Via Empirical Legal Studies, Above the Law, and NAALP.

I’m going to start doing this to all my dollar bills. I love the attention to grammatical detail in adding the final ‘S’ to ‘DOLLAR.’ Bravo.

Via Found Magazine.

Will flip-flops once again be prominently featured at the GOP presidential nominating convention?

Obama 2007:

Question I-B:
If you are nominated for President in 2008 and your major opponents agree to forgo private funding in the general election campaign, will you participate in the presidential public financing system?

Yes… If I am the Democratic nominee, I will aggressively pursue an agreement with the Republican nominee to preserve a publicly financed general election.

Obama’s Spokesperson, 2007:

Obama’s spokesman Bill Burton said the senator “is pleased FEC took this important step in preserving the public financing system, which is why he sought the opinion. If Senator Obama is the nominee, he will aggressively pursue an agreement with the Republican nominee to preserve a publicly financed general election.”

Obama 2008:

Sen. Barack Obama told supporters Thursday that he has decided not to accept public financing for his general election campaign.

Hmm…

Here’s another Los Angeles housing price chart:

Via LA Land and Westside Bubble.

Woot! Totally free money that’s not coming from anywhere important and with no long term consequences attached to its payment and no obvious need to ultimately recoup it and not at all a flimsy government attempt to confuse the populace! I’m gonna buy a dirt bike!

What, are they coming up with ways to tax just me now? It’s getting so I can’t afford the little things anymore. It’s not right.

I signed up for Mint.com hoping that I could use it as a free, online replacement for Quicken. It turns out that Mint.com doesn’t allow you to enter cash transactions (for no clear reason) so my hopes were quickly thwarted. I still get emails from them sometimes, though, so I went to the unsubscribe page, linked from the emails, to try to opt out. Here’s the page:

Ignoring the fact that I can’t uncheck the final checkbox, take a look at the totally legible submit button (or is it a clear button?):

It gets no clearer when you mouse-over it:

Oh, and it’s not just Firefox, here’s the site in Internet Explorer:

Same legibility problem:

Same mouse-over problem:

It’s almost as if they don’t want you to be able to unsubscribe. Go figure. Boo Mint.com, I hate you.

While filling out my mandatory federal education loan exit interview, I was asked if I would like to calculate the amount of salary I would need in order to repay my debt.  Here’s the terrifying answer:

Debt Wizard
Question: How much salary do I need to support my student loan debt?
Answer: Based on student loan debt of $185,000.00 to be repaid over 10 years at 8.5 percent interest, my estimated monthly payment is $2,293.74.

To support repayment of the debt, I should earn at least:
# $165.41 Hourly
# $28,671.69 Monthly
# $344,060.29 Annually

The “Debt Wizard” isn’t anywhere near as cool as I was hoping he would be.

And in that vein, should tipping carry a social stigma?  Is it a “malignant evil” that “foster[s] a lord-and-vassal relationship”?

I’m filling out my California tax return and was just asked if I received any income from Ottoman Turkish Empire Settlement Payments.  Damn, don’t I wish?  Those Ottomans, they must owe me something, right?  There was no “more info” button provided, so I went to the Turbotax forums to figure out what this was:

In 1999, a class action suit against New York Life Insurance company was filed by the descendents of those that survived the unfortunate events of 1915 under the rule of the Ottoman Empire during WWI. The company was sued specifically for not being forthcoming in paying up for policies of those killed in mutual massacres. The suit was settled in 2004 for $20 million, and payouts began to individuals and some Armenian charitable organizations.

Here’s a new story about the settlement.   Next up, the Phoenicians… it’s about time for those jerks to pay up!

Slash is in the midst of suing his former realtor because Slash was apparently incapable of independently judging the size of a house:

Former Guns N’ Roses guitarist Slash (also known as Saul Hudson) feels he overpaid for his Spanish-style Hollywood Hills home, which has a pool, a separate gym and stunning views. He bought the house in January 2006 for $6.2 million. He sold it last December for $5.7 million. Slash is suing his former real estate agent, claiming the house was neither as big nor as private as the agent claimed. The case is ongoing in California Superior Court.

Slash’s inability to judge a building’s size shouldn’t be too much of a surprise to Guns ‘N Roses fans who should remember that Slash paid $4.5 million for the “enormous” church used in the band’s November Rain video.

The Sun puts together a hypothetical Bloomby ‘08 electoral map as part of a larger article about the possibities of the first billion dollar election campaign:

I question a few of these.  Why are Virginia, Nevada and New Mexico out of play?  Why are Montana and Kansas in play?

Inflation a problem?  Not for Zimbabwe:

President Robert Mugabe’s government lopped off three zeroes from the local currency in July 2006 in its fight against inflation.

My economic education may be limited, but I’m fairly certain that that scheme’s not going to work.

Since entering the United States in April of 2002, I’ve spent $198,510.46 (not including payroll taxes). I don’t feel like I have sufficient amount of stuff to justify having spent that much money. I may have eaten a lot of food.

If you, like me, were wondering what the actual, specific issues motivating the Writers’ strike were, this video gives a pretty good run-down of the numbers involved, the basic history of where those numbers came from and why they’re important today:

Of course, this is all done from the perspective of the writers; I’d be curious to see an argument from the studios defending their stand.

Via DanielKells.

Click image to wide-ify.

This picture is from a Best Buy in Virginia near Charlottesville. The price of a new 3 foot component video cable was $7.99, the price of the “open item” version of the same 3 foot component video cable was $9.99.

What a bargain!

McDonald’s Monopoly is once again upon us. For those you who wish to relive the childhood thrill of hoping to win $50, here are the “rare” pieces (from Wikipedia):

Dark Purple - Mediterranean Avenue ($50)
Light Blue - Vermont Avenue ($500)
Light Purple - Virginia Avenue ($1,000)
Orange - Tennessee Avenue ($5,000)
Red - Kentucky Avenue ($10,000)
Yellow - Ventnor Avenue ($25,000)
Green - Pennsylvania Avenue ($50,000)
Dark Blue - Boardwalk ($1,000,000)
Railroad - Shortline ($100)

Two things stink about this year’s contest. A#1: the railroad only wins you $100, last year it was $5,000,000. B#2: The printed game board is no longer monopoly board shaped, instead it’s just a boring listing of the pieces organized by color. What fun is that?

UC Berkeley’s Boalt Hall School of Law paid a consulting firm to come up with a new, more memorable, name for the school. $25,000 bought them their new name: UC Berkeley School of Law.

Money well spent!

PS.  I’ve wrested control from the robots.

The two candidates I’m most intrigued by, Ron Paul (libertarian, though potentially crazy) and Joe Biden (the only candidates who wants to split Iraq in three) are, unsurprisingly, at the bottom of the fundraising barrel.

This race needs more Bloomberg.

Via APNews.

Seemingly uneven anti-tax protesters Edward and Elaine Brown had been holed up in their New Hampshire home avoiding federal arrest warrants since June of this year. They claimed to have abandoned man’s law and were going to hold out with their guns and their anti-tax philosophy (God hates taxes). Today they were finally arrested. Oh well.

I find anti-tax protesters fascinating.

UPDATE: They were tricked!

From CNN:

“We wanted this redesigned bill to scream, ‘I am a five. I am a five,”‘ Larry Felix, director of the Bureau of Engraving and Printing said in an interview with The Associated Press.

Mission accomplished:

Via Kottke.

Apparently a lot has changed since the 1930s. It turns out that the large, New York City law firm of Wilmer Hale, if their webpage is to be believed, had the following policy as stated by their 1930 annual report:

At the present time an older senior partner is expected to work 5.5 hrs. on weekdays (9–1, 2–3:30) and 2.5 hrs. on Saturdays (9–11:30), with one month vacation.

Sounds cushy! 48 weeks times 30 hours per week (5.5 hours per weekday and 2.5 hours per Saturday) works out to 1,440 hours per year. That’s not billable hours, mind you, it’s just hours. Billable hours would be significantly lower. Top firms today tend to require something closer 2,000 billable hours. There’s always rumors of places secretly requiring much more.

I guess that work week was understandable considering the starting salary for a junior associate.

Average starting annual salary of a “junior” or associate at Hale and Dorr: $1,200.

Starting salaries today at the top firms are $160,000. Back then, they worked at $0.82 per working (not billable) hour. Today’s starting lawyers, even at the unlikely rate of 3,000 billable hours per year, work at a rate of $53.33 dollars per billable hour.

Who’s better off?