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Down with the B.A., and Long Live Education (Cato-at-liberty)

In a country where they require people to have at least two years of college to work in a call center. Where even jobs in sales require you to have a BA, can’t help but agree.

Down with the B.A., and Long Live Education
That could be the rallying cry of Charles Murray in this month’s Cato Unbound. Suppose, he argues, we were to give the job of designing our higher education system to an expert, and that expert gives us the following proposal:
First, we will set up a single goal to represent educational success, which will take four years to achieve no matter what is being taught. We will attach an economic reward to it that often has nothing to do with what has been learned. We will urge large numbers of people who do not possess adequate ability to try to achieve the goal, wait until they have spent a lot of time and money, and then deny it to them. We will stigmatize everyone who doesn’t meet the goal. We will call the goal a “BA.”
Mad, says Murray. A terrible system.
Down with the B.A., and Long Live Education (Cato-at-liberty).

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Grasping Reality with Both Hands: The Semi-Daily Journal Economist Brad DeLong

Doesn’t anybody edit what press release they put out. I had to go to the original link to ascertain that the official press release had “currrent” as a mispelling. I remember this line on “the hours”.

Do you think it's possible that bad writing actually attracts a higher incidence of error?

John McCain and Sarah Palin: Dishonest and Dishonorable
They even lie about how many tame economists they have:
JohnMcCain.com – McCain-Palin 2008: 100 ECONOMISTS WARN THAT WITH CURRRENT WEAK FINANCIAL CONDITIONS BARACK OBAMA’S PROPOSALS RUN A HIGH RISK OF THROWING THE US ECONOMY INTO A DEEP RECESSION…
1. They only have 90 names on the list. Not 100. 90. They can’t count.
2. They only have 90 names on the list: that means that they could not find any more–and I assure you that they tried.
3. Shame on them for saying “Barack Obama’s proposals run a high risk of throwing the U.S. economy into a deep recession.” The economic considerations that can be advanced against Obama policies do not include “throwing the U.S. economy into a deep recession.” I cannot imagine what mechanism can possibly be contemplated by which Obama’s plans would reduce aggregate demand by enough to accomplish that result.
Yes, I am talking to you, Michael Bordo, Michael Boskin, Charles Calomiris, Kristin Forbes, Douglas Holtz-Eakin, Glenn Hubbard, Anne Krueger, Allan Meltzer, Kevin Murphy, William Poole, Kenneth Rogoff, Harvey Rosen, Anna Schwartz, George Shultz, John Taylor, and Murray Weidenbaum. You know better. And I know you know better.
No, I’m not talking to you, Kevin Hassett. I know that you don’t know better.
Grasping Reality with Both Hands: The Semi-Daily Journal Economist Brad DeLong.

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Grasping Reality with Both Hands: The Semi-Daily Journal Economist Brad DeLong

Wish more people call BS on all the Crap that circulates on the media in my country. I was riding the bus about 30 minutes ago and the news reports were on the rising price of pork, the philippines meat of choice. And I was none too happy about how the report was done. Have to call GMA7 on how poor they report biz/econ news.

Washington Post Death Spiral Watch (Robert Samuelson Edition)
No wonder Paul Krugman’s ire was aroused: this is worse than I had expected. Much worse:
Robert J. Samuelson: Bankrupt Economics: What we are witnessing, in the broadest sense, is the bankruptcy of modern economics…. The $152 billion “stimulus” program earlier this year was a classic exercise in “demand management.” It didn’t work well mainly because this crisis originated in frightened financial markets…. Unfortunately, we lack experience with stabilizing financial markets, and the issue has been at the fringes of economics…
Do I point out that Ben Bernanke has spent most of his life analyzing the stabilization of financial markets, and that nobody but a blithering idiot would put him “at the fringes of economics”?
Do I point out that we have a lot of experience with stabilizing financial markets–that we dealt with a credit crunch in 1990-92, with exchange rate crises in 1992, 1994-5, 1997-8, 2001-2, plus others that did not become crises, plus a bubble collapse in 2000-2001?
Do I note that economists are now investigating whether the second quarter stimulus program worked better or worse than expected–which means that it worked about as well as people thought beforehand?
Grasping Reality with Both Hands: The Semi-Daily Journal Economist Brad DeLong.

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Make-Believe Maverick : Rolling Stone

This is powerful writing.  On the real John McCain from Rolling Stone here ht to Doc Searls here.

There’s a distance between the two men that belies their shared experience in North Vietnam — call it an honor gap. Like many American POWs, McCain broke down under torture and offered a “confession” to his North Vietnamese captors. Dramesi, in contrast, attempted two daring escapes. For the second he was brutalized for a month with daily torture sessions that nearly killed him. His partner in the escape, Lt. Col. Ed Atterberry, didn’t survive the mistreatment. But Dramesi never said a disloyal word, and for his heroism was awarded two Air Force Crosses, one of the service’s highest distinctions. McCain would later hail him as “one of the toughest guys I’ve ever met.”
Make-Believe Maverick : Rolling Stone.

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Eric Musselman's Basketball Notebook: There are times when we have to stand alone

Some people need permission to act! But that is something no one can give you, no one but yourself!
Give yourself permission to dream.
Give yourself permission to act.
Give yourself permission to fail.
Give yourself permission to dream again.
Queen Latifa from NYTimes here ht to eric musselman’s blog:

“I know people who are twice as creative as I am, twice as smart, but they didn’t do anything because they feared going into a room and opening their mouths. My parents told me to truly accomplish things in my life, there would be times I would have to stand alone. It may be scary, but that’s what it requires. So the times I had to stand alone, I got it. I understood where I was coming from, so hopefully, everybody else would get it eventually.”
Posted by Eric Musselman at 8:13 AM
Eric Musselman’s Basketball Notebook: There are times when we have to stand alone.

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Crowding Out By Life—IEEE Spectrum: Great Thoughts

So True!
Often is the day that doing small things, doing chores, doing minutae, and poof the 8 hours of work is done, then time for self begins, its starts wit reading something, a few articles from hacker news or reddit, cleaning out my inbox, reading my feeds, postingon my blog,  and poof 8 hours passes without doing anything significant.
The good thing is that there is never a week where I do not spend at least 4 hours straight on doing something of significance for me. The truth of the matter is that these four hours are the fuel for me, keeps me happy, probably my biggest luxury.
No great thoughts are hard to come by but I believe it starts with the desire to and the will to have the time and concentration necessary for it.

For most of us, even those with the best of intentions about getting earthshaking ideas, the minutiae of life bubble to the top of our consciousnesses, crowding out any incipient great thoughts. When we have no great things to worry about, the small ones rise up and keep us awake at night.
I once heard a story about Einstein that is probably apocryphal, but I like the message it conveys. Supposedly, Einstein was confronted by a student who said that he kept a pencil and paper by his bed in case an idea surfaced while he was sleeping. “Do you do that?” he asked Einstein. “Alas,” Einstein replied, “I seldom get ideas.”
IEEE Spectrum: Great Thoughts.

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How to Get Rich « blog maverick

Excellent advice on how to get rich from mark cuban owner of the dallas mavericks.
emphasis are mine and please do read the whole thing.

First, here is WHAT NOT TO DO:
There are no shortcuts. NONE. With all of this craziness in the stock and financial markets, there will be scams popping up left and right. The less money you have, the more likely someone will come at you with some scheme . The schemes will guarantee returns, use multi level marketing, or be something crazy that is now “backed by the US Government”. Please ignore them. Always remember this. If a deal is a great deal, they aren’t going to share it with you.
…..
So what should you do to get rich ?
Save your money. Save as much money as you possibly can. Every penny you can. Instead of coffee, drink water. Instead of going to McDonalds, eat Mac and Cheese. Cut up your credit cards. If you use a credit card, you dont want to be rich. The first step to getting rich, requires discipline. If you really want to be rich, you need to find the discipline, can you ?
…..
The first step to getting rich is having cash available. You arent saving for retirement. You are saving for the moment you need cash. Buy and hold is a suckers game for you. This market is a perfect example. Right at the very moment when cash creates unbelievable opportunity, those who followed the buy and hold strategy have no cash. they cant or wont sell into markets this low, that kills the entire point of buy and hold. Those who have put their money in CDs sleep well at night and definitely have more money today than they did yesterday. And because they are smart, disciplined shoppers, their personal rate of inflation is within their means. Cash is king for those wanting to get rich
The 2nd rule for getting rich is getting smart. Investing your time in yourself and becoming knowledgeable about the business of something you really love to do
It doesn’t matter what it is. Whatever your hobbies, interests, passions are. Find the one you love the best and GET A JOB in the business that supports it.
It could be as a clerk, a salesperson, whatever you can find. You have to start learning the business somewhere. Instead of paying to go to school somewhere, you are getting paid to learn. It may not be the perfect job, but there is no perfect path to getting rich.
Before or after work and on weekends, every single day, read everything there is to read about the business. Go to trade shows, read the trade magazines, spend a lot of time talking to the people you do business with about their business and the people they buy from.
This is not a short term project. We aren’t talking days. We aren’t talking months. We are talking years. Lots of years and maybe decades. I didn’t say this was a get rich quick scheme. This is a get rich path
Now you wait for times of uncertainty and change in your business. The time will come. It may come quickly, it may take years and years. But it will come. The nature of our country’s business infrastructure is that it is destined to be boom and bust. Booms are when the smart people sell. Busts are when rich people started on their path to wealth.
You will know when that time is here for you because you will know your business inside and out. You will be ready because you will have been saving up for this moment in time
How to Get Rich « blog maverick.

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Flip Pride-Ronald Ventura Edition-Hong Kong Correction | Art Market Monitor

Congratulations to kababayan Ronald Ventura.

Bloomberg and Reuters have results from the Asian contemporary sales where only 60% of the lots found buyers. Collectors were picky but not stingy. Some of the works that did sell made prices dramatically above high estimates. The Evening sale of Contemporary Asian art brought in HK$117,117,500 ($15 million) with I Nyoman Masriadi selling for HK$4,820,000 ($615,000) and Wang Yidong beating the high estimate. Indonesians Agus Suwage, Affandi and Handiwirman Saputra and Filipino Ronald Ventura also set artist records. Liu Ye came in toward the top of the estimate range.
Hong Kong Correction | Art Market Monitor.

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-rePost-Here where I am at Paulo Coelho’s Blog

Got This Great Story From Paulo Coelho’s blog!
The sheate is almost as important as the sword, it allows the samurai to not think about the sword most of the times, like during trying to run from enemies, or jumping etc.

Here where I am
Published by Paulo Coelho on October 3, 2008 in Stories
– That is why the discipline of meditation was worthwhile – concluded the master, when the young man returned to him. – You may have great skill with the instrument you choose for your livelihood, but it us useless, if you cannot command the mind which uses that instrument.
Here where I am at Paulo Coelho’s Blog.

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Warren Buffet talk in University of Florida

from this video:
“If you take a job you don’t like, its like saving sex for the old age,…”
“…Take a job you love. Don’t Take a job that you think would look good in your resume…”
“I always really worked in a job, I loved doing. Always take a job that if you’re independently wealthy you would take.. you can’t miss, … you’d get way more out of it”
“If you think you’re going to be a lot happier if you’ve got 2x instead of x.. ”
“You’ll get in trouble if you think 10x is the answer to all your troubles”