Okay, first try to answer these 5 questions.

How many does the economist claim you had correct? 5?

Here are the correct answers anno 2010:

1. Obviously the couch costs less than 150 or rational actor theory says the store wouldn’t have the sale. It also fits in with other psychological factors to have a massive discount “sale;” if you’ve ever researched buying a car you know the sticker price is fake anyways. So the only choice is that the couch costs the retailer $120.

2. Cannot be answered. There’s no place to enter the parameters of the proper binomial distribution.

3. Same concept as question 1. So (dealer invoice) – (incentives) is probably around $8000.

4. Statistically speaking, everyone takes the lump sum instead of the 20 year annuity, so the payout is going to be smaller than the 2 million pot. If you figure a generous 7 percent interest rate for the time discount they’ll each get roughly 100k.

5. $240, 20 dollars in interest the first year, 22 the second, and 1 dollar a year in fees because my bank charges me 10 cents per debit transaction. I try to use my Discovercard to avoid that but the local sub shop doesn’t accept them.

You’ve all seen this, of course.

[Apple responds:]

[Quote:]

But I have a take on that – people only made money out of records for a very, very small time. When The Rolling Stones started out, we didn’t make any money out of records because record companies wouldn’t pay you! They didn’t pay anyone!

Then, there was a small period from 1970 to 1997, where people did get paid, and they got paid very handsomely and everyone made money. But now that period has gone.

So if you look at the history of recorded music from 1900 to now, there was a 25 year period where artists did very well, but the rest of the time they didn’t.

[Quote:]

First launched twenty-five years ago in October of 1985, NASA’s Space Shuttle Atlantis is scheduled for its 32nd and final launch this afternoon (at 2:20pm ET). This launch – one of only three remaining missions left in NASA’s Shuttle program – will deliver an Integrated Cargo Carrier and a Russian-built Mini Research Module to the International Space Station. Collected here are a series of photographs of Atlantis’ recent activity, as it descended from orbit last November, landed, and was processed and prepped for today’s final launch. (42 photos total)

11
In Orbiter Processing Facility-1 at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, two of three space shuttle main engines have been installed on space shuttle Atlantis for its upcoming STS-132 mission. (NASA/Troy Cryder) #

Iceland, Eyjafjallajökull – May 1st and 2nd, 2010 from Sean Stiegemeier on Vimeo.

[Quote:]

As more details emerge about the explosion and sinking of the Deepwater Horizon, which killed 11 workers and spilled millions of gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico, it has become clear that the single-minded drive for profit and a total lack of regulation created the disaster.

In the immediate aftermath of the explosion, oil giant BP, rig operator Transocean and the Obama administration all took the position that the disaster was an unforeseeable event. Interviews with workers, information gathered by researchers and testimony given to Congressional and Coast Guard hearings prove, however, that there was in fact ample warning that a disaster was possible, even likely. But BP and its partners, Transocean and Halliburton, disregarded these warnings.

They could do so with impunity. There exists no regulatory body in the oil industry to defend the safety interests of workers and the environment, the Mineral Management Service (MMS) of the Department of the Interior having long ago ceded all meaningful regulatory control to the industry itself.

It’s all the fault of that French guy.. what was his name, Laissez Fair?

And they should send Tony Hayward to jail:

[Quote:]

Tony Hayward, the beleaguered chief executive of BP, has claimed its oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico is “relatively tiny” compared with the “very big ocean”.

Well, a bullet in the brain is very tiny compared to the mass of the rest of the body…

[Quote:]

When did a united Europe ever capture the imagination of many of its residents? The European project was an elite-driven, top-down affair from the outset. Its leaders took the view, often explicitly, that Europe’s voters did not know what was good for them and would have to be led to enlightenment. There was never any willingness to let public indifference or outright hostility moderate the pace. For the most part, voters were not consulted. When they were, and voted No in the occasional referendum on further transfer of power to Brussels, governments resolved to keep on asking until voters got it right. Germany adopted the euro despite a sustained majority opposed to monetary union. (Surely this helps to explain German anger over the bail-outs. “We were against this in the first place. Now see what’s happened.”)

[..]

Previously, Europe’s governments have responded to stress on the union by trying to accelerate the pace of integration. Don’t rule out the possibility that this will happen again. In fact you could argue it already has. The bail-out plan is a huge development in its own right, and the innovation cannot stop there. Now there is talk of stronger central control of national budgets.

Voters won’t like that. But what do voters know? It’s not as though they’ll take to the streets…

[Quote:]

Loveable Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg called his first few thousand users “dumb fucks” for trusting him with their data, published IM transcripts show. Facebook hasn’t disputed the authenticity of the transcript.

[Quote:]

The anti-gay rights activist who recently toured Europe with a male escort has resigned from a group that promotes counseling for people who “struggle with unwanted homosexuality,” though the man insists that he is not gay.

George Rekers resigned from the board of the National Association for Research & Therapy of Homosexuality, the group’s website said Tuesday.

“I am immediately resigning my membership in NARTH to allow myself the time necessary to fight the false media reports that have been made against me,” Rekers said in a statement posted on the group’s website. “With the assistance of a defamation attorney, I will fight these false reports because I have not engaged in any homosexual behavior whatsoever.

“I am not gay and never have been,” the statement said.

Next up: a visit to a river in Egypt.

Any time this happens I expect the Onion to publish an article with the headline “Anti-Gay Activist Actually Heterosexual.”

The jews.

[Quote:]

The Office of Media Relations of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops offers the following Q&A on Canon Law as it relates to sexual abuse of minors.

[..]

Q: What happens after the bishop reports the results of the preliminary investigation to the CDF?

A: The CDF will review the material and make a decision on what the next steps might be. The decision is based on the material gathered during the investigation and on the observations and recommendations of the bishop regarding the allegation and what might be a suitable way to address it. The next steps could include several options depending on what materials the CDF received. Among them, the CDF could authorize the bishop to hold a trial locally or to address the allegation through a simplified, administrative penal process. It could also hold a trial in Rome at the offices of the CDF. In the clearest and most egregious cases, the CDF could refer the matter to the Pope for immediate dismissal of the cleric (see below for more on this). It might also happen that more information is needed before a decision can be made. This would require the bishop to gather the information and forward it to the CDF. The CDF could also confirm, if the facts and circumstances warranted it, that there is not sufficient evidence of the commission of an ecclesiastical crime.

Okay, let’s check american secular law then:

- If you know that someone is a rapist and you don’t tell the police, you are a criminal.

- If you have evidence relevant to ongoing criminal or civil investigations or litigation about the rape of children, and you don’t tell someone, you are a criminal.

- If you rape a child, you are a criminal.

No where is it mentioned in the Q&A, “if we know that an American citizen committed a crime on American soil, we will alert American authorities.”

They think they’re above the law.

[Quote:]

[Quote:]

Pope Benedict XVI on Thursday called abortion and same-sex marriage some of the most “insidious and dangerous” threats facing the world today, asserting key church teachings as he tried to move beyond the clerical abuse scandal.

So there you have it. Gay Marriage Is ‘Insidious And Dangerous’, while fucking little boys is “Petty Gossip”.

The leadership of the Catholic Church is one of the most insidious and dangerous threats facing the world today.

[Quote:]

Transocean Ltd., owner and operator of the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig that burned and sank last month and unleashed a massive oil leak into the Gulf of Mexico, on Thursday filed a request in court to limit its liability to just under $27 million.