King Tut was recently cited for a minor in possesion of alcohol after being discovered lying in a tomb with red wine. King Tut kept mum for any questioning by reporters during the arrest. After confiscating the wine, police officer Harold Mitchell told reporters, "This wine came from a vintage 3300 years ago. I sampled it, but I think it is a bit past the pique." As punishment, LA County Judge Judy sentenced him to remain in public view at the LA Museum for three weeks to be gawked at like a circus freak.

-Trevor

I finally made it out on Tuesday night. A couple guys and I went to see Serenity. It's a sci-fi action adventure. It is based off a now cancelled television series that I have never seen, so cannot comment on. Overall the movie was decent if you enjoy science fiction, though there were clear references to the show that I missed.

-Trevor

In a truly heartfelt message for all those who love to hate, the new president of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, made comments on the line of, if you acklowledge Israel, you will die a horrible death because God hates you. I always find it ironic that religion seems to be such a bringer of hate where the messages always talk about love. This is exactly why organized religion is such a sham, it breaks people apart rather than bringing anyone together. I would say that we should bring Barney into the picture to help bring everyone together, but it is likely this would come to blows as people argue whether Barney is 65 million years old or only 10,000.

-Trevor

Artist: Black Rebel Motorcycle Club
Album: Howl
Genre: Indie Rock / Religious

Read more!

I was catching up on all my political bs when I really started to look at Harriet Miers. See the comparison? Creepy...

Out with the old and in with the not as old. At 51 years young, Ben Bernanke is only a Senate confirmation away from being only the third fed chairman in my lifetime. As usual with the media, they always have someone question whether or not the "new" guy will do a good job because of some comment he made a couple years back about the cost of producing money is nil. They interpret this as saying he will allow our interest rates to go out of control as they were in the 1970's. So for those who care, here's a brief lesson about the Federal Reserve.

The Federal Reserve is here to pursue the goals of promoting as much growth as possible while trying to keep inflationary pressures and interest rates as low as possible. For those who aren't too familiar with the concept, in general high interest rates lower money velocity (how fast it moves through the market) and therefore decreases the demand for money and lowers inflation. There are of course situations in which there are high inflation and high interest rates (stagflation) like that seen in the 1970's that are often due to some severe supply shocks.

Of course the policy of the fed does change as witnessed during the 70's in which the policy was as stated:

• To help counteract inflationary and deflationary movements, and to share in creating conditions favorable to sustained high employment, stable values, growth of the couuntry and a rising level of consumption.

In order to combat the problems of the 1970's, Paul Volkers tightened the money supply by raising interest rates. This of course had the effect of pushing the country into a recession. It was not a very popular move because if you try to tell someone who lost a job during the recession that it was necessary to get the economy back on track and they will probably tell you where you can stick it.

So now rather than encompass a huge array of strategies, the fed with Greenspan decided that they would try to merely maintain the inflation rate, something that Americans are now very averse towards. This also favors the current economic theory that stable prices fosters more growth than low interest rates alone. This is also to help minimize fluctuations from Monetary Policy.

There are three methods in which the Fed can achieve their goals, Open Market Operations, Reserve Requirements, and the ever popular discount(bank) rate. Open Market Operations is actually one of the most powerful tools as they purchase or sell securities in the open market and therefore have a larger control over the effect of their policies in this regard. Second, reserve requirements are requirements for banks to maintain a certain level of deposits in order to prevent problems if there is a run on the bank. Today the deposit ranges from 3-10% based on the type of account. This has a rarely used tool as it has a large affect on the velocity of money. Finally the discount rate is the interest rate at which the fed lends to commercial banks and financial intermediaries.

The rest is beyond the scope of this article. However, the media is afraid that Bernanke will not keep a close eye on interest rates and will let the inflation rates soar. If I were you and obviously I am not, I would not be too alarmed because the media tends to try to evoke fear in people. I think it is something that draws people back to their shows. Well I guess that's all for now, but have faith that Bush chose a good guy for the job.

-Trevor

After nearly a month preparing for midterms, I'm finally done, for now. I can take a couple days off before I need to start buckling down for Finals this December. I'll put up a couple more posts this month, so check back.

-Trevor

IMPORTANT: READ THIS BEFORE YOU CLICK ON THE LINK!

There are two nearly identical pictures that will appear on the screen. Almost 2500 people were tested to see if they could find the three differences in the first 30 seconds. Only 23 of these people were able to figure it out. I wasn't able to find a single one, but Brad found all three. Prove that you are smarter than him.

http://members.home.nl/saen/Special/Zoeken.swf

The Professional Organization for Editors of Magazines have released their list of the top 40 magazine covers in the last 40 years. It is interesting to look at what they deemed the best, but who am I to argue. Of course when don't I have an opinion, but this time I will keep it to myself. Well, I have a couple of favorites, especially #16.

-Trevor

Just when we were becoming accustomed to dealing with the fact that our food will kill us, a new study has shown that we will now face possible disease and death from pillows. No it is not similar to SIDS, but all that disgusting mold that contaminates your shower and pepper has been shown to thrive in that pillow of yours. We nowknow of at least three rooms in which death can occur, the kitchen, bathroom, and bedroom (The living room can be considered a way in which we can kill ourselves by spending many years of it watching television). Well, I guess I will never look at a pillow the same way again.

-Trevor

I received an e-mail the other day that requested I post these pictures on my site. I warn you that if you have puritan eyes that you shouldn't click on "More". For those who have no moral values, have fun...

-Trevor

Read more!

A group of Econ guys and I drove down to South Tucson today and ate at Mary's Lucky Dollar Market. While I have been there a few times already, I believe I have sampled a large variety of the food available to give a good review.

Mary's Lucky Dollar is in South Tucson in a "ghetto" part of town. The building is not much to look at, but if health inspectors eat once a week at the restaurant, I think it should be as safe as eating at home. The restaurant caters to mostly construction workers and day laborers with most of the customers having the food "to-go". The soup is one of the first things to go, which is unfortunate as I have yet to sample any, but have heard great things.

What makes it great is that the food is about as close to authentic "homestyle" Mexican food as I will ever get in Tucson. In addition the most expensive meal with only set you back $3.50. Gabe, our resident expert, informed me that this food is close to what is prepared in Northern Mexico and is different than the "hot" Mexican food that you will find in other parts of Mexico.

If you ever make it to Tucson, this is a must stop for anyone wanting to think outside the bun and say, "I'm Full!".

-Trevor

Everyone is talking about the new video Ipod, but in reality this is not the most important news that has come out of Apple recently. The big news is the fact that Disney has given Itunes customers access to some of their best selling series, Desperate Housewives and Lost. Of course this has the television affiliates and the director's guild of America up in arms about not getting their "fair" share out of the deal (link) I believe everyone is a little naive about the motivation behind Disney's move. It is obviously driven by "$", but I think Disney has a a longer term vision than what most critics of the deal believe. I think a fact check may be in order.

First, we must look at the state of one of Disney's cash cows, the family movie industry. Michael Eisner's reign as CEO of Disney drained to company of any creative talent. They couldn't produce a hit if their life depended on it. So along came Steve Jobs and Pixar and with a distribution deal came some great movies like Toy Story, Finding Nemo, and the Incredibles. Of course their contract is just about up, and Eisner and Jobs had a falling out of sorts with Pixar wanting to find a new distributor.

Well Eisner left and in comes Robert Iger. He has a large mission of rebuilding Disney's fragmented image and needs to keep up the image of "producing" quality movies, but where is the talent? Working for Pixar, of course. How can he get a new deal? Well Steve Jobs is a shrewd businessman and isn't going to take Disney back without getting a little extra and he has a new video Ipod coming out. So what better way to promote the Ipod by having video streams that people would actually want to watch. Of course since Disney owns ABC and Touchstone (which produces Desperate Housewives and Lost) it is quite easy to make a deal.

Now we can see that while a new deal between Pixar and Disney has yet to be struck, I would be surprised if it isn't in the works. Everyone wins, even those in Hollywood who are bitching about not thinking of this first.

-Trevor

Wish me skillz on my midterm tomorrow. It will be full of fun questions to snare the casual observer.

-Trevor

We all know that chicken's will kill you, but the question now is whether fish are Christ risen? A recent study by "they" have concluded that eating fish will save your soul (or keep you from getting stupid) and therefore you need to incorporate more into your diet. However, they concluded that there was no evidence that Omega-3 was the reason that fish is healthy. Of course that does not stop KGUN 9 (ABC, a parent company of Walt Disney) news from reporting just the opposite while mentioning this report. This just makes me wonder what is going on in these reports and why they think they need to tell us what we want to hear rather than the truth (maybe we will switch to watch the liars, but as least they will be ethical). On the other hand, a report next week will clearly state that Omega-3 is the next cure-all and will even help with erectile dysfunction.

-Trevor

I know for all you guys up in Minnesota that it's fall and getting sort of cold, and so I would just like to mention that last night the low was 55 degrees and I was thinking, damn I haven't seen it that cold since last April or so. However, I would like to add that it is somewhat humorous to hear people complain how cold it is when it is 80 degrees outside with a breeze and see them wearing sweaters (seriously). You will probably get some perverse pleasure out of that.

-Trevor

We are all going to die a horrible horrible death. The flesh will melt right off your gangly arms while you are looking in the mirror about how all of your hair fell out. Well maybe it will not be that bad, but did you know that a flu pandemic will sweep the world and you will likely die? Or that's what the news tells us and they have no reason to sensationalize what is happening. Everything has gone a foul since the fowls over in Asia decided to start breeding up a super flu that will surpass the deadliness of the flu of 1918. Wait, wasn't the flu supposed to become a pandemic last year? It was, but only after sharks stopped killing people off the coast of Florida and they are not done yet, so the chickens have decided to wait until this year to unleash their deadly virus amongst us.

And why do we not do anything about it? Well we are, but it will not be enough and so you might as well give up now. In fact, if you wish to ensure your eternal soul will reach heaven, send your life savings to me because I have a direct connection to God and will certainly send him your cash direct.

-Trevor

Got my midterm back for General Equilibrium. Not great but got a B+ on it, so it could have been much worse. In reality, I did quite well when looking at the fact that I missed an entire page of theorems that he provided us to use on the problems. In absolute terms, only five others did better on the exam than I did in a class of 28 so I think I should be in solid footing. Not too bad in my opinion.

-Trevor

Here is one of the test questions for those who care:

Art and Bart sell ice cream cones from carts on the boardwalk in Atlantic City. Each day they independently decide where to position their carts on the boardwalk, which runs from west to east and is exactly one mile long. Let's use xa and xb to denote how far (in miles) each cart was positioned yesterday from the west end of the boardwalk; and we'll use xa^ and xb^ to denote how far from the west end the carts are positioned today. Art always positions his cart as far from the boardwalk's west end as Bart's cart was from the east end yesterday (xa^ = 1 - xb). Bart always looks at xa (how far Art was from the west end yesterday) and then positions his own cart xb^ = xa*xa. Prove there is a stationary pair of locations by Brouwer's Fixed Point Theorem.

Note: I really don't think it is worthwhile to give you Brouwer's Fixed point theorem, but this was a decent problem and not too hard as long as you remember to setup the function correctly.

I forgot to post about the Local H concert on Monday. It was over at the Plush Lounge on 4th Ave (the happenin' place in Tucson). It was a great concert, but unfortunately there were only 30 or so people who made it to the concert (maybe not so happenin' after all...) Anyways Local H put on a great show. If I had to describe it in one word, I would describe it as intense. In addition to their great singles, they played a cover from the Queens of the Stone Age (Feel Good Hit of the Summer) in additon to a few covers from Tommy. While not being a huge fan of the Who, they did a great job. And who says a two man band can't rock?

It is unfortunate that more people did not make it to the concert. I could think of nothing worse than to take five hours to get to a show in which so few people show up. Ironically they have more air time on the radios down here than in Minnesota but attract a significantly smaller audience. God can be so cruel as to allow people to go to boy bands but miss what great rock sounds like.

-Trevor

Sorry for taking so long to post, but I've had been pretty busy. I took my first of three midterms on Monday. Probably could have done better, but could have done much worse as well. Not too many worries since this is meant to be a very difficult test. My next midterm is on Thursday for Statistics. I do not think it should be too bad, but will require a decent amount of studying.

In other news I won the lottery for a season ticket for U of A basketball. I seem to have a lot of people in the department telling me that I shouldn't sell my tickets. Supposedly this is a once in a lifetime opportunity. I believe they may have a biased opinion based on their interest in college basketball. For me, I'm thinking it could make a tidy profit, but if the price isn't right, I think I should enjoy the games myself.

-Trevor