matching algorithms

There are patterns, of course. Looking for the algorithms of matching people  Looking for a rule?  What should one maximize? Life is like rugby...played by people of all size and speed.

cultural jinx

Was talking the other day to a Wharton educated businessman and used "bad eye" in the conversation. He asked me what was a bad eye. It was not my bad accent. Oh. come on! Devising business strategies without knowing what what a bad eye is.

sexciting or sexcited

So? was there a case? The blogosphere might be driven  by sex and dirty stuff. But a district attorney? Who would believe that a major socialist politician would behave aggressively towards a chamber maid? A French socialist leading the world finance's? A man with a woman first name and a Sephardi  Jew with a Germanic last name. raping  a Muslim?...  Me and everybody else.  But a DA should not get excited longer than the first hour. DAs should not seek fame or votes? This one made some correction at least.

dismounting discounted rainbow bike

I was riding my bike on the bicycle path on  West Street yesterday.   I had  bought this bike for $50, deep discount,  probably because nobody wanted the color scheme. At 14th street the path was blocked  due to the gay parade. I dismounted and walked amid the parade goers a half mile to Clarkson. And then I realized that walking with my rainbow colored bike I was fitting right in.

Midnight in Paris

This childhood friend living in Paris dropped me and my mother at a metro station. It was midnight. When we realized we had missed the last train we took an escalator to street. We got through the heavy turnstile gate that closed behind us. In front of us a grille locked for the night. Midnight in Paris prisoners in a metro bouche.

Frank died

And we, his friends, immediately  checked our weight and took our blood pressure medication.

Price of democracy and loss of values.

Lately I socialize with some Russians in their thirties. Professionals. They don't know anything about the dialectic of history or value product.  An entire body of knowledge and expertise lost .. Burn what you adore and adore...The naive Americans who took over Marx have not figured yet why the markets collapsed...

longest day, day of His wrath

The days of thy servant

of adversity, of temptation in the wilderness:, of battle and of meditation.

Was going to post a picture of my mother here,,,,

remorse

of course I have nothing to say about Dante or Heidegger. Not even about sex. My previous post was just a matter of speaking ... in fact I have nothing to say. Remorse? Regret?

searching for Dante Aligheri

Now that Weiner is finished, need a new sex scandal. This blog got nice traffic from all these sex scandals. Thank you Weiner and Kahn and all. Nobody comes to visit when I say something about Dante or Heidegger...Why wonder? The internet became truly popular only when it allowed all these sex sites and porn videos and chats ....

what was what

Latin? Bible and Italian Justice

It was rupture, not rapture. Misreads and miscalculates.... while  in Italy they prosecute scientists....

crazy ....

Of course crazy. A hockey player. A congressman. A New Yorker married outside his faith.Not heeding Pelosi. I like him although he gave me an impossible hard time ten years ago.  Crazy me?.

queens view

Role Reversal

Sarah Palin's emails are not scandalous, Weiner's have photos of his sex. The reverse would be more exciting...Who orchestrated this is a great farceficator

exchange rate

My father was pretty much a coward. Afraid of everything. But in the darkest years of communist repression, if he saw the opportunity to place a bon mot, he would go for it. Be what it may. So Jon Stewart cannot not stop himself to joke about his friend....a kingdom for a joke...

dancing congress of weiner

The congress does not move forward, it dances. Its members stexts. We rock and roll down the drain...

the view from wife

As long as men wield power the story will be about sex. When women will be in power everything will be about shoes.

embarassing....

 Never maturing. Weiner sending  semi-pornographic messages to unknown people, via the internet . Not very much different from my writing this blog.

debunking photography

if you take enough pictures, one of them will look good. Even looking at new jersey

Wein voir les comediens

I used to like this guy, but pretty sure he did send this picture. Can forgive everything but bad sense of humor...and it was...or was this some kind of deprecating ...calambour

wrong blog

My post WRONG ADDRESS got most hits over the years. Obviously lost souls drifting  in a sea of words with no wind in their sails...imagine their disappointment when they reached this...

Reached that age

..When I look in the mirror and don'r recognize myself. Don't spot myself in group pictures.I saw myself dealing with life's trials and know who I am by now. Just don't recognize myself...never accepting...

Predicting disasters

These scientists should have known. In Italy they tried Galileo who actually had said E pur si muove..

Finished

Missed the train. No departure. Derapture. In fact it was a physical impossibility. Too many sinners. Oh Dostoevsky!

waiting..... the entrapture

this year the Apocalypse falls today Officially, I mean. What matters is how many sins you have. But who's counting?

crapture

Foretelling - earthquake; seconds, tsunami; one hour, hurricane; days, greenhouse effect; fifty years, rapture centuries.See you tomorrow. The physical world is not coming to an end. The rapture tomorrow is only about  our souls. Don't they sell an insurance for 'just in case'. The popes used to sell indulgences.
Buy  one and move on.

marx brothers' room service

 This is what my wife figured out (or read someplace and now pretends it is hers). Strauss-Khan was expecting a call girl. Why else would he take a bath in the middle of the day?  Did not realize it was a different woman. The headdress was an added excitement. Even  running out to the door was part of the scene. Running after the maid  he felt gratitude to the  Madame who had planned....

ma(i)d sex

Clearly I know nothing about cultural differences (see my previous post). It seems that honneur oblige to have sex with the maid. Note that in french it is femme de chambre. As the French cannot  imagine that someone who cleans a room could be a maid. More than a day.  Schwarzenegger kept his maid in his house for safer sex. DSK's unwilling maid used to live in an AIDS housing.  Bet that Osama's sex tapes were about chamber maids. .

DSK in galère (maudite galère)

Exercising power is surely an aphrodisiac for many. DSK having an erection. No holds barred. But with an unwilling chamber maid? Where is the limit of honneur oblige.?

5 21 2011

Was checking out this site about the Judgement day and the screen was overtaken by an ad on how to flatten your stomach. Sincerely, I don't think there is enough time left for this....on 5 21 2011 will walk the catwalk with a sagging stomach.

Dark people and the blonde

At first glance, these pictures and the trial smelled of racism. They went after the Indians on Wall Street. The perfect markets were spoiled by these guy! And a blonde. Just these guys? And then this article about income and religion (or education or culture).
We had this game in business school, where we had to negotiate with a colleague the price of I don't remember what. I set a moderately low price and did not budge for one hour as my colleague was offering half that price and so on. At the end there was no deal. In the post-analysis this Sri Lanka colleague explained that in his culture a deal involves a long process of negotiation with exaggerated demands and miser offers. Could ot imagine I was firm.
 So what am I saying? What is the moral of the recollection? Markets have their own culture (or religion), As about education.... Later on our top professors left the school and its "games" to meet the true markets. They went bankrupt.

osama watching porn on tv

In this garrison town, closeted with three wives fussing around, he had to watch porn. Understandable. What was the man going to do?
This guy asked a barber to babysit his son for the evening. When he returned home the guy founds his son playing with the barber's dong. "What is this?". The barber retorted: "Would you have preferred I let your boy play with my knife?"

always ready

I carry a nice silk tie in my pocket. Just in case. Prepared for any disaster.

veintiuno de mayo

Not again!  Another judgement day?

osama watching tv

some kind of Kropotkin with a dyed beard. In his memoir Kropotkin discusses if anarchists can go into retirement. But it seems bin laden was still planning terror in his dark room.

What the doctor recommended

I buy groceries at this fancy new large  two levels store. Everything organic. Could not find salt on their shelves today. Don't carry.  They just cannot turn a profit from salt.

uno de mayo

This young lady, a student of urban problems, was showing concern about the gentrification of an area of Brooklyn. I confused her with the following... Since late 1800s tenements have been considered unsanitary. Still in existence, they are rented to poor people? What's the problem if poor people are displaced by  some rich people who  think fashionable to live in bad conditions?

high noon drama

 Is eye for eye equivalent with justice is done? Osama killed with a shot in the eye. Vendetta - like in a Verdi opera.

Columbus Circle

A young black woman was handing out the weekend edition of the Wall Street Journal. A passerby inquired "Why do they give this for free?"  The young woman moved her shoulders in an uncertain way but said:    "Probably they want to give back to the community."

Exhausting Verdi

When I watch an opera and I know the aria, I sing - lip-sync. Some Verdi operas exhaust me completely as I mouth  all the parts.....it is not the singing that is difficult, but the acting.... con anima.

how many bridges?

Burning

a flame kept alive will break the stone

Spring ...

Was shocked when I saw the garden in flower; had completely forgotten about its existence. And now it seemed burning in the flames of spring. Poor Andy, does anyone remember you?

RO

Feli was supposed to come at ten to help her arrange the French books that had fallen off the shelves, but Ro fell and died at around eight. She was almost 102. These last years she was furiously defending her culture and her way of thinking. Her dignity. When I told her about iPads and the upcoming death of books, she was incredulous. But then I described the feature that could make the letter size very large. I could tell that secretely she hoped one day to read this enlarged print.

gary goldberg

He was Mr. Mental, or maybe we were ...he - the creator, the architect, me - the engineer...Always looked at him with disbelief. Found out yesterday he died in 2003. And look in disbelief.

not a baboon

Drs. Seyfarth and Cheney believe that one reason may be that they lack a “theory of mind”; the recognition that others have thoughts. Since a baboon does not know or worry about what another baboon knows, it has no urge to share its knowledge. Dr. Zuberbühler stresses an intention to communicate as the missing factor.

This blog is a proof that I am not a chimp, nor a champ.

Union Rules

From wake-up till 8 when I leave for work my dog is very playful and friendly. Follows. Barks. Leaks. When I come back at 6 he barks very happy and won't stop till I pet him. But if I show up home earlier, he barely moves his head to acknowledge. Tries to look happy but it is clear that he is annoyed.

tunnel vision

The other day just before my station arrived noticed “Every man takes the limits of his own field of vision for the limits of the world.” Can one be more darker in the underground?

hubris

Went to buy bookshelves at Ikea. Looked nice. But then I thought - for my books, the best. Or at least I should do better than IKEA. So I went to a midtown store and ordered a nice unit. Paid and after six weeks inquired about my purchase. The midtown fancy store was out of business.