Are We All Just Marks In The Hugest Hustle In History?
[ Add A Comment ]Posted on October 18, 2009 by admin in Politics
Sunday, October 18th, 2009I can’t help noticing that some people are getting richer while the rest of us struggle to get by.
 Tim Geithner Demonstrates Just How Much He Cares About The Average Working Stiff |
I can’t shake the feeling that I’ve been conned in the biggest pigeon drop in history. While it’s nice to see the FBI go after a few greedy billionaires for insider trading, I’m tired of wealthy capitalist guys in suits that cost more than my housing for a year first telling us that we need a socialist banking system, then that they need 23 trillion of our imaginary future tax dollars to save capitalism, then that it’s none of our business where the money goes, even when we sue and win to find out, then that in spite of the fact that they deceived us at the outset that these same rich banker capitalist guys will be happy to loan the government banks money to save them. Is it just me, or is there something wrong with this picture? In a similar era in US history, Franklin D. Roosevelt said “We have always known that heedless self-interest was bad morals; we know now that it is bad economics“. This idea is highlighted by the points made in the NYT piece Bailout Helps Fuel a New Era of Wall Street Wealth, in which they quote Gary Richardson, a research fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research as saying (in reference to the banks that have been bailed out): “we have just shown them that they can have the most frightening things happen to them, and we will throw trillions of dollars to protect them. I have big concerns about that.” So do I. How about you? Read the rest of this entry »
Products That Probably Had Strange Boardroom Meetings, Part I
[ Add A Comment ]Posted on May 21, 2009 by admin in Lifestyle & Culture
Thursday, May 21st, 2009Has it ever occurred to you that the people that are most likely to use Viagra are the ones that you’d least want walking around with erections?
In part one, a look at The Handkerchief, Skydiving, Banks, and Viagra.
 Do we really need a man that looks like this running around with an erection? |
Viagra
A friend of mine (who happens to be black) made the joke years ago that “you can bet it weren’t no black man invented viagra“. Probably true; I always picture some lonely balding white man with a PhD in pharmacology who had never even gotten to put his “manhood” to its intended use, and was rapidly entering the age where he might never be able to. The multiple levels of irony and tragedy here are overwhelming – youth is wasted on the young, wealth is wasted on the bald and aging, etc. – but the bottom line is, how, as a man, do you pitch a product that’s intended to give you an erection to a bunch of other men? I can imagine a few awkward moments with the pitch, like “Well, it’s not something I’d use, of course” or “And you see, that’s why we want a bunch of balding old men running around with erections, and Viagra will get the job done.”
The Handkerchief
“I’ve gathered you all together today to tell you about a great (ah-choo!) new product idea”. The presenter, who has a glob of mucous hanging from his nose, reaches into his pocket and pulls out a square of high-quality silk. “This, gentleman, is the ‘HANDKERCHIEF’. Never again will we be forced to wipe the disgusting fruits of our proboscises”, he proclaims, as the mucous jiggles at the end of his nose, “on our Read the rest of this entry »