Sophia, I'm going through that book like a hot knife through butter. It's fascinating.

Isaiah Mustafa from the Old Spice ads is on Ellen today! (Edit: OMG, he's adorable and hilarious. And a former professional football player.) Also Ed Helms, who I just like more and more.

Quants, as I understand the term having read the awesome IOU: Why Everyone Owes Everyone and No One Can Pay, are super smart mathy folks who were sought out by the financial industry to come up with equations that justified every action they took that defied common sense.

So it's like the mathy equivalent of squints on Bones?

super smart mathy folks who were sought out by the financial industry to come up with equations that justified every action they took that defied common sense.

To be fair, I think their actions made sense as long as a whole bunch of financial stuff didn't go South all at once. Yeah, in retrospect that was an obvious flaw, but people were like, "Housing prices have not fallen in many decades, so let's just not worry about that happening."

So, my class was going to watch I Have a Dream today, but my DVD decided to stop working. And, I can't access YouTube at school. I'll have to download it at home tonight and we'll watch it tomorrow.

To be fair, I think their actions made sense as long as a whole bunch of financial stuff didn't go South all at once. Yeah, in retrospect that was an obvious flaw, but people were like, "Housing prices have not fallen in many decades, so let's just not worry about that happening."

They assigned risk factors that were insanely low in order to keep risky ventures going. Like, 1 in many billion odds. I mean, that was their jobs and what the bankers paid them to do.

The thing was, there was a culture of total infallibility, and the numbers were there to back it up, which was unsustainable from any other common sense perspective.

They assigned risk factors that were insanely low in order to keep risky ventures going. Like, 1 in many billion odds. I mean, that was their jobs and what the bankers paid them to do.

Yeah, that's true.

I read somewhere about the ratings agencies that assigned triple-A ratings to these investments - one of the ratings agencies did not even have the ability to test for the possibility of housing prices going down. I mean, their computer models would not even accept negative numbers for "housing price increases."

For the SoCal folks - how funny is it that my Groupon today in Michigan is for Isgo Lepejian?

Mississippi Prom Canceled After Lesbian Date Request

JACKSON, Miss. — A northern Mississippi school district decided Wednesday not to host a high school prom after a lesbian student demanded she be able to attend with her girlfriend and wear a tuxedo.

The Itawamba County school district's policy requires that senior prom dates be of the opposite sex. The American Civil Liberties Union of Mississippi had given the district until Wednesday to change that policy and allow 18-year-old Constance McMillen to escort her girlfriend, who is also a student, to the dance on April 2.

Instead, the school board met and issued a statement announcing it wouldn't host the event at Itawamba County Agricultural High School in Fulton, "due to the distractions to the educational process caused by recent events."

Wankers.

So, another big quake in Chile? Seems a bit spooky to me.

eta: CNN tells me a 7.2 quake during the new president's inauguration.