Interesting article in The Independent about being a Viking-era re-enactor. The only people you had to worry about not offending back then were the Vikings. Otherwise, you were your own man in just about every aspect of your life. A few basic rules from God and King, but in every other way, you were truly on your own.
She’s a former student and had an amazing profile photo on Facebook. Had to work with it…
I was disappointed with the last American movie I saw, Alice in Wonderland, but was more than satisfied with the last Bollywood film I saw, Rann. Both feature a strong actor-director combination, but the Indian version is the one that paid off most satisfyingly.
Johnny Depp is at his best with Tim Burton at the helm, but Alice went off the rails for me as it drew to a climax. I loved the landscapes and the clever CGI stuff, but a movie needs a real plot to keep it going. Sorry, Alice, but I can’t feel excited about seeing you again.
Amitabh Bachchan is amazing with Ram Gopal Varma directing, as was proven in Sarkar and Sarkar Raj. Rann gives Bachchan a milder character but just as much drama and intrigue as we had in RGV’s earlier work with Big B. I planned on watching the DVD half-way through last night and then finishing it tonight, but I absolutely could not bear to stop watching it when I got to the half-way point. The plot punched its way through to the very end. Even though it ended with some tragedy, the finish made good sense in the confines of the plot as well as in a real-world sense. Rann tackles the way media, politics, and ratings intertwine to corrupt the system and I plan to use this in my AP Government class. Forget the emotionalism of Mr. Smith Goes to Washington: Rann is the real deal. First class film hain.
The carry trade is pretty straightforward: it’s a bet that a currency will do certain things in the future and that, given that given-ness, one can use a position on that currency as a hedge, or reduction of risk, on other investments.
In this crisis, many people looked to the way the US was spending money to get out of trouble and assumed that the dollar would stay weak relative to the euro. There is a massive carry trade in the dollar, with the expectation that it stays weak.
With the recent turmoil over Greece, Spain, Portugal, Italy, and Ireland, it looks like the euro may weaken and the dollar strengthen. That will mess up everyone that expected the dollar to stay weak. When it strengthens, the people that had bet on a weak dollar will lose quite a bit of money.
All, right, deficits are bad. No argument about that from me. Taxes can damage the economy. Again, I agree wholeheartedly. Now, Tea Party, tell me how you’re going to rein in deficits and cut taxes without bringing on a catastrophe to make the events of the 1930s seem like the “Not All That Bad Depression.”
The Tea Party is too little, too late. Yes, we fear deficits, but what politician is going to vote to dismantle entitlement programs? How are we going to get rid of entrenched politicians when the interest groups backing them have put so much money into discrediting their opponents? And how do we know if the replacements the Tea Party puts forward are mentally sound?
In War, Politics, and Insanity, C.S. Bluemel put forward the idea that many of the world’s politicians, particularly the populist ones, are certifiably insane. They grew up with hard lives and became rebellious mavericks – psychotic mavericks. The book was written in 1949, so the author was thinking of Hitler, Mussolini, and Stalin, not Palin. The comparison still applies. The danger of populism is that it attracts leaders just like the common man that believe in themselves to the point of megalomania. My final question for the Tea Party is this: beyond your economic solution, how will you keep your movement from producing an American dictator?
Yes, there are more civilian casualties, eroding goodwill toward the US-NATO forces. Worse, Karzai has pretty much scrapped anti-corruption efforts in his bid for power. It’s a mess there, and no surge of US forces is going to fix things with Karzai still at the top.
For my birthday, I headed down to the Huong Ly, a great little Vietnamese place just north of Belt Line, off Greenville. Don’t go there for the atmosphere: go there for the great food at very reasonable prices. We had four entrees and two appetizers for right at $30.
First to arrive were the spring rolls… delightful little things, full of contrasting temperatures and textures. Dip them into the sweet peanut sauce for more fun.
Next were the fried eggrolls. As mentioned here previously, these are full of meat and very little filler. Absolute heaven in a compact cylinder. They arrive freshly fried, very hot on the inside. I have to wait a little before starting on one of these so I don’t burn my tongue, but I definitely eat one.
Next arrival was the durian smoothie. I love durian stuff. I love the way it stinks at first and then becomes an irresistible flavor after tasting. Not everyone likes the durian, but I am truly blessed in that regard. Calvin took a taste and liked it, Yvette tried it and said, “meh,” because she has no sense of smell. Malia took a whiff of it and found it objectionable. Little kids can be like that.
Malia’s sandwich was next to arrive. She tried it, but the fish sauce on it was a bit too strong for her. The rest of us took a bite and found it fantastic.
The main entrees were soon in arriving at our table, given how they were on the same tray as the sandwich. Calvin had the chicken with rice noodles.
Yvette had the pork chop on rice…
… and I had the pork and shrimp on rice noodles. Those crumbly things on top are peanuts. There’s a little bit of sauce to pour on top of it and stir around. Everything in it tastes wonderful and there’s an amazing interplay of flavors. I could go on with more gastronomic praise, but suffice to say this stuff didn’t just hit the spot. It smacked it right on the nose.
And then, Malia asked to try the durian smoothie. I thought, sure, why not? I don’t want to try to talk her down from exploring new flavors. In spite of its smell, I soon saw this:
She ate about half of it! The flavor Andrew “Bizarre Foods” Zimmern can’t swallow, she ate half of! I couldn’t believe it. I’m proud of her for giving it a try and finding another new taste to add to her repertoire.
I decided to eat some of her sandwich in exchange for the smoothie. 🙂
Was it good? See for yourself:
We pretty much cleaned our plates. Thank you for the happy birthday, Huong Ly!
This film was a real gem. Shah Rukh Khan and Kajol are fantastic together: they’re truly one of cinema’s greatest screen couples. I’m going to confess there are melodramatic scenes and moments of imperfection. I don’t care. There are also scenes with fantastic cinematography in the San Francisco sun and truly touching and heartfelt moments. The leads, SRK and Kajol, are in their prime and their characters drive the film through twists and turns and on to its satisfying climax.
The second half of the film involves touches of magical realism in coastal Georgia. I guess that’s a nice way of saying there’s probably nowhere in Georgia that looks like a Harry Potter or Lord of the Rings set, but that’s what we get in the film. It serves as a metaphor for New Orleans, that much I get: so let it go at that. I still maintain this is an important – and entertaining – film. It’s a must-see, and bring the Kleenex.
Not really. There’s 99 other guys just like him in the Senate. Check out Muckety for his associations. It’s the typical mosh pit of banking, defense, pharmaceutical, and special interest groups that fetters every other senator. Check out some of the guys he’s immediately connected to and who they’re one jump away from. Like other senators, he’s just a legal partnership away from a truckload of special interests. A brief search turned up Roche and JP Morgan among the clients of a firm he has a direct relationship with.
So, no, he’s not a real loss. The next senator from Indiana, be he Demican or Republocrat, will look a lot like Bayh: someone with a much closer relationship with the board of directors of JP Morgan than I’ll ever have. Still, the Muckety link is nice. Check out your favorite Congressperson or Senator with it!
The image to the right shows the national debt in 2004, when it was just over $7 trillion, or $7,000,000,000,000 for those who like zeroes. In scientific notation, it’s $7.0 * 10^12. Currently, the debt stands at $12 trillion or so, and the debt limit now lets it go to $14 trillion.
$14 trillion is 100% of GDP, and taking our debt beyond that number puts us in danger of going over a tipping point.