Brown Motion

LOL. SMH. ROFL. ETC. The western ideas of pursuing something intangible has been packaged and sold the world over.  Not unlike some religion trying to sell its ideology to gain access to virgins or whatever suits your lifestyle. The very idea of happiness and its pursuit came to a grinding halt with Covid. It seems within weeks the pursuer became the pursued. With the pandemic the stark statistics of where the bug spread shows lazier, poorer nations getting ahead of the curve or parabola or whatever shape we are calling it.  These guys knew they had a crappy healthcare apparatus and could never cope so they just told their junta to take an extended break - not alike what they are used to except now on steroids... HOLIDAY!  More tea please. Compare and contrast to the western or what are mostly thought of as advanced and richer nations - it showed their economies faltered.  Underlying thesis for that was pure hubris. A simple misplaced belief that we hav...

The largest economy on earth - loaded statement there - has a fundamental flaw. Look closely.  At American Dollars.  The currency in the world.  Everyone wants some. What do you see on it? Lots of portraits of dead men.  Poor Washington got stuck to a $1 bill.  Some other relatively unknown guys got higher values.  How come? Also some pictures of old greek looking buildings.  Some mumbo jumbo scrawls that cannot be duplicated easily. But most importantly the printed words - IN GOD WE TRUST. What? When a pandemic hits we don't really care what the President does.  Nor the Congress.  Nor the Federal Reserve. You see most people don't even understand the above man made institutions. Most people apparently understand God.  Because the first thing they think is - Oh God! Otherwise these are just meaningless pieces of colored paper.  What on earth are we doing chasing them?  We will find out on Easter. PS:...

America it seems has once again fallen in love with their national sport.  Football. Statistics for latest season as tracked by trackers that track all things money indicate that attendance as well as eyeballs on screens were up on average 5% from prior years. When the 49ers played their conference championship last night the Levis was packed to its gills or waist?  Super Bowl in Miami this year is already boasting of headliner singers and crooners and rappers to entertain and enthrall the people paying to attend with tickets running as high as the cost of a fully loaded Tesla X. Hey if you got it flaunt it and then worry about debt. Right? After watching my first season of football (purely for material) including 10 full games with eight different teams (read corporations doing business) below are some rookie (not novice - see my lingo is changing) observations - There are 11 supersized humans on each side that competes at any given point on the field. The field ...

Selling the promise of higher education in brand name campuses is now reached level of maturity where the sheep are drawn to the slaughter house with a simple email invite. Marketing costs have come way down.  Asians (by that largely Chinese and Indian ex pat) will arrive in droves to seminars hosted on school property with a Chinese speaker who may have a couple of female lackeys putting up a powerpoint to walk through.  The pitch is asking the lost souls to sign up for 1 on 1 consulting for their child in exchange for mucho dinero. Note this is touted as a legit way to gain access to top tier schools without going to jail or forking out large gobs of cash as donations. Mere mention that the founder had something to do with an Ivy League brand (might as well have done some obscure week long management training course) will draw out the hyper anxious parents wanting to better their children's lives. While the parental motivation may be real the path chosen is oft misg...

What does that mean?  I refer to the arcane world of currency conversion.  Today an American Dollar can be exchanged at a bank for a princely sum of 69 Indian Rupees.  This within a short 10 year span where the Rupee saw itself drop like a stone against the American fiat.   Never mind India had its share of Fiats (but they were from Italy and not very good). Frankly it is all made up.  If you turned the clock way back to the spring of 1792 you would have found that an American Dollar was worth 24 grams of pure silver.  Now why someone would care to carry around pure silver is worth debating but back then people killed each other for that metal. In today's terms where silver trades for around $15 per 24 grams one would be correct to say that the inherent value of the USD has depreciated itself by 15 x. How and why this happens is very confusing and the rules and regs that govern all this are set by very powerful people who get to decide how th...

When you visit a place you see and smell and touch things that gives you a first hand look into how a place operates.  So it was with Japan. We spent about 9 days and visited around 15 places or cities.  We traveled almost exclusively by train(s) except when we used our own two feet or took a bus because it was the wise thing to do. So here are some observations from yours truly - It is by and large a clean place.  I mean really pristine where there is less of humanity and where there is a ton (e.g. Tokyo downtown) it is swept up clean.  People like most civilized societies do not throw trash out at random except receptacles designed for said purpose.  There are not many trash cans come to think of it except at railway stations and outside 7-11 convenience stores which are ubiquitous. Very little homelessness or pan handlers (even less than San Francisco and the latter is a rich city by any measure). Not too many gun toting police were visible unlike i...