Oxfam: 85 richest people as wealthy as poorest half of the world

Winnie Byanyima, the Oxfam executive director who will attend the Davos meetings, said: "It is staggering that in the 21st Century, half of the world's population – that's three and a half billion people – own no more than a tiny elite whose numbers could all fit comfortably on a double-decker bus."

http://www.theguardian.com/business/2014/jan/20/oxfam-85-richest-people-half-of-the-world

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:U.S._Distribution_of_Wealth,_2007.jpg

Driving the middle road

Capitalist systems are winning the world over including communist China and Russia, we recognize the invisible hand driving it forward, we don't want people to be addicted to social welfare and mooch off, we know it is not always going to be fair, there will be luck and perseverance and hard work and failures and sparks of innovation, and we know greed is good metaphorically speaking in that it greases the wheels of capitalism, we know government cannot be the means and the end to betterment.

However, unbridled, naked, reckless greed can as well drive us back to the jungle life whence we evolved from.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/19/opinion/sunday/for-the-love-of-money.html?hp&rref=opinion

Polar Vortex

Anyone who didn't live within the polar vortex got to believe it was cold by the fact that it was so cold in Lexington KY that a prisoner who escaped state prison turned himself in to be able to warm up.

Scratch from MIT

Scratch, created from MIT, is a wonderful programming environment and platform that is kid friendly, to be able to learn and discover coding. In about an hour or two, created this elementary game with my elementary school going daughter. It's fun, expressive and uses real programming concepts with simplified constructs.

http://scratch.mit.edu/projects/16049942/

Perfect Failure

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/12/15/in-praise-of-failure/

Two interesting reads, one technology and the other personal facets of one of the two complex personalities that have had been so driven to drive us into the information age from the electronics age. A trip down the memory lane, one reminding us of our humility in the face of frail human body the other working hard on challenges bigger than technology and information. How would later generations look at this dawn of information age, after they have internalized the wonders..

http://www.rollingstone.com/culture/news/the-steve-jobs-nobody-knew-20111027

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/06/magazine/and-then-steve-said-let-there-be-an-iphone.html

“Let me be more specific: One faction of one party in one house of Congress in one branch of government shut down major parts of the government, all because they did not like one law.” President Obama

With hundreds of laws passing over scores of years, irony is why have the shutdowns not been frequent and common place. Maybe some people who don't like certain laws are more adult than some other juvenile ones?