Staring at Strangers

That's a Lot of Marijuana!

According to a recent article on the CNN website, states, hit with ever widening budget gaps, are looking for new places to slap on more taxes.  They are considering everything from strip clubs to marijuana.  Of course, non-medical marijuana use would have to be legalized before it could be taxed.

A number that really blew my mind was the estimate that if California taxed marijuana at $50 an ounce, the State would bring in $1 billion in additional tax revenue.

Wow, there's a lot of smokin' going on in the Golden State!  I'd say that it's no coincidence that this also is where the movie industry is based.

Technorati Tags: marijuana, California, taxi, budget gap, strip clubs

Recession? Nope, Here's How to Make $4.1 Billion in 10 Months

According to an article in yesterday's New York Times,  the $5 billion investment in Goldman Sachs made by Warren Buffett in September 2008 has grown to $9.1 billion today.  That's $4.1 billion dollars made in 10 months. 

"Yes," you say, "but is he really happy?"

I don't care!  Have you got any idea how much money that is?  That's $11,232,876 a day, $468,036 an hour, $7,800 a minute, and $130 a second. 

Do you remember the 15 minutes you wasted on Facebook the other day?  If you were Warren Buffett you would have made $117,000 in those 15 minutes!

And he makes this money whether he is awake or asleep.  So if he goes to sleep at 10 pm and wakes up at 6 am, he's $3,744,288 richer when he opens his eyes in the morning!

Oh by the way, Mr. Buffett current return on an annualized basis is 111%, but surprise, the U.S. government received an annualized return of only 23% on its investment in Goldman Sachs.

The New York Times article concludes:

At the time of Mr. Buffett’s investment, critics said that Goldman’s long run of soaring profits was coming to an end. As a federally regulated bank holding company, Goldman would not be able to take the kind of risks that have yielded profits and bonuses that defined Wall Street’s latest Golden Age, they said.

But earlier this month, Goldman reported a second-quarter profit of $3.44 billion.

Makes you not even want to get up and go to work in the morning.

Technorati Tags: Goldman Sachs, Warren Buffett, investment, U.S. government bailout

Mexico Builds Border Wall To Keep Out US Assholes

Mexico Builds Border Wall To Keep Out US Assholes

Blackberry's BrickBreaker Game - Victory and Defeat All At Once

I've been secretly tormented by the BrickBreaker (aka BallBreaker) game that was included with my Blackberry (and every Blackberry for that matter).  There are 34 levels, and you could be on level 33, but if you lose, you go back to level 1.  Arrgghh!!!!

I tried to forget about it, tried telling myself that it wasn't important, that it was only a game. But it was no good.  I had to beat this thing. 

The worst part was that it was always with me to tempt me because my Blackberry was always with me.  So I'd flame out on level 23 and go right back to level 1, starting again.  All of my reason had left me, all that remained was a blinding determination to defeat this thing.

Finally, victory was close at hand.  I had finished level 33, and for the first time, level 34 lay before me.  Finish this and I was done. 

The screen revealed itself.  It wasn't too difficult.  Something that I could accomplish if the video game gods were not against me.  And I had 2 lives left, one extra if I screwed up . . . once.

And then it happened.  I had finished!  Yes, finally, my work was done!  But wait, where was the congratulations screen?  Job well done notice?  What's this, there is no such screen, just a return to level 1 to start all over again????

Nooooooooooooooooooooooooo!!!!!!!  I felt like I was trapped inside some bad horror movie with Vincent Price gloating over my sad fate. 

I got over my disappointment, and finally, I got over the game.  I imagine that there are some gamers out there who have replayed the game in a continuing cycle 300 times or more.  I am not one of those people.

Technorati Tags: BrickBreaker, Blackberry

Who Wants to be a Mexican?

Foreigners seeking naturalization as a Mexican citizen, except for those who were born here, adopted by Mexicans or have a certain degree of Mexican blood coursing through their veins. must prove that they know something about Mexican history and culture. Take a look at the study guide, which is updated twice a year.

Technorati Tags: Secretaria de Relaciones Exteriores, naturalization, Mexican citizenship exam

Sperm Speed Toward Sexy Senoritas

Turns out that a male's sperm travels faster towards an attractive female. How do scientist know this, you wonder?  Check out this article in Discovery News and you'll find out.  This is a family blog, dammit, and I'm not going to pollute the minds of little ones with this trash.  I'll just post the link and let you do the work yourself. 

Technorati Tags: sperm, attraction, speed

Hope Is a Four Letter Word

If you have any interest in current affairs, you'll want to read this editorial in yesterday's Wall Street Journal entitled From McNamara to Obama.  As much as I'd like to believe that some good ideas will solve all of our problems, Barack Obama's rhetoric makes me nervous, and Bret Stephens does a good job putting the reason for my nervousness into words.

Here's one paragraph which will give you some idea:

McNamara, who died yesterday at 93, will go down as a cautionary tale for the ages, and perhaps none more than for the Age of Obama. Whatever else distinguishes JFK's New Frontier or LBJ's Great Society from Barack Obama's "New Foundation," this too is an era of soaring rhetoric, big plans and boundless self-regard, issued by an administration convinced it can apply technocratic, top-down solutions to huge and unpredictable systems -- the banking, auto and health-care industries, for instance, or the climate. These are people deeply impressed by their own smarts, the ones for whom the phrase "the best and the brightest" has been scrubbed of its intended irony.

Here we go again.

Technorati Tags: Rober McNamara, Barack Obama, Kennedy, William Easterly, Vietnam

Michael Jackson Died - Enough Already!

I posted this on Facebook and received five comments within 34 minutes.  I think I'm on to something.

Okay, so Michael Jackson was a brilliant performer, and his death was sad, but I'm not spending my time thinking about him, leaving comments all around the Internet, or watching a lot of his videos on YouTube. I didn't even watch his memorial and I'm okay with that. Nor did I become a fan of his Facebook page (he's got close to 7.5 million fans there, he doesn't need mine). Does this make me a bad person?

Technorati Tags: Michael Jackson, Facebook

I Hope You’re Happy Now

IncaKolaNews (IKN) loves charts, bar graphs and maps, and so do we, which is why we faithfully and without fail read this blog every single day. IKN turned us on to this index, which ranks Mexico at No. 23 in the happiness scale, with Sri Lanka and Pakistan on either side of the Happy Scale.

Poor Los Estados Unidos, so far from God and so close to Mexico, comes in at 114th place out of 143, is sandwiched in between Madagascar and Nigeria.

Technorati Tags: Happy Planet Index, happiness, country rankings

Civic Duty

This morning, I joined more than 77 million Mexicans who were eligible to do something civic. I walked two blocks over to the local public elementary school, where the voting polls would be set up. Realizing that I had never voted live and in living color even in Los Estados Unidos, opting always for the easier method of voting early or absentee, much less in Mexico, I was ready for a novel and exciting experience. Right. I didn’t vote, on purpose, in the last Estadounidense presidential election.

There wasn’t exactly a crowd at the polls. The schoolyard held exactly five people looking for which classroom to enter. A guy wearing a PRD button helpfully looked at my voting credential and told me to go to the room designated for people whose names begin with “J.” He obviously was either trying to trick me or couldn’t read, because the big sign at each classroom revealed that people with last names from Leyva to Ponce should go here and those with last names ranging from Ponce de Leon to Zorro de Zavala were to go there.

A fellow lettuce farmer whose last name fell in the same lot as mine joined me, and we chat about our crops while we wait to be admitted. At the desk, I hand over my credential  to the functionary, who announces my name out loud, amazingly pronouncing it correctly, while she thumbs through the book where the photos of each eligible vote are printed. Entering the supersecret voting booth, I mark my ballot with a dull nub of a pencil, fold it, exit, and deposit it into the hermetically sealed plastic carton.

I did not vote PAN. I did not vote PRI. I did not vote PRD. I did not vote for any party represented on the ballot. I voted for no one. Nulo. En blanco.

Technorati Tags: suffrage, voting, IFE, en blanco, vota nulo