I don’t pretend to understand international politics, but when I look at statistics table like the one below from The DHS:

But how do we justify that the ratio of Asian Indian naturalized into the US is somewhere between 1.7 and 1.3 times the number of Chinese from PRC naturalized into the US?

1.7 times is almost twice the number. Consider a simple calculation. suppose that X is the percentage of world’s population that the US would like to have as it’s citizens. Would X * 1.1e9 be less than X * 1.3e9? Instead of being almost twice as much?

What the heck am I missing here? As dutiful citizen of the US, I’d like to point out that we might be making a serious mistake here not sampling fairly from the world’s population!!

Note that the ratio goes the other way. The legal immigration of Chinese Permanent Residents exceeds that of India to the ratio of 1.4 times as much. So why is it that only 40% of PR of Chinese origin choose to become Americans and as much as 77% of Indian origin choose to be come Americans?

Dare I suggest that Chinese are not as competitive? Less adaptive to the Culture of the United States? Too loyal to their indoctrination from Communist upbringing?

What could possibly be the reason why this is  happening? Well, perhaps this may shed more light on the subject. The number of newly issued visas by country breaks down as follows:

So, according to this table, the US actually imports 3 times as many Chinese people to work in the US as the number of Indians recruited. However, Indians were more able to bring their relatives into the US by Immediate or family preference Visa’s. So it would appear that Chinese people are being brought over as labor for the American economy and the Indians are just bringing their families over to live.

It seems that China contribute more to the American Economy than India, but India contribute more to the USA by way of culture (Slumdog), population, and of course consumers.

Overall, I think Indians have a better strategy than Chinese. Slaves and Laborers  are really not part of the population until they rebel and live up to human level of quality in life. Then they can even begin to be part of the society.

Sigh, the ever suffering Chinese…

I made an interesting observation with a co-worker today. It would seem that the “short sale” in real estate world can be viewed as a call option for the buyer and a put option for the lender. Short sale takes place when the owner (and eventually seller) does not pay mortgage for 6 months, and bank that loaned him the money to buy this house(the lender) agrees for him to try to sell the house at a price below his loan amount to minimize the bank’s loss (which would have been the entirety of the remaining loan principle minus whatever the house is worth) The missing amount between short sale price and the remaining loan principle is either forgiven or put into a separate payment program which the owner/seller would have to pay over the next few years.

This situation, though somewhat painful for the owner, creates a great investment opportunity to a buyer. The conventional wisdom is that short sales are some percentage below market value of the house. So for instance, if the house that is for short sale is worth $100,000 at market value, then it is likely that the lender will allow me to buy it at $80,000, or $75,000, or even $50,000 depending on the market and the house.

A buyer, may put in an offer at a price slightly higher than 20% discount (after inspecting the house, of course), say 10% below market. This gives him the advantage over all other buyers who will have made offer assuming 20% to 25% mark down.

If all goes well, he will receive an approval from the lender of the short selling owner, typically three months after the offer is accepted by the seller and submitted to the lenders.

At that point. the buyer has the option of continuing with the purchase at 15% discount, or making an offer on a different, and presumably better, house at the same price.

So, by being involved in a short sale, he creates a call option for himself on an opportunity that may or may not be a good deal. But this choice is almost entirely free. (The offer, cost only fees to a realtor).

And often, it is an entirely legitemate reason that bank takes too long or market recovers for buyer to back out of the offer. So it is nearly zero risk and zero cost to the buyer, but the upside is possibly 10% to 20% guaranteed mark-down from market price of a house.

Now, I realize that the lender may be doing the same thing, which is that they are using the offer as a probabilistic put option, which just means that the arbitrage is shared between the buyer and the lender…

This appears to be common practice amongst professional real estate investors and contractors who flip houses. Just today, I saw two houses close within the same week, the short sale being a good 25% larger in square footage, has an additional pool, but identical lot size, right next to each other on the same street (literally xx1 and xx3 on the same side of the street), exactly same age. And the larger home with the pool that is a short sale sold for something like 7% less than the smaller house right next to it. This illustrate an expert use of this technique I describe above.

I of course also suffer from the same situation. What I paid for my house, bought a short sale that closed exactly within a week before my closing next block over(1xx vs. 2xx). And that house has twice the square-footage of my house, same lot, 10 years older than my house.

The only thing that it does put to question is the professional ethics of my realtor, my seller, my financial agent. Only these people knew of my purchase progress, and only they could have informed that short-seller (or that lender) of my purchase price. I am beginning to wonder about the professional integrity of the people in the real estate business in the San Francisco Bay Area….

America is such a wonderful country. It’s so vibrantly full of life and cultures. Today, somebody blanked my computer screen while I tried to work.

My initial reaction was to search on google

“Jewish Holidays in 2010”

because I know that previously, some people with advanced hacking skills will hack into my computer and blink my screen or screw with things on Jewish holidays so that I stop working and observe it with them.

Nope, nothing Jewish today, next I searched

“Indian Festivals in 2010”

For some reason, my company is gaining Indian population at an alarming rate. Nope, nothing Indian today… And plus we aren’t competing or anything, so it makes no sense for them to mess with my computer.

“Christian Holidays in 2010”

I said to google, and google said “nope”, today is not a Christian holiday either.

WTF, why would somebody be screwing with my computer on a non-holiday? And why did they screw with my computer on their holidays to start with? Is there a deity unknown to me in each of these religions and corresponding cultures that espouse slothery? Is there a god in their religion that says: “Today, you may not work!!”

Man, I feel so ignorant.

Oh, and the Muslims. That’s the people who believe in Islam a religion, as far as we’re taught in America, that is essentially an organized terrorist organization.

Oh, and Koreans, Man! America is so complicated… Has Koreans invented a saint of some kind after their separation from Chinese culture that I don’t know about?

Which of you deities have I offended today that causes my screen to blank every time I’m about to type a command into my console?

what kind of animal sacrifice must I make to appease you? Can I light some fireworks on July 4th? Does that count???

Happy July 4th everybody!!

There’s something strange about the Incentive Stock Option system at Startups in America. Suppose the founders want to make employees work harder. It is to his greatest advantage to give his employees as few stock options as possible. This is not to preserve his own stock options or reduce dilution, but to motivate the employees to work harder.

Because typically, bosses at work get somewhere from 100x to 1000x the stocks an employee has. So a founder who is comfortable with a $1Billion IPO means his employees will only get similar level of reward if the company IPO’s at $100Billion or even $1 trillion. So the employee has to aim much higher than the founders.

This may explain why often the executives at companies will make obviously irrational decisions. They already have $10million, why go to the extra leg of getting to $20million?

But the employee has only $100k, getting to $200k is a huge improvement on quality of life.

I came to an interesting measurement of age of computer today. Suppose we use something simple minded (such as throughput rate of Integer Arithmetics) as measurement of computing power. Let us further suppose that Moore’s law is really followed by the development of computers during it’s entire development since the very first transistor, then we can make a very interesting calculation.

Let T be the total computing power of all humanity today. (This should be estimable based on number of CPU’s Intel and AMD produces each year).

Let O be the origin where the very first transistor was invented, when the total semi-conductor based computing power of humanity is some small number like (1 integer add)/minute.

Fit an exponentially growing curve between the total computing power between time T and O, plot a graph of this curve with time on the X-axis and total computing power of humanity on the Y-axis.

Now, then, to determine the power of your computer (or computing cloud that you own), simply find on the Y-axis the power of your computer and drop down to X. At that point you can claim:

“My computing cloud is equal to all of human computing power as of February of 1981.”

Makes for great PR snippet.

Also, you can use it as a pitch to get more funding:

“Our computer cluster is still in the 1980’s !!”

“But Dad! My laptop is like so 1950!”

Okay, I admit it, I’ve been fooled.

So, apparently, Menlo Park, CA, even though it has a street called the “Edison Way” is not the original Menlo Park (NJ) where Edison worked.

%$%#^$^%$^@%

Why is it that people think it’s gay to watch Mamma Mia the movie? I just caught it on HBO last night and man, there were some hot chicks in the movie dancing around showing off some nastily huge boobs. Man! She’s so sweet, I woke up with a tooth ache this morning. (oh, hey, AND she’s from Pennsylvania too)

I mean, sure, there’re hot guys in the movie, but it is the fact that hot guys and girls mix that makes it heterosexual, right? So, why are guys gay to want to watch insanely bueatiful girls and some suitably pleasant boys flirt, kiss, hug, and roll around in the sand in romantic prelude to their wedding?

Recently, I had the pleasure of realizing that a company’s current and future performance may be correlated with the Assidity of the company.

Assidity, NB not Assiduity, means the amount of Ass-hole like behavior exhibited by employees and executives of the company. The behavior does not have to be directed exclusively to internal or external persons.

I’ve worked at several fortune 500 companies in the recent decade. The assidity of the company increases when the company, either as a collective, or by executive decision, is trying to shed some employees. By increasing assidity of the company, some employees or officiers may elect to leave the company. Typically this happens only in two situations.

a.) the company is running out of money and cannot support it’s currently employeed personnel.

b.) the company is doing really well, and the departure of some personnels means more bonus/stocks for those who stay.

It is easy to distinguish the two types of assidity. Type A assidity is typically justified with a long term plan that cancels some projects. Type A assidity can be in the form of “changing directions” in the company’s business. Both of these changes may seem to make complete sense, but in reality only affect a selected, identifiable group of employees.

Type B assidity on the other hand will rarely be justified. The company is performing well, so it has the leeway to take risks that it would otherwise not afford to take. Assidity may be applied to a particular lucrative customer. To any passer-by, this type of assidity will seem completely absurd and absolutely irrationaly.

Now, the question that remains, is, as a non-insider, how do we determine the amount and type of assidity a company has. And once we can quantify this measurement, we can apply it to stock price prediction and profit from other people’s assidity.

Yeah!!!!! awesome!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

🙂

Obnoxious thoughts:

Once again, it takes a Chinese girl to prove that it doesn’t take D cups and large hips to be sexy and absolutely doable!!! I mean, gosh! she doesn’t even have a pretty face, and yet, man… so hot!!

Did the lead bully speak and act a lot like Jet Li? Is this like an insult from Jackie Chan? haha

Jakie says: “Everything good about me started here…”

Dre’s good. Somewhere, I read that people thought he doesn’t resemble his dad… I have to agree. But there’re a lot of mannerism that only Will Smith could pass on.

Personally, I think the movie did too much…. Introducing modern China will take like several decades of movies like this, and then it moves on to introductory Kungfu by Jackie Chan, who obviously wants to showcase the philosophy of Chinese and history and qi and iq and and and and and and…. Sigh, alas, their film skills are not up to par with Jackie Chan’s kungfu moves….

Great attempt, but I would like to see inter-cultural movies like this go back to taking the jacket off, and putting the jacket on.

Having said that. DAMN!!! I guess it takes a single black mom to goto China in series style! I feel that she must be one of the most believable character… Damn! I’ve never seen a black women in a qipao, but damn!

Man, Meiying dancing to lady-gaga is so, err,, what’s the expression, makes people randy.

But admittedly, Dre saying that “meiying should start a band/dancing group” is like him wining a Chinese Kungfu tournament. really? somehow, I don’t see him saying this earnestly and convincingly, just as much as the bullies don’t want him to win the tourney, EVEN tho that is the story.

Carminative
means a vegetable that combats flatulence.

Buxom
means “vigorously and healthily plump”