Some topics I wanted to post last week but never got around to:
1. Just saw this in the Washington Post - about 60 million Americans are "unbanked" - no checking or savings account - or "underbanked". How do they define underbanked?
The FDIC defined underbanked households as those that have a checking or savings account but use non-bank money orders, check-cashing services, payday loans, rent-to-own agreements or pawnshops at least once a year.
So - am I part of this count when I use the check-cashing service at the Peoria casino once a year? Or any of us when we use this in Vegas?
2. Talking about Vegas, how about getting together with this guy in Vegas? The Journal* has a story about a whale who lost $127 million over a year. I'd love to know what he was wagering on.
3. Changing to science, this news from the UK. When doing an experiment where you compare two groups of people, you want to find the same number of samples in each population subset and then do your measurements and/or observations.
But what happens when - to your surprise - you can't find any members of a particular group?
Researchers were conducting a study comparing the views of men in their 20s who had never been exposed to pornography with regular users.
But their project stumbled at the first hurdle when they failed to find a single man who had not been seen it.
I wonder how much government funding they needed to come up with that finding!
4. Tiger: too much to talk about. Comments welcome.
* - see, I'm becoming better! See my use of "the Journal" in everyday vernacular?
6 comments:
If it pleases anyone, we purchased our mirror ball (displayed almost exclusively at New Years Eve) from the whale's Oriental Trading Co.
Oh, and onto Tiger. Do you now despise him as much as Lance Armstrong? Or am I reading your dislike for Lance incorrectly?
The article talks about what he gambled on. He would fit in perfectly with Wiz and I:
"He was considered a house player because slots and roulette are house games-they have terrible odds for the player say Mr. Kunder. And the way he played blackjack, he made it a house game."
"Mr. Watanabe would stay at the tables for up to 24 hours,sometimes losing as much as $5 million in a single binge. He was allowed to play three blackjack hands at $50,000 limmit for each hand...the casino raised his credit to $17 million."
Wow. $17 million on the finger. Incredible.
To asnwer your question on Tiger, Sweet:
Completely different situation with lance vs. Tiger. In Lance's case, he had a wife of 20 (?) years, and the instant he became a celebrity, he wanted to "trade up" and become involved in teh "celebrity" lifestyle - dating Sheryl Crow. So he- Lance- drove the dissolution of his marriage by trying to trade up.
Tiger, for what we know, is not trying to actively divorce Elin, and certianly is not trying to trade up.
I'm not supporting Tiger here, but completely incomparable to Lance.
Err no, it looks like Tiger is trying to trade down. Almost as if Mel Kiper Jr is in his ear telling him to trade down and accumulate a quantity of "value" picks. Yikes. Tiger - stay with the blue chipper!
So Jay, in your words:
Tiger = Mangini.
Discuss.
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