Is the Plural of Sasquatch "Sasqui?"

I have a bunch of different topics I wouldn't mind posting on, but none of them are substantial enough for their own post- and rather than not post anything (which is my tendency), I'll post a compilation. (This would have been posted two days ago, but the internet has been down...)

Sometime this morning, between playing golf, swimming in my pool, and making my way into work by 1 PM (for my brutal six hour shift of reading books, watching TV, and wasting time on the internet), and laughing at homeless people, I realized- I have a great life.

I just finished reading (well, I have like thirty pages left, but I'll never read them- I can't remember the last time I actually finish-finished a book) The (Mis)Behavior of Markets by Benoit Mandelbrot. It was amazing. Mandelbrot, the founder of fractal geometry, demonstrates how the market actually moves similarly to fractal models, instead of the random coin-flip motion proposed by the now defunct Efficient Market Hypothesis (defunct everywhere but the Ivory Tower that is). Most interesting part- memory and market movement. I'll summarize- markets (and individual stocks, commodities, etc...) are influenced by the past, i.e. the past causes the future. Well, not caused, but more of a Humian correlation. Stocks that have trended downward continue to trend downward, and vice versa. It's much more complicated, but beyond the scope of this eclectic post- check out the link above for more information, it's a great book, even if you aren't interested in the market.

Dos- I'm now reading Critical Mass, a book in which "Philip Ball makes physics sexy again" (according to the back cover quote from Vanity Fair). Besides doing for physics what Doris J. from the Grove didn't, Critical Mass "asks the question, Are there laws of nature that guide human affairs?" (once again from the back cover). I'm only forty pages in, all of which have dealt with Hobbes' Leviathan so far, so I don't know. But I will, and I'll probably tell you.

Three- I'm inheriting a business in the next few months under one condition; I stay in the Outer Banks to run it. It's a simple business, changing air filters and light bulbs in a couple hundred rental cottages (i.e. 2-10 bedroom houses are "cottages" down here) once a month in exchange for some cash (should work out to around $30 an hour). In terms of what I've been looking for, it's perfect. I don't have any fixed costs other than renting a storage unit to keep the air filters and light bulbs, it's seasonal (perfect for long winters in Colorado, or a villa in the south of France), it requires no initial investment (perfect for starving ex-college students), and it's legit. It's already been incorporated, and it's a perfect fit to be my investment vehicle, along with probably allowing me to write off a decent amount of things I'd buy anyway as a business expense (hello company vehicle!). Plus, there is a ton of expansion I can do with it, provided I can find suitable help. Also, I'm making $30 an hour doing some landscaping around here, so all I need to find is some illegals to do it for less than $15 (shouldn't be tough) and I'll just sit back and collect checks and throw them in the market.

IV- I just read this article in National Review about AlGore's movie and coupled with his non-election year, non-host, guest spot on SNL a few weeks, I have to say I'm uneasy with the whole blending of boundaries between politics and entertainment. I'm not saying things were ever ideal, or that the blend is a new development, I just things are so much more seamless between the two, and I think everything is cheapened the moment Rick Santorum gets cast in some Lifetime remake of Little House on the Prairie, or when Barak Obama starts getting crunked up with Little Jon on MTV: Spring Break.

On a semi-related note, the Kyoto Protocol was stupid when it was proposed, stupid when it got voted down 95-0, and stupider now that the short-sighted countries who signed it are admitting they have no chance of compliance. The Kyoto Protocol makes as much sense as Beowulf having sex with Robert Fulton at the First Battle of Antietem...