Sam Kornstein

Avan Jogia and Inigo Montoya

Posted on January 27, 2013January 27, 2013 by Sam Kornstein in Current Events, General

My site traffic has surged 500% over the past few days after 20-year old Canadian sensation Avan Jogia tweeted about my post on Mandy Patinkin, Inigo Montoya, and Saul Berenson: Admittedly, I’d never heard of Avan, but I appreciate the tweet and traffic that came with it. He’s known for playing Beck Oliver the Nickelodeon TV series Victorious. He actually looks a bit like Mandy: While I’m on the topic, for any Inigo Montoya fans out there, I found this amazing shirt on Amazon, which I immediately purchased for my girlfriend:

Lightroom 5 Preset: Speakeasy

Posted on January 26, 2013April 13, 2017 by Sam Kornstein in Lightroom 5 Presets, Photography

Here’s my sixth free Lightroom 5 preset, Speakeasy. This one adds some slight enhancement, mostly sharpening, contrast, and vibrance, without changing the overall look and feel of the photo. It’s quite versatile, and I use it on a wide range of photos, usually when I’m not looking to get too creative, but want to remove haze and liven up a shot a bit. One thing I often tweak after using the preset is the exposure, especially if I want to get more contrast in a shot with some sky. Here’s the first example of the preset, a boulder on Mt. Cardigan: A dog on a street: A parrot up close: And a beach landscape taken in Puerto Viejo: Here’s the download:

Sustainable Approaches to Reducing Food Waste in India

Posted on January 14, 2013April 13, 2017 by Sam Kornstein in General, India Food Waste, Research

About a year ago I spent a month in India working on an MIT research project focused on food waste with a classmate and close friend, Paul Artiuch. Throughout that month, we blogged extensively about what we learned both on the MIT Public Service Center website and on this site. Here’s a summary of what we wrote: 1. Battling Food Waste in India 2. More on Azadpur Mandi 3. India’s Cold Storage Capacity 4. A Look at India’s Agricultural Supply Chains 5. The Punjab Potato Party 6. India’s Grain Storage Problem 7. India’s Lack of Food Processing 8. Smaller Markets in Rajasthan 9. Four Problems with India’s Food Supply Systems 10. Pune: A (Nearly) Waste-Free City Since we returned, we’ve

Woody Guthrie’s 1942 New Years Resolutions

Posted on January 1, 2013January 1, 2013 by Sam Kornstein in History

What an interesting guy: My favorites: 3. Wash teeth if any 16. Learn people better 19. Keep hoping machine running 27. Help win war — beat fascism

Top Songs From 2012

Posted on December 31, 2012December 31, 2012 by Sam Kornstein 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

Rules of Investing

Posted on December 31, 2012January 8, 2018 by Sam Kornstein 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

Comment on the “Milk Cliff”

Posted on December 30, 2012December 30, 2012 by Sam Kornstein 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 December 30, 2012December 30, 2012 by Sam Kornstein 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

Lightroom 5 Preset: Joshua Tree

Posted on December 30, 2012April 13, 2017 by Sam Kornstein 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

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

Posted on December 30, 2012December 30, 2012 by Sam Kornstein 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.