Tuesday, July 24, 2007

guidance

* Most of it doesn’t matter. So much of what I got excited about, anxious about, or wasted my time and energy on, turned out not to matter. There are only a few things that truly count for a happy life. I wish I had known to concentrate on those and ignore the rest.
* The greatest source of misery and hatred in this world is clinging to past hurts. Look at all the terrorists and militant groups that hark back to some event long gone, or base their justification for killing on claims of some supposed historical right to a bit of land, or redress for a wrong done hundreds of years ago.
* Waiting to do something until you can be sure of doing it exactly right means waiting for ever. One of the greatest advantages anyone can have is the willingness to make a fool of themselves publicly and often. There’s no better way to learn and develop. Heck, it’s fun too.
* Following the latest fashion, in work or in life, is spiritual and intellectual suicide. You can be a cheap imitation of the ideal of the moment; or you can be a unique individual. The choice is yours. Religion isn’t the opiate of the masses, fashion is.
* If people complain that you’re too fond of going your own way and aren’t fitting in, you must be on the right track. Who wants to live life as a herd animal? The guys in power don’t want you to fit in for your own sake; they want you to stop causing them problems and follow their orders. You can’t have the freedom to be yourself and meekly fit in at the same time.
* If you make your work your life, you’re making your life into hard work. Like most people, I confused myself by looking at people like artists and musicians whose life’s “work” fills their time. That isn’t work. It’s who they are. Unless you have some overwhelming passion that also happens to allow you to earn a living doing it, always remember that work should be a means to an end: living an enjoyable life. Spend as little time on the means as possible consistent with achieving the end. Only idiots live to work.
* The quickest and simplest way to wreck any relationship is to listen to gossip. The worst way to spend your time is spreading more. People who spread gossip are the plague-carriers of our day. Cockroaches are clean, kindly creatures in comparison.
* Trying to please other people is largely a futile activity. Everyone will be mad at you sometime. Most of the people you deal with will dislike, disparage, belittle, or ignore what you say or do most of the time. Besides, you can never really know what others do want, so a good deal of whatever you do in that regard will go to waste. Be comforted. Those who love you will probably love you regardless, and they are the ones whose opinions are worth caring about. The rest aren’t worth five minutes of thought between them.
* Every winner is destined to be a loser in due course. It’s great to be up on the winner’s podium. Just don’t imagine you can stay there for ever. Worst of all is being determined to do so, by any means available.
* You can rarely, if ever, please, placate, change, or mollify an asshole. The best thing you can do is stay away from every one you encounter. Being an asshole is a contagious disease. The more time you spend around one, the more likely you are to catch it and become one too.
* Everything takes twice as long as you plan for and produces results about half as good as you hoped. There’s no reason to be downhearted about this. Just allow for it and move on.
* People are oddly consistent. Liars usually tell lies. Cheaters cheat whenever it suits them. A person who confides in you has usually confided in several others first—but not got the response they wanted. A loyal friend will stay loyal under enormous amounts of thoughtless abuse.
* However hard you try, you can’t avoid being yourself. Who else could you be? You can act and pretend, but the person acting and pretending is still you. And if you won’t accept yourself—and do the best you can with what you have—who then has any obligation to accept you?
* When it comes to blatant lies, there are none more egregious than budget figures. Time spent agonizing over them is time wasted. Even if (miracle of miracles!) yours are honest and accurate, no one else will have been so foolish.
* The loudest noise in the world is the sound of people whining. Don’t add to it.

Wednesday, July 18, 2007

Norman Borlaug recieves medal




This is the location of the latest medal awards to civilians. One of these men is Norman Borlaug who has spent his life developing ways to feed the poor of our world.

Sunday, July 15, 2007

Civic Planning to Avoid slums: Regressive Property Tax Break

So, the goal of a city is to support its people in making their lives better. One way to improve someone's situation is to make their land property more valuable. There exist cities with slums. These places have not been kept up by their owners. So, to solve this issue a computer program could be written to implement the following according to new laws that are passed:

A regressive property tax for the least valuable property of the city. An owner's property tax will be adjusted downward provided that his property that has been identified as a 'least value property' increases in appraised value faster than the city average appreciation. As long as the property is still identified as a least value property the property owner is eligible for this regressive tax break. So, this should encourage owners to improve their properties to be better than those in other parts of the city. When they surpass other areas of the city in value the other areas of the city will be assigned the 'least value property' status and those owners will be given an opportunity to benefit from the "regressive property tax break".

This rising tide of valuation will lift all ships and make the city a beautiful place to be.

Friday, July 13, 2007

Investing


This year has been kind of weird for the stock market. The traditional summer slide didn't happen.

This site explains the 'Sell in May and go away' strategy based on seasonal changes in the market.

"We discovered that those best days on average are October 16 for the entry into the market for its favorable seasonal period, and April 20 for the exit from the market’s favorable season. However, those are just the best days as averaged over a very long time period. Obviously the market does not begin a rally on the same day each year, or begin to decline from a top on the same day each year."

These dates are consistent with other reports that I'm aware of.

nada




Nothing new to report except that I'm going to a birthday celebration today.

Thursday, July 12, 2007

My Car

My other new toy: a Bluestone 2007 Saturn Sky Turbo Redline. Its a great car and a lot of fun.

My Phone


This is my new phone toy. It is a smart phone and I just got my GMail working on it. I may have to write some code for a mobile im solution but we'll see.

Terrorism as a crime

This article explains why Terrorism is best dealt with as a crime rather than an act of war.

ugly stupid people

“optimal genotypes differ between male and female red deer, because a genotype that produces a male phenotype with relatively high fitness will, on average, produce a phenotype with lower fitness when expressed in a female.”

Wednesday, July 11, 2007

Investment Guidelines

1. Your capital must produce income.
2. Your capital must be absolutely safe.
3. Your capital must be in totally liquid investment. you must be able to convert it into cash at a moment's notice, to handles emergencies.
4. Your capital must not be diminished at the time of investment by unnecessary commissions, or other expenses.
5. Your income must be absolutely safe.
6. Your income must not fluctuate. You must know exactly what your income will be next month, next year and 20 years from now.
7. Your income must be payable to you, in cash, at regular intervals.
8. Your income must not be diminished by charges, management fees or redemption fees.
9. The investment must produce this regular, fixed known income without any further involvement or expense on your part. It must not require maintenance, management, geographic presence or attention due to 'acts of God'.

Friday, July 06, 2007

Thursday, July 05, 2007

Hortibot

Danish engineers have created an advanced robot that can weed fields.

Cost: 71000 / robot features described in the above article.