about 1.26 billion feet away from Earth.
The earliest evidence of man using tools dates to 1.4 billion hours ago.
The Great Pyramid of Giza is 2.4 billion minutes old.
Rachel Zoe is 1.26 billion seconds old.

Why you buy a road. The cause for a neo-WPA.

when you buy a road:
  • a contract is awarded, supporting a staff of local estimators, project managers and office staff, and their [shitty] 401k managers, and insurance salesmen;
  • sub-contracts are awarded, supporting a staff of local estimators, project managers and office staff, laborers and tradesmen, material suppliers, equipment rental companies, equipment builders, resource companies, and their [shitty] 401k managers, and insurance salesmen;
  • who spend their income on homes, food, water, utilities, schools, doctors, [las vegas] hookers, and cottage industry [marijuana].


Figure 1:  source graphic, wikipedia.com - source info, cotton.org/econ/cropinfo/cropdata/rankings.cfm

when you buy a tshirt:
  • a highly levered, cyclical, and, in all liklihood, public company (because what sucker would finance such a business out of pocket), pays a Bermudan REIT for rental space;
  • pays debt service while able;
  • pays high school kids minimum wage;
  • pays Sri Lankan taylors less than minimum wage;
  • pays a Liberian flagged shipper;
  • pays Chinese and Indian cotton producers;
  • who pay Amerians a pittance in return for easily acquired and difficult to protect intellectual property.
What is Western Financialism?

Even the most pugnacious recognize the overwhelming evidence supporting a libertarian stance in today's increasingly polarizing political climate, but we have to be realists, after all.  Abandon the banks and advance civilization.  Get behind projects that validate having such a nutty deficit number.  They should be of monumental undertaking.  People and the government would be better off having dole birds pick up one Starburst wrapper after another on the side of the road than afford those to collect shelter and food with an ample energy-time balance to procreate and scheme.

Las Vegas was built by recreating labor from the Hoover Dam project.

Thursday, November 24, 2011

Football: Fucked by the Zebra

The spirit of the game of American Football has been thoroughly fucked by the ability of intransigent assclowns to make senseless decisions based on observable facts.  A good example would be tonight's end-of-game personal foul call against Texas A&M for personal foul, helmet-to-helmet contact, wherein the supposed victim didn't even fall to the ground.  Such bullshit application of the rules turns the tides of games in favor of late game officiating, leads to less competitive sport, and generally de-emphasizes the original spirit of combativeness that drove the sport for the past 50 years.

To be perfectly clear, I feel that my libertarian leanings are vindicated one fucking mis-applied rule after another from market theory, to football, to local politics.  If we consider that a major crux of the argument against college playoff football is legacy games like aTm/ut then why are we not investigating the idea of conference location, consolidation, and scheduling when the tough choice to break with 118 year tradition has already been made out of fiduciary reasoning?

Why the fuck aren't we blocking conferences into 10-13 team regional groups by school size and feeding conference champs into a playoff series?  Not only do you see shorter travel times, more focus on education, and a higher drive to be individually successful, but also a pyramid of goal setting like that of collegiate basketball.

In conclusion, fuck the pants off of the idiot asshats calling the aTm/ut game tonight.  The outcome clearly did not represent the spirit of the game.  Also, fuck ut fans worldwide.  You are all bandwagon jumping asshats with no skin in the game, and nary an interest in the actual school, but only the fact that you are grew up when Texas was good and want to identify with the winningest team.  The worst of all fans are those that enjoy the reward with no effort and no pain, for they are the dumpster lickers, the sewer fuckers, the louse-infested, orphaned dogs of sporting joy.  A disgusting shame that they will never appreciate because only real fans know that pride and pleasure are a line bitterly tasted and sufficiently weathered.

Sunday, November 20, 2011

Landfills: Appreciable Property

thesis: landfills are going to be worth more than the cost to maintain and license in the near future.

if we accept emerging market growth in middle class consumerism;
if we accept ongoing developed market consumption at median rates in electronics and packaging across a range of economic outcomes;
if we accept that past recycling efforts were minimal to non-existant;

then the market for plastics and electronic components will become bigger;
then input materials for plastics and electronics will become more scarce, more highly demanded, and/or more highly speculated;
then using scientific techniques certain strata of old waste piles will be mined for concentrations of useful materials;

therefore landfills containing concentrated volumes of recyclable content will gain in value;
therefore older landfills will gain value more quickly than contemporary ones

Tuesday, November 8, 2011

Is Europe a "Sell the News" Event?

In a matter of weeks we will have some finality out of the EU.  That is, they will all adopt some form of austerity, losses will be had on bonds, and stagflation will take over arising from "dole bird" issues to go with forthcoming ECB rate cuts, and continual increases in the value of oil.

Along with European austerity, China PMI are coming in light, and though I believe there's a trade to be had on the development of a Chinese middle class, a period of digestion looms.

All of this, of course, against the backdrop of our own home-grown economic issues like declining confidence in the quality of the market, stagflation, polarizing political ideologies, lasting structural unemployment, and confidence concerns in municipal debt.

Accepting austerity and the condition of stagflation in 2 of the 5 major global economies doesn't seem like a great environment to be bulling up.