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I have to admit — I'm a liberal at heart . I don't believe that the government should govern our lives 100%, but we do need them. With Will, we are using the Early Intervention program to help him with speech, so I've come to rely on them somewhat. We use the government for our schools too (though Madison goes to private school, so the local school gets money for her even though she doesn't go there). With all that being said, I just don't get the tea party protesters.
First, they claim taxes are too high. Obama cut taxes for 98% of families.
Next, they claim that 47% of Americans paid no federal income taxes this year. However, they didn't take into acct this includes college students, senior citizens on fixes income, or working families with children. All of these classes receive deductions that "pro family" conservatives support. Of course, they ignore that many large corporations pay little or no income taxes at all. (I want their lawyers for when I do my taxes). There is also small business deductions that can be taken too (talk to the governor candidate Bill Brady here in IL on that one).
Next, they preach against "socialism". They claim they want smaller government. Okay, then I guess we need to get rid of Social Security and Medicare — the two biggest drains on the federal government. Oh wait, they want to keep those.
They are against government spending unless it involves Bush's Iraq War, the bailouts, and the Medicare prescription drug mess.
I'm confused. They want something for nothing and don't want to pay for it. Do I have that right?


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L.A. Story: A Foodie's Guide
The Los Angeles restaurant scene has all the buzz of a Weinstein premiere. Bäco Mercat chef Josef Centeno gives us a tour.
AS I BITE INTO a slice of warm zucchini bread smothered with cherry, limequat and plum preserve at Valerie in Los Angeles's Grand Central Market, a sharp-suited man in shiny Berluti brogues picks up his morning flat white and quinoa muffin. At a nearby taco stand, some builders are devouring pork tacos smothered with fiery hot sauce. Two L.A.s converging under one roof.
Long a foodie mecca, the city has in recent years become a force to be reckoned with. The charge is being led by a group of young chefs who have opened up affordable, experimental restaurants in once-forgotten neighborhoods like Echo Park and Silverlake.
"Los Angeles is experiencing a revolution in terms of its dining scene," says Cathy Chaplin, author of "Food Lovers' Guide to Los Angeles." "Not just with regards to the diversity and range of restaurants and cuisines available, but also in terms of residents' willingness to step outside their comfort zones."
Grand Central Market (317 S. Broadway; grandcentralmarket.com ), near Downtown's notorious Skid Row, is the perfect place to kick off a tour of this new food scene. Built in 1917 and once a trinket and tacos affair, the market is slowly transforming into a place that offers gourmet cheeses and organic cold-press juices.
My guide through the food-packed lanes is chef Josef Centeno, who opened his first stand-alone restaurant here three years ago. Bäco Mercat (408 S. Main St.; bacomercat.com )—named after his signature sandwich, filled with soft-shell crab, beef-tongue schnitzel or lamb meatball (from $9/€7)—was followed in 2012 by the low-key Mexican restaurant Bar Amá (118 W. 4th St.) and, last October, Orsa & Winston (122 W. 4th St.), a Japanese-focused place.
"There are two sides of L.A.," Mr. Centeno says as we devour a piece of signature Blum's coffee crunch cake (whole cake from $45), at Valerie ( valerieconfections.com ). "The zero-carb, egg-white side, and the other. Those who eat and those who don't eat. The people who eat are definitely now taking over."
The next 48 hours prove him right as we set off on a food-fueled tour that will take us from the Pacific to the Hollywood Hills. Our second stop is Guisados in Central L.A.'s Echo Park (1261 W. Sunset Blvd.; guisados.co ), where the tortillas are made fresh daily and the toppings are slow-braised.
Our lips still zinging from a tasting platter of cochinta pibil and chicken tinga ($6.99) that's so spicy not even a creamy, cinnamon-y horchado ($3) could cool it, we head to Silverlake. The neighborhood, a hotbed of creatives and bohos, is an apt audience for L & E Oyster Bar's craft beers (from $4) and market-inspired small plates, such as roasted cauliflower salad ($9) and smoked mussels with Meyer lemon zest ($14), that sit alongside the menu of oysters. An old deli-style board displays the selection ($28 for a dozen), flown in daily and bearing names like Battle Point, Malagash and Hurricane Island—more Robert Louis Stevenson than Central L.A. (1637 Silverlake Blvd.; leoysterbar.com )
On the way to Koreatown, we make a pit stop at Scoops (712 N. Heliotrope Dr.), a forward-thinking ice cream joint in East Hollywood, at 11:30 a.m.—the perfect time, it turns out, for a salty avocado and rum and peanut butter curry taster ($3 a scoop).
After a short drive, Mr. Centeno pulls into a nondescript strip mall in Koreatown. Sun Ha Jang (4032 W. Olympic Blvd.) has been an institution in the city for 25 years—one of the few places where you can get authentic Korean roast duck ($54 for four). When the order arrives, our table groans with the sizzling slices of duck and the little pots of chive, pickled onion, sprouts, pickled radish and steamed cabbage that accompany it.
"L.A. restaurants used to be high-end or ethnic. There was nothing in between," says Mr. Centeno, a native Texan who trained in New York at Daniel and Les Celebrites before moving to California. "There was a demographic in L.A. that just wasn't being tapped into—a lot of the younger crowd could only afford ethnic food."
Now, a proliferation of food trucks and other affordable options are joining traditional restaurants like Sun Ha Jang to offer Angelenos haute cuisine without the haute prices. Mr. Centeno says it's part of a nationwide movement. "Something great is happening across the country," he says. "You don't have to be in the biggest cities anymore to get the best food."
But being in a city as big as Los Angeles does mean you have more options. So we head back downtown to Bäco Mercat, our final stop for the day. The airy room is full. After a day of feasting, so am I. But I manage to squeeze in one bite of the Toron bäco, with oxtail hash and horseradish yogurt ($13), before heading back to Chateau Marmont, where I hit the pool in a vain attempt to burn off some of the day's excesses.
Round two starts in Venice Beach. First stop, the Gjelina Takeaway Cafe (1429 Abbot Kinney Blvd.; gjelina.com), where the smell of freshly baked berry and buckwheat bread greets us at the door. The open kitchen is busy with chefs making wholesome open-topped sandwiches (from $6.50). Almost all of the ingredients come from the Santa Monica Farmers Market. "It is uncommon for restaurants to devote this much real estate to vegetables," says Travis Lett, who also owns the sit-down restaurant next door. But it's ideal for this health-
obsessed corner of California.
Having learned my lesson yesterday, I eat only a sparrow-like bite of the pillow-soft pumpkin bread. I want more but drag myself away to follow Mr. Centeno to Lukshon, specializing in Southeast Asian dishes (3239 Helms Ave.; lukshon.com ). We indulge in Manila clams with pork belly, cloud ear, hijiki and Thai basil, and dandan noodles dancing with fiery Sichuan peppers.
With the clock ticking, we move on—but not very far, at least in culinary terms. Kris Yenbamroong's Night + Market (9041 Sunset Blvd.; thenightmarket.blogspot.com ) offers Asian cuisine with a country market twist and a ramped-up chili kick. My request for extra spice is granted with an off-the-scale crispy rice salad with spicy sour pork ($35 for three courses).
At Bludso's (609 N. La Brea Ave.; barandque.com ), a barbecue joint worth fasting for, the fire is saved for the Missouri-built smokers. The brisket (cooked for 14 hours; $7 for 1.4 lbs.) and ribs (cooked for eight; $14 for half a rack) are so tender they can be eaten with a spoon—but I save that for a decadent red velvet cake ($5).
Our final stop is another meat-heavy hangout. The highlight at Chi Spacca (6610 Melrose Ave.; chispacca.com ) is the home-cured salami ($12). Accompanied by wood-fired focaccia ($18), it is a tempting appetizer to the kitchen's fiery chicken and chili ($25).
Leaving the Hollywood restaurant, I say goodbye to Mr. Centeno. With the night lights of Tinsel Town glowing around us and a host of restaurants checked off my bucket list, I feel very much a part of the "eating side" of L.A. The egg-white omelet will have to wait another day.
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subset: commoncrawl


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Fish are the only pets allowed in the Underground Elephant Office, but CEO Jason Kulpa hopes one day to move to a new place with more liberal pet policies. "When you see our office, we've been been able to attract a very weird, creative, cool, selective type of person to this business. We will need more and more space, absolutely. I think eventually over the next 10 years we will continue to grow. We've grown the company quite well. We've been fortunate, but the next space will be even weirder, I promise you, and you can expect some more interesting things from Underground Elephant."
— Peggy Peattie


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The debate rages (okay, it doesn't "rage," nor is it a debate; more of a fun discussion) over on Scott's Catholicism Blog, where Scott Richert revisits a humorous 1994 essay by novelist Umberto Eco, "The Holy War: Mac vs. DOS", and then asks, "Why are so many prominent Catholics on the web Mac users?"
Jeff Miller, "The Curt Jester", writes:
Kathy Shaidle the first Catholic blogger does in fact use a Mac along with Carl Olson of Ignatius Insight, Julie of Happy Catholic, Lisa Hendley of Catholicmoms.com.
And of course the Vatican uses Linux and has the servers named after archangels.
I switched to Mac in Oct 2007 and haven't looked back. There is a Catholicity to the Mac. You have both beauty and simplicity. The Mac interface is quite dogmatic with programs adhering to a similar interface. While on Windows finding preferences they could be on any menu. But there is also power in OSX that is like the sacraments in giving direct access via the terminal.
I wrote:
I've been a committed Mac user for a number of reasons: the first computer I worked on was an Apple, Apple/Mac has long catered to those working in graphic design (which is what I did throughout my twenties), I find Macs to be intuitive and elegant, etc., etc. But I'm not a Mac fundamentalist; I do believe that truth and goodness can be found in non-Mac computers. And while I know that a few Mac-users can be snobby and elitist, I've also found that there are some very irrational Mac-haters out there. Really, now, shouldn't we be debating matters of more pressing importance?


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McDonald's has shifted focus in the past couple of years to step up its environmentally-friendly efforts.
For example, sustainable initiatives have been put into place at international and domestic units, and McDonald's global headquarters in Illinois earned LEED platinum certification in 2009.
The U.S. Green Building Council's Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design Platinum seal is one of the most prestigious green building awards, and exists in less than 250 buildings in the country.
Not a company to rest on its laurels, McDonald's continues to adapt green friendly practices, most recently opening its fourth LEED gold certified restaurant in Riverside, Calif. — its first green restaurant in the west.
To recognize the efforts, the restaurant's iconic Golden Arches have been turned green.
Other LEED certified McDonald's units are located in Cary, N.C., Savannah, Ga. and Chicago.
The Riverside McDonald's, which has been in existence for 44 years, is owned and operated by Tom and Candace Spiel, and reopened Thursday after an extensive remodel featuring a list of green features.
They include:
"We were inspired to build a McDonald's restaurant that highlights the green focus of Riverside: California's first Emerald City," said Candace Spiel, McDonald's owner/operator. "We are so proud of this restaurant and its possibilities to encourage and educate our customers and community on the importance of environmental sustainability."
Education will be promoted through the restaurant's new touch screen display that includes information about the building's green features and sustainable practices that can be done at home.
McDonald's global headquarters, built in 1988, includes an open office environment, space-saving underground parking, native landscaping, rainwater collection, low mercury interior lighting, bike racks, recycling and waste programs, and more.
The company's recycling program has yielded 130 tons of recycled materials annually, including 31 tons of scrap metal, 128 tons of paper, and 80 percent of used cooking oil has been converted into biodiesel fuel.
McDonald's Corp. released its latest corporate responsibility report in January, outlining its latest global practices in the areas of sustainability and environmental responsibility.
Topics: Burger/Steak/BBQ , Customer Service / Experience , Equipment & Supplies , Going Green , Marketing / Branding / Promotion , Restaurant Design / Layout , Sustainability
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GIGABYTE uses a licensed modified version of the Phoenix Award BIOS. Their main menu is split into the MB Intelligent Tweaker (MIT), Standard CMOS Features, Advanced BIOS Features, Integrated Peripherals, Power Management, and PC Health Status. The Standard CMOS settings allow you to view your detected SATA and IDE drives, date and time, and system boot errors.
The Advanced BIOS Features is where you enable or disable the major CPU features of the AM3 CPUs including C1E, Virtualization, and K8 Cool n Quiet etc. Here is also where you set your Boot device priority and the Initial Display adapter. Integrated Peripherals is where you set your SATA controllers settings, including the onboard ESATA, the GSATA RAID Controller and the Onchip SATA Controller.
The MIT is where the tweaking of the system clocks and voltages is done. The Advanced Clock Calibration is where you can set the EC Firm3ware you can change the core speed when using a Black Edition CPU from +12% to -12%. You have a wide array of choices on tweaking the motherboard in the MIT menu. I was able to overclock the Phenom II 810 to 3.04GHz without issue as to stability. Overclocking the CPU faster caused stability issues. Heres a chart of the settings available:


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The classes will be offered from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. on the last Saturday of the month through October, weather permitting. Scheduled courses are Saturday, Aug. 28; Saturday, Sept. 25; and Saturday, Oct. 30. Registration deadlines are Friday, Aug. 20; Friday, Sept. 17; and Friday, Oct. 15. Participants must be 18 or older, or 14-17 if accompanied by a parent.
Kayakers will learn about the proper selection and usage of safety equipment; kayaking terminology; how to identify and reduce risks; trip planning; kayaks and paddles; carrying, launching and boarding a kayak; balancing, maneuvering and controlling a kayak on the water; "rules of the road"; and rescue and safety. In addition, beginning paddlers will receive instruction on how to safely kayak on lakes; calm, protected ocean environments and other flat-water settings. Experienced kayakers will learn advanced paddling techniques and other skills to help enhance their enjoyment and safety on the water.
The first half of the "Essentials of Kayak Touring" course will take place at Texas A&M-Corpus Christi's Moody Sustainers Field House pool, where participants will learn the basics and practice handling a kayak in a safe, controlled environment. After lunch, participants will travel to the Lighthouse Lakes Paddling Trail, near Port Aransas, where they will be guided on an afternoon paddling tour of the area. Lighthouse Lakes, considered one of the preeminent natural environments in the state and an ideal place for kayak touring, is renowned among bird-watchers, nature tourists and anglers on the prowl for redfish and trout for its richness and abundance of wildlife.
Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi kayaking instructors have been conducting educational kayaking programs since 1998 and are fully certified by the American Canoe Association, the national leader in paddle sport education and instruction. The kayaking course will be offered again in spring 2011.
Participants will need to bring their own swimsuit, water shoes (or shoes you are prepared to get wet), a hat, sunglasses, sunscreen, a water bottle and lunch money. A small daypack with other items may also be brought. The cost is $100 per person, which includes the use of top quality boats, paddles and lifejackets for the day.


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So it's especially unique that Big Daddy Kane (the legend) and Prince Paul (the innovator; pictured) would pull in to Cincy on their current tour -- not to mention that it'll be with the intimate atmosphere of a relatively small club (Top Cat's). Kane's old-school approach never meant that he was stuck in the past, and his smooth style developed with the times (though always retaining a strong purity). Prince Paul is one of Hip Hop's most prolific artists, embarking on ambitious projects like the audio-movieA Prince Among Thieves (which Kane appeared on) and the riotous fun of his Handsome Boy Modeling School project. Hopefully, solid shows like this won't continue to be so hard to come by in our fair city.
At Top Cat's on Friday.
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Good question, and one that I am sure I don't have a complete answer for. But I have some thoughts on the subject based on working with customers over the years so here goes... In my experience the best IT metrics are:
- Aligned to business outcomes.
- Presented in a way that business users think.
- Inspire people to improve them.
Aligned to Business Outcomes
Well, duh! But it's amazing how many IT metrics that look like they align with business interests at first glance but turn out not to be so good. A good example of this is everybody's favorite: up-time: especially when expressed as a percentage. Now clearly 99.99% availability is better than 99.9% availability, or even 99.98%, and better numbers are worth striving for. But as an indicator of business value, these types of numbers are of limited value.
The problem is, in this example, that the business impact of outages is non-linear. A short outage doesn't really hurt, but a long one does. As an example, let's take 99.9% availability - a number that many people would regard as two nines short of a decent service level. You can achieve 99.9% availability even if you have a 90 second outage every day. In most organizations, 90 seconds a day would probably count as irritating but not represent a huge impact. On the other hand a 45 minute outage every month, or a close on 9 hour outage once a year would certainly be noticed, even though they both represent the same overall availability.
Many IT metrics - number of transactions that fail to complete, time to problem resolution, number of incidents per user, number of bugs per line of code etc. - suffer the same problem. The impact is non-linear. Business only notice, and are impacted, by the long tail in these statistical distributions and these are the metrics that count.
Good metrics are the ones that respect this non-linearity. So to get good alignment we need to throw away the data that represents small failures and report only those that really have impact. So, in our up-time example, move away from 99.xyz%, and start expressing the impact in terms of something like number of outages over 3 minutes, 10 minutes, 30 minutes etc. Now I share the concern that this kind of metric is somewhat negative in it's presentation, but I would argue that that makes it (and others like it) a better-aligned measurement.
Presented in a Way that Business Users Think
It is a long-stated goal of the IT profession that, one day, IT services will be just like electrical power or telephone dial-tone: it will simply be there and users will take it for granted. Well I have news: users already do take IT for granted and assume it will be "just there" when it's needed. In fact, better than that, as I discussed above, there's even a tolerance for a certain amount of failure. Now the level of tolerance has it's limits obviously and at some point business does start to suffer, and the exact point where failure becomes a real issue differs from application to application, business to business, and from user to user. But all users have one thing in common: they think of things in terms of failures, not successes. IT, by default works most of the time: what you need to measure is how far away from most of the time you are getting.
There's nothing strange going on here; we all think like this. If I ask you if you have been happy with your cellphone service this month, you will immediately try and recall if you had any problems. You may say you are unhappy based on how much failure occurred and the impact it had on you at the time, or you may say everything was basically okay despite a few dropped calls. Again, circumstances and expectations differ, but the point is its all based on thinking about problems: when asked this question you will not do is think about the 274 calls that went through without a problem.
So to get better aligned, throw out the "success" data and report problems. Nobody cares about success, they take it for granted. So provide only metrics that focus on your failures: not only will these types of metrics garner IT more respect for being honest about it's failures, it will provide numbers that much more realistically reflect how well, or otherwise, IT is supporting the business.
Metrics that Inspire
The third characteristic that a good metric has is that it should inspire people to take action to improve it. Some metrics are better than others at this.
I have long thought that it is only a certain type of quality wonk to gets excited about going from 99.9% to 99.99% to 99.999%. Numbers like this don't typically inspire. They don't inspire IT folks to get better, and they don't signal to the business that things are getting better. The same thing goes for getting from 5-sigma to 6-sigma: the improvement gets lost in the statistics: nobody gets what the difference between a 5.3 last month and a 5.6 this month means. It could be huge in terms of business benefits but it looks tiny. We're human, bigger, simpler numbers are a lot easier to think about.
So, again, a good approach is to drop the statistics and go for the raw numbers, something I talked about in my post on the transaction factory model. So instead of 99.99% successful completion of transactions this week, report it as 1,352 failures. Getting that number to zero is much more inspiring than moving some statistical indicator incrementally upwards. It's also much easier for the business side of things to see improvement (or otherwise) with simple numbers.
Of course these numbers perhaps look worse on the outside than overall statistics. There's something more comforting about reporting 99.99% success than saying you had 1,352 failures last week. But a good metric should prompt action, and action often only follows if you get out of the comfort zone. And, who knows, if you explain to your users exactly who bad things actually are, they may just start understanding why you keep asking for additional funding!


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Hi all,
This is a commissioned piece I made a few months ago, the map of the world of Bicolline. The duchy of Bicolline is a cooperative that organizes very large LARP games in Quebec (games, events and details can be found here and here and the map is intended to replace their previous one. The logo of Bicolline and the heraldic were provided by the client. Original map size is 46"x33" and intended both for print and web usage.
© Le Duché de Bicolline-2013- All rights reserved
Hope you'll like it,
As usual, feel free to rate, rep or run away


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Just four years ago, the 2003 FA Cup finalists were thrust into administration and teetering on the brink of bankruptcy.
In came the late Markus Liebherr to save the club and set off an incredible rise from the third tier to the Premier League.
Saints, unbeaten in their second season back in the top flight, have lofty ambitions and Europe has been mentioned as a goal for the not so distant future.
Such plans formed part of the exciting project sold to Fonte when he dropped down from Championship side Crystal Palace to join Saints in January 2010.
"This was 100 per cent what I was promised," he told Press Association Sport.
"I stepped down from the Championship, where I had offers from other clubs and there were rumours of something else.
"When I came here, it was always with the thought of playing in the Premier League.
"The chairman had a vision, had the resources and the ambition and it was an easy decision for me to come here.
"I am just pleased that I managed to step my game up a little bit. I feel comfortable now and I am just happy to be part of this club, this team and I hope we can keep moving forward.
"This has been a great story and it is not over. We need to keep going higher and higher and that is what the manager and chairman are looking for.
"I am pleased to be part of this group and I hope we can keep moving forward."
There are banners around St Mary's saying 'It's happening' and 'Our dream is real', pointing to big plans reflected in the big-money summer acquisitions of Dejan Lovren, Victor Wanyama and Dani Osvaldo.
"Three signings costing 30-something million pounds," Fonte said with a smile. "Great, quality players.
"For us players that have made the transition from League One, it is good for us because they make us work harder, make us improve as players, as a team.
"It is a pleasure to be part of this club, to share a dressing room with those players.
"We have a great team spirit, the club is fantastic with the resources we have. The training ground is being built.
"Everything is in place for us to be successful and we need to do the job on the pitch."
As well as success in the league, Saints are hoping to impress in the cup competitions.
Having seen Swansea and Wigan triumph last term, Mauricio Pochettino's side will look to follow in those footsteps when their Capital One Cup campaign kicks off at Barnsley tomorrow.
"Last time we were there we won 1-0, a good memory," Fonte said.
"I know it is a hard, hard ground. I played there many times. I know it is going to be hard but we need to go there with the mentality of winning because we want to have a go in the cups as well.
"We want to win every game we are involved in because we have the team for that.
"We have 23, 24 excellent players so the manager will pick a strong team and we will go there to win."
- Sports & Recreation
- Soccer


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Japanese secondaries-focused private equity firm WM Partners, founded by former CEO of Japanese investment group JAIC, has held an interim close of JPY5.25bn ($50m) for its first fund, AVCJ reported.
The firm span out of JAIC last year, and is seeking to raise as much as JPY10bn ($102m).
The fund – JSPF No. 3 has secured commitments from both institutional and strategic LPS, the report said, including Organization for Small & Medium Enterprises and Regional Innovation, which allocated JPY2bn.
Matsumoto said the firm will also seek to market to both overseas and homegrown insitutitonal investors, with a final close of between JPY8bn and JPY12bn, "within a year.
The firm will seek to work with corporations seeking to downsize their investment activities or those institutions looking to comply with regulation. WM will also provide liquidity to venture capital firms nearing the end of their fund lives.
Copyright © 2014 AltAssets


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Faculty in Biology
John Taylor, Associate Professor
Office: PCH 012 Office Phone: 250-472-5206
Teaching: Molecular Genetics (BIOL361), Basic Techniques in Molecular Biology (BIOL362), Molecular Epidemiology (BIOL439) and a grad course on Evolution (BIOL535).
Research Interests:
Comparative Genomics: Gene and Genome Duplication
My work on whole genome duplication in fish lead to curiosity about the evolutionary consequences of gene duplication. Work in the lab is now focused on two large gene families, opsins and olfactory receptors. We are studying opsin gene duplication in guppies ( Poecilia reticulata) and in the four-eyed fish Anableps anableps.
Guppies, and other species in the genus Poecilia, have a larger repertoire of Long Wavelength Sensitive (LWS) opsin genes than any other taxon. The 'extra' opsins may lead to unusually good colour (wavelength) discrimination in these colourful fishes. In the four-eyed fish we are most interested in patterns of opsin gene expression in its distinct dorsal and ventral retinas. The research on olfactory receptors (ORs) involves C. elegans, sea urchins, and amphioxus. We are studying the duplication and divergence of non-coding regulatory sequences upstream of C. elegans ORs and identifying and characterizing expression domains of candidate ORs in amphioxus and sea urchin ( Strongylocentrotus purpuratus).
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Antonyms Questions and Answers
Sample Paper for English Language antonyms with solved answer key is given here. You can practice the questions in the English Language section of EL Model Paper fully Solved question paper english language question paper with answer.Question Papers And Answer Keys are very helpful for you if you are going to appear in any exam.English language section questions for IBPS, IBPS PO, IBPS Clerks and IBPS Specialist Officers Exam, UPSC, SSC, LIC, GIC, Defence, IDBI bank, Union bank,etc,.Fully solved examples with detailed answer for each antonyms question.English Language questions and answers from the topic of Antonyms in English Language, you can solve them using short tricks and tips.
Antonyms Formulas Details
Type : English Language
Vocabulary: Antonyms
An antonym is a word that is the opposite meaning of another. It comes from the Greek words "anti" for opposite and "onym" for name.
Example : An antonym is a word that means the opposite of another word. For example "bad" is an antonym of "good".
antonyms model question paper for bank exams
antonym in english language for exams
Free Bank Po English Antonyms Online Practice Tests
English Language Model Questions Paper


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AIG Fever--the Broader Stakes for Obama
The growing frenzy over AIG's insistence on providing $165 million in employee bonuses, mainly to securities traders in the company's catastrophically disastrous financial products group, reflects an entirely legitimate belief that this scandal will serve as a popular tipping point between widespread unhappiness and marching-in-the-streets popular outrage over government bailouts of the financial sector. The President and Treasury Secretary spent much of the day trying to get in front of this fast-moving train, not only expressing their own outrage but discussing the possibility of ways to block the bonuses without creating a whole new financial crisis.
It's an example of the visibility of this issue that it completely overshadowed Obama's rollout of initiatives to help small business secure access to credit, itself an important symbol of the administration's efforts to help worthy victims of the financial meltdown rather than its perpetrators.
It's obvious that many people from opposite ends of the ideological spectrum are perpetually angry about corporate bailouts. And as for the general public, similar sentiment is definitely growing, as Mark Blumenthal reports today at Pollster.com:
In the survey released just today by the Pew Research Center, nearly half of Americans say they are "angry" about the government "bailing out banks and financial institutions that made poor financial decisions" (39% say they are bothered but not angry, only 12% are not bothered). Not surprisingly, this anger translates into considerable skepticism about bailouts of banks and financial institutions:
62% say the federal government has spent too much on "large banks and other financial institutions in danger of failing," 8% say it is spending too little and 21% say the amount is about right (Newsweek [pdf]).
59% oppose "giving aid to U.S. banks and financial companies in danger of failing," while 39% favor it (USA Today/Gallup).
50% disapprove of "the federal government providing money to banks and other financial institutions to try to help fix the country's economic problems," 39% approve (CBS/New York Times [pdf]).
Note that the expression of disapproval is slightly lower on the last question, which justifies assistance as way "to help fix" the economy. Nonetheless, the opposition as measured over the last month is still considerable, even before the latest AIG bonus story.
As this last poll finding cited by Blumenthal illustrates, it's critically important that the Obama administration be viewed as only being willing to help "banks and other financial institutions" when it's absolutely necessary to "fix the economy," while fighting like hell against any further abuses or misuses of taxpayer dollars. And that's why the administration's response to the AIG bonus issue, even as it prepares to make another $30 billion infusion of cash into the company, is so dicey but so important.
One theory among progressives, well articulated today by TNR's Noam Scheiber, is that the administration needs to shift to a more radical strategy of temporary takeovers of troubled banks and financial firms, whether or not it's billed as "nationalization."
This approach, of course, will immediately be labeled as "socialism" by conservatives, and that may be why the administration has avoided it. But as the AIG furor has documented, there's some serious risk now that the President will be viewed as both enabling and deploring financial sector abuses, drawing attention to the waste of taxpayer funds even as he's promoting more bailout money in the very near future. Even as gifted and popular a communicator as Barack Obama will struggle to maintain that balancing act, given the crossfire he will get with each new revelation of the causes and consequences of Wall Street misconduct.


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Dudes are finally coming around to how awesome these are. More
Meet meggings. They are leggings for men, and we want to know how you feel about them. More
Ever wonder why men don't wear more leggings? It's because they have never tried 'meggings'! That is, leggings for men, which fit the same way women's leggings do except they also frame your junk. A Chicago-based company called Meggings Man … More
Men are apparently wearing tights. Not only are they wearing tights, tights are taking the world by storm. They're called "meggings." I don't know how they're doing that, but I don't like it. I like it when men wear pants or, if that is absolutely not a possibility, jodphurs. More
What's in Kate Moss' beauty bag? …Surprisingly little. Because she is a supermodel. -The Telegraph
Chinese designer Guo Pei makes pieces with an opulence and attention to detail that rival Galliano's work at Dior. Check out those stunning shoes. -On the Runway
Could the Rodarte sisters land an Oscar for Black Swan? With all this talk of their nightmare tutus, they seem like a lock. -Coco Perez
And in anticipation of Black Swan, here's some memorable ballerina-inspired editorials. -Fashionista
Marc goes to Tokyo, Tavi rocks a bindi, Viktor & Rolf touch pinkies and More


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1, When I want investment advice, I get it from:
a) The Wall Street Journal b) The Street Dogs column c) Complete strangers at the video store.
2. When I wake up in the morning, I:
a) Shower b) Get dressed c) Lift my head off the keyboard and start shorting stocks.
3. In order to trade stocks intelligently, one must have a:
a) BA b) MBA c) Mouse.
4. The last book I read was:
a) Madame Bovary. b) How to Invest like Warren Buffett c) Windows 2000 for Dummies.
5. I go to the doctor:
a) Once a year. b) Once every two years. c) When I put my fist through the screen.
6. GE is a company that manufactures:
a) Paper b) Cowboys c) I have no idea but I just bought two hundred shares.
7. When I am in a bar and meet a beautiful woman/man who seems to be attracted to me, the first thing I look at is:
a) Her/his face b) Her/his body c) CNBC screen
8. Beating the spread refers to:
a) The way whipped cream cheese is made
b) The way Honduran peasant women clean their bed coverings
c) Don't know/care.
9. P:E ratio means:
a) Something to do with, like, stocks and junk like that
b) The number of times an hour that a day trader has to use the bathroom
c) Like I care?
10. A tick is:
a) A nervous syndrome common to day traders
b) Something that often lives in a day trader's hair
c) These questions are really starting to annoy me, dude!
If you answered (c) to any of the above questions ... Congratulations! You have what it takes to succeed
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I am often asked if I have found a secret — or at least a consistent answer — to successfully building businesses over my career. So I've spent some time thinking about what characterises so many of Virgin's successful ventures and, importantly, what went wrong when we did not get it right. Reflecting across 40 years, I have come up with five "secrets".
1 Enjoy what you are doing. Because starting a business is a huge amount of hard work, requiring a great deal of time, you had better enjoy it. When I started Virgin from a basement flat in West London, I did not set out to build a business empire. I set out to create something I enjoyed that would pay the bills. There was no great plan or strategy. The name itself was thought up on the hoof. One night some friends and I were chatting over a few drinks and decided to call our group Virgin, as we were all new to business. The name stuck and had a certain ring to it.
For me, building a business is all about doing something to be proud of, bringing talented people together and creating something that's going to make a real difference to other people's lives. A businesswoman or a businessman is not unlike an artist. What you have when you start a company is a blank canvas and you have to fill it. Just as a good artist has to get every single detail right on that canvas, a businessman or businesswoman has to get every single little thing right when first setting up in business in order to succeed. However, unlike a work of art, the business is never finished. It constantly evolves. If a businessperson sets out to make a real difference to other people's lives, and achieves that, he or she will be able to pay the bills and have a successful business to boot.
2 Create something that stands out. Whether you have a product, a service or a brand, it is not easy to start a company and to survive and thrive in the modern world. In fact, you've got to do something radically different to make a mark today. Look at the most successful businesses of the past 20 years. Microsoft, Google or Apple, for example, shook up a sector by doing something that hadn't ever been done and by continually innovating. They are now among the dominant forces.
3 Create something that everybody who works for you is really proud of. Businesses generally consist of a group of people, and they are your biggest assets.
4 Be a good leader. As a leader you have to be a really good listener. You need to know your own mind but there is no point in imposing your views on others without some debate. No one has a monopoly on good ideas or good advice. Get out there, listen to people, draw people out, and learn from them. As a leader you've also got to be extremely good at praising people. Never openly criticise people; never lose your temper, and always lavish praise on your colleagues for a job well done. People flourish if they're praised. Usually they don't need to be told when they've done wrong because most of the time they know it. If somebody is not working out, don't automatically throw him or her out of the company. A company should genuinely be a family. So see if there's another job within the company that suits them better. On most occasions you'll find something for every single kind of personality.
5 Be visible. A good leader does not get stuck behind a desk. I've never worked in an office — I've always worked from home — but I get out and about, meeting people. It seems I am travelling all the time but I always have a notebook in my back pocket to jot down questions, concerns or good ideas. If I'm on a Virgin Atlantic plane, I make certain to get out and meet all the staff and many of the passengers. If you meet a group of Virgin Atlantic crew members, you are going to have at least 10 suggestions or ideas. If I don't write them down, I may remember only one the next day. By writing them down, I remember all 10.
Get out and shake hands with all the passengers on the plane, and again there are going to be people who had a problem or have a suggestion. Write it down, make sure that you get their names, get their e-mail addresses, and make sure, the next day, that you respond to them. Of course, I try to make sure we appoint MDs who have the same philosophy. That way we can run a large group of companies in the same way a small business owner runs a family business — keeping it responsive and friendly.
When you're building a business from scratch, the key word for many years is "survival". It's tough to survive. In the beginning you haven't got the time or energy to worry about saving the world. You've just got to fight to make sure you can look after your bank manager and be able to pay the bills. Literally, your full concentration has to be on surviving. Obviously, if you don't survive, just remember most businesses fail and the best lessons are usually learned from failure. You must not get too dispirited. Just get back up and try again!
©2010 Richard Branson
The London Telegraph reports that Austrian millionaire Karl Rabeder is "giving away every penny of his £3 million fortune after realising his riches were making him unhappy."Rabeder told the paper, "It was the biggest shock in my life, when I realised how horrible, soulless and without feeling the five-star lifestyle is. My idea is to have nothing left. Absolutely nothing. Money is counterproductive -- it prevents happiness to come." Rabeder will be giving his money to charities he set up in Central and Latin America. He said he made his decision while on vacation in Hawaii. Rabeder follows in the footsteps of other people of means who have come to the conclusion that, net worth does not equal self-worth. There seems to be a (non-scientific, admittedly) correlation between the amount of money given to charity by the country's most generous businesspeople and the success of their businesses. 1. Bill Gates, founder of Microsoft (MSFT)Total donated: $28 billionThe Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation backs coalition groups that attempt to solve seemingly unsolvable health issues, particularly HIV, malaria, and tuberculosis.Here's how Microsoft has fared over the years: 2. George Soros Total donated: $7.2 billion Soros gives to a variety of causes, including needle-exchange clinics in California, he funds scientific research in Russia, and founded MoveOn.org. As Soros does not head up a public company, no chart is available to track his financial success. 3. Gordon Moore, co-founder of Intel (INTC) Total donated: $6.8 billion The Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation focuses on science, environmental issues, and takes a special interest in nursing education, as Betty Moore once received the wrong medication from a nurse while in the hospital.Here's how Intel has fared over the years:
4. Warren Buffett Total donated: $6.7 billion In 2006, Buffett made a pledge to give more than $30 billion over 20 years to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation -- the largest single charitable donation in history.Here's how Berkshire Hathaway (BRK.A) has fared over the years: But in at least one case, the converse appears to hold true: Donald Trump. Trump, who has chased the almighty dollar unlike any other -- lending his name to everything from clothing to vodka to bottled water to magazines to disposable cameras to steaks to golf courses to modeling agencies to an online travel website -- will even lend himself out for cash. If you're having a party, The Donald will appear for the jaw-dropping rate of $300,000 an hour.
Trump also happens to be one of the business world's least-generous figures.The Smoking Gun calls Trump "an absolute cheapskate" and points out that the Donald J. Trump Foundation doled out $287,000 in 2002, down from 2001's $306,000. (These were the latest figures available at press time). They describe these figures as "remarkably paltry -- not to mention pathetic -- sum[s] for someone who's reportedly worth 10 figures." Let's take a look at how Trump Entertainment Resorts (TRMP) has fared over the years: Yes, you're reading that chart correctly. The stock is currently trading at $0.08 a share.Which means, if you're an investor holding 3,750,000 shares of TRMP, you've got just enough to spend 60 minutes in the company of the great man himself.
From MInyanville
In characteristically tough prose, several steps in the USA big banks' world were outlined as heinous cons in a piece originally written by Matt Taibbi on Rollingstone.com, and I have posted it all in several parts.
Parts 1 and 2 described Con 1 as the "Swoop and Squat," in which a target car is trapped between two perpetrator vehicles and wrecked, with the mark in the game being the target's insurance company — in this case, the government, Con 2 as the "DollarStore" or "Big Store" scam — popularized in movies like The Sting — a huge cast of con artists is hired to create a whole fake environment into which the unsuspecting mark walks and gets robbed over and over again. A warehouse is converted into a makeshift casino or off-track betting parlor, the fool walks in with money, leaves without it. Con 3 was the "Pig in the Poke". At one point or another, pretty much everyone who takes drugs has been burned by this one, also known as the "Rocks in the Box" scam or, in its more elaborate variations, the "Jamaican Switch." Someone sells you what looks like an eightball of coke in a baggie, you get home and it's baby powder. The scam's name comes from the Middle Ages, when some fool would be sold a bound and gagged pig that he would see being put into a bag; he'd miss the switch, then get home and find a tied-up cat in there instead. Hence the expression "Don't let the cat out of the bag."
Part 3 gave you Cons 4 and 5. Con 4 – The "Rumanian Box" was one of the great innovations of Victor Lustig, the legendary Depression-era con man who wrote the famous "Ten Commandments for Con Men". This was a little machine that a mark would put a blank piece of paper into, only to see real currency come out the other side. The brilliant Lustig sold this Rumanian Box over and over again for vast sums — but he's been outdone by the modern barons of Wall Street, who managed to get themselves a real Rumanian Box. How they accomplished this is a story that by itself highlights the challenge of placing this era in any kind of historical context of known financial crime. What the banks did was something that was never — and never could have been — thought of before. They took so much money from the government, and then did so little with it, that the state was forced to start printing new cash to throw at them. Even the great Lustig in his wildest, horniest dreams could never have dreamed up this one. Con 5 was the "Big Mitt" All of that Rumanian box paper was made even more valuable by running it through the next stage of the grift. Michael Masters, one of the country's leading experts on commodities trading, compares this part of the scam to the poker game in the Bill Murray comedy Stripes. "It's like that scene where John Candy leans over to the guy who's new at poker and says, 'Let me see your cards,' then starts giving him advice," Masters says. "He looks at the hand, and the guy has bad cards, and he's like, 'Bluff me, come on! If it were me, I'd bet everything!' That's what it's like. It's like they're looking at your cards as they give you advice." In more ways than one can count, the economy in the bailout era turned into a "Big Mitt," the con man's name for a rigged poker game. Everybody was indeed looking at everyone else's cards, in many cases with state sanction. Only taxpayers and clients were left out of the loop. At the same time the Fed and the Treasury were making massive, earthshaking moves like quantitative easing and TARP, they were also consulting regularly with private advisory boards that include every major player on Wall Street. The Treasury Borrowing Advisory Committee has a J.P. Morgan executive as its chairman and a Goldman executive as its vice chairman, while the board advising the Fed includes bankers from Capital One and Bank of New York Mellon. That means that, in addition to getting great gobs of free money, the banks were also getting clear signals about when they were getting that money, making it possible to position themselves to make the appropriate investments.
The benefits of free money are outlined in a more strait-laced fashion in this video…
The final part now tells of the last two cons, the Wire, and the Reload. Enjoy it all…
Here's the thing about our current economy. When Goldman and Morgan Stanley transformed overnight from investment banks into commercial banks, we were told this would mean a new era of "significantly tighter regulations and much closer supervision by bank examiners," as The New York Times put it the very next day. In reality, however, the conversion of Goldman and Morgan Stanley simply completed the dangerous concentration of power and wealth that began in 1999, when Congress repealed the Glass-Steagall Act — the Depression-era law that had prevented the merger of insurance firms, commercial banks and investment houses. Wall Street and the government became one giant dope house, where a few major players share valuable information between conflicted departments the way junkies share needles.
One of the most common practices is a thing called front-running, which is really no different from the old "Wire" con, another scam popularized in The Sting. But instead of intercepting a telegraph wire in order to bet on racetrack results ahead of the crowd, what Wall Street does is make bets ahead of valuable information they obtain in the course of everyday business.
Say you're working for the commodities desk of a big investment bank, and a major client — a pension fund, perhaps — calls you up and asks you to buy a billion dollars of oil futures for them. Once you place that huge order, the price of those futures is almost guaranteed to go up. If the guy in charge of asset management a few desks down from you somehow finds out about that, he can make a fortune for the bank by betting ahead of that client of yours. The deal would be instantaneous and undetectable, and it would offer huge profits. Your own client would lose money, of course — he'd end up paying a higher price for the oil futures he ordered, because you would have driven up the price. But that doesn't keep banks from screwing their own customers in this very way.
The scam is so blatant that Goldman Sachs actually warns its clients that something along these lines might happen to them. In the disclosure section at the back of a research paper the bank issued on January 15th, Goldman advises clients to buy some dubious high-yield bonds while admitting that the bank itself may bet against those same shitty bonds. "Our salespeople, traders and other professionals may provide oral or written market commentary or trading strategies to our clients and our proprietary trading desks that reflect opinions that are contrary to the opinions expressed in this research," the disclosure reads. "Our asset-management area, our proprietary-trading desks and investing businesses may make investment decisions that are inconsistent with the recommendations or views expressed in this research."
Banks like Goldman admit this stuff openly, despite the fact that there are securities laws that require banks to engage in "fair dealing with customers" and prohibit analysts from issuing opinions that are at odds with what they really think. And yet here they are, saying flat-out that they may be issuing an opinion at odds with what they really think.
To help them screw their own clients, the major investment banks employ high-speed computer programs that can glimpse orders from investors before the deals are processed and then make trades on behalf of the banks at speeds of fractions of a second. None of them will admit it, but everybody knows what this computerized trading — known as "flash trading" — really is. "Flash trading is nothing more than computerized front-running," says the prominent hedge-fund manager. The SEC voted to ban flash trading in September, but five months later it has yet to issue a regulation to put a stop to the practice.
Over the summer, Goldman suffered an embarrassment on that score when one of its employees, a Russian named Sergey Aleynikov, allegedly stole the bank's computerized trading code. In a court proceeding after Aleynikov's arrest, Assistant U.S. Attorney Joseph Facciponti reported that "the bank has raised the possibility that there is a danger that somebody who knew how to use this program could use it to manipulate markets in unfair ways."
Six months after a federal prosecutor admitted in open court that the Goldman trading program could be used to unfairly manipulate markets, the bank released its annual numbers. Among the notable details was the fact that a staggering 76 percent of its revenue came from trading, both for its clients and for its own account. "That is much, much higher than any other bank," says Prins, the former Goldman managing director. "If I were a client and I saw that they were making this much money from trading, I would question how badly I was getting screwed."
Why big institutional investors like pension funds continually come to Wall Street to get raped is the million-dollar question that many experienced observers puzzle over. Goldman's own explanation for this phenomenon is comedy of the highest order. In testimony before a government panel in January, Blankfein was confronted about his firm's practice of betting against the same sorts of investments it sells to clients. His response: "These are the professional investors who want this exposure."
In other words, our clients are big boys, so screw 'em if they're dumb enough to take the sucker bets I'm offering.
Not many con men are good enough or brazen enough to con the same victim twice in a row, but the few who try have a name for this excellent sport: reloading. The usual way to reload on a repeat victim (called an "addict" in grifter parlance) is to rope him into trying to get back the money he just lost. This is exactly what started to happen late last year.
It's important to remember that the housing bubble itself was a classic confidence game — the Ponzi scheme. The Ponzi scheme is any scam in which old investors must be continually paid off with money from new investors to keep up what appear to be high rates of investment return. Residential housing was never as valuable as it seemed during the bubble; the soaring home values were instead a reflection of a continual upward rush of new investors in mortgage-backed securities, a rush that finally collapsed in 2008.
But by the end of 2009, the unimaginable was happening: The bubble was re-inflating. A bailout policy that was designed to help us get out from under the bursting of the largest asset bubble in history inadvertently produced exactly the opposite result, as all that government-fueled capital suddenly began flowing into the most dangerous and destructive investments all over again. Wall Street was going for the reload.
A lot of this was the government's own fault, of course. By slashing interest rates to zero and flooding the market with money, the Fed was replicating the historic mistake that Alan Greenspan had made not once, but twice, before the tech bubble in the early 1990s and before the housing bubble in the early 2000s. By making sure that traditionally safe investments like CDs and savings accounts earned basically nothing, thanks to rock-bottom interest rates, investors were forced to go elsewhere to search for moneymaking opportunities.
Now we're in the same situation all over again, only far worse. Wall Street is flooded with government money, and interest rates that are not just low but flat are pushing investors to seek out more "creative" opportunities. (It's "Greenspan times 10," jokes one hedge-fund trader.) Some of that money could be put to use on Main Street, of course, backing the efforts of investment-worthy entrepreneurs. But that's not what our modern Wall Street is built to do. "They don't seem to want to lend to small and medium-sized business," says Rep. Brad Sherman, who serves on the House Financial Services Committee. "What they want to invest in is marketable securities. And the definition of small and medium-sized businesses, for the most part, is that they don't have marketable securities. They have bank loans."
In other words, unless you're dealing with the stock of a major, publicly traded company, or a giant pile of home mortgages, or the bonds of a large corporation, or a foreign currency, or oil futures, or some country's debt, or anything else that can be rapidly traded back and forth in huge numbers, factory-style, by big banks, you're not really on Wall Street's radar.
So with small business out of the picture, and the safe stuff not worth looking at thanks to the Fed's low interest rates, where did Wall Street go? Right back into the shit that got us here.
One trader, who asked not to be identified, recounts a story of what happened with his hedge fund this past fall. His firm wanted to short — that is, bet against — all the crap toxic bonds that were suddenly in vogue again. The fund's analysts had examined the fundamentals of these instruments and concluded that they were absolutely not good investments.
So they took a short position. One month passed, and they lost money. Another month passed — same thing. Finally, the trader just shrugged and decided to change course and buy.
"I said, 'Fuck it, let's make some money,'" he recalls. "I absolutely did not believe in the fundamentals of any of this stuff. However, I can get on the bandwagon, just so long as I know when to jump out of the car before it goes off the damn cliff!"
This is the very definition of bubble economics — betting on crowd behavior instead of on fundamentals. It's old investors betting on the arrival of new ones, with the value of the underlying thing itself being irrelevant. And this behavior is being driven, no surprise, by the biggest firms on Wall Street.
The research report published by Goldman Sachs on January 15th underlines this sort of thinking. Goldman issued a strong recommendation to buy exactly the sort of high-yield toxic crap our hedge-fund guy was, by then, driving rapidly toward the cliff. "Summarizing our views," the bank wrote, "we expect robust flows . . . to dominate fundamentals." In other words: This stuff is crap, but everyone's buying it in an awfully robust way, so you should too. Just like tech stocks in 1999, and mortgage-backed securities in 2006.
To sum up, this is what Lloyd Blankfein meant by "performance": Take massive sums of money from the government, sit on it until the government starts printing trillions of dollars in a desperate attempt to restart the economy, buy even more toxic assets to sell back to the government at inflated prices — and then, when all else fails, start driving us all toward the cliff again with a frank and open endorsement of bubble economics. I mean, shit — who wouldn't deserve billions in bonuses for doing all that?
Con artists have a word for the inability of their victims to accept that they've been scammed. They call it the "True Believer Syndrome." That's sort of where we are, in a state of nagging disbelief about the real problem on Wall Street. It isn't so much that we have inadequate rules or incompetent regulators, although both of these things are certainly true. The real problem is that it doesn't matter what regulations are in place if the people running the economy are rip-off artists. The system assumes a certain minimum level of ethical behavior and civic instinct over and above what is spelled out by the regulations. If those ethics are absent — well, this thing isn't going to work, no matter what we do. Sure, mugging old ladies is against the law, but it's also easy. To prevent it, we depend, for the most part, not on cops but on people making the conscious decision not to do it.
That's why the biggest gift the bankers got in the bailout was not fiscal but psychological. "The most valuable part of the bailout," says Rep. Sherman, "was the implicit guarantee that they're Too Big to Fail." Instead of liquidating and prosecuting the insolvent institutions that took us all down with them in a giant Ponzi scheme, we have showered them with money and guarantees and all sorts of other enabling gestures. And what should really freak everyone out is the fact that Wall Street immediately started skimming off its own rescue money. If the bailouts validated anew the crooked psychology of the bubble, the recent profit and bonus numbers show that the same psychology is back, thriving, and looking for new disasters to create. "It's evidence," says Rep. Kanjorski, "that they still don't get it."
More to the point, the fact that we haven't done much of anything to change the rules and behavior of Wall Street shows that we still don't get it. Instituting a bailout policy that stressed recapitalizing bad banks was like the addict coming back to the con man to get his lost money back. Ask yourself how well that ever works out. And then get ready for the reload." The End
There has been a lot of comment about banks, their role in the recent market turmoil, and their raison d'etre.
Back in 1957, this piece from UK humour magazine Punch seemed to understand what many people still wrestle with...
I have been known to say on the fundamentals courses I give ( Company Financials and Announcements course group ), that Graham's classic "The Intelligent Investor" has a deceptive title. The point I try to make, in my clumsy references to brains selling for six bob a kilo at Cato Ridge abattoir, is that pure IQ cleverness is not going to get you there. The uncommon thing which you need is actually common sense!
Talking more to the brains, egos and so on that can bring big companies to their knees, Bill George of Harvard Business School here sets out some delightfully clear notions on how to find and harness the skillsets needed.
Enjoy the clip...
Play 2.5 minute Video
At 11 o'clock on the 11th day of the 11th month a bugle was sounded, and World War One officially ended.
Read poems from the likes of Wilfred Owen , Siegfried Sassoon and Rupert Brooke to get a flavour of this crazy conflict... below is a famous piece by Owen, who died on November 4 - a week before the conflict ended.
Relevance to the Markets? Plenty.
Rightly, it was known as the Great War - not because this or any war is "great", but because of the bizarrely high death tolls. World War One has also been called "the war to end all wars", since its accepted figure of 38.8m killed, woulded and missing in action seemed an unbeatable level. Taken over the 4 and a bit years, that amounts to 24,907 people lost every day, of which around 6,350 died. Daily! Which seems impressive, unless you compare it with battles like the one at Canae in 215 BC, where Hannibal's Carthaginians gave the Romans a bloody hiding, with a one day Roman death toll of 48,200 ( according to Livy), 50,000 (Appian, Plutarch) or 60,000 (Quintillian). Add some 8,000 dead Carthaginians, and that was a very bloody single day.
So, it appears that history does repeat, with due adaptation for the technology and fashion of the day. And the reason is dreadfully simple - humans seem unable to evolve. The species agglommerates into empires, the winners conquer, then they collapse. And so it repeats.
So where is our much-loved JSE right now?
Here is the last 50 years, tracking the index vs earnings, and showing CPI inflation. The smooth line is the "trend" of where it seems both profits and the index normalise - a geometric compound return of 12.3% (excl dividends). Can we ever get very far from either the earnings line or the trend?
And here is a zoom in onto the last decade. Notice the average forecasts for JSE earnings, predicting strong growth of 30% then 17%.
And yet we are still some 51% higher than the average earnings multiple would have us trading, and 19% above the multi-decade trend.
So if you think history may come round again, are the eps forecasts too low? Is sharp profit growth going to get the blue line back up to, or maybe even above, the trend? Or, will it be different, this time?
My wife's life policy with Liberty requires an annual premium to be paid. Liberty seem to require either a visit to a physical bank branch to deposit a cheque, or consent to a debit order. Why should it be such a mission to pay this by internet banking (the reference given me by Liberty when trying to pay from Standard internet banking was rejected). Is this a unique hassle?
For governments which borrow (all governments)? A friend – because it pays down the borrowings, by eroding the payback obligation.
For the asset management industry? A friend – because it grows the nominal value of its pool of assets on which fees are based, and often triggers performance fees en route.
For you?
This article may give you some tips as to how to deal with inflation…
"Embrace Inflation": How to Profit and Protect Your Wealth
by Aaron Task in Investing (Yahoo)
Related: TIP, TBT, GLD, SLV, ^GSPC, JNK, ^DJI
"Deflation is a very serious risk [but] inflation is a greater likelihood," Arun Motianey, senior strategist at RGE Monitor, says of the great economic debate of our age.
Despite ongoing (and legitimate) concerns that a combination of China's economic risk, debt deleveraging and technology will spur Japan-style deflation in the coming decade, Motianey is more concerned about inflation for a simple reason: "I'm expecting the central banks of the world to embrace inflation," he says.
If you think the Fed is easy now, just wait. Motianey predicts the Fed will monetize the public debt in the not-too-distant future, meaning it will print money and buy Treasuries -- well beyond what it's done in the past year. The Fed will also probably require banks to hold a higher level of government debt in order to maintain demand, he says.
Unlike the inflation of the 1970s, Motianey predicts we'll soon enter a period of "voluntary inflation," not unlike the 1948-1951 episode when the Fed somewhat surreptitiously helped Uncle Sam inflate its way out of the huge debts incurred during World War II and its aftermath.
A big difference between then and now is the sensitivity and sophistication of the financial markets to such Fed maneuvers. In his new book, SuperCycles: The New Economic Force Transforming Global Markets and Investment Strategy, Motianey details how investors should prepare for what he calls a "targeted period of higher inflation," including:
--Avoid government bonds: "The so-called risk free bonds ironically will now become the riskiest," he says.
--Hold corporate bonds as a "quasi-equity": A little inflation will provide corporations with pricing power, leading to higher earnings and the cash flow needed to meet their debt obligations, he says.
--Stay long stocks, with a narrow focus on dividend payers, as well as companies that produce natural resources and basic materials.
--Own gold and other commodities, which Motianey predicts will do "extremely well" in this scenario.
All this may sound self-evident but deflationary pressures - or the perception thereof - have been driving some market action lately, meaning opportunities are being created for those who believe inflation is the greater long-term threat.
As the market prices and sentiments come and go, it can help to stay objective.
Right now, the JSE is priced at almost 14 times earnings - in other words when you buy a share, you are asked to surrender 14 years of profit to pay for the damn thing - rather more than the mulktidecade average of less than 12X.
As we pass the middle of this year, the attached table shows what the 'expert' analysts out there are forecasting for growth in earnings per share in the three largest companies in each broad sector/discipline, from now till next July, and for the following year.
It does seem that - IF the earnings forecasts come through, then the overall price/earnings (PE) ratio is maybe not too bad!
JSE mid-2010 eps forecasts


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Hanscom-managed program helps save Airman's life
A patient is offloaded from a C-130J with the 772nd Expeditionary Airlift Squadron at Bagram Airfield, Afghanistan, last month. C-130J aircraft are outfitted with the Dynamic Retasking Capability, managed at Hanscom AFB, Mass., which provides the ability for the aircraft to be directed to an alternate location with up-to-date information. Having that capability recently assisted an EAS crew with saving an Airman's life. (U.S. Air Force photo by Capt. Tristan Hinderliter)
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Hanscom-managed program helps save Airman's life
Posted 5/13/2013 Updated 5/14/2013
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by Patty Welsh
66th Air Base Group Public Affairs
5/13/2013 -
HANSCOM AIR FORCE BASE, Mass.
-- A program managed here that helps gets supplies safely to warfighters recently was used in Afghanistan to help save an Airman's life.
The Dynamic Retasking Capability Urgent Operational Need provides the ability for C-17 and C-130J aircraft to be directed to an alternative location with up-to-date information.
According to program officials, with the DRC the flight crew can receive data such as threat information, weather awareness and text messages, ultimately leading to a potential change to a mission.
By early April, the system had been used in theater for more than 11,000 flight hours, and supported air land and airdrop missions. For the C-130J, more than 1,500 missions were completed and for the C-17, 675. Although originally intended to increase the success of cargo airdrops, the team here knew there would be other unforeseen uses.
"As part of any mission those aircraft are participating in, they have the ability to use the DRC," said 2nd Lt. Joseph Silvio, DRC program manager.
In late March, a C-130J was in use as a routine aeromedical evacuation flight in Afghanistan, conveying patients from forward operating bases to Bagram Airfield. Through the DRC, the crew received an urgent message to divert to an alternate location to evacuate a patient who medical personnel thought needed more care than was available at their location. (Full details are available
The patient, a combat controller, had a large wound where he had been shot in the leg and also a broken femur. His current condition was "urgent but stable."
However, as the flight headed back to the next scheduled FOB per the original plan, the controller's condition worsened. He was losing blood and his blood pressure dropped.
The crew knew they needed to get him to a medical facility that could deal with the condition as soon as possible. Unfortunately, the crew was not able to use traditional methods to communicate the request to change their flight plan. However, by using the DRC, they were able to let their command and control know they were changing course to head straight to Bagram.
Medical crew on the aircraft were able to control the bleeding during the flight and once arriving at Bagram, the patient had surgery, which saved his leg and his life.
"We knew there would be other uses for the capability," said Silvio. "It's gratifying to know something designed to support the airdrop mission was able to be used to save life and limb."
Personnel from the 772nd Expeditionary Airlift Squadron, who accomplished this mission, praised the abilities of the DRC as well.
"The system has become indispensable in our current operations," said Lt. Col. Sean Barden, 772nd EAS director of operations. "We use DRC on every mission to accomplish everything from passing weather alerts and NOTAMs [Notices to Airmen] for re-tasked fields to assisting during emergency refrags/diverts."
As the system started out as an urgent operational need, in January it reached a decision point where three choices could have been made: keep it as an enduring capability; sustain the capability in theater; or dispose of it. After a capability transition review, it was decided that the system would be kept as an enduring capability.
The program office here is not purchasing any new systems, but working to support what is already fielded.
And although Barden says there could still be some improvements made, he said the technology is sound.
"In all, the technology has proven very reliable given the relative youth of the system." He added that it's also "surprisingly user-friendly."
The DRC team at Hanscom is pleased the capability is improving missions, not only as anticipated, but even beyond.
"It's great to see a system we fielded helped with saving someone's life," said Bill Herbert, DRC deputy program manager.
Editor's note: information included in this article was from an article from 451st Air Expeditionary Wing Public Affairs,
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Date: 1957
Description: Aerial view of the Baraboo Wisconsin Dells airport.
Date: 1982 ca.
Description: This map shows the location of major settlement regions for various ethnic groups. Includes a legend in lower left hand corner. Sparse settlement is repres...
Date: 1946-07-13
Description: Horse-drawn wagon in a United Public Workers Parade/Demonstration through downtown. The horse bears signs that read "1946 One Horse Pay!" and "1846 One Hor...
Description: A shower of sparks fly as a factory worker tends to an International A-100 "Golden Jubilee" truck at Springfield Works.
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Description: View from road of the storefront of Truck & Tractor, Inc., an International Harvester dealership. An Olympic Transportation Co. truck is parked near the en...
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Date: 1960
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Description: A side view of vehicle manufactured by the Winther Motor and Truck Company, used to carry employees to and from work in mines. This vehicle was apparently...
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Date: 1929-04-03
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Date: 1965-09-25
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Date: 1967
Description: The Clark Oil Company station at the corner of State Highway 73 & 21 and Baxter Avenue.
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Description: Man working on a wagon wheel at International Harvester's Weber Works. Two other workers and a fire escape sign are in the background.
Date: 1956-08-27
Description: Mayor Ivan Nestingen points out one of the civil defense decals which are being placed on all Madison buses. The decals state that the buses are pledged fo...
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Description: The Madison Armature Part Company building (formerly the Wisconsin National Guard Armory), 17 Market Place. Photograph is taken from 101 North Blount Stree...
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Here's some good news. While Anton Corbijn has generally taken his time between films—three years passed between "Control" and "The American," and it was four more until the forthcoming "A Most Wanted Man"—the filmmaker is already onto his next gig, currently in the midst of production in Canada on "Life" starring Robert Pattinson and Dane DeHaan. And yes, that's the first look at the pair above.
The film tells the story of the relationship between renowned Magnum photographer Dennis Stock (Pattinson) and Hollywood legend James Dean (DeHaan), chronicling a road trip the pair took which forever changed Stock's life. And Corbijn is excited about the project, and collaborating with these actors: "When I see Rob I see an inner turmoil that is great for the role," Corbijn told EW (print edition, not online). "And Dane is really interesting. He has a beautiful face, but it's a face to grasp. It's hard to see how Dane reads [onscreen] sometimes, and the same goes for James Dean."
No release dates yet for this one, but one wonders if the quickly moving Corbijn could have it done in time for the fall festival circuit.


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- 102Promote
Art Print
Tuesday 19 March 2013: nor remains, simply, yet...by Juan Antonio Zamarripa [Esqueda]
Collect your choice of gallery quality Giclée, or fine art prints custom trimmed by hand in a variety of sizes with a white border for framing.
many thanks, GM. more like this throughout the week... peace!
many thanks for your comment, Phil Perkins. peace!
Fantastic, love it
Oh Yeah! ✯ ✯ ✯ ✯ ✯ 👍
thanks very much, Alice Gosling.
and t✯h✯a✯n✯k✯s also to Wayne Edson Bryan
another one coming up... soon!
and t✯h✯a✯n✯k✯s also to Wayne Edson Bryan
another one coming up... soon!
I just love your architecture images!!
belated thanks for your comment, SP. more (illustrations) soon. peace!
Beautiful effect, like it ! :))
Awesome piece! Love this one! :)
Thanks Françoise & Graham for your comments. It's an ongoing "investigation"... Let me know what you think about the upcoming week's "entries". Peace!
Your work is beautiful!
many thanks for your comment, Alejandra. I appreciate the encouragement. salud
many thanks for your comment. peace!
Oh Yeah! ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆!
Very cool!
Thank you both, pixel404 & M D. Peace!
Really like this
Thanks for looking at my "older" work and commenting, too. Peace.
Marvellous style, love this whole series. :))
Thanks again, Daisy.
Very nice use of layers!
Thanks once again, Myriam. I think the ab/use of layers could be one of the contents in my digital photo mangling, indeed. Tell a friend, if possible! ;-)
Very cool work!
I appreciate your comment, AA! Peace.
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text:
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text:
Jan. 13, 2013
LOS ANGELES - Noah Garcia shelved a second-place finish off the 3-meter board to lead Stanford at the Bruin Diving Invitational this past weekend at UCLA's Spieker Aquatics Center. The Cardinal fared well during its first competition of the New Year and returns to the boards with upcoming league meets at Arizona State (Jan. 25) and Arizona (Jan. 26).
Garcia (565.15) was fifth and Taylor Sishc (562.25) was sixth in the 1-meter event. Connor Kuremsky (558.85) rounded out the top 10 with an eight-place showing. Kristian Ipsen led the field with a 376.35 in the prelims.
Garcia (683.90) took second off the 3-meter board with Kuremsky (587.45) placing ninth. Garcia held his position after posting a 340.40 in the prelims of the event.


text:
W-B man charged with additional 600 counts of child pornography
A Wilkes-Barre man arrested last week for child pornography was hit with hundreds of additional charges Friday, according to courts records.
Charged last week with about 150 counts of child pornography, Scott L. Savage, 40, of 180 Stanton St., now faces more than 600 additional counts. He is jailed at the Luzerne County Correctional Facility, unable to post $250,000 straight cash bail on the new charges.
When Savage was arrested Aug. 15, officers said he told them he started searching for pictures of teens on Google, but "would look for links to click on to find younger children until he found what he was looking for," according to a police affidavit.
On Aug. 5, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children got a tip from Google that someone using its email service had tried to send eight sexually explicit photos of children. The internet service provider, Verizon Online, gave police the name and street address connected to the ISP address.
Officers performed a search of 180 Stanton St., where they seized two desktop computers and one laptop computer. Police said the computers contained 150 images of children, mostly young girls, engaged in sex acts. Savage told officers he had been viewing child pornography for about five to 10 years, police said.
Police said Savage admitted to sending child porn images from his Google email account and downloading child pornography to his phone, which was also seized.
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It sounds silly, but I can't get it. Why can the expression [] == [] be typed at all? More specifically, which type (in class Eq) is inferred to the type of list elements?
In a ghci session, I see the following:
Prelude> :t (==[])
(==[]) :: (Eq [a]) => [a] -> Bool
But the constraint
Eq [a] implies
Eq a also, as is shown here:
Prelude> (==[]) ([]::[IO ()])
No instance for (Eq (IO ()))
arising from use of `==' at <interactive>:1:1-2
Probable fix: add an instance declaration for (Eq (IO ()))
In the definition of `it': it = (== []) ([] :: [IO ()])
Thus, in []==[], the type checker must assume that the list element is some type a that is in class Eq. But which one? The type of [] is just [a], and this is certainly more general than Eq a => [a].
IMHO this should by ambiguous, at least in Haskell 98 (which is what we are talking about)


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I don't know exactly where to put any threads I have questions with, but since I'm just a fat guy trying to get some exercise and reduce weight and cholesterol, I like this section. The amount of sections and information in this forum overall is overwhelming and I have a hard time sorting through the racer info vs. just exercise info.
So, last night I was curious and counted the teeth on my junk Walmart mountain bike job. Here's what I have...
25 / 33 / 42
13 / 15 / 17 / 19 / 21 / 24 / 28
26x1.95 tire
Not sure what the standard is on rear cassette and how gearing is spaced on "good" bikes.
So I was curious about cadence and started googling around. Everything I read says to ride 85-90 rpm. Most of what I find googling seems to pertain to the "serious" cyclists. I'm not interested in being the fastest I can or how much distance I cycle, I'm just trying to get an hour of biking in a day for exercise. I'm perfectly happy riding my 12-14 mph for an hour every night.
Next I looked for information on calculating cadence from your gear ratios. I found a calculation and made a table in Excel to plug all my gears in and get a cadence at various speeds. When I'm on the relatively flat Allegheny River Trail I find myself generally between 12 and 13 mph for 6 miles out and 13-14 mph for 6 miles back. I ride in my highest gear. Trying to get higher than 14 mph, I'm pushing too hard and tire out, though I do sprint my final quarter to half mile and run 18-19 mph as long as I can for that last span.
From my calculation, between 12, 13, and 14 mph my cadence is 49 - 53 - 57 rpm. That feels right and pretty comfortable for me.
So reading about cadence, like I said, I see everything saying that you should aim for 85-90 rpm. What?!? That calculated on my top gear that I should be aiming for 21 mph! That is an absolute impossibility for me. I can hardly hit 19 mph for a quarter mile. The only time I've hit 21 mph was coasting downhill behind my house on around 11% grades. I tried to keep up with pedaling and couldn't catch that kind of spinning at 21 mph.
So, I look at my next gear down, 42/15. 85 rpm calculates to running 18 mph. Ok, so this was last night after my ride I was looking all this up so haven't tried going faster on a lower gear. I will try next time just going with the 42/15 and see what kind of speed I get out of it, but I feel like 85 rpm my legs will be flailing about uncontrollable. Also, again, no way I'm going to be doing 18 mph.
Ok, then I'll look at a 65 rpm cadence, perhaps for me that is a more realistic goal to achieve. When I have to slow down to get through the barriers that block motor vehicles, I generally down to 4th on the rear and move back up through the gears until I'm back in top gear. As I'm accelerating back up when I'm on the 42/15 (6th) I hit 12 mph when I move to the top gear. At 12 mph my cadence calculates at 56 rpm and I think I'm pedaling pretty darn fast and need to jump up to the top gear.
14 mph in that 42/15 6th gear calculates to 65 rpm. Times that I've done that before moving to top gear feels like the legs are flailing around way too much.
I'm just trying to learn and understand a bit about the techniques of pedaling a bike. I've read last night that lower cadence you will put more effort with your legs and that would be good for muscle building in the legs but faster pedaling at a given speed will be a better cardio workout. Also I read that the lower cadence and more effort would tire you out faster. Since losing weight and lowering cholesterol is my goal, seems that I want to pedal a higher cadence than I have been now for 3 weeks today. Feeling wise, the tiring out with lower cadence doesn't make sense to me. I will try out different gearing and pedaling faster my next ride, but my thinking right now is pedaling faster will be more tiring.
Like I said, just trying to gain some knowledge here and hope that some folks can shed some light for me thinking in a Clyde way rather than a 140 lb racer way, but maybe I'm thinking all wrong on the fact that I'm on a junk heavy mountain bike. I'm picking up a new bike next year, but I don't think I want the slung down low stance of riding a road bike and I'm researching some different hybrid bikes for later purchase (something like Specialized Crosstrain is what I'm thinking as I do have a ride I go on that is gravel road and a possible trail to ride that is cinder or hard pack gravel rather than paved, thus the not wanting a road bike.)


text:
mens style
How Spring's Top 7 Menswear Trends Stack up in SF
By Lauren Goodman on February 25, 2015 1:00 PM
With slightly warmer weather coming our way, it's time for men to step out and rock some fresh trends. From Indigo dyed to surf inspired, the season change can't come fast enough.
Link Love: Mrs. Obama in SF, Swarovski on the Cheap and Hipsters in Seersucker
Good reads from our feeds...
The Cut reports on what Michelle Obama wore yesterday at a volunteering conference in San Francisco. Hint: it was Rachel Roy.
Get a glimpse of the weird world of Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland via Fashionista.
Style.com gives us the scoop on new Swarovski gems that leave your wallet intact.


text:
Possibly the most popular and discussed subject in the space autograph hobby are autographs of the twelve Apollo moonwalkers - the astronauts who walked on the moon on Apollos 11, 12, 14, 15, 16 and 17. And probably the most popular and desirable way to collect their autographs are on portraits of them taken in their Apollo white spacesuits (WSS). Complete autographed WSS sets are found in many collections and displayed on many Websites and the set I have shown here is a good but unremarkable representation of such a set. Many collectors desire unpersonalized portraits, with only an autograph and with possibly a mission inscription added by the astronaut. Four of the 12 autographed WSS's shown here also have personalizations added by the astronauts, with 8 having autographs without personalizations and some with mission inscriptions.
Besides white spacesuit portraits autographed by the 12 moonwalkers, there are several other good ways to put together a set of moonwalker autographs: Autographed photos of each astronaut on the moon (also shown here); Autographed business suit portraits; signed personal letters (also shown here); individually autographed space covers for each moonwalker's mission (also shown here); signed index cards; and even a mixed set of various types of items (portraits, covers, cards, etc.) is very possible and would be the easiest and cheapest way to acquire a set of moonwalker autographs. So even today, over 40 years after the last moonlanding, it is still possible to find and assemble a set of items autographed by each of the 12 men who walked on the moon.


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Hi everyone!!! I have another fun and frugal craft for you
What I love about this craft is that you can use up your freebie stash and you can personalize each one
Check out the video below for the craft! Let me know what you think
{ 1 comment… read it below or add one }
Super cute paper favor idea… Easy instructions!
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text: On 22 Dec 1998, Randy Heiland writes: > Can someone expedite my understanding of things... I want to > display an application on my (SGI) X wkst and "share" it with a > person on a PC. I've successfully installed VNC and ran the sample > server/client, but, of course, the server app (defined in > ~/.vnc/xstartup) doesn't actually *appear* on my wkst. How do I > remedy this? > E.g., I have an OpenGL application that I want to interact with and > have the person at the PC being able to see what I'm doing (and, > optionally, be able to interact with the app himself) My understanding is: You must set up the VNC server on the SGI box, and then run a viewer on your SGI to connect to that 'virtual' X server, and run the application there. Then, a PC user can also use a VNC viewer to see the same virtual X server on the SGI. If both of you connect using the viewer with the '-shared' option, you'll be able to collaborate on using the application(s) that run on the virtual VNC X server. Under X, VNC does not display 'whatever is on the X console screen' of the VNC server machine; instead it sets up (possibly multiple) virtual X servers and shares those with whomever wants to view them using the VNC viewer. From VNC's perspective, whether those users are local to the server machine or on the other side of the planet doesn't matter. Under lesser operating systems, with less flexible window systems, VNC is reduced to simply sharing the one real console windowing environment. Whether you can do OpenGL on the X server that is part of the VNC server code, I have no idea. We do have an SGI machine here, but I have not yet needed to try VNC on it :-) Hoping that helps, Jonathan -- Jonathan Marsden | Internet: jonathan "at" xc.org | Making electronic 1849 N. Wabash Ave.| Phone: +1 (909) 794 1151 | communications work Redlands, CA 92374 | FAX: +1 (909) 794 3016 | reliably for Christian USA | http://www.xc.org/jonathan | missions worldwide --------------------------------------------------------------------- The VNC mailing list - see http://www.orl.co.uk/vnc/intouch.html ---------------------------------------------------------------------