300 Words About 44 Women

Yeah. I don’t actually have a way to do that headline. I was thinking that I need to fire up an update here on Best Hubris after finally finishing what was supposed to be a 300 or 500 word quickie about my thoughts on buying some puts on Vail stock based on what is going … Read more

Oregon Can Pump Own Gas

A little over a decade ago, I worked for IBM. Actually, it was a consulting arm of IBM called ISSC. It got rebranded as IBM Global Services. I don’t have any idea what it is called today. Anyway, the point is that I never should have left. I never got paid more money for doing … Read more

NASA Sends Super-Bacteria to Space Station

mrsa super space station virus

Am I the only one who has ever watched a science fiction movie?! NASA, in conjunction with a medical researcher just sent the “antibiotic-resistant superbug” MRSA into space where astronauts will study how it grows and mutates in zero-gravity. I’ll tell you how it grows and mutates in zero-gravity, into a unstoppable killing machine undetectable … Read more

U.S. Budget Deficit Lower in November But…

So, this article makes it sound like the deficit for November is smaller this year than last year. That would be interesting, because there are no real major changes in the U.S. budget or spending since last year. But, then if you read the LAST sentence, you’ll see that the deficit would actually be $3 billion … Read more

Why Are There Nonessential Government Services

With the government shutdown, there has been a lot of talk about nonessential government personnel and nonessential government services. In particular, many people are asking if these people and the services they provide are not essential, then what are we wasting money on them for anyway. The answer, lies, as it so often does, in … Read more

Why Everyone Got LinkedIn Top 5 Percent Email

There is a bit of cloud brewing on Twitter and elsewhere over an email sent by LinkedIn. In the email, the company congratulates the user for having one of the “top 5% most viewed profiles.” The catch is that it is starting to seem like “everyone” got one of these emails. LinkedIn Top 5 Percent … Read more

Confirmation Bias in Politics

Confirmation bias is when someone takes more notice of data or results that support their preconceived notions, and less notice of data or results that cut against what they want to believe. This is one of the big no-no’s of the hard sciences, and a great way to get your research results blown out of … Read more

So Tired

I wanted to update, to write something clever, something intricate, something meaningful. But… I am so very, very tired. Frankly I’m stalling so that I don’t go to bed so early that I can’t actually fall asleep. Today, we link for no reason to this article about discount premium bonds and then we away for … Read more

Tax Day Cometh?

Here comes tax day. Taxes are not due today, taxes are due on April 17th this year. How fast can investing make you rich? There are many things standing in the way of a successful investment strategy. One of the most common is an unrealistic expecatation of how long it should take for investing to … Read more

How Much Does Hollywood Really Lose to Piracy?

There is an interesting video of a recent TED talk regarding something the speaker calls Copyright Math. In it, he comically destroys the numbers that Hollywood uses to scare Congress into doing its bidding via ill-conceived laws like SOPA. He demonstrates how if the numbers the media industry pedals around as its “losses” due to … Read more

Posterous Bought By Twitter

I had completely forgotten about my Posterous accounts until the company announced it had been acquired by Twitter. Now, I like Twitter as much as the next tech-savvy guy, but it’s never been as useful for me as it has been for others. I wonder if the integration between Twitter and Posterous will change that? … Read more