Meow, meow meow, …

Meow, meow meow, meoooow, meeeeeow, meow mmeow, meowwww!

$1.4b worth of stolen artwork destroyed. This is one of the more bizarre stories coming out of the art world.

It’s interesting to watch Microsoft try to succeed in the video game market. This recent article about the various deals between Electronic Arts, Microsoft, and game console companies outlines the issues fairly well. What’s ironic is that Microsoft could likely do a hostile takeover of Electronic Arts using it’s $40b in cash reserves. EA’s current market cap is a measly $8.6b. Basically, with $40b in cash reserves Microsoft can effectively ask themselves “What market do we want to buy next?”

If Yahoo can change your privacy preferences without notification, then Microsoft must think they can do so as well with Hotmail. More about this.

This guy apparently does not get as much spam as the rest of us. He also does not realize that most spammers are illegally using the hardware and bandwidth of unsuspecting companies to send out their spam. This is where his “junk mail” and spam comparison falls apart. [via madman]

The president of Venezuela apparently had advance warning of last month’s failed coup against him. While that’s interesting in itself, the more interesting thing to me is this phrase:

[Rodriguez] said Opec had learned that some Arab countries, later revealed to be Libya and Iraq, planned to call for a new oil embargo against the United States because of its support for Israel.

Since the terrorist attacks last year I am finding my interest uncomfortably being drawn more and more into the goings on of world politics, and to learn that such things are happening because of a hatred of the United States or a hatred of what the United States “supports” is not a good feeling. The problem is that most Americans are woefully ignorant of world politics and do not realize that the decisions made by our government regarding international affairs have an immediate or future effect on our way of life. I don’t claim to understand or even necessarily want to understand the root cause [differences of religion?] of the conflicts between Israel and some Arab countries, but I do know that the U.S. is being unwillingly pulled into something that we’re probably better off being left out of. If history shows us anything, it’s that whenever the U.S. gets drawn into a world conflict, it ends up badly. I think the one exception to this would be when the U.S. entered World War II even though that ended up with us dropping atom bombs.

I knew that buying that Pixar stock back in February when it was nearing it’s 52-week-low was a good idea. It’s up 36% since I bought it. This makes me and my portfolio very happy. My only complaint is that I should have bought more.

Here, let me hold this frying pan and you can shoot it to make sure the gun works.

Posted by Cameron Barrett at May 17, 2002 05:25 PM

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