One way to keep your debt down is to bring a loss frame to your loan statement

Here is a reproduction of a very useful technique to remind oneself to keep the debt figure down. The description is in the context of credit card statement but can be applied to credit facility statement as well.


"Nudge blog reader and Booth School grad Fakhr Mokadem thinks there is a way to reframe credit card statements to keep people from overspending. Instead listing the balance as a positive amount, Mokadem wants to list it as a negative.

For instance, say I have a credit limit of $10,000 and I have spent $8,500 throughout the month. Usually a credit card statement would read: – Credit $8,500. Available balance $1,500. This lets people feel that they have room to spend…

What if I had the following statement: You are -$8,500 and you can go down to -$10,000.

Framing the statement this way makes feel that you should move up to zero, rather than trying to stay below $10,000.

Mokadem says he tries to read his statements this way in order to motivate himself to keep his debt down. “Instead of feeling that I have a right to spend up to my available balance, I feel that I am under water or really in debt,” he says."

Nudge blog · Trying to keep your debt down? Bring a loss frame to your credit card statement

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Computerized Controlled Free Market

Here is an excerpt from an interesting article about free market

While the SEC is busy investigating Goldman Sachs, it might want to look into another Goldman-dominated fraud: computerized front running using high-frequency trading programs.

Market commentators are fond of talking about “free market capitalism,” but according to Wall Street commentator Max Keiser, it is no more. It has morphed into what his TV co-host Stacy Herbert calls “rigged market capitalism”: all markets today are subject to manipulation for private gain.

Keiser isn’t just speculating about this. He claims to have invented one of the most widely used programs for doing the rigging. Not that that’s what he meant to invent. His patented program was designed to take the manipulation out of markets. It would do this by matching buyers with sellers automatically, eliminating “front running” – brokers buying or selling ahead of large orders coming in from their clients. The computer program was intended to remove the conflict of interest that exists when brokers who match buyers with sellers are also selling from their own accounts. But the program fell into the wrong hands and became the prototype for automated trading programs that actually facilitate front running.

Also called High Frequency Trading (HFT) or “black box trading,” automated program trading uses high-speed computers governed by complex algorithms (instructions to the computer) to analyze data and transact orders in massive quantities at very high speeds. Like the poker player peeking in a mirror to see his opponent’s cards, HFT allows the program trader to peek at major incoming orders and jump in front of them to skim profits off the top. And these large institutional orders are our money -- our pension funds, mutual funds, and 401Ks.

When “market making” (matching buyers with sellers) was done strictly by human brokers on the floor of the stock exchange, manipulations and front running were considered an acceptable (if morally dubious) price to pay for continuously “liquid” markets. But front running by computer, using complex trading programs, is an entirely different species of fraud. A minor flaw in the system has morphed into a monster. Keiser maintains that computerized front running with HFT has become the principal business of Wall Street and the primary force driving most of the volume on exchanges, contributing not only to a large portion of trading profits but to the manipulation of markets for economic and political ends.

Web of Debt - COMPUTERIZED FRONT RUNNING: HOW A COMPUTER PROGRAM DESIGNED TO SAVE THE FREE MARKET TURNED INTO A MONSTER

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Can we reduce Natural Disasters After Effects?

A quote from HBR Blog "The Conversation" on the need for a strategy to reduce aftereffects of natural disasters to "man-reduced".


"The biggest lesson that we can learn from natural disasters is that while they are not man-made, their aftereffects can be "man-reduced." It might be easy to regard the European airspace crisis as a one-off, but as many regions worry about the "next big one," more specific measures should be put in place by governments as well as by businesses for coping with big natural disasters when they do strike. We don't know whether it will be an earthquake, a tsunami, or a volcano next time — but we do know there will be a next time."


But the question is, can we reduce the aftereffects of natural disasters.


For the Believers', there is guidance in Quran as to how to cope with natural calamity.


"O ye who believe! seek help with patient perseverance and prayer: for Allah is with those who patiently persevere. And say not of those who are slain in the way of Allah: "They are dead." Nay they are living though ye perceive (it) not. Be sure We shall test you with something of fear and hunger some loss in goods or lives or the fruits (of your toil) but give glad tidings to those who patiently persevere. Who say when afflicted with calamity: "To Allah we belong and to Him is our return." They are those on whom (descend) blessings from Allah and Mercy and they are the ones that receive guidance." Ayat 153 - 157 of Sura Al-Baqara

Rising From the Ash: The Need for Risk Strategy - The Conversation - Harvard Business Review

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Geneva atom smasher sets collision record - Yahoo! News

" The world's largest atom smasher conducted its first experiments at conditions nearing those after the Big Bang, breaking its own record for high-energy collisions with proton beams crashing into each other Tuesday at three times more force than ever before.

In a milestone for the $10 billion Large Hadron Collider's ambitious bid to reveal details about theoretical particles and microforces, scientists at the European Organization for Nuclear Research, or CERN, took high-tech photographs so they could study the disintegrating protons after they collided at a combined energy level of 7 trillion electron volts.

The collisions herald a new era for researchers working on the machine in a 17-mile (27-kilometer) tunnel below the Swiss-French border at Geneva.

Dubbed the world's largest scientific experiment, researchers hope the machine can approach on a tiny scale what happened in the first split seconds after the Big Bang, which they theorize was the creation of the universe some 14 billion years ago.

In its standard form, the big bang theory assumes that all parts of the universe began expanding simultaneously. But how could all the different parts of the universe synchronize the beginning of their expansion? Who gave the command? 
Andre Linde, Professor of Cosmology 1

"He is the Creator of the Heavens and the Earth..." (Surat ash-Shura, 11)

In the only book revealed by Allah that has survived completely intact, the Qur'an, there are statements about the creation of the universe from nothing as well as how this came about that are parallel to 20th-century knowledge and yet were revealed fourteen centuries ago. 

First of all, the creation of this universe from nothingness is revealed in the Qur'an as follows:

He(Allah) is the Originator of the heavens and the earth…(Surat al-Anam: 101)

Another important aspect revealed in the Qur'an fourteen centuries before the modern discovery of the Big Bang and findings related to it is that when it was created, the universe occupied a very tiny volume:

Do those who are disbelievers not see that the heavens and the earth were sewn together and then We unstitched them and that We made from water every living  thing? So will they not have faith? (Surat al-Anbiya': 30) 

There is a very important choice of words in the original Arabic whose translation is given above. The word ratktranslated as "sewn to" means "mixed in each, blended" in Arabic dictionaries. It is used to refer to two different substances that make up a whole. The phrase "we unstitched" is the verb fatk in Arabic and implies that something comes into being by tearing apart or destroying the structure of ratk. The sprouting of a seed from the soil is one of the actions to which this verb is applied.

Let us take a look at the verse again with this knowledge in mind. In the verse, sky and earth are at first subject to the status of ratk. They are separated (fatk) with one coming out of the other. Intriguingly, cosmologists speak of a "cosmic egg" that consisted of all the matter in the universe prior to the Big Bang. In other words, all the heavens and earth were included in this egg in a condition of ratk. This cosmic egg exploded violently causing its matter to fatk and in the process created the structure of the whole universe.

Another truth revealed in the Qur'an is the expansion of the universe that was discovered in the late 1920s. Hubble's discovery of the red shift in the spectrum of starlight is revealed in the Qur'an as :

It is We Who have built the universe with (Our creative) power, and, verily, it is We Who are steadily expanding it. (Surat adh-Dhariyat: 47)

In short, the findings of modern science support the truth that is revealed in the Qur'an and not materialist dogma. Materialists may claim this all to be "coincidence" but the plain fact is that the universe came into being as a result of an act of creation on the part of Allah and the only true knowledge about the origin of universe is to be found in the word of Allah as revealed.

Geneva atom smasher sets collision record - Yahoo! News

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The Future of Publishing « 800 CEO Read

The future of publishing is changing very rapidly and moving towards online contents. Here is an excellent link that show what publishing would be in the future. Enjoy the video.



The Future of Publishing « 800 CEO Read

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Space Shuttle Discovery Soars Over Cinderella Castle

Tiger Woods is back in action

 As Tiger Woods' tee shot on the first hole gently faded through the increasingly cool and windy air on Thursday, Brian Wacker says, so did everything that happened the last five months. From that point on, Woods looked very much like the Tiger of old.

The 2010 Masters Tournament - Much-anticipated return goes about as good as could be expected

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