“Atheists say God doesn’t exist. I say atheists don’t exist.”

So cool! Especially when you get to make nifty patterns and selectively melt the ice. This has my money for becoming the next olympic sport.

Laos.

The reason for all of this, of course, is it is more sacred if it is carried out in this manner. The experience of riding in a boat powered by a human is superhuman. How, I have no idea. I felt less than human, actually, when I did it. Supposedly the way to Nirvana is by boat, so this whole process mimicks that. Great! What if getting to Nirvana meant actually holding to the principles of the religion and not to austere backwardness? That’d be cool, wouldn’t it?

The worst of it all is how this religious experience just happens to bring out the worst in people, and most of them don’t even realize it. Lame. Old grandmas and grandpas, using canes and sometimes barefoot, endure an entire day’s journey in the heat and under the harsh sun to go pray to family at a cave up in the mountains. One man was carrying his mother piggyback up the hill. Jesus! Or should I say Buddha? Sure, the scenery is pretty, but most of it is lost in the sea of humanity. Shit, piss, trash, odor, pushing, shoving, slipping, eating, yelling, and more. It’s not exactly pleasant.

The entire trip up there are booths where you can rest or buy the most simplistic, oddball, wacky souvenirs you can imagine.  I’m all for business and progress, but sometimes it’s necessary to truly reflect and say “Wait a minute, is this helping the situation any?” No. Indeed it is not. If you cannot make this journey in one fell swoop, you should not be going up at all. And as for those souvenirs, they are just gaudy. It’d be like hiking in Yosemite, a thoroughly enjoyable experience, only to have terrible country music being blasted from countless shops, Space Dots being sold every step along the way, and naked baby posters and figurines crowding your space. Again, not a pretty picture.

Up in the cave it is so dense that people have suffocated. That should not happen. Ever. The beauty of lines escapes the Viet Namese conscious  at the moment, at their own peril. Not only is it frustrating to be in a mass of people grabbing you, it is unsafe and unnecessary. Instead of bringing Choco Pies, beers, those naked baby photos, and other tacky ornaments as offerings, maybe these folks should be praying for something else. I, myself, will be praying for the best.

Clive Crook examines some new charts. Russia led the way yesteryear, back in the days when it didn’t much matter because of communism, but has expanded its lead on the US by a big margin. Reasons to be wary of the data, though, follow in the comments. The US has awesome immigration and many workers get their degrees midcareer, which may in fact be more useful and powerful than going straight from high school to attaining a PhD.

“Consumers demand sensational stories that resonate with their view of the world. Consumer choice is supposed to improve welfare, but should people be able to choose the news they want to hear? As the market grows, it appears that spin and sensationalism will only become more prevalent. But there is a way that the market does ultimately reward accuracy. In such a large market, reputation becomes important; saying things that are flat out wrong incurs a penalty. If you become known as someone who peddles unreliable information, consumers will go elsewhere. Your competitors have an incentive to monitor your analysis and catch your mistakes.  Of course, it then depends on how your viewers define wrong!”

Think of all the toilets in new high-rises, especially in Asia, and how much wasted energy goes into getting the water up there only to have it come back down without doing anything productive. What a waste. Speaking of waste, there would be added mass thanks to folks taking their urine and feces up when they took the elevator or stairs. That is usable energy! Oh, the things we have yet to learn.

“Several state-owned business groups and corporations were scrambling to set up banks and securities companies instead of focusing on their core businesses.”

The current mess in financial markets has everyone wondering what could have been done, and what should be done, to prevent such a thing from happening in the first place. Tough question, really. Innovation will always come about. If rules are put in place, folks will always think of some new, novel way to dodge it. Yay humans! Go us! Megan McArdle gives a brief analysis of what the Fed is up to these days. What is up with economists and drinking analogies anyhow?

“Taking away the punch bowl doesn’t do much good if the guests just drive to another bar.”

We, as people, are affected by these historical developments, for better or worse. The mind is easily tricked. Dan Ariely writes about an experiment at MIT where students were asked to write the last two digits of their Social Security numbers down next to items and see if this action affected their willingness to pay for items. It did, in some cases up to 350% between the bottom and top quintiles. Eek. A quote:

“Social Security numbers were the anchor in this experiment only because we requested them. We could just as well have asked for the current temperature, or your shoe size. Any question, in fact, would have created the anchor. Does that seem rational? Of course not. But when we make one decision, even when it’s about an arbitrary number, we bring this history into our future decisions, and continue to make the same decisions over and over without going back and questioning their wisdom.”

Ah the beauty of heuristics!

“But it would be pretty big if we had a first Black president. That would be huge.
I mean, I guess…. What, they gon’ give a dog a bone? There you go. Ooh, we have a Black president now. They should’ve done that shit a long time ago, we wouldn’t be in the fuckin’ position we in now. With world war coming up right now. They done fucked this shit up then give it to the Black people, “Here you take it. Take my mess.”

Right, exactly.
It’s all a fuckin’ setup. It’s all a setup. All fuckin’ bullshit. All bullshit. I don’t give a fuck about none of that.”

Sai Gon, though, has almost no bureaucratic taste to it, barely any bridges, no elevated highway at all, terrible sidewalks, hardly any police, and less cars. The city is nearly 800 years younger than Ha Noi, too.

Some unifying things going for them is expansions of infrastructure, including international terminals and metro lines. It’s an oddity that  both cities developed on only one side of their respective rivers. That will likely change, however, and for the better.