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I've had the idea for at least three years that there should be a site where you can rate anything: doctors, architects, plumbers, schools, etc. Too bad these bastards stole my idea two years before I thought it up.

It's okay though, since they're pure evil: not only do they torture babies, but apparently they're also responsible for killing newspapers. But I have no scruples so I'll use them to get back at all the people who ever wronged me! That's right Malaysia and Slate, I'm talking to you!

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How old are you? Older than 25? Well then you better face the facts: you're past your prime; each new day just brings you one day closer to death.

Take this post from boing boing on video arcades:

In this RPGNet forum, a youngster asks, "I was reading about arcades and how you'd have to queue to play popular games as well as follow rules like no throwing in fighting game or the others wouldn't let you play. This seems rather strange. The money cost must have gotten expensive pretty quickly as well. I'm not old enough to have been to them when they were around so I'm curious about what they were like."

I am speechless. Arcades aren't around anymore? What do you do when you have to go bowling for a birthday party, but Jimmy stole the only 9 pound ball, and beside you hate bowling anyway because it sucks and it makes your hand hurt? What DO you do? What!

I know what I used to do: play Street Fighter II. It was something like this:

In arcades, you queued up for popular or new games, usually. You set down a quarter or a button or something on the machine (quarters were the popular choice), and you watched, and when the next round came up (in fighting games, this was when someone lost, but in other games, it was when they ran out of quarters), you jumped in. This usually meant you were playing against someone else, so you got to know everyone who was a regular quick.

Exactly! Except the arcade was in Japan Town so you thought you knew everyone else, but that's because you thought you were always playing the same Asian guy named Ping or something. I can say this because I'm not racist!

But wait, what were the mores of this ancient community? From Boing Boing:

I know in our arcade, there was a little sticky on the Street Fighter machine, reading, "M.Bison is an automatic forfeit of next turn", which meant that, if someone chose Bison (who, in the older Street Fighters, was dangerous as hell in an experienced player's hands), they got to play one round with him, and, win or lose, they had to hand the controls over to the next player in line.

Guess what Boing Boing, they may have taken that kind of shit at your arcade, but not at Japan Town Bowl. Yes M. Bison was cheap, but that's only if you sucked and couldn't properly counter Bison's Psycho Crusher with Ryu's Shōryū-ken. Then again, if you sucked that bad, you were probably one of those guys who played Guile all the time because you thought his flash kick was invincible (it's not). You probably never had the experience where Ping would totally surprise you by suddenly becoming awesome and using one of those crappy characters like Dhalsim to beat the pants off you.

Oh god I'm old...

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Slate's IT dude, Farhad Manjoo just wrote this bizarre panegyric to facebook. Before going into everything that's wrong with his praise of facebook, let me just remind you, dear reader, that this computer "expert" had never heard of videolan, digsby, or mediamonkey until a month ago!

Here's an argument against using facebook: it is useless.

Everyone I know already uses email and chat. Why go through the hassle of entering one extra portal just to duplicate functionality that I already have. Also, facebook's chat technology is buggy garbage right now (but that will probably improve).

As for facebook's "social" apps, they get boring pretty quick.

Do you really care that your "friend's" status has gone from "feels like chicken tonight" to "is eating chicken and it's oh so fingerlicking good" to "got salmonella poisoning but managed to claw my way to the computer to type out this status update. Please don't blame the chicken."

How many pirates can you fight before you throw in the towel and just set up a grease monkey script to automatically level you up. And why is the pinacle in ninjadom Chuck Norris? It's ninja role models like this that turned Somalians to piracy.

Lastly, how many stupid movie quizzes can you take? It's fun for maybe a week, but then it all get's incredibly boring.

Facebook seems to me to be a lot like AOL in the early nineties: an easy way to get the computer illiterate masses on to the web. However, it doesn't really offer much apart from annoying updates from people who aren't actually your friends. I don't see why, after having found their friends and learned how to contact them, a substantial portion of facebook's users won't just move on to some other, more interesting corner of the web.

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I had an interesting conversation with a friend the other day. Apparently over on the continent, people have a more sensible, civilized method of keeping time: Central European Time!

It's an hour later than British Summer time, which means an hour more sunshine all the time for everybody including hourly worker Joe!

Yes, I know what you're going to say: "Gimpei, you are insane. Central European Time is for Central European countries like Germany or Poland. Despite the many Poles in the UK, the UK is not Poland so don't put us on their time."

And you are quite right, dear reader, I am insane: insane like a person who is actually sane! Consider exhibit 1 above. Both France and Spain use Central European time, and if I'm not mistaken, large swaths of Spain are actually farther to the West than UK. What's more the Greenwich meridian passes straight through France!

British people, I know you want to keep your distinct national identity; you like the fact that you drive on the wrong side of the road, that your beer is warm, and that you eat foods with strange names like spotted dick. But maybe it's time to recognize a bit of Europeaness, of the cultural values that you share with the continent, and most of all of your shared temporal heritage.

So rise up Britons; cast aside the shackles of BST. No need to go to Spain for your sun, you can get it in Britain! You don't even have to do any crazy things like join the Euro, but you should probably take the recipe for jellied eel and vaporize it in a controlled, underground nuclear explosion.

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Dowd

Krugman

Gimpei

Rodrik

Dholakia

Someone from the right... i can't figure out who...

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When I first read this rambling, ranting letter by the recently retired hedge fund manager Andrew Lahde, I thought he might be mentally disturbed but maybe he just took a few too many bong hits.

Exhibit 1: Signs of a god complex

I don't know if you've ever had the misfortune of having to speak to someone who is stoned when you're not high yourself, but they tend to think that everything they have to say is pure genius, when in fact it is pure nonsense. Also, their solutions often involve bringing lots of people or things together. For example, a conversation on nuclear proliferation might go as follows:

-Dude... All this killing force in the world is terrible. It's really messing with my high. What we should do is... I know! We should bring all the nukes together into one place, like a spaceship, and then shoot them all into space.

-Right on man... This idea about darkside and the wizard of oz is great. Is it true that a midget hangs himself in the background halfway through the movie?

-Homeless people are also a problem. What if we got them all together and put them on an island for homeless people. It could be somewhere in the carribean so it would be warm and there would be lots of low hanging fruits that they could eat...

-Uh huh (walks off to bathroom to masturbate)

-...Then we could put them all on a spaceship and shoot them into space.

In this category I would put Lahde's "modest" proposal for reforming government: George Soros should pay lots of money to get all the best minds together to propose an alternative to our current system of government, because nobody in America since Thomas Jefferson or Adam Smith has spent any time trying to figure out ways to improve government.

Great idea Andy, except such an institution already exists, it's called an academic conference. There are plenty of political scientists, philosopher, economists etc. at these events; some with very sensible ideas, some without. What's more, this has been going on for centuries. I promise I'm not lying.

Exhibit 2: Paranoia

Lahde seems oddly obsessed with people whose parents had enough money to send them to prep school. They are both the source of his new newfound wealth and the explanation for the downfall of society. Doctors, lawyers, computer programmers, etc beware! Your children are all fools and they are responsible for hurting our great country. Take them out of Harvard right now or they may turn into something truly awful, like that terrorist Obama.

Exhibit 3: Non-sequiturs that occasionaly verge on real genius

At the end of his tirade, Lahde suddenly vears off into the debate on drug legalization. On this point I agree with him entirely. Marijuana should be made legal; it certaintly isn't any worse than alcohol and making it illegal just produces large amounts of crime.

However, much as in the case of drunkeness, you really shouldn't send emails while stoned. I include the original letter by Lahde as evidence below.

Today I write not to gloat. Given the pain that nearly everyone is experiencing, that would be entirely inappropriate. Nor am I writing to make further predictions, as most of my forecasts in previous letters have unfolded or are in the process of unfolding. Instead, I am writing to say goodbye.

Recently, on the front page of Section C of the Wall Street Journal, a hedge fund manager who was also closing up shop (a $300 million fund), was quoted as saying, “What I have learned about the hedge fund business is that I hate it.” I could not agree more with that statement. I was in this game for the money. The low hanging fruit, i.e. idiots whose parents paid for prep school, Yale, and then the Harvard MBA, was there for the taking. These people who were (often) truly not worthy of the education they received (or supposedly received) rose to the top of companies such as AIG, Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers and all levels of our government. All of this behavior supporting the Aristocracy only ended up making it easier for me to find people stupid enough to take the other side of my trades. God bless America.

There are far too many people for me to sincerely thank for my success. However, I do not want to sound like a Hollywood actor accepting an award. The money was reward enough. Furthermore, the endless list of those deserving thanks know who they are.

I will no longer manage money for other people or institutions. I have enough of my own wealth to manage. Some people, who think they have arrived at a reasonable estimate of my net worth, might be surprised that I would call it quits with such a small war chest. That is fine; I am content with my rewards. Moreover, I will let others try to amass nine, ten or eleven figure net worths. Meanwhile, their lives suck. Appointments back to back, booked solid for the next three months, they lookforward to their two week vacation in January during which they will likely be glued to their Blackberries or other such devices. What is the point? They will all be forgotten in fifty years anyway. Steve Balmer, Steven Cohen, and Larry Ellison will all be forgotten. I do not understand the legacy thing. Nearly everyone will be forgotten. Give up on leaving your mark. Throw the Blackberry away and enjoy life.

So this is it. With all due respect, I am dropping out. Please do not expect any type of reply to emails or voicemails within normal time frames or at all. Andy Springer and his company will be handling the dissolution of the fund. And don’t worry about my employees, they were always employed by Mr. Springer’s company and only one (who has been well-rewarded) will lose his job.

I have no interest in any deals in which anyone would like me to participate. I truly do not have a strong opinion about any market right now, other than to say that things will continue to get worse for some time, probably years. I am content sitting on the sidelines and waiting. After all, sitting and waiting is how we made money from the subprime debacle. I now have time to repair my health, which was destroyed by the stress I layered onto myself over the past two years, as well as my entire life – where I had to compete for spaces in universities and graduate schools, jobs and assets under management – with those who had all the advantages (rich parents) that I did not. May meritocracy be part of a new form of government, which needs to be established.

On the issue of the U.S. Government, I would like to make a modest proposal. First, I point out the obvious flaws, whereby legislation was repeatedly brought forth to Congress over the past eight years, which would have reigned in the predatory lending practices of now mostly defunct institutions. These institutions regularly filled the coffers of both parties in return for voting down all of this legislation designed to protect the common citizen. This is an outrage, yet no one seems to know or care about it. Since Thomas Jefferson and Adam Smith passed, I would argue that there has been a dearth of worthy philosophers in this country, at least ones focused on improving government. Capitalism worked for two hundred years, but times change, and systems become corrupt. George Soros, a man of staggering wealth, has stated that he would like to be remembered as a philosopher. My suggestion is that this great man start and sponsor a forum for great minds to come together to create a new system of government that truly represents the common man’s interest, while at the same time creating rewards great enough to attract the best and brightest minds to serve in government roles without having to rely on corruption to further their interests or lifestyles. This forum could be similar to the one used to create the operating system, Linux, which competes with Microsoft’s near monopoly. I believe there is an answer, but for now the system is clearly broken.

Lastly, while I still have an audience, I would like to bring attention to an alternative food and energy source. You won’t see it included in BP’s, “Feel good. We are working on sustainable solutions,” television commercials, nor is it mentioned in ADM’s similar commercials. But hemp has been used for at least 5,000 years for cloth and food, as well as just about everything that is produced from petroleum products. Hemp is not marijuana and vice versa. Hemp is the male plant and it grows like a weed, hence the slang term. The original American flag was made of hemp fiber and our Constitution was printed on paper made of hemp. It was used as recently as World War II by the U.S. Government, and then promptly made illegal after the war was won. At a time when rhetoric is flying about becoming more self-sufficient in terms of energy, why is it illegal to grow this plant in this country? Ah, the female. The evil female plant – marijuana. It gets you high, it makes you laugh, it does not produce a hangover. Unlike alcohol, it does not result in bar fights or wife beating. So, why is this innocuous plant illegal? Is it a gateway drug? No, that would be alcohol, which is so heavily advertised in this country. My only conclusion as to why it is illegal, is that Corporate America, which owns Congress, would rather sell you Paxil, Zoloft, Xanax and other addictive drugs, than allow you to grow a plant in your home without some of the profits going into their coffers. This policy is ludicrous. It has surely contributed to our dependency on foreign energy sources. Our policies have other countries literally laughing at our stupidity, most notably Canada, as well as several European nations (both Eastern and Western). You would not know this by paying attention to U.S. media sources though, as they tend not to elaborate on who is laughing at the United States this week. Please people, let’s stop the rhetoric and start thinking about how we can truly become self-sufficient.

With that I say goodbye and good luck.

All the best,

Andrew Lahde

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