Thanks, Keith Olbermann — that was excellent.
Author Archives: paulschreiber
one expensive VISIT
Since January 2004, the US-VISIT program has apprehended nearly 1,000 people. Out of 44 million. At a cost of $15 billion. That’s $15 million per bad guy caught.
cash cows explained
at work, i posed the question “can vegetarians have cash cows?” the answer: since a cash cow is something that generates cash, and vegetarians are okay with consuming animal products (but not animals), vegetarians can indeed have cash cows. vegans, on the other hand, cannot.
musician bingo
Some musicians are more comfortable in studio than on stage, and it shows. While on stage, they often resort to clichés and canned lines. We should have a game called “musician bingo.” We can print out cards and bring them to shows. Here’s what I have so far: musician mentions name of city musician asks …
the west wing
Why Farhad Manjoo still watches The West Wing: The show is a fiction, certainly. There isn’t a politician in the world like Jed Bartlet, an exceedingly smart, (mostly) honest man with principles, who doesn’t govern by politics, who takes counsel from the cooler, calmer heads on his staff, and even from his opponents. Today in …
great speeches of the 21st century
Robert F. Kennedy at the Sierra Club, September 10, 2005 [via Wil]: I do 40 speeches a year in red states, and there is no difference between how Republican audiences and Democratic audiences react when they hear what this White House and this Congress are doing. There is no difference except that the Republicans come …
saying no to diamonds
A couple of months ago, Sarah got engaged. She declined to get an engagement ring (she doesn’t elaborate on her reasons). This, in my opinion, was an excellent decision. Why? Since then, I came across an Econ-Atrocity Bulletin “Ten reasons why you should never accept a diamond ring from anyone, under any circumstances, even if …
writing great email
Like many people, I get a lot of email. Maybe not as many as Cory or Steve, but a few hundred a day, fairly easily. I manage to read and respond to most of it pretty quickly. Last March, boingboing pointed out Stever Robbins’ article at the Harvard Business School, Tips for Mastering E-mail Overload. …
on originality
Wil Shipley on ideas: Delicious Library was not an original idea. It was a new approach to an idea that’s been around for as long as computers. Hell, longer. I think the first cavemen carved on rocks when they lent out their, uh, sticks to other cavemen. Which wasn’t efficient, but still worked better than …
where the money went
Florida university discovers misplaced $275,000: Three University of South Florida officials were fired after the school discovered $275,000 in misplaced checks and cash scattered throughout an office. Nearly half the money at the school’s English Language Institute — $133,647 — was in checks up to 10 years old and could not be deposited, said university spokeswoman …