Month: December 2012

Top Songs From 2012

Posted on by in Music

Inspired by a friend’s post of his favorite 2012 songs, I thought I’d put my own list together. My favorites from this past year definitely span a wide range of genres – I can’t quite pin down whether my tastes moved in any particular direction. I wouldn’t say it was even close to the best year for music in recent memory, but there were definitely plenty of releases worth a listen. Here’s a link to listen to a playlist with my top songs in Spotify. And here’s my list with Spotify links, in no particular order: 1. Zeus – Are You Gonna Waste My Time 2. Andrew Bird – Orpheo Looks Back 3. Alabama Shakes – Be Mine 4. Hot

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Rules of Investing

Posted on by in Markets

Barry Ritholtz has a great list of investing rules, originally posted in two parts with descriptions in the Washington Post here and here. He recently reposted the consolidated list on his blog, The Big Picture, and it’s too good not to share. Every investor has their own process and decision-making rule set (or at least should), and while there’s no one approach that’s right, there are plenty that are wrong. Barry’s rules, at least in my opinion, are effective guides to help avid common mistakes and pitfalls. They’re broad enough that I think they’re applicable to investment activities ranging from managing a personal 401k or IRA all the way up to running a hedge fund or advisory firm. At the risk of

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Comment on the “Milk Cliff”

Posted on by in General

Adam Sigel, in response to an earlier post: Turns out that Tommy from Snatch was somewhat right when he told us to drink less milk. “Big Dairy” has conditioned us to equate milk with calcium, but it’s not the only source, nor is it necessarily the best one. http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/what-should-you-eat/calcium-full-story/index.html As a lactard that switched to soy milk earlier this year, I wouldn’t be directly impacted by the milk cliff, but it’s generally never a good thing when we revert to laws that pre-date integration in schools.

Shtetl-Optimized and Thoughts on Lincoln

Posted on by in Current Events

I’ve been following the blog of Scott Aaronson, Shtetl-Optimized, for a while now — he’s a professor at MIT with research focusing on quantum computers and complexity theory. When he writes about his work, his descriptions are usually far too complex and technical for me to even begin to comprehend. For example, a week or so ago, one of his posts started off like this: “If the world ends today, at least it won’t do so without three identical photons having been used to sample from a probability distribution defined in terms of the permanents of 3×3 matrices, thereby demonstrating the Aaronson-Arkhipov BosonSampling protocol.” I think that was an apocalypse joke, but I can’t be positive. Anyway, I found Scott’s blog long

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Lightroom 5 Preset: Joshua Tree

Posted on by in Lightroom 5 Presets

Here’s my fifth free Lightroom 5 preset, Joshua Tree. I’ve been very surprised by the positive responses I’ve gotten to my first four presets, which can be found in the ‘Lightroom 5 Presets’ section of my site. Thanks to everyone for downloading them. If any readers want to share either their own presets, or examples of presets I’ve posted, I’d be happy to include them in a post. This one has a bit of a vintage old photo tint, adds a vignette, and reduces the saturation while increasing vibrance and clarity. It’s fairly versatile, and I’ve used it on a wide range of shots. Here’s an example, which inspired the name, from Joshua Tree National Park: And here’s another. A horse drinking some

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The Much Feared (but less talked about) “Milk Cliff”

Posted on by in Current Events

Via Ezra Klein, “If Congress fails to renew the farm bill by Jan. 1, the country’s farm policy will revert back to laws dating from 1949. Government price supports for milk would rise significantly — and the cost of milk could rise by as much as $3 per gallon. Dairy doom!” “While we’re on the topic, though, it’s worth noting that milk has been growing steadily less popular in the United States for three decades now”: The post then goes on to discuss how milk has been losing out to other beverages, with one of it’s biggest competitors being bottled water. Given my uses of milk, which are mainly for coffee and cereal, I don’t see water being a reasonable substitute. But that’s just me.