MovableType 2.0

by

I’ve just upgraded the backend for my site to Movable Type 2.0, which was just released today. New toys are always good! :)

Front page changes being the most visible, I’ll address those first.

Of lesser consequence, I’ve taken off the ‘Recently Read’ box for the time being. I’m not reading as much as I was before my ‘puters got down here (something I hope to work on correcting after the hullabloo of moving into my new apartment settles down), and I wanted to open up space for the newest addition.

The newest feature addition is one I’ve been looking forward to being able to do since I started reading that it would be included in the MT 2.0 upgrade. On the right below the archive listings, you’ll now notice a ‘Recently commented on’ section. This lists the ten posts that people have (hrm…let’s work on this….) most recently commented on. Yeah, that was tough to figure out, wasn’t it? ;) Anyway, new comments will pop a post to the top of that list, and if you hover your cursor over the post title, it’ll display a comment telling you how many comments have been made total for that post. Nifty, eh?

The less-visible change I’ve made is to the monthly archive listings, and it’s also a change implemented in MT 2.0 that I’ve been waiting for. While I like the standard of having my newest post at the top of the main index page, ensuring that the newest information is always the first to be seen, it seemed kind of silly to me that this forced my monthly archive pages to also display in reverse chronological order. MT 2.0’s stronger sorting features, however, allow me to keep my main page as is, while sorting my monthly archives so that they can be read in chronological order, top to bottom. Makes much more sense to me.

I think those are the only changes I’m going to make for the moment. I’m sure if I stumble across something else that I feel I just have to add, I’ll babble about it. And, of course, suggestions are welcome, if anyone has any.

Explaining Enron

by

A quick primer on the Enron scandal (courtesy of A Boy and His Computer):

Explaining the Enron collapse through simple financial terms.

If you’re an average layperson, your grasp of high finance consists of knowing your ATM code. So you’re probably bewildered by this scandal surrounding the collapse of Enron, which had been the seventh-largest corporation in America.

Today we’re going to explain the Enron story, using simple financial terms that you can understand, such as “dirtballs.”

Q. How, exactly, did Enron make money?

A. Nobody knows. This is usually the case with corporations whose names sound like fictional planets from Star Wars. Allegedly, Enron was in the energy business, but when outside investigators finally looked into it, they discovered that the only actual energy source in the entire Enron empire was a partially used can of Sterno in the basement of corporate headquarters. Using a financial technique called “leveraging,” Enron executives were able to turn this asset into a gigantic enterprise whose stock was valued at billions of dollars.

Q. What does “leveraging” mean?

A. Lying.

Q. Why didn’t Wall Street realize that Enron was a fraud?

A. Because Wall Street relies on “stock analysts.” These are people who do research on companies and then, no matter what they find, even if the company has burned to the ground, enthusiastically recommend that investors buy the stock. They are just a bunch of cockeyed optimists. When the Titanic was in its death throes, with the propellers sticking straight up into the air, there was a stock analyst clinging to a railing, asking people around him where he could buy a ticket for the return trip.

Q. So the analysts gave Enron a favorable rating?

A. Oh, yes. Enron stock was rated as “Can’t Miss” until it became clear that the company was in desperate trouble, at which point analysts lowered the rating to “Sure Thing.” Only when Enron went completely under did a few bold analysts demote its stock to the lowest possible Wall Street analyst rating, “Hot Buy.”

Q. What other stocks are these analysts currently recommending?

A. Mutual of Taliban.

Q. Doesn’t Enron have a board of directors whose members are responsible for overseeing the corporation?

A. Yes. They are paid $300,000 a year.

Q. So how could they have allowed this flagrant deception to go on?

A. They are paid $300,000 a year.

Q. But didn’t Enron have outside auditors? Why didn’t they discover and report these problems?

A. Yes, Enron had one of the most venerable auditing firms in the nation.

Q. What do you mean by “venerable?”

A. We mean “stupid.” As a result, Enron executives were able to deceive the auditors via slick and sophisticated accounting tricks.

Auditor: OK, so you’re saying you made $600 million in profit.

Executive: Correct.

Auditor: Can I see it?

Executive: Sure! It’s right here in my desk! UH-oh! The drawer is stuck!

Auditor: Wow! Just like last year!

Q. What should be done to punish the Enron executive dirtballs who, knowing the company was in trouble, cashed in their own stock and screwed thousands of small investors?

A. In the interest of putting this ordeal behind us, we believe they should receive only a slap on the wrist.

Q. Really?

A. With a hatchet.

Q. Isn’t that a pretty severe punishment?

A. Actually, it has been deemed harmless.

Q. By whom?

A. Wall Street analysts.

I’m organized, really

by

Equal parts fascinating and reassuring:

The messy desk is not necessarily a sign of disorganization. It may be a sign of complexity: those who deal with many unresolved ideas simultaneously cannot sort and file the papers on their desks, because they haven’t yet sorted and filed the ideas in their head. [Many people] use the papers on their desks as contextual cues to “recover a complex set of threads without difficulty and delay” when they come in on a Monday morning, or after their work has been interrupted by a phone call. What we see when we look at the piles on our desks is, in a sense, the contents of our brains.

You are being lied to!

by

More in my current semi-fascination with conspiracy theories, and which ones might be more true than others — I’m considering picking up You Are Being Lied To.

You Are Being Lied To acts as a battering ram against the distortions, myths, and outright lies that have been shoved down our throats by the government, the media, corporations, organized religion, the scientific establishment, and others who want to keep the truth from us.

If nothing else, it could be an interesting read.

Beck’s iPod

by

Cool ad from Apple on “…the back page of the Sunday NYT Magazine, which had an ASCII-art sillhouette of Beck’s head made up of the names of all the songs on Beck’s iPod, with some marketing copy explaining that Beck has a ginormous library of MP3s from which he loads 5GB at random onto his iPod every day. Then I opened up Kottke.org and there was a link to a PDF of the ad (minus the marketing copy), which is indeed cool.” The PDF file is here, the quoted text is courtesy of Boing Boing.