Obviously, the writers have no idea what a hedge fund is — they probably assume that it’s where all the stock brokers work. What they should say is that love isn’t like a non-diversified traditional long-only fund.

In reality, love is exactly like a hedge fund. Love is a limited partnership structure (LP), it takes a large initial investment, and is largely unregulated. Frequently, it uses an aggressive strategy, relying on large directional bets and substantial amounts of leverage. The plan is to generate significant alpha (using the Lipper Love Average as a benchmark) but it is not uncommon to see a hedge fund or a love relationship with an unsuitably low Sortino ratio, indicating that it has strayed from it’s raison d’etre. This is a hedge fund (marriage) destined for fund outflows (divorce).

Love is relatively illiquid, such that if it takes on large speculative investments, and develops into something like a live-in relationship or marriage, there will be a lock-up period.

Long or Short Capital | Hedge Funds and Love

Please wait while one of the largest mobile machines in the world crosses the road. The machine pictured above is a bucket-wheel excavator used in modern surface mining... The largest excavators are over 200 meters long and 100 meters high, now dwarfing the huge NASA Crawler that transports space shuttles to the launch pads.

APOD: 2006 November 22 - A Bucket Wheel Excavator on Earth

Now that the election is behind us, and the Democrats control both houses of Congress, there's no reason not to admit it: the Right was right about us all along. Here is our 25-point manifesto for the new Congress:

3. Introduce the new Destruction of Marriage Act

4. Border fence replaced with free shuttle buses

6. Withdraw from Iraq, apologize, reinstate Hussein
9. All taxes to be tripled

10. All fortunes over $250,000 to be confiscated

12. Tofurkey to be named official Thanksgiving dish

13. Freeways to be removed, replaced with light rail systems

15. Stem cells allowed to be harvested from any child under the age of 8

18. God to be mocked roundly
21. Outlaw all firearms: previous owners assigned to anger management therapy

22. Texas returned to Mexico

23. Ban Christmas: replace with Celebrate our Monkey Ancestors Day

the Right Was Right

For his new book, the 1,000-page "Against the Day," publisher Penguin Press didn't even issue a formal announcement, but assumed, correctly, that simply including it in the fall catalog would take care of the job.

Pynchon fans eager to feast on new novel - Yahoo! News

The unusual move - the figures show China sold no crude oil at all to its neighbor in September - reduced cumulative sales for the year by about 7 percent over the same period in 2005. China's oil exports to Pyongyang had been averaging about 50,000 metric tons a month this year.

In September, China exported 125,185 tons of crude for a reported value of $62 million. All of that was exported to the United States, with North Korea receiving nothing.

China cut off exports of oil to North Korea - Asia - Pacific - International Herald Tribune

Files Forever is a new service from DreamHost Web Hosting!

* It's an online store for content providers to offer their own DRM-free files.
* DreamHost charges only a tiny one-time storage fee plus 5% 50c transaction payment fees. (Which we even attempt to minimize by combining orders.)
* Any file you get from Files Forever you own forever, and may re-download as much as you want and even loan to your friends!
* You can keep uploaded files private and use it as a permanent online archive, or a great way to send large files to your friends!

Currently, Files Forever is in beta testing and only open to DreamHost customers.

Interesting. Present rules: files must be at least one megabyte. Pricing is $6/Gb, one-time.

Naturally, forever means "lifetime of DreamHost under present ownership", which may or may not mean a particularly long time. But it is a fixed rate cost versus an alternative like Amazon's S3.

DreamHost: Files Forever

Emily Davis, 17, of Bowling Green was charged in county juvenile court with one count of littering for putting her bra on the antenna of a car traveling north on I-75 in Middleton Township on Sept. 26 with three other teenage girls inside.

The bra, which reportedly had been frayed because it was chewed by Miss Davis' dog earlier in the day, flew off the antenna. The Ohio Highway Patrol said a trailing car with two Toledo men inside swerved into the grassy median to avoid the object, flipping over several times.

- toledoblade.com -

Sometimes, when we shine a light on a particular piece of malware, we find some interesting things that would otherwise go unnoticed. One such piece of malware is the trojan sometimes called "Troj/SpamThru", among other names.

Pretty interesting writeup of a modern trojan. A little disturbing in the sophistication of the software. I was especially impressed by the software downloading and patching a pirated copy of commercial anti-viral software, to remove competition on the host.

SecureWorks - The Information Security Experts

Gonzales deep-fries Coca-Cola-flavored batter. He then drizzles Coke fountain syrup on it. The fried Coke is topped with whipped cream, cinnamon sugar and a cherry. Gonzales said the fried Coke came about just from thinking aloud.

Judges for the contest chose Shirley London's Fried Praline Perfection as the tastiest fried delicacy.

The two won out among 26 entries such as fried macaroni and cheese and a deep-fried cosmopolitan.

Either the judges are huge... or cardiologists.

Gonzales achieved notoriety in 2005 with the fried peanut butter, banana, and jelly sandwich -- selling an estimated 25,000 of the treats, according to the fair's Web site.

Next year's entry: Fried high fructose corn syrup... no, that was this year.

WFTV.com - Food News - Newest Fair Food: Deep-Fried Coca-Cola

Canadian troops fighting Taliban militants in Afghanistan have stumbled across an unexpected and potent enemy -- almost impenetrable forests of marijuana plants 10 feet tall.

Canada troops battle 10-foot Afghan marijuana plants - CNN.com