Photo of the Day: A Spinner in Action

Many of you probably know nothing about cricket. Greatest sport ever. Truly. A type of bowler (similar to a pitcher in baseball) is a spin bowler, and we all tend to think of them as crafty with their fingers. I loved this pic because it emphasizes the concert of different muscles coming together - look at the tension in the legs, abs, all over.

History Flashback: Time mag cover from April 1984

Picture of the Day: Iceberg!

A Liberian-flagged cruise ship after hitting an iceberg in Antartica. Thankfully, no one was hurt!

Random Thoughts on Black Friday

It was my first time in several years buying anything on Black Friday. There were quite a few deals - the one that got me to Walmart was this Kodak ZD710 digital camera with a 7.2MP resolution and 10X optical zoom. There were some other spectacular deals, and definitely some crowds, a topic supported by early news reports. But looking at people's shopping carts, and the vast stacks of unsold specials in my city's Walmart, I wonder if this is indeed an indication of a retail slowdown. It does appear to me that people in at least my town seem to be getting much more conscious of expenditures, possibly due to the housing slowdown and rising oil prices? I'll be curiously waiting for the final numbers ...

Speaking of shopping, be sure to check return policies! I haven't purchased too much more than books online, and as I was considering buying a camera (yes, I'm probably the LAST person to still be using a film point and shoot!) I decided to peek at the return policies. Amazon gives you a 30 day return period (although there's a grace period around the holidays), and any opened item loses 20% of its value. On Buy.com, it's 14 days and a 15% restocking fee. If you think you're not sure about the quality of the product you are buying, favor the traditional retailers - a purchase at Walmart can be returned to a store for no extra charge, even if you bought it online.

Speaking of cameras, shopping for one is a bit like going to the gym. In the gym, there's the ridiculous emphasis on the bench press even though it is not a decent metric of fitness. In the camera world, it appears it's all megapixels and megapixels (ok, there are times when two seemingly identical cameras are vastly different in prices, but not for any reason a novice like me can figure out) Here's a tip: think what you'll use it for. I talked to a few friends savvier about these gizmos than I (hey, I still use a film camera!), and it seemed evident to me that if your application is mostly for travel, a good optical zoom is far more important than MP. If you plan to make posters, or make prints from portions of your photo (i.e. you crop out part of the picture) then MP are much more important.

Dem Debate: Turn off the Commentators

Anyone else tired of the crap political commentators put out after every debate? After the last edition, one I watched because I was finally done with my doctoral defense (yes, yours truly now has signatures approving his Dr.-dom!), I couldn't help but notice how disparate my views were from those of the "experts".

Hillary, they told us, put in a stellar performance. Really? I must have missed that. What I saw were soft questions (including the most ridiculous question about diamonds or pearls, one it turns out CNN encouraged an audience member to ask), and a failure to commit to specific policies. Sen. Clinton is best when she has to play the old pol's game of being everything to everyone.

Obama, we are told, stumbled. I'm not that impressed with him, but at least he did on occasion commit to where he stands on issues. Of course, that was few and far between, as the top tier candidates largely deflected every question to a beration of the Bush administration.

The sidelined candidates, on the other hand, did a stellar job. Richardson and Dodd were very good in talking about specifics, and Biden had flashes of brilliance when asked about foreign policy. But the media just writes a few brief lines about them - after all, a Pakistan policy isn't as exciting as how Hillary snapped at Edwards!

Cartoon of the Day: Pat Robertson Endorsement

From Politico.com

Awesome Football Vid of Trinity's Lateral Win

This is a must watch!

Trinity's lateral revolution

Picture of the Day: Lake Lanier

The drought in Georgia is very worrying - estimates are that Atlanta has less than 60 days of water supply left. This picture (courtesy USA Today) is of Lake Lanier in Cummings, Ga. where the drought has exposed several docks.

No no Grandpa, Don't Overload Stocks!

This morning, as I chowed down my Raisin Bran, I happened to catch a personal finance "expert" who recommended that even people in their 60s should have 70% of their financial assets in stocks. 70 percent!! That's the highest I've ever heard, and while I have no readers that old that I know of, I hope younger readers can be the light and advice Grandpa and Grandma against this foolhardiness.

I've ranted before that any asset is only worth the price you pay for it. There is no such thing as a free lunch, and those who thought there was now make up the numbers in the foreclosure listings. But since I'm way too busy writing that epic called a dissertation (seriously, at times it does feel like one!), I'll leave you with this one great article from the one great magazine called the Economist. An excerpt (emphasis added):

Elroy Dimson, Paul Marsh and Mike Staunton of the London Business School examined the record of 16 stockmarkets which were in continuous operation over the course of the 20th century. In itself, this selection showed survivorship bias by excluding the likes of Russia and China. The academics found that only three other countries could match the American record of having no 20-year periods with negative real returns. Other investors were far less lucky. Japanese, French, German and Spanish investors all suffered instances where they had to wait 50-60 years to earn a positive real return; in Italy and Belgium, the waiting period stretched to 70 years. It was no good following the famous advice to “put the shares in a drawer and forget about them”; the furniture would not have lasted that long.

My point isn't to stay away from stocks. It's just that stocks appear kind of pricey to me. If not for some special circumstances, I'd probably invest mostly in high quality issues, or better yet market-neutral funds which invest in these issues (actually about half my money is in one such fund), and overweight TIPS and cold hard cash (paying attention to yield, of course)

Big Brother Is Indeed Watching You

Washington has been swamped with talk of legal and illegal wiretaps and other intrusions on the privacy of individuals who, depending on who you believe, may or may not be related to terrorists. But the media has largely ignored the much greater story of surveillance on US citizens who are most definitely not involved with terrorists. The latest camera law in Baltimore is a troubling new trend of cities that are using CCTVs to intrude on the privacies of ordinary citizens. While the National Security Agency is not incorruptible, I'm much more disturbed (even as a foreigner) with surveillance by local officials, where I'd suspect the checks and balances are much weaker.

At what point are we going to discuss this issue without using it as an opportunity to take potshots at the Bush administration?

And the IgNoble goes to ...

The Ig Noble awards are out! If you have never heard of them, where have you been? Here is the Wikipedia article on the awards.

Here are some of my favorites from this year's award winners (here is the story)

• Brian Witcombe of Gloucester and Dan Meyer of Antioch, Tennessee, for their report in the British Medical Journal, Sword Swallowing and its Side-Effects


• Mayu Yamamoto of the International Medical Centre of Japan, for developing a way to extract vanilla essence from cow dung


• Juant Manuel Toro, Josep Trobalon and Núria Sebastián-Gallés, of Barcelona University, for showing that rats cannot tell the difference between a person speaking Japanese backwards and a person speaking Dutch backwards


• The Air Force Wright Laboratory, Dayton, Ohio, for instigating research on a chemical weapon to make enemy soldiers sexually irresistible to each other

To be fair, I think some of the research is useful - a previous awardee, for example, studied why woodpeckers don't get headaches. That could be a blockbuster drug of the future.

The Terror Democracy Dilemna

Now that Iranian President Mahmud Ahmedinijad is safely back in Iran and the excitement (and not in a good way!) surrounding his visit has subsided, it's worth considering one little detail that has been routinely ignored by the press, and even an academic such as the President of Columbia University. Read this line ....

Mr Ahmedinijad is not a dictator

That's right - despite all the brouhaha over Mr Ahmedinijad, he is many things but not a dictator. Rather, he's been elected in relatively free and fair elections. That's the little detail everyone seems to be ignoring - Iran is a democracy. Now, I have no love lost for Mr Ahmedinijad, and I do think his rhetoric is unfortunate, but I think the hype's getting ahead of him. He actually doesn't really have that much power, and certainly there's enough reason to believe his sabre-rattling is to boost his popularity that's taking a beating thanks to an economy that's tanking despite soaring gas prices.

But this presents a dilemna for our idealist leaders. We'd like to believe democracy goes hand in hand with all we hold good, but this is hardly the case. Remember Adolf Hilter was a democratically elected leader. Ditto Russian President Vladimir Putin, who despite his oppressive rule seems to have record-breaking popularity. It just doesn't fit. In fact, a failing democracy is more likely to have leaders whip up sentiments to distract the electorate.

That's not to say we should not support the installation of democracy globally. Let's just not be so idealistic to believe that democracies are good for us in the absence of taking other steps to deal with real issues. Oh yeah, and dial down that rhetoric - we don't need a war with Iran!

A Secondhand Perspective on a Health Care Crisis

I was at my mechanic today, chatting up with the owner's daughter, only to learn the owner had been hospitalized today for a diabetic condition. Turns out the owner did not have health insurance, as the soaring costs of premiums had resulted in a tab of $2,400 a month for the four employees in the business. Why? Insurance companies do not want to accept customers with pre-existing conditions, and hence such patients are forced to fork over exorbitant premiums to participate in plans will allow them in.

Here is a businessman whose family has run this shop for decades, long enough to qualify to be a historical feature of the city. And yet we have a health care system than endangers the well-being of such a model citizen! For politicians to pretend that there isn't a crisis is disingenous, and while I don't believe in a huge government solution like some, government's got to be part of the solution.

Tough Questions on Free Speech

It was a remarkable week for the idea of freedom of expression, and yet you saw precious little analysis of some of the tough questions surrounding free speech in the media. This should be a week we're all contemplating the limits of this issue, so I thought I'd open the floor to thoughts.

The first case involved a student who broke protocol and jumped ahead of a line after question time to ask a question of Senator John Kerry. While the senator appeared to be willing to answer the question, police attempted to escort the student out, and in what seems to me like antics for the camera, the student resisted and was Tasered.

The second case was an MIT student who wore what looked like a bomb under her dress to the airport to pick up her boyfriend, when she was instead picked up and arrested.

The third case is the brouhaha over Iranian President Ahmedinijad's scheduled talk at Columbia.

Depending on your political persuasion, some of these are slam dunks. Well, I beg to differ.

Start with the MIT student. It's obvious she was stupid to arrive in an airport posing what could be perceived as a security threat, and it's obvious that the TSA were quite right in arresting her. What we do need to think about is how far we'll take that argument in the future. A friend of mine told me some time back about a "Politically Incorrect" Halloween party they had, where one of the characters was dressed as a suicide bomber. May that be perceived as a threat when such a person walks on the street? My own university had an issue with a student facing civil and administrative penalties for practicing for a play with a fake gun.

My view on the Tasering of the student is that it was quite the right course. After all, here was a student who was being disruptive to an event and resisting eviction. But even that isn't as cut-and-dry in my mind. After all, this was a public university, and it's certainly worth discussing how appropriate it is to attempt to censor or regulate speech in such an institution.

Then to Mr Ahmedinijad. On the one hand, this is obviously a guy who could be our #1 enemy, and we are providing him with a platform for propoganda. And yet, how could we censor a man who we are critical of because he's against free societies. I actually applaud Columbia for negotiating the terms so that the Iranian president will have to answer any questions from the audience - sometimes the best disinfectant is sunlight!

But those are my views. You may have others, and I'd love to hear from you.

Opinion of the Day: Ritzholtz on Social Networking

I'm waiting for a model to finish running, and need something to keep me awake, so here was an interesting piece from Barry Ritzholtz on why to pass on social networking sites. For full disclosure, I do participate in social networking sites.

Photo of the Day: China Congestion

Quote of the Day: Hamburger Offsets

Environmental humorist Lou Bendrick on the idea of buying carbon offsets to compensate for the global warming pollution caused by our actions:

You get to sin, but you get to buy your way out of it. It's sort of silly. It's like buying tofu offsets to be able to eat a hamburger.

Rant of the Day: "Self Help"

One of my favorite places in the world is a bookstore, but if there's one gripe I have, it's the section titled 'Self-Help'. I mean, don't get me wrong, I have no problem with books from Dr Phil being labeled such, but the issue with this big sweep was that all manner of books are tagged as such. So you read a book on improving your productivity, getting more from life, being a better person ... Self-Help, Self-Help and Self-Help.

Now, I'm not normally one for tags. Readers of my ramblings know I'm not particularly PC. But I do object with the self-help tag. It suggests people who read these books are somehow flawed. Well, it's true, we're all flawed and imperfect, but that leads me to my gripe. By using a demeaning term as "self-help", it drives so many people from seeking to become better people. And thus, we have a society filled with people who are convinced they are perfect; that seeking to discover your flaws and insecurities is somehow an indication that you aren't quite right ... I've even had people brag about how they haven't changed since they were a teenager! Well, newsflash: if you aren't changing, you aren't growing!

A Lesson in Grit

Here's something you don't find a lot of on this blog - a personal story. I try to stay away from them, partly because I prefer my deepest emotions, thoughts and insecurities are better a private affair, and also because I think they have no meaning or relevance in another's life beyond watching a freak show. This time however, I was moved by the grit of an elderly lady to make my reflections public.

I injured my thumb last Saturday with an embarrassing fall on a dance floor caused by way too many inebriating fluids, as I took down a rather attractive lady who has innocently mistaken my newfound confidence as a measure of competence. The thumb swelled up, and as I struggled with the pain all night, I was in a rather whiny mood Sunday morning. I was staying with a friend's grandparents, and his grandmom did what all grandparents do - try to make me feel better both about the injury and the incident that caused it.

A little later though, she herself took a fall, and came crashing down. She was unable to get up, and we called the paramedics for help. As we waited for relief, here was on old lady with artificial hips, who could barely move her legs and who was clearly in pain, still laughing and joking, teasing me for rubbing off on her, and being so incredibly jovial. Through it all, not once did she complain, beyond calling herself a little silly; there were no screams of pain, and in fact there was a deliberate effort to conceal any she may have been feeling.

I wish I could say I was transformed instantly. Chances are I still will be a wimp the next time I injure myself. Maybe someone should show me this post when I do.

Say No to Biofuel

It's 3 am here at Portland airport, and even this cup of java can't trigger a very eloquent essay, but on my drive here, I heard a story I felt compelled to post here. Turns out rising commodity prices have caused rising pasta prices in Italy. Add that to the soaring prices of corn that affect the poor in Latin America, and you have a problem. While biofuel is not the only problem, this story emphasizes why biofuel is a sinful fuel, maybe even more than the much maligned petroleum sources.

Seriously, if you truly care about global warming, skip the touted technological solutions and focus on good ol' conservation. That's not to say solar and wind and whatever else don't have a place in society - just that it's silly to think they'll make a big dent in our "dirty" energy consumption or greenhouse gas loads any time soon.