who is it?

"alien tears will fill for him

pity's long-broken ern,

for his mourners will be outcast men,

and outcasts always mourn."

you wanted a hit

"when the constitution was destroyed, the u.s. ceased to exist. what exists today are power centers that are unaccountable. elections mean nothing, as both parties are dependent on the same powerful interest groups for campaign funds. the most powerful interest groups are the military/security complex, which includes the pentagon, the CIA, and the corporations that service them, the american-israel public affairs committee, the oil industry that is destroying the gulf of mexico, wall street (investment banks and hedge funds), the insurance companies, the pharmaceutical companies and the agri-companies that produce food of questionable content."

wow. that is not from some crackpot blogger, like myself. no, that is paul craig roberts, former assistant secretary of the treasury in the reagan administration.

read the whole thing here.

last night, an umpire blew a call in the ninth inning to steal a perfect game away from a tiger pitcher. a perfect game. again. we have had two this year and if he would have gotten the call right, we would have had three. with more than half the season to go. including the two from this year, we've had 20 perfect games in the history of baseball. if the ump would have gotten the call right, we would have 21. with 14% of them this year!!!! that's incredible!! the year of the pitcher is upon us.

tentative decisions

so what is high frequency trading (HFT)? well, i'm glad you asked.

several concepts should be understood first. they include (this comes from the PBS nightly business report website):

1. many tiny opportunities: HFT traders target opportunities to make minuscule returns and pursue millions or billions of those opportunities in a day.

2. advance tech: HFT is not possible without the rapid identification of a myriad of trading signals, a task that requires advanced computing technology.

3. latency arbitrage: HFT traders take advantage of latency arbitrage, which is defined as buying or selling a stock or other investment slightly ahead of other market participants who do not have the ability to rapidly identify small changes in prices.

4. raw feeds: HFT traders get their price data directly from stock exchanges. these raw feeds get them the data they need milliseconds before more consolidated data feeds reach other market participants, like fund managers.

5. co-location: HFT traders often co-locate their servers in stock exchanges to reduce the distance the electronic data has to travel and, in turn, reduce the time it takes for them to identify data and make trades.

why is this important? well it seems HFT might have played a part in the "flash crash" from earlier this month. there is a potential for something to go really wrong, really quickly. a lot of these buy/sell terms are based on price fluctuations and when the determined price is achieved, it triggers a buy or a sell. because of HFT, the buy/sell could be millions of options, as indicated in point 1 from above. the "flash crash" is a potentially small example of what might happen.

now that we know this, let's watch a funny video from samantha bee further detailing HFT.

also, here is an interview with james murphy of lcd soundsystem. excellent piece.

the national to houston

get out your october calendars. the national are coming to town.

never gonna give you up

i'm not in the camp that believes it's always sunny in philadelphia is the best show on the television. i don't think it's in the same category as seinfeld and it's for sure not in the same category as arrested development, seeing as how arrested development was the greatest television ever. period. seinfeld is firmly entrenched at number two, with the simpsons taking hold of the number three spot and newsradio holding firm at four. number five is TBA. number 135 on the list is mama's family. the mama's family with bubba, not the pre-bubba years. and how was bubba supposed to be a teen? the guy was 35 years old?

but, the episode where mac and charlie try out for the eagles is pretty funny stuff. mostly, the funny comes from one scene. mac and charlie are trying out for the eagles, ala, invincible. so, after the workout, they are psyched because they're going to meet donovan mcnabb, who is supposed to show up and talk to all the guys trying out. but when he gets there, it's obviously not him and charlie and mac notice this. but not only is not donovan mcnabb, it's actually the actor who played elvin on the cosby show. so charlie and mac start asking why was elvin from the cosby show there? and why was he peddling mcdonald's cheeseburgers? just the fact that they thought of replacing donovan mcnabb with elvin from the cosby show is comedic gold.

gold.

number 78 on the list is mr. belvedere, which inspired this hilarious snl skit.