February 2012
18 posts
“James, I don’t get how you can be an engineer, and not be able to count.”
– my trainer
“A Carnegie library is a library built with money donated by Scottish-American...”
“By the fourth year, however, many bankers were a mess, according to the study....”
– Hazard of the Trade: Bankers’ Health
“The enclosed shopping mall, despite still often being considered a dominant...”
– Labelscar, the retail history blog. Site authors claim to have visited two thirds of malls in the US.
Wall Street
By implication, the whole asset management industry is going to consolidate and shrink; its cost and fee structure will also need to adjust to more competitive levels. Meanwhile, the trend toward lower fees and the preference for larger managers pinch smaller funds even more nastily because of the way these developments interact with the second reason for the industry’s fundamental...
“I’d tried to explain that if he didn’t give me drugs, I would likely spend the...”
not gonna lie, i’ve been following jeremy lin and what’s happened has been pretty amazing
“You are not responsible for all the things that happen to you, but you are...”
– 30 Lessons for Living: Tried and True Advice from the Wisest Americans, Karl Pillemer
“Olive-oil fraud continues today, though modern governments are often less...”
– Extra Virginity: The Sublime and Scandalous World of Olive Oil, review.
“I don’t play chess. I play golf — poorly. I don’t play the piano, but we have a...”
– Bizarre shareholder conference call from Albert Lord, CEO of Sallie Mae (the largest college tuition lender in the US). He ended it with an audible, “Let’s get the fuck out of here.”
“Six months before the space shuttle Challenger exploded over Florida on Jan. 28,...”
– Engineer Roger Boisjoly died on 3 February 2012.
“People seem to have a strange concept of how luck works and how the...”
– 29 life lessons learned in travelling the world for 8 years straight. The best advice article I’ve ever read.
January 2012
43 posts
“So he lived, not knowing and not seeing any possibility of knowing what he was...”
– Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy
“The atmosphere [Saturn’s moon Titan] is so thick and the gravity so low...”
“My boss won’t let me make espressos. I need a year more, maybe two, before...”
– A Tokyo barista. The best coffee, french food, cocktails, and denim are probably in Tokyo, according to this article. It neglects to mention the best USAF MA-1 flight jackets though, by japanese company Buzz Rickson’s (yes, a japanese company making mid 20th century american military...
“Some of Warren [Buffett]’s proposals on taxes strike people as extreme....”
– Alice Schroeder, Buffett’s biographer.
“[There exists] a shadowy Government with its own Air Force, its own Navy, its...”
– Senator Daniel Inouye
“As Google has demonstrated, computerized systems that replace human drivers are...”
– After mass adoption of autonomous cars, we’ll probably see more slumber super-commutes. I totally would not mind.
“I don’t care what you guys do in there… just don’t leave any rick...”
“It’s basically a Teutonic Scooby-Doo, with overt sexual tension among the young...”
– An Invisible Woman Taught Me German. A language course with actually fun subject matter.
“Many facilities can brew a new soda, but few have the on-site refrigeration that...”
– How Spindrift Makes Natural Sodas Without High Fructose Corn Syrup (It’s Harder Than You Think)
“I wouldn’t expect this from grad students though, unless they work on...”
– sums up my aerospace engineering angst in undergrad
“Archaeology has placed the earliest known [canine] domestication at potentially...”
– Dog-human relations go back about 9,000 years.
“Not one person in a thousand said that happiness accrued from working as hard as...”
last night, i dreamt i met mark zuckerberg and his...
“Competitive cross country runners on a college team incur high injury rates, but...”
– The barefoot shoe company Vivobarefoot is saying this study proves barefoot running is best. I haven’t read the paper, but the excerpt above seems to counter that. It doesn’t test a causal basis for the difference in injury rates. Forefoot striking requires a deliberate change from usual...
“If I tried to write Midnight Sun now, in my current frame of mind, James would...”
– And we’d be shocked by the appearance of taste in her writing.
