Giancarlo Angulo's Blog
AND THE NUMBER ONE THING I HAVE LEARNED:
#1 – Those who have achieved REAL success in life (financially, emotionally and spiritually) will never criticize your dreams and aspirations. Instead they will look for ways to share their own experiences to help lift you up to higher levels. Successful people are rarely jealous and welcome the achievements of others.
As with all free advice….remember, you get what you pay for.
via SOME ASSEMBLY REQUIRED: 41 Things I’ve Learned By 40.
I understand why the top students in America study physics, chemistry, calculus and classic literature. The kids in this brainy group are the future professors, scientists, thinkers and engineers who will propel civilization forward. But why do we make B students sit through these same classes? That’s like trying to train your cat to do your taxes—a waste of time and money. Wouldn’t it make more sense to teach B students something useful, like entrepreneurship?
I speak from experience because I majored in entrepreneurship at Hartwick College in Oneonta, N.Y. Technically, my major was economics. But the unsung advantage of attending a small college is that you can mold your experience any way you want.
via How to Get a Real Education at College – WSJ.com.
In the past, Mr. Ryan has talked a good game about taking care of those in need. But as the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities points out, of the $4 trillion in spending cuts he proposes over the next decade, two-thirds involve cutting programs that mainly serve low-income Americans. And by repealing last year’s health reform, without any replacement, the plan would also deprive an estimated 34 million nonelderly Americans of health insurance.
So the pundits who praised this proposal when it was released were punked. The G.O.P. budget plan isn’t a good-faith effort to put America’s fiscal house in order; it’s voodoo economics, with an extra dose of fantasy, and a large helping of mean-spiritedness.
via Ludicrous and Cruel – NYTimes.com.
I’ve come to respect Capone’s reviews. His review of limitless was spot on!!!
Although I’m sure it won’t be, SUPER deserves to be placed in the pantheon of great and inventive superhero movies. It’s subversive edge goes even further astray than Kick Ass, and its journey into the altered mind of a man driven to somewhat heroic acts is as rooted in pain as Batman or Spider-Man or a dozen other costumed individuals. Go see SUPER for the blood and insane behavior; go again for what lies beneath.
— Capone
via Ain’t It Cool News: The best in movie, TV, DVD, and comic book news..
Nakakadalawa na itong si Maila Ager. I think she needs to drink some coffee.
Arroyo ally dares Aquino Gov’t to go after allies.
Gov’t dared to go after Arroyo allies
By Maila Ager
INQUIRER.net
First Posted 13:54:00 04/07/2011
Filed Under: Politics, Graft & Corruption, Government
MANILA, Philippines – A senator dared the Aquino government on Thursday to also go after allies of then President and now Pampanga Representative Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, who have now joined the present administration.
via Gov’t dared to go after Arroyo allies – INQUIRER.net, Philippine News for Filipinos.
It seems the headline doesn’t make sense.
Think this should read as Owners of Pipe line with fuel leak asked to pay owners of makati condo and residents.
Owners of Makati condo in fuel leak asked to pay residents
By Maila Ager
INQUIRER.net
First Posted 13:44:00 04/07/2011
Filed Under: Congress, Health
MANILA, Philippines – After holding two hearings, the Senate committees on environment and natural resources, and health has found the First Pilipinas Industrial Corporation (FPIC) responsible for the fuel leak in West Tower Condominium in Makati City and ordered that appropriate actions be taken against the company.
In a 24-page report, the joint panel also recommended that a sufficient compensation package should be given in favor of the residents.
via Owners of Makati condo in fuel leak asked to pay residents – INQUIRER.net, Philippine News for Filipinos.
In fact, the average African-trained member of the American Medical Association left his or her country of training well over five years after earning the Medical Doctor degree—as I learned when I surveyed them. Thus an African country that has invested in the training of a typical emigrant doctor has already received several years of service from that doctor (without even accounting for care provided during medical school). So it is false to say that the investment in the training of those people is fully “lost”. Furthermore, African-trained members of the American Medical Association send home to Africa, on average, over $6,000 per year, even 20 years after arriving in the United States—including those who send no money. Far from being “scant compensation”, this means that the typical African-trained doctor coming to the United States has sent back much more than the cost of training another doctor in the country he or she came from.
via People are not property: Please stop saying that countries “steal” doctors from Africa – Chris Blattman.
Someone should crunch the numbers on Mareng Winnie’s claim. I think what the author of this blog post is forgetting is that there is an opportunity cost component, and a dimension of positive externalities that may well go beyond 6000 USD a year in money sent back home.
Damn this actually tingled my spine, I need a symbiote, hehe.
In 1888, a biologist called Henry Orr was collecting spotted salamander eggs from a small, swampy pool when he noticed that some of them were green. He wrote, “The internal membrane of each egg was coloured a uniform light green by the presence in the membrane of a large number of minute globular green Algae.” Orr decided that the eggs “present a remarkable case of symbiosis.” The salamanders and the algae co-existed in a mutually beneficial relationship.
Orr was right that the two species have formed a partnership, but he was wrong in one crucial regard. He thought that the algae (Oophila amblystomatis) simply hung around next to the salamander embryos in the same egg. They don’t. More than 120 years later, Ryan Kerney from Dalhousie University has found that the algae actually invade the cells of the growing embryo, becoming part of its body.
With algae inside them, the salamanders become solar-powered animals, capable of directly harnessing the energy of the sun in the style of plants.
The spotted salamander isn’t the only animal to form partnerships with algae. The emerald green sea slug steals the genes and photosynthetic factories from a type of algae that it eats. Coral reefs are built upon a partnership between corals – a type of animal – and algae that provide them with energy. Many other animals, from sponges to worms have developed similar alliances. But the spotted salamander is the only back-boned animal (vertebrate) to have done so.
Since Orr’s discovery, several scientists have teased apart the details of this relationship. With algae in their eggs, the salamanders are more likely to hatch, they do so earlier, and they’re bigger and more developed when they emerge. All of this depends on light – the algae need it to photosynthesise and provide nutrients and oxygen to the embryos. If the eggs are kept in darkness, they never accumulate algae. In return for their services, the algae feast upon the salmanaders’ waste; if they are presented with eggs that have no embryos inside them, they hardly grow.
via Solar salamanders have algae in their cells | Not Exactly Rocket Science | Discover Magazine.
Wish I could join a team trying to win this.
“We often find the winners come from electrical engineering and physics,” explains founder and CEO Anthony Goldbloom. “Theyre common-sense disciplines, where people are used to problem-solving. Rather than spending time on questions like Should I be using this algorithm or this system? and What outcomes are we looking for? the engineers and physicists just try to answer the question.”The size of the kitty should pull in quality teams—Heritage says it expects scores of competitors. The question surely seems answerable. But there are concerns that remain. For instance, Goldbloom says that Heritage and Kaggle have worked hard to ensure that the people behind the data set remain anonymous. It seems like an outlandish possibility. But de-anonymization has killed prizes before. Netflix, for instance, pulled its second $1 million public competition after computer scientists figured out who some of the users in the data set were. Goldbloom is working with Canadian researchers who specialize in keeping health information private, as well as with one of the computer scientists who cracked the Netflix prize, to test the data set.But on the first day of the two-year competition, everyone was optimistic. “Im hoping that people will be attracted [to the contest] intellectually and for the betterment of mankind,” Merkin says. “The only way families can have affordable health care is if we try to make the system a little more efficient.”Thats certainly a $3 million question.
via Heritage Health Prize: Is $3 million enough to improve the U.S. health care system? – By Annie Lowrey – Slate Magazine.
“A cynical young person is almost the saddest sight to see because
it means that he or she has gone from knowing nothing to believing in nothing.”
– Maya Angelou