Steve Fischer's Random Blog

Category: Crazy

  • Back to the gold standard

    No, this isn’t a commentary on our economic crisis. This is a strange real estate story. A friend of ours is a real estate lawyer and he dabbles in real estate in Brooklyn. He knows this guy and the other night he told me this story…

    Back in the day (turn of the century), 99 year leases on commercial buildings were common. To hedge against inflation the leases would commonly have a “gold clause”, which basically said that the owner could request payment in gold.

    Following the Great Depression, FDR eliminated the gold standard in 1933. Gold clauses were declared invalid. However in 1977 a court held that gold clauses could be enforced if they were agreed to after 1933 (or something like that – I’m not a lawyer, nor do I play one on TV).

    Why is this important? My friend knows a guy who was smart, eccentric and in the real estate field. This guy decided to scour the country looking for an existing lease with an enforceable gold clause. It took a year. He found one.

    He spent $845,000 to buy the land. The 1912 lease entitles him to $35,000 a year. He asked for it in gold at 1912 prices (1,693 ounces of gold). The current tenant sued, won in the lower court but lost in the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals. Unless the Supreme Court takes up the appeal, that ruling will stand and the gold clause will be enforced.

    At the current gold price of about $880/ounce the annual rent just went from $35,000 to just under $1.5 million. Wow.

    You can read about it here…

  • Mail Goggles

    This is just hilarious…

  • Large Hadron Collider Humor

    Note: if you don’t know what the Large Hadron Collider is or what the recent “controversy” surrounding it is about, this isn’t funny at all. This is definitely geek humor…

    Has the Large Hadron Collider destroyed the world yet?

    I’m also amused by the Phil Plait (Bad Astronomy blog) line:

    What’s the difference between Abe Vigoda and the Large Hadron Collider?

    One has a website where you can see if he’s still around, and one has a website where you can see if you’re still around.

  • Chemical Free

    I’m amused by this British post (from the Guardian) primarily for the use of the phrase:

    gob-smackingly untrue

    For the record, this blog is 100% chemical free…

  • Moon Hoax Mythbuster

    I’m always amazed to discover how many people there are who still think that NASA faked the moon landing. I’ve pointed out this guy’s blog before and it was recently picked up by the Discovery Channel. He did a long mythbusting blog a while back that is considered one of the better ones.

    Apparently the Discovery channel has a Mythbuster show and in an upcoming episode they will be addressing the common “moon landing was faked evidence” that the moon photographs clearly show multiple light sources (as opposed to one sun) which proves they were done in a studio. Conspiracy theorists will say that this photo:

    shadow

    shows shadows going in different directions, so it was clearly done in a studio, not on the moon. The show will apparently recreate this to show how it happens (this blog does it fairly well)

    I’m assuming that the new X-Files movie poster is a subtle reference to this part of the moon hoax conspiracy theory.

    xfiles_wp1_800x600

    Really, I just like this Bad Astronomy post because he uses the phrase

    I will give you a million bajillion dollars…

  • Amusing Game

    I love this guy’s games, because they have a simple but great sense of humor. I’ve blogged about them before, but if you don’t recall, this guy creates small simple games that take a maximum of 7 days to create. He usually puts out one a month.

    This month’s installment is a simple shoot ’em up. You are trying to blast robots. But there’s a twist. When you die, you press the spacebar to go back in time.

    What actually happens is that the game remembers exactly what you did the first time and “you” automatically do exactly that (up to and including getting killed) while the new “you” gets to operate along side. So in this game dying is advantageous because eventually there are ten of your blasting robots simultaneously.

    Amusing…

  • Amusing Blog

    This blog has a very simple format. The author tries to do some amusing Venn diagram on an index card. Like today’s item below.

    image

  • More obvious but funny stuff from Trizle

    The site should really be called, “obvious business advice in an amusing hip-hop format”.

    This post suggests focusing on the most important 20% instead of getting mired in a million different things. My favorite quote:

    Peep Your To-Do List

    …or your email list, your project list, etc.

    The rec:

    1. Cut 80% of the sucky ones.
    2. Work on the remaining top 20%.

    The less you place on your plate, the more you kick mother-kafluckin assizzle.

  • Ugly = Good?

    Here’s another post from Trizle. The title is “Why Ugly Projects = Good” but in truth it’s talking about just finishing the damn project (even if it’s ugly).

    This is obvious stuff, but the writing is amusing:

    Think of Fat Guy + Running

    Fat guy screams he’ll run this year:

    • “I need to get the nicest shoes!”
    • “I have to read the latest running magazines!”
    • “I need the latest gear!”
    • “I need the most awesome running trail!”

    Yet, details eventually get him:

    • Instead of just frickin’ running, his immersion into details prevents him from achieving that goal.

    Likewise:

    1. We Business
    2. People
    3. Suck
    4. Like
    5. Fat Guy
    6. Because
    7. We’re So
    8. @#%#^
    9. Obsessed with
      1. The Details

    We want X to be oh-so-fricko-perfecto that we forget the most important part:

    • Accomplishing the @#$%, even if we’re the ugliest @#$% finisher in the world.

  • Crazy Architecture

    This one is quite amusing…