Monday, March 24, 2008

From the Onion:

JPMorgan Chase Acquires Bear Stearns In Tedious-To-Read News Article

NEW YORK—As a volatile market reacts to news of the Bear Stearns fire-sale deal with a surge in stock prices but reduced bond yield, officers from JPMorgan Chase announced Monday that they were close to finalizing plans to purchase the securities giant in an incredibly complex series of financial maneuvers and obscure legal jargon that can only be described in the most mind-numbingly dense and unreadable way. Successfully adding yet another infuriating block of text to an already indecipherable paragraph, some investors said they hoped to stave off bankruptcy for Bear Stearns, which, during last year's impossible-to-write-about mortgage crisis, saw its value depreciate almost as quickly as readers' interest in this story. "Critics on the equity side have no economic standing because the deal valuation is based on intrinsic pricing models," said analyst Jack Pinard, only further bogging down the news for anyone who might be remotely interested in grasping what the fuck is going on. While speculation spread on Wall Street that shareholders might angle to boost the selling price beyond JP Morgan's very low but federally guaranteed bid, others claimed to be absolutely amazed that you even made it to the end of this sentence.

Thursday, March 13, 2008

This is so cool. It's called Mapjack and it is a hi-res version of Google's Street view. It's only available in two cities (one of which is my old stomping grounds of S.F.). Here are some of my favorite views:

PacBell Park
NBCi Office Building
XOOM.com Office Building
Lombard St.
My Alameda Apartment
Best Cheese Steaks Ever
Site of the S.F. X Games