Someone Need an A$$ Whoopin?

This reminded me of my childhood. My father's "weapon of choice" was his slipper. That may sound funny, but he could really whip that thing. Different times.

I swear, one time he made that thing go around two corners.

HT: Adam Yore

Rudolph The Red Nose Reindeer Promotes Bullying! (sniff, sniff)

People of my generation got used to seeing Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer at least a hal-dozen times each holiday season. It was so ubiquitous that asking someone my age "What do bumbles do" would have about an 80% chance of being answered "Bounce".

It was only a matter of time before the PC crowd got a hold of it. Special ed professor George Giuliani claims that St. Nick's behavior in cartoon is tantamount to bullying, and sends the wrong message to children watching the family favorite. In response, he's written a new book, "No More Bullies at the North Pole," which re-tells the story of the triumphant reindeer (I checked - it's not available at Amazon in case you were thinking of getting it).

"Santa has ten policies that are very unfair, and Mrs. Claus sets out to correct those policies, and what you just saw, where Rudolph is being treated very very badly, and that should never happen," Guiliani said.

Here's an interview of this guy on Fox. It's also notable because they have a response from Brad Stine, one of my favorite comedians. I'd say he does a good job of treating the good professor's idea with all the seriousness it deserves.

In case you're not aware of him, Brad Stine is best knows for his routine "Put a helmet on!" here's a clip


HT: Ace of Spades Headquarters

Ah well - enough wasting of time. Back to work. I have an exam to write, a paper to finish, and a presentation to check (my student-managed investment fund group is making their end-of-semester presentation to the fund's advisory board in two days, and this time we're doing it on-site at the offices of a major investment management firm).

update: The Unknown Daughter thought I was kidding when I told her someone had made up a story about Rudolph being bullied. She's finding out that the world is not only stranger than we imagine, but stranger than we can imagine. Then she proceeded to make fun of Professor Giuliani. That's my girl.

Tell Us About Faculty Interviews That Went Bad

At the FMA, I talked to several candidates on the market (of course, their opening line was the traditional mating call of the new candidate: "are you hiring this year?"). Since by now they're through the experience, I thought they could use a bit of comic relief. .

I was out with a number of my friends in Denver. The topic turned to "interviews gone bad". Most of them had been in the field for at least a half-dozen years (and in most cases, twice or more that many). So we've all either been on an interview that (as Terry Pratchett would say) "went pear-shaped") or have heard of one - and in some cases we know stories from either side of the table. After hearing a few stories that made me laugh so hard that I almost wet my trousers, I thought this would make a great topic for a post.

To get the ball rolling, I'll share tow of my favorites (I wasn't personally involved in either, but heard them from one or more of the participants):

1) Sleeping Walrus University: My friend John (the name has been changed to project the guilty) likes to (over)partake of the fruit of the vine. One night, he overdid it in a major way. His school was interviewing, and unfortunately, they were holding interviews in the room he was sharing with another faculty member. The next morning came around, and he was hung-over, probably still mostly soused, and completely dead to the world (absent dynamite or a crane, he was not to be roused or moved). So, when the first interviewee of the day came in, the other two faculty members mad ethe best of the situation, and conducted the interview with John asleep in the bed, covered up completely by a mound of blankets.

John is not a slender man (he's somewhere in the Chris Christie weight and body-shape class), so the pile of blankets looked like someone had buried a walrus (or maybe a sea lion)under there. And to boot, John was snoring at rock-concert decibel level. So, every few minutes, an interviewer's question (or the candidate's response) would be punctuated by a loud "SNNNZZZZPPPPFT". I think the candidate might have gotten a campus visit out of it, but ended up taking a position elsewhere.

2) Yes, we believe in full disclosure: An older faculty member I know came on the job market in the late 1970. His most memorable interview was conducted in a poorly-lit hotel room. I know that it's important for the interviewer to feel comfortable, but this guy didn't quit get the concept. For some reason, he felt no need to wear pants, and conducted the entire interview wearing a t-shirt and his underwear (and no, my friend didn;t remember if they were boxers or briefs - he focused on making only eye contact). Sometimes less is NOT more, dude.

If you have other stories, feel free to put them in the comments. Please pass this along to your friends, because almost everyone either has a story of their own or knows of one. By all means, don't use your real name, and try to disguise or change enough details so that they can't be traced back to the parties in questions. I'll periodically promote the best ones from the comments up to the main post (note: I may make a few editorial changes for the sake of spelling, punctuation, extremely poor taste, anonymity's sake, or comic license).

So give me your best (or worst), and let's have some "inside baseball" fun.

We Really Need Extra Credit (oh wait, we don't)

Every semester, I get a handful of students who come up to me and say something like "UP, is there anything I can do for extra credit? I reeeeeaaaaalllly need to pass this class". So this time, I thought I'd let students self-select up front instead of whining ex post.

I have about a 6-7 extra credit assignments for my investments class. I parcel them out one by one, with a deadline for each. Most will involve some kind of Excel assignment that will drive home a class topic, and will take an hour or so. If they complete an assignment by the deadline, they get one or more points added to the next exam.

I mostly have juniors in my investments class. They should currently be in the midst of applying for internships. Since they can't apply without a resume, I thought that giving them a point on the exam for simply having a resume review done by our college career services person was pretty much a no-brainer.

The end result - only three out of 21 students had the resume review done and got the points. And of course, they were my top three students.

Ah well. At least this makes it pretty easy to answer the students who darken my door in the last week of the semester looking for extra credit.

As usual, The Far Side has something that's on point.

Your Time-Wasting Moment Of The Day

Since we're at Hump Day + 1, I thought I'd post something humorous. The Unknown Daughter loves shows where someone ends up in a puddle of mud, slime, goo, or anything disgusting. So ABC's Wipeout was right up her alley. Here's a clip of their top ten:

I'll confess, I've also let her watch some episodes of Most Extreme Elimination Challenge (with the volume off because of some of the double-entendres) when the Unknown Wife wasn't around.

Based on early evidence, it's pretty likely the Unknown Toddler will als have similar tastes.

The Dismal States

If you're like me and stuck in the latest round of global warming (we're getting 8-10" - as usual, I blame Al Gore), you can use a chuckle. Here it is.

Every state is "special" for one reason or another. So, someone with far too much time on their hands put this together - the United States of Shame. Enjoy.

I will add that the Massachusetts distinction is absolutely correct.

HT: Ace of Spades.
.

Toilet Training the Unknown Baby Boy

This post is further proof that child rearing rots your brain. I'm actually posting on a finance blog about toilet training my kid. Ah well, it give me a break from madly working on the paper I'm trying to finish for the FMA deadline - I already sent one, but this one is insurance.

The Unknown Baby Boy (a.k.a. "Knucklehead") isn't toilet trained yet. He turns 2 in late March, so we're in no rush - if we make it to the warm weather, we'll probably use the time-honored approach of letting him run around outside with no pants on (yes, trees will be involved, and let the neighbors beware).

It's a time-honored tradition for guys to make a game out of their "liquidity management" (hey - it's a finance blog, so I have to at least make a pun in that direction. Some people advocate using little targets for the little guy when training (he can;t write cursive yet, so that's out...). But Sega has taken it to a whole other level. They've come out with game (called "Toylets") that's currently in selected locations in Tokyo where you can play video games by peeing in a urinal. Here's a short article:

In the early ’90s, Sega held 65% of the US video game console market, had millions of fans, and was considered one of the premier creators of modern gaming entertainment. Today, they are helping you play with your pee. The Japan branch of the multinational company recently announced that they are testing their Toylets male urinal video game at select locations around Tokyo. Toylets uses a pressure sensor located on the back of the urinal to measure the strength and location of your urine stream. A small LCD screen above the urinal allows you to play several simple video games including a simulator for erasing graffiti and a variation on a sumo wrestling match. At the end of a game, the screen displays advertisements.

... the four types of video games on the Toylets include:

“Mannekin Pis”: a simple measurement of the urine produced.
“Graffiti Eraser”: where you move your urine back and forth to remove paint
“The North Wind and Her”: a game where you play the wind, trying to blow a girl’s skirt up. The stronger you pee, the stronger the wind blows.
“Milk from Nose”: A variation on sumo wrestling, where you try to knock the other player out of the ring using the strength of your urine flow (shown as milk spraying from your nose). The record of your pee is saved and used as the opponent for the next player. So the game is sort of multiplayer. Toylets even lets you save information onto a USB drive! I fear the MMORPG that will arise from this.

Read the whole thing here.

To quote George Takei, Oh my!

I need some metal floss. Now back to work.

Dilbert on "Meeting Pirates"

I wonder if Scott Adams has been spying on our faculty meetings?

The Manslator

Here are two facts :

1. The Unknown Wife and I have somehow managed to stay married for over 20 years.
   
2. I recently took an online test for empathy and scored just above folks with Aspergers and high-functioning autistics.

How can I explain these two facts? It's simply that I married well above my station to a person who's far, far nicer than me.

Having said that, I could have used one of these - I particularly like the caveman voice - kinda fits how I feel in the morning.

HT: The Ace of Spades

Turducken? Meh! I want a TurBacon Epic

We survived Thanksgiving with the Unknown In-Laws. The Unknown Wife, her mom, and her sisters are all good cooks, so we easily put on a couple of pounds.

Many of you have heard of the Turducken (a dish consisting of a de-boned chicken stuffed into a de-boned duck, which itself is stuffed into a de-boned turkey).

But these folks have gone several steps better - the TurBacon Epic: a 20lb pig stuffed with a 8lb turkey, a 6lb duck, a 4lb chicken, a cornish hen, a quail, bacon croissant stuffing, and 10 lbs of bacon wrapped around all the layers. It's "only 79,046 calories and roughly 6,900 grams of food coma inducing fat.

To quote Yakov Smirnoff, "What a Country!"

Happy Thanksgiving From the TSA

Luckily, we're not flying this Thanksgiving - we live a mere 2 hours from our families. But in case you are, here's a pretty funny clip from SNL.


Now take off you D**n shoes!

Terry Pratchett Quotes

Before J.K. Rowland, Terry Pratchett was the best-selling British fantasy author of the 1990s. He's written more than 60 books (either by himself or in collaboration with a coauthor). In fact, while I was at the recent FMA conference I made a comment "There can only be... one thousand" at a reception,a and found that an Irish friend of mine was a fellow Pratchett-phile.

So imagine my enjoyment at finding out there's a repository of Pratchett quotes titled the Pratchett Quote File (you can also get it in a test file here). Here's one that struck home (note that the Unknown Wife and I just celebrated our 20th anniversary):

Sam Vimes could parallel process. Most husbands can. They learn to follow
their own line of thought while at the same time listening to what their
wives say. And the listening is important, because at any time they could
be challenged and must be ready to quote the last sentence in full. A vital
additional skill is being able to scan the dialogue for telltale phrases
such as "and they can deliver it tomorrow" or "so I've invited them for
dinner?" or "they can do it in blue, really quite cheaply."
-- (Terry Pratchett, The Fifth Elephant)

Unfortunately, skimming through the quote file just burned an hour and a half of my time. I guess I really don't want to start grading the 70 exams currently sitting on my desk (each of which has 10 pages of work in it). Unfortunately, I just gave the exam tonight, and I want to give them back on Wednesday (it's the drop date for the semester).

Irony

I regularly get together with a couple of guys from my church. We've been going over a book titled "Twelve Steps for Recovering Pharisees". It's main theme is that we are pretty much all hard-wired to find ways be judgmental twerps who try to make ourselves feel superior to those around us. So this cartoon from XKCD hit the spot.

How The Financial World Views Itself

A former student of mine who works at a hedge fund just sent me this. For what it's worth, he says it's pretty accurate

My favorite is how the traders view sales. Note: the image originally came from MacroMan.

Hanging Out In Scenic Dayton

I'm here in Dayton at the R.I.S.E. forum (a very large student-focused conference on the investment world), and I'm waiting for my students to get their stuff together. Since I've been here several times, I'm skipping the lion's share of the sessions and mostly just catching up with friends.

Last night, after making the obligatory pass through the Oregon District (a very funky place, with everything from art galleries to martial arts dojos (practicing with katanas) to peep shows), I went to my room to work on class stuff - my students are getting a video presentation on MBS pass-throughs to watch while I'm gone.

In the meanwhile, since it's spring training season, I give you this classic but still funny piece (complete with a mention of a lesser-known greek figure about 2:17).

Stess Tests and Shaved Wookies

Just had a stress test (there was a minor irregularity in an EKG at my recent physical). I'd been putting in a lot of seat time (on the bike) at the gym up until about 3 weeks ago when some other problems had me stopping altogether, so I wasn't too worried. But my doc ordered the test just to be sure.

Unfortunately, they shave parts of the chest to make sure that the leads for the EKG have good contacts. And I am, shall we say, a bit on the hirsute side (kind of like saying Ed "Too Tall" Jones is too tall). So I came home with a few patches missing.

I took the clippers to the rest, and now I have nubs. TMI, for sure. But I'm all about the sharing.

I now have more sympathy for my wife.

Sesame Street Has Gone PC

When Jonathan and his sister were young, I learned to do the voice of many of the sesame street characters. Their favorotie was definitely Cookie Monster. FIrst, he's got a pretty cool voice (I can only do it for a while before my throat gives out, but it's worth it). Second, he has imulse control issues. THird, he's a bit of, shallwe say, a MORON.

In other words, a typical guy. But lately, they've been trying to rehabilitqate him by making him eat more fruits and vegetables (he now sings " A Cookie is a Sometime Thing". Were Jonathan here, he'd agree with the unknown daughter - "Dad, that's just wrong in so many ways".

So, in Jonathan's honor, I give you what Cookie Monster says in an unguarded moment:


I still suspect some One Flew Over The Cuckoo's nest type action - look for the scars.

It's Exam TIme

I'm writing the semester's first exam for my fixed income class. As usual, I'm not looking forward to the grading (this time, I am NOT giving them any short answer questions - their answers are anything but). I'm hoping at least one of my students can come up with an answer like one of these:

21 seriously funny exam answers

For some reason I found this one (#18) particularly amusing. But you can choose your own:

Preparing for Obama's SOTU Address

I might tune into the SOTU (State Of The Union) address tonight. Unfortunately, I have to watch the Unknown Kids (unknown Wife has a girls night out). If I weren't, I might be willing to try one of the following SOTU drinking games:

• From the Huffington Post
• From the San Francisco Chronicle
• From the New York Daily News
  

But, since I have to watch the kids (and I want to have a liver once I'm 60), I guess I'll just have to content myself with SOTU Bingo.

Fun With Faculty Parking

I was watching the Unknown Baby Boy today while the Unknown Wife went to physical therapy (she recently threw her back out - luckily, it's gotten better). So, I got to my office later than expected. When I did, it was raining a bit, and the faculty lot behind my building was full.

Then I saw one car (a bright red Mustang convertible without a faculty sticker) that took up two spaces. That's right - it's raining, he/she didn't have a sticker, and had taken up two spaces in a lot that they didn't even belong in - thereby ensuring that at least two people who belonged there could use the lot. So, I wrote them this little note (suitably wrapped so it wouldn't get soaked):

Sorry about denting your car. I tried several times to park in the next space to your left, but it was very tight. I think I hit your rear bumper on the corner, and I might have scratched the paint a bit (but it was hard to tell, since it was raining a bit). Then i tried in the space to your right, and might have done the same. Unfortunately, with your car taking up two spaces, it didn't leave me much room. If you have any questions, please call me - the scratch didn't look too bad, and I have insurance, so I'd be happy to take care of it.

Then I left an illegible number.

It's not an original idea, but I hope the person involved has to spend a fair bit of time looking for the nonexistent damage.

In the rain.

Hey - I had to walk in it, so karma is that way.