The Eternal Footman

Carnegie Mellon researchers put up a new site the other day called Death Risk Rankings. What they've got is an interesting, albeit morbid, tool that allows you to view the statistics of dying within a year from various causes. The tool gives you some customization flexibility so that you can view the data in various ways to get a better view of the death landscape.

You'll want to go over a few of the tutorial's quickly to get a better understanding of what the output tables are saying. And, for you math/logic types, they even have a tutorial written about Simpson's Paradox.

Anyway, for Californian males (non-White, non-Black) in my age group (30-39), the data shows 777 per million deaths within a year -- the top three causes are suicide (97), transportation-related accidents (82) and heart attacks (53). Move up two age groups to the 50-59 crowd and death stats show a quintupling with 4026 per million deaths.

As I said, it's all a bit morbid, but at least now we've got a tool to give us a better guess as to when our time will come (and how).

I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker,
And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker,
And in short, I was afraid.

Iceman Documentary

I just spent a couple hours watching an older HBO documentary on a rather scary contract killer named Richard Kuklinski. This guy is just plain scary. He was known as the 'Iceman' to the authorities after it was learned that he sometimes froze his victims as a means to alter the time of death.

As far as cold-blooded for-profit killing goes, this guy was the best. I found the story to be scary, yet fascinating. It is amazing he was able to keep his family in the dark about all of his activities. At least most of his victims were shady criminal types. Though, there was at least one that was just random.

Anyway, if you're interested in this sort of thing, here are the links:

Iceman Part 1
Iceman Part 2
Iceman Part 3
Iceman Part 4
Iceman Part 5
Iceman Part 6
Iceman Part 7
Iceman Part 8
Iceman Part 9
Iceman Part 10
Iceman Part 11
Iceman Part 12

Holiday Break

The markets were closed today, since today was declared a National Day of Mourning for the late former president, Gerald Ford. So, I figure I'd give a quick update about my extended holiday break; today was my first day back in the office.

Anyway, I headed down to SoCal with QB to hang out with friends and family. While there, QB took me out on a dinner cruise with Hornblower in Marina Del Rey. The food wasn't amazing or anything, but it was decent enough. The weather was nice, and so following our meal, we got to spend a good amount of time outside just enjoying the view and fresh air.

On a different day, my sister and Spud joined us for a BBQ at my buddy, Jorge's place. We also enjoyed playing the Lightning Reaction game (that game is so friggin' awesome). Food was good, and all in all, it was a fun-filled afternoon.

Eventually, we made it to see the parents, and we played a lot of family type games like Taboo, Pictionary, and Scattergories. The Omaha Steaks I bought my dad for Christmas came in handy... as luck would have it, my parents' only 4-year old refrigerator broke just days before we went there. Normally, a broken fridge wouldn't be that big a deal. But, the company said that no repairmen would be available until after the holiday.

Speaking of gifts, I got my mom a Roomba from iRobot, which was actually pretty cool. I should totally get one for my place. My other sister and her husband got as a joint gift from me, an alarm clock that has an iPod hook-up. And, my other sister still hasn't received her gift yet. Here it is, and it's currently shipping. I wasn't able to play my hands quickly enough on PokerStars to get the gift shipped early enough for arrival before Christmas. Anyway, I expect to get it in the next week or so.

What did I get? Clothes, clothes, a slew of XBox 360 games, and more clothes. I guess no one got the memo that I actually dress alright these days.

New Year's Eve was uneventful. Mostly spent time with the family who came up here to visit me and others in the Bay Area. Probably the first New Year's Eve in quite some time where I didn't do much of anything. All for the better anyway, I guess. I feel totally energized and ready to tackle the new year. Heck, I even had fun at work today.

And, here's a quote for all you old-school gamers: It's time to kick ass and chew bubble gum... and, I'm all out of gum.

A Pascal's Wager of Sorts

So, North Korea fired off some test missiles... shook up the markets a bit. Their nuclear ambitions might one day be realized, and maybe they'll use their newly acquired nuclear power to do some really nasty stuff.

Anyway, I was thinking about this a little bit last night before I went to bed. Say that in the future, North Korea (or some other nuke-enabled nation) threatens the U.S. and the rest of the world, which in turn causes a collapse in the financial markets. Then, it would seem that you should be going nuts and buy heavily into equities or any other investment vehicles that suffered devastating declines due to the nuclear threats.

Just as Pascal laid out in his faith-related decision matrix, the decision matrix for global nuclear devastation is similar.

If the nuclear threat goes away for whatever reason, then the financial markets should recover in a large way, which would benefit those who invested in a collapsed market. If the nuclear threats eventually lead to a truly global-scale nuclear war, which would result in armageddon, then you've really lost nothing, since you'd be dead or you'd be living in a world that is for the most part, dead. Even ownership of gold or maybe even water would not be honored. The guy with the gun pointing at your head would be the ultimate consumer... surely, not you (unless you had the gun of course).

Just a random thought.