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Lost Vegas

Crazy interesting article about people who live in the flash flood tunnels below Las Vegas, but I’m not feeling very creative right now as I deal with this disaster of a car I drive around, so I’m going to steal someone else’s quote that I think fits well.

Interesting but depressing. Stories like these help keep me motivated to grind away at school and not start a heroin habit. Regardless of how appealing I find forts.

From Force of Good

Here’s the deal. There are three types of successful exits for startup founders. You get a new car, you get a new house, or you get a new life.

And now, some Kid Cudi to make you happy during what is apparently Atlanta’s Monsoon season.

This sounds awesome.

First, there is The $20 Theory of the Universe, which tells the awesome story of a guy taking two grand in twenties to NYC and seeing what he can get in a weekend by passing people some cash.  The answer: a first class seat on the plane, to drive a street cleaner, to see the dirty pictures people get developed at photo huts, 3 room upgrades, and more.

Next, he decides to try the trick in the rest of America as The 20-Dollar Millionaire Hits The Road.  By far my favorite part of this article is where he gets to Vegas and gets stuck trying to see just how much he can get out of a bellboy and comes up with this awesomely ridiculous scenario:

Then I unrolled another twenty and asked him to get me some ice. He said sure, and he even sort of waved off that second twenty, holding up the first one as if to remind me. “No,” I said. “A lot of ice.” Now I was thinking as fast as I could, because I didn’t have any plan when I started, so I said, “My foot is badly burned. I need you to fill up the bathtub.”

He looked at my shoe. “You want a doctor?” he asked. Then he said, “You aren’t limping.”

“It’s a radiation burn,” I said. Where do I get this shit? What pulls it from inside me? I was thinking something like–desert, uranium, Area 51, inexplicable burns that would not cause me to limp, X-Files, salt pork.

“No kidding?” he said. “Okay. Okay.” He stepped to the door. “I’ll get you some ice,” he said. “That’s got to hurt.” He raised his eyebrow and stepped out. While he was gone, I kept thinking, What if he asks me how I got it? But he didn’t come back, some busboy did, with a room-service cart and two giant garbage bags full of ice.

So says this Bloomberg article

The study published in the journal Economics and Human Biology showed that tall people reported more enjoyment of life and less pain and sadness. Taller men also said they worry less though they are more likely to experience stress and anger than people of average height, said researchers led by Angus Deaton from Princeton University in New Jersey.
…
The investigators compared the impact of height to other factors known to affect quality of life, including income. Each additional inch boosted happiness levels by the same amount as a 4.4 percent increase in family income for men and 3.8 percent pay raise for women.

Thanks to Big Contrarian for the find

But not for the reason you think.

In this post he talks about how the salary cap disappearing for the 2010 NFL season won’t erase parity from the league.  He makes very good points about how much money each team brings in and how they will all be able to spend more because they’ll have the tv revenue which is split evenly among teams.

However, the more important part of this is only covered in one sentence at the end of his post

I admit I’ve oversimplified things, and one concern about having no cap would be the accompanying lack of a salary floor, which could induce cheapskate owners to hoard their money without putting a decent product on the field.

This is going to happen.  Definitely.  Jacksonville is most likely but don’t count out Cleveland, Detroit, basically any broke ownership group whose team doesn’t stand much of a chance to win that year.  Why wouldn’t they put out a Washington Sentinels type team, get that one big paycheck that makes everything else feel better and then enjoy the new reality of a rookie salary cap in not having to pay $40m to whoever they drafted in 2011?

Also fun, the league minimum salary disappears as well.  So, while some stars may get big deals, there are going to be pro NFL players making $70,000 who are used to living on $310,000.  I’m just saying, it’s going to be a good time to start a repo business for high end cars.