I'm gonna be rich!

Here's news that shouldn't be news.  Assholes make more money than nice guys.

A new study finds that agreeable workers earn significantly lower incomes than less agreeable ones. The gap is especially wide for men.
The researchers examined "agreeableness" using self-reported survey data and found that men who measured below average on agreeableness earned about 18% more—or $9,772 more annually in their sample—than nicer guys. Ruder women, meanwhile, earned about 5% or $1,828 more than their agreeable counterparts.
"Nice guys are getting the shaft," says study co-author Beth A. Livingston, an assistant professor of human resource studies at Cornell University's School of Industrial and Labor Relations.

That bold part is my emphasis.  I think "nice guys get the shaft" works better than "nice guys finish last."

"Nice Guys Get The Shaft." Pimps throughout the ages have known this rule, which is why Ronnie here keeps his pimp hand strong, beeyotch.

Second verse, same as the first...

Haven't we done this before?  And didn't it take a lot of publicity and the congress and people actually knowing about it before hand?

Seems like a good time to get out of debt.

Apparently one of the Indonesian Citibank branches is hiring "debt collectors" who, unlike our domestic variety, seem to favor a more "personal approach."  Personal as in torture and murder, rather than a friendly chat.

Noting that Indonesian debt collectors have a reputation for sometimes aggressive persistence, Johansyah, the central bank official, said: “The best thing to do is just pay.”

....

Security cameras filmed Octa entering the room in the late morning and exiting in a wheelchair, apparently unconscious or dead, more than two hours later. The interview room has no cameras.

How long do you think befor ethis sort of thing catches on here?

Too damn smart. Cut it out.

Apparently, it is now illegal to be super duper smart.

First, she won $5.4 million, then a decade later, she won $2million, then two years later $3million and in the summer of 2010, she hit a $10million jackpot.
The odds of this has been calculated at one in eighteen septillion and luck like this could only come once every quadrillion years.

Harper's reporter Nathanial Rich recently wrote an article about Ms Ginther, which calls the the validity of her 'luck' into question.

First, he points out, Ms Ginther is a former math professor with a PhD from Stanford University specialising in statistics.

A professor at the Institute for the Study of Gambling & Commercial Gaming at the University of Nevada, Reno, told Mr Rich: 'When something this unlikely happens in a casino, you arrest ‘em first and ask questions later.'

Unless there's something missing in this story (you know, something like actual wrong doing...) the professor at the institute for gambling and commercial gaming is suggesting that people smart enough to figure out really, really, really quite hard math problems should be arrested.

Mr Rich details the myriad ways in which Ms Ginther could have gamed the system - including the fact that she may have figured out the algorithm that determines where a winner is placed in each run of scratch-off tickets.

He believes that after Ms Ginther figured out the algorithm, it wouldn’t be difficult to determine where the tickets would be shipped, as the shipping schedule is apparently fixed, and there were a few sources she could have found it out from.

According to Forbes, the residents of Bishop, Texas, seem to believe God was behind it all.
 

The Texas Lottery Commission told Mr Rich that Ms Ginther must have been 'born under a lucky star', and that they don’t suspect foul play.

What sort of foul play could possibly be involved, other than being super smart and putting it to good use?  I suppose she could have bribed a lotto official, but the immediate assumption that foul play is the best answer to how she pulled this off is weird. To be fair, the lottery is being very decent about this, far more decent than I would have expected from minor functionaries.

One of two things...

Either the size of the debt we're in, or one mediocre weekend tab at the bar for Charlie Section.

LINE 'EM UP!

Bob Lutz, the former Vice Chairman of General Motors, is the most famous also-ran in the auto business. In the course of his 47-year rampage through the industry, he's been within swiping range of the brass ring at Ford, BMW, Chrysler and, most recently, GM, but he's never landed the top gig. It's because he "made the cars too well," he says. It might also have something to do with the fact that Maximum Bob, who could double as a character on Mad Men, is less an éminence grise than a pithy self-promoter who has a tendency to go off corporate message. That said, his new book, Car Guys vs. Bean Counters: The Battle for the Soul of American Business, has a message worth hearing. To get the U.S. economy growing again, Lutz says, we need to fire the M.B.A.s and let engineers run the show.To get the U.S. economy growing again, Lutz says, we need to fire the M.B.A.s and let the engineers run the show.