Irrational Dichotomy

Joseph LeDoux, a leading neuroscientist, specialising in the area of human brain's emotional response, points out that, in fact, there are two different paths along which the signals (electrical signals if you will) travel inside our brain in response to a stimuli.

The normal path which, starts from one of the five senses to the thalamus, to neocortex(rational center), which then distributes the appropriate response to other parts of the brain including the amygdala. This circuit is behind our rational decisions.
In addition to the normal path there is another short circuit tripwire which, extends from eyes/ears to thalamus then directly to the amygdala. Amygdala being the emotional center, this tripwire causes an emotional response to an sensory stimulus, and since this path is shorter than the normal one. our emotions are meant to supercede our rationality.

To make things worse the response from these two paths may even contradict themselves.

We are indeed hardwired, by nature's choice, to remain confused for most of the time, and at all of those moments to be equally irrational.

Humpty Dumpty Greenback

'The Greenback' has sent a wave of concern across the entire geography, with its free-fall against a basket of currencies. Everyone is concerned, some are surprised and others in fear:
- surprised at why Fed is letting the fall, and
- fear at the possibility of the US recession getting replicated around the world because of the falling greenback.
Since dollar is the most dominant currency for trade across the world. Its fall has led to increase in every commodity price across the board, from the gold, to the oil, and to the corn.

How does it help Uncle Sam?
Well it brings in extra exports, since goods exported by the US become more competitive in the global market, this is supported by the recent data indicating reduced Trade Deficit.
At the time when nothing seems working for Uncle, neither retail numbers nor consumer confidence, An increased export may be bringing in some hope to curb the shrink of economy to some extent.

Imagine this:
Liquid dollar is flowing all over the floor seeping to every nook and corner of economic prosperity, turning them all green. May be Uncle Sam understands globalization better than anyone else.

nice move still no donuts.

Mr Jobs, has finally laid down arms against the wider and much accepted community of jail-breakers. I being an iPhone user chose not to be a jail-breaker coz my phone had 1.1.2 when I bought it, and I didn't want to mess-up with the new equipment(reverting to 1.1.1).

This unfortunate decision has costed me a lot of agony. Every time I visit a flash or java applet, I regret my decision to not have jail-broken. The mental agony did hurt the most, when I recently installed 1.1.3 firmware upgrade ( approx 106 MB in size ), because this upgrade was backed by my enthusiam to find iPhone SDK, as announced by Mr. Jobs.

Alas, no SDK, no Flash, no Applet. What this new upgrade brought along with major bugfixes is 'The Paradox of Choice', at which Apple is so good at:
The choice to either wait for 1.1.5 or shift to BlackBerry.

WELL!!! iPhone sux.