spokesNspin

This was the Washington Monument one recent morning during my ride to work at 6:00 AM.

I liked how the top just disappeared into the clouds and fog.

Check out this news story from a news service.

(Silver Spring, MD) — Concert-goers just couldn’t give peace a chance Saturday night. A youth concert for non-violence ended in a brawl in Silver Spring. Montgomery County Police had to call for back-ups. Dozens of teens were arrested. No serious injuries were reported.

You just can’t make this kind of stuff up.

From John C. Bogle founder and former CEO of the Vanguard Mutual Fund Group.

In 1980, the compensation of the average chief executive officer was forty-two times that of the average worker; by the year 2004, the ratio had soared to 280 times that of the average worker (down from an astonishing 531 times at the peak in 2000). Over the past quarter-century, CEO compensation measured in current dollars rose nearly sixteen times over , while the compensation of the average worker slightly more than doubled. Measured in real(1980) dollars, however, the compensation of the average worker rose just 0.3 percent per year, barely enough to maintain his or her standard of living. Yet CEO compensation rose at a rate of 8.5 percent annually, increasing by more than seven times in real terms during the period. The rationale was that these executives had “created wealth” for their shareholders. But were CEOs actually creating value commensurate with this huge increase in compenstion? Certainly the average CEO was not. In real terms, aggregate corporate profits grew at an annual rate of just 2.9 percent, compared to 3.1 percent for our nation’s economy, as represented by the Gross Domestic Product. How that somewhat dispiriting lag can drive average CEO compensation to a cool 9.8 million in 2004 is one of the great anomalies of the age.

I could be wrong about this because I am wrong about lots of things.  But does the idea of an organic tobacco farm seem a little odd?

A study was just released that shows on-line porn subscription rates.  Turns out Utah is #1.  

  Here is a quote  from the article:

 ”…Edelman found that regions where people regularly attend religious services are not statistically different from their counterparts in more secular regions. But users who do attend religious services tend to shift their adult entertainment sessions to other days of the week than the day of services. ”

So if you attend church regularly on Sunday, you still look at porn.   It is just a prohibited Sunday activity. 

The researcher said it could be that in conservative areas adult entertainment is less available so there is a higher incidence of going on line for it.

I think it could also be that in such areas people don’t want to be seen patronizing adult entertainment businesses so they do it online.  Kind of  reminds me of the old joke.

Baptists don’t recognize the Pope.  They also don’t recognize other baptists in the liquor store.