The meaning of Life?

We each have two key quests in life:

Quest for Identity – who am I?
Quest for Purpose – Why am I here?

We worship that which gives us the answer to these two questions.

Discuss.

Origami iPhone stand

Nice one…

Firefox 2.0

For those that dislike the new tab close “x” button location:

Go to about:config.
Filter on “tabs”

Find the entry for “browser.tabs.closeButtons”.

Default is “1″ where the close button is on the right-hand side of all open tabs.

Setting it to “2″ makes the close button only visible on the active tab.

Setting it to “3″ makes the close button appear on the far right again (1.5 behavior).

The choice (as with all open source software) is ultimately, yours. Happy days!

Palindrome

S A T O R
A R E P O
T E N E T
O P E R A
R O T A S

Hello stranger

How nice, when you find someone you haven’t seen or heard from for ages, via some strange web connection.

Warms the cockles of my heart.

Celosa

Why do women compare?

Do men make them compare, or is it just the way they are wired?

The definition of irony:

As a result of a reality TV show in which viewers effectively voice their opinion and decide who should survive and who should be “evicted”, the public now associate the term “big brother” with a certain level of people power, where actions or outcomes are directly a result of their collective desires. This is democracy in the new millenium, but it is not directing the decisions of our leaders, who continue to pander to the media and make unilateral decisions that they somehow conclude are in our best interests, but rather a quite pointless new-media orgy that is creating more Z-list celebrities, by virtue of their coverage in the… media. How depressing.

And to think that George Orwell in 1984 was essentially criticising the dictatorships that extreme left-wing politics produces. In so far as the public choose, as opposed to “the party” choosing, it is in fact the complete opposite of the original meaning of the term Big Brother – the faceless, all seeing, all knowing political machine that removed all semblance of choice from the public. 1984  shows us a world where we not only surrender our ability to choose how we want to live, but to the point where we surrender our ability to think differently.

i·ro·ny   (r-n, r-)
n. pl. i·ro·nies

1. The use of words to express something different from and often opposite to their literal meaning.
2. An expression or utterance marked by a deliberate contrast between apparent and intended meaning.
3. A literary style employing such contrasts for humorous or rhetorical effect.

For those inquiring minds who haven’t read Orwell’s book, I would highly recommend it. For more information (including plot spoiler’s) try:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nineteen_Eighty-Four

Uncertainty

What is uncertainty, and how does it differ from risk?

This question was raised by Frank Knight, who in 1921 authored a treatise on the subject called: Risk, Uncertainty and Profit

In it he says:

Risk: randomness with knowable probabilities – the roll of a dice
Uncertainty: randomness where we cannot know the probabilities.

Critique: Decision-makers who do not know the objective probabilities simply assign subjective probabilities to various outcomes – but, careful reading reveals a more nuanced distinction between risk and uncertainty.
Risk is encountered when we have simple choice, eg. roulette – to place a bet or not to place a bet (bimodal) with resulting probability of 1 in 38 possible pockets.
In many simple choices, the possible states are bimodal – yes or no to a particular opportunity, bet, wager. In deciding whether to take out insurance, either a flood will damage a house or it will not. At other times, they extend along a single dimension, such as the range of possible returns to an investment. In these cases we assign ex ante probabilities to their occurance. (ex ante = based on expectations about the future)

Risk resides in simple choices, but uncertainty arises in messy situations, where the variety of possible actions is nearly infinite. The information relevant to guide ones actions grows more complex. One must decide which levers to pull, when, how hard, and in which combination and sequence. The optimal combination, sequence and timing of future actions will depend critically on the interaction of many external variables, including shifting regulations, unstable commodity prices, the entry of new rivals, changing consumer preferences, volatile exchange and interest rates, fickle capital markets, geopolitical events, natural disasters and continuous technological change – not to mention the responses of competitors who will do their best to thwart managers’ best-laid plans.

Managers face uncertainty and investors face risk, although the world is equally volatile for both. The distinction hinges on the range of possible actions they can employ to achieve the desired outcome, with is complex for executives and simple for investors. Or to take a sports analogy, the punter chooses whether to bet or not, but the coach must juggle myriad interactions of trades, training, strategy and tactics to win.

So that you hear me

para que tu me oigas
mis palabras
se adelgazan a veces
como las huellas de las gaviotas en la playa

collar, cascabal ebrio
para tus manos suaves como las uvas

y las miro lejanas mis palabras
mas que mias son tuyas
van trepando en mi viejo dolor como las yedras

ellas trepan asi por las paredes humedas
eres tu la culpable de este juego sangriento

ellas estan huyendo de mi guarida oscura
todo lo llenas tu, todo lo llenas

antes que tu poblaron la soledad que ocupas
y estan acostumbradas mas que tu a mi tristeza….

(Pablo Neruda)

la otra orilla es mas bella

no conocia la expresion.

me siento mucho mas viva cuando hablo en mi lengua materna y cuando hace calor

la pasion es para mi una gran parte de la vida y en londres la corto, contigo la corto, con el rio la corto

quiero tener un rincon pasional en mi vida, quiero cuidar de las pasiones porque son tesoros pero tambien pueden ser venenos que nos pueden terminar matando… tu y yo…

cuando me derrito al verte, cuando me muero por tu cuerpo y tus besos y tu sexo… me destruye y te destruye y no se como pararlo, como dejar de amarte? cuando te amo, te amo completamente y pasionalmente. y cuando corto con la pasion paro de amarte y cuando te amo vuelve mi pasion a tocar tu puerta.