Also known as my baby sister:
Fog? Check. Cable car? Check. Alcatraz? Check. Must be the Powell and Hyde line:
More fog? Check. Bridge? Check.
In a move calculated to let millions of people believe that taste has not fled the American continent altogether, Thomas Kinkade has filed for bankruptcy:
The Chapter 11 petition was filed in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in San Jose in the name of the Kinkade production arm, Pacific Metro of Morgan Hill, Calif. It allows Pacific Metro to reorganize and puts an automatic stay on the collection of all judgments, including one for $3 million owed to Karen Hazlewood and Jeff Spinello.
"Kinkade is a … deadbeat," said their lawyer, Norman Yatooma, who accused the artist and his Los Angeles attorney, Dana Levitt, of "breaching their agreement" to pay up. "Kinkade's word is as worthless as his artwork. His lawyer is no better."
(Oh my god! It's a gazebo!)
From Matthew Yglesias, information about coffee consumption worldwide, which apparently peaks in Finland:
The Swedes are actually a bit less coffee-mad than the Finns, Norwegians, Danes, or Icelanders but as you can see here 
all the Nordic peoples drink a ton of coffee, in the Swedish case a bit less than twice as much per capita as Americans do. The Södermalm area of Stockholm where Mikael Blonkvist and Lisbeth Salander live and Millenium and Milton Security are headquartered is just littered with coffee houses like nothing I’ve ever seen in America (incidentally, this is where I stayed when I was in Stockholm on the recommendation of a blog reader—it’s a hugely fun neighborhood, definitely stay there if you visit). Personally, I drink way more coffee than the average American and find this aspect of Swedish life congenial. Even I, however, had to balk at the extreme quantity of coffee I was served in Finland where consumption is absolutely off the charts.
And another from math teacher Dan Meyer:
It is exceptionally easy for me to treat the skills and structures of mathematics as holy writ. My default state is to assume that every student shares my reverence for the stone tablets onto which the math gods originally etched the quadratic formula. It is a matter of daily discipline to ask myself, instead:
- what problem was the quadratic formula originally intended to solve?
- why is the quadratic formula the best way to solve that problem?
- how can I put my students in a position to discover the answers to (a) and (b) on their own?
This last is particularly intriguing because not only would I like those answers about the quadratic formula, I'd also like those answers about the Capital Asset Pricing Model and Black-Scholes.
Off to San Francisco this afternoon, to put off dealing with my head-exploding workload for three days. If the guy sitting in the row ahead of me leans back so I can't use my laptop, I will cry.
What will they think of next. Now you can get a pair of 2GB USB cufflinks in silver or gold. They're maybe a little pricey ($195), but I do have a birthday coming up...
I mentioned a few days ago that I'm swamped. I didn't realize at the time how swamped, sadly. It turns out I'm more swamped than Florida. I'm so swamped, the Rs.O.U.S.[1] are drowning.
So, though it's redundant, I'll reiterate I'm not dead. I am, however, slowing to the worst ratio of blog entries per month since October 2007.
Part of this comes from how much work and school are challenging me right now. This is good, actually. I have only a finite amount of creativity, but I'm using it all. And Decmeber 12th—the end of my MBA—really isn't that far away.
[1] Since "rodent" is the subject, it gets pluralized. "ROUSs" may be what Westley called them on first reference, but on second reference he said "rodents of unusual size." Q.E.D.
Chicago hit 32°C yesterday for the first time since August 9th, and barely missed setting records:
By the time Monday evening's rush hour was getting underway, 33°C highs had been logged at both Midway and O'Hare---18°C higher than the peak reading of 14°C a week earlier---a level 10°C above normal. Only 21 of the past 140 years have recorded a temperature of 33°C or higher this early in the warm season underscoring the rare nature of the hot spell. There hasn't been a warmer May temperature in Chicago in the past 4 years. It was hotter here than in perennial hot spots like Phoenix, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Miami and Orlando.
The forecast for this coming weekend calls for temperatures in the 20°C–22°C range. That still won't help my electricity bill, which will spike a little earlier than usual this year.
I've got about three hours left on the 8-hour clock for my finance midterm, which is good because I think it will take me only about four hours to finish the last bits. I'm pleased we're learning all the skills required to perform detailed financial analysis at someone else's direction, rather than the skills to direct someone else to do it and to figure out what it means, because it provides a nice break from all that stuff in all our other courses.
After today, we have hardly any work left this term:
- Strategy case, due Saturday May 29th before class
- Finance assignment #5, due Monday May 31st
- Finance assignment #6, due Monday June 7th
- Finance and Strategy final exams, both due Monday June 14th
- A 20-page Strategy paper, also due Monday June 14th
- CCL culture dash video, due Wednesday June 16th
- CCL business analysis paper, due Thursday June 17th
Our Term 5 books should arrive right around then, along with Term 6 registration, as the rock slides down the mountain again.
At least we're more than halfway done. And I've got the Lost finale tonight. I expect it'll make more sense than finance.
Actually, almost every country is #1 at something. The U.S. is first in serial killers, for example; the U.K., CCTV; Ireland, quality of life.
If I keep finding sites like Information is Beautiful, I'll never finish my morning reading.