The Coffee Person

UpDown.com is where social networks meet fantasy stock portfolio investing. It rewards its users with real money if they write good content and invest well; recently its rewards for content have come under scrutiny by the community.

Given that UpDown will reward specific users for their actions that offer some benefit and that players' actions are mostly in the realms of analysis submission and portfolio investing, we quickly find two directions which UpDown may take in organizing the rewards it distributes: UpDown can reward its users that prepare good analyses, and it can reward its users who invest their portfolios particularly well. Until now UpDown has chosen to follow both routes to some degree.

Atlas Energy Resources LLC operates oil and natural gas businesses in the Appalachians and Michigan, as well as running tax-advantaged drilling investment operations.

"You run the largest mortgage originator in the country. If you don't have some personal responsibility [for the mortgage crisis], I don't know who does," said Maryland Democratic Representative Elijah Cummings. Let me tell you, Mr. Cummings: Your esteemed colleagues in Congress and the fine folks at the Federal Reserve, especially the ones before Mr. Bernanke became the chairman, hold some personal responsibility for the mortgage crisis.

"The International Energy Agency (IEA), which advises industrialized countries on energy policy, said on Wednesday record crude oil prices would have eased had OPEC decided to raise production at its meeting."

I'm glad somebody finally taught them about the law of supply and demand, where if supply increases, the price eases. For anything. Here is the article about OPEC.

I got into a discussion with a friend in 1000-level economics about whether monopolies are so bad they should be prosecuted. We went through several objections to the monopoly supposedly warranting legal prosecution before we got deep into some core economics concepts. What follows is my attempt to deal with whether the monopoly should ever be prosecuted from economic reasons; in other words, whether trust-busting adds economic value.

Lately I've been doing something thinking about Cartesian skepticism. It just really bothers me that a person could doubt all propositions to the point where the only idea believable is that the person thinking exists. I find it rather absurd to say that we can't know things with certainty. Of course, so do a lot of other people, yet for some reason this extreme skepticism remains applied to religious topics.

Suzette Washington's employer, Bertolini's, found out that somebody was stealing clothing from inventory. Knowing this, Suzette Washington found out from her friend Paula the specific individuals that might have done the act. Suzette was facing a dilemma between Paula's desire for her silence and her employer's implicit desire to know the thieves' identity.

Hundreds of years ago most humans were engaged in the industry of subsistence agriculture. One of the major factors leading to economic development has been specialization, or the division of labor, where some grow food while others do different work. Yet how is it possible to have a specialized economy if one must live in fear that the very person feeding oneself might prove traitorous the next day? Trust is necessary to facilitate trade in the specialized economy.

In this essay, also for English Composition II, I rebut an essay contending that we should vote at every opportunity because it is American, among other reasons.

In 1991, a spectacle which had begun two years earlier culminated in the collapse of the world's socialist empire. The Soviet Union, which operated a command economy structure, had not buried its opposition as Khrushchev had promised. Instead, America and her allies stood confident. They even sent aid to the collapsing socialist republics.

In this essay for English Composition II, I made the case that, contrary to the beliefs of my teacher, nationalism itself is not a great dividing force for humanity, but rather the sinfulness which is expressed in nationalism is the great problem for humans.

The year is 2006. The French and Italians are playing for the World Cup. Each team is driven to its nation's glory, desiring the praise that results from victory. In New York, French and Italian tourists visiting the Empire State Building are glaring at each other from across the elevator. They are representing their nations, even as tourists.