Links

1. Books that make you dumb?. This is cool.

2. NYT Primary Choices: Hillary Clinton and John McCain

3. China and India combined to produce nearly half the world's economic output in 1820 compared to just 1.8% for the U.S. Looks interesting.

So just say it

If you're writing online, forget everything you were tortured by in high school English class. You're not trying to win any awards or get an A. You're just trying to be real, to make a point, to write something worth reading.

So just say it.

That's from my favorite blogger Seth Godin. Thanks Seth. I am trying.

There Will Be Blood

Directed by Paul Thomas Anderson.

I saw one of the best acting by Daniel Day-Lewis as Daniel Plainview in this movie. In the opening scenes we see him as a lone silver digger and fells into the mine breaking his leg, but survives. Then he starts digging for oil, moving into California. Where he meets his nemesis, Eli Sunday (another best performance), the young preacher in the local church of the third revelation.

In this versatile, must win Oscar winning role, we see Daniel Day-Lewis as loving father but also who despises his son (adopeted, deaf), a capitalist, and ofcourse his contempt and hatred for Eli, the preacher. The church scene where he gets baptised and last scene at the bowling alley are the best (the whole movie is awesome).

Camera work is awesome as it captures the vast, desert landscape beautifully.

One of the best movies I have seen in a long time.

Update:
1. NYT Review
2. SF Chron Review
3. Slate.com Review

WEP

Norbert Weiner award for Bruce Schneier

Bruce keeps his wireless open so his neighbours can connect. He did a recent blog about his open wireless.

On related notes, How strong is WEP?

Not looking good...

Are we already in recession?:

The Philadelphia Fed reported Tuesday that the economy shrank in 23 states last month, including Ohio, Missouri and Arizona, and was stagnant in seven others. California and Florida, with their plunging home values, may soon join the recession list.

And the Real Estate:

For prices to return to the old norm, they would still need to fall 30 percent across much of Florida, California and the Southwest and about 20 percent in the Northeast. This could happen quickly, or prices could remain stagnant for years while incomes and rents caught up.

And the bottom line is:

As is already happening, banks will become less willing to lend money, households will become less willing to spend money they don’t have and investors will become more alert to risk.

Here is the full article.

Stock Market Recap

International Stocks fell for the second day. I was expecting a huge sell off in US stocks. Stocks open with huge losses. DOW was down 465 points at market open.

India's Sensex was down again with huge losses and the trading stopped twice. See the graph. All the 10 big losses are since 2006 and most of them are in 2007 when the market rallied to more than 22,000 points.

I was kind of expecting this reaction from the US stock market given the two days of huge losses in the overseas markets.

Most surprising news for today?: Fed cuts interest rate to 3.5% from 4.25%. That's .75 basis points. That's huge. That made the difference to calm the nerves of the investors and the DOW closed with just 128 point loss.

What a day!

Stocks Fall

Stocks fell all over the world due to the US recession fears: India's Sensex fall's 7.4% on Monday. Since Jan 1st it lost close to 4000 points.

And it's just not in India, the markets fell all over the world. As today is MLK holiday for US markets, let's see what happens on Tuesday.

India's Commercial Space Program

This is good: India's PSLV (Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle) launches Israel's Earth Imaging Satellite into Orbit as the commercial space program expands:

The launch was executed under a commercial contract between the Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI), to which belongs Tecsar, and the Antrix Corporation, marketing agency of the Department of Space. Antrix has received a handsome amount from the IAI for launching the satellite. Satellite builders from Israel were present at Sriharikota.

This is another example for India's space program which is growing slowly but steadily.

Indo-Chinese economy

The Hindu's Opinion piece on Jan 22'nd:

The value of bilateral trade in 2007 was $38.6 billion. With the target of $20 billion set for 2008 reached two years ahead of schedule and the revised target of $40 billion by 2010 likely to be reached by 2008, an enhanced target of $60 billion by 2010 has been set during the visit. Some concern has been expressed over India recently running up a sizeable trade deficit with China, upwards of $10 billion in 2007.

Compare that to US deficit which runs more than $400 billion a year.

And here is the comparison between Indian and Chinese economy and where India is failing.

Addendum: Here is the congressional research services (CRS) report about "China’s Trade with the United States and the World"

Ten Reasons Why 2008 is Different From 1971

Funny:

3. In the 1970s, Detroit produced big, gas-guzzling vehicles and struggled to adjust in an era of high fuel prices as smaller Japanese imports began to make market share inroads. Now, Detroit produces big, gas-guzzling vehicles and struggles to adjust in an era of high fuel prices as cars from Japanese makers--many of them manufactured in the U.S.--solidify their market-leading positions. See, that's different!

Here is the link.

Links

1. Follow the bible.

2. Want to Learn Investing?

3. Ways to use twitter

Accelerating Foreign Capital

Accelerating Foreign Capital into US:

The weak dollar has made American companies and properties cheaper in global terms, particularly for European and Canadian buyers. Even as Americans confront the prospect of a recession, economic growth remains strong worldwide, endowing oil producers like Saudi Arabia and Russia and export powers like China and Germany with abundant cash.

.....

“The forces sucking in this capital are much bigger than the political forces,” said Mr. Garten, the Yale trade expert. “If there is a big controversy, it will be between Washington on the one hand and corporate America on the other. In that contest, the financiers and the businessmen are going to win, as they always do.”

Not sure how this will turn out in the end. But I do think it's needed the most in the current situation.

Bobby Fischer

The Chess giant Died.

More links:

Fischer vs. the World: A Chess Giant’s Endgame

Wikipedia Entry

Game of the century

Kilimanjaro

Here is an article on NYT about Kili and snow levels.

And here is my Kilimanjaro trip report in 2004.

Links

1. Ten Recurring Economic fallacies
2. Quick Fix to Economic Downturn?. Article says nope.

Myths of energy independence?

In today's WP article about the Myths of Energy Independence, Robert Bryce lists 5 myths. His arguments are as weak as can be, for example, when he is arguing about the big push to alternative fuels he can only think of automobiles and bio-fuels. There is much more alternative fuels are in play: solar, wind, wave, etc... And each one has a different flavor (ex: solar PVs and solar thermal, etc). And with the newer battery technologies that they can charged quicker and lasts longer will change the total automobile industry. I haven't included the automobile industries favorite hydrogen cells technology.

The Moral Instinct

There is great article on NYTimes online by Steven Pinker:

The gap between people’s convictions and their justifications is also on display in the favorite new sandbox for moral psychologists, a thought experiment devised by the philosophers Philippa Foot and Judith Jarvis Thomson called the Trolley Problem. On your morning walk, you see a trolley car hurtling down the track, the conductor slumped over the controls. In the path of the trolley are five men working on the track, oblivious to the danger. You are standing at a fork in the track and can pull a lever that will divert the trolley onto a spur, saving the five men. Unfortunately, the trolley would then run over a single worker who is laboring on the spur. Is it permissible to throw the switch, killing one man to save five? Almost everyone says “yes.”

And the 5 moral spheres:

harm, fairness, community (or group loyalty), authority and purity

This about the community:

Community, the very different emotion that prompts people to share and sacrifice without an expectation of payback, may be rooted in nepotistic altruism, the empathy and solidarity we feel toward our relatives (and which evolved because any gene that pushed an organism to aid a relative would have helped copies of itself sitting inside that relative)

And this:

The ranking and placement of moral spheres also divides the cultures of liberals and conservatives in the United States. Many bones of contention, like homosexuality, atheism and one-parent families from the right, or racial imbalances, sweatshops and executive pay from the left, reflect different weightings of the spheres. In a large Web survey, Haidt found that liberals put a lopsided moral weight on harm and fairness while playing down group loyalty, authority and purity. Conservatives instead place a moderately high weight on all five. It’s not surprising that each side thinks it is driven by lofty ethical values and that the other side is base and unprincipled.

...........

When a mother stays up all night comforting a sick child, the genes that endowed her with that tenderness were “selfish” in a metaphorical sense, but by no stretch of the imagination is she being selfish.

Read the whole thing.

Link

1. Malcolm Galdwell's New Yorker Articles.
I haven't read all of them...but as always looking forward to read them all.
2. More Gladwell
And his upcoming 3rd book.

Recently Read

Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town - By Cory Doctorow. *****

His father is mountain, his mother is washing machine. His brother are: a fortune teller, 3 of his brothers are Russian nestling dolls, a brother as an Island and the brother who he has killed a while ago come back to revenge and terrorize him and his brothers.

Very difficult, very eccentric and very imaginative. Highly recommended.

5-stars.

Mormonisim

To put it bluntly, the combination of secret mysteries and resistance in the face of oppression has made it increasingly difficult for Mormons to talk openly and successfully with outsiders about their religious beliefs.

That's by Noah Feldman on NYTimes.

Also I recommend the Jon Krakauer's "Under the Banner of Heaven".

Recently Read

1. Speaker for the Dead: Orson Scott Card. ****
Second of the Ender series. Ender Wiggin arrives to Lusitania and ends up saving it. This is more of a look into moral issues than sci-fi. Ender has been asked to come up to the planet as a Speaker for the Dead for xenologist named Pipo who was brutally murdered by the alien species Piggies. Ender makes the pact with the piggies not to kill anymore humans. Also he sets up the Hive Queen in Lusitania.

4 stars.

2. Xenocide: Orson Scott Card. **
Third of the Ender Series. This is kind of let down from the previous two books. Again Card dwells into the moral responsibility of the humans. Ender and his gang (actually his family) has to come with a solution to save
- Lusitania - Starways congress has already send a fleet to destroy it
- find a cure for descolada virus which is deadly for humans but the piggies depend on them
- find a cure for the god spoken of the planet Path
- save Jane who lives in ansible networks and the starways congress is about to shutdown the ansible networks.

How does Ender and his family getting things done? It's simple.
I still like Card's writing style but only 2-stars.

3. True Names: Vernor Vinge ****
Collection of 5 stories.
- Bookworm, Run! - A highly intelligent Norman the Ape escapes from the NSA's experiment with lots of secrets. NSAs agents and Russian agents are in his heels.
- True Names - Keep your identity secret or you dead on the cyberspace. Very interesting.
- The Peddlers Apprentice - Jagit the peddler comes out of the cave after ten thousand years. He was expecting the world to go through the cycles of ups and down. But finds that the worlds affairs are mostly controlled by the government. And he meddles with it.
- The Ungoverned. When there is no government how would the people defend themselves when an aggressor comes marching. Another very interesting.
- Long Shot - Humans sends a space shuttle with a highly intelligent program(Ilse) on board to find another livable plant. On it's way to the new planet she observes the huge explosion on the sol sys. But her voyage continues and lands in the planet to her disappointment she forgets the task that supposed to done on the planet. Or does she?

4. Eastern Standard Tribe - Cory Doctorow. ****

Very interesting. Art Berry is User Experience designer works and lives in London. Even though he is in GMT, he is a hard core EST. Accused of being mentally ill, he founds himself in the Boston asylum. Now he has to untangle the web that he is in.