RSS feed for this tag: ![[RSS syndication file]](/i/rss.png){kind=small}
- Doc Skala's Old-Time Variety Hour, episode 5
In glorious mono from Roncesvalles, Toronto, and Hilo, Hawaii, it's Episode 5 of Doc Skala's Old-Time Variety Hour, brought to you by Grace Kola Champagne and by ILOG CPLEX. In this episode I play the last of the Hawaiian tape, covering my tour of the volcanic landscape.
(31 January 2010)- Doc Skala's Old-Time Variety Hour
- In glorious mono, it's the audio Web log posting thing. Free membership is required to download the audio files. (29 January 2010)
- Doc Skala's Old-Time Variety Hour, episode 4
In glorious mono from Roncesvalles, Toronto, and Hilo, Hawaii, it's Episode 4 of Doc Skala's Old-Time Variety Hour, brought to you by Tuong Ot Toi Viet Nam, and by the words 早い and 速い. This episode features more Hawaiian tapes, and some thoughts on alcohol - in Buddhism, and in Norse neopaganism.
(24 January 2010)- Doc Skala's Old-Time Variety Hour, episode 3
In glorious mono from Roncesvalles, Toronto, and Hilo, Hawaii, it's Episode 3 of Doc Skala's Old-Time Variety Hour, brought to you by Sailor Jerry's Spiced Rum, and PC New Wave Cola. In this episode, I continue the travelogue, and give the whole Internet advertising thing really a deeper analysis than it's probably worth. Don't miss it.
(17 January 2010)- Doc Skala's Old-Time Variety Hour, episode 2
In glorious mono from Roncesvalles and High Park, Toronto, it's Episode 2 of Doc Skala's Old-Time Variety Hour, brought to you by the VL-878 pocket-sized audio device and the Ensoniq AudioPCI. In this episode I take a trip to the park, walk the labyrinth, and talk along the way about faith, magic, and whether reality exists. Don't miss it. ETA: Now in ever-more-glorious mono! It turns out that I put a file in the wrong directory and as a result, what went up on the site on the 10th was an early draft instead of the fully edited and cleaned-up version. That explains some of the complaints I got despite the big effort I'd put into cleaning it up - I thought the people involved were just being pricks, but no, it turns out that what they heard wasn't the glorious version that I'd worked on. So, if you had trouble listening to episode 2 before, give it a try again now.
(10 January 2010)- A modest proposal
I should be allowed to set up a hidden camera at the doorstep of the Dundas West subway station in Toronto, which is across the street from the local Catholic school, and take photos up the skirts of teenage girls (or anybody else wearing a skirt) as they enter and leave the building.
(6 January 2010)- Doc Skala's Old-Time Variety Hour, episode 1
In glorious mono from Roncesvalles, Toronto and Hilo, Hawaii, it's Episode 1 of Doc Skala's Old-Time Variety Hour, brought to you by El Yucateco Green Habanero Sauce, and the letters ン and ソ. Detailed summary and download link below the cut. Free registration required, to keep out the bots.
(3 January 2010)- The terrible secret of Livejournal
- I'm hearing another round of rumours about Six Apart, the company that runs Livejournal, and its deletion of Livejournal users. It sounds like they've changed their code to make it less obvious when a user has been deleted (by hiding usernames or something, instead of showing them in strikethrough), and they're continuing to not follow their stated policies of issuing warnings and conducting reviews and so on. The fandom community is up in arms, and the current situation is seen as an example of Six Apart not sticking to the promises it made last time there was a round of deletions. I think the time has come for me to reveal the terrible secret of Livejournal - the one big issue behind this situation, that neither side wants to admit even to themselves. Because of this one big issue, I think that fandom is making unreasonable demands of Livejournal. This is a sort of open letter or reality check for the fandom community: you can't expect Six Apart to give you what you're demanding, and you need to recognize why. (9 August 2007)
- PimpMaster C explains pump and dump scams
Yo, PimpMaster C here, to tell you all about the pump and dump. I know you ladies in the audience probably have a thing or two to say about that shit too, but this is not a romance advice column; I'm talking about the financial concept. It's a way to make serious bling by basically just convincing other foos to give it to you. UPDATE: Check it, my academic homies Frieder and Zittrain have wrote a paper about those pump'n'dump stock spams you get. Go read it (you gots to have Javascript to download the PDF), and don't be falling for that shit, yo.
(22 January 2007)- PimpMaster C explains call options
Yo, this is PimpMaster C again. Today I'm gonna tell you about call options, which are kind of like a financial version of the coupons yo momma might clip from the supermarket flyer. A call option is something you can buy that lets you buy something else later at a guaranteed price, if you want to.
(23 September 2005)- PimpMaster C explains the simple moving average
Yo, I gots a way of understanding the price of shit without seeing the short-term fluctuations that could confuse you. This is PimpMaster C telling you about the simple moving average.
(1 September 2005)- PimpMaster C explains isoutility curves
Yo, it's PimpMaster C again. I sent my homies around the hood to round up a bunch of pimps, and I lined them up here to give you a really clear type of description of how isoutility curves work. Check it, that term sounds a lot like "isoelastic utility", which I told you about before, and the two concepts are indeed related, but it's important to keep straight that they are two different things. Anyway, here are the pimps, arranged on a chart according to how happy they are with their investment portfolios.
(18 August 2005)- PimpMaster C explains the efficiency frontier
Yo, this is PimpMaster C, with a little help from my homies in the graphics department of the PimpMaster C enterprise. We managed to solve our Etch-a-Sketch problems and get the images into the computer. I don't wanna go into too much detail on that because it was boring as Hell, but let me just say that only a real foo buys a low-riding parallel port scanner without checking the hydraulics first. Anyway, it's time to tell you all about domination. That's a way of saying when one investment is better than another, and it leads to a thing called the efficiency frontier.
(12 August 2005)- PimpMaster C explains stop orders
Yo, PimpMaster C here. Sorry about the long time since my last posting; business has been pretty good and I kinda forgot. Also, I was writing up a lengthy article on domination for the portfolio theory series, and I put Letitia to work making some bitching graphics of risk versus return, and everything was going pretty well until the Etch-a-Sketch broke. Check it, all the grey powder fell out on the floor, and that shit is difficult to replace. We been trying all kinds of grey powders down here and so far none of them have worked properly. While Tish continues with the research, let me tell you about stop orders.
(9 August 2005)- PimpMaster C explains market and limit orders
Yo, this is PimpMaster C. I know you all want to hear more of that portfolio theory shit, but that is some pretty difficult shit and so while I work on perfecting the next installment, here's a note on something much simpler, namely market orders and limit orders. These things come up when someone is acting as your agent or broker to buy or sell shit on your behalf. You and the dealer can make whatever deal you want, but there are certain kinds of deals that are pretty common and that have special names.
(19 July 2005)- PimpMaster C explains isoelastic utility functions
Check it, some foo said he didn't believe I'd be able to explain modern portfolio theory in words even yo momma could understand, and I admit, that's going to be difficult, but it's just going too far to say that it's entirely impossible. Yo, this is PimpMaster C, starting right in with the isoelastic utility functions, which are important in utility theory, and that in turn is one of the first things you or yo momma gots to learn to understand portfolio theory.
(11 July 2005)- PimpMaster C explains triple witching hour
Yo, this is PimpMaster C. You may have heard the term "triple witching hour". Check it, I'm going to explain that shit. Triple witching hours basically turn up when you have a lot of people trying to make deals before deadlines, and the different deadlines happen to coincide.
(1 July 2005)- PimpMaster C explains diversification
Yo, PimpMaster C here with the straight deal on diversification. Diversification is a very simple principle which occurs throughout finance and in many other places, and it could be summed up as "Don't put all your hos on one corner." You foos will probably find it more convincing if I describe it with numbers, however, and so let's consider the situation of a fixed horse race.
(27 June 2005)- PimpMaster C explains value investing
Yo, PimpMaster C here to talk about value investing. Value investing is great stuff if you're good at it, and it's the strategy used by many famous pimps who have made great amounts of bling through its careful application. Value investing is based on what is called fundamental analysis, and to understand how that works, you only gots to remember one simple fact, namely that "fundament" means "ass".
(21 June 2005)- PimpMaster C explains arbitrage
Yo, PimpMaster C here to dish the story on a little concept called arbitrage. Let's say the hos on 2nd Street are offering blowjobs for $25, but up on 12th Avenue the same service of the same quality is available for $30. That situation provides the opportunity for a pimp who is quick on the draw to make a risk-free profit, by exploiting the difference in price for the same goods between two different markets. That's what the big-time pimps call "arbitrage".
(19 June 2005)- PimpMaster C explains dollar cost averaging
Yo, PimpMaster C again. Check it, I gots the goods on dollar cost averaging.
(15 June 2005)- PimpMaster C explains haircuts
Yo, PimpMaster C here, taking a break from my usual business to post what's planned to be the first of a series of articles on finance. Today: the haircut.
(15 June 2005)- PimpMaster C explains hedge funds
Yo, I gots a very simple explanation of hedge funds here. A hedge fund is where some gangsta thinks he is the shit, and tells you he can make you a whole lot of money through some complicated financial shit he has going. So you give him your money, and then maybe he really is the shit and you get rich, or maybe he blows it and you're screwed. That's a hedge fund. Check you later!
(15 June 2005)