think or thwim

At Metafilter,
many superfluous links.
Seems ridiculous.

The missus pointed out that it’s not really a haiku. It’s a senryū, and not a very good one. I pointed out that it’s very clever, and that maybe she’d like write her own god damned poetry.

Bill Maher is perspicacious as usual.

More Bill Maher videos are available at the HBO.com.
Also check out his blog at The Huffington Post; this post in particular.

John Walkenbalk, whose books taught me the finer points of Excel and whose blog taught me the finer points of bacon, has been keeping track of Bush’s approval rating.

I use technical analysis to help make investing decisions, and I thought you might like to know how I’m going to play this chart. In investing I almost always (except when I am stupid) follow the trend. Clearly Bush’s popularity has been in a downtrend, but that may be changing. Notice that the recent lows are higher than the May 2006 low.

There may be a double bottom forming, which would signal the start of a new uptrend. However, his approval rating needs to climb above the October 2006 highs before I’ll have anything good to say about him. Preferably it will break out above that resistance with high confirming volume of people participating in the poll.

As you may have noticed from previous posts, I’ve been short Bush since the first election. 9/11 put me way underwater on the trade, but unlike the sissies that ran for cover, I stuck with my position and rode it out. In fact, I added to it. By the beginning of the Iraq war, I was all in. I’ve been loathing the Bush administration with everything I’ve got ever since, and it’s been my best trade of all time.

But, since crowd sentiment has turned so negative on Bush, it’s time to cover my short. One more piece of really bad news could make the bears capitulate, and set up a perfect double bottom. Exiting the trade at that point would maximize my gain, but I don’t want to be greedy.

Like I said, I’m not going to start liking him yet. At this point, that would be catching a falling knife. I need to see some evidence of a new uptrend first. I’m just going neutral. That frees up a lot of emotion that I can put to work somewhere else. I’m looking for something to invest in on the long side. Barack Obama seems to be in a pretty steady uptrend.

More on this later…

:: J-Walk

This is the most inspirational thing I’ve seen in a long time. I love how the crowd goes wild as soon as he steps on the court.

The game was in February 2006. Greece Athena won 79-43.

He’s already got a movie deal for his life story. Read more about him at Wikipedia.

:: Mindhacks.org

I’d think twice before paying $85 million for a Picasso right now. This chart is from Art Market Insight’s Art Market Trends 2006 (PDF).

There’s a lot of interesting information in the report, including a list of the most expensive works sold in 2006.

:: Paul Kedrosky

This is not what I expected. I’d imagined a fast moving wall of water, but this stuff looks like lava.

Kellick Creek at Ringwood Road Crossing southwest of Merriwa, NSW, Australia [Google Map]:

Wahweap drainage (in Arizona?):

These videos weren’t taken by him, but David Rankin films flash floods for fun. From his site:

Also, as a hobby, I chase, predict, and capture Flash Floods on video. I am fascinated with the amazing destructive power these floods have. 1 inch of rain over 1 square mile amounts to over 17.38 million gallons of water that need to be drained. Some of the floods in these videos were produced when 2 - 4 inches of rain fell over 30 square miles, over a billion gallons of water draining down one wash in the desert. These washes are usually bone dry for most of the year until the monsoon rains come.

He has a DVD of his flood films for sale. There’s a sample on his site.

From Eddie Izzard | Dress to Kill

From the Denny Dent website:

Describing Denny Dent’s Two-Fisted Art Attack to someone who has never witnessed it can be like describing a rainbow to someone who cannot see. No matter how hard you try, the words fail to tell the whole story…

Dent died in 2004. From his obituary:

Dent’s mother was a painter of limited means. Dent, who was born in Oakland, Calif., told some reporters that he grew up on welfare and spent the first part of his adulthood in what he called “that mire of drugs and alcohol and the rest of it.”

His epiphany came at a vigil commemorating the death of Beatle John Lennon, when Dent impulsively painted a rapid-fire portrait of Lennon on the spot. He began performing in the early 1980s, mostly at colleges and universities where students loved his unique combination of loud music, frantic painting and abstract expressionist portraits of rock singers and movie stars.

:: Fresh Creation

Scott Adams’ blog makes me laugh at least twice a week and laugh so hard I cry at least once a month. In October Seth Godin said he resists the urge to link to every Scott Adams post because his readers have probably already read it. I have the same problem. If I didn’t fight the urge, the tag cloud on the left would say “Think or Thwim is about: scott adams, humor, documentaries…”

On Sundays Adams usually writes something serious. Today was extraordinarily good, and it’s been two weeks since my last Scott Adams post. So here’s an excerpt:

I remember when Dilbert hit it big and it became clear that I would never again have to worry about money. It was a wonderful feeling, but it didn’t last. I went from happy to hollow with no warning. The first moment that I could afford any car I wanted, I lost interest in having a nice car. I simply couldn’t see the point, if there ever was one. Success is surprisingly disorienting.

One day, about ten years ago, I was alone in my office, sitting on the couch and reflecting on the fact that I had managed to become rich and famous in my dream job. For the first time in my life, I had no goals. And for a goal-oriented guy, that’s an empty feeling. Success was supposed to feel good and stay that way. But it tricked me. There was a huge hole in my soul. I sat in my office and sobbed.

Then the change happened. It wasn’t something I thought about. It wasn’t an indication that I am a good person or a bad person. It was just some sort of chemical reaction in my moist robot head. It was natural.

I turned outward.

Read the rest at The Dilbert Blog.