Sounds cool!

Maybe "insults" was poor word choice. It's just kinda strange to see people with strong math skills get sucked into doing stuff for Wall Street when the system is clearly rigged not in your favor. Rather than something, you know, useful to everyone. And then the rest of us are just stuck with 401k savings plans (if we're even that lucky) that we can't really do anything else with, other than play the market and hope someone doesn't screw it all up for us (even though that's exactly what everyone else on the market is there to do).

Yeah, I did have a good "accounting for engineers" class for my MS degree, it was easily more interesting than the other systems classes. Was taught by a brilliant Arthur Anderson guy who was laid off after the Enron scandal, ironically enough. Didn't cover much of the stock market, of course.

Anyways, just hold onto your butts for the next crash, I guess.

Thanks.. I'm sorta at a point in my life where all of those are actually options that are available to me, and I sorta have lower time commitments to my employer & family and a workshop area to start tinkering with some of that on the side.

I'm not at the point where I can actually start using any of my 401k savings towards any of that, though. Supposedly I have an OK but still somewhat aggressive portfolio, but I try to ignore it and let the fund managers do their thing until I see stories like this that remind us that, yes, we're due for another bubble bursting soon, and it could well be some combination of tech/realty/edu loans/energy or even something we don't expect to all come tumbling down.

All those things used to be "the conventional wisdom", but nowadays all of those things have been proven to be quite volatile.

I never believed in "making money from money"... I guess that's called "financial engineering" nowadays? That kinda insults me as an engineer, since we generally abide by physical laws. With financial laws, you're pretty much playing games using other people's rules. Other people who profess to love money above all else, and play the game to generate more money out of "nothing", and if you would just give them some of your money to play with, they'll help you "grow" your money too for a cut of the "take". But they don't add any value to the economy... they "multiply" it. And then they can just take "a little bit off the top", because no one will notice.

I'd love to invest in actual production... you know, things that add value and subtract costs instead of just "multiply" monopoly money. What options are there for that kind of thing?

And the best quote from the Ars comment section was "Darth Vader" is pretty much a Germanic version of "Dark Father"... so for all of Lucas's failings, that " I am your father" moment that the paper is largely based on was likely not one of the serendipitous ones that the paper hopes it to be.

"Han shot first", OTOH, we see cropping up in law ALL THE TIME.

Having had lived near a Mormon temple, it's obviously the guy on top signaling the end of the world.
http://www.ldschurchtemples.co...

Damn crazy 7th day adventists.

you know, a country made up of multinationals... people who immigrated from various other places. Some of them even still have dual citizenship or more.

Not to be confused with multinational corporations, but those are also a thing that happens, btw.

Well haven't you heard? The American University is a place where Russian professors teach Chinese students.

(As an ironic aside, most martial arts studios in my area are where American masters teach Chinese martial arts to Russians)

Last I checked, Russia still has plenty of quotas on how many Jews are allowed in each of their universities. Otherwise the Jews would totally take over. Fortunately, Jews are welcome to emigrate to Israel or the US and enter decent universities there. Try doing that as a black or hispanic.

America is somewhat ... different from the rest of the world, even compared to Western Europe. Diversity is not a bad thing. Lack of diversity has certainly provided its share of problems throughout history, though.

Harvard (and other Ivy League colleges) has a reputation for generating a fair amount of lawyers, politicians, doctors, etc. What do you think would happen if all of the people with positions in charge of a multinational country were all, say for the sake of argument, "white men"?

If only there was some sort of test that people could take to unearth their biases...

Oh, here are some! https://implicit.harvard.edu/i...

Protip: If someone has to give them to you, they aren't rights; they're privileges.

yep. When referring to government Dept. of Redundancy Dept. functions, it's totally appropriate to use "irregardless", regardless of how wasteful and inefficient adding the excess 'ir' is.

That sounds like the "country mouse" / "city mouse" view. I agree that to a country mouse, the vast majority of what the government does with your tax dollars looks like a pointless waste. Cities have quite different problems on a different scale than what independent rural societies deal with. I'm quite comfortable to admit that there are people much smarter than me working on those problems with my tax dollars, even if once in a while there are reports of corruption which was appropriately handled by some oversight committee.

I did grow up in the DC metro area and worked for the defense industrial complex across the street from the Pentagon, wining and dining with DoD officers and the occasional congressman. I also have a lot of friends from HS doing social work in the surrounding area. Let me tell you sometime about which group has become dependent on the government and is enjoying the lavish lifestyle at the expense of everyone else, it might not be very obvious to you.

Mad props to the conservatives for realizing that yes, people lie, cheat, and steal, and shouldn't be trusted with their money. But most liberals I know believe in The System and want government to work and do the best they can in whatever position they have to make it work. And I kinda know which world I'd rather live in, even if there is some amount of corruption overhead.