Jay On The Go

At a time when seniors are going back to college , free online education is making American style education available to everyone in the world , college degree is the new high school diploma , and job prospects for Americans look dismal , comes the report from the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center that of the 1.9 million students enrolled for the first time in all degree-granting institutions, just over half of them had graduated within six years . Another 16.1 percent were still enrolled in some sort of post-secondary program after six years, and 29.8 percent had dropped out altogether.  These people are not only getting their degrees, for whatever time they are in college, they are taking out student loans, that need to repaid no matter what .  I guess if you do not have the stomach for working hard, it is better not to even consider college , but dropping out is just the worst decision you can make.  I must also add that so many college students I come across they are o

When Pandora first came online, I started listening to music there, and then they told me that I was listening to too much music (my music is on when I am working from home ) and they cut me off.  So I abandoned them and switched to DI.fm .  Then they kept begging me to come back because they were sorry to see people like me go away and that they would increase the amount of time I could listen to music.  Obviously, I did not return to them.  I now hear that they are having more trouble paying their bills and cap their listening period.  Damn; when are they going out of business?  I love my Digitally Imported, though, I must announce that I only listen to Trance music, but I am sure that there are similar music services for other genres. 

Nothing terrifies me more than the thought of China becoming the world's economic superpower (it is also clear that the Chinese government will even steal corporate and government secrets to get a competitive edge).  Eventually, China will either steal or buy military technology as well, it might also become a military superpower.  That will not be a good day for humanity because the Chinese Communist Party is a group of power-hungry, thoroughly corrupt thugs who have absolutely no morals .  Expect them to support dictators all over the world and anyone who opposes them will be destroyed. There is more bad news.  Latest data shows that Chinese people now hold an incredible 25% of the world's savings (yeah, the Chinese are the new Japanese ), approximately $4.5 trillion.  It is also a fact that we keep borrowing from China so that we can keep consuming the junk from China.  So what will the Chinese do with all this money?  As the Japanese did in the 80s and 90s, they will s

If you are like me and like to trade commodities like gold, silver, and oil (I have traded IAU, UCO, and SLV), you will simply need to do a lot more paperwork while filing your income tax return with the Internal Revenue Service (IRS).  Even if you do your taxes using TurboTax, which pulled all my documents from the TD Ameritrade account, I was still stumped when it came time to complete the form related to these trades.  So this is how it works.  Unlike other equities that are simple buy/sell, the commodities are tricky.  Basically, the owner, iShares, of this exchange traded fund (ETF) sells a tiny portion of your holding to cover their costs, and that is why you will see that each month there are trades that you have not made.  In my case, the actual quantity was zero shares and the total proceeds were just $22. So how to calculate the cost basis?   I suggest that you plug the data in a spreadsheet.  In first column, list the 12 months.  In the second column, against each month, a

My argument has been that good employees can be effective working from home .  If you have employees who are goofing off at home, it is not that you are letting them work from home; it is just that you have bad employees .  These folks are not professionals and should be fired.  The reality is that they will goof off even when they are in an office (you all know the types who waste time on the Internet or are constantly on the phone or spend plenty of time in the hallways and cafeteria, etc.) and it is naive to think that you can somehow make them more productive by forcing them to come to work in a building. Having said that, Yahoo is completely within the rights of a firm to tell its employees that they cannot work from home .  So while Marissa Mayer maybe a little out of touch (she is a CEO, is worth more than $300 millions, makes tens of millions of bucks a year, has a nursery in her corporate office, etc.), she can still treat low level employees any way she wants.  Look, th

Yes, the super-rich can lose a billion dollars to gambling , but I thought that was rare.  Elliott Orsillo, CFA, co-founder of Season Investments in Colorado Springs, tells CNBC, "One of my clients had $400,000 in credit card bills. He came to me because it was impeding his ability to fuel his jet. The credit card companies would not allow him to charge his fuel anymore."   If this were not true, I would have thought it was a joke.  I wonder if the wealthy are also "too rich to fail," that eventually someone bails them out.

During the late 90s, I found an awesome job that I loved, but it required a 75 mile commute one way, from Connecticut to New Jersey.  Yeah, it was mostly highway driving and I completed it in about 90 minutes or so each way, but with occasional delays, I was spending about 20 hours each week driving.  Around that time the Internet was just starting and my employer was terrified how their business of information collection and processing would be impacted by it, so they were very reluctant to embrace anything new, including telecommuting (which was emerging as new concept in the dot-com boom).  Since several employees were like me, eventually, they let us work one day from home, that we got to choose.  The company insisted on a separate phone line so that work calls could be redirected and an Internet connection, which was fine for me, but wow, it was awesome.  I got to sleep late, and a minute after my office closed at 530 PM, I was home.  It made such a difference in my life.  Eventua

I guess you could gamble a billion bucks in gambling , but this is serious question facing the Japanese government.  You see, despite overwhelming evidence that government spending can work during downturns, Republicans have killed all chances of an economic recovery in America, not because they fundamentally disagree with the economics fundamentals; they just wanted to see President Obama fail in the first term.  In his second term, they are too embarrassed to admit they were wrong so they continue to oppose his policy and are desperately trying to cut spending so that American can continue to be in slump (with the assumption that yet another Mitt Romney like candidate can make the same argument and win the 2016 elections). So what is going on in Japan?   Well, like most of the developed countries, Japan too is in a slow growth mode, and it is hurting the Japanese worker.  There is high unemployment among educated youth and the government wants to address that by raising governmen

We are all aware that after the peak of the late 90s, the employment situation has not been very encouraging .  It was around this time that due to the maturing of Internet technologies and creation of broadband infrastructure everywhere, it is possible for workers in remote parts of the world like The Philippines or India to serve us.  The manufacturing jobs have been shipped first to Mexico and Latin America and then to China , through a process that took decades.  While politicians are reluctant to say this, the reality is that a very few jobs will come back and if they do, they will take very different form.  That is why President Obama has been emphasizing that Americans embrace education, particularly learning vocational skills.  In any case, bachelor degree is new high school .  It was in this context that remarks by David Willetts, Britain’s higher education minister, were remarkable.  He said, “There is nothing stopping older people applying for university.  If they can bene

As you know, after I started to take online classes , I have been singing the praises of massive open online courses .  Just to give you an idea, while we have merely scratched the surface at this time, edX, the nonprofit venture by Harvard and M.I.T hopes to serve a billion students worldwide over the next decade.  About 700,000 individuals are using their platform now with more than 900,000 course enrollments.  Indeed, the dropout rate is 90% , but over time the attrition should fall and reach should improve.  Imagine the power of knowledge to an additional billion people worldwide!

Ouch!  And that is when we are yet to see the full impact of impending massive immigration of cheap labor from Latin America , spread of free online education , and more visas for high tech workers .  The Times is reporting that a college degree is now a must for jobs that typically were done by high school graduates.  They cite the example Atlanta, GA law firm Busch, Slipakoff & Schuh which has hired newly minted college grads for jobs like filing clerks, receptionist, paralegals, administrative assistants. etc. arguing that they are much more motivated, talented, and smarter.  Job creator (I love this funny term) Adam Slipakoff, the firm’s managing partner proudly proclaims, “Going to college means they are making a real commitment to their futures. They’re not just looking for a paycheck.”  I guess the only winners in this are universities that keep charging ridiculous sums for college diplomas .  I don't see how the college graduates benefit and it could be a disaster for

Since I listen to music all day when I am working on my computer, I need quick access to the volume icon so that I can mute it if I need to answer the phone or lower the volume for some reason.  This morning the icon disappeared for some reason even though I made no changes at all.  Choosing the control panel --> notification area icons and selecting show icon and notifications did not help because the volume icon was gone.  So if you are in a situation like mine on a Windows computer, try this: Reboot the computer and see if it returns. If not, right click on the task bar at the bottom and select Start Task Manager.  Go to the processes tab, and find a file called explorer.exe.  Select it and click the end process button on the bottom right of the window. Now click on the applications tab and click on the new task button on the bottom right.  In the pop up window, type explorer.exe and click OK.  This should restore it, and most definitely, if you reboot it.

As a kid, it has been my dream to live in a waterfront property some day; so far it has not materialized.  The closest I have come to it is hotels and homes of friends.  Unfortunately, with hurricanes like Katrina and Sandy and the recent NEMO snowstorm here in the Northeast, I have noticed that the damage to waterfront properties has been more pronounced .  While we got almost 30 inches of snow, since we are so far from the ocean, we were spared the worst of the damage (we had even prepared for power outage but were spared that too).  So should I abandon my dream of owning a water front home some day?   That is what I am leaning towards.  It does not matter whether you accept that global warming is real (I do) or deny that it exists (thanks to the oil companies that have billions of dollars of investments at risk if they acknowledge that global warming exists and in order to stop any legislation that could hurt their profits in the near term, they have bought scientists and pol

We have all been offered bilingual customer service and manuals for decades now, but after Florida Senator Marco Rubio delivered his rebuttal to the State of the Union speech in both English and Spanish, I was convinced that we have turned a corner.  If a Republican presidential hopeful can get away, or even be admired by his Teabagger supporters, with speaking a non-English language, we might have come to finally realize that with tens of millions Spanish speakers in the country already and an estimated 50 million Spanish speakers expected to arrive during the next 10-15 years , we might as well accept the fact that like The Netherlands or Belgium or Austria or India, we are fast becoming a nation where speaking just one language will be a taboo rather than a badge of honor.

I anticipate that spread of MOOC will make the job market nasty in the developed world .  If people everywhere in the world can have access to the same education as us, they will then compete with us for the jobs, and corporations will glad hire the cheapest labor they can find .  There is another development that will make United States a tough place to find a job as we legalize an estimated 12 million illegal immigrants .  Indeed, there is no guarantee that the Obama Amnesty will become law but have you noticed that politicians of both parties are now in favor of it.  It may take some time but the reality is that this is going to happen during the next five years.  That is not where the problem ends, because these people are already here and while some of them are unemployed or working in the underground economy (and will switch to the mainstream economy after legalization), but the law also enables legalized aliens to begin sponsoring their immediate family immediately, and more fa

I have been singing the praises of free online education but Duke University is launching a program to teach how to start personal blogging at a whopping cost of over $43,000 a year.  Look, I have spent a lot of time in traditional universities getting two masters degrees and I have tremendous respect for learning and universities, but I find this funny.  First of all, while blogging is complex (there are creative and technical aspects that are not easy to grasp), I am not sure that one needs to spend so much time and effort learning it in an academic setting.  Secondly, rather than invest so much time in an academic program, you are much better off by starting to blog right now, and learn as you go, because everything in the world of blogging changes every few weeks, that you will be much better off riding the wave.  And in case you need a blogging coach, write to me .  I will be glad to help.

I have been taking a massive open online course Introduction to Philosophy at Coursera .  I have always been curious about philosophy and this free course sucked me right in.  I have already completed four weeks and wait eagerly for the next week's course material to be uploaded.  I watch the videos, do the reading, and take the quiz.  I must confess that I have learned a lot more this way than I have done in some of my university classes the old fashioned way.  I am already debating what course to take next.  Should I continue to delve deeper into philosophy or try something entirely knew, like genetics or psychology?  I am so excited about the future of online learning that I wonder what will happen to brick and mortar universities where students pay tens of thousands of dollars each year to live on campus, drink lots of beer, party like there is no tomorrow, and then occasionally study.  They also have lots of weekends, holidays, and breaks with the net result being an undergr

When everyone made a big deal about the flyby of an asteroid 2012 DA14, I was not at all concerned.  Yes, it flew as close as 17,000 miles to the planet, but it was far enough to cause any damage.  Some people noted that it was a lot closer than our geostationary satellites but I don't understand why that matters.  In fact if something flies right over the tallest point on the earth, the peak of Mount Everest, and causes no other damage, the distance does not matter (I realize I am making a rhetorical point because if something flies that low, it will generate a sonic boom and that can cause damage of all sorts, the way it broke glass windows in Russia). Now since the meteor that exploded over Russia seemed to appear out of nowhere (it is clear that either no one knew about it or decided not to reveal the information), the conspiracy theorists have been having a field day speculating that it was a man-made object that crashed, most likely from the Iranians or North Koreans, who h

During last few years, I have traveled to a few relatively poor countries like Argentina , India , and Honduras .  In all cases, I found that if I was looking for a safe, clean experience, be it a hotel or restaurant or spa, it is much more expensive than what I have experienced in United States or Western Europe.  During my one-month stay in Buenos Aires , while a subway ride cost just a quarter, going out for a decent dinner was easily $40 or more.  Here in the Boston area, I am so used to grabbing a quick lunch at most places for less than $10, but in Buenos Aires, it was impossible to eat at a decent cafe at that price (I do not eat street food and if a restaurant looks even a little run down, for health reasons, I avoid it).  In Argentina, we did not shop anything (except for the groceries) but even t-shirts were $20.  I have seen the same story repeated in India and Honduras.  Overpriced Brazil:  In an article about Rio, I am told about "$20 for cocktails, $40 for entre

For more than two decades China was glad to take our low-end manufacturing jobs with its ample supply of low-wage workers.  Obviously, these millions worked hard for years in unimaginable horrible working conditions and saved money so that their (mostly sons called as little emperors) only child could get a better education and not have to toil in factories.  And it worked.  China now has a lot of (mostly men) people with good education, like engineering diplomas, but no jobs.  Chinese economy still needs low-wage workers to keep the system working.  The Times is reporting that these people simply refuse to work in factory jobs considering them beneath them, even when they pay more than a desk job.  These people would rather dress in their fine clothes to work in an office with a phone and computer, attending meetings, and pretending to be executives, while making a lot less than those who make stuff in a factory.  I guess China needs to develop a framework for outsourcing , maybe to

When I saw the mess on Carnival cruise ship Triumph, my first reaction was why did those people have to suffer for so long and why could not the cruise line simply send another similar cruise ship and transfer all the passengers.  If the company was not doing it, there must have been a reason for it.  Well, I did find out.  While I have never been on a cruise and probably never will (the idea of being on a boat does not appeal to it because I would rather explore new places on land during a vacation than lounge all day and eat like a pig) but these ships are huge and can sometimes have as many crew members as passengers.  So it is not uncommon to have a few thousand passengers and as many employees making the total number of people on the ship around 8,000. The only way to transfer people from one ship to another on high seas will be to transfer them on life boats (for safety reasons the two ships cannot get very close to each other) and that is just impractical for thousands of pass

Looks like we all are taking so many anti anxiety medications that our fish are now getting addicted to it.  So this is how it works.  You take the pill and some of it absorbed by your body but most of it passes right through your body and enters the sewage system.  From there it enters our water supply and makes it way to rivers and oceans.  When fish come in contact with this water, they consume the chemical as well, and as funny as it sounds, experience the same emotions as we do: calm, relaxed.  In fact, researchers say that they become so calm that they are even unable to run away from fishermen and get caught easily.  Not only is this upsetting the marine ecosystem, but through the fish it is entering the bodies of human beings who do not need anti-anxiety medication.  I guess we should soon have a planet full of very calm and relaxed living beings just because a few people were suffering from anxiety.

For all practical purposes I am a vegetarian .  I also happen to love horses considering that I did some horse-riding in high school.  As someone who takes a philosophical approach to life, I often wonder what is a reasonable explanation for killing and eating some animals while not others.  Apparently, there is none, and that is why Chinese eat dogs and French love horse meat while Hindus consider it a sin to eat beef and Muslims cannot even imagine consuming pork. Considering that we use industrial farming techniques to produce our beef while horses are not raised that way, my gut feeling was that horse meat would be a lot more expensive, using the simple logic of demand and supply (I got curious about this story after finding out that horse meat was discovered in burgers sold in the United Kingdom and they were appalled because like us Americans they do not eat horse meat, but the reason it was added to burgers was because it is cheaper and manufacturers could increase their profi

My jaw dropped when I read that 66-year old Maureen O’Connor, former mayor of San Diego in California, blew a billion dollars over a 9-year period in gambling.  How do you lose that kind of money?  Well, I'm sure that she had particularly unlucky days, but she would need to lose over $300,000 daily if she were to gamble 365 days a year for nine years.  Trust me, that is a lot of time in casinos .  Luckily, it was her money, but she lost it to a point that even her home has a mortgage now that she might not be able to pay.  The only reason that this is news is because she stole a meager $2 million from her ex-husband's charity and being charged with a crime.  I wish there were a more sophisticated explanation for her partying, but she blames it on a brain tumor.

Well, I was trying to figure out who was worse, Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal or Florida Teabagger Senator Marco Rubio as far as evaluating their performances after the state of the union speeches by President Obama, my conclusion is that probably Jindal was worse because that guy is just a pain to listen to.  On the other hand, Rubio showed that he is so not ready for prime time despite his best efforts to inject himself into presidential politics by taking advantage of a party without leadership and direction. But what about Rubio claiming to be middle class and living in a middle class neighborhood in Miami?  Surely, unlike the elitist Obamas with their impressive degrees and luxurious home in Chicago, the Rubios claim to live in a house like your and mine.  Oh, what a liar; he lies not only about evolution and climate change, but like Mitt Romney, he lies about his wealth too.  It so turns out that not is he lying about living there -- he is trying to sell his home (at 6

I don't know how it got into my head that one should workout every day , but when I decided to get more disciplined about my fitness , I found that the best way to be regular was to make it part of my routine.  So I argued that if I could do some exercises before the morning shower that I took five days a week before going to work, it would work well, and it did.  I am proud to say that for almost 20 years now, it has worked very well for me.  Just in case, a weekday happens to be a holiday or I am on vacation , I don't workout or might workout later in the day, but other than that, it works for me.  It has also helped me stay reasonably healthy and fit , despite the fact that I work from home on a computer . It was in this context that I came across a study (published in Exercise & Science in Sports & Medicine) by Dr. Gary Hunter of University of Alabama at Birmingham.  He has found that when it comes to exercise “ less may be more .”  According to this research,

Beyonce says in a Vogue interview that her one-year old daughter Blue Ivy is her best friend.  Ouch!  Not only do I feel bad for her husband Jay-Z, but you have to be a moron to believe that a little girl can be the best friend of a grownup woman (it actually sounds fairly unhealthy and I would advise a woman with similar thoughts to see a therapist and expand her circle of friends).  I am all for love between a mother and her child (I speak to my mom every other day often for an hour or more, we enjoy conversations about a variety of topics, and we both love each other, but neither one of us believes that we are best friends) but when moms spew out nonsense like this, they just make you laugh (there was a time that Katie Holmes claimed that her three-year old daughter Suri helped her get ready for red carpet by picking her outfits ).  Ladies, look, you might want to believe that by giving birth somehow you have popped out Jesus Christ, but think about it, there are some 7 billion

The FTC has found that about 5% of Americans have errors in their credit reports and that could mean that you may have a harder time borrowing or just pay higher interest rates.  While I am not so meticulous in getting my free credit report copy each year , and during the last year, I refinanced my home , changed my auto insurance policy , and leased a car without any problem, after reading about this report, I still decided to get a copy of my credit history .  Obviously, it is free, and easy to get (you have to remember some basic information about your previous addresses and loans because each credit agency asks for different information to confirm your identity). Well, I did find some minor errors on my report.  For instance, Experian completely missed one address that I lived at during the late 90s for several years.  And Equifax actually made two addresses out of one, in one case it was correctly listed as Apt# A19 and another time as Apt#819.  I don't know if it makes

All those who pushed Apple stock to over $700 believed that the company was invincible but now that the stock is more reasonably priced in the $400s, we are learning why Samsung and Google are able to steal market share from the company.  Like in life, even in the world of business, arrogance means sooner or later you bite the dust.  As someone who makes a living studying market trends , Apple's insistence that 'consumers don’t know what they want' means that they fail to see the shifts in consumer behavior, while Samsung that is obsessed with trend analysis and market research knows exactly what they want.  Kim Hyun-suk, executive vice president at Samsung, tells The Times, “We get most of our ideas from the market.  The market is a driver, so we don’t intend to drive the market in a certain direction.”  Anyone who thinks that corporations are smarter than consumers might pay a high price and this is not the first time Apple would do that.

For anyone who loves potatoes, this is a simple snack to make.  What we do is to make a lot of these and then freeze them.  Yeah, they don't taste as yummy as when eaten fresh, but there are times that when we stop working at around 6 PM, that by the time I climb one flight of stairs up to the kitchen, I am famished.  Lorena comes down from her second floor office and she too has no energy to cook.  Then, we pull a few of these babies out and bake them for a couple of minutes to munch them with a glass of wine , while we contemplate what to have for dinner, say, something like stuffed poblano peppers .  To make these, boil potatoes, peel them, mash them with your hands so they still have small pieces, add peas and chopped cilantro, salt, and black pepper.  You can cook them on a flat pan after spraying them with some olive oil, though, they will turn out pretty good in the oven as well.

A relatively simple dish to make at home for anyone who is busy but wants to eat something interesting.  The hardest part is probably the roasting of the peppers but once you do that, get rid of the carbon.  From here on, it is entirely up to you what you want to stuff it with.  We used shredded Monterrey Jack cheese with pre-cooked Beluga lentils and then topped it off with Mexican corn salsa .  After a long day at work, this is easy and delicious, especially with a glass of Spanish wine .

I am sure that most families struggle with menu planning but Lorena and I do even more because we both run our business from home and often eat almost all of our meals at home .  We are very selective about where we go to eat out because unless we are positive that the extra calories are worth it, we would rather cook something fresh at home .  Trust me, after a few years of doing that, we are bored and have run out of ideas, despite watching way too much Cooking Channel and borrowing tons of cooking books from the library.  That is when we came across this service in which they mail you a box with a bunch of ingredients along with menus.  The first one was from Mexico and the tortilla soup was cooked within minutes of arrival because it came just before lunch.  Definitely yummy.  We also devoured the Mrs Renfro's chipotle corn salsa in a matter of days.  Delicious, as well.  We also tried the Nonna Lole's Soffrito for Arroz Valenciana and it is very good as well.  We are yet

Call me unreasonable, but there are parts of the world for which I have a soft corner: France , Spain , Japan , and Argentina .  That often results in consumption of way too much wine from France, Spain and Argentina, and a lot of Japanese food .  Monte Ducay is a delicious wine with a earthy flavor.  We combined it with some delicious tapas made at home.  Strongly recommended.

When I was trying to lease a car during past spring, I did not even consider a hybrid because the initial cost is so high, even with all the tax incentives I was going to get.  So no surprise then that like most Americans, I ended up leasing a regular SUV.  I knew that we must look at the total cost of ownership of a vehicle over time and this chart below (from Union of Concerned Scientists) demonstrates that if you buy and use an automobile for 15 years and drive like an average American, a good hybrid is much cheaper.  My concern is that unless you take excellent care of your vehicle, 15 is a very long time.  While I am not as spoiled as many Americans who dump their cars after 100K, I find that once you have driven a car for about 7 years, it can give you a lot of trouble .  So it might very well be that a regular gasoline powered car might be cheaper for you as well, but this research is useful.

I had always wondered how the gas prices worked and if gas stations were profitable.  I once even asked a gas station owner in my town and he told me that they were not really profitable to give him a comfortable lifestyle so he made most of his money from an auto repair shop and towing service that he ran from the same facility.  He also mentioned that other owners stay in business by selling impulse purchase items like snacks and drinks , along with emergency items that people need in the neighborhood or during a road trip .  They overprice them because when people buy something at a gas station, they have pretty much decided that price does not matter.  Now the Union of Concerned Scientists has crunched some numbers and has published this graphic that shows that when I fill up my tank on the RAV4 , the gas station has barely made a buck.  

Last night we went to truffle making class in Boston and needless to say that the class was in English.  Maybe if you did not speak a word of English or spoke only a bit, you would have enjoyed a class like that, but in order to fully learn, it is important to have reasonably good command of English.  In any case, in our class, there were three young men, who were not only unusually loud, talking mostly among themselves (which was fine considering it was a fun activity and no one really went there to make new friends), but most annoying to me (and I am assuming to other students), they spoke in a foreign language (they were fluent in English as well).  I don't think they impressed any one with their linguistic abilities and spoiled the fun for everyone.  I know that some people are annoyed a lot by foreign languages, but mostly my wife and I are both much more accepting of them, because between the two of us we speak four languages and have lived in several countries.  Still, it w

Lorena bought one of those LivingSocial deals to learn how to make truffles at the ChocoLee Chocolates (Dartmouth/Tremont Streets).  I guess we were both envisioning it to be something truly romantic to do in month of February around Valentine's Day.  We imagined being in a cute kitchen around a table learning the mysterious process of making truffles.  Well, we should have reasoned a bit.  After all, if you are buying a deeply discounted experience, that is what you are going to get.  So when we showed up at the place on a Wednesday night, this was nothing like what you see in those chocolates commercials on television.  The classes are held in a dinghy soup kitchen.  The chef is knowledgeable and a lot of fun.  She has also structured the class well so everything is taken care of, but the class is overcrowded.  So you have to mostly stand and watch.  You still get to do some things and you will learn pretty much what you need to in order to make truffles at home. The other bi

Scientists have found something very interesting, that, if you are a smoker, it is not just that you lack will-power or that nicotine has taken over your brain, or that Philip Morris is saying Thank You For Smoking and you are too weak to say no.  Most likely you have a mental illness.  CDC has concluded that people who smoke are more likely to suffer from mental illness .  It gets worse.  These mentally ill smokers also smoke more cigarettes compared to people without mental disorders.  So, yes, if you want to quit smoking by working your addiction and improving your will power, but before anything else, consult a psychologist to treat your mental illness.

Finding happiness for me has been my passion for some years and the more I have thought about it and taken steps to be happy , I have become happier .  Now, some research makes me reconsider the assumptions that I had up to now that after a certain income level the happiness flattens out .  Daniel Sacks, Betsey Stevenson and Justin Wolfers have demonstrated that happiness actually keeps improving with income .  Their findings prove that rich  people report higher well-being at any given point as well as over time.  What impressed me even more is that there is no maximum wealth threshold at which point higher incomes stop mattering.  While reading a related article by Adam Davidson, I found out that United States, unfortunately, is an exception.  Even though we are thrice as rich as we were in the 70s, our happiness has remain stagnant.  Why?  Simply because the rich have gotten richer while the middle class and poor have lost whatever stability that they used to have, like, jobs, pen

For the second time in our lives, we leased, this time a Toyota RAV4 and prior to that we had a Honda CRV.  Now when we leased the CRV , because raised our annual mileage to 15,000 by paying a discounted rate upfront, but when we drove it for a few months (the car was totaled in an accident) we realized that we never hit the monthly average (because we work from home).  So with the RAV4, we stuck to the standard 12,000 miles taking on the risk that we will exceed the mileage at the end of three years.  But what has fascinated me is that dealer keeps calling us much more ahead of time for our schedule maintenance.  For example, for the 5K maintenance, the phone started to ring when we had barely crossed 2K miles in the beginning of month three.  For the 10K maintenance, the phone is ringing not in the tenth month but in the 7th month when we have just about 7,000 miles.  It makes me believe that car lessors know fully well that people will drive a lot more than a thousand miles a month

I have always been curious about philosophy and wished that if I had the time and money, I would join undergraduate classes at a nearby university (I wanted to learn for the joy of learning because I already have two masters degrees).  It did not happen till Coursera came along and I found that they, in partnership with University of Edinburgh in Scotland, were offering an Introduction to Philosophy course for free.  Let me tell you while I had heard great things about online learning, once I started taking the classes, only then I realized that it is even better than my wildest expectations.  Some of the best parts: I 'go to school' sort of whenever I want. I can literally take classes on my couch while sipping a glass of wine. If my mind wanders or I don't grasp something right away all I need to do is to rewind the video.  Yeah, one could ask a question in class, but not always, and it is impossible to admit to a professor that you did not pay attention to what

The pollution in Beijing (it is the worst affected city but it is probably quite bad in other Chinese cities) is so bad that readings are off the chart.  The smog (smoke plus fog) is so nasty that it can be seen from space and people are dying due to breathing problems.  Similar conditions are also being reported in parts of India, where unregulated and uncontrolled industrialization like China, is causing air quality to be so low, that it is no longer healthy for any form of life (together the two countries have more than 2 billion people, though).  Don't lose heart, my friends in China and India, and stupid tourists who are still visiting these two countries, because Chen Guangbiao will sell you clean air in a can for 80 cents.  If you are dying from breathing the unbreathable air, just pop open the can and you can hope to live for a few hours more.