Warning: squirrels.

The Marketplace Decoder

As a pseudo dismal scientist [I have a BA in economics], I have following the media's coverage of the global economic crisis with a mixture of amusement and dismay.  As others have noted, the coverage has fallen into two categories: absurdly simplistic or mind-numbingly complex.

I think I have found a happy medium.  Paddy Hirsch, Senior Editor of Marketplace, has released several whiteboard videos over the past few weeks that are both informative and well worth watching. 

The first video explains what collateralized debt obligations are.

Crisis explainer: Uncorking CDOs from Marketplace on Vimeo.

The second video explains how credit default swaps work.

Untangling credit default swaps from Marketplace on Vimeo.

The third video explains how short selling is and why naked short selling is potentially a bad thing for everyone.

Getting naked in short selling from Marketplace on Vimeo.

Election 2008 Polling Places and Voter Registration Information

Can't remember where your polling place is?  Try the following Google App.

For more information about this app, including how you can customize the app and add its code to your website or blog, check out Google Gadgets.

Fun with Wal-Mart Canada

So, the programmers at Wal-Mart Canada created a website that was so poorly designed that one could force their pages to display the name of one product and the image of a completely different product just by changing a few numbers in the product's URL.

Of course, once the folks at Fark.com discovered this, the result was pure (juvenile) comedy gold:



You can read the [now legendary] thread at http://forums.fark.com/cgi/fark/comments.pl?IDLink=3937050

One word of warning: I am not responsible if you wet your pants laughing.