DanKohn.com

Hendrik Hertzberg facetiously suggests in the New Yorker that the clearest way to have the Pledge of Allegiance reflect our national views on religious is that: After “under God,” insert “and we don’t mean Allah.”

Flying Concorde was one of those once-in-a-lifetime thrills (actually, I took it round-trip). The windows get warm to the touch from friction and you reach high enough (55,000 feet) to see the curvature of the Earth. Unfortunately, I expect before too long that another Concorde will blow up and the fleet will be grounded for good, just as will happen with the US Space Shuttles. You can never plan for every contingency, and there is not enough quantity in either fleet to shake out serious bugs. Almost no other aspect of modern life could survive a zero tolerance threshold for failure.

In any event, I do not see myself flying on the new Japanese supersonic jet anytime soon.

An Al Queda recruiting movie, that’s funny if in rather poor taste.

Hard to imagine, but what if there were movement on the Anthrax case as a result of Nicholas Kristof embarrassing the FBI with his columns?

It was a great pleasure to spend a week hiking the “Grand Canyon of Africa” in Namibia with Tim Cahill, who writes for Outside magazine. Richard Bangs wrote up our trip in MSNBC, and Tim will be publishing a major Outside story soon. I was amused by this Q&A about the “oneness” that primitive peoples feel. I believe Tim’s answer makes clear his view on the subject of Jean-Jacques “noble savage” Rousseau versus Thomas “nasty, brutish, and short” Hobbes.

#111 ranked Amazon reviewer Henry Raddick says this about a particular book:

I plan on giving this tremendous guide to my wife for her birthday. After all, she has been pestering me for a BMW sports car and even gave me some sort of owners’ guide for my birthday, so 2 can play at the heavy-handed-hints game.

You’ll have to click through to get the punchline. The book is out of print.

If I were SEC Chairman Harvey Pitt, I would not be happy to wake up this morning hearing that John McCain had called for my resignation. Although I support this fully, I can’t see McCain’s argument that executives should only be allowed to sell stock 90 days after they quit their job. Basic financial prudence and portfolio theory would dictate that otherwise completely effective execs would quit rather than keep all of their eggs in one basket.

Also, I cannot understand the hullabaloo about expensing stock options. Like everyone else, I like Warren Buffett’s quote:

If options aren’t a form of compensation, what are they? If compensation isn’t an expense, what is it? And, if expenses shouldn’t go into the calculation of earnings, where in the world should they go?

The answer is that there is only one metric that ultimately matters to shareholders, and that’s earnings per share (EPS). The emphasis is on per share. Stock options increase the total number of shares outstanding and therefore reduce the fully diluted EPS. Now, I would certainly support regulations requiring that EPS always refer to fully diluted EPS, and that undiluted EPS be deprecated for the much less useful number that it is. Note that this is just what Bush suggested in an interview with the WSJ. However, I can’t see the argument that this approach “only accounts for the increase in shares outstanding, not the cost to the company of the stock options.” After all, the only cost to the company is the increase in shares outstanding. The trick is for investors to use the metric — fully diluted EPS — that takes this cost into account.

Great closing quote by McCain: “To love the free market is to loathe the scandalous behavior of those who have betrayed the values of openness that lie at the heart of a healthy and prosperous capitalist system.”

US CentCom lists support from allied countries in the current war. Is it just me, or does the phrasing here seem unnecessarily pejorative? “France provided its only Carrier Battle Group to support combat operations in the North Arabian Sea. Aircraft from this Battle Group have flown more than 2,000 hours for OEF to date, supporting the coalition with air reconnaissance, strike and AEW missions. France’s naval contribution to OEF accounts for approximately 24 percent of their entire naval forces.”

Hilbert’s paradox of the (aptly named) Grand Hotel: If an infinite number of rooms are filled, and an infinite number of coaches arrive, each with an infinite number of passengers, are there rooms for them?

Ever wonder what the USS in front of ship names on Star Trek stands for? Starship Enterprise from wikipedia explains: “The USS Enterprise was once referred to as the ‘United Space Ship Enterprise’, but ever since has always been ‘United Star Ship’. Since Starfleet is unrelated to the United States armed forces any similarity between this awkward phrase and the American warship prefix ‘United States Ship’ must be strictly coincidental.”