Magnums

Not the gun but the ice-cream. Bought six of Friday. Another six yesterday and just hauled back twelve from Fairprice. All because they are selling it one-for-one. It is so over priced, even with one for one, I feel it is at best only fairly priced.

Whither China?

Simon Hunt visited and researched on China and in his latest report listed the following worrying features about the huge country.

Beneath the superficial prosperity in their major cities, China has always given us many things to worry about but for the last few decades, the pessimists have always been wrong. The Chinese has a surprising ability to muddle through. How do you analyze this? You really can't because to be honest they also need enough luck on their side. In their long history, there were some very unfortunate moments and they suffered phenomenally for them. Hard to think of another country that has suffered more.

• Home affordability
• Leadership instability
• A potential if not actual housing bubble
• The rising income and wealth differential between those who have made it and those who have not
• The country’s continued dependence on exports as its principal driver of growth
• Cheap credit, which punishes savings and encourages investment/speculation
• The misallocation of capital that springs from the previous factor
• Local/provincial government indebtedness
• A new assertiveness and arrogance at all levels
• Policy making that focuses on short-termism without addressing structural and longer-term issues, etc.
• Impact of rising wages
• Energy intensity
• Role of foreign companies
• Resource dependability – water, raw materials, etc.

A psychiatrist links Neuroscience with Spirituality

I am always keen on unifying concepts. In this book Dr. Curt Thompson provides the link between some of our latest findings in Neuroscience and Christian Spirituality.

Anatomy of the Soul: Surprising Connections between Neuroscience and Spiritual Practices That Can Transform Your Life . .

http://www.amazon.com/dp/141433415X/ref=...

Do you want to improve your relationships and experience lasting personal change? Join Curt Thompson, M.D., on an amazing journey to discover the surprising pathways for transformation hidden inside your own mind. Integrating new findings in neuroscience and attachment with Christian spirituality, Dr. Thompson reveals how it is possible to rewire your mind, altering your brain patterns and literally making you more like the person God intended you to be. Explaining discoveries about the brain in layman’s terms, he shows how you can be mentally transformed through spiritual practices, interaction with Scripture, and connections with other people. He also provides practical exercises to help you experience healing in areas where you’ve been struggling. Insightful and challenging, Anatomy of the Soul illustrates how learning about one of God’s most miraculous creations—your brain—can enrich your life, your relationships, and your impact on the world around you.

Rich and Poor Nations

The global economic imbalance was inevitable because it was just the reflecting human behavior. The poor, if they have any surplus will try to save, especially the women. The rich, mostly living in the first world being credit worthy would even go into debt. Now if there was a lively global trade and investments going on, aggregate the individuals, families and businesses, the result are all these imbalances. Of course governments especially in East Asia also often seize the opportunity to entrench it so that they feel more secure and better positioned to protect their political and national power.

TS video sale

Drove all the way to Ubi for the TS Video sale. One of wifey's favorite past times. Very good deals but we had to return the next day to exchange a couple of bad DVDs. Afterward we dropped by Toa Payoh Fork & Spoon for dinner.

Education

In conclusion, the education of the mind is about relationships (not just person to person sort). It is discovering those relationships. Understanding how they are formed, nurtured and destroyed. It must necessary begin with remembering, identifying and recalling basic objects, e.g., the alphabet, the numerals and/or the basic strokes and radicals of a language like Chinese. Afterward it is all relationships isn't it? And the toughest and most tested relationships I think are in Mathematics and Physics. Idle speculations are quickly put on trial and easily thrown out if they are found wanting. In other branches of knowledge bad ideas are often allowed opportunities to grow. These buildings of concepts and ideologies erected on sand eventually collapse and if they are ideas of the politics, economy and business, they bring with them much grief. A recent example? Market Fundamentalism.

Off the Books: The Underground Economy of the Urban Poor

I think I am going to buy this book because there are so many passages I want to mark and remember. We don't have an under class light the one portrayed in this book, but I am afraid we are getting there. One particular racial group seem to be arriving there faster than the others :-( As far as I can tell, there is insufficient commitment and imagination to arrest the trend.

Off the Books: The Underground Economy of the Urban Poor

http://www.amazon.com/dp/0674030710/ref=...

Listen to a short interview with Sudhir Venkatesh Host: Chris Gondek | Producer: Heron & Crane In this revelatory book, Sudhir Venkatesh takes us into Maquis Park, a poor black neighborhood on Chicago's Southside, to explore the desperate, dangerous, and remarkable ways in which a community survives. We find there an entire world of unregulated, unreported, and untaxed work, a system of living off the books that is daily life in the ghetto. From women who clean houses and prepare lunches for the local hospital to small-scale entrepreneurs like the mechanic who works in an alley; from the preacher who provides mediation services to the salon owner who rents her store out for gambling parties; and from street vendors hawking socks and incense to the drug dealing and extortion of the local gang, we come to see how these activities form the backbone of the ghetto economy. What emerges are the innumerable ways that these men and women, immersed in their shadowy economic pursuits, are connected to and reliant upon one another. The underground economy, as Venkatesh's subtle storytelling reveals, functions as an intricate web, and in the strength of its strands lie the fates of many Maquis Park residents. The result is a dramatic narrative of individuals at work, and a rich portrait of a community. But while excavating the efforts of men and women to generate a basic livelihood for themselves and their families, Off the Books offers a devastating critique of the entrenched poverty that we so often ignore in America, and reveals how the underground economy is an inevitable response to the ghetto's appalling isolation from the rest of the country. (20060904)