What is love?

Not that this post will tell you, however here is an interesting audio clip I came across today giving the finer points of how to keep a marriage together, especially for women. It is not something you should play loudly at work. Listen to it here or save it to your computer for personal laughter time (size is about 4mbs).

Random thoughts about work

Sometimes at work when I think about what I need to do to get a promotion ( a little premature, I know). I also think about how the field of economics is just too constrained within its little structure. For example, I was reading a blog about environmental economics and saw that the author was rejected from the journal he submitted the paper to. The problem was that the author didn't use an optimising model of behaviour - such as to maximise happiness (utility) or profits, etc. I am against this sort of thinking personally, as most of us in the real world know that when you go to the shop or restaurant you don't have perfect information to make an optimal choice so we do the best we can (I know it can seem like optimisation). Other choices are made much in the same way.

Some times to get ideas about an optimisation paper I might search the Internet newspapers so that I can something off the wall. One such site is weird news asia, with a tonne of interesting reads. Check out the picture below from China, what was this guy optimising when he was constructing his house? I like music a lot, yet not that much. Perhaps if I was playing an instrument it might suit me more. Anyway, I am confident that once he plants a garden it would be a gem of a house. Definitely a talking point.

Scrolling down the page I came to a picture that pretty much sums up academic economics as I think it stands.

The last kingdom

Lately I have been without a TV which is a blessing and a curse. The curse bit being that I just can’t lie around and watch TV or play video games. However, not having a TV allows me to read. At the present rate it seems to be about 2 books in 7 days. For me I have doubled the amount of books I have read in about a month.

One author my father recommended is Bernard Cornwell. He is a historical writer who fabricates stories around historical events. The first book I read was in the Saxon Stories – The Lords of the North. I was hooked, engrossed in the story and before I knew it, it was over. I felt an affiliation with Utred, as he tried to regain what was lost in the first book.

After reading that book, I quickly secured the two previous books in the series from my father’s library and devoured them. Now I am waiting to find the latest book which apparently has just been released in the UK.

In the meantime I have moved onto the books about the hundred year war between England and France. These books are older, yet just as good. I am determined to find out whether Thomas, will recover the Holy Grail and complete other tasks set of him.

What the?

I was going to a job interview sometime in July and I came across this picture in the toilet at Victoria University. I was quite amused by this photo and thought I might share it with the world. You will find this helpful if you ever come to Australia as you know we are different down here, so this will help you feel like like a local. You will be surpised to find that there are not some made for late night etiquette, especially for kebab shops and taxi ranks. With those then you too could say you come from the land down under.

Chewing gum

As some of you know, I am not for chewing gum. I think it is sticky and messy. Many times it has jumped on my shoe when I have been unaware and once or twice it has jumped onto my pants, because people are sometimes careless. I have been blessed for a while of not having such occurrences.

So today in the Yahoo oddly enough I found that chewing gum does not have to bother me anymore. A stickless chewing gum is a blessing. No more chewy on the boot, yeah!

The hunted becomes the hunter!

I have spent the whole day messing around with econometric programs and have finally made some progress. I was waiting for one of my programs to tell me I have an error, which tends to be the norm rather than the exception, so I decided to check out a few other blogs which I read.

On one of them I came across this video and decided the accompanying text made it worth while to watch. I knew I had about 5 minutes to kill if the program worked. I was amazed at what I saw and thought I got to get a better discovery channel than the one I used to watch. Anyway there are crocs, buffalo, and lions. Enjoy!

And, it was gone with the flash of steel

After about 1 year, I decided that what I wanted my beard to be was not going to happen. Think Johnny Depp in Pirates of the Caribbean. It was too thick. Besides, I was tired of it jumping into my corn flakes at breakfast. I had tried a few other models such as those seen here and here, yet it was not long enough. So with defeat, I pulled it off and here I am in my naked bare chinned glory.