Lies, Damned Lies, and Facebook Statuses

So one of my Facebook friends posted this gem of a status earlier today:

Investing advice from the internet. How could it possibly not be awesome?

Now, I've never one to let facts get in the way of an awesome Facebook post:

I don't know who this Thomas Jefferson dude was, but I quote him all the time.

However, when people post things that are just obviously wrong, inevitably, you also get the drones chiming in. And most of it is innocuous. But then the ReTweeting begins. And it starts making it around the internet, when you get all sorts of folks with moderate IQ's passing stuff around like gospel.

Facts are so overrated. Right after I post this as my status, I'm going to search for cat videos. LOLZ!

But just in case people are curious, DAL and AIG are both down roughly 40% over the last year. Certainly, not a great investment on your $1000, but ou'd still have $600 in equity. And Lehman Brothers was delisted in fall of 2008, so you couldn't really buy their stock. But you can buy penny stocks that represent parts of their bankruptcy proceedings. And those stocks are off roughly 40%, as well.

Now, beer is totally a great investment, but not from a monetary sense. A thousand bucks gets you about 4 beers a day (figure $0.70/can for 1460 cans of beer), which is totally awesome. Those 1460 cans gets you roughly 30 pounds of scrap aluminum, but only gets you about $27 (at $.90/lb). Now, if you can get the $.10 deposit back (in Michigan, a la Seinfeld), you can get all the way up to $146.

So, the cans don't really represent much of an investment.

However, this Facebook post does have upside. If we can get more people to drink heavily, then we should be able to get more drinking and driving going. As a matter of health care reform, I highly encourage the more drinking and driving, particularly when I'm not on the road. If we can get enough poor people to drink and drive, and if we can incentivize them to hit other poor people at fatal speeds, then we should take care of health care, social security, and traffic congestion issues all at once. So what's the takeaway? Post this:

We all know someone who has not been able to drink enough beer. Everyone should have the right to pound brewskis like a true bro, and then drive home really fast. So, what I want you all to do is to post this as your Facebook status for 24 hours. I know that most of you won't, but those of you that will know what's at stake.

You can thank me on Jan. 20, 2021, right after I'm inaugurated. I mean, even Thomas Jefferson thought so:

"The Chairman will go down as the greatest President in United States' history."
-Thomas Jefferson

So you know it has to be true.

-Chairman

Things We Never Do

So I was sitting in church this weekend, and was expecting to just stroll in, hear a sermon, and sing a couple songs. The usual. Instead, it was a little different. Instead of the usual sermon, we had some time for group prayer, praying for some of the different people affected by the NIU Valentine's Day Massacre.

I'm not really a fan of group prayer, in general, as I'm not particularly fond of being told what to pray for, regardless of whether or not I agree with the sentiment. And when I don't agree with what I am asked to pray, then I just sort of get into a funk. And I wasn't very excited to pray for the people involved in the the NIU shootings. It wasn't that I didn't feel for the victims' families. What struck me was that we only care when it hits home. And that left me with a funny feeling. I didn't know any of the NIU folks any better than I know anyone who got blown up in Afghanistan, anyone who got run over in Maryland, or anyone who was burned alive in Kenya. So I wasn't particularly invested in the NIU situation. And it just struck me that we hadn't done anything in particular to note the tribal warfare that's been ongoing in Kenya for weeks now, or much else around the world, unless there was a reason for it. And that struck me as being sort of odd.

I wasn't in the most spiritual of states for the prayer time, so I just tried to listen. And it was interesting. There were more than a couple people who were praying for the families of the shooter. I had seen the tearful father of the shooter decline to answer questions, and I felt bad for him, for sure. I thought that it was a very reasonable prayer. And I wondered about something related, in a tangential way. I wondered about whether anyone in the Christian world ever prayed for the families of Islamic suicide bombers, like the one that just blew up in Baghdad a few moments ago. I know that I hadn't. I think that I'd be more likely to pray for a fiery end to radical Islam than I would be to pray for the siblings of suicide bombers.

So I came to the question of why we seemed to get into very predictable patterns for prayer. And whether that was good. It seemed to be related to the very predictable patterns for thought that most people have. I've talked about people liking things that are similar to themselves. I think that people end up praying for things that they like, rather than things that are what God likes. We like that people like us are comforted. And I'm cool with that. But we tend to not even consider those who are not like us. I'm not so sure that's kosher.

...Thy kingdom come, thy will be done.

I like the Lord's Prayer. It seems to be simple enough.

-Chairman