Today’s accidental porn showing on network television brought to you by China

Baristas discover that business really picks up when they dress like hootchies

Store orders youth to remove his hooded sweatshirt fearing he might be in a gang. “He’s only two-and-a-half,” objects grandmother who was carrying him at the time. “I don’t think he’s going to rob you”

Private-eyes paid public funds to have paid non-private sex, videotape it actually

Burglar breaks into home, orders five adult pay-per-view movies

Woman passes out behind wheel, drives 8 miles before plunging into river.

Man loses weight playing Wii Sports

During a dispute do you A) punch a 3-year-old and a 9-month-old in the face, B) attempt to drag a woman from her car, or C) ask arresting officers where they live so you can molest their wives? This overachiever goes for D) All of the above

Drunk driver still blames everyone else. Yep, that includes the 76-year old deaf man he ran over, who “wasn’t where he should have been.”

Flower shop robbed. Again. For the 30th time in 3 years

A cold one for man’s best friend

Get high legally with audio

The last post generated some fantastic comments. Especially James Andrix and David who both pointed me towards the Dilberito. I gave it a lookover, and it is both a fantastic idea, and built with a great philosophy. Unfortunately, it isn’t available in many places outside of college cafeterias!

The concept:

Scott Adams is enjoying creating a corporation modeled after tenets set forth in his best-selling book, The Dilbert Principle: Create a vision, hire good people, then get out of the way. True to his word, Adams created the vision for the company and hired one of the best minds in the food industry, Jack Parker, to run the operation. The company’s first creation was the DILBERITO — a delicious handheld meal fortified with 100% Daily Value of 23 essential vitamins and minerals.

Tell me that isn’t fantastic! Unfortunately, in my quest, I’m trying to create this bachelor chow with whole foods. I could simply say to eat 5 bowls of a nutritious cereal a day (like: this or this) and pop a multivitamin, but that isn’t what I’m attempting to create. Key words that I am trying to avoid, ENRICHED and PROCESSED.

I’ve found very nutritionally dense foods, and have to admit I’ve learned quite a bit. This is quite the engineering exercise, which makes it all that much more fun! It’s almost like solving a linear system.

The good point, I’ve found a relatively simple group of foods with a great nutritional balance, but I’ve yet to do cost analysis to see if it fulfills my previous wishlist.

The bad point, it isn’t a single serving food item like I wanted, more of a daily meal plan.

I stuck to my guns on the “KISS” approach, and meal preparation time should be minimal.

Here’s the breakdown of the macro-nutrients:

• Calories - 1711
• 37% Carbs [162g]

• 31g Fiber

• 40% Fats [80g]

• 3:1 Omega6:Omega3 [31319mg:10244mg]

• 23% Protein [104g]

Here’s the breakdown:

Breakfast:
1c 2% milk + 1oz Blueberries

Snack:
Glass of 1c Orange Juice

Lunch:
1c Pasta + 1/2c Sauce (I use spaghetti and Ragu Traditional Spaghetti sauce)
Half a can (7oz) Pink Salmon
4oz Broccoli

Snack:
1 cup 2% milk + 3oz Sunflower Seeds

Dinner:
1 medium Sweet Potato
1tbsp Flax Oil + splash Lemon/Vinegar as a dressing + 1cup Spinach [a salad]
or 1C cooked Spinach with a bunch of garlic
[Insert whatever lean protein]

Dessert:
Great choice is kiwi, but any fruit (not in hard syrup)

This seems to be very close to ideal. Low on the Glycemic Index (14), good Omega ratio, low cholesterol and lots of good fats, tons of vitamins and minerals, complete protein.

If you can afford it, i heartily recommend organics for at least the spinach, blueberries and milk. If you are unfamiliar with Flax Oil, it is available in large supermarkets and health food stores in the refrigerated section.

The only deficiencies:

• 73% Thiamin
• 81% Zinc

Vitamin breakdown:

• A - 867%
• C - 360%
• D - 282%
• E - 169%
• K - 1264%
• Thiamin - 73%
• Riboflavin - 138%
• Niacin - 132%
• B6 - 113%
• Folate - 163%
• B12 - 200%
• Pantothenic Acid - 116%
• Calcium - 169%

Mineral breakdown:

• Calcium 169%
• Iron 90%
• Magnesium 132%
• Phosphorus 264%
• Potassium 124%
• Sodium 85%
• Zinc 81%
• Copper 139%
• Manganese 318%
• Selenium 284% *199 mcg, dangerous upper limit is 400 mcg

Feel free to round this out with a bowl of cereal for breakfast. And steer clear of multivitamins, you’re getting plenty of them already and don’t want to megadose!

I’d especially like to thank nutritiondata for being such a fantastic resource for finding nutrional information!

Recipe for Java Cookies

A school in Little Rock offered bonuses to teachers for improved student testing. Naturally, students’ scores jumped 29 percent. Even more naturally, parents love it. Most natural of all: Teachers’ unions are forcing them to stop

Ah, yes, the IntarWebs. Connecting two people’s sex toys in real time

The evolution of a web developer/designer

Clarins unveils anti-aging satellite defender

AJAX Debugging with Firebug

When every local news outlet and police tell you the ice is not safe, it must be time to plow a road across the lake. Well, halfway across the lake

Vet accused of injecting horses with vodka pre-race

If you’re going to steal a bunch of GPS devices, you might want to TURN THEM OFF before the cops do their no-brainer

If two passenger jets are two miles apart, travelling at 500 MPH directly toward each other at 30,000 feet, how many pairs of soiled underwear will you have?

Chocolate Covered SQL - Funny Computer screwups

The sale of prescription drugs has more than doubled in the U.S. during the past 8 years. In 1990, Americans spent $37.7 billion on prescriptions; in 1997, national spending on prescriptions reached 78.9 billion. Prescription drugs are the fastest-growing portion of health-care costs, having risen at the rate of 17% per year for the past few years. [1]

Tons of money spent on diets, pharmaceutical costs rising yearly. Knowing what we do about nutrition and its impact on health, lets focus instead on prevention, instead of just treating symptoms. Heresy you say, but just imagine!

So, being the “Health Nazi” in my circle, I’ve spent years pondering what I like to call Bachelor Chow.

First, let’s explain my definition of bachelor chow:

1. A specific blend of foods, specifically engineered to meet all nutritional and caloric needs that can be produced in bulk and eaten for every meal of the day.
2. Human equivalent to commercial pet foods.

Basically, a conveniently-prepared and healthy blend of foods that fulfill your necessary requirements. Taste is a secondary in this exercise, but of course, it should be edible. Also, we’ll assume that nutrition bars and weight-loss shakes are basically a multivitamin, fillers and sugar. We want to create a “whole functional food” not something cooked up in a lab.

We should also set some ground rules:

1. Nutritional needs should shift as you age. A puberty-aged boy require a very different nutritional composition from an elderly post-menopausal woman. So, to make the exercise more practical:
1. Bachelor Chow is created for the average late-20s computer-geek.
2. Activity level is light to moderate.
3. Health is good, weight is normal. (We’ll assume 5′8″ and 150lbs)
2. Bachelor Chow meals should cost no more than an average lunch at a restaurant. As an arbitrary price point, I pay on average $8US for lunch.
3. Preparation time should not exceed 15 minutes, and as a best case, would not require refrigeration and entail simply pouring from a bulk-bag into a bowl and adding water to reconstitute.

With these points in mind, it’s time to draw up a specific shopping list of nutritional needs.

• Caloric intake should be 2500 calories to maintain weight
• Minimize ingredients that could pose a risk if eaten too often
• Sadly, this removes most large ocean-dwelling fish due to heavy-metal poisoning.
• Try to use as many organics as possible, keeping in mind the $8US max budget constraint.
• Achieve nutrient levels as close as possible to the FDA’s new dietary guidelines.
• 1 gram of fiber for every 100 calories (so, daily intake of 25 grams of fiber)

This is quite the shopping list. Perhaps it would be easier to break food into macro-components.

Healthy Proteins: (opinionated ordering of most healthy choices to least)

• Beans
• Chicken
• Small fish such as Salmon, Pollock, and Catfish, and Shrimp.
• Soy-products
• Eggs
• Dairy

Healthy Fats: (opinionated ordering of most healthy choices to least)

• Walnuts
• Almonds
• Flax Seeds (ground or oil)
• Avocado
• Peanuts
• Dairy/Cheese

Healthy Carbs: (Sticking with complex densely nutritious carbs, in no order)

• Any fruits and veggies except white potatoes and corn.
• Especially superfoods like Blueberries, Broccoli, Oranges, Pumpkin, Spinach, Tomatoes
• Wild and Brown Rice
• Whole-grain bread (read label for at least 3 grams of dietary fiber per serving)
• Oatmeal
• Whole wheat pasta

Now that we have our shopping list, please give me some ideas of how to mix them together in the comments!

And, yes, I am aware of the monkey chow dude. While very similar in philosophy to bachelor chow, he couldn’t handle the food past 7 days. I want a long-term solution.

In part 1a, I’ll add my own recipe experiments and thoughts.

Any e-mails sent to that address will show up automatically on the web page. You can read them, click on links, and even reply to them. The e-mail address will expire after 10 minutes.

Why would you use this? Maybe you want to sign up for a site which requires that you provide an e-mail address to send a validation e-mail to. And maybe you don’t want to give up your real e-mail address and end up on a bunch of spam lists. This is nice and disposable. And it’s free. Enjoy!

Just try and tell me that isn’t the most rad thing!

Unfortunately, a few sites are already aware of this and block registrations from the specific domain, but 99.9% still let you through! Enjoy while it lasts… Now, if there were only some way to have a 10 minute Web browser and Windows installation that you could dispose of and never have to worry about spyware and virii…

[edit]

Apparently, there are a few other sites that do this as well. Many require you to login though. But if a site blocks a specific disposable email account, google for another.

Here is another: dodge-it

One of the areas that always gets us discussing the two different approaches is the SQL JSTL tags in J2EE.

I positively, absolutely, completely despise these tags. I have two main gripes about them:

1. The J2EE spec says: “The JSTL SQL tags for accessing databases listed in Table 14-8 are designed for quick prototyping and simple applications.” Unfortunately, that’s just asking for trouble. I don’t know about others, but from my experience, management/product development tends to see a “prototype” or a “simple application” and, if they like it, immediately want to move it to production. And then they want to begin enhancing it. Never mind if it was just thrown together in a couple of hours as a proof of concept.

To me, this is almost as if Sun hadn’t learned past lessons in releasing technologies that caused more headaches than they solved, e.g. creating JSP’s and then telling people to use a model 1 architecture. Which brings me right to…

2. These tags discourage the use of the MVC pattern. I’m willing to go out on a limb here and bet that the JSP’s in applications that make use of these tags also contain business logic, and presentation logic.

Again, this is a bad thing.

That’s why I always take the slightly longer approach of engineering a foundation for any application I work. It’s really not that difficult nowadays with the many excellent open source frameworks out there (Spring, Hibernate, etc.). There’s really no reason to just hack something together any more.

I’ve been bitten in the ass in the past way too many times by misuse of JSP’s (tag related or otherwise), so now I’ve made it a point to always lay a solid foundation for anything I build. That way, if I ever need to support and/or enhance it, I’ll know that I won’t have to go digging through JSP after JSP with embedded SQL, business logic, and presentation logic.

And, more fun… One of these gizmos humping a Wii.

Ten New Year’s resolutions for us irrational investors

Summary:

The market is unpredictable. Accept that you can’t time the market and buy (low cost) index funds for the long-haul. And of course, fund your retirement nest-egg!

My additions and comments are the indented lines and denoted [me:]

1. OK, say it out loud: ‘I am an irrational investor!’

Acceptance is the first step to recovery

2. Yes, I know I’m running a handicap race against Street pros

3. I will never again try to predict our unpredictable markets

4. Yes, I’ll be optimistic about my life, but not the market

5. I will focus on the long term and stop active trading

6. I resolve to live ‘below my means,’ saving 10% for retirement

To me, this is at least #2, not #6

7. I resolve to trust nothing I read in the media

This goes for more than just the financial media…

8. OK, I know my broker’s advice is always biased in his favor

9. I promise I will build a well-diversified portfolio

10. In 2007 and beyond, I will only buy no-load [me: LOW expense ratio] index funds [me: or ETFs]

If you just can’t make the switch to passive index investing, change the above to:

• In 2007 and beyond, I will only buy no-load index low-expense ratio funds.

]]> http://evsh.net/read-ten-new-years-resolutions-for-us-irrational-investors/feed/ http://evsh.net/enamored-with-etfs/ http://evsh.net/enamored-with-etfs/#comments Sun, 07 Jan 2007 05:08:06 +0000 Olav2 etf investing mutual funds http://evsh.net/archives/12 I’ve been enamored with ETFs ever since I read the Radical Guide to Investing.

If you aren’t aware, there is an investment vehicle that is taking the country by storm called ETFs. ETF stands for Exchange-Traded Fund, and is basically similar to a mutual fund except it trades on an exchange and can be traded intra-day as opposed to the end of the trading day. It prices constantly as well, instead of just the end of the day.

New ETFs are showing up every day to allow the retail investor to get into asset classes that were only available to sophisticated (read: people with a lot of money) investors, hedge funds and institutional money managers.

The benefits are:

• Generally lower expense ratio than mutual funds
• ETF average expense ratio: 0.39%
• Mutual fund average expense ratio: 1.39% [1]
• Can be traded throughout the day
• A single purchase buys an entire asset class or sector
• You can (in theory) sell short to be able to hedge
• Generally more tax efficient than mutual funds
• Passive index-based investing

And of course there are disadvantages

• Commissions
  
• Since it trades on an exchange, unlike a mutual fund, you will pay a commission to purchase and sell it.
• Generally not a good idea for Dollar-Cost Averaging small amounts of money due to commissions eroding the savings from expenses.
• Could be at a Premium or Discount to NAV
• Market mechanisms usually protect this from occurring to a large extent in open-ended ETFs but due to supply/demand conditions, it is possible.
• Passive index-based investing

And if there is one thing I can’t stress enough, it’s the importance of low expense ratios.

Check this:

[2]
If you’d like to learn more, check out:

Yahoo ETF Center
ETFConnect

And for an interesting visualization of ETF performance:

Smartmoney ETF Heatmap

Please let me know if you use these in your own portfolios and if you feel you have benefited over standard mutual funds in some way.

]]> http://evsh.net/enamored-with-etfs/feed/ http://evsh.net/disclaimer/ http://evsh.net/disclaimer/#comments Wed, 03 Jan 2007 18:34:50 +0000 Olav2 disclaimer legal http://evsh.net/?p=5 Although we will attempt to keep information accurate, the accuracy of the information provided cannot be guaranteed. All parties providing information on evsh.net warrant that the copying, distribution and use of such materials in connection with evsh.net will not violate any other party’s proprietary rights.

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