Giancarlo Angulo's Blog
Yehey I am on the top ten (Software Engineer /computer systems analyst), CHucks lucky he’s a mathematician!
The top three jobs in the survey–mathematician, actuary, and statistician–are all highly quantitative. Several others in the top ten–biologist, software engineer, computer systems analyst, and sociologist (yay–that’s my field)–are also often mathematical.
Why Are Math Jobs So Much Fun? – Tom Davenport – HarvardBusiness.org.
Let us remember the fact set: Merrill managed to get Bank of America to agree to buy it in September, elbowing aside Lehman. The deal is subject to shareholder approval, however. BofA, realizing it has acquired a garbage barge, threatens to scuttle the deal unless Uncle Sam lends a helping hand. Negotiations proceed behind closed doors (and neither Merrill nor BofA shareholders are told prior to the shareholder vote that BofA has agreed to do the deal subject to some form of government support).
Now we learn that after it was evident that the US taxpayer was going to subsidize the Merrill acquisition, the Merrill compensation committee accelerated bonus payments by a month to make sure they were paid out before the BofA deal closed.
Efforts are being made to minimize the amount involved (it is claimed to be only $3-$4 billion, but the fact is amounts were reserved in prior quarters that are excessive in light of full year performance. So the fact that some of the amounts were allowed for in previous quarters is misleading).
naked capitalism: Merrill Execs Pay Selves Bonuses Ahead of Schedule (and Before BofA Closing).
Ummm… Are There No Copyeditors?
Laura Meckler writes:
Washington Wire – WSJ.com: Women’s Groups Protest Dropping Contraceptives Provision in Stimulus: Women’s and reproductive rights groups expressed dismay Tuesday after the White House and congressional Democrats agreed to drop a provision from the economic stimulus package that would have made it easier for states to expand coverage of contraceptives through their Medicaid programs.
The measure had become a target of GOP attacks, such as this one from House Minority Leader John Boehner of Ohio “How you can spend hundreds of millions of dollars on contraceptives? How does that stimulate the economy?” he said last week. His argument is part of a Republican hammering that too much in the bill will not serve to aid the economy.
Supporters of the measure point to an estimate by the Congressional Budget Office that, by the third year of implementation, the measure would actually save $100 billion per year by preventing some pregnancies and avoiding the Medicaid cost of delivering and then caring for these babies…
Surely this is $100 million a year? I mean, $100 billion a year is $1,333 in reduced Medicaid costs for every post-menarche pre-menopause woman in the United States…
Grasping Reality with Both Hands: Ummm… Are There No Copyeditors?.
I actually do this, I got Fired from my First and Second Jobs and whenever I feel uninspired to work, I either read the emails of my boss from my first job or read my evaluation from my second job. I get energized whenever i do this.
The hidden enemy
by Paulo Coelho on January 28, 2009
The friends of the warrior of the light wonder where his energy comes from. He answers: “from the hidden enemy.”
His friends ask him who that is.
The warrior answers: “someone we cannot hurt.”
It may be a boy who beat him in a fight when they were youngsters, the girlfriend who left him at the age of eleven, the teacher who called him stupid.
The hidden enemy becomes a stimulus. When the warrior is tired, he remembers that he has yet to show his courage.
He does not think about vengeance, because the hidden enemy is no longer part of his history. He thinks only of improving his skills so that his feats can be known to all and reach the ears of those who have hurt him in the past.
Yesterday’s pain has become today’s strength.
The hidden enemy at Paulo Coelho’s Blog.
From personal experience the places where it is cheapest to buy stuff, only accepts cash transactions. Talking to one store owner it is because of the credit card company’s cut.
I was surprised at how high the fees were. For instance, in this example of a Mastercard, when you buy a $1.50 pack of gum at a convenience store, the credit-card company gets 28 cents. Even on big-ticket items like airline tickets, the credit-card company collects nearly 3 percent.
This is not to say that there is anything wrong with those fees. I presume that the issuing banks can choose their own fees (within reason), and that there is more or less free entry — which suggests that the industry should be pretty competitive. Merchants accept credit cards, which implies that the benefits of doing so outweigh the costs.
The True Cost of Credit – Freakonomics Blog – NYTimes.com.
My Wife or My Art
January 29th, 2009
Jack VettrianoJack Vettriano is the UK’s most popular artist, something of a Scottish Thomas Kinkade. But he got a late start on his career, as the Independent quotes him:
It wasn’t until my wife and I separated, when I was 39, that I started painting full time. Before that, we were trapped in a rather difficult position, like a lot of people, struggling to pay the mortgage and also paying school fees for my wife’s child. We could just afford to go out once a month if we were lucky. Once I was on my own, I began painting as a full-time career and within a year I was making three or four times what I had ever dreamed imaginable. Soon I had several galleries keen to represent me, and the press were also starting to show interest.
At Home with Jack Vettriano (The Independent)
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My Wife or My Art | Art Market Monitor.
Seems Congress is prepairing 100 billion peso stimulus package, roughly 5 percent of nominal GDP, not bad in scale, but I haven’t seen any of the details.(Can’t seem to find an online copy). As usual opposition makes noise because corruption would probably eat most of the stimulus, and recent reports suggests that they are going to use money from the SSS and GSIS. This is frankly scary because this is shadowing/mimicking what happened in the pre-need crisis early this decade. The GSIS and SSS do not have as large an endowement to begin with and it is probably not a good idea to enter investments they do not have any experience with. (I am reading reports that they plan on investing in infrastructure projects, which is very scary, because most of these projects are just not profitable in a purely financial sense, rather they are profitable in a societal utility sense.)
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from the Daily Beast an Excerpt of Yunus’ book Creating A World Without Poverty!
First, we need to broaden the concept of business by including social business in the framework of the marketplace. Making it easy for individuals and companies to see how business practices can be applied to solving social problems, especially those spawned by poverty, while reinvesting profits in the growth and expansion of the benefits thus created can create a “virtuous cycle” of ever-improving conditions for the planet’s least-fortunate citizens.
Second, we need to create inclusive social services that can reach out to every person on earth. These include services normally treated as part of the for-profit sector (such as financial services, food supply, and housing), those usually provided by government or non-profit institutions (such as education), and those that may traditionally be provided on either a for-profit or a not-for-profit basis (such as healthcare). It is absurd that after thousands of years of social and economic development, our systems in all these areas have such enormous blind spots—black holes into which hundreds of millions of people fall, simply because they don’t fit in the existing “business models.”
Third, we need to design appropriate information technology devices and services for the poorest and most underprivileged members of society and to make sure those devices and services get into the hands of those who need them. Information is power. If we guarantee that our most powerless citizens (men and women, young and old) have access to wireless telephony, Internet service, global television and news services, and other emerging forms of information technology, we will quickly find these people becoming more effective advocates for their own rights and interests.
…..
For anyone who is wondering, “How can I contribute?” my answer is this: Start by designing a business plan for a social business. Decide which social problem you’d most like to tackle. Figure out what resources you can use to address it. Develop a plan for applying these resources efficiently and effectively. Then try turning that plan into reality. The social business you create based on your plan may be small, but if it works, it could end up being replicated in thousands of locations—and so end up changing the world.
How to Save the Developing World – The Daily Beast.
I think I’d do a series of posts on musings about social business.
Got this link from oui
Enneagram Type Indicator Results
Your highest score will indicate you basic type, or it will be among the top 2-3 scores. You have answered all the questions — terrific!
Type 1 6
Type 2 4
Type 3 4
Type 4 4
Type 5 6
Type 6 4
Type 7 3
Type 8 2
Type 9 3
4 4 4 6 4 3 2 3
The Nine Personality Types of the Enneagram
Type 1: The Reformer. The rational, idealistic type.
Type 2: The Helper. The caring, nurturing type.
Type 3: The Motivator. The adaptable, success-oriented type.
Type 4: The Artist. The intuitive, reserved type.
Type 5: The Thinker. The perceptive, cerebral type.
Type 6: The Skeptic. The committed, security-oriented type.
Type 7: The Generalist. The enthusiastic, productive type.
Type 8: The Leader. The powerful, aggressive type.
Type 9: The Peacemaker. The easygoing, accommodating type.
For more information about the types, the test or your score, click here.
Enneagram Test Result.
Cool test had to make some choices, don’t know if this is true, so I am a Thinking Reformer!hehe!
“One of two in 100 years of basketball (to get his number retired)? That’s amazing,” Roy said, wearing cuff links beneath his monogram at the ends of the open-collared, white dress shirt that complemented his dark suit. “Even more, the 30th Pac-10 player? It’s a great list to be on.”
An improbable one, too.
Roy failed to get qualifying college entrance scores out of Seattle’s Garfield High School in 2002. His scores improved so dramatically when he took the SAT a second time the disbelieving NCAA’s clearinghouse rejected them as invalid. So he took it again — and his scores were lost. Then they were found. The NCAA cleared him for eligibility. The UW did not, initially.
Months of what should have been his freshman year passed, darkly. The Huskies’ season began and Roy was a confused teenager, shut out of college and the arena in which he is now immortalized. He needed a purpose, a job.
So the man who torched the Phoenix Suns for 52 points earlier this season with the Trail Blazers scrubbed industrial spills out of the insides of shipping containers in the rugged, cold shipyards in downtown Seattle.
Talk about rags-to-riches. The payoff was three consecutive NCAA tournaments, Pac-10 royalty in his hometown and NBA stardom down Interstate 5.
“Yeah, the doubt definitely crept in my freshman year,” Roy said, chuckling. “I thought, ‘Man, I’ll never have that chance.”‘
University of Washington retires Brandon Roy’s No. 3 jersey – NBA – SI.com.