Learning the meaning of it all..

http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/12/24/laws-of-physics-cant-trump-the-bonds-of-love/

What a disappointment. No bending and no mending. Yes we need to look at and do something about violence in video games, but nothing else except more and bigger guns in the hands of good guys? Who are the good guys and how do we know they will not end up with the bad guys? 40% of gun sales occur in secondary markets (black markets unaccounted for). Nothing about better checks and waiting periods. Nothing about war grade assault weapons that can spray 100 bullets a minutes. A gun homicide somewhere every 20 minutes mostly with illegal weapons. They have lost it and lost a chance for a modicum of respect.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/22/opinion/the-nra-crawls-from-its-hidey-hole.html

Positive statement from NRA, the god of guns. Let's hope they have meaningful reflection in the coming days on the "wellness" and "regulation" aspects of the constitutional "well regulated militia". Looking forward to bending of minds in the Fri news conference.

Honor the victims -- with action

http://www.cnn.com/2012/12/17/opinion/gergen-gun-culture/index.html

God help America wean itself from the fallacy of law-abiding good citizens owning assault weapons making the society a safe place to live. Exactly one such snuffed out the sweet innocent smiles of so many little ones and senseless loss of adult lives caring for them and protecting them.

Arms, Liberty and Civility

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/12/16/the-freedom-of-an-armed-society/

Gumption n guns

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/16/opinion/sunday/kristof-do-we-have-the-courage-to-stop-this.html

Until the next random demon pops up amongst us what can we reflect upon?

That America was historically a land of settlers who used guns to protect themselves, and to form militias to defend freedom against authoritarian tyranny. That close to half a million died in the civil war fought to protect the perceived righteous freedoms on both sides. That ultimately one side's definition of freedom no longer counts in the modern world where America elected the first half-black and half-white president.

That in the last two hundred years guns like all other technology have advanced quite a lot. That we have advanced bombs and nuclear weapons we did not have then. That no one is clamoring for an individual's rights to manufacture and own bombs to form well-organized militias against the all powerful government. That we have faith in our 911 and police and army to protect us, not to go out of control against us.

Can we be a free people and still have the authoritarian government not mind their business but tell us to buckle up when we can do no harm to anyone else by not doing so?

Can we be a free people and still have the authoritarian government tell us to buy insurance, coax us to not smoke, protect us from harmful foods and drinks, make us pay our taxes, arrest us for walking naked on the streets?

If we can still be a shining statue of liberty, I don't see a reason why we cannot be a free nation even when the government does not allow, or severely restrict, the use of lethal semi-automatic and automatic guns that can kill dozens in minutes.

Chronicle of an Illustrious Illumination.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/13/arts/music/ravi-shankar-indian-sitarist-dies-at-92.html

Retina display is indeed powerful. After reading so much on my tired old iphone I could feel the strain on my eyes and after weighing the ipad mini versus ipad went with retina display ipad. Far too many form factors to juggle with in life, but I am glad I did go with the bigger screen and it is light enough (though not handy enough but I decided not to carry it anywhere out of the home). The screen quality is so good I am thinking I should be able to read all the books, magazines and news I want on it. After spending half hour on it the laptop screen seems blurry and fuzzy.

So why did one lose and the other win? Why did the voters vote for someone they felt was lesser qualified with economy even when economy was the top priority?

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/07/opinion/friedman-hope-and-change-part-two.html?ref=todayspaper

Got sweet surprise and interruption from sleep. Electric power is back after 51 hours and looking forward to a new dawn tomorrow.

Crossed 48 hrs and counting to get the electric power back. Grateful to have hot and cold running water and cooking gas. Goldilocks temps 40s and 50s not too cold to live without heating and not too warm to have the refrigerator food spoil immediately. No major damages but so many others in NJ and NYC not so fortunate.

I thought I had seen once in a lifetime hurricane up the mid-atlantic coast in the form of Irene in 2011, but apparently I have a new lifetime now with Sandy looking to come ashore in 2012. Omnious looking 950mb low pressure coming to areas where the lowest recorded ones have been around 960mb. Heavy rain, flooding, wind gusts, loss of power and water, even snow with this one turning into a nor'easter across such a huge swath of the most densely populated region in north America (there is still some hope as a few minority models do show this turning out into the Atlantic, but hope is so thin now). Hoping to be as fortunate as last time. Wondering if a few billions worth of investment can show ways to tame these natural disasters that so regularly produce losses that high.

http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/science/08/28/hurricanes.gates.gray/

Economic oligarchy or socialism snuffing entrepreneurial energy? Interesting the reddest of them conservatives Ryan is no alien to pork and barrel ways of the beltway. So if he is truly against socialism why don't he dare say social security and medicare ought not to be, for it is nothing more than government helping people who don't take responsibility for their later years?

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/14/opinion/sunday/the-self-destruction-of-the-1-percent.html?ref=opinion

National Constitution Center in Philadelphia PA is a wonderful experience of United States history of governance. Half hour theater production and a museum full of artifacts, videos etc with interactivity. As a bonus, an interactive voting booth helped me decide which way I should lean to vote in Nov. Out of the 10 odd issues presented I selected the three most important ones for me, education, health care and economy. Based on my responses to several questions on these topics it told me Obama out matches Romney by 6 to 4 for me.

http://constitutioncenter.org/

Tracing the Origins of Indo-European Languages

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2012/08/24/science/0824-origins.html?ref=science

Neil Armstrong

"It suddenly struck me that that tiny pea, pretty and blue, was the Earth. I put up my thumb and shut one eye, and my thumb blotted out the planet Earth. I didn't feel like a giant. I felt very, very small."

Not so common gun sense

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/26/opinion/armed-but-not-so-safe.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/26/opinion/an-arms-race-we-cant-win.html

Guns and Roses

Many many dozens of moons ago an immigrant worker wearing a younger man's clothes asked a naive question in the then very new corporate electronic discussion forum: why does someone who is not a law enforcement officer need to own a gun?. Another young man across the continent from Pensylvannia thundered back, o' my cold dead fingers. Now wearing more mature clothes and perhaps a bit more wizened and understanding the settler ethos which has shaped the genes of a nation and its people, I do get one point, that if a bad person wants to kill he can do so with or without a gun. But I am still perplexed, and now living in crowded suburbs of New York do wonder still why would anyone who is not into law enforcement or army want to own assault weapons? What freedom? Who could they protect? The senselessness of it all is mind boggling, unless one is fatalistic and believes that if a bad thing is going to happen to you it will happen with or without assault rifles.

While the monsters of Columbine, Aurora, Virginia keeping popping up now and then I have yet to witness any sensible news stories depicting how owning a gun helped a good person protect themselves against a bad person. Guns do not cause or prevent killings. Killing existed long before guns. Guns do make them more detached, clinical, cold blooded, senseless, horrendous, game-like, unhinged from reason and sanity. There are not many mountain frontiers left to be settled in this land for the coming generations. What is left to conquer and suppress are our random demons.

“Each person's task in life is to become an increasingly better person.” – Leo Tolstoy

Efficient Gardening and Messy Machinery

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/11/opinion/our-gardenbrain-economy.html?_r=1

To be or not to be

http://swampland.time.com/2012/07/03/decision-2012-follow-the-bouncing-health-care-ball/

NY Times QUOTATION OF THE DAY

"Right now, it's scary to get sick, because if you don't die from the sickness, you die when you see the bill."
GLADYS VASQUEZ, 50, a Houston home health aide who lacks health insurance.

College through venture capital?

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/14/opinion/the-college-graduate-as-collateral.html?_r=2&nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20120614


 The author is discussing economics of college education in the US. In place of financing this with debt, he has proposed a novel market solution to enable investors to finance the education in return for future potential payoff. So instead of paying off the debt the student will later on in life pay more in taxes part of which will go to the investors who took the risk to finance earlier on. This way the student remains free of debt burden in return for the agreement to contribute part of the earnings differential (due to education) towards the investment pay back.

Thinking more about this it actually makes a lot of sense to have a market mechanism in place to evaluate risks and returns for particular lines of education..individual students may or may not be able to make an informed decision and the wrong turn could lead to debt burden down the road without pay off if the line of education they went in goes out of favor with the job market..but the collective market may be able to better evaluate the longer term potentials for various fields of study and accordingly set the pricing and financing..credit derivatives markets exist to evaluate and swap credit risks..similarly these could be education derivatives which the investors could bet on based on their project of the direction of economy..

Presence

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/06/10/are-we-living-in-sensory-overload-or-sensory-poverty/?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20120611

Moving and uplifting

http://www.cnn.com/2012/06/07/us/from-janitor-to-harvard/index.html

Galactic trains on a cosmic collision course

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/hubble/science/milky-way-collide.html

Market Morals

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/31/opinion/kristof-markets-and-morals.html?emc=eta1

Touching the head of the head of state

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/24/us/politics/indelible-image-of-a-boys-pat-on-obamas-head-hangs-in-white-house.html

Mind over machine

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/17/science/bodies-inert-they-moved-a-robot-with-their-minds.html?_r=1

Thank you Mr. Dimon

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/14/opinion/krugman-why-we-regulate.html

More sanity in democracy by way of lottery?

http://campaignstops.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/04/23/the-mega-millions-solution/?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20120424

Quite impressed and interested..

..watched first of the six episodes on netflix streaming..

http://www.pbs.org/thestoryofindia/

US Supreme Court begins hearing..

.. on the health care mandate. I am not trained in law but in the parlance of software something does not seem to compute. For an analogy, I may be the safest and the most conservative driver but I have not heard anyone stand up for my right to not have to buy minimum mandated insurance to be able to operate my vehicle. I may be the most healthy person around, but even so the tax dollars does provide for the ultimate insurance for life's uncertainly and unpredictability. If I drop flat in the middle of a public or private space, people around are going to call 911 without having the opportunity to talk with me about whether or not I am paying tax dollars for this, and the hospital will treat me first and find this out later. So what's the big deal about adding a penalty or tax surcharge for individuals to pay, if they don't buy the minimum mandated health insurance?

Mr Santorum would like..

 .. intelligent design to be taught in schools but guess what would he want them to worship when out of school? The mindless randomness and evolution of the markets without any intelligent input design from the top!

Saint O'Immigration

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/17/opinion/its-about-immigrants-not-irishnesss.html

Good bye and so long..

.. to a no sweat winter!

The vegetarian butcher

I recall some excellent meals with beef, pork and chicken dishes at Chinese-Vietnamese vegan restaurants in southern California.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/11/opinion/sunday/finally-fake-chicken-worth-eating.html

Innovation in recording vision

http://gadgetwise.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/02/29/a-review-of-the-lytro-camera/

http://www.lytro.com/

Some growing up to do for Santorum

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/28/opinion/bruni-its-a-college-not-a-cloister.html

Well oiled machine, maybe a tad too much of the oil?

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/19/opinion/sunday/the-danger-of-too-much-efficiency.html?ref=opinion

It was a very good experience, one of the most..

..important one after the citizenship oath, to be doing the jury duty service. The importance of fairness as the cornerstone to freedom and liberty, the eagle on top of the stars and stripes. They respect the individual constraints, both professional and personal, and in turn they evoked my respect for their part in ensuring a fair process to both parties. During the long wait times for the day long service, it was quite fitting to be able to find a time magazine cover story on the Oracle of Omaha, Warren Buffet. His life story and his reflections on MLK's influence on him. It stuck upon me the take away that the government should not be in the business of changing hearts but they need to enact and enforce the regulations to restrain the heartless. The old judge entertained us with some hearty laughs. Another funny nugget I read..Republicans and Democrats are like Coke and Pepsi, the branding and marketing might be different but they are made of the same chemicals..

Costs of finance intermediation

http://www.cnbc.com/id/46199437

Foolishly laughing all the way into the euphoric asphyxiation of the bubble

http://www.cnbc.com/id/46194541

What is good for the goose, is it good for the gander?

http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2012/01/18/the-united-states-economy-through-a-private-equity-lens/

Daydreaming without an iPhone

http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/01/01/resolved-in-2012-to-enjoy-the-view-without-help-from-an-iphone/