I’ve been Twittering and I must admit. It’s addicting due to its real-time updates. That’s what mainly draws people to Twitter where they share their brief thoughts quickly and to share links too. Another thing I’ve been thinking why it’s so popular is that it fills the void of a profile page for personal websites or blogs. Many Twitters have their own personal website. Twitter is the one that is frequently updated, so users explore around, reading different tweets and if they happen to find that “profile page” interesting, they may click on the personal website address at the top right to learn more about that person and what s/he may have blogged.

Thought I’d take a stab at explaining how economy works, generally speaking, in layman’s terms and from the macroeconomics’ perspective. I’m not trying to write a Ph.d dissertation so don’t be shooting me with reference whereabouts as I am just writing off my head, with what I know and being reasonable.

I suppose it’s hard not to be thinking about economy since that’s the hot issue right now, with 2.4 million jobs being lost—the most since 1940. Yikes. So, I’ve been thinking what economy really is. At first, I thought it is just a cycle that if studied and know how it works, enables you to become rich and have a great life, or in other words, living out the “American dream”.

Let me say that economy is purely abstract. It only exists as math in your head. Numbers. It used to be based on the value of gold till someone realizes that’s not necessary and break off the valuation. That’s because there are enough goods, services, and possessions created that apparently, people want them badly enough. Dollar simply provides the means for it. Want a Porsche? then you’d have to work your ass off till you have enough to afford it. Want some hot flesh lap dance and more some than that ? Pay some fat dollars. Nothing to do with gold. Just numbers.

Price is simply the amount that you would be willing to pay for it. Marketers are expert in pricing their items in such a way that it’s not too high that customers won’t pay nor too low as to lose the profits. They aim to achieve profit margin as wide as they can. No buy? then lower the price (called a sale) till customers say “hey, this is pretty affordable. I can purchase this.” A sale is made—seller gets money and the buyer is now one happy customer with the wanted good.

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I was surfing on the Internet and much to my own surprise and (late), the oldest wooden structure in Seoul is entirely burned down. I visited this building in 2002.

National Treasure No. 1 Burns
Namdaemun gate on Wikipedia

Unbelievable.

I saw someone asking what’s the difference between them. Thought I’d share a few words on this as I’ve tried them all.

These use a board, obviously, but how they maneuver is different. Skateboarding uses wheels, snowboarding – no wheels but on snow, and ofc, surfing on water. They have two things in common – they require you to have a strong sense of balance and spatial direction – forward, back, left, right, and rotate. Without those, you can’t go anywhere.

For starters, skateboarding is ideal to start learning how to board because it’s most accessible – a board with wheels is all you need while you need a far more equipment for snowboarding and surfing. Snowboarding is the most expensive because you need to buy a ski lift plus insulation for cold weather, check this whole range of snowboarding reviews. If you’re scared of water, forget about surfing! If you dig water and big waves don’t scare you (not scared of getting drown), surfing is fun but is the trickiest largely because it is unpredictable, you have to read/measure the waves right to make a good catch. To me, surfing is the most exhilarating because you get 100% immersed into nature by its body of water and if you get to carve the wave, nothing is greater than that and you can feel nature carrying/pushing you. If you are looking for a stand up paddle board blog, visit Kona Boards Australia for more information.

From the technical aspects, I’ve found skateboarding to be the hardest. You need to learn how to do an ollie, which in my opinion, is the hardest trick to learn but once you master it, tricks become much easier and you can go over any kind of step like stairs and how high you can jump depends on how fearless you are. Tricks add up there – kick flip, kiss on the rail, so on.

They’re all fun to try and involve different kinds of nature but one thing is that you gotta have a solid foundation – sense of balance and spatial direction, which is knowing where you go and to anticipate the next step/move.

Happy boarding. :-)

Ryan Commerson and Wayne Betts Jr made a short movie – link here.

It’s a cool movie. Basically, they’re trying to change the misconception about deaf people being dumb because in the past, the word, deaf, was always associated with dumb and that hearing loss had to be fixed. They were tired of seeing how Hollywood movies would cast a deaf person to play a role of self-pity or some dumb person, so they used a good-looking deaf lady and made a sexy scene out of it in order to change the world’s perspective on deaf people.

I want to share something funny that’s happened at my work. Not a long ago, we hired a new co-worker and he sent out an intro email and I replied back to his email. Turned out that we have some similar interests and we chatted a bit. Then I went out on a vacation. When I got back, he IMed me that he had learned that I’m Deaf and he didn’t know that I was. So, we as deaf people have come a long way since then.

Happened to see this excerpt, liked it a lot.

The five spiritual faculties – faith, energy, mindfulness, concentration, and wisdom – are our greatest friends and allies on this journey of understanding. These qualities are most powerful when they are in balance. Faith needs to be balanced with wisdom, so that faith is not blind and wisdom is not shallow or hypocritical. When wisdom outstrips faith, we can develop a pattern where we know something, and even know it deeply from our experience, yet do not live it. Faith brings the quality of commitment to our understanding. Energy needs to be balanced with concentration; effort will bring lucidity, clarity, and energy to the mind, which concentration balances with calmness and depth. An unbalanced effort makes us restless and scattered, and too much concentration that is not energized comes close to torpor and sleep. Mindfulness is the factor that balances all these and is therefore always beneficial.
~ Joseph Goldstein, in Seeking the Heart of Wisdom

link

Great pic.

from Flickr

This visualization chart sums it up, what I’ve been thinking and talking about.

Blank state
We need to output more

from Flowingdata

link

I liked how this pic turns out.