human calculator

I have heard that there used to be a job description of "calculator" - people who could do arithmetic very quickly would be centrally located in an office bullpen and give answers as needed. Even if apocryphal, it is suggestive - there are skills that can become almost useless because of new technologies. I wonder if recall/memory is one of those skills.

suzlon = enron?

Just asking.

fannie freddie

Much of the discussion I've seen on Fannie and Freddie has involved wiping out the equity and/or bailing out the debt, all in the name of protecting the housing market (and the economy that relies heavily on the housing market). I don't understand why the second (protection) is so closely linked with the first. As Warren Buffet did with bond insurance, why couldn't the government set up a new entity to buy and package mortgages and let both the equity AND debt holders of Fannie and Freddie bear the pain? It's not as if no one knew the two companies weren't rotten to the core. Unless the debt is so immense and widely held that a writedown would cripple the economy.

Apple

I really must not have any understanding of the computer market. Apple has some tiny (under 10%) slice of the computer market. But it has "66% of the market for retail PCs over $1000". Which means that the retail market is mostly sub-$1000 machines and/or the retail market is nothing. I had no idea. It also explains why it seems everyone has a Mac and yet they have no market.

Political appointees

I don't understand the political appointee vs. career civil servant rules of the federal government (or state or local government for that matter). Is this tradition/custom or statutory? If statutory, I am embarrassed by how little I know about something so fundamental to our government.

special relationship

News that a countryman will be held in a foreign jail is often jarring - either the listener will somehow minimize the crime or feel the punishment seems too severe.

Most Americans would likely feel less conflicted about hearing of an American being held in an English prison than Mexican. I would guess that a chart showing reactions would be a good predictor of feelings regarding other places. Assuming the validity of this "kinship" test is proven, I think it could be useful in another context: Nationbuilding.

I think most Americans feel relatively (aside from the burdens of travel) indifferent between incarceration in NY or California. But this is unlikely between Basra and Tikrit for most Iraqis. A survey indicating this would be a nice, more concrete, way to show that efforts to build a single Iraq are misguided and that success is somewhere between far-away and never.

Familiarity breeds indifference?

Citi is expected to take another $10b writedown. And the stock barely moved. I assume a lot of this was priced in but still...