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Pats QB Matt Cassel in High School

New England Patriots back up quarterback Matt Cassel (16) yawns as starting quarterback Tom Brady, center, watches the action during the NFL football game against the Buffalo Bills in Foxborough, Mass., Sunday, Sept. 23, 2007. The Patriots defeated the Bills 38-7.. (AP Photo/Robert E. Klein)

Patriots backup quarterback Matt Cassel has stepped into big shoes left behind by Tom Brady's season-ending injury in the first game of the NFL this year. After two games Cassel has been holding his own. Nothing spectacular, but good enough to give the Patriots and their fans a 2-0 start. Prior to this season however, the last time Cassel started as QB was for the Chatsworth High School Chancellors in 1999 as a 17-year-old who looked like this at the time:

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New Chrysler Campaign

Gas prices are still wallet emptying high, the housing market is crashing, Wall Street is imploding, and in such a climate what is Chrysler going to do? Roll out with a massive advertising campaign that is centered around a web-based reality show promoting their updated Dodge Ram pick-up truck.

The promotion of the truck centers on a Web site, RamChallenge.com. The Challenge is an obstacle-course driving competition with four pairs of competitors, which Ms. Meyer said mirrored typical Ram drivers: cowboys, military men, firefighters and contractors.

While I actually applaud Chrysler's strategy of circling their wagons around one of their marquee core products, I'm skeptical about this reality show advertising concept. This is exactly the sort of stuff that companies such as Chrysler should avoid, because it comes across as trying to repackage what is essentially a lengthy commercial into something that it is not, or in other words putting lipstick on a pig, to use the parlance du jour. And this RamChallenge.com represents the worst of this: a Frankenstein shoe-horning of a hot TV format (reality shows) mashed onto a web platform, and then "ramming" it down the throat of consumers.

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Kid Robot

Kid robot Wakamaru is "interning" in his first visit to the US on the shop floor of New York's Uniqlo store. These photos here are taken from his blog.

This is his charging station. Haha.

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Market Fail

1. Kaizar, Associate Editor at Newstrust recommends this featured article from the Washington Post that helps to explain what the fuck is happening on Wall Street:

Indeed, it is increasingly clear that Wall Street chief executives themselves didn't fully understand the risks they were taking on during the boom years of this decade; they have seemed as blindsided as any regulator.

The problems on Wall Street may go deeper. Financial firms have expanded vastly in the past decade, hiring tens of thousands of bright business school graduates to engineer new financial products, find ever more complicated ways to manage other peoples' money, and dream up new ways to combine, divide, and recombine corporate America.

Some large portion of that work, it now appears, wasn't really creating any value for the company's clients or for the U.S. economy. No matter how many times crummy mortgage loans are recombined into clever packages, they're still crummy.

In a perfect world, those excesses would be corrected by a gradual, orderly decline, in which a few firms get bought out by competitors, some modest layoffs occur, and Wall Street cuts back on its hiring for a few years.

In the real world, that correction is occurring before our eyes, through a series of convulsive weekends in which the entire financial world appears at risk of coming off the rails.

2. There's also an informative Q & A about this turmoil at the New York Times:

Q. How will this affect the mutual funds in my 401(k)? I'm beginning to think I should move my money fast! — Toni Hilton

A. To put it mildly, it’s likely that your mutual funds aren’t having their best day: the Dow Jones industrial average closed down more than 500 points, or about 4.42%. But markets are mercurial beasts, and we don’t know what’s going to happen tomorrow, the day after — or six months from now.

That's why it's so important for investors to be diversified across different asset classes and investment types. It’s one of the most important ways investors can produce more consistent results, while helping cushioning against sharp declines. You want to make sure your money is divided across different slices of the stock and bond markets: that means domestic and international, large, mid-sized and small, as well as other alternative asset classes.

It also might be time to review your risk tolerance: if you’re tempted to move your money around on a difficult day, it might be time to rethink your stock allocation (in other words, you might want to lower it).

Also keep in mind that market declines work in your favor: they allow you to buy more stock or mutual funds shares cheaply.

3. Although brokerage firms such as Lehman, are forbidden from filing Chapter 11bankruptcy, nonetheless Lehman Brothers officially filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy this morning "listing debts of $613 billion and naming as unsecured creditors owed hundreds of millions of dollars banks from Tokyo, Hong Kong, New York, Singapore and Taipei, among others."

Slate's Explainer answers the question: How was Lehman able to do this, and how exactly does a financial-services firm declare bankruptcy?

So how did Lehman manage to file for Chapter 11? It has separated out its businesses. Lehman Brothers Inc., the firm's brokerage arm, is expressly not included in the filing, and Monday afternoon's news reports suggest there may still be outside investor interest in the brokerage arm.

Is Lehman Brothers Holding Inc. - the parent company - in the clear because it can reorganize under Chapter 11? Not likely.

Read more here.

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Sarah Palin's "Debut" on SNL

Here's Tina Fey, as expected, playing the role of Sarah Palin on SNL in the first episode of this new season. Pretty spot on. All the YouTube uploads get removed pretty quickly, so here's a link to the Hulu one: Hulul

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Investors Flee Russia

Interesting observation by Garry Kasparov regarding the implications and results of Russia's recent foray into Georgia:

For the first time since the Crimean War, Russia has no allies," said Garry Kasparov, chess grandmaster turned opposition politician. "We are encircled by countries that are either suspicious or alienated and very angry.

What's particularly telling about this conflict is China's muted and rather chilly voice towards Russia. As The Economist notes

A Chinese spokesman said his country was “concerned” and called for “dialogue and consultation”. That reflects both China’s pragmatic desire for good economic relations with the West, and also its dislike of both separatism and interference in other countries’ internal affairs. With Tibet, Taiwan and restive Muslims to contend with, China takes a dim view of anybody chopping up other countries and declaring the results to be independent states.

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Copy & Paste Special Characters

« » ‹ › ‘ ’ “ ” „ ‚ £ ¥ € ¬ ¶ @ § ® © ™ ° × π ± √ ‰ Ω ∞ ≈ ¹ ² ³ ½ ¼ ¾ - – — ⁄ \ { } † ‡ … • ●  ⌘ ⌥ ↩ ⌃ ⇧ ¿ ⁂ ☞ ∴ ∵ ‽ ◊ ※ ← → ↑ ↓ ✔ ☼ ♠ ♦ ♣ ♥ ♪ ♫ ♯ Å å Ä ä Ö ö Ø ø Æ æ Ü ü ß é In the previous t-shirt entry below, I couldn't figure out where the "£" icon was on my keyboard. Instead of pecking and guessing, I went to CopyPasteCharacter.com where I quickly found it, copied it, and pasted it into the entry.

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Future Wifey Alert: Jessica Gomez

I just received a message through the wire notifying me about a potential threat to the Hot Girl title currently owned by model Jessica Michibata. Sharing the same first name, Australian model Jessica Gomez is half Portuguese and half Chinese and fully one hundred percent future wifey material. Here are a couple photos of her promoting some new cell phone and throwing out the first pitch at some baseball game.

It's interesting that Keith Haring is being used in this ad...

This is a good way to stretch out the lower back. I applaud this message.

Solid stare down.

Yes.

You can also view her in this "controversial" commercial for Diddy's fragrance for women. What a self-serving commercial by Diddy: Here's the set up, guys, for my next commercial. Cast a super fly model chick who will strictly wear only sexy panties or short skirts. Guy will feel her up and make out with her. I will be that guy.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sQhaekrXJxg]

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Ed Koch and his Readers

Former New York City mayor Ed Koch recently vocalized his support of Barack Obama. He shares some of the e-mail responses he received following the announcement of his endorsement. I like this quote by him: “I have no problem with Palin being an expert on skinning a moose and turning it into stew. I have a problem with her breaking tie votes in the Senate.”

I have no problem with Palin being an expert on skinning a moose and turning it into stew. I have a problem with her breaking tie votes in the Senate.

Read more here.

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Good Deal: Get Good Magazine for $1

Similar to Radiohead's pay-what-you-what plan, you can purchase an annual subscription to non-profit Good Magazine for a cost you determine...well, the lowest you can pay is $1. You can also subscribe for $20 and in addition to the magazine, you'll also get free admission to their Choose Good parties. This is a great deal for a great magazine started by a fellow Brown class of '02 alumnus.

Subscribe now!

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Quote

John McCain, who is shameless about promoting himself as America’s ultimate patriot, put the best interests of the nation aside in making his incredibly reckless choice of a running mate. But there is a profound double standard in this country. The likes of John McCain and George W. Bush can do the craziest, most irresponsible things imaginable, and it only seems to help them politically. - Bob Herbert

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Half-Life is Real

Holyshitholyshitholyshit. Large Hadron Collider is....going to rip a dimensional seam and open a portal into another universe which will unleash demon-ish aliens into our world!!!!

I need to unpack my anti-gravity gun for the end of times that is going to occur as a result of our hubris.

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