The Beckyan Deli
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Does the religious right also not get that the Colbert Report is a parody?
Even if you didn’t watch Tuesday’s Daily Show, you probably saw the second half of Jon Stewart’s interview with Mike Huckabee linked on one of the million liberal blogs out there. I was curious as to what the conservative blogs were saying, though. What did they think of Huckabee’s performance? Or about Stewart’s line, “Religion…
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Share buybacks!
A-ha! In my previous post on owning stocks, I had completely forgotten about stock buybacks, when the company uses excess cash to buy outstanding shares. In this sense, the company itself is placing real value on the stocks, and this gives them some intrinsic value other than (a) producing dividends or (b) liquidation. The traditional…
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Group hug! (Grupo abrazo? グループの抱擁 ? ryhmä hali?)
I was looking at the 2008 Google Zeitgeist for the U.S., and there were no real surprises about which search terms were the fastest-rising. However, I was surprised and delighted to see which five terms made it in Google Translate: Google Translate – Fastest Rising (U.S.) 1. you 2. what 3. thank you 4. please…
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More thoughts on the stock market
This week, The Economist asks the question: Where have all your savings gone?, with a picture of a guy staring down a bottomless pit. But they’re relatively upbeat, now’s the time to buy, things will recover, etc. But they also had this nugget: In demographic terms, asset markets could be seen as a pyramid scheme,…
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What’s the purpose of owning stocks?
Something I was thinking about the other day…what is the value of stock in a publicly traded company these days? According to the wise people at wikipedia: A share of stock is one of a finite number of equal portions in the capital of a company, entitling the owner to a proportion of distributed, non-reinvested…
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Mac & Cheese
At long last, here is my Mac & Cheese recipe. It’s not fancy, but it certainly gets the job done. Unless, of course, you are lactose intolerant. Sorry Becky! This can be made with any firm cheese. I usually use sharp cheddar, but I’ve found a mix of garden-variety cheddar and smoky English farmhouse cheddar…
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Sometimes, putting family first means putting it off
This article on red state and blue state attitudes towards sex didn’t really tell me anything new. But this jumped out at me: Maybe these choices weren’t originally about values—maybe they were about maximizing education and careers—yet the result is a more stable family system. Not only do couples who marry later stay married longer;…
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Change (is) how the story ends
Right now we’re all excited and hopeful that things will go well on Tuesday, and that Barack Obama will be elected president. But before we get too complacent, let’s look at what we said in 2004 before the election:Vinay (via email) said: It’s very 4:56 in the AM, I’m about to leave for my 1st…
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Not Our American Dream
Andrew Sullivan linked to a long article from 1985 on a couple building their dream house. Reading about all the space the couple wanted in their house was almost shocking. About a year and a half ago, we downsized from a 3.5-bedroom house in Michigan to a 1.5-bedroom apartment in California. We love our current…
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The Shining Rays
I don’t want to jinx anything (too late!) but the Rays prevailing over the Red Sox has given me hope about Obama’s prospects… Let me explain. For tracking the polls, the best place by far is fivethirtyeight.com, which uses some hardcore statistics to combine polling and demographic data to forecast the election results. The guy…
Got any book recommendations?