The First Will Shower You, The Second Will Dump On You

Most of Candidate #1's voters are:

• straight ticket voters
• single issue (abortion) voters
• single issue (gun control) voters
• naive voters
• ignorant voters
  
• voters who want change
• racists

Most of Candidate #2's voters are:

• straight ticket voters
• single issue (abortion) voters
• single issue (gun control) voters
• naive voters
• ignorant voters
  
• voters who want change
• racists

Which one are you? (Saying you are "none of these" likely means you are ignorant.)

Thank You Sir, May I Have Another?

Let's say you're in a garden. You and your spouse. And the owner of the garden plants a new tree; an apple tree. The owner tells you not to eat the apples.

Question 1: Do you eat the apples that the owner told you not to?

Question 2: If you did eat an apple, would it be acceptable for the owner to punish you? How about punishing your kids? Grand kids?

Question 3: Does the above scenario relate to slavery, Albanian blood feuds or Genesis?

What'll It Be, Guvna?

Several years ago, when I visited London, I ate at a restaurant called Champor-Champor. Apparently, I also signed up with them to send me specials, which they do about once a year. This year's pre-Christmas menu is very amusing in its pretentiousness.

FESTIVE MENU: 1 – 22 DECEMBER 2008

LUNCH: £25 (two courses*); £29.50 (three courses)

DINNER: £27.50 (two courses*); £32 (three courses)

Bread selection and canapés (please note canapés are not offered at lunchtime)

STARTERS

Chicken liver, duck liver and bird eye chilli parfait; deep fried puri bread; spiced cranberry jam

Waterchestnut and salmon fish cake; baby octopus umai; Hong Kong style XO sauce

Home-made lamb, Japanese pepper and kesum leaf sausage; Gujerati carrot salad

Tea smoked ostrich fillet, marbled quail eggs and celeriac mash; sesame and soy dressing

Chick pea, curry leaf and tofu falafel with plum tomato and Thai basil chutney (v)

INTER-COURSE (£2.80 supplement)

Coffee, khalua and clove granita

Chinese plum mulled wine and jaggery granita

MAINS

Malay festive water buffalo rendang; Kelantanese herb rice; deep-fried fish

Malaccan-Portuguese king prawn Bostador; Goanese steamed sanna bread; vegetable achar

Malay Royalty ‘opor burung’: boneless quail in thick, spicy and creamy curry; steamed jasmine rice; Indian rasam

Nonya venison in sweet soy and cinnamon sauce; coconut rice; green mango somtam

Indonesian style vegetarian ‘nasi ambeng’- a concoction of dishes including rice, curries and fried vermicelli (v)

DESSERTS

Rich chocolate mousse cake; rum-pickled green chilli cream

Poached plum trifle; Christmas pudding ice cream

Five spice and black pepper cake; cranberry parfait

Anyway, don't be put off by the crazy names. My recollection was that the food was pretty tasty...or at least different.

This Post Wanders More Than A Jew In The Desert

Apparently, the leader of Hamas has stated that the recent financial crisis is punishment from God.

"We see it as God's punishment for the criminals (U.S. and its Western allies). Nothing is more unjust than occupying an Islamic state. Nothing is more unjust than keeping the Palestinian people under occupation for over 60 years," Ismail Haniyeh told worshippers before Friday prayers in the Gaza Strip.

"They deprived our people of money and now God has deprived them of money. They besieged our people and now they are besieged by the punishment of God," Haniyeh said.

Let me get this straight. First, God waited 60 years (!) to do something? Does God not realize how long that is to people? No, that's not possible since He is omniscient. Maybe He has been trying to punish the West for years but has not been successful? No, He's omnipotent, all-powerful.

Powerful enough to flood the world, turn wives into salt, kill your first born or even turn your staff into a slithering snake. But yet, not powerful enough to blow up a bus without the help of a true believer who gets to go to Heaven and be with 72 virgins. This would be the same Heaven invented about 2000 years ago by rabbis because their followers were pretty upset that despite being the "chosen people" they were really getting crapped on by the Romans and other non-chosen's.

When the followers demanded reasons, the rabbis made up Heaven and Hell. Your reward for living a crappy life on Earth was an eternity (man, that is much longer!) in Heaven while the crappers would spend their eternity in Hell. A crappy 50 years or so now vs. a crappy forever for the crappers seemed like a pretty good deal.

It was adopted by Christianity and Islam but changed a bit so that non-Christians (or non-Moslems) replace the crappers. So it was not only no longer enough to not crap on people, you had to be part of the group. Even better, just being part of the group made you a non-crapper even if you crapped all over people?

How can you not love a God with a sense of humor like that?

Brought To You By The Wildebeat

I been watching the Flight of the Concords this week. Here's a taste of one of their songs:

Hiphopopotamus vs. Rhymenoceros

Who Wants To Win A Nobel Prize?

Caveat. It'll be in Economics. Still interested?

Hypothesis:
A market can only support a certain percent of capital seeking "better than average" returns.

Let's say you have a trillion dollar market and it averages 10% return. If a billion dollars goes for returns of 20%, the rest still gets 9.98%. No big deal.

If you raise that to 10 billion in chasers, the rest gets 9.8%. At 100 billion, the rest gets 8.88% and things are f*cked.

Just flesh that out (i've done the hard work already) and wait a decade or two and you'll be a Nobel Prize winner.

Why Are My Co-Workers So Fat?

If you are lucky enough to work with me and smart enough to come in to work today, I brought in Strawberry-Banana Cobbler. Please to enjoy.

People always want recipes. Off the top of my head, I think it's something like this:

• 6 T. butter
• 3/4 cup flour
• 3/4 cup sugar
• 1 tsp. baking powder
• 1/4 tsp. salt
• 6 oz. milk
• 2 very ripe bananas (sliced into cereal-eating size) and 4 strawberries (halved)

Preheat oven to 350F. You might as well put the butter in a 9" round cake pan and melt it in the oven.

Mix flour, most of the sugar, baking powder and salt in a bowl. Mix in the milk until just combined (don't over mix, you don't need to get all the lumps out). Pour mix into the pan with the melted butter (don't stir). Toss in the fruit.

If you want a simple recipe then sprinkle the remaining couple of tablespoons of sugar over the top. Bake 40-50 minutes.

If you want the complex recipe then bake for about 30 minutes, then sprinkle the remaining sugar over the top and bake for another 10-20 minutes.