maxxworld

Jon Stewart’s Brother is a Stock Market Insider

Following the public grudge-match between Jon Stewart and Jim Cramer, some have speculated that the reason for Stewart’s bitterness is that he himself lost much of his savings in the recent stock market crash. Indeed, while Stewart has consistently taken on the failings on the media, his recent attack on CNBC has been unusually resentful (and not as funny).

Some have suggested that Stewart lost his shirt in the stock market, leading to his unusually bitter attack on Cramer. However, a better theory has surfaced. Jon Stewart’s brother, Larry Leibowitz, is a stock market insider, working as the head of US Markets at NYSE Euronext. This article reveals that Leibowitz prepped Stewart for the Cramer interview.

It is possible (and likely) that Leibowitz lost a ton of money in the recent economic downturn. This explains Stewart’s all-out attack on the financial world, especially the CNBC. As you can see in the video below, Stewart’s original attack on CNBC is very different in style from his usual attacks: not as funny, and more biting.

So apparently, Barack Obama was rejected from Swarthmore (when he applied as a high school student to hopefully attend Swarthmore). According to this month-old Swarthmore Daily Gazette story (which I completely missed when it first came out!):

Senior Joel Mittleman ’09 actually had the chance to personally confirm the rumor when Obama held an open town hall at Strath Haven High School during the Pennsylvania primaries. “I did ask Obama [whether it was true],” he says, “not during the actual question and answer, but as he was walking the line shaking hands afterwards.” Mittleman recalls the Senator laughing in response, asking him where he heard the information, and then saying “Yes, it’s true. It really broke my heart, actually.”

From: http://daily.swarthmore.edu/2008/11/8/obama-denied/

But the plot thickens. Apparently, MSNBC picked up on this story, but almost copied the above Daily Gazette story word-for-word. Although the MSNBC story attributes the story to the “college newspaper”, the wording of the story is lifted almost exactly, including even the “mismatched quotation marks” according to @mskorpe1 on Twitter.

The link to the MSNBC story is here: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/28197566/
And in case it changes, the screenshot is shown below:

This story fascinates me on multiple levels. First, there is the obvious point: Swarthmore rejected a future world leader. But, what would have happened if Obama was indeed admitted to Swarthmore and decided to attend? Could he still have eventually become the president of the United States? Would he still have formed the crucial social connections that probably led him to success, like the ones he probably made at Columbia? And what does this say about a Swarthmore education? Swarthmore is often criticized for having a “bubble” – almost like an intellectual monastery cut off from the rest of the world. I can see how this is an apt description on many levels. And this insularity is sometimes even looked upon as a positive trait. But the more I think about it, the more I suspect that Obama would have never become who he is today had he attended Swarthmore. He probably would have become a professor, or something just as obscured from the real world.

Barack Obama has just been elected – under what I believe are insurmountable and impossible expectations. In a way, Obama just lost- when the honeymoon period is over, the fickle public opinion will fall just as fast as he rose. But more on this later.

this country is fucked.

During the primary season, Joe Biden was my favorite pick. If I had not been swayed by the exciting prospect of having a women or a half-black man on the ticket, I probably would have supported Biden. I really liked his frank and direct way of answering questions, and he wasn’t afraid to show his emotions. It gets too tiresome to see politicians mincing their words all the time. Sometimes, it’s really refreshing to see some fiery oration. And of course, this is in the great traditional of America’s founders. And Biden’s competence was not just in his passionate speaking – he always had answers that were slightly unconventional and sensible. He really appeals to the contrarian streak in me.

But since he’s been picked as the VP candidate, he seems to stepped down his rhetoric. This is a little disappointing, but it is also expected. It can be argued that his strong rhetoric may hurt Obama’s campaign. On the other hand, the VP candidate has traditionally held the “attack dog” role, so perhaps Biden needs to step it up a bit.

In the end, I will be very disappointed if Biden allows the normative powers of the national spotlight to curb his personality.

For an extremely entertaining demonstration of Biden’s fire-power, check out his speech from the Senate floor:

P.S. By the way, I noticed a spike in traffic to my blog. Did you find my blog through a link from elsewhere? If so, please comment and let me know, or at least tell me how you got here. Thanks.

Many who advocate civil unions for gay couples argue that it is a practical way of granting equal rights to gays without ruining the ’sanctity’ of marriage as that between one man and one woman. Some even argue that marriage is fundamentally a religious institution. Buy wait- there is a problem here.

First, if civil union couples have the same legal rights as that of married couples, then what is actually the difference between the two? Tradition? Religious distinctions? But the government does not have the constitutional right to be engaged in either of these issues.

If marriage is a religious institution, why is the state handing out marriage licenses? This would be a violation of the separation of church and state. And separating marriage and civil unions by name only for matters of tradition? This is just as bad as ’separate but equal’.

If we as a society recognize marriage as an institution that the church has a say in, then the state should only issue civil union licenses, even to straight couples. But as long as the government sanctions ‘marriages’ for straight couples, it must do so for gay couples as well.

Without real legal differences between marriage and civil unions, granting one to straight couples while another to gay couples would be unconstitutional, while distinguishing the two with real differences in legal benefits would be discriminatory.

From The Telegraph:

At least 50 people have lost their sight after staring at the sun hoping to see an image of the Virgin Mary, according to reports.

Alarmed health authorities in India’s Kottayam district have set up a sign dispelling rumours of a miraculous image in the sky and warning of the dangers of looking into direct sunlight.

Forty-eight cases of sight-loss, allegedly caused by photochemical burns on the retina, have been recorded at St Joseph’s ENT and Eye hospital in the region since Friday.

Despite warnings, and the potentially harmful effects of their actions, believers are allegedly still flocking to a hotelier’s house in Erumeli near where the divine image is said to have appeared. 

Here we are, surrounded by computers and aircrafts, and people are still stupid enough to do this kind of thing. As somebody famous said, ‘We take airplanes to get to an astrophysics conference. But when is the last time somebody got on a magic carpet to get to the spirituality conference?”

That’s right. I am declaring my prediction right here and right now. McCain will win the presidential election and Obama will lose. Here are the reasons:

1. Obama is black.
I hate to say it, but most of lower-middle class white America is not ready for a black president. This is not to say that lower-income whites in the south and the midwest are racists. It’s just that there is a cultural divide between these two racial/cultural groups. For the average white voter in this demographic, voting for Obama is uncomfortable. It’s important to recognize this fine line between racism and simple discomfort with an unfamiliar culture.

2. The Republicans will tag Obama with a nickname like they did to Kerry with “flipflopper”
Republicans are masters at this sort of PR campaign. A likely target for this sort of thing would be Obama’s stance on meeting with foreign leaders unconditionally. Republicans will paint Obama as someone willing to meet and negotiate with terrorists. (Which is all the more outrageous, since negotiating Terrorists is actually not a bad thing.)

3. Obama is too smart for a politican.
I hate to say it, but Obama is too cerebral to be appealing to many voters. This is unfortunate, because it is precisely his intelligence that will probably make him a great president if he were elected.

4. Obama’s message of “Change” is really bullshit.
Seriously, I thought liberals were smart. Why are we falling for this sort of crap? For one, “change” and “hope” are so vague they mean absolutely nothing. “Change”? Are we going to abandon the constitution? That would be change, right? I mean, isn’t “change” virtually what every politician campaigns for? When is the last time you heard a candidate say “We need more of the same” even when things were going well? The bottom line is, while Obama may make a great president, it’s not because of his message of “change”. His strengths lie in his intelligence and wit. Obama’s slogan of “change” is so empty and asinine. Why doesn’t he add the message “I want to win” and “We need to get more electoral votes” in addition to “change” and “hope”.

If there is one thing going for Obama, it’s that McCain is really bad at speaking. If anyone else had been the Republican nominee, Obama would have been already toast.

Troops dug burial pits in this quake-shattered town and black smoke poured from crematorium chimneys elsewhere in central China as priorities began shifting Thursday from the hunt for survivors to dealing with the dead. Officials said the final toll could more than double to 50,000.
-The Associated Press

I am convinced that the reason for such fatalities in the chinese earthquake is due to widespread practice of constructing buildings too quickly and carelessly. I have been generally very suspicious of whether China is actually becoming a first-world nation, or it’s just really good PR. I hear stories from my parents about how Koreans always check trade shipments (like sea products) from China because they are notorious for stuffing cargos of Crab shipments with blocks of lead (to increase weight). And then I hear about poisoned toys shipping to America.

I think the Chinese are trying too hard to seem like a first-world nation without actually doing the hard work. Most of the nation is still in poverty, and there is massive corruption in their government. Plus, from what I can gather about the general culture of the Chinese people, image and PR gets priority over actually improving the country itself. (This is actually generally true for Asian culture, maybe except the Japanese. But I think the Chinese have it the worst.)

I can just imagine the Chinese constructing these large cities as quickly as possible, with very little safety standards in place. And now, their carelessness and borderline deception has come to bite their own ass – in the form of 50,000 casualties. Of course, the flip side is that the world’s sympathies will be with them – right on time for the Olympics. Couldn’t have wished for a better PR outcome, especially on the heels of the Tibetan protests.

In my relatively short experience in academia, I have noticed one trend that tends to separate those in the Natural Sciences and those who are not. As in anything else, there are exceptions, but it seems to me that those with first-hand experience in the quantitative sciences understand that Science just might be the best tool we have in figuring out some of the most intractable questions for human kind – What is the meaning of life? Why are we here? Is there a God? etc.. On the other hand, those without experience in the quantitative sciences seem to think that the Natural Sciences are simply cold, hard facts – with no inspiration or spirit, and is doomed to explain only the nitty-gritty facts with numbers and charts. This is simply not true. Perhaps the most important contribution by Science to humanity is its ability to give definite, concrete answers to the questions philosophers and humanists have only been able to ponder about.

While those philosophical questions may seem simply rhetorical and un-answerable anyways, they are actually quite tractable and answerable through rigorous experimentation and logical deduction. Take the question “Is there a God?” for example. This is, in essence, a scientific hypothesis, because a world without God is observably a different universe than one with a God. (This is, of course, assuming that your definition of “God” is sufficient to yield such observable differences. If your definition of God is not as strong, than certainly it is not the belief of mainstream Christianity, Judaism, or Islam, hence of less concern.)

Of course some of these questions have already begun to be answered. The question “Why are we here?” was answered definitely by Darwin – we are here because of evolution. Now, I understand that some people mean more than that when they ask “Why are we here?”. But such pseudo-philosophical waxing is BS. The only meaningful interpretation of the question “Why are we here?” is to literally answer it with brute facts. Of course, another mistake many make is that such a brute fact-based answer is either demeaning or uncomfortable. Well, even if it were, that has no bearing on the veracity of the answer. And I don’t think it’s all that demeaning to begin with. In fact, it’s awe-inspiring that we could be here as a product of such a beautiful and elegant process like evolution. And those who claim otherwise apparently lack the imagination to grasp the austere beauty of the intricate and elegant universe around us.