It seems everyone has a slightly different way to make that “perfect” mojito. Piecing together a few different tips from the web, I made a pretty good “practice” mojito last night, as follows:
2 Tablespoons baker’s sugar (extra fine, so it mixes into the drink well)
1 handful of fresh mint leaves
2 oz rum
1 small lime
Dash of (Angostura) bitters
Ginger ale (club soda is apparently a more traditional alternative)
Ice
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At Wednesday’s G20 summit, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev suggested creating “a new reserve currency” to replace the dollar. In a paper published March 23, Chinese central bank governor Zhou Xiaochuan also proposed a new reserve currency, one “disconnected from individual nations.”
China and Russia want a new global reserve currency. What would it look like? – By Christopher Beam – Slate Magazine
Seems to me like little more than excuse to hire some out-of-work accountants. Like the article goes on to say, countries who don’t want to hold dollars don’t need to- they can buy other currencies with which to hedge. The important thing is a floating currency exchange. Any attempt to create a de jure global reserve currency just means a bunch of bureaucrats who think they can arbitrate the relative value of currencies better than the markets can.
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To loosely paraphrase Tolstoy: Perfect things are all perfect in the same way. Every imperfect thing is impefect in its own way.
I think this maxim is applicable to all categories, not just families, but individuals, and even inanimate objects. At an individual level, I believe we are each defined more by our flaws than by our attributes.
According to an article from Valleywag, Mark Zuckerberg had some not-too-pleasant-sounding things to say about Facebook users:
“He said something like ‘the most disruptive companies don’t listen to their customers.’” Another tipster who has seen the email says Zuckerberg implied that companies were “stupid” for “listening to their customers.” The anti-customer diktat has many Facebook employees up in arms, we hear.
It’s difficult to tell what Zuckerberg’s real tone was, since the above is hearsay. If his point is that a company never has to care about or listen to its customers, he is dead wrong. On the other hand, if he believes that innovation rarely bubbles up from one’s user base, then he is correct. It is the balance between the two forces that makes or breaks a company.
I am with what anecdotally seems to be the majority of people, who thought the Daily Show interview of Jim Cramer conducted by Jon Stewart was brilliant, even while painful to watch.
Jim Cramer had the misfortune of representing all of CNBC, indeed all of the financial news networks (which is what now, 3?). On the other hand, Cramer sort of brought this upon himself, with the over-the-top advertising for him that CNBC provided (e.g. the much harped-upon “In Cramer We Trust”), and the media blitz that Cramer himself engaged upon after the initial salvos were fired that, while featuring him, didn’t focus solely on him.
Stewart’s message though, similar to the withering one he delivered to the (2nd generation of) CNN’s Crossfire, is that these media institutions are woefully mis-serving their audiences. Most of what the financial networks provide is not news- it is commentary. What news they do deliver is already known amongst most traders and professionals, and so useless for any short-term financial decisions, on which the networks unfortunately prey.
I recently came across this blog post detailing someone’s sarcastic nature, and its rewards and pitfalls: I Bite My Thumb at Thee.
At first, I was going to reply to Scant’s article as a comment, but then I decided it was high time that my nerdy reply to Matt Wilcox about CSS3 from way back in December got usurped from being my most recent post.
So, here is my reply to Scan, and to all others who, like myself, are willing followers of that most cruel god Sarcasm (most-loved sibling to Wit, I must add)…
This is a response to Matt Wilcox’s article The fundamental problems with CSS3:
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I wouldn’t wish a fatal brain tumor on anyone… except for Bob Novak.
Enjoy your last days, you bitter, old douchebag!
In response to Julian E. Zelizer’s Let’s See That Audacity In Action at HuffPost:
I’m all for helping out the urban areas, but not if the tradeoff is throwing good money after bad at the Detroit automakers, a veritable black hole of funding.
Suffering urban areas need decent jobs, and decent jobs require thriving companies- which the Big Three automakers are absolutely not. Any bailout that allows them to stay in business in any way resembling how they are now just delays the inevitable, and throws our tax dollars away.
Whether it’s due to mismanagement, poor product planning or exorbitant union benefits (my guess is “all of the above”), the Detroit automakers simply are not competitive. Why should consumers who chose better, cheaper cars now have to subsidize the losers?
Some have suggested the government put Detroit companies into receivership. I can’t think of any other entities less fit to run auto manufacturers than the Big Three– except perhaps the federal government. The government’s role is to look after the public interest; the automaker’s role is to sell cars. We don’t need a government-run auto industry looking to appease social interests; we need well-run auto companies looking to appease consumer interests. Let’s avoid the American Yugo, shall we?
I say let the Big Three seek bankruptcy protection, restructure themselves, their product lines and renegotiate their contracts to do business in the 21st century. If they still can’t hack it, then let the Japanese companies come in and run Detroit for a while. At least they seem to know what they’re doing.
In the Huffington Post article Larry Summers’ True Record on Women, Sheryl Sandberg writes an otherwise glowing review of Lawrence Summers’ (former short-term Treasury Secretary and ex-Harvard president) record on women. There was one bit I had to take issue with, however:
To conclude that he communicated poorly — and even insensitively — is fair.
Having read a transcript of Summers’ statements at that conference, I’ll go one further and say that to conclude that he communicated poorly– much less insensitively– is unfair.
Summers raised some points of consideration with regard to why women and men choose certain careers disproportionately. He offered his opinions and personal insights in good faith, and suggested further study.
This inflamed the insecurities of certain people who hold fast to an ideological belief that, when it comes to education and careers, men and women must by necessity start out perfectly equal, and so any imbalance must be caused by social factors. That’s a fine theory to hold, but only if you can support it with evidence instead of ideology. Summers’ detractors on this point are afraid of any competing theories, perhaps because they know their own is on such shaky ground.
The fact is, if you really want to increase the representation of women in fields like math and science (or, conversely, the representation of men in the humanities), you need a firm and grounded understanding of what motivates them to enter certain fields. Social factors no doubt play a role, but if that’s all you focus on, I believe you’ll be sorely disappointed with your results.
Rather than being strung up, Summers should have been lauded for his willingness to enter into the conversation honestly and express points that most in academia seem too cowed to.
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