06 March 2008

News Commentary

Marathon hopeful, 101-year-old , training hard
Already Britain's oldest employee, 101-year-old Buster Martin now aims to become the world's oldest marathon runner by completing the London Marathon and celebrating with a pint of beer and a cigarette.

Training for a marathon is hard for a 101 year old? This is news? What is news is that this father of 17 returned to work at 99, bored with retirement after two years.

For those of you wondering how he has stayed so fit and managed to father 17 children, it could be that Buster has done housework as a means of to both ends: studies indicate that men who do housework get more sex. It is not that men are unaware of this; they just keep hoping for shortcuts, like chocolates and empty promises.

Barak Obama raised $55 million in February.

To put this in perspective, it represents less than 2/1,000th of 1% of the federal budget and less than 3/10,000th of 1% of annual GDP. We still spend less on elections than we do on Halloween candy each year.

Home prices are dropping. The media reports this as bad news. Oddly, this same media had earlier reported rising home prices as bad news, a sign that homes were becoming unaffordable. I guess this is how the media keeps their reporting balanced; any direction the pendulum swings can be construed as bad news.

Forbes latest list of billionaires has some interesting data, among other things seeming to support the notion of globalization. "Two years ago, half of the world's 20 richest were from the U.S. Now only four are. India wins bragging rights for having four among the top 10, more than any other country." In second place, bumping Bill Gates and nudging up against Warren Buffet, is Mexican investor Carlos Slim, whose net worth has doubled in the last two years to $60 billion. The 1,125 billionaires on Forbes' list are worth a combined $4.4 trillion. Assuming a 10% interest rate, their combined net worth would generate Obama's $55 million in donations in about an hour. Facebook's 23 year-old founder Mark Zuckerberg is perhaps the world's youngest self-made billionaire. (At 23, I'm pretty sure my net worth (a shaky balance sheet that included a number of albums and a Bang & Olufsen turntable on one side and student loans and a '65 mustang prone to monthly break downs on the other) was probably closer to a negative $5,500.) With all that money, it is probably no wonder that Zuckerberg would need to create a social network site like Facebook. Many friends can be had for considerably less than a billion and someone with this much money would need some way to keep track of them all.

Personally, I'm hoping to get on Forbes' list within the next year as I begin hostile take overs of other blogs, leveraging my small number of comments to take over first Scott Adams blog and then begin picking off the blogs of people like Andrew Sullivan and Arianna Huffington. How will I finance the purchase of these blogs? By highly leveraging my comments and obscure rating into stock I expect hedge fund managers to snap up. Why would they snap this up? Because next month, some other hedge fund manager will bid the price even higher. Now is the time for savvy investors to get in on the ground floor. I'm pretty excited about this, but I digress.

Mike Huckabee bowed out of the Republican primary contest. This has nonetheless been a boon to his career. He'll be starring in a new Broadway Musical: Gomer Pyle, New Mayor of Mayberry. The drama revolves around the mayor's move to outlaw evolution in the town; that Gomer Pyle is mayor seems evidence that he has succeeded.

11 comments:

cce said...

How can I ever thank you for linking to an article about male housework inspiring more sex? He's tried just about everything save for cleaning the kitchen floor.

Ron Davison said...

Suddenly, like a scene out of your fiction, I can see a woman lean back, arching her back and, once she's caught her man's attention, casually mentioning that there appear to be dust balls under the 'frig.

Anonymous said...

Didn't Warren Buffet get his names on all the news channels last year by promising to give away his fortune to charity?

I guess he saved back a little bit for himself.

Gypsy at Heart said...

All I can say is: IT SURE DOES!
Chocolates might work on the odd occasion too.

Allen said...

"studies indicate that men who do housework get more sex." Really? I DEFINITELY wasn't included in those studies! I do the laundry, dishes, 95% of the food shopping and 50% of the cooking. I DEFINITELY wasn't included in those studies or I'd have a permanent smile on my face.

Anonymous said...

Husbands who get more sex do more housework.

Thomaslb- I also recall that about Warren Buffett, and I think the charity was the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation! -Maybe they have agreed to give each other equal charitable contributions!

Ron Davison said...

Thomas,
Warren gets to have his principal and interest too.

G@H,
the smell of Lysol ... the taste of chocolate ... she felt almost giddy as Fred walked by in his apron.

Allen,
Yeah, but you don’t know how little you would have gotten if you hadn’t done ANY housework. Plus, I’m pretty sure that you are only supposed to use it as an aphrodisiac for women you already know – otherwise they just assume that you’re with the maid service and the best you can hope for is a $20 tip at Christmas. If you are actually trying to pick up women, I kind of think that you are supposed to talk to them before emptying their dishwasher.

Scott,
cause and effect for the housework - sex connection may, indeed, be backwards. And do you think that Bill and Warren are making contributions to each other? Actually, that kind of makes sense.

Life Hiker said...

It's bad when the price of any common commodity increases or decreases dramatically as a result of speculation. In the case of home prices, all of us are getting screwed royally because speculation was fueled by our government's policies.

I'd bet Huckabee would be in line for a Tony. He's an actor masquerading as a preacher and a politician.

ronara said...

The housework is the result of excessive guilt on the husband's part. After all, you only assume the active sex is with his own wife.

Ron Davison said...

LH,
First Gore with his Nobel, then Huckabee with his Tony. This could open up a whole new wave of consolation prizes for failed presidential bids.

Ron Davison said...

Other Ron!
Welcome back to R World and leave it to you to think outside the bed, I mean box. Tsk, tsk.