I’ve been thinking a lot about relationships and how intense they can be. Specifically, I’ve been thinking about how there are different labels for popular types of relationships, and how certain fringe-type relationships don’t have labels and are harder to talk about, precisely. For example, most of us have some people in our lives that we would label as family; specifically, you might have a brother or a sister, a mom and a dad, etc. There are other people that are labeled as friends. Others

Here’s some cool technology [http://arstechnica.com/science/2012/08/sight-for-sore-eyes-optical-prosthetic-mimics-retina-functionality/] : an optical implant that trans-codes visual stimulus into the format that the cells in your eye expect, rather than just increasing the magnitude of the signal. The technology is in its infancy right now, but it sets the stage for some really awesome progress, in the realm of helping the disabled, but also enhancing the average. Imagine being able to replace

Just read Ben Graham’s book, “The Intelligent Investor” which taught me a lot about investing, specifically about the logical divide between speculation and value-investing. It was really insightful. Armed with that knowledge, and having my curiosity stirred by all the opportunities being offered to software developers in High Frequency Trading, I started thinking about HFT field and how it relates to Graham’s principles. Trying to make a long story short: given the little I know about HFT, the

I’m trying to figure out how to use Facebook non-narcassitically. I feel like a large part of what I’ve recently posted has been too “look-at-me” and shallow… I think Facebook is a tool, and, aside from logistical stuff like event planning, it’s best used to share beautiful, mutually beneficial, and inspiring things: meaningful photos, art, yet-to-be-answers questions, postulates, etc. Too often, though, I use it to as a naive way to satisfy a craving for self-affirmation and an outlet for pri

> People are taking the piss out of you everyday. They butt into your life, take a cheap shot at you and then disappear. They leer at you from tall buildings and make you feel small. They make flippant comments from buses that imply you’re not sexy enough and that all the fun is happening somewhere else. They are on TV making your girlfriends feel inadequate. They have access to the most sophisticated technology the world has ever seen and they bully you with it. They are The Advertisers and the

If everything that is discussable can be defined as an instance of a concept, where we define concept as the encapsulation of many complimentary ideas into a consistently recognizable pattern, then the Zen idea of duality becomes definable. I came across this idea while reading Shunryu Suzuki’s “Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind”. He talks about how the mind and body are both eternal and finite, simultaneously; he describes this phenomenon through a metaphor calling mind and body “two sides of the same

Workplace bathroom behavior would make for an awesome case study. We spend 7+ hours at a place where we carefully maintain our social interactions, trying to optimize for very idiosyncratic professional goals, but one thing we all have in common: we all poop. And given the amount of coffee that gets consumed in highly competitive New York firms, I imagine this reality manifests itself quite frequently. That being said, we don’t talk about it! I’m not trying to say that the topic should be the l