MI Township Tries to Ban Dancing

There was quite a vocal fight about permitting a restaurant to have belly dancing in rural Oakland County, MI.

Best quotes:

"The Devil is at Orion's gate."  Orion is the township in question.
"These people are out of their minds."  Obviously, this was said by a reasonable fellow.

Running through the holiday

I took part in the inaugural Independence 5000 race this past weekend.  Pacers running stores has been putting on quite a number of events lately.  I was able to beat my previous 5k record by 19 seconds, which is great considering my achilles was acting up a bit.

I recovered mostly during the weekend, went on a few gentle runs.

I also got to use my new toy, a Garmin Forerunner 305.  Here is my run, as told through the Garmin (the time is a little bit off since I started the timer a few seconds before the race).

2nd Amendment Applies to the States

Breaking news: Chicago's handgun ban has been struck down, the Supreme Court has ruled that the 2nd Amendment applies to the states.

Sen Robert Byrd Dead

Senator Robert Byrd of West Virginia died today at the age of 92.  He's the longest serving member of Congress.  While there will no doubt be many tributes to him, we should all keep in mind that he represents the (hopefully) end of an era, where you can go from KKK leader to US congressman.

Why I sold my Kindle (updated)

I was given a Amazon Kindle as a birthday present last December.  I recently sold it on eBay.

When I first receive the Kindle, I was very excited about it.  I thought this would definitely be the wave of the future, and a great device to use for years to come.  Over the holidays, I took it with me on vacation and read books for about 30 hours on it.  I was able to download free, older books online as well as a few free deals Amazon had going on.

The Kindle's screen is truly nice to read on.  The only downside is that there is quite a lag in the refresh rate.  I didn't get rid of the Kindle due to the technology itself, the main reason I dumped it was due to simple economics.

Price of new Kindle: $259
Cost of leather cover: $35
Sold both for: ~$190 net of shipping and eBay fees
Total loss: ~$104 (but keep in mind it was a gift)

So, basically I used a Kindle for about 2 months, let it sit for 4 months, and sold it.  I consider myself lucky, since it would have cost me much more to keep it.

I read approximately 2-3 books per month.  The average cost of a new book is $18 or so, on a Kindle it is $10.  So some would say that I would save between 16-24 a month by using the Kindle.

Not true.

First of all, a Kindle book is worthless.  You can't sell it, you can't trade it, you can loan it to a friend.  It is there to be read once and that's it.  That bestseller you buy for $18 can be sold for something later on.  And you can always buy a used book on half.com for a lot less.

And need I talk about my new best friend?  The library.

Keeping the Kindle would have cost me $20-30 a month in recurring book fees to Amazon.  It would make me stress over each purchase, wondering if its worth the money, since I wouldn't be able to do anything with the book once I was done.

What Amazon needs to do is lower the price of books, or at least remove the DRM, like Apple has with iTunes.

By the way, I took my profit and bought something I'll at least use: a Garmin Forerunner 305 brand new for $135.

Update: About an hour after posting this Amazon dropped the price of the Kindle to $189.  Looks like my timing was dead on.

Proposed Arizona law most certainly unconstitutional, unjust

The xenophobes in Arizona are at it again.  On the heels of passing a very tough anti-immigration law that turns the state into a police state, they have now proposed that children of illegal immigrants will not automatically become US citizens if born in the US.  

Citizenship is a federal matter, not a state matter, so it is unclear how this would be enforced (it appears they would deny birth certificates, which is very odd).  But even if they are able to get the logistics straight, this is still a federal matter.  

The rationale behind this is to prevent "anchor babies" where parents will not be deported if their kids are US citizens.  However, anchor babies are more myth than fact; you cannot deport a US citizen but you can deport their parents, whereupon they would become a ward of the state.

In any case, a child born here deserves to be a US citizen.  Think of it this way: your parents are illegal immigrants from Mexico.  You are born in the states and raised in the states.  When you are 15, your parents immigration status is uncovered.  Now tell me this, is it ethical to deport someone who likely speaks English as good as anyone else and has never known another country?

Afghan Plunder

It was announced yesterday that there is up to $1T of minerals in Afghanistan.  Before you get too excited, consider this: we've known about the lithium for 40 years.

Strasburg Amazing in Debut

Stephen Strasburg threw 14 strikeouts in the 5-2 Nats win over the Bucs.

This video shows the complete domination he brings to the game: http://mlb.mlb.com/video/play.jsp?content_id=8802881

Holloway Suspect Murder Again?

The truth is often stranger than fiction.  In this case, Joran van der Sloot is accused of murder, for the second time in 5 years.  He was suspected, but never charged, with killing American teen Natalee Holloway in Aruba several years ago.  Earlier this year he had what many call a confession.  Suffice it to say, there was a lot of criticism as to how the local authorities handled the case.

BP still in business

BP is not yet in danger of bankruptcy, says one financial analyst.  I'm in agreement, BP does have a large amount of cash reserves.  I also agree that investors are the ones who are really killing BP.  Consumers have short minds, and BP could always rebrand as Amoco.  But as an investor right now I'd put my money into Total (TOT), which has a juicy yield without any of the baggage.

AAPL vs MSFT

When I bought my first Mac in February 2002, I was a blacksheep.  Nobody really bought Apple or paid much attention to it.  Microsoft was the big kid on the block, and Apple was a scrappy punk.  Times have changed.  Thanks to several big splashes over the years, Apple's market capitalization is now more than Microsoft's.

How did this happen?  Simple.  The OS wars were a red herring.  It's the hardware, stupid.  It was the iPod that saved Apple, not OS X.  But OS X was very successful in further destroying Microsoft's reputation.  Just think back to the "Get a mac" ads.  Sony has also fallen by the wayside.  Even its venerable Walkman brand is dead.

In 10 years, who will be #1?  Any thoughts?  My guess would be a firm like Samsung.

iPad magazine pricing out of touch

Wired is reporting that its iPad app sold 24,000 copies in 24 hours.  While I don't doubt this figure, I do think that the pricing for their online magazine is absurd.  They point out that at $5 each, it is the same price as the print version at a newsstand.  That is true, however a subscriber gets the same thing for $1 delivered to their house.  Given that the edition at your house can easily be lent to your friends, read in the bathroom, or used to start a fire, there's a lot more usefulness than a digital copy.  Wired needs to price this app at $1 to match their subscription price.

RIG's liability

A new development today in the Deepwater Horizon disaster.  Transocean, LTD (RIG) is claiming that 159 year old law will greatly reduce its liability.

I don't have much confidence in their ability to evade lawsuits.  All it takes is one safety regulation not being followed for them to face full liability, which is like to be substantial.  Consider that the rig that blew up was owned and operated not by BP, but by Transocean.

Kagan for SCOTUS

I don't know what to think of the current Supreme Court pick, Elena Kagan.  On one hand, she's described as a good defender of the first amendment.  On the other hand, her support of the Executive Branch and police powers is troubling.  And on the interesting side, there are rumors she might be gay.

This could be an interesting confirmation, considering that the democrats cannot overcome a republican filibuster.

Dow drops 1k and regains most - WOW

Today the Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped by almost 1,000 points.  People are calling this a "computer glitch" but the truth is nobody knows what happened yet.  It is likely that the initial panic was from investors were very nervous about the situation in Greece.

Some background on Greece.  What is most likely the most fucked up member of the EU voted today on an "austerity plan."  Basically this is a plan to cut government spending by a large amount including wage cuts to government workers.  Suffice it to say, it didn't go down well among the common folk who decided to stage violent riots.  And on top of this, the house of cards that is the EU is still to drop (Spain, Portugal, and Italy are next).

So investors are worried about this, and its likely that some stock crossed a threshold that triggered automatic selling.  I heard in at least one source that some trader at Citi entered an order for a billion instead of a million. That stock would likely be Proctor and Gamble.  It appears that the system worked correctly, and that the fast paced electronic trading was halted on the NYSE, allowing sensible selling to resume.

Since PG is a component of the Dow, the entire market went into a freefall.  My entire portfolio, consisting of autos, banks, oil ETF's and retailers was down 10%.  With the comeback I ended down a reasonable 4% but that was a scary day.

From what I gather the market worked exactly as it should have.  The safety systems kicked in and ending down 4% is nothing bad.  There are those who will argue that situations like these mean we need more government regulation.  This is wrong.