My Sick Mind

Occam's Razor is often expressed in Latin as the lex parsimoniae (translating to the law of parsimony , law of economy or law of succinctness). The principle is popularly summarized as "the simplest explanation is more likely the correct one". I do almost all my banking on the Internet. Aside from a stray institution that "needs" a paper billing statement returned to them, I write almost no checks. Like everything else, there is good and bad to that. Most of the bad lies in the future, with the potential for Internet fraud. The good lies in the present. One thing that is particularly frustrating - until you stop and think about it - is the transfer of money from one account to another. When I pay a bill from my checking account, it takes between 2 and 5 days for the payment to reach the payee. That makes it necessary to do some actual financial planning, or else the bills will be late. It frustrated me until I figured out a viable alternative. I now pay m...

Geez. First of all, thank you to the thirty of you who have taken the time to follow me on this little Internet voyage. If you feel like the rantings get tired, there are 4 years of stuff to search. Start going back over the things you missed since you joined me and you might think I was either (a) funnier or (b) the same as now, only older and more tired. Either way, It's been an interesting time, and I wonder where my pent-up rants would have wound up if it weren't for the Internet. I haven't written much about the big oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Partly because I figure that you're already aware of it and partly because I'm at a loss to describe how I feel about it. I think I said that it would make the Exxon-Valdez look like "a Bounty commercial," but it goes beyond that now. The thing I can't figure out is how BP didn't have a plan for a pipeline break. As a driller and a major player in the oil industry, you'd think that they would ...

I'm not sure what is wrong with me. Something though, that's for sure. Tonight at the grocery store, I bought a razor that runs on batteries. Some kind of 5-blade contraption called Gillette Fusion POWER Gamer, (I don't know what Gamer means) as though my regular razor isn't powerful enough. Maybe I should have saved the money and I could just shake my hand violently while I shave? "Soothing micropulses with incredible comfort" it says, "You'll barely feel the blades." That's good, because if it's one thing I don't want to feel it's blades. It promises "Gillette's Closest, Most Comfortable Shave" [in capital letters]. That's great, and I suppose it's 20 percent better than those stupid 4-blade shavers. There's a button on it that you push to make it vibrate, and judging from the shape of it, I'd say it has other uses. Marketing, boys. I got a replacement credit card in the mail yesterday. I kno...

On a related note to yesterday's small rant over baseball's drug problem: Major League baseball has a list of banned performance-enhancing drugs that, if a player uses, will get him kicked out of the league. So, why would anyone take a supplement that isn't on the list? MLB is telling the players that the stuff they can take doesn't enhance their performance, so why would they waste their money? What's not on the banned list - vitamin B complex and bioflavinoids? Take the steroids because that's obviously what works. Meanwhile, when it comes to our mounting personal debt, it seems the blame is with us. Go figure: Every penny of Americans' nearly $1 trillion in revolving debt started with someone - some individual person - whipping out a piece of plastic and making a decision to use it. We could consider that free will and just call it a day, but there's plenty of reason to believe the story isn't so simple. There are piles of evidence that p...

Philadelphia Eagles cornerback Sheldon Brown is the latest in a long string of players who have demanded a renegotiation of a contract. You don't need to understand sports to appreciate the nonsense that goes on. Athletes don't live in our world. They occupy the same space, but technically, they are of another place. Whenever they start talking about "outperforming their contract" or similar language and demand to renegotiate a contract they signed 2 years ago, it's as clear as day. Most of you want the biggest, nicest car; most luxurious home and most beautiful spouse - most of you. Minutes after you acquire one of these, someone else gets something nicer because either the technology has advanced or you make younger friends. Buy a cell phone today and see how it looks next year. Athletes sign lucrative contracts that look good when they're signed, but they don't age well. Suck it up Sheldon. You're living a life outside the rest of the world and ...