After viewing the fields of Ojai yesterday, we decided to go to Pasadena today, with a quick detour to La Cañada Flintridge. A big thank you to A Patel, who suggested in the comments on the post about Montecito that we stop by The Huntington Library, Art Collection and Botanical Gardens. This place is wonderful! I knew next…
After writing about the mathematics of Borda count voting systems as applied to the Eurovision contest, I realized I never posted the Russian performance, presented by the virginal 17-year old Tolmachevy Sisters. Bask in the symbolism of both the staging and the orchestration choices. Those of you with a history or music background will spot it…
The Washington Post this morning had a story about the political discontentment in Russia over the outcome of the 2014 Eurovision competition. Given that a few days ago, I outright said I’d personally emigrate were I living in Russia, this confluence of events is particularly timely. I’m going to use it as an excuse to talk about something known…
I spent my morning taking the Moroccan empire to victory in Civilization V against the world thanks to an extensive network of highly lucrative trade routes before going to the bank with Aaron to sign the contract for a new working capital line of credit our banker recommended. The whole experience was a pleasant surprise.
After dinner at Pierpont’s in Union Station, we made our way over to the symphony hall, arriving a few minutes before the orchestra took the stage. Tonight is a big departure from our usual Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven. Particularly of interest to us were the second and third groups on the program. The second was Rodrigo’s Concierto de Aranjuez for Guitar and Orchestra, which was performed by Jiyeon Kim, a guitar virtuoso.
My youngest sister made our day yesterday by stopping by the house to visit for a few hours. She had been at the NakaKon convention in Overland Park and saw an 8-bit pixel Metroid collectible she thought I’d love. She was right. Upon holding the specimen, I temporarily reverted to a six year old, 1980s-living, NES-dominating beast. Behold, and listen to the theme if you need some adequate inspiration.
Having reached the end of the road in the third installment of the Final Fantasy XIII trilogy, requiring 150+ hours of game play over a four year period to climb the highest levels of power in creation and culminate in a conclusion to the series, I’m struck how the entire thing is really a well-done repackaging of Plato’s Euthyphro dilemma. In case it’s been awhile since you delved into the classics, the philosopher’s famous question posed in Greece more than 2,300 years ago can be summed up as (made singular since a majority of world religions are now monotheistic): Is something “good” because God says it is good, making it dependent upon His will or does God say something is “good” because it is inherently “right”, making goodness independent of His will?
Almost four years ago, I beat Final Fantasy XIII and blogged about it that evening. I never got around to playing the next game in the series, so over the past two weeks, I managed (mostly by fitting it in late at night) to put somewhere around 50 hours into Final Fantasy XIII-2. Now, I’m working on the final game in the trilogy.
I’m going through the corporate bond filings of pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly just out of curiosity. They have a huge patent cliff coming up, during which time as much as 40% of their revenue base will be exposed to generic competition. I wondered what it would do to the risk metrics on the senior bonds so I pulled the Moody’s rating and reading over the figures as I listen to an old 1970s song called Snookeroo.
With the holidays concluded, too many Thanksgiving, Christmas, and reunion dinners to count, endless nights with family and friends, and the bulk of the busy season behind us in the businesses, we spent today in our pajamas as the snow fell outside, cooking a pot roast and working on some projects we wanted to finish. (Technically, we still have one Christmas celebration left, which was postponed until later this week.)
