Bulldog Financial’s Bullblog

As an infographics (or Data Visualization) aficionado, I stumbled across this map that overlays US States with the names of countries with similar GDP’s from this site: http://strangemaps.wordpress.com/

Texas has a similar GDP to the entire country of Canada, which makes sense considering similar populations - 22m vs. 20m

I’ve been thinking about spam recently as I’ve been making the slow change from Outlook email to Thunderbird forcing me to reset my spam filters. Whether it’s online, on the phone or in the mail, managing spam has a cost. I want back all of the microchunks of time that it takes to decide what to do with spam once I’ve determined it was in fact spam. I want back all of the delete key presses and I want back all of the missed opportunities due to false positives. Since I’ll never see my wasted productivity back, I want to advocate a new idea on behalf of future spam victims. I think that we should consider reclassifying an obvious spam violation as “Attention Theft” and prosecute it the same way we would any other petty theft. I know it’s not much of a deterrent and that enforcement would be extremely difficult, but it might stop otherwise “good” people from engaging in the practice if they knew there were legal consequences. This would also give some protection to the Opt-in people whom I regard as the white-hats in the broadcast messaging business. Just a thought.

It’s about 1pm on the day after the 2006 mid-term election. A couple of Senate races have yet to be called, but there is absolutely no doubt that the Democrats have given the Republicans what Tom Delay called “a Texas whipping”. When I went to sleep last night around 1am, I was dismayed but took some small comfort in the fact that Jim Talent of MO was in place to win. He’s one of the smartest politicians I’ve ever met, and it’s sad that we don’t have a guy like him representing us in government anymore. I’m not shocked, but I am disappointed in the outcome of that race and that fairly describes my opinion about the entire campaign.

The truth of the matter is not that Democrats won - they certainly did and I won’t vilify them for it, but that Republicans lost. I know that there is a rabid “Hate Bush” crowd that is rejoicing today, and I don’t begrudge their day in the sun. Those types one ones that can’t be reasoned with in any case and I don’t even try anymore - just like the “radical islamists” who blow themselves up to kill others. The people I’m concerned the most for is the moderates on both sides who voted the Republicans (not necessarily conservatives) out in favor of “Anti-’s” with no discernible plan for any of the things they’re “anti” about, namely the war and rampant spending. I honestly believe that Americans today are more vulnerable to foreign attacks than we were yesterday and we Republicans only have ourselves to blame at this point. Now the elections are over I hope that we can quiet the vitriolic rhetoric on both sides, but I doubt that will happen. I’m bracing for less focus on our military - a huge mistake in my opinion, higher taxes on the people that make the most money and provide the most jobs, and social programs that are designed to be equal - that is to say equally bad for everyone. We’ll see how things turn out, but I must tell you that I am deeply concerned for our future in the world.