View From the Bushes

Once again, I feel somewhat robbed by the weekend. Overall it was pretty good, but Sunday morning I got the 24 hour flu that the rest of the family had two weeks ago. It started just as I woke up Sunday morning and hit its zenith right about 10:15... By the time I went to bed I was mostly recovered, although I'm still hoarse from the vomiting. I think I should have drank more in college. My friends who get drunk a lot are apparently much better at puking then I am. Course then I didn't sleep well at all, which could have been due to the long nap I took on Sunday, but may just be my many sins and misdeeds coming to haunt me.

Over the weekend I did some reading on Charles Ponzi and the original Ponzi scam. There were a lot of interesting parallels between it and 12DailyPro (which as I've mentioned before, has an unholy fascination for me). One thing that I found particularly interesting is that the original Ponzi scheme promised a 50% return every 45 days. 12DailyPor promised 44% every 20 days, so a rate roughly double that of the original scheme. Another parallel is the fanaticism of the followers. It only takes a few minutes of browsing the forums of 12DailyPro before you encounter mindless adoration of the kind Charles Manson only dreamed of.

Another thing that many people wonder about is, if it is a huge scam why hasn't Charis just taken the money and run? Well Ponzi didn't, and in fact evidence would seem to indicate that rather than being some grand scheme conceived in malevolence from the very begining that Ponzi (and presumably Charis) had something of a business plan in the beginning and things just sort of got out of hand, leaving Ponzi trying to find some way to dig himself out of his golden coffin. A similar thing is happening at 12Daily. Of course, if there's a pyramid scheme or a get-rich-quick scam, Utah is sure to be at the center of it. I'll leave you with this article from Utah's channel four, and hope that next time Utah isn't the laughing stock of the nation.

One of those rare times when I'm embarrassed to be a Mormon
Ross