Saturday, November 7, 2009

Almanacs “Gagan Singh - Bleacherreport.com” plus 4 more

Almanacs “Gagan Singh - Bleacherreport.com” plus 4 more

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Gagan Singh - Bleacherreport.com

Posted: 07 Nov 2009 04:51 AM PST

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Gagan's Bio

Gagan Singh is, simply put, a walking basketball almanac. His knowledge of the NBA is only matched by very few experts being paid ridiculous amounts of money by the major TV networks and by his ridiculously long beard.

In between his part-time job and his full time job as a Business Marketing student, Gagan Singh finds the time to write about the NBA and the sporting world in general on a daily basis.

He currently resides in Toronto, Ontario and is a big fan of the Toronto Raptors and the Los Angeles Lakers. Although he supports all of Toronto's sports franchises, his heart will forever belong to the Raptors. Living in Canada has given him the freedom to adopt the Tampa Bay Buccaneers as his NFL franchise.

Gagan Singh has been known to be very blunt and cares very little for what other have to say about him. He says what he wants, how he wants and when he wants. Political correctness is not something he believes in. Also, he will forever refer to Vince Carter was "Wince" due to the fact he lost all respect for Wince for what he did to his beloved Raptors.

One of his greatest moments came last year after him and his friends were featured on the cover of the Toronto Star newspaper following The Raptors first playoff game in years.

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BOOK REVIEW: 'CIA World Factbook 2010' Is the Ultimate Reference Guide ... - HuntingtonNews.Net

Posted: 07 Nov 2009 05:12 AM PST

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Opening shot ... Before you generalize about the major - Chicago Sun-Times

Posted: 07 Nov 2009 03:18 AM PST

See? This rampage by Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan who shot dead 13 people at Texas's Fort Hood Army base Thursday, confirms everything I've been saying all along -- psychiatrists are dangerous, unbalanced individuals; they go into the profession seeking the mental help that they themselves need . . .

Scratch that. Bad joke. But of course, Hasan does represent another suspect group in our society -- Virginians. Edgar Allan Poe was from Virginia. Shirley MacLaine, too. They're not stable people . . .

No one is suggesting that, maybe because the bias against psychiatrists is more of a mild suspicion, and general dislike of Virginians began to ebb after 1865.

But Hasan is also a Muslim, and people who would laugh off the psychiatrist/Virginia slurs view that aspect differently, because it scratches a shameful itch.

"We should seal the borders!" said a friend of mine, someone I generally respect when he isn't saying stuff like that.

"Tell me," I challenged him "how the actions of this Muslim American indicts all Muslim Americans?"

He sputtered, and I went on.

"If a lady murders her kids and says that Jesus told her to do it, does that indict all Christians? All ladies?"

I've said this before, but it bears repeating. There are two false logic threads that define racism. The details don't matter, you can plug in anything.

The first is extrapolating from the specific to the general. You meet someone from the Netherlands and they need a shower. You therefore conclude the Dutch are a dirty people. That's racism.

The other is to go from the general to the specific. You meet a guy from Iceland, and you automatically pat your wallet, because your dad taught you that Icelanders are thieves. That's also racism.

The killings at Fort Hood might say something about the strain that overtaxed U.S. soldiers are under. It might say something about security on Army bases. But if you think that it says something about religion, what you're really doing is saying something about yourself, and it isn't something good.

We don't do that kind of thing

Here's another example.

A few days before the Fort Hood massacre, one of my depressingly regular correspondents sent in the following brief, taunting e-mail:

"What, no comment on the Richmond rape? No thoughts on the richness that the perps add?"

The first sentence refers to the vicious gang rape of a 15-year-old girl two weeks ago after a high school dance in California. The second refers to my oft-stated opinion that, rather than ruining the country, as bigots claim, Hispanic immigration enriches it.

I've learned long ago that it's not my job to argue with everyone who can type an e-mail. Don't bother trying to teach a pig Latin, the saying goes: it only frustrates you and upsets the pig.

But the attitude of that message -- See what these people do? -- screams for reply. He doesn't mean high school students or Californians. He means Hispanics. Sometimes you have to answer.

I wrote back:

"One of the keys of being a racist is to hold other groups accountable for things you dismiss in your own group. The crimes committed by whites don't undermine your status, so why should crimes committed by Hispanics undermine theirs? Oh right, because you hate them already. Thanks for writing."

Assuming the Fort Hood murders are an act of extremism and not a symptom of mental illness -- it can be hard to tell -- then what could the killer possibly have hoped to accomplish?

Well, an American soldier of Islamic extraction committing such an atrocity will be seen by some as supporting the notion -- embraced by both fundamentalists and bigots, ironically -- that Muslims are somehow not part of the American story, that they don't belong in the U.S. Army. That they don't belong here.

There are Americans -- many, I would guess -- who draw that conclusion, oblivious that they are doing exactly the thing that the terrorists, knowingly or not, want them to do. Highlighting our differences, embracing sectarianism, strife, disharmony, jihad.

So how does the patriotic American try to thwart negative results of such a crime? Only one way, obviously, by rebutting the fundamentalist message, by reaffirming that America is an open tent to all who would come and peacefully accept our values, of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, and that lone unbalanced individuals who do barbaric things do not sweepingly indict their co-religionists, even if thinking they do feeds into our comfortable prejudices.

Especially if thinking they do feeds into our comfortable prejudices.

Today's chuckle . . .

"My friends were telling me I'm in the Sun-Times," said Robin Bach, whose joke about dressing as her mother and going door-to-door criticizing what everyone else was wearing was plucked out of an almanac and ran at Halloween.

The comedienne grew up in Highland Park and lives in Rogers Park. She didn't get into stand-up until she was 40.

"I started late," said Bach, 54. "I got tired of working for somebody else."

Putting her on the spot, I requested a joke. She said:

My friends in Wisconsin asked me to go deer hunting with them. I was a little reluctant, but they said, "C'mon, it'll be fun, just make sure you wear one of those bright orange vests so you don't get hurt."

I said if that's the only way you can tell between me and a deer, I'm not going.

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Author says there's money to be made in clean water -- and benefits to ... - Columbus Dispatch

Posted: 07 Nov 2009 02:42 AM PST

Steve Hoffmann wants you to invest in "blue gold," make a profit and help save mankind in the process.

He's talking about water, H{-2}O, the oil of the 21st century.

And the 54-year-old resource economist and investment-fund manager has written a 303-page primer about how to do just that.

Hoffmann thinks Planet Water: Investing in the World's Most Valuable Resource (John Wiley & Sons, 2009) is every bit as compelling as any business book on the market today.

"The global condition of our water resources has never been in more peril, nor have the investment opportunities ever been greater," Hoffmann said.

Why?

There is no substitute for pure, life-sustaining water, and it's getting harder to get by the day, Hoffmann says.

Sure, there's an abundance of water. That's why Earth is known as the Blue Planet. But there are serious disconnects: Most water isn't drinkable or isn't accessible in sufficient quantities for major population centers.

Some big cities -- including Shanghai; Mumbai, India; and Lagos, Nigeria -- already face monumental challenges of matching explosive population growth with limited water supply. Droughts, storms and contamination create massive disruptions.

There's money to be made in fixing all this, Hoffman says.

He wrestled with the idea of profiting from a worldwide predicament but concluded that clean water for all depends on private investment in technology and infrastructure. "It just isn't going to happen without it," Hoffmann said.

Kevin Commins, executive editor for Hoboken, N.J.-based publisher John Wiley, agrees. "We felt a book alerting investors to those opportunities would sell well. Steve's background in the water industry and the investment industry made him an ideal author for the book."

Although sales of Planet Water haven't exactly created a tsunami, Commins says the book is catching on. It was named one of the top investment books of 2009 by Stock Trader's Almanac.

Hoffmann earned his master's degree in resource economics with a focus on water from the University of North Texas in 1986. His 25-year career has included everything from academics to private-equity funding.

But most impressively, Hoffmann is the architect of the first water-based exchange-traded fund, which was created in 2005.

ETFs bundle stocks with defined similarities so that investors can be diversified within a category or industry. In this case, his index, Palisades Water Index, is 30 stocks, all traded on U.S. exchanges, including water utility, treatment, infrastructure and resource-management companies.

PHO, which is licensed and tracked by Invesco PowerShares, is now a $1.5 billion ETF.

Hoffmann's second fund, Palisades Global Water Index, with an international slant, was launched by PowerShares in mid-2008 and is now a $500 million ETF.

Together, his indexes bring in several million dollars in annual license fees to Hoffmann's company, Palisades Water Index Associates LLC in Plano, Texas.

"Ours are considered the benchmarks of the water industry," he said.

Hoffmann pushes ETFs as a good way for individuals to invest in water.

"It's the third-largest industry in the world, yet it is extremely fragmented and diverse," he said. "So it is difficult to identify even a dozen stocks that you could invest in. It makes far more sense to take a market-basket approach."

Tom Lydon, editor of ETF Trends, a Web site dedicated to exchange-traded fund news and market trends, agrees with Hoffmann. Although Lydon admits to being ETF-biased, he says he has cause: ETFs are highly transparent, so you know what you're getting, he says, and the expenses are much lower than a typical mutual fund. You also get diversity within a sector.

"The profitability aspect is something else," Lydon said. "One could argue that, 'Gee, the technology sector is so much more profitable and proven now compared to the water industry and water-related ETFs.' However, if you feel supply and demand is going to get more attention, you may be a little early, but from a long-term stance, it may make some sense."

So how have Hoffmann's water indexes performed?

PHO, a high-flying ETF in the boom times, took a severe hit along with the rest of the market, Hoffmann says, but it has recouped about 70 percent of that sell-off. His second index is back nearly 90 percent from its low.

So it turns out that pushing clean water is a bit like advocating investments in clean energy. There are fluctuations.

So does Hoffmann feel like the T. Boone Pickens of H{-2}O?

"I do. I really do," Hoffmann said with a laugh. "You have to remember with water, there are no substitutes. Time is a little more of the essence."

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"The global condition of our water

resources has never been in more peril, nor have the investment opportunities ever been greater."

Steve Hoffmann author

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The Almanac - OfficialWire

Posted: 07 Nov 2009 12:33 AM PST

The moon is waning. The morning stars are Venus, Mars and Saturn. The evening stars are Mercury, Neptune, Jupiter and Uranus.

Those born on this date are under the sign of Scorpio. They include Marie Curie, discoverer of radium, in 1867; band leader Phil Spitalny (known for his all-female orchestra) in 1890; Nazi leader Heinrich Himmler in 1900; actor Dean Jagger in 1903; musician/comic Red Ingle in 1906; French novelist Albert Camus in 1913; evangelist Billy Graham in 1918 (age 91); jazz trumpeter Al Hirt in 1922; Australian opera star Joan Sutherland in 1926 (age 83); singers Mary Travers (Peter, Paul and Mary) in 1937; Johnny Rivers in 1942 (age 67) and Joni Mitchell in 1943 (age 66).

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On this date in history:

In 1805, the Lewis and Clark Expedition arrived at the Pacific Ocean.

In 1874, the first cartoon depicting the elephant as the symbol of the Republican Party was printed in Harper's Weekly.

In 1916, Republican Jeannette Rankin of Montana became the first woman elected to the U.S. House of Representatives.

In 1917, the Bolsheviks overthrew the Russian government in St. Petersburg.

In 1940, only four months after its completion, the Tacoma Narrows Bridge in Washington state, the third longest suspension bridge in the world at the time, collapsed. No one was injured.

In 1944, U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt was re-elected to a fourth term in the midst of World War II but died the following April. Harry Truman, his vice president, succeeded him as president.

In 1972, Republican Richard Nixon was re-elected as president of the United States, defeating Democrat George McGovern.

In 1983, a bomb exploded in the U.S. Capitol, causing heavy damage just outside the Senate chamber but there were no injuries.

In 1985, Colombian troops ended a 27-hour siege of Bogota's Palace of Justice by 35 M-19 guerrillas. Eleven Supreme Court judges were among the 100 people killed.

In 1987, U.S. Supreme Court nominee Douglas Ginsburg withdrew his 9-day-old candidacy following criticism of his judicial ethics and his disclosure that he had used marijuana.

In 1989, Democrat David Dinkins was elected as the first black mayor of New York City. In Virginia, Democrat Douglas Wilder claimed victory in a razor-thin race to become the first black elected governor in the United States.

Also in 1989, "Night Stalker" Richard Ramirez was formally sentenced in Los Angeles to die in the gas chamber for 13 killings.

In 1991, basketball star Earvin "Magic" Johnson disclosed he was HIV-positive and announced he was retiring from the NBA's Los Angeles Lakers.

In 2000, in one of the closest U.S. presidential elections ever, Republican George W. Bush and Democrat Al Gore wound up in almost a dead heat with Bush determined the winner more than a month later following turmoil over the disputed Florida vote that ultimately involved the U.S. Supreme Court.

In 2001, U.S.-led jets resumed bombing in northern Afghanistan, targeting Taliban positions near the country's northeastern border with Tajikistan.

In 2002, British Prime Minister Tony Blair warned Saddam Hussein "action will follow" if the Iraqi leader fails to meet demands in a U.N. resolution regarding weapons inspectors.

In 2004, in an overwhelming show of force, France put down a wave of anti-French violence in Ivory Coast, its former West African colony.

In 2005, Chilean police arrested former Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori hours after he arrived in Santiago, on his way to Peru to run for president again. The 67-year-old politician was wanted for corruption and human rights abuses in his home country.

In 2006, Democrats regained control of the U.S. House of Representatives from the Republicans and reclaimed Senate leadership as well in 2006 midterm elections.

In 2007, Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili imposed a state of emergency after days of protests by opposition parties who want him to resign. He said elections would be in January 2008.

In 2008, as expected, the U.S. Labor Department announced the loss of 240,000 jobs in October, bringing the American unemployment rate to 6.5 percent, highest point since 1994.

Also in 2008, authorities said about 90 people, mostly students, were killed when a reportedly poorly built church-run school collapsed on the outskirts of Port-au-Prince in Haiti.

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A thought for the day: French novelist Albert Camus wrote, "The struggle to reach the top is itself enough to fulfill the heart of man."

 
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