I used to feel intimidated by people like this; now I see them as walking insecurity beacons, slaves to the perceived judgment of others, trapped within a self- perpetuating circle of crushing status anxiety.

Well said.

Stocks take a turn for the worse as investors scoff at the Fed’s decision to step in yet again, this time adding $3 bln in temporary reserves. At $35 bln (the sum of the first two repos), the Fed had already stepped in more aggressively than its actions following the 9/11 attacks to calm a nervous market.

Since a third injection is unprecedented, as such infusions typically only occur during a crisis, investors are again left wondering just how bad the subprime situation is and questioning whether or not an emergency rate cut would even be enough to avert a possible true credit crunch.

I’ve seen Jim Cramer go asplodey before, and mostly I just generally find him entertaining rather than taking his advice seriously at all, but he really went AWOL on CNBC about this same issue recently.

My assessors evaluation this year showed that my place has lost value, homes in the area are now selling for about 10-15% less than I paid four years ago, and many houses have gone to into foreclosure in this area. I’m still waiting to see what prices the homes that recently sold in a foreclosure auction went for wondering how much they will bring the value of my place down. I do somewhat regret buying a place when I was so young, but maybe it’s better in the long run to learn this lesson on a relatively inexpensive piece of property with a standard 30 year loan.

How do I dare say this to you moronic war supporters who are “Supporting our Troops” and waving the flag and all that happy horse shit? I’ll tell you why. I’m a Marine and I served my tour in Iraq. My husband, also a Marine, served several. I left the service six months ago because I got pregnant while he was home on leave and three days ago I get a visit from two men in uniform who hand me a letter and tell me my husband died in that fucking festering sand-pit. He should have been home a month ago but they extended his tour and now he’s coming home in a box.

You fuckers and that god-damn lying sack of shit they call a president are the reason my husband will never see his baby and my kid will never meet his dad.

Wow.

It didn’t quite go as planned as there was a problem during the second stage, however given that it took the Atlas program 12 tries for a successful launch into space, SpaceX seems to be well on their way.

More coverage and video of the launch:

• Space Flight Now
• SpaceX Updates
• Launch Video
• Kwaj Rockets

He said they received 45″ of very heavy snow there, where drifts are regularly at 6′ and in places reach up to 14′. Quite a few roofs in the area have collapsed under the weight of the snow (including the Fire Department and Nursing Home), and he’s been spending most of his time digging people out since he’s one of a few people in the town with a front-end loader. Most people who live there keep a lot of food around, but there are at least 100 people stranded there at the moment who were en route on a group ski trip, and it’s been hard to keep them with supplies as nothing in that area really keeps enough stock on hand for events like that. It also sounds like various common animals in the area are starting to die (birds, rabbits, etc.) not to mention the livestock there.

The coverage by the Denver media is pretty shitty, but I did come across a few other sources which more accurately depict the situation down there including this article. The link may or may not work because of registration crap, so I’ve copied a good bit of text out of it:

Using helicopters, snowmobiles, tractors and whatever else they could lay their hands, rescuers on Monday opened roads and ferried supplies and feed to ranchers isolated by the blizzard that buried Southeastern Colorado.

“Everybody is looking for whatever resources are available,” said Polly White, public information officer with the state Division of Emergency Management.

“Yesterday (Sunday) and the day before, Colorado National Guard Blackhawks (helicopters) were out taking people literally off the road east and west on (U.S.) 160,” White said.

She said grocery stores in Springfield in Baca County were running out of food and the Guard would try to take in supplies via Humvees.

Residents of the sparsely populated Eastern Plains counties rushed to help their neighbors in the face of 10-foot-tall drifts of snow that closed highways and rural roads.

“We are doing all we can to help each other out here,” said Helen Emick, whose family runs a cattle ranch about 28 miles south of Lamar near the Baca County line.

Emick said the only way that people are able to travel in the area is by Caterpillar tractors.

From Rescue Teams Keep Busy – Pueblo Chieftain.

Some of the Denver media coverage:

• Effort to save cattle begins
• State fears agricultural disaster
• Baca County works to rescue stranded motorists
• Food, aid may come by chopper

My dad is supposed to send me some photos soon– I’ll post them when I get them.

On a related note, Henry Rollins rants about the current religious movements in the US, and although his round-about presentation could have been better, he drops enough f-bombs to make me happy.

I spend quite a long time researching purchases of goods, to the point of becoming a bit of an expert on the range of products that compare to what I end-up purchasing, etc. Given the amount of time I spend on research and the popularity of the reviews on my site, I decided to create a new blog titled Reviewfoo. This will be the new home of my research and reviews going forward, and I plan to write more on the subject any time I spend a considerable amount of time researching something before a purchase.

As an avid web-surfer and first adopter, I also intend Reviewfoo to the the place for regularly passing news and tips for everyday things such as finance, “life hacks”, home improvement, etc between my reviews. It’s a fairly general interest blog and you might find a new useful tip there from time to time. Check it out and let me know what you think!

Among the things which you are more likely to be killed by than an animal: poisoning, being a pedestrian, being electrocuted, dying in a fire, and many others.

One of the statistics that I don’t like seeing: your lifetime odds of being killed on a motorcycle are 1 in 1,159. Gack.

I think the best boilerplate piece of advice in the article is on purchasing plane tickets is the following paragraph:

My main advice for buying airline tickets is to always book more than a month in advance, as prices rise in the last month—especially during the last two weeks, when our data show that they go up by $70 on average. Flexibility in the time of day in which you travel and the airport from which you fly can be worth 50 percent. And finally, even if you’re committed to flying on a particular flight with a particular airline, it still pays to search if you’ve got two months before the flight takes off. Check the price every day, and if it falls by 20 percent, book it. A saving of 20 percent simply by monitoring the price on Orbitz for two weeks is an enormous return on invested time.

I’ve pretty much always bought plane tickets at least a couple of months in advance when possible, so overall I’d have to agree with his observations.

Researchers using brain scans have found introverts have more brain activity in general, and specifically in the frontal lobes. When these areas are activated, introverts are energized by retrieving long-term memories, problem solving, introspection, complex thinking and planning.

I like that the article also dismisses a common misconception about introverts:

They’re not slow, inattentive or shy. Shyness is behavior that may diminish as children grow; introversion is a character trait that lasts.

Granted we usually come-off as being misanthropic or arrogant to extraverts as we don’t like to engage in small talk or be anywhere that is loud or busy for long periods of time, but I think we’re pretty easy to understand.

I’d forgot about the aformentioned article and it’s now cracking me up… for instance, this is a good description of why we don’t like most meetings or small talk:

We tend to think before talking, whereas extroverts tend to think by talking, which is why their meetings never last less than six hours.
…
The worst of it is that extroverts have no idea of the torment they put us through. Sometimes, as we gasp for air amid the fog of their 98-percent-content-free talk, we wonder if extroverts even bother to listen to themselves.