August 2010
19 posts
“By preventing this mosque from being built, America is doing us a big favor…...”
– Taliban operative Zabihullah, on how the mosque controversy is benefiting the Taliban. (via officialssay)
Has the Taliban ever had a value proposition of it’s own? Sign of the weakness of your own organizational creed if you can only take advantage of situations like this.
Mapping the players in Web 2.0 →
Cool infographic that depicts all the players in the web 2.0 land grab. Turn on the movements to see how individual entities are encroaching on the land of others.
Moments that Shape Us
Think back to your years of schooling. Is there a moment that stands out to you, your recollection crystal clear both on what happened and what you felt at that time?
The common expression is to refer to these as “eureka” moments. Proclaimed by Archimedes at the moment of discovery, eureka is the feeling of a great percussion occurring within our selves. A moment where forces brewing within us...
“In loving kindness, be like the sun. In generosity, be like water. In...”
– Luqman the Sage
Cancer-stricken dad sees son play in the Big... →
Read this and had tears well in my eyes. Makes you realize what really matters in life: the relationships you foster. Dad to son and son to dad.
Wrong Analogy
Those making analogy of “white militia group building center near Oklahoma City” as a parallel to what is happening in lower Manhattan are using a flawed analogy. A correct analogy would be to say something like a “white Gulf War I veterans group builds center near oklahoma city”. Difference is not subtle.
Look at this way. If Al-Qaeda (the actual perpetrators) were...
5 tags
Muslim Collective Guilt for 9/11
There is one and one only topic that has dominated my Ramadan dinner party conversations of the past week - Muslim Americans soul searching on the controversy sparked by the Cordoba Initiative’s Park 51 Muslim cultural center in the Century 21 district of lower Manhattan in NYC, better known by it’s media imposed name “the Ground Zero Mosque”.
In the hours of debate at...
“The true battlefield is where no warriors or arrows are needed.
It is inside...”
– Mahabharata
Helping locally
Congratulations to my wife for joining the board of the District 61 Foundation. Foundation supports local school district with fundraising. Important role these days of tight school budgets.
Really proud of you honey.
2 tags
The Art of Dying
Dying used to be accompanied by a prescribed set of customs. Guides to ars moriendi, the art of dying, were extraordinarily popular; a 1415 medieval Latin text was reprinted in more than a hundred editions across Europe. Reaffirming one’s faith, repenting one’s sins, and letting go of one’s worldly possessions and desires were crucial, and the guides provided families with prayers and...
A Coward's Message →
Neil Steinberg in today’s Chicago Sun Times getting to the heart of what I believe lies at the opposition of the Republican base and it’s opportunistic leaders to the so called Ground Zero mosque: bigotry. It’s a shame that a political party exists in this country whose only message to it’s constituents is that of the coward: to demonize the non-white other (Hispanic...
2 tags
Crisis of Middle America (FT) →
Quote for those who too easily dismiss the fact that Americans are lazy and reliant on welfare:
not everybody can be a bond trader, a software entrepreneur or a Harvard Professor
2 tags
Need an idea for a business? →
I recently started reading Penelope Trunk’s blog. This insightful article does a great job of breaking down the process involved in coming up with a business idea. What I love about it is that it debunks the myth that most business ideas come out of nowhere in a “eureka” moment. Rather, there is a state of living that prepares the ground for creating such a eureka moment.
...
Pie in the face of the ADL →
Newsweek and CNN reporter Fareed Zakaria returns his award and honorarium to the ADL for their stance on the mosque in lower Manhattan.
3 tags
Twitter Whale and the Support Tail
If you are like me and tried to login to Twitter today, you were met with the infamous “Twitter Whale”, the (supposed to be) cute persona that greets you to tell you that Twitter is down. Not sure why Twitter chose to present a Whale but my interpretation is because running a service on the scale of Twitter is a “whale” of a problem. Bad pun I know but you get my point.
...
1 tag
StockTwits Pretenders $$
For anybody who follows people who tweet their trades, there is only one barometer you should use to sniff out a pretender: Do they tweet their bad trades along with their good trades? The past couple of days I am shaking my head at all the self proclaimed “professional” traders who having been tweeting like birds because we have had a run up but were silent when the market was...
“At Microsoft, the joke was R&D stands for “reverse engineer and deploy”
– Former Microsoft Employee 