I am a Rubik’s Cube
You are decidedly left-brained! You could solve a trigonometric formula with your eyes closed, but struggled with diagramming sentences in grade school. You didn’t run with the popular crowd in high school, but you went to the reunion because now you make more than all of them combined. If you’re not an actual rocket scientist, it’s only because you didn’t want to limit your options.
http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/objectified/which-object-are-you.html
LYONs and TIGRs and ELKS! Oh, My! - WSJ
wsj.com
Suze Orman’s Will
& Trust Kit
$13.50 ($14.70 with tax)Financial and health-care power of attorney, will, revocable (living) trustWe liked helpful asides, honest disclosure that we might actually need an attorney, and lifetime access to the service after purchase. We were confused about earmarking assets on first try.
LegacyWriter
(888) 609-3474
$35 ($38.06 with tax); documents sold separately for $14.95 to $19.95 eachFinancial and medical power of attorney, living will, last will and trustStraightforward prompts and explanations were helpful. Customers can make unlimited updates to documents for 60 days after signing up, or pay a $10 annual fee for continuing access.
BuildaWill
$19.95Basic will, with forms for a notary. No medical/financial power of attorney or end-of-life docs included, but it was relatively easy to provide for giving spouse the house and dividing cash among many. Charges a $9.95 “storage fee” for users who don’t build and print their will within 30 days of purchase.
LegalZoom
$329 for “gold” joint living trust package; $39 for living will; $9.99 extra for wallet-size medical directives cardLiving trust and living will, medical power of attorney, unlimited phone or online support. An $80 charge, included in the “gold” package, covers revisions over a 12-month period. Printed documents are mailed to your home. While this service was the most expensive, it was easy to use. “Document specialists” review customers’ work for basic errors. We liked the option to order a wallet-size medical-directives card.
The U.S. jobless rate jumped up 0.4 percentage point to 10.2% in October, the highest level since April 1983. The government’s broader measure of unemployment shot up even more, rising half a point to 17.5%. The comprehensive gauge of labor underutilization, known as the “U-6″ for its data classification by the Labor Department, accounts for people who have stopped looking for work or who can’t find full-time jobs. Its continuing divergence from the official rate (the “U-3″ unemployment measure) indicates the job market has a long way to go before growth in the economy translates into relief for workers. The U-6 rate is now the highest since the Labor Department started this particular data series in 1994. It likely isn’t as bad as it was in the 1980s, when the headline unemployment rate hit 10.8%. U-6 only goes back to 1994, but a discontinued measure has a longer history. That old U-6 measure peaked at 14.3% in 1982. Through some calculation, a comparable measure can be determined in the current report. Under the old U-6 methodology, the October rate would be 14%, the highest rate since 1982, but still below the peak. The 10.2% unemployment rate is calculated based on people who are without jobs, who are available to work and who have actively sought work in the prior four weeks. The “actively looking for work” definition is fairly broad, including people who contacted an employer, employment agency, job center or friends; sent out resumes or filled out applications; or answered or placed ads, among other things. The U-6 figure includes everyone in the official rate plus “marginally attached workers” — those who are neither working nor looking for work, but say they want a job and have looked for work recently; and people who are employed part-time for economic reasons, meaning they want full-time work but took a part-time schedule instead because that’s all they could find. In the coming months, the U-6 measure may be an important signal for the labor market. The official jobless rate is likely to rise through at least the first half of next year as more people return to the job market. That means Americans who now fall into the U-6 category, for stopping their job searches due to discouragement, will eventually fall into the U-3 category as they restart their job hunt. A U-6 figure that converges toward the official rate (even an official rate that’s above 10%) could indicate improving confidence in the labor market and the overall economy. But the convergence could be months away. And when it comes, it will keep unemployment above 10% for a painfully
Anselm’s ontological argument
Can I spend my whole life going after what I believe in, not find it, and still be content in knowing that I, at the very least, was true to myself?
Person 1: I’m glad I got to experience love at least once because at least I know what I’m looking for.
Person 2: Yeah, but that also makes it tough because it’s not like that comes around often, if at all. Don’t we just usually end up settling?
Person 1: No, I hope not
Person 2: Ok, but then how long do you wait for it? I mean we can’t wait until we turn 50, right? Where is the cut-off when say ok, I’m done waiting; I’m ready to get hitched with a decent person
Person 1: How much importance do you place on love?
Person 2: I guess it depends on if it really exists I’m not so sure it does for everyone. If you’re lucky you’ll get it, or else, good luck with whoever you decide to settle with.
Person 1: That’s true. It depends on if you want to take the chance and how much the chance is worth to you. Can you chance living alone for the rest of your life in search of that someone? I think I might
Person 2: hmm…
Person 1: Then again I’m crazy :)
1. Four places that I go to over and over:
memories, the internet, the beach/forest, my home
2. Four favorite games:
Starcraft, SET, Tetris, Mario Kart
3. Four favorite smells:
Good Chinese food, forest, Midsummer’s Night Yankee candle, popcorn
4. Four things I’d like to learn:
Another language, patience/mindfulness, stochastic calculus, fool proof jump shot
If it is difficult to grasp the enormity of the numbers in this tale of hyper-inflation, it is far more difficult to grasp how it destroyed a culture, a nation and, almost, the world. People’s savings were suddenly worthless. Pensions were meaningless.
Germany: If you had a 400 mark monthly pension, you went from comfortable to penniless in a matter of months. People demanded to be paid daily so they would not have theirwages devalued by a few days passing. Ultimately, they demanded their pay twice daily just to cover changes in trolleyfare. People heated their homes by burning money instead of coal. (It was more plentiful and cheaper to get.)The middle class was destroyed. It was an age of renters, not of home ownership, so thousands became homeless. But the cultural collapse may have had other more pernicious effects.
Some sociologists note that it was still an era of arranged marriages. Families scrimped and saved for years to build a dowry so thattheir daughter might marry well. Suddenly, the dowry was worthless – wiped out. And with it was gone all hope of marriage. Girlswho had stayed prim and proper awaiting some future Prince Charming now had no hope at all. Social morality began to collapse. The roar of the roaring twenties began to rumble. All hope and belief in systems, governmental or otherwise, collapsed. With its culture and its economy disintegrating, Germany saw a guy named Hitler begin a ten year effort to come to power by trading on the chaos and street rioting. And then came World War II.
We think it’s best to close this review with a statement from a man whom many consider (probably incorrectly) the father of modern inflation with his endorsement of deficit spending. Here’s what John Maynard Keynes said on the topic:
“By a continuing process of inflation, governments can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of thewealth of their citizens. By this method they not only confiscate, but they confiscate arbitrarily; and, while the processimpoverishes many, it actually enriches some…..Those to whom the system brings windfalls….become profiteers.To convert the business man into a profiteer is to strike a blow at capitalism, because it destroys the psychologicalequilibrium which permits the perpetuance of unequal rewards.Lenin was certainly right. There is no subtler, no surer means of over-turning the existing basis of society than todebauch the currency. The process engages all the hidden forces of economic law on the side of destruction, and doesit in a manner which not one man in a million is able to diagnose….By combining a popular hatred of the class ofentrepreneurs with the blow already given to social security by the violent and arbitrary disturbance ofcontract….governments are fast rendering impossible a continuance of the social and economic order of thenineteenth century.”
-Art Cashin
Background: Morse code is a series of dots (.) and dashes (-) which represent letters, numbers, and alternative characters. Some of these characters require only a single sign while others require all five signs. For example
E = .
and
0 = - - - - -
Answer: For each sign, you can transmit x^2 characters. For instance, if only 1 sign was used then only 2 unique characters could be transmitted (1^2). For Morse Code purposes, you want a system that can hold 26 letters, 10 numerals, and some alternative characters like punctuation etc. We are now looking for a system that can hold greater than 36 unique characters. Let’s go down the list. 1 sign yields 2 characters (1^2). 2 signs yield 6 characters (2+2^2). Note: Since this system can use either 1 or 2 signs, we’re adding the yields received from using 1 and 2 signs. If we continue using this pattern, 3 signs yields 14 unique characters (2+4+2^3), 4 signs yield 30 unique characters (14+2^4) and finally 5 signs yield 62 characters (30+2^5). Yippee using 5 signs, there are more than enough unique characters!
..-. ..- -. .— .. - …. -.-. —- — -… .. -. .- - —- .-. .. -.-. …
