A Sub-prime Lexicon
Money: debt.
Wealth: debt.
Credit: debt.
Treasury Bill: debt.
Bond: debt.
Asset: debt.
Leverage: debt.
Commercial Paper: debt.
Investment: debt.
Bull market: market with debt.
Bear market: market without debt.
Inflation: too much debt.
Deflation: too little debt.
Federal Reserve: official debt printing machine.
Cash injection: debt injection.
Liquidity: availability of debt.
Illiquidity: shortage of debt.
Home ownership: lifelong debt.
Mortgage: debt you cannot afford.
Housing bubble: debt bubble
Ownership society: debt society.
Market [...]
Archive for February, 2008
A Linguistic Idyll III
Posted in Miscellaneous, tagged debt, language, lexicon, subprime on February 29, 2008 | 1 Comment »
The Butterfly in a Graph
Posted in Statistics, tagged butterfly effect, chaos theory, graphs, mathematics on February 29, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
The so-called ‘butterfly effect’ is a very important scientific concept that the general public should be aware of, unfortunately it has been popularised using the obligatory oversimplified mental image of a butterfly causing a storm, etc.
Those kinds of oversimplifications-that has been popular since Sputnik made the headlines-are favoured by the journalists who copy them from [...]
Weekly Lesson (3)
Posted in Miscellaneous, tagged River War, war, Winston Churchill on February 27, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
“No community embarks on a great enterprise without fortifying itself with the belief that from some points of view its motives are lofty and disinterested…Fanaticism is not a cause of war. It is the means which helps savage peoples to fight. It is the spirit which enables them to combine—the great common object before which [...]
Scale Appreciation in Modern Science
Posted in Science, tagged computer, hurricane, modernity, scale, supercomputer on February 27, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
The worst thing that happened to science in the last fifty years is the invention of the super-computer, while the great computational power of these machines made it possible to solve some problems using the latest scientific theory it has also been a barrier to the development of newer and more efficient theories.
Almost all resources [...]
A Linguistic Idyll II
Posted in Miscellaneous, tagged English, language, lingua franca on February 22, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
Speaking ‘Literally’
“People got killed last week, literally killed”
– A financial analyst, August 2007.
At first look it seems that the word ‘literally’ was misused in this sentence, but further consideration will show that it was used correctly and that the resulting confusion is due to a fundamental weakness in the English language.
To get ‘killed’ in [...]
Kitano in America
Posted in Cinema, tagged Golden Lion, Omar Epps, review, Takeshi Kitano on February 22, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
Brother, directed by Takeshi Kitano, starring Takeshi Kitano and Omar Epps.
Takeshi Kitano is a Japanese filmmaker, actor, TV personality and comedian; outside of Japan he is known only through his films, his most known is HANA-BI, which won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival in 1997.
There is a long tradition in Hollywood of [...]
Weekly Lesson (2)
Posted in Miscellaneous, tagged Hegel, History, passion on February 20, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
“We assert then that nothing has been accomplished without interest on the part of the actors; and if interest be called passion, inasmuch as the whole individuality, to the neglect of all other actual or possible interests and claims, is devoted to an object with every fibre of volition, concentrating all its desires and powers [...]
Redreaming the dream
Posted in Literature, tagged Iain Pears, novel, review on February 20, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
Iain Pears’s The Dream of Scipio, 2002, about hundred and sixty-five thousands words in three parts spanning 392 pages.
Three characters separated by time but connected by a single text. The first character writes the text, but only the second character is able to demonstrate the courage expressed in that text, while both the first and [...]
Re-Examining Bigger, Faster and More Part 2
Posted in Statistics, tagged china, india, oil, price on February 18, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
[Note: this piece was written some time ago and the numbers are those of 2006]
Some people blame the high oil prices on China and India, how true is that accusation?
First let’s take a look at the size of the three biggest countries in the world:
A Linguistic Idyll I
Posted in Miscellaneous, tagged adverb, double negative, language on February 15, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
Badly Adverbed
“This war was very badly mismanaged”
– John McCain, 2007.
I know what it is to ‘badly manage’ an enterprise, it is to manage it in a wrong or deficient way and thus fail to achieve the desired outcome or achieve it outside the set parameters. I, also, know what it is to ‘mismanage’ an [...]
Gertrude & Claudius
Posted in Literature, tagged Hamlet, John Updike, novel, review, Shakespeare on February 15, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
John Updike’s Gertrude & Claudius, 2000, about sixty-five thousands words in three parts spanning 210 pages.
Here is a short review I shared with a couple of friends some years ago:
Weekly Lesson (1)
Posted in Miscellaneous, tagged Hegel, History, Science on February 13, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
“Experimental physics will present the rational science of Nature – as history will present the science of human affairs and actions – in an external picture, which mirrors the philosophic notion.”
-Hegel’s Shorter Logic, §16 [my emphasis]
Re-Examining Bigger, Faster and More Part 1
Posted in Statistics, tagged china, economy, gdp, growth on February 13, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
[Note: this piece was written some time ago and the numbers are those of 2006]
Some people claim that China is the second biggest economy of the world, they give this list as a proof:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_%28PPP%29
so: USA=$12,277,583M & China=$9,412,361M
USA= number 1 & China= number 2
But this list is not real numbers, it’s made with statistical mumbo-jumbo [...]
The Illusionist vs. The Prestige
Posted in Cinema, tagged Christopher Nolan, film, Neil Burger, review on February 11, 2008 | 1 Comment »
The Illusionist, 2006, directed by Neil Burger, starring Edward Norton, Paul Giamatti and Rufus Sewell.
The Prestige, 2006, directed by Christopher Nolan, starring Christian Bale, Hugh Jackman, Michael Caine and David Bowie.
Here is something I posted on an Internet forum about The Illusionist a few months ago:
