Friday, January 10

Thinking ahead

So Diya has now recently turned 10 and now she is going to move into the next phase of her education :)

I am starting off with her financial education like I did with Kannu, my target is for her to start operating her own stock brokerage account by the time she is 13 years of age and hopefully she will get sufficient money put aside for funding her own education for some time at least. We sorted our Kannu’s educational expenses this way :)

Career choices change dramatically when you are young. She previously wanted to be a doctor but then she said that it requires too long hours and she wouldn't have fun. So she wants to be an illustrator / graphic designer at the moment with second option to be a scientist. We have had some long conversations on this and she asked me to send her a list of universities which may be appropriate for her. I've got a monster at home..:) Here’s what I sent her.

 

Diya

As you requested, here are the top universities which offer undergraduate bachelor degree courses in graphic design, computer aided design, illustration. Etc. they all are in the top so doesn’t really matter which is number 1.

· Massachusetts Institute of Technology: http://web.mit.edu/

· Royal College of Art: (this only offers postgraduate courses, sweetheart, so you will have to wait) http://www.rca.ac.uk/

· Stanford University : http://www.stanford.edu/

· Oxford University: http://www.ox.ac.uk/

· University College London: http://www.ucl.ac.uk/

· Cambridge University: http://www.cam.ac.uk/

· Harvard University: http://www.harvard.edu/

We have some time before you enter but its good to start looking at the courses and read up on them, so that you can decide if or when you want to do these courses or something else J

And here is the web address for Caltech

http://www.caltech.edu/

if you wanted to do a PhD in Physics, again those universities above will allow you to do a bachelor and master’s degree J

and don’t worry about money, sweetheart, we will take care of it J

love

Baba

Thursday, January 9

How Many Pears Would a Pear Packer Pack if a Pear Packer Could Pack Pears at Quasi-Exogenously Varying Piece Rates?

heh, I just loved the subject. The abstract is here

We examine labor supply using a unique dataset collected from a large pear-packing factory. Pear packers face both expected and unexpected shocks to their wages, and we use this to evaluate different models of inter-temporal labor supply. We find strong evidence for reference-dependent preferences, but only mixed support for models of rational-expectations-based targets.

Bit esoteric but is interesting to read the article…

Wednesday, January 8

how to pick small cap shares

Kannu

Here's an excellent overview of how to pick small company shares. And the best part is that this applies for large companies as well. But if you want, you can always invest in funds which invest in small caps. All the elements in here are what you will do in your own business, look after the details, check the board and management, look for a good track record, don’t invest in something that you don’t understand etc. etc. Very nice and basic information that so many people don’t follow, son. If you want to become a banker, then this is also very useful information. And the reason why this is so straightforward and popular is that this is common sense.

You can print this off and keep it as a checklist when evaluating companies, absolutely worthwhile

Love

baba

How to pick small-cap shares

By John Lee

Small-cap shares tend to outperform the broader market significantly over longer periods, even allowing for their greater volatility, and have turned in particularly notable performances since the worst of the financial crisis passed.

They are less well covered by analysts and the media, so the chances of finding an undervalued nugget are high for those prepared to do the legwork. In addition, small-caps can grow faster from a lower base than their larger rivals.

John Lee was one of Britain’s first “Isa millionaires”, and made much of his fortune (now over £3m) via judicious investment in smaller company shares. His book How to Make a Million – Slowly, is published by Pearson Education next week.

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Monday, January 6

Women Around the World Are Being Stoned to Death. Do You Know the Facts?

the world's law codes are full of stupidities and idiocies. Mostly arising from the religious underpinning of most modern law systems. But thankfully most modern law systems have removed crap like this. But when people say laws are religiously mandated is when all kinds of alarm bells go off. 

Morons. 

Women Around the World Are Being Stoned to Death. Do You Know the Facts?
http://www.policymic.com/articles/68431/women-around-the-world-are-being-stoned-to-death-do-you-know-the-facts


Stoning still happens today. There are 15 countries in which stoning is either practiced or authorized by law, even if it has never been practiced. In Iran, Mauritania, Nigeria (in one-third of the country's states), Pakistan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Sudan, the United Arab Emirates, and Yemen, stoning is a legal punishment. However, out of these countries, only in Iran, Pakistan and Somalia have stonings actually occurred, and all instances in Pakistan have occurred outside the legal system.

By comparison, three of the remaining five countries (Afghanistan, Iraq, and Mali) do not condone stoning in national legislation, but sentences and executions have been carried out by non-state actors. In the Aceh region of Indonesia and Malaysia, stoning is sanctioned regionally but banned nationally.