The somewhat unexpected announcement of the demise of two of my favored restaurant chains starts me into a rambling somewhat indirect political statement this morning - but bear with me, I will try to get to the point by the end. I find that Wall Street frequently exhibits a herd mentality (they
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07/30/2008
It has been a pleasure to be personally acquainted with Larry Thornberry, a writer living in Tampa, for more years than either of us would be willing to disclose. Larry is a contributor to the American Spectator and other outlets and brings edgy op-ed prose to a level that I enjoy. I have frequ
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07/28/2008
When I looked at Mike Jones intriguing piece on perspective < link >, I was reminded of one of my favorite wildlife photos. It usually takes folks a second look to realize we are directly overhead with zebras and what we thought we were looking at are merely shadows. I try to spend a few minutes
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07/27/2008
Active Rain is aging well. We, as a community, passed the 100,000 member mark yesterday. The on screen statistic in my graphic clicked over today. Congratulations to the entire AR team for this major milestone. I came into the party at the 31,000 mark – 15 months ago.
07/25/2008
I note that there is a new version of Irfanview available. (v 4.20) Irfanview is an excellent utility program for viewing, resizing and converting images files. It can rename or resize groups of files in a batch mode and seems to offer the widest range of file format conversions of any program I
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07/25/2008
I don't typically do movie reviews in these pages but I am a long time fan of Ben Shapiro, a young conservative columnist that I have enjoyed for several years and have quoted on a number of occasions. Ben is 24. He graduated from high school at 16 and attended UCLA. He was a syndicated column
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07/23/2008
The Press Trust of India (PTI is a major news outlet in India), of all places, has an article yesterday about Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal being on Senator McCain's short list for Vice President and his running mate for the November race. Senator McCain is traveling to Louisiana today to meet
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07/23/2008
Many of us have read about the failure of the IndyMac Bank headquartered in Pasadena, CA. The decision to close the $32 billion dollar financial institution was taken by the Office of Thrift Supervision (OTS) who acts for the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC). Many financial instituti
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07/19/2008
I have watched as the Japanese purchase vast holdings in US real estate, the Chinese have established a significant presence in our financial institutions and the Germans purchased a major American auto maker. But now they have gone too far. Belgian based InBev NV has announced their agreement
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07/14/2008
The following photo was taken within the last several days by a friend of mine in Mandeville, LA. (He tells me it is real - not photoshop) I don't mean to be advertising for The insurance company or the agent, but I like his political message. And the agent obviously thinks it will help his bu
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07/12/2008
