Archive for October, 2008
Yay!
October 29th, 2008 Uncategorized
I found a writing buddy for Nanowrimo! He’s Luke H and an engineer.
Payouts to Purchasers of Lehman Brothers linked products
October 28th, 2008 atschool
From Kelvin Tan’s Live Journal here (1) and here (2)
Here 1:
So combining Shiller and the concept of shadow prices, the simple answer for Tan Kin Lian is this, no one can compensate you because the missing money is not in anyone’s pocket to be taken and returned to you. Through this stock market correction, we are realizing that actual prices far exceeded the shadow prices. When we use our money to buy these minibonds, the reason they can give us a 5% return is because they are investing your money in the stock market in the hope that, in the future, someone will value that stock at a higher price than what we have paid for it initially, the difference becomes our profit.
Here 2:
Even at this time, I am sure there will be more than 50% of Singaporeans who will take up the offer. After all, how many of us would seriously consider that possibility that any of those banks would fail? I guess most of us would reason that there is no way our government will let that happen. I am saying that the same reasoning probably also applied to our views towards Lehman Brothers.
Hear, hear.
The recent news, well not so recent, reported that the banks would be paying out compensation to the investors. (I’m quite stumped as to the logic behind it. Perhaps it is a gesture of sympathy.) What I’m very interested in is the answer to the question, how might one qualify for such sympathy should the things that one invests in goes kaput.
Another bit of confounding news: that bonds are not bonds. I’m not quite comprehending this line of argument: even if they were vanilla type corporate bonds, the money would still have been lost since Lehman Brothers is no more. I haven’t seen the prospectus. I’m guessing that structure of the product is such that the the credit risk depends on the credit rating of Lehman Brothers and that’s why it’s packaged as a bond. The point I am taking away from all these: buy passive index type trackers because any other products would have a different beta (risk element) as compared with the market.
How to Recapitalize the Financial System
October 28th, 2008 elsewhere
From Greg Mankiw:
(As an aside, one might ask, why did these firms make such bad bets? Essentially, it was a result of poor judgment among various private decisionmakers, encouraged by equally poor judgment of various public policymakers, many of whom were more interested in promoting homeownership among questionable borrowers than in the preserving the safety and soundness of the financial system. But this is not the time for recriminations. We have to face up to the problem sitting in our laps.)
Read the whole thing, please. It’s good for you.
More on cake
October 25th, 2008 Uncategorized
Trying to find Sara Lee All Butter Pound Cake reviews, I clicked through a lot of trifle recipes involving the said pound cake. I’ve never had a trifle because if it turned out a mistake,I won’t be able to finish it. (Maybe I can cultivate the kind of friends whom I’m not too sad if I receive news of their untimely death by poisoning…)
There is also an interesting receipe for Chocolate Pound Cake Fries.
I still want an ordinary butter cake.
Food crazes
October 25th, 2008 Uncategorized
This time the food craze is butter cake. 6 out of 8 or 9 tweets today was about trying to find cake or thinking about cake. Not creamed cake, not fruit cake, not banana walnut but a all butter loaf cake. After being done with work, I went off to find one but there were obstacles to the Grail. Mainly, I can’t find a shop that sells decent butter cake and in the search I almost bought 3 cakes: Sara Lee All Butter Pound cake, a house brand all butter pound cake and the butter loaf cake from subway niche. This is in addition to the banana loaf and 2 orange cranberry cake muffin. I didn’t after all – it was just payday afterall, not as if I had gotten some small winnings in lottery.
My last food craze was not so long ago in April/May while I was writing the thesis. I ate nothing but fish for an entire month. I couldn’t get enough of fish. I ate fish for all my meals. It was weird and I was told I smelled of fish, I was told.
Further back, the last food craze I can remember was for butter mints from Marks and Sparks. Bags after bags of them. I couldn’t stop and when I did, I felt I couldn’t work, that my brains were rubbish.
Brain Hack II
October 18th, 2008 elsewhere
I downloaded the mp3 beats from this place and put it on this morning after I woke up – nothing happened.
Next I put on a preset on www.bwgen.com called The Awakened Mind. I fell into dreaming – not exactly asleep but not awake. I’m not sure if that is what was to happen.
I’m going to try out the Creativity preset while doing my phase outline – that’s tomorrow…
Brain Hack I
October 17th, 2008 atschool
Pzizz works as far as I want it to work – that is, I need to control my mind to tell it to fall asleep, else the suggestions don’t work.
Yesterday I put on Quick Energizer for my lunch nap and I was surprised how relaxing the beats were. Last night, searching for brain wave states I found BWGen software which has free presets.
It didn’t work (ie, to make me sleepy) when I put it on the speakers last night but worked perfectly this morning when I have it on earphones (to keep me awake and focused).
It’s going to be heavily used during Nanowrimo especially the focus and the creativity presets. I’m really interested in other variants in their presets but don’t really want to cough up USD40 for it. I wonder if I can experiment with it to do my own presets since they have given the details.
Krugman wins the Nobel Prize for Economics 2008
October 14th, 2008 atschool
He made it into the odds and wins then dusts off old essays about himself and his work.
Professor C. Mary Turnbull
October 10th, 2008 Obituaries, books
I didn’t know Mary Turnbull just passed away. I remember finding and reading the History of Singapore in my uni library and was amazed that a foreigner knew so much about Singapore. I was also amazed how much I didn’t know.
-Obituary by PJ Thum
-Tribute by National Archives
- Obituary: Professor Constance Mary Turnbull
