SEC Modernizes Oil and Gas Company Reporting Requirements to Provide Investors With More Meaningful and Comprehensive Disclosure

I guess the SEC is feeling the heat on this one :-)

The Securities and Exchange Commission today announced that it has unanimously approved revisions to modernize its oil and gas company reporting requirements to help investors evaluate the value of their investments in these companies.

"In the more than a quarter century since the SEC last reviewed its rules in this area, there have been significant changes in technology that have increasingly limited the usefulness of current disclosures to the market and investors,” said SEC Chairman Christopher Cox. “These updates to the SEC rules will help ensure more meaningful and comprehensive disclosure of information that, even though it does not appear on a company’s balance sheet, is of significance to investors in making informed investment decisions."

Get all the details here: http://www.sec.gov/news/press/2008/2008-304.htm

The Madoff Tax Advantage, Some Good News For People Scammed Out Of Money

The Freakonomics blog has a nice article explaining that people who invested with Madoff can deduct their loses as theft, this has a more favorable tax treatment

Taxpayers who invested in Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC directly, or through a fund of funds, have a loss that is most probably categorized as a theft loss for tax purposes. This loss has a more favorable tax treatment than theft losses of personal non-business property. Theft loss is determined and applied to get you back taxes for the current year of loss and the three years prior. These losses remain available beyond that four year period, and they can be carried forward for 20 years…

Read the whole article here: http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/12/29/the-madoff-tax-advantage/

I am sure it won't make up for the loss completely but something is better than nothing when you are a victim of a Ponzi scheme

How come liberals are so conservative with fuel and conservatives are so liberal with fuel?

All the people I know that drive a hybrid car are liberals or lean towards the left, all the people I know that drive trucks and Hummers are conservatives. Go to Whole Foods , watch the granola types as they park their Prius, you can easily tell that they are Liberals because of all their stickers on their cars. Now go in front of a gun shop, the stickers on the cars there will be more right wing oriented; the cars themselves will also have a much higher MPG. Maybe someone should come up with some new bumper stickers:

Liberals: fuel conservatives, Conservatives: fuel liberals

Now I called people driving a Prius and shopping at Whole Foods granolas. For some of you who do not know what I mean by that here is how Urban Dictionary defines granolas:

An adjective used to describe people who are environmentally aware (flower child, tree-hugger), open-minded, left-winged, socially aware and active, queer or queer-positive, anti-oppressive/discriminatory (racial, sexual, gender, class, age, etc.) with an organic and natural emphasis on living, who will usually refrain from consuming or using anything containing animals and animal by-products (for health and/or environmental reasons), as well as limit consumption of what he or she does consume, as granola people are usually concerned about wasting resources. Usually buy only fair-trade goods and refrain from buying from large corporations, as most exploit the environment as well as their workers, which goes against granola core values.

BTW this wasn't meant to offend anyone, I was just in a funny mood today. Must have been that Whole Foods 365 brand cola junk

Whole Foods 365 Brand Cola Sucks

So my wife the health nut decided to bring this junk home when I asked for some cola for my bambus.




This stuff is just horrible, for one it doesn't taste as good as Coca Cola and second it doesn't NOT have ricking caffeine. Might as well drink a Shirley Temple in that case. So I told my wife never to buy this crap again.

Passive house and others of this design get all the heat and hot water they need from the amount of energy that would be needed to run a hair dryer

I have just finished Hot, Flat, and Crowded by Thomas Friedman, it was a very interesting book. Today the NY Times has an article titled No Furnaces but Heat Aplenty in 'Passive Houses'

From the outside, there is nothing unusual about the stylish new gray and orange row houses in the Kranichstein District, with wreaths on the doors and Christmas lights twinkling through a freezing drizzle. But these houses are part of a revolution in building design: There are no drafts, no cold tile floors, no snuggling under blankets until the furnace kicks in. There is, in fact, no furnace.

In Berthold Kaufmann’s home, there is, to be fair, one radiator for emergency backup in the living room — but it is not in use. Even on the coldest nights in central Germany, Mr. Kaufmann’s new “passive house” and others of this design get all the heat and hot water they need from the amount of energy that would be needed to run a hair dryer.

I wonder how that would work in Princeton where I live, we sometimes get 100 degrees Fahrenheit and 95% humidity in the middle of the summer. Could that house cool itself in that kind of heat? I doubt it.

Cat steals fish from person fishing

Got this in the inbox today. I always liked cats more than dogs, I can see people having certain dogs because they are useful. What is the point of a chihuahua? Get a cat instead, you want a cat that behaves a little like a dog then get a siamese cat.

Do I need to say anything with this picture?

I didn't think so