Category: Best Read

The account of Sjida’s life is inspiring, Do read the whole thing! My prayers are for the people still in bondage, any form of bondage.

Sajida is a 29-year-old college-educated woman from a Christian family here (and a reminder that oppressive values in Pakistan are not rooted just in Islam). She scandalized her family by marrying a man she chose herself — and then becoming pregnant.
The next step was brutal: Several women held Sajida down as a midwife conducted an abortion, while she struggled and wept.
Then her brothers weighed what to do next. Sajida’s eldest brother wanted to sell her to a trafficker who offered $1,200, presumably intending to imprison her inside a brothel. Two other brothers just wanted to kill her.
Op-Ed Columnist – Giving Thanks to Heroes – NYTimes.com.

wow, can’t say this enough: We Are All In It Together!

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In online discussions people say we should let the companies fail — they scare me even more, because they don’t understand how much our lives depend on each others. That was clear in New Orleans after Katrina. They couldn’t re-open the restaurants not because there was no demand for the services, there was, but because there was no place for the staff to live and no way to get the supplies they needed. And you can’t bring in the workers to rebuild the city without places for them to eat.  
Civilizations take a long time to reboot after a crash, so you must do everything you can to avoid crashing, but this one seems to be willful, we have the means to prevent it, but for some reason we’re too stupid, collectively, to stop it. 
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Fact is, we all live in New Orleans and Detroit, and we’re going to learn that in this country, but it’s going to be a very very painful lesson, apparently. 
Is the panic over Detroit real? (Scripting News).

This was a great thought provoking story! Wow!

A programmer’s view of the Universe, part 1: The fish
I write a column for computer programmers called “Stevey’s Blog Rants.” It’s basically a magazine column — I publish to it about once a month. The average length of my articles is about 12 pages, although they can range anywhere from 4 to 40 pages, depending on how I’m feeling. But for precedent, don’t think blogs: think of Reader’s Digest. The blog format sets the wrong expectations.
Hence, some people complain that my articles are too long. Others complain that I have not given my arguments sufficient exposition, and that my articles are in fact too short on detail to warrant any credibility. This is a lose-lose situation for me, but I keep at it nonetheless because I enjoy writing. Even if nobody were to read my blog, the act of writing things down helps me think more clearly, and it’s engaging in the same way that solving a Sudoku puzzle is engaging.
You should try it yourself. All it takes is a little practice.
Stevey’s Blog Rants: A programmer’s view of the Universe, part 1: The fish.

This i priceless!

So the federal government is now sending $700 billion of taxpayer money to free market scions who, I remind you, spend millions on collective protest (“lobbying”) against any form of government aid — especially to the middle class, to the poor, and to foreigners.
Whither the Riot? – Freakonomics – Opinion – New York Times Blog.

The story was wow go read it!

I send messages to myself to remind of the days when I find myself with a lightness of being and an unexplainable happiness.
I woke up, went to church then, afterwards whilst commuting for work I just had that feeling and sms myself.
I open my computer at work, and read this story, I find myself in such a happy state of self!
Thank You! Thank You Very Much!
The cloud and the dune at Paulo Coelho’s Blog.

The impact of tax rates on productivity and development is something economists masterbate about, enterpreneurs don’t waste their time thinking about it. We have business to do.
Entrepreneurs live to be entrepreneurs. I have never had a discussion with anyone about starting a business that included tax rates. Ever. If anyone that wanted an investment from me made a point of discussing tax rates as an impact on their business, I wouldnt invest in them. Ever.
Entrepreneurs live for the juice of making their dreams come true. Of having a vision and fighting to see it come true. The joy of mission accomplished and the scoreboard of the financial rewards.
The Cure To Our Economic Problems « blog maverick.

excellent dichotomy.

Success is culturally defined. When you give the culture what it expects, the culture will reward that. But a leader is someone who gives the culture what it needs, not what it expects.”
Eric Musselman’s Basketball Notebook: Leadership is different than success.

wow this is like big, wow speechless
wow! if this works I don’t know peace nobel for the whole politburo?
from marginal revolutions blog:

China policy proposal of the day
Shouldn’t this story be on p.1 of every newspaper?
Now China’s government has unveiled a controversial plan to achieve universal care that would both increase health-care funding and control prices.
As this morning’s WSJ explains, the proposed plan would be quite a shift for China. The draft plan’s overall goal is to cover 90% of the population within two years and achieve universal care by 2020. It aims to return to non-profit national health care, an idea that was largely abandoned in the country 1980s.
This all stands in contrast to China’s current system, which provides little government funding to government hospitals and requires patients to pay heavy out-of-pocket expenses. The WSJ notes that out-of-pocket payments made up more than 60% of health spending in China at the end of the 1990s.
The plan — drafted in consultation with groups including the World Health Organization, the World Bank, consultant McKinsey & Co. and a few Chinese university-based public health experts — requires all revenue raised by public hospitals to be funneled to the state. The government also aims to set pricing standards for medical services.
Marginal Revolution: China policy proposal of the day.