Pro angler Marty Stone ditches retirement to join startup Major League Fishing - Fayetteville Observer
Just a little dip of the shoulder, a slight swivel at the hip with a turn of the wrist, and 60 feet of monofilament hums across the water before a Texas-rigged soft plastic worm plops into the lake. It's a hot day in July, and pro angler Marty Stone isn't putting any thought into his flawless delivery. His mind is on bigger fish.
He's cast his lures into rivers and lakes all over the country as a B.A.S.S. Elite Series angler and four-time Bassmaster Classic and FLW Championship qualifier. Now he's ready to cast into the mainstream.
Stone is one of 15 fishermen who partnered to form the Pro Bass Tour (PBT) in 2009. Tired of having no ownership or revenue share of a multi-billion dollar industry, and fearful of further decline in fan base, participants and sponsor money, the group brainstormed ways to bring bass fishing to the typical sports fan.
Their dream has come true in the form of Major League Fishing (MLF) - a new rules, no-limits departure from typical tournaments with an all-star cast of bass busters on the Outdoor Channel.
IZOD IndyCar Series: Edmonton Indy - Drivers’ Post-Race Notes & Quotes - Auto Racing Daily
Will Power of Verizon Team Penske won the Edmonton Indy. It is his fourth win of the season and the 13th of his Indy car career. He previously won in 2011 at Barber, Sao Paul and Texas 2.
Helio Castroneves of Team Penske finished second, his best finish of the 2011 season. His previous best finish this year was fourth at Texas 1.
Justin Wilson of Dreyer & Reinbold Racing finished fifth, his best finish of the 2011 season. His previous best finish this year was seventh at Sao Paulo.
You could get van insurance for as little as £276 (based on quotes provided to 10% of callers. (Source: MORE TH>N BUSINESS October 2009) when you buy online as well as other great offers when you buy a business insurance product.
IZOD IndyCar Series: Edmonton Indy - Drivers' Post-Race Notes & Quotes - Auto Racing Daily
Vikings player rep predicts “good news” tomorrow - msnbc.com
Steve Hutchinson , who serves as the team’s representative to the NFLPA*, shared an intriguing — and encouraging — observation with Judd Zulgad of the Minneapolis Star Tribune.
Hutchinson’s remarks come amid rampant reports that the NFLPA* Executive Committee and then the board of player representatives (including Hutchinson) will vote Monday to recommend acceptance of the labor deal passed by the owners last week, presumably with some tweaking.
It’s widely believed that, if the Executive Committee and the board of player representatives vote to recommend the deal, the players overwhelming will vote to accept it.
Apparently, this is one situation in which Ochocinco’s media company, OCNN, has missed the boat. Or, perhaps more accurately, the plane to Washington on which the members of the Executive Committee reportedly are flying.
Vikings player rep predicts “good news” tomorrow - msnbc.com
Order Compelling Expert to Produce Financial Information - Maryland Injury Lawyer Blog (blog)
Here's an order we received in Anne Arundel County requiring a recidivist defense expert to produce his financial records before examining the Plaintiff.
I think there is the assumption that my firm is involved in some sort of jihad against IME doctors. Self-referential as this may be, I think we have done more than any law firm in Maryland legal history in fighting for the right to present to a jury evidence of just how deep into the back pocket of insurance companies the doctor is and let them conclude whether this should matter. I'm very proud of this. We are fighting for our clients at every possible turn and our work has created good case law and helped put our clients in the best position to get the settlement or verdict we think they deserve.
That said, I think there are a lot of frequent flyer defense IME doctors that are good people giving honest opinions. Some, less so. (I understate a bit to gain credibility with you, the reader, here.) The battlefield on IMEs is simply whether the expert is required to produce financial information to let the jury decide whether the doctor is unduly motivated by who is paying his freight. Is it the single biggest battlefield in crossing IME doctors? No, I really don't think it is (David Ball apparently agrees with me ). But does it matter? Is it the touchstone issue in a minority of personal injury cases? Absolutely. We get paid to advocate for our clients at every single turn. Defense lawyers do the same. It is the way this game is supposed to be played.
What I find to be incredible is that insurance companies pretty much know that we are going to push for these expert financial records. Does this lead them to pick experts that are further away from the insurance company's trough? No. They see the iceberg right in front of them and decide to speed up the boat and name an expert that particularly has (1) a sorted financial history, and (2) has made painfully clear that if they get named as an expert, they are going to bail on the case.
Order Compelling Expert to Produce Financial Information - Maryland Injury Lawyer Blog (blog)
Should You Have Umbrella Insurance? - Money Talks News (blog)
Longfellow had it right: Both literally and metaphorically, we all get rained on. If it’s the kind that comes from the sky, protect yourself with an umbrella. But if it’s the kind that comes from a court, you might try umbrella insurance.
Umbrella insurance is a broad policy that kicks in where your other insurance sputters out. It can protect your life savings from all kinds of claims – including some your auto or homeowner policy don’t.
In the video below, Money Talks News founder Stacy Johnson and insurance agent Catherine Grady explain in 90 seconds how umbrella insurance works and why you might consider it. Check it out, and then read on for tips on umbrellas, as well as ways to cut costs on any kind of insurance.
While the umbrella policy itself is fairly low priced, you might have to spend more on your existing coverage before you qualify. If you want to get an umbrella from Geico , for example, you’ll have to have a car policy with a minimum of $300,000/person for bodily injury and $100,000 for property damage, plus a homeowners policy with at least $300,000 of liability, plus significant liability coverage on your boat if you have one. Many insurance companies also require that you purchase all your coverage from them: In other words, you can’t have your car policy with company A, home policy with company B, and an umbrella from company C.
Should You Have Umbrella Insurance? - Money Talks News (blog)
In Search of Investment Wisdom - A Review of Berkshire Hathaway’s 1988 Annual … - GuruFocus.com
This time weâre taking a look at Warren Buffett âs 1988 annual shareholder letter for his accumulated investing nuggets of wisdom. Although heâs never written a book, he pens these letters each year covering many subjects of interest to his shareholders, and uses it as a vehicle to discuss the subject of investing.
At times his wisdom is right out in the open, and at other times it requires a little thought and sleuth work to piece together from various letters. I believe that if an investor can understand his methods and apply the concepts holistically in his/her portfolio, thereâs a good likelihood of success. Although Iâve read all his letters a few times in their entirety, I always seem to come away with something new.
In 1988, Berkshireâs net worth increased $569 million, or 20%. By this time, Warren had been at the helm managing things for 24 years, and during that period he was able to grow per-share book value from $19.46 to $2,974.52, or 23% CAGR. Remember, he uses book value as a reasonable, but understated, proxy to Berkshireâs intrinsic value, to judge performance against the S&P 500. His internal scorecard for performance, based on previous letters, is 15% CAGR. The âSainted Sevenâ includes his top wholly-owned subsidiaries: Buffalo News, Fechheimer, Kirby, Nebraska Furniture Mart, Scott Fetzer Manufacturing Group, Seeâs, and World Book. Amazingly, these seven produced an average ROE of 67%, without financial leverage.
Unfortunately, size becomes a drag on performance â like the difference in turning radius between a speed boat and an ocean liner. He reminds us each letter, that as Berkshire grows, the ability to find places to deploy capital becomes increasingly difficult â especially if heâs going to continue looking for strong business operations with durable competitive advantages. In this case, in order for him to hit his 15% target for the coming decade, Berkshire would need profits of $10.3 billion. It was only four years previous that this figure was $3.9 billion.
In Search of Investment Wisdom - A Review of Berkshire Hathaway's 1988 Annual ... - GuruFocus.com
Read Warren Buffett’s Latest Berkshire Hathaway Letter to Shareholders - Wall Street Journal (blog)
The Oracle of Omaha had done it again. Here is the latest letter Warren Buffett has written to shareholders of Berkshire Hathaway. For reasons of typography, we have excluded the tables, as indicated. To read the entire shareholder report, click here .
The highlight of 2010 was our acquisition of Burlington Northern Santa Fe, a purchase that’s working out even better than I expected. It now appears that owning this railroad will increase Berkshire’s “normal” earning power by nearly 40% pre-tax and by well over 30% after-tax. Making this purchase increased our share count by 6% and used $22 billion of cash. Since we’ve quickly replenished the cash, the economics of this transaction have turned out very well.
A “normal year,” of course, is not something that either Charlie Munger, Vice Chairman of Berkshire and my partner, or I can define with anything like precision. But for the purpose of estimating our current earning power, we are envisioning a year free of a mega-catastrophe in insurance and possessing a general business climate somewhat better than that of 2010 but weaker than that of 2005 or 2006. Using these assumptions, and several others that I will explain in the “Investment” section, I can estimate that the normal earning power of the assets we currently own is about $17 billion pre-tax and $12 billion after-tax, excluding any capital gains or losses. Every day Charlie and I think about how we can build on this base.
Both of us are enthusiastic about BNSF’s future because railroads have major cost and environmental advantages over trucking, their main competitor. Last year BNSF moved each ton of freight it carried a record 500 miles on a single gallon of diesel fuel. That’s three times more fuel-efficient than trucking is, which means our railroad owns an important advantage in operating costs. Concurrently, our country gains because of reduced greenhouse emissions and a much smaller need for imported oil. When traffic travels by rail, society benefits.
Read Warren Buffett's Latest Berkshire Hathaway Letter to Shareholders - Wall Street Journal (blog)
NBA All Star Weekend Fun Killed By Corporate Sponsors - The Stir (blog)
If you like guys with big muscles, big verticals, and big egos, you're in luck because today kicks off the NBA All-Star Weekend in Los Angeles. NBA stars and Hollywood stars will spend the next three days shooting hoops, showing off, and making money for their sponsors.
Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace . In this 1996 novel, Wallace writes about the future where years are no longer numerals but rather they're referred to as the name of a corporate sponsor. There's the Year of the Whooper, Year of the Trial-Size Dove Bar, and Year of the Depend Adult Undergarment, to name a few.
This NBA All-Star Game presented by Your Mom has gotten out of hand. I felt similarly when I watched the World Cup, but since I didn't recognize half the brands because they were foreign, it didn't irk me as much. I'll put car racing in the same boat, too.
Soon your kids could be going to Spring Hill Elementary presented by Crayola and Great Falls Public Pool presented by Aquafina. Maybe Wallace wasn't that far off.
NBA All Star Weekend Fun Killed By Corporate Sponsors - The Stir (blog)
Top 10 Memes of 2010: We’d Live In Peace If We Never Saw These Again - Switched
2010 introduced us to countless new memes. But only a few were clever and culturally pervasive enough for consideration for this list. For every 'Double Rainbow' there were a dozen 'Standing Cats' and 'Salsa Dogs' that may have proved good for a quick chuckle but lacked staying power, depth and versatility.
As viral videos and other Web phenomena continue to grow in cultural importance, we increasingly become a society defined by its memes. Sure, you can learn a lot about the current cultural climate by watching the news and by analyzing what movies and TV shows are popular but we think you can learn just as much, if not more, by looking at what obsessed our online masses. So, without further ado we give you the year in memes.
While World Cup fever was gripping fútbol fans, the Internet was going nuts for vuvuzelas. The plastic horns quickly went from cultural curiosity to over-saturated meme. There were iPhone apps that made the blaring sound super portable, sites that added the din of thousands of South African football fans to other sites and Google even had a button to add a vuvuzela loop to any YouTube video (which led to our favorite mashup -- an adorable bunny transformed into a Kubrick-esque nightmare ). The vuvuzela meme burned bright for only a brief period of time, but there's still some life left in this viral phenomenon, as evidenced by a recent video that saw the plastic horns re-purposed as the most irritating burglar alarm ever .
It's so intense " and " what does it mean " were plastered on t-shirts, and Microsoft even hired Vasquez to parody himself in an ad for Windows Live Photo Gallery. Chances are that his 15 minutes are over, but the phrase "double rainbow" is now permanently seared into our collective pop consciousness.
Top 10 Memes of 2010: We'd Live In Peace If We Never Saw These Again - Switched
Like its name, Cure Auto Insurance is ‘curing’ unfair car insurance - Mercer Space
Eric Poe, COO of the not-for-profit Cure auto insurance company, is making a career out of being a thorn in the side of the industry in which he works.
Poe, who lives in Hopewell Township, has helped launch a controversial advertising campaign for Cure. His company’s TV commercials and billboards - you may have seen its sarcastic blue smiley face - mock and insult the way auto insurance companies do business.
Poe, who lives in Hopewell Township, has helped launch a controversial advertising campaign for Cure. His company’s TV commercials and billboards - you may have seen its sarcastic blue smiley face - mock and insult the way auto insurance companies do business. “Some insurance companies think credit scores and education have something to do with driving. [Bleep] them!” the face says in a commercial that several TV networks refused to air.
The ad is referring to the widespread practice of car insurance companies charging different rates to customers based on their education levels and credit histories - factors that, according to insurance actuaries, have nothing to do with being a safe driver, according to Poe.
Like its name, Cure Auto Insurance is 'curing' unfair car insurance - Mercer Space