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It is well and good ,and easy, to talk about making money in investing and trading...
As if it is so easy to make money in the stock market.
But in the real world, you can easily find
many many investors who have "pok!ed"
and they are the ones who are able to hold the longest (and even buying more).
They can hold and hold until they are 'pengsan'
And they will still, with their last breath, defend their action (of holding on)...
Even after they are "pok!"...
Every Profession needs SKILLS, QUALIFICATIONS, CERTIFICATIONS to achieve PROFICIENCY.
PRE-REQUISITE is PROFESSIONAL EDUCATION beyond ACADEMIC EDUCATION.
In Every Profession, nOt EVERYONE SUCCEEDS.
The REALITY is there must be FAILURES.
SOMEBODY must FAIL in FREE MARKET COMPETITION.
INVESTING AND TRADING are ZERO-SUM GAMES.
WINNER TAKES ALL.
wIthOUT FAiLURES, there Is nO SUCCESS.
LEARNING frOm FAILURE(S) is the ULTIMATE EDUCATION.
LEARNING frOM OTHERS' FAILURES is the BEST EDUCATION.
In HARVARD, it is known as CASE STUDY.
CASE STUDY made HARVARD MBA World Renouned Previously
iPunter ( Date: 14-Aug-2010 10:55) Posted:
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Trading for a living may sound attractive to many professional people thinking of doing just that...
But the reality is one (most) would have to be very lucky to be still living after trading*.
hehehe...
(*For the purpose of this post trading includes investing)
Sovereign Citizens — a 21st Century counter culture
Study estimates up to 300,000 Americans defy federal, state laws
COLUMBUS, Ohio — They call themselves sovereign citizens, U.S. residents who declare themselves above state and federal laws. Many don’t register children’s births, carry driver’s licenses or recognize the court system.
Some peddle schemes that use fictional legal loopholes to eliminate debt and avoid foreclosures.
A few such believers are violent: Two police officers in Arkansas died in a shootout in May after stopping an Ohio sovereign citizen and his son.
As many as 300,000 people identify as sovereign citizens, the Southern Poverty Law Center found in a study to be published Thursday that was obtained by The Associated Press. Hate group monitors say their numbers have increased thanks to the recession, the foreclosure crisis, the growth of the Internet and the election of Barack Obama in 2008.
James T. McBride
Adherents expect the current American system of government to end one way or another.
“I’m the Patrick Henry of the 21st century. I’m here to regain our freedom,” James McBride said in a jailhouse interview. “I’m going to, or die trying.”
'Straw man' belief
At the heart of their belief system: The government creates a secret identity for each citizen at birth, a “straw man,” that controls an account at the U.S. Treasury used as collateral for foreign debt. File enough documents at the right offices and the money in those accounts can be used to pay off debt or make purchases worth thousands of dollars.
Perseid meteors appear to emanate from a point in the constellation Perseus, as shown in this graphic depicting the northeastern sky at around midnight. Although the meteors can appear in any part of the sky, their tails can be traced back to that point..
A couple of years ago, I put together a top-ten list of tips for maximizing your meteor-watching experience. Here's an updated game plan for making the most of the meteors, assembled with Cooke's help:
- Pick a viewing spot far away from city lights, where the skies are likely to be clear and wide-open. Higher elevations are usually better than lower elevations, and you don't want to be surrounded by trees, buildings or other obstacles to viewing.
- For help in site selection, you can check out the Clear Sky Chart website, which provides weather conditions for skywatching ... and links to popular viewing locations on a state-by-state basis. Your local astronomy club can also point you in the right direction. This year, some events for amateur astronomers are timed to take advantage of the Perseids - for example, star parties in California's Mojave Desert, in Michigan, in Oregon and Washington state.
- Bring a blanket or a chaise lounge to lie back on. Have layers of clothing available in case the air turns chilly at night. Bring snacks or drinks. Bring a flashlight so you can find your way through the dark. Bring a music player or radio if you need a diversion. And bring your friends. Meteor-watching sets a great mood for chatting about cosmic issues, or meditating on the wonders of the heavens.
- Don't give up too quickly. Give your eyes plenty of time to get accustomed to the dark. Although the meteors appear to emanate from the radiant in Perseus, don't focus exclusively on that point. "The closer the meteor is to the radiant, the shorter the trail is," Cooke explained. "I always tell people to look straight up, because that way, they'll catch plenty of meteors far enough from the radiant to see a trail."
- The later you can stay up, the better. "It's a late-night shower," Cooke said. You could start seeing Perseids at around 9:30 p.m., and those "Earth-grazers" tend to leave the longest, most impressive trails. But the show doesn't get good until after midnight, and the peak usually comes just before morning twilight begins.
- To get a better sense of what to expect at which time, use NASA's Fluxtimator. When you click in the right coordinates for meteor shower, date, location and viewing conditions, the Java-based calculator charts what the estimated meteor flux will be at different times.
- If you're totally clouded out, you can try listening to the meteors. NASA's Perseid Web page includes a video feed that shows what Cooke's cameras are seeing, accompanied by a soundtrack of radio blips created by the meteor streaks. Cooke said it's also possible to hear the radio blips by tuning your FM radio to a station so distant that all you can hear is the hiss of a carrier wave. "When a meteor passes, you'll hear a blip kind of like a sonar blip," Cooke said. Here's a spooky audio file that gives you an idea what the radio echoes sound like.
- The meteors aren't the only game in town: Saturn, Mars and Venus form a striking planetary triangle in western skies just after sunset, and the International Space Station is visible from many North American locations just before sunrise. Impress your friends by telling them that the bright star near the zenith at around 11 p.m. is Vega (made famous by the "Contact" movie). and that the bright "star" in the southeast is the planet Jupiter. If you're far enough north (or south), you might even see an aurora.
- If you want to share your meteor sightings with the world via Twitter - and find out where the sightings are sizzling - the MeteorWatch website is the place for you.
- Even if you miss the meteor shower completely, you can click through SpaceWeather.com's meteor gallery and catch up on the highlights. And you can start making plans for the Leonid meteor shower (peaking Nov. 17-18, unfortunately during a nearly full moon) as well as the Geminid meteor shower (peaking Dec. 13-14).
http://cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2010/08/11/4869749-see-and-hear-the-meteor-show
An all-sky camera captures a fireball streaking over Alabama on Aug. 3 during the Perseid meteor shower.
The Perseids are produced by trails of grit left behind by Comet Swift-Tuttle during its 133-year orbit. Earth starts plowing through the Swift-Tuttle debris in late July, and the height of the shower comes annually around Aug. 12-13. The Perseids are so named because they appear to emanate from a point in the constellation Perseus, also known as a "radiant." Because the radiant is in northern skies, Northern Hemisphere observers are in a more favorable position to see the shower.
http://cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2010/08/11/4869749-see-and-hear-the-meteor-show
A bright Perseid meteor streaks over buildings at the Stellafane amateur astronomy convention in Springfield, Vt., on Aug. 7.
When the late show is over, turn off the TV, step outside and catch a late, late show in the night sky. It's prime time for the Perseids, arguably the most accessible meteor shower of the year.
"If you want comfort, this is the shower to see," said Bill Cooke, the head of NASA's Meteoroid Environment Office at Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama.
http://cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2010/08/11/4869749-see-and-hear-the-meteor-show
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/38663094/ns/technology_and_science-wireless/
iPhone users have had more sex partners than Android and BlackBerry users
OkCupid's study of sex and smart phones is pretty hard to refute
A snapshot of 30-year-old smart phone owners and their sexual partners, based on a study of 9,785 members of the online dating community OkCupid.
msnbc.com
commentary
There's no bait 'n' switch headline here. What you read above is indeed a discovery, one made using solid data from a large group of fairly random people. In other words, argue all you want, but it's true.
OkCupid, the self-styled "best dating site on Earth," is by extension also the best repository of anonymous (or, rather, anonymized) data on socially active single people. While conducting a site-wide survey on photography, the Cupideers realized they had a data set of almost 10,000 people that showed two things: A type of smart phone and a number of lifetime sexual partners. The results were strangely non-random.
At every age group, the iPhone-owning posse has significantly more liaisons under their collective belt, with BlackBerry owners coming in second and Android bringing up the rear. In a controlled snapshot of the 30-year-old age group, depicted in the bar chart above, iPhone-owning women had had 12 sexual partners on average, twice the number named by Android-carrying women of the same age. In fact, although the trend applies to men and women, it's 30-year-old iPhone-owning women who come off as particularly promiscuous — statistically speaking, that is.
So, what's the takeaway? First, if iPhone-owning singles are not more sexually promiscuous, they're at least bigger liars and/or braggarts. And second, if you're under the impression that — thanks to OkCupid's study — you can actually gauge your chances of getting lucky by the type of phone your intended mate is carrying, you will most certainly fail. I mean, I'm no Dr. Phil, but just don't go there.
Update: A talented social scientist — who also happens to be my wife — casts some doubt on the statistical accuracy of OkCupid's findings. She writes:
- OkCupid's report shows *correlation* not *causality.* It may be that there's something about iPhones that attracts sexual partners (doubtful, but possible I suppose) or that people who have more sex are more likely to choose an iPhone.
However, cause and effect are impossible to decipher here.
