Buzz Bissinger Shopping Addiction Story

At first, son, when I read this, I was amazed and felt quite superior thinking of this chap as a muppet. As a person whose clothing skills range from boring off the shelf ill fitting suits to crack exposing shabby jeans, the idea of spending 1/2 million dollars on Gucci clothes is preposterous. 

Then I figured, actually I'm guilty of obsessions and addictions as well. I used to smoke for decades! So that was an addiction. 

I'm obsessed with buying books and to a lesser extent watches and cuff links. It's long past the point that I can logically justify buying more books as I already have more than enough unread books to last me couple of years. It's tough to beat addiction and obsessions. 

So salutary lessons kannu. Avoid. 

Then again, what are the heights of humankind other than obsessions and addictions? Where would we be without Michelangelo's magnificent obsession with art? 

Tough one eh? 

Love 

Baba

Buzz Bissinger Shopping Addiction Story: Newsmakers: GQ
http://www.gq.com/news-politics/newsmakers/201304/buzz-bissinger-shopaholic-gucci-addiction?printable=true

---

Newsmakers

In the past few years, I’ve bought eighty-one leather jackets. Dozens of boots and leather gloves. I’ve purchased pants that cost $5,000. I own a $22,000 coat. This winter I took a tour of Milan’s Fashion Week (all expenses paid by Gucci, in appreciation of my many, many purchases), where I spent tens of thousands more and began to seriously grapple, once and for all, with a compulsion that could cost me more than just my life savings. My name is Buzz Bissinger. I am 58 years old, the best-selling author of ‘Friday Night Lights,’ father of three, husband. And I am a shopaholic

Is Giving the Secret to Getting Ahead?

Kannu

Here's an interesting take and I agree with it. To get ahead help others. More you help the more you get better. 

I'm not talking about a Mario Puzo style godfather help in terms of 'I collect favours' son but just helping out. 

Do read that book if you get a chance son

Really is good strategy :) 

Love 

Baba

Is Giving the Secret to Getting Ahead? - NYTimes.com
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/31/magazine/is-giving-the-secret-to-getting-ahead.html?&pagewanted=all

---

Just after noon on a Wednesday in November, Adam Grant wrapped up a lecture at the Wharton School and headed toward his office, a six-minute speed walk away. Several students trailed him, as often happens; at conferences, Grant attracts something more like a swarm. Grant chatted calmly with them but kept up the pace. He knew there would be more students waiting outside his office, and he said, more than once, “I really don’t like to keep students waiting.”

Grant, 31, is the youngest-tenured and highest-rated professor at Wharton. He is also one of the most prolific academics in his field, organizational psychology, the study of workplace dynamics. Grant took three years to get his Ph.D., and in the seven years since, he has published more papers in his field’s top-tier journals than colleagues who have won lifetime-achievement awards. His influence extends beyond academia. He regularly advises companies about how to get the most out of their employees and how to help their employees get the most out of their jobs. It is Grant whom Google calls when “we are thinking about big problems we are trying to solve,” says Prasad Setty, who heads Google’s people analytics group. Plenty of people have made piles of money by promising the secrets to getting things done or working a four-hour week or figuring out what color your parachute is or how to be a brilliant one-minute manager. But in an academic field that is preoccupied with the study of efficiency and productivity, Grant would seem to be the most efficient and productive.

Graduate School in the Humanities: Just Don't Go

Children

An interesting article on doing a PhD in humanities. 3 down and 4th in planning, I can well recognise this situation. Nobody will pay you to teach others which really don't show clear economic value. 

You may not like it but the brutal truth of the matter is that your main piece of education is to ensure you get paid for the value you add. 

Take it forward as a teacher. If what you teach isn't valued then you won't get paid. As simple as this. When I became a professor, I got into trouble with my senior colleagues when I would say things like, ' if a student hasn't learnt then the teacher hasn't taught'. That kind of personal responsibility is unfortunately missing in quite a lot of teacher which is the reason why they tend to blame parents, universities, governments, students, porn, you name it. 

Bad. 

So my advise is to do a good first degree what will give you skills to earn a shed load of money and add huge amounts of value.  Then do a graduate degree to boost your earning potential. 

Then comes a PhD. Or two. Or if you are mad as me then more. Study for a PhD for pure pleasure and the fun of learning. Otherwise it's a bit dodgy. Of course the situation is better in economics and business PhD's :) but if you want to do a history or English lit PhD then forget it. 

Love

Baba

Graduate School in the Humanities: Just Don't Go - Advice - The Chronicle of Higher Education
http://chronicle.com/article/Graduate-School-in-the/44846

---

By Thomas H. Benton

Nearly six years ago, I wrote a column called “So You Want to Go to Grad School?” (The Chronicle, June 6, 2003). My purpose was to warn undergraduates away from pursuing Ph.D.’s in the humanities by telling them what I had learned about the academic labor system from personal observation and experience.

It was a message many prospective graduate students were not getting from their professors, who were generally too eager to clone themselves. Having heard rumors about unemployed Ph.D.’s, some undergraduates would ask about job prospects in academe, only to be told, “There are always jobs for good people.” If the students happened to notice the increasing numbers of well-published, highly credentialed adjuncts teaching part time with no benefits, they would be told, “Don’t worry, massive retirements are coming soon, and then there will be plenty of positions available.” The encouragement they received from mostly well-meaning but ill-informed professors was bolstered by the message in our culture that education always leads to opportunity.

All these years later, I still get letters from undergraduates who stumble onto that column. They tell me about their interests and accomplishments and ask whether they should go to graduate school, somehow expecting me to encourage them. I usually write back, explaining that in this era of grade inflation (and recommendation inflation), there’s an almost unlimited supply of students with perfect grades and glowing letters. Of course, some doctoral program may admit them with full financing, but that doesn’t mean they are going to find work as professors when it’s all over. The reality is that less than half of all doctorate holders — after nearly a decade of preparation, on average — will ever find tenure-track positions.

Islamic vs. conventional banking: Business model, efficiency and stability

This paper was quite an interesting one. I quote the abstract:

How different are Islamic banks from conventional banks? Does the recent crisis justify a closer look at the Sharia-compliant business model for banking? When comparing conventional and Islamic banks, controlling for time-variant country-fixed effects, we find few significant differences in business orientation. There is evidence however, that Islamic banks are less cost-effective, but have a higher intermediation ratio, higher asset quality and are better capitalized. We also find large cross-country variation in the differences between conventional and Islamic banks as well as across Islamic banks of different sizes. Furthermore, we find that Islamic banks are better capitalized, have higher asset quality and are less likely to disintermediate during crises. The better stock performance of listed Islamic banks during the recent crisis is also due to their higher capitalization and better asset quality.

Given the financial crisis, this new model has quite a lot of lessons for the modern Anglo Saxon world of banking. I've been keeping track of Islamic Finance for some time now and this has changed quite a lot since the early days.

 

The profit sharing element has quite an interesting behaviour as they end up being better capitalised with lower loan losses. In other words, they become a sort of private equity type of firm. Interesting, I wonder if these lessons will be learned by the regulators? Or force bad performing loans to be converted into equity like the CoCo’s? Not for the banks but for the firms to which the banks have lent to?

Won an award for communications

So I receive this press release.

 

I was just going to delete it when I saw something and burst out laughing. Check out the spelling of Communications and Professional.

Good heavens, Lauren Rutter will get into serious trouble…But the irony of a press release claiming being the leader of communications and professional services and making a typo on that was just too delicious not to point out.

Ben-Hur and Lew Wallace: How the scapegoat of Shiloh became one of the best-selling novelists in American history

I have to admit Kannu that I never read the book. The film itself made a huge impact on me. Judah Ben hur was such a heroic man, going through huge trials and tribulations. Then wins through. Takes revenge over his enemies. Becomes wealthy. Finds god. For I had seen the movie as a teenager. My aunt took me to see this in Calcutta. Big impression. Do see it if you can. 

But the backstory is perhaps more interesting. Didn't know the link to the carnage of the civil war. 

Fascinating. 

Love

Baba

Ben-Hur and Lew Wallace: How the scapegoat of Shiloh became one of the best-selling novelists in American history. - Slate Magazine
http://www.slate.com/articles/life/history/2013/03/ben_hur_and_lew_wallace_how_the_scapegoat_of_shiloh_became_one_of_the_best.single.html

---

Gen. Lew Wallace, circa 1861. Courtesy of Brady-Handy Photograph Collection/Library of Congress

You can also listen to John Swansburg read this piece using the player below:

I.

Lew Wallace was making conversation with the other gentlemen in his sleeper car when a man in a nightgown appeared in the doorway. The train was bound for Indianapolis and the Third National Soldiers Reunion, where thousands of Union Army veterans planned to rally, reminisce, and march in a parade the New York Times would later describe as “the grandest street display ever seen in the United States.” It was Sept. 19, 1876, more than a decade since the Civil War had ended. Wallace had grayed a bit, but still wore the sweeping imperial moustache he’d had at the Battle of Shiloh. “Is that you, General Wallace?” the man in the nightgown asked. “Won’t you come to my room? I want to talk.”

Robert Ingersoll, also a veteran of Shiloh, was now the nation’s most prominent atheist, a renowned orator who toured the country challenging religious orthodoxy and championing a healthy separation of church and state. Wallace recognized him from earlier that summer, when he’d heard Ingersoll, a fellow Republican, make a rousing speech at the party’s nominating convention. Wallace accepted his invitation and suggested they take up a subject near to Ingersoll’s heart: the existence of God.

Ingersoll talked until the train reached its destination. “He went over the whole question of the Bible, of the immortality of the soul, of the divinity of God, and of heaven and hell,” Wallace later recalled. “He vomited forth ideas and arguments like an intellectual volcano.” The arguments had a powerful effect on Wallace. Departing the train, he walked the pre-dawn streets of Indianapolis alone. In the past he had been indifferent to religion, but after his talk with Ingersoll his ignorance struck him as problematic, “a spot of deeper darkness in the darkness.” He resolved to devote himself to a study of theology, “if only for the gratification there might be in having convictions of one kind or another.”

But how to go about such a study? Wallace knew himself well enough to predict that a syllabus of sermons and Biblical commentaries would fail to hold his interest. He devised instead what he called “an incidental employment,” a task that would compel him to complete a thorough investigation of the eternal questions while entertaining his distractible mind. A few years earlier, he’d published a historical romance about the Spanish conquest of Mexico, to modest success. His idea now was to inquire after the divinity of Christ by writing a novel about him.

It took four years, but in 1880, Wallace finished his incidental employment. He called it Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ. It’s one of the great if little known ironies in the history of American literature: Having set out to win another soul to the side of skepticism, Robert Ingersoll instead inspired a Biblical epic that would rival the actual Bible for influence and popularity in Gilded Age America—and a folk story that has been reborn, in one medium or another, in every generation since.

Creative Jobs Versus Financial Stability - Is Creative Ambition Enough to Get Financial Stability

Son

Didu told me a story when I would read books rather than study. It was about a man who gets down from a big expensive car wearing a suit and bumps into a woman. She is his old gf who had dumped him as he never could show determination to do something in his life. Always lost in books and dreams. After a coffee, they parted ways. The gf is kicking herself for having let him go. And then the next scene is of the man who lives in a little pokey room on top of a garage. He is a driver. Still reads books but also drinks. 

That stayed with me and still does. I could have been that man son if luck/god/whatever hadn't intervened. So do have a creative side. Paint. Write. Sing. Teach. Photograph. But only after you have financial security. I'm proud of your saving habits. When you told mamma that you will buy your phone from your own money, I was so proud. Seriously. That's my boy. 

Keep on it son. I love you. 

Baba

Creative Jobs Versus Financial Stability - Is Creative Ambition Enough to Get Financial Stability - ELLE
http://www.elle.com/life-love/society-career/creative-ambition-versus-financially-stable-job

---

When I was 26, my then roommate was a great scavenger of furniture. One day, she came home with a daybed frame: a twin-size wooden box with only three legs, which is likely why someone had left it on a curb in the first place. The frame sat propped against our dining room wall for the next year, until I moved in with my boyfriend (now husband), and she let us take it. My husband made a fourth leg out of salvaged wood, and we found a cushion that more or less fit the frame in the “as is” section of IKEA. The back was constructed from a mattress pad rolled up and stuffed into a homemade pillowcase, and the whole ensemble was eventually covered with some black corduroy fabric that we bought for $10. All told, I think we spent about $40 on the “couch.” That was six years ago. At the time, I thought of our jury-rigged furniture as a temporary arrangement, a way station on the path to adulthood. Now it serves as a reminder of how slow and grueling the road to financial security can be.

Which brings me to a second anecdote, one that occurred about a year ago. Over a plate of pasta one night, my husband told me that I needed to make more money. I don’t remember what prompted it, whether we were discussing saving for a down payment or planning a vacation, but regardless of the topic, it was hard to argue with his point. If I really wanted the things I said I did, we’d need more than we were bringing in, than I was bringing in, because, as he implied, I was the one who wasn’t really holding up my end.

Grameen Foundation and other charitable bits and bobs

Its been a long time that I updated this blog. How time flies. And fruit flies like bananas.

So I have now joined up this Bankers without Borders outfit. Its a fascinating place started by the Grameen Foundation..famous organisation in its own right. The basic idea is that bankers with particular qualifications can help charities with various tasks such as finance, administration, recruitment, strategy, cash management, transformation, recovery, etc. etc. Usually for few months in some wonderful out of the way places. I applied to one outfit in Ghana who wanted a recovery piece (a charity which was facing problems and needed a bit of recovery…got some experience of that) but well, wasn't selected. So looking forward to the next opportunity.

Home Start Hillingdon is going well, well, as well as it can in these financially constrained times. But good news, the Mayor of Hillingdon has decided to join our summer event where we celebrate the wonderful work our volunteers do. So chuffed about it all.

Every month, I manage to get into a real funk, when I hear about some of the family situations we have to handle, its just crazy. I sometimes feel that before people can become parents, they need to go through exactly the same level of scrutiny that adoptive parents have to go through. The level of cruelty and pain and suffering and and and that kids go through is just amazingly painful. Through no fault of their own, they suffer so badly when their parents are made redundant, get drug addicted, imprisoned, etc. etc. sighs. hate hearing but also love hearing how we recover these families. each year we help up to 100 families. Brilliant work our staff and volunteers do.

On the Animal front, not much action, did potter around with some financials but haven't really managed to make as much of a difference as I wanted. But hopefully would be able to help raise some funds soon and also put my camera to good use with the munchkins. Every time I go there and see the mute hopeful look in the eyes of the dogs, it rips my heart out…sighs. cant wait till I retire and then have my own dogs :)

Helped out with some lectures to some educational trusts and foundations, hosted a group of students from the USA, that was fun, I actually got a T-Shirt out of it. Its very cool, pale blue..very nice. But cant wear it till I lose another 10 kilo’s, heh, so there’s a good incentive.

University lectures are proceeding apace. Am going to my old alma mater in 2 weeks time :) will be good

Enough already…

Resort Of Last Resort

Here's an example of where the bottom feeders live. People who are escaping Islam. Poverty. They are desperate to get away from the bastards who have ruined countries such as Pakistan Afghanistan and Iran. And more will come. The history of Islam tells us that Muslims kill more Muslims than any other religion. And this sad story has a long way to run. Till Muslims manage to box Islam into the civilised box rather than the shape fundamentalists have put it into. 

Ironically you see one of the sets of idiots, Saudis, who are responsible for this desecration of Islam coming to Indonesia to get their rocks off. The hypocrisy is breathtaking. The Saudis piss over their co religionists in India Bangladesh Pakistan Indonesia Egypt Lebanon and in return these guys fawn over the Saudis and lick their feet. Only place there where I faced in your face racism. Bah. 

But there you go. It's a sad view of one of the sad spots of the world. As an economist you need to consider why nations hate and love immigration. Freedom of capital is allowed generally but of labour? Nope. Think about why this is so son.

Love

Baba  

Resort Of Last Resort | The Global Mail
http://www.theglobalmail.org/feature/resort-of-last-resort/585/

Fear, corruption, boredom, smugglers, extortionists, Saudi sex tourists and temporary wives: such is life in the Indonesian resort town that has become limbo for asylum seekers.

Night is enveloping the hills of Cisarua, a resort town high outside Jakarta, and the area’s evening rituals are beginning. Rainwater thunders down from nearby mountaintops along hundreds of canals and rivulets that go whooshing on into the polluted sink that is Indonesia’s capital.

Across the bowl-shaped valley, dozens of mosques begin booming the call to prayer, all merging together into an asynchronous whine. In hillside villas, groups of men from Saudi Arabia — some in traditional white thawb robes, some in baggy track pants – load up on the evening’s stock of alcohol, which is banned in their home country. On motorbikes and in cars, pimps begin ferrying in the men’s other vice — Arabic-speaking Indonesian women.

(See the photos behind the story: Barat Ali Batoor’s series from Cisarua, In Between Persecution And Asylum.)

In other rented houses, hundreds of asylum seekers sit with little to do. Many have become near-nocturnal out of sheer boredom, and are just starting their day. Over the past decade, the town has become the unofficial haven for asylum seekers heading to Australia. For some, it is a brief stopover before they jump on a smuggler’s boat. For others, it is a limbo that can last for years.

Haider — not his real name — is sitting in a living room with half-a-dozen other men who, like him, are Hazaras from the Pakistani city of Quetta. All appear drawn and exhausted. One of the men, Ghulam Reza, sits with his foot extended because of an untreated, bloody gash.

Terror Group Recruits From Pakistan’s ‘Best and Brightest’

Kannu

I've written much about Pakistan before. It's a classic example of the worst that can happen when religion gets mixed up in state matters. Despite encouraging signs like the first democratic govt since independence able to complete its term of office, the state and religious nexus isn't broken and is actually getting stronger. 

For example some of my Pakistani friends on fb are showing an increased religiosity. One prayed to Allah to get Imran Khan elected. This fellow is a blithering nincompoop. He talks absolute rot but to listen to his supporters, the sun shines out of this backside. So to tease, I asked if other Pakistani religious minorities will also be praying to Jesus and Ram and Guru Gobind Singh to get him elected? No response but it was amusing. 

This is one of the reasons why I detest religion in politics and overwhelming state power. The combination is even worse.

These 200000 estimated jehadis in this group are with us, the group is growing and not only I but you will be dealing with this over the next 30-50 years minimum. Joy

Love

Baba

Terror Group Recruits From Pakistan’s ‘Best and Brightest’ - ProPublica
http://www.propublica.org/article/terror-group-recruits-from-pakistans-best-and-brightest/single#republish

---

Terror Group Recruits From Pakistan’s ‘Best and Brightest’

Imagine a terrorist group that recruits tens of thousands of young men from the same neighborhoods and social networks as the Pakistani military. A group whose well-educated recruits defy the idea that poverty and ignorance breed extremism. A group whose fighters include relatives of a politician, a senior Army officer and a director of Pakistan’s Atomic Energy Commission.

That is the disconcerting reality of Lashkar-e-Taiba, one of the world’s most dangerous militant organizations, according to a study released today [1] by the Combating Terrorism Center at the U.S. Military Academy in West Point, N.Y. The report helps explain why Pakistan has resisted international pressure [2] to crack down on Lashkar after it killed 166 people in Mumbai — six U.S. citizens included — and came close to sparking conflict between nuclear-armed Pakistan and India.