Debate by ~REGGDIS

Last week I was in the UK for work, first time in that country. Work went perfectly but from the moment I stepped into that country, I was flooded with strange thoughts and new impressions.

“Why have you come here?” asked the passport checkpoint official.

“For work.”

“What is the nature of your work?” he continued in a very polite tone. A few more questions…

“Where will you go after your 5 days stay?” he asked.

“Home… back to the USA,” I responded.

“Welcome to the UK.”

For the rest of the trip to the hotel, I was thinking about my last sentence “home… back to the USA.” A stranger in a strange country in a strange world, I was going to go home… that mystical place that has a special meaning for every Armenian.

Everyone extremely polite. Everything running perfectly on time. Discussion of austerity measures and restraint in government spending. What was it about these people that allowed them to conquer the world? Why am I writing in their language?

Vatican. Concentrate so much wealth in 100 acres. Wealth of the highest caliber. Statue of a king, viscount, or another lord or a street named after one. Systems everywhere, lots of systems. Driving on the wrong side of the road. Fish and chips… great fish and chips.

One morning, jet lagged I sat there working and listening to a debate on TV on how they could cut government spending. What a healthy debate! In the US, we are growing governments.

On the way back, I read Walden almost the entire time.

“Books must be read as deliberately and reservedly as they were written. It is not enough even to be able to speak the language of that nation by which they are written, for there is a memorable interval between the spoken and the written language, the language heard and the language read. The one is commonly transitory, a sound, a tongue, a dialect merely, almost brutish, and we learn it unconsciously, like the brutes, of our mothers. The other is the maturity and experience of that; if that is our mother tongue, this is our father tongue, a reserved and select expression, too significant to be heard by the ear, which we must be born again in order to speak.” ~ Henry David Thoreau

How much I have to grow up to perceive the world at this level, let alone be able to write anything that “must be read as deliberately and reservedly…” How much we Armenians must endure to begin understanding how the world works. The books have been written in English. The maps have been written in English. For us they have also been written in Russian, in Turkish, and in every other language, old and new. We need to stop being the only ones reading our own books and drowning in our own tears. Maybe we need to be born again. Maybe we need to learn their father tongue. How else can we expect to have any influence when we are not even in the room, let alone sitting at the table where our fate is determined. Are we the spoken word, “transitory” in the timeline of the human civilization?

Two songs come to mind. The first is a revolutionary song – a lullaby, a beautiful contradiction still beyond my understanding. The second is the song called Cilicia.

Sunday after I was back, I went to church where I found new liturgy books. They’re in two languages, English and Hinglish. Hinglish is a strange language. It’s the Classical Armenian written with English letters. An Armenian born and raised outside Armenia is fortunate if he or she speaks some dialect of the language (somewhere I read that about 1500 words were needed). That Armenian is a minority if he or she can read and write in Armenian. There are probably a handful who have studied and understand the Classical Armenian. For whom is the weekly Divine Liturgy service? Is Hinglish the best we can do? Does it even please God when we worship him without understanding what we say.

How about we improve the Divine Liturgy, write it in the best of our father tongue, in nice big beautiful Armenian letters and hope that it’s read and sung as “deliberately and reservedly” as it’s written. This may also please the Creator. I’ll stop dreaming. For now, let’s have  a healthy debate about this and perhaps we will understand why I write in English.

Rocky Trail by ~Meemster1973

This site seems to have become yet another barometer. There are times when I want to write every minute and everything, and then there are times when I find myself struggling to write a single word. In the latter case, I find comfort in the best practices of lawn maintenance which suggest to cut the grass according to growth rate NOT calendar. In some blogs, people seem to force themselves to write daily (in some cases multiple times per day). While this might be a good way to practice self-discipline and might result in higher numbers of readers (to advertise to), that is not possible in my case given the purpose of this site and the rest of what constitutes my life. I recognize that I probably lose many readers along the way who like daily updates. Despite the title here, I am unable to come up with something worth sharing every day. I knew this when I started but thought that years later with thousands of past entries the frequency would be less relevant. I hope the content will be of some interest and some value to a couple people.

Interestingly, I get a bunch of search hits every day to Newton’s Laws In Everyday Life and hundreds of hits to Understanding Poetry: The Final Frontier. Who would have thought… George Soros is right on the money when he says “First, financial markets do not reflect prevailing conditions accurately; they provide a picture that is always biased or distorted in one way or another. Second, the distorted views held by market participants and expressed in market prices can, under certain circumstances, affect the so-called fundamentals that market prices are supposed to reflect.” To paraphrase, my point  is “blog statistics do not reflect the value of the work accurately; they provide a picture that is always biased or distorted in one way or another but these distorted views held by the author(s) and expressed in the writing, can affect the content that the statistics are supposed to reflect.” I consciously try to avoid falling into this trap because my goal here is not to sell advertising, or to sell myself, or to create works of art (God never gave me that unique gift). I just want to share my journey and in the process leave a worthy trail; however, I want the journey to matter even if the trail proves to be of little value.

fairytale house by ~Siska92

I bought a house for $150,000 eight years ago and had a loan of $120,000. The value of my house increased to $350,000. I took advantage of the situation and refinanced, being a conservative person, only borrowing $280,000 at a favorable 5.5% rate fixed for 30 years paying $1,600 per month for the mortgage and another $400 per month for real estate taxes and insurance. I was conservative and spent the $135,000 of home equity that I took out on improvement to my home (new kitchen, new bathrooms, hardwood floors, finished basement, and a small swimming pool for the little ones). This caused my tax bill to increase by $200 per month due to higher assessments. After a few years, the real estate market crashed and my house is unfortunately now only worth $180,000. I still owe $270,000 and have to pay $2,200 per month to live in “my” house. My choices are a) continue paying the high monthly payment with a giant negative balance sheet or b) rent a place for $1,200 per month, let the bank have the house and start from a clean slate.

I wish the situation was as nice as the above description. Here are a few additional realities:

• All my neighbors got foreclosed and my whole neighborhood has been downgraded whereas before I thought I lived in a decent part of town.
• My town is unable to meet budget demands and has to increase taxes to pay its bills.
• I actually spent the money on Made in China products worth $0 today and a GM vehicle that’s lost a lot of its value instead of home improvements.
• My bank let me borrow up to 100% of equity so I borrowed the full $350,000.
• The loan I got had a variable interest rate and my payments are more than $2,200.
• The $30,000 stock portfolio cushion that I had is now only worth $15,000.
• I am about to lose my job even though I work hard. They say that the company has to cut back because of the economy.
• I also had a credit card balance of $38,000 and student loans of $24,000.
• Even though my wife really loves to shop, we just cannot afford to buy anything any more.
• I had never signed any contracts before buying this house, let alone the sixty thousand mortgage documents they made me sign at the closings.
• I’ve called the bank every month for the last six months asking for help or a way to get me out of this pickle.

What are my choices? I think I better let the bank have the keys, declare bankruptcy if I have to, move out into the $1,200 a month apartment and hope I can find another job so I can pay the rent before the economy gets any worse. How is any of this bull shit they talk about on TV going to help me this month? I voted for Obama to make a change but so far I see more of the same. There is little they can do to make me stay in this house given the reality I am facing.

Glass distortions by ~ahillo

Earlier I wrote about separating the wheat from the chaff but today a few sentences in comments of a post provided much food for thought. The lens of our minds often paint a very distorted picture of ourselves and, as a result, of others and the world around us. Unfortunately, since we only have a single point of reference, it is difficult for many of us to catch and correct this distortion. The distorted view, in turn, tends to cause us to dismiss ideas, thoughts, or points that could otherwise be invaluable (the wheat). We correct this distortion through constantly cross-checking what we see with what others see either via live experiences or via imagination enriched through education, reading, and other means of learning. For example, Dr. House in a popular TV show wants his team to challenge his thinking forcing him to see the same problem from different angles. Dr. Niederhoffer in Daily Speculations gets a real-time perspective from his readers while exchanging with them his perspectives. Another example is our ability to use past education, reading to relate to current events, or current people (mind applying past patterns to current ones). We are hard at work trying to correct the distortions created by our own upbringing, learning and experiences, yet often we end up with an even more distorted view if our subconscious corrective efforts are not using the appropriate models or people. If I had multiple lives, I would devote one to the study of the hypothesis above. The author of the referenced post says he never lets his “personal feelings for a person interfere with any good ideas they bring to the table” which is perhaps his effort to correct the distortions by forcing his mind to remain open despite the stimulus (dislike) to close.

There is another sentence hidden in those comments stating that “the person and his/her ideas are 2 different things.” Is this really possible? I believe that a Person = ideas + attitudes + habits + values + beliefs + qualities + character + roles + contributions + lessons + observations + legacy + other dimensions where it’s impossible for each dimension to be independent of the others. The key point I forgot to mention in the post comments is regarding the time dimension. While we are the sum of what we do, say, write, believe… these do change over time allowing us to change as well. I remember reading someplace Gandhi saying “A person cannot do right in one department of life whilst attempting to do wrong in another department. Life is one indivisible whole.” Humans are complex beings but one way to understand ourselves and others is to realize that we are multidimensional beings, with many parts to each equation. And, those parts are always changing. Some parts we hope change very frequently (experiences, observations, etc.) while some parts we hope remain fairly constant (good character, trustworthiness, etc.).

I have noticed that people who try to understand the market (or life) spend more time learning themselves as the market (and life) is unforgiving and doesn’t care about our distorted screens. There are too many opinions that can further distort our views causing confusion and doubt. Since our positions and actions in aggregate determine our success, we tend to focus on these trying to understand how the universe can affect them. In life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, an open mind and active efforts to correct our own distorted views are required.

For fear of having another very long post, I’ll stop here.

Wheat by ~HarelLoire

On my drive home this morning, I was thinking about my greatest daily challenge. This is an activity that consumes significant amount of processing power of my brain yet happens almost completely subconsciously without impacting anything else. It is like the markets – never completely understood, conquered, or tamed, yet having significant impact on our lives. All day long, when I read something, hear something, speak with someone, discuss a topic, answer a question or hear a response, I’m trying to determine the credibility, value, impact of what I’m consuming. I am hard at work trying to determine what is noise and what is information. Let’s say a concept is being explained very clearly and logically, does that mean it makes sense? What if someone writes with excellent vocabulary and perfect sentence design, does that make the writer credible? You are reading what I have written. Is this noise (discard immediately) or a thought worth considering for a bit. Am I smart? Can you trust the letters, words, sentences and paragraphs that I have crafted here? Reporters write millions of articles daily but how do you determine which is worth the minutes spent on reading?

There are many examples of what I’m describing. Even in a hierarchical relationship while we may comply with a request, we subconsciously either agree or disagree with it and in bad situations simply don’t care. A coworker raised a question about a requirement saying that we should poll others to see if we have captured the requirement correctly. That’s another example. Why am I paying any attention to this daily challenge? Could it be that those who are extremely smart or capable are able to separate noise from valueable information better than the rest of us? I wish I could devote a month or two to the analysis of this subject. The reason is that perhaps there should be a class in school teaching valuable lessons on separating garbage from jewels that are thrown at us from every angle every day.

Sometimes what we consider garbage in hindsight becomes obvious to have been a jewel. Is there any way to prevent the initial mistake or is this just human nature? There are also times when taking a message for granted is required for survival (hearing fire in a crowded theater – run then think). Because this processing is subconscious in my case, I cannot write my methods of separating communications but maybe if I pay attention going forward, I can report back my findings. Until then this activity will continue to remain one of my top daily challenges.

Wolf in Sheep's Clothes by *Skia

“Watch out for false prophets. They come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ferocious wolves.” ~ Matthew 7:15

For trader types you can replace the word “prophets” with “profits” and Matthew is still right on the money. But this is about a different wolf – Google.

Six months ago, I was somewhat familiar with the SEO concept. This blog has helped me learn a few more technical lessons. Still Google’s intentions are not clear to me; yet its actions in the blog business (as well as in search) have left me somewhat disappointed. As an investor, I wonder what percentage of Google’s constituents are unhappy like me.

First, host your own blog if at all possible. This will give you the most flexibility and control over management and appearance of your content. I started on Blogger but quickly hit the limits of what I could do with it (without mentioning the constantly changing bug landscape). Unlimited space, management, and security were not enough to offset its limitations. I then tried WordPress.com and found that also had various limits (mostly imposed to make money and for their ease of administration). I finally decided to let 1and1 host legacy daily using the free software from WordPress.org. This has been working out very well so far. I have ultimate control over everything in the site and can take advantage of open source advancements that may not be stable enough for a Blogger or a WordPress.com to uptake.

Second, understand how the world sees your site. I didn’t fully appreciate this until I moved from Blogger to self-hosted WordPress. Blogger has its unique permalinks, feed links, search links and many other types of links for every blog. The site as seen from outside has a number of URLs that people can bookmark, share, copy into a Word document, send to a friend in an e-mail, print, etc. Once the site is moved, unless all of these links are maintained, existing users will see error pages. One would expect that migration of posts and comments would be the hard part of migration but that was actually the easiest. The hard part was making all of the old links work in the new environment. This is really important because of Google (the wolf).

We are used to Google returning the blue links to our queries within split seconds, but Google is slower than moss growing in the cracks of our outside steps at updating its index. In my case it has been taking months. I understand…  legacy daily was not high on their priority list (literally). People Google-ing (the verb… amazing) would hit the old Blogger links and find a page that had been deleted or moved until I solved the issue. Once Google or any other engine (or visitor) indexes a link, you should not change the link or you should provide a redirection path to forward your visitors. In the case of self-hosted WordPress, a great plugin called Redirection came to my rescue.

I sometimes hear that the Internet is very fast. When it comes to cleanup, the Internet seems VERY slow. This is probably the technical manifestation of the  human behavior of collecting more and purging less. I wonder if letting Google bots find 404 errors would make them clean-up their index faster (that’s research material for another day).

Third, capture your own foot traffic. Web sites are no different than typical boutique stores. If nobody comes in, chances are not much gets “sold.” This is why some stores have very cool AC on a hot day, or post a sign “Spanish Spoken Here”, or send us coupons for 10% off. They want to attract more traffic. What you buy is a different issue. Similarly, web sites want to attract visitors. What those visitors do upon arrival is another topic. In case of Blogger or WordPress.com, they are using your content as the 10% off coupon. Once the visitor is on the site, monetizing the traffic is another problem altogether. Blogger and other hosting sites seem to have a single purpose. That is to capture as much “foot traffic” as possible (like a shopping mall does for boutiques). What is done with that traffic can be determined some other day but for now they want to get your clicks and your articles. We all know this but the part that bothered me a lot was that on the surface they gave me ability to use my own domain name but seemed to be concerned with getting the traffic on their servers at a lower level. If that’s all they can get, that’s better than nothing (in my current setup they get no traffic).

Fourth, do not use FeedBurner (acquired by Google) if self-hosting your blog. The disappointment here was the main reason for having the urge to share thoughts on this topic. Aside from having buggy feed flares, almost non-existent support, and many limitations, this service is by far the biggest wolf in my blogging experience. Every blog has the site (http://legacydaily.com) and the feed(s) (http://legacydaily.com/feed/). Feeds allow people to subscribe to posts using various feed readers that can show the latest information only. This way, for example, people can check the latest fifty articles from fifty different blogs without having to visit all fifty sites. FeedBurner’s value proposition is to provide a single address for your feeds where any feed reader will find compatible content, easy e-mail subscriptions, various enhancements to the feeds, insertion of advertising into feeds, and many other changes from the vanilla feed that a blog software provides. Also, if all users point to the FeedBurner feed, you can get statistics on the number of subscribers, site visitors, etc. Again, the main intention is to force as much “foot traffic” through their servers as possible. I was hoping that Google would fix the issues with FeedBurner. I don’t mind them receiving the foot traffic as long as I maintain control and ultimately have a choice over my visitors’ experiences. But instead they forced me to migrate to a new Google feed through feedproxy.google.com. I expected that the feed address (using MyBrand service) would remain the same but after working on it for hours, I found no easy way to get the new Google feed to show my own site name to people who would, for example, want to subscribe to my feed. I have had enough! No more FeedBurner! The old legacy daily feed at http://feeds.legacydaily.com/legacydaily has been removed. The new feed is at http://legacydaily.com/feed/ (if you have subscribed to the former, please update your links to point to the latter). Also, e-mail subscriptions previously maintained by FeedBurner are now maintained by the site.

In sum, I understand and want Google to make money but if enough people like myself become disenchanted with their tactics, perhaps it becomes harder for them to capture the traffic and therefore to sell advertising based on that traffic. Their basic business model may stop working.

Daybreak in Corinth by *carlzon

1 Corinthians 13 is one of my favorite chapters in the Bible. A few recent thoughts made me think of it again.

“11 When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me.” ~ 1 Corinthians 13

I have to admit that I was getting discouraged by the many blogs where content is a waste of the energy required to create, store and transmit it (I want to make this one of the exceptions). Fortunately, after a few months of surveying the landscape, it seems there’s a bell curve of some sort in the blogosphere as well. As I read the thoughts of people smarter than myself, I recognized my own writings as childish. Two options emerge: 1) stop writing, get off the podium, learn some more, expect that the kids will discover their own and care less about what I write, or 2) continue thinking, learning, writing, and improving. After reading The importance of stupidity in scientific research mentioned by Steve Ellison’s recent post, I feel that it’s probably important to continue this project understanding the depth of my own ignorance. How else would the second sentence in the verse above be possible?

Along similar lines, I am currently involved in a project where the progress is made in almost an identical path as in a past project which was ultimately unsuccessful. It is sometimes frustrating to have to witness people not being interested in warnings because they have not had the same experiences themselves. This is similar to a child who ignores a parent’s word and has to experience himself to learn. I find myself in the position of the parent in this case, but also in the position of the child in other cases where I’m unwilling to take the words of others for granted (here’s an example).

In closing, I need to mention that the verse below from the same chapter is very high up in my mind but also is one of the reasons for wanting to share and hear others.

“1 If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. 3 If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing.”

TOOBS for stock by ~Mydin

I was thinking during my commute how quick the integration of new discoveries is these days. Perhaps it’s another side effect of easy information that new products, new inventions, new processes and new methods are analyzed, internalized, and digested so fast. Take the iPhone, for example. It has been around for a couple years, yet there are thousands of little programs for it already. I am sure that in another year or two, it will be added to the list of ancient technologies such as floppy disk, MS-DOS, short-wave radio, light bulb, screws, wheels, etc. To be sure, most technologies are still in use today but they have been internalized by us to the point where we rarely consider the human efforts, sacrifices, and trials that went into their initial births.

Three thoughts come to mind. First, never give up. It may take years to develop a system, a product, or to study a new force, new genetic mutation, new cancer cell, or write a great book. It may take a lifetime. People may argue, disagree, dismiss your work. They may misunderstand, misrepresent, take credit, discredit what you do. But from my history lessons, nothing major and meaningful was ever born overnight. One thought leads to another, one work makes it feasible to create another. That’s the process of development. What we see in the rear view mirror is the mature internalized, accepted, perfected result of many lifetimes of hard work.

Second, we all have some talents. My father says that great people are born with these special talents. He says although we can go to schools to learn how to write like ՎԱՀԱՆ ՏԵՐՅԱՆ, very few will be gifted with that special fragrance that he breathed into his poetry. Sure, but I also believe we each have our own unique gifts. It is a matter of early discovery and a lifetime of hard work. Again, in hindsight all we see are the jewels left behind by the greats. We do not always see all of the trials, failed attempts, discouragement, disagreements, and the hard work they endured. A classmate from elementary school writes beautiful poetry almost daily (who would have ever expected) but also lives a routine that would seem impossible to most. With God’s gift, and lots of hard work, I can envision a book in the horizon. I am sure it will be anything but easy.

Third, when you make it do not be disappointed when it’s quickly integrated into the civilization or the culture. The new method that was developed after years of hard work may become a standard routine so elementary that is taken for granted and almost forgotten. Sometimes the greatness is not appreciated for a generation or two. Often the impact is profound in many other areas of life not imagined initially. I am thinking of the Internet Protocol, for example.

As for me, I’ll be busy thinking much, learning much, observing much, experiencing much and, of course, expressing much…

Writing is therapeutic. Every day (and especially on difficult days) thinking about an interesting topic and sitting down to write about it has been a blessing. I have enjoyed this process immensely. Being not much of a writer in my school years, I am very excited that this has become an enjoyable hobby.

Days are “empty” quite often but we have the power to change them. Given the nature of my blog, I found it sobering to realize that not every day something worth writing about happens. Some days are full of work, chores, commute… uneventful, uninteresting, unexciting, mundane… This process has forced me to focus on having more interesting days and seeing life in slightly brighter colors.

Write is life by ~AkaneMiyano

Even though I write for my kids (and now for myself), I have realized that being read is all of a sudden very important. Perhaps, it’s the deep need to be understood and accepted. It seems especially important to be understood by family and friends. When I started writing (following the example of a friend), I thought to myself that I didn’t care if anyone read my blog as I was writing for the kids. That didn’t last… I now understand why scientists write in academic journals and get critiqued by peers before their discoveries are accepted.

Newspapers and magazines are nothing but commercial, large scale blogs. I understand them better now. I also understand writers slightly better. I am even more skeptical about authorities on a subject matter. Based on these, my reading (actually sifting) has improved. Most blogs I have come across so far (and also most articles in papers and magazines) are not worth reading (perhaps same goes for this blog).

Expressing personal “new” discoveries, thoughts and lessons and realizing that there is absolutely nothing new in what I write or say has humbled me. I’m reminded daily Ecclesiastes 1:9-11 “What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.”

Based on this experience, I feel many of us are often guilty of not hearing, when hearing not listening, when listening not understanding, when understanding not caring enough, when caring enough not acting, when acting not finishing, when leaving unfinished not apologizing… Introspection is a powerful way of adjusting our compasses for the days yet to come.

Writing my posts, sometimes I’m terrified of raising children like thousands out there who read sensationalized garbage and leave uninteresting comments simply to drive traffic to their own web sites so they can increase their advertising revenue. What’s the point… Have we learned nothing over thousands of years of civilization? Ecclesiastes 1:9-11 comes to mind again…

I have learned that we’re really FAR TOO BUSY. Years ago, during a stroll around the Wellesley College lake with my friend (later my best friend and now my beautiful wife), I noticed that she was walking faster than I. We purposely tried to slow down and enjoy every step. Years later I find that I would probably walk even faster now… slowing down only recently to reflect and write a few lines.

My blog design and its content reflect who I am. I could not accept any cluttered designs, any advertisements, and unworthy automated or generated content. I also could not write about trendy topics, news, or anything unrelated to daily experiences or thoughts.

With the fear to have a post that’s too long, I’ll stop here. The lessons and the experiences are far too many. I’d recommend this to everyone!

PS. If you came to this page expecting tips on how to increase the traffic to your web site, I’m sorry to have disappointed you.