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Pauly

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Posts posted by Pauly

  1. Although I disagree with school shooting characterization as:

     

    There is nothing you can do however to prevent the occasional lone nut (or small group of nuts) from deciding to kill people.

     

    I agree that humans/humanity in general are very bad at making statistics based decisions. There are numerous issues that are not focused on even though working on them would yield huge benefits and vice versa there are numerous issues that consume huge resources even though they are statistically insignificant and the resources are wasted.

     

    Edit:

    Just for illustration to Pauly:

     

    Assume that a chance of your child getting killed in school shooting is 0.00001%.

    Assume that a chance of your child getting killed in auto accident is 0.001%.

    Assume you can vote only for only one solution:

    A. Reduce a chance of your child getting killed in school shooting 10 times.

    B. Reduce a chance of your child getting killed in auto accident 2 times.

     

    Would you vote for A or for B? Why?

     

    You are welcome to change percentages and numbers yourself.

     

    Why would I assume that I can vote for only one solution? That assumption is what makes the argument asinine. Are engineers being pulled from Tesla so that they can work on solving school shootings?

    Like I said, statistics are obviously useful for many things, but if you try to use them to make school shootings look insignificant in a zero sum game with car accidents you sound ridiculous.

     

  2. The truth is that school shootings really are no big deal

     

    I'm sorry that you had to go through that, but it is difficult to enumerate all the ways your comments are wrong. 

     

    Do you have children? Your lack of pathos suggests that you do not.

    You can use statistics to argue for a lot of things, but to suggest that school children being murdered in class is 'no big deal' because we need self driving cars is being almost laughably callous.

     

  3. If we are going into physicists, then definitely read everything about and by Richard Feynman.  8)

     

    http://smile.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=Richard+Feynman

     

    I'd like to see a parallel universe where Feynman went into investing.  ;D

     

    Indeed. My son's middle name is "Feynman"  8)

     

    I've watched a few of his lectures online but haven't ready any of his books. Are there one or two in particular you'd recommend?

     

     

  4. Did anyone buy in today? There doesn't seem to be a way to value this besides Prem Watsa + India = $$$.

     

    I'm tempted to start a position soon for two reasons.

     

    1) Prem Watsa + India = $$$  ;)

     

    2) This has the faint air of a spinoff of the Fairfax brand. As such it might take time to be recognized properly by the market. The less than explosive debut today reinforces this feeling.

     

    Speculative? I suppose it is since it has no holdings. But it's FFH, how speculative could it be?

     

    Can anyone dissuade me?

     

     

  5. I'm keeping an eye on the Sberbank thread, but when you read stories about how the Russians have managed to run up a $50 billion bill for a Winter Olympics it makes you think that Russia is a great place to make money vanish into thin air.

     

    I'm sure it's that risk that's keeping their market cheap. My guess is that it's a market that will produce some big winners, and a lot of catastrophic losses.

  6. I use Dropbox frequently. They've done a nice job of making the program easy to use across phones/tablets/desktops. But, I only use the free services so they're losing money on me...and I actually don't know anyone who's upgraded to a paid plan. I'd be interested to see their numbers.

     

    Do you think the YouTube guys are kicking themselves over selling too soon?  With these difficult to monetize startups being valued so highly, what would a YouTube IPO have looked like today?

     

     

  7. SBUX is also very good at training their employees. They tend to be really chipper and genuinely seem to enjoy working there, which makes for a more pleasant consumer experience.

    They have good quality cups and lids (unlike Tim Horton's where I resign myself to the fact that I'm going to burn myself when their cheapo lid malfunctions), and, as everyone else has said, the coffee may not be the best, but it definitely won't be the worst. And when you're craving a coffee there's nothing more disappointing than a hot cup of dishwater.

  8. Great show, great final season, and great final episode. I don't know any other Tv show I could say all those things about.

     

    But Warren isn't writing those tweets himself, right? I mean, 'Warren is in the house' ?? And he wouldn't actually refer to himself as The Oracle, would he? Gotta be a ghost writing BRK staffer...?

  9. My first post after officially joining the board so I guess I'll start by writing my confession here:

     

    RIG : Bought not too long after the Mocando spill. Figured the market was punishing Transocean too severely and once BP was thrown under the bus it would be smooth sailing for RIG. Well, after 3 years of disappointment and growing disgust with management I finally swallowed a 20% loss.

     

    Mocando dragged the whole industry down and rather than putting my money with one of the guilty parties I should have looked at who else was being punished just by association...maybe I would have gone with SDRL.

     

    COCO : Jeez, I don't know what I was thinking with this one.  Again, figuring that legal pressure would ease up and let Corinithian Colleges return to its former 'glory' I bought in at about $5 thinking it couldn't go much lower (it had recently been at $20+). The financials looked decent and the P/E was obscene. I'm sitting with a 60% haircut at the moment. It's a very small position dollar and % wise so now I'm just letting it sit in my account as an unpleasant reminder that a great company at a fair price is much, much better than a horrible company at a terrific price.

     

    Paul

     

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