Author: admin

This was from an excellent post about aging. Read the whole thing.

This is something I’ve long wanted to write about, but it seemed difficult to do so without coming off as vain. But I know Bitchphd would want me to soldier on anyway, so what the fuck. There’s this famous quote from Joan Collins that the problem with beauty is that its like being born rich and getting poorer. I sometimes wonder if aging is going to cause people to treat me radically differently than they do now, and if I’ll be able to deal with it.
via Unfogged.

One sentence take-away: “Luck is what you make it” or “We make our own luck”

In one experiment, Wiseman planted a specific number of photographs in a newspaper and asked both types of people (those who considered themselves to be “lucky” or “unlucky”) to count how many were hidden within the pages. It took the unlucky people an average of 2 minutes while only 2 seconds for the lucky group.
Why?
Because on the second page in a major headline he wrote “Stop counting. There are 43 photographs in this newspaper.” The unlucky people focused so heavily on the task at hand—rather than approaching the situation more openly—that they missed the message completely, as well as a second one further in which offered £250 if they stopped counting to redeem their prize.
Wiseman’s research has determined that unlucky people are generally more tense and that anxiety works against one’s ability to notice the unexpected. He also noted that lucky people tend to exhibit four main characteristics that seem to create the luck they experience:
1. They are skilled at creating and noticing chance opportunities
2. They make lucky decisions by listening to their intuition
3. They create self-fulfilling prophesies via positive expectations
4. They adopt a resilient attitude that transforms bad luck into good
The good news is that Wiseman has also proven that you can train yourself to be lucky. Lucky people can become luckier, and unlucky people can catch up to those who seem to have better experiences.
via If you’re reading this, you’re lucky < Steven Kovar.

This is a fucking give away to delinquent employers! There must be a better way,  Condone the workers who probably knew too late that their employers were not paying their share but the company officers must be held accountable. This cannot simply be a freebie to the companies (dare I say of probably the congress people/politician themselves who also have companies.).

Arroyo urged to sign SSS condonation bill into law
10/15/2009 | 01:04 PM
A lawmaker on Thursday urged President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo to immediately sign into law a measure seeking a one-time amnesty for penalties on unpaid employers’ remittances to the Social Security System (SSS).
In a statement, Quezon Rep. Lorenzo Tanada III said the bill, which the House ratified on Wednesday, should be immediately signed into law to help ensure that ordinary and privately employed individuals can avail of SSS benefits in light of the devastations caused by tropical storm “Ondoy” and typhoon “Pepeng” over the past few weeks.
“In the light of Ondoy and Pepeng which brought devastation to a lot of areas in the country, it is important that the benefits of SSS members such as calamity, housing, and other loan packages, be made available. That can only happen if payments are now considered up-to-date. This bill hopes to do that,” said Tanada, principal author of the House version of the measure.
via Arroyo urged to sign SSS condonation bill into law – Nation – GMANews.TV – Official Website of GMA News and Public Affairs – Latest Philippine News.

To discover great hacks, we must always be searching for the true nature of our reality, while acknowledging that we do not currently possess the truth, and never will. Hacking is much bigger and more important than clever bits of code in a computer — it’s how we create the future.
Or at least that how I see it. Maybe I’ll change my mind later.
via Paul Buchheit: Applied Philosophy, a.k.a. “Hacking”.

What a contrast between Borlaug and the Wall Street financial wizards that brought the world to the brink of ruin. They argued that they had to be richly compensated in order to be motivated. Without any other compass, the incentive structures they adopted did motivate them — not to introduce new products to improve ordinary people’ lives or to help them manage the risks they faced, but to put the global economy at risk by engaging in short-sighted and greedy behavior. Their innovations focused on circumventing accounting and financial regulations designed to ensure transparency, efficiency, and stability, and to prevent the exploitation of the less informed.
There is also a deeper point in this contrast: our societies tolerate inequalities because they are viewed to be … the price we pay for having incentives that motivate people to act in ways that promote societal well-being. Neoclassical economic theory, which has dominated in the West for a century, holds that each individual’s compensation reflects … what he adds to society. By doing well, it is argued, people do good.
But Borlaug and our bankers refute that theory. If neoclassical theory were correct, Borlaug would have been among the wealthiest men in the world, while our bankers would have been lining up at soup kitchens.
Of course, there is a grain of truth in neoclassical theory… Nevertheless, the simplistic economics of the 18th and 19th centuries, when neoclassical theories arose, are wholly unsuited to 21st-century economies. In large corporations, it is often difficult to ascertain the contribution of any individual. Such corporations are rife with “agency” problems: while decision-makers (CEO’s) are supposed to act on behalf of their shareholders, they have enormous discretion to advance their own interests — and they often do.
via Economist’s View: “Skewed Rewards for Bankers”.

A typical conclusion was that rules that assign property rights and rules that let people trade lead to good outcomes. What’s the skyhook? That people will follow the rules. Why would they respect the property rights of someone else? We had no idea. We might have had in mind something like this: police officers will arrest people who don’t follow the rules. But this is just another skyhook. Who are these police officers? Why do they follow rules? This is not an idle concern. Elinor showed that there are lots of important cases where people follow rules about ownership without police officers. One of the central challenges in understanding failures of economic development is that in many places, police officers don’t follow the rules they are meant to enforce.
via Charter Cities: Skyhooks versus Cranes: The Nobel Prize for Elinor Ostrom.

I have no idea how large the code base is, how complicated the code is, how much they adhere to recognized good coding standards but, It just seems that either 3 months is not enough or they have GREAT programmers/analyst. Hope the latter is true.

“2-3 months”
The importance of the source code audit has previously been raised by a lawmaker.
Bayan Muna Rep. Neri Colmenares said last August that IT experts would need at least 2 to 3 months to conduct a proper source code audit.
CenPEG said in its petition: “In order to sufficiently review a source code of such magnitude, it will take at least three (3) months for a team of programmers working full time.”
With the schedule announced by Comelec however, these groups will finish their review of the source codes on or just before election day.
The CenPeg petition is still pending with the SC.
The Comelec will use 82,200 PCOS machines which will be used for the first time in the country in the 80,000 clustered precincts for the 2010 elections. With reports from Timi Nubla, ABS-CBN News
via Source codes to be available to others after Feb. 6 – Comelec | ABS-CBN News Online Beta.