Pictures of the SP4449 visit

An ordinary commuter train leaving Naperville

An ordinary commuter train leaving Naperville for comparison with the SP4449.

The SP4449 Locomotive Comes to Naperville

Here is a movie of the SP4449's saying "Goodbye" to Naperville.

Michael Jackson and other Celebrity deaths

The reason rare events group together is due to the mathematics that governs their statistics. The name given to that is "Poisson Statistics".

It applies when the probability for an event (famous celeb dying in one particular day) is very small but the number of occasions during which the event could happen (number of days in the year) is large. In that case one sees the events (celebs dying) grouped together in two's, three's or four's or whatever in a day but also many days when nothing happens.

It may seem strange but it is entirely expected.

For the mathematics behind this, see:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poisson_distribution

It's the same reason one has the impression that airline accidents occur in three's, etc.

What A Combo!

Zen and Psychoanalysis

An article from the New York Times magazine that I found interesting....

Clara Ray Farm and Old Springhill Park

Clara Ray Farm (the rectangular area between Plank Road and the railroad tracks) and Old Springhill Park (the triangular area to the right of the farm, the railroad tracks, and the row of houses along Milton are owned respectively by the City of Naperville and the Naperville Park District.

Combining them into one area is an opportunity to make some large field recreation areas (i.e., for soccer or lacrosse). A careful design, in my opinion, could also satisfy the flood abatement goal as desired for many years.

Someone who understands the financial disaster...

Check out this web site...

http://www.tavakolistructuredfinance.com/

Big Bang Theory of the First Kind

This is a cool article by Alan Guth:

Inflation and the New Era of High-Precision Cosmology

Here's Looking At You, Kid

The title is from Casablanca. The scene is of a Peregrine Falcon some years back living on a ledge off the twelfth floor of Wilson Hall at Fermilab

--D.

April 7, 2009 Election

College of DuPage Board, Naperville, Illinois.

Sandy Kim, Kim Savage, Nancy Svoboda, Tom Wendorf

School District 203 Board, Naperville, Illinois

Jim Dennison, Lynn Hodak, Patti Mathewson, Jackie Romberg

City Council, Naperville, Illinois

Tim Messer, Jim Boyajin, Charles “Charlie” Schneider, Judy Brodhead, Doug Krause, Paul Hinterlong

How about solving the financial crisis with a lottery?

Sell lottery tickets backed by the toxic assets.

The payout has got to be better...

So coming down to Louisiana on the plane a trader sitting next to me thought that "paying off the mortgages" and replacing them with a new bright and shiny standard mortgage like the 40 year one at 4% that Cramer suggests would be a good way to get out of this mess -- canceling out the "Collateralized Debt Obligations" in the process.

Someone needs to put all the financial instruments up on the web so we can see what is meant by toxic -- suffice it to say that some of us might just be willing to buy the underlying property.