S_Loan

If I were to tell someone that it is possible to reach
retirement age and still have unpaid student loans, you would think
I was in a joke-making mood. Well no, it is possible ( although the
complete telling is well beyond the scope of this blog, and human decency
 generally). And - given that tax time is here -  there is about to be an app for it.

Calculations are simple, really. All derive form the simple notion of
compound interest calculations. If I invest 120$ at 5% for ten years,
and leave the money in, at the end of the period I will have
120 x 1.05^10 dollars, which is 195.47$.

The problem, for the student loan, is that one often has incomplete info
like a slip that says you paid so much interest last year or whatever and the
underlying situation is unclear. This app should resolve all situations. Here comes:

I am setting to work in Visual Studio and should have a prototype before too long!

Of concern from a mathematical point of view, passage to base e gives a much more accurate
number for continuous accretion. Our 120$ investment calculated on the basis of ongoing interest
gain ends up being worth 120 * e^(.05 *10), which gives 197.85$. One would go to this formula for calculating a physical phenomenon, like ice melt.

The firdt calculation module could look like this:

DOWNLOADED VISUAL STUDIO COMMUNITY YESTERDAY. I'M A HAPPY CAMPER. 

THANK YOU MSOFT!!

Drinking Age

source: Le Monde Blogs, FRENCH FRIES
author: Audrey Sokolo, student at the University of Virginia
translation: doxa-louise

America's Students and Drinking Age

As you are no doubt aware, the legal drinking age in the United States is 21.When I arrived in Charlottesville for my year at the University of Virginia, I was not aware that this law might be having a major impact on the lives of American students. In effect, it complicates things for them. Most of my peers will be turning 21 during their fourth year at University. These students are thus 'under age' for most of their studies.

To get around this, most will resort to false identity cards. It is a system known by all, with sites proposing the creation of such cards against renumeration. Some are thus prepared to invest more than one hundred dollars to guarantee their entry to bars or clubs. The alternative solution is to spend evenings in fraternities, quasi-club associations which recruit by cooptation, where the 'under age' are allowed to consume alcohol.

Many of my friends find this rule for 21 hard to explain, given that the rest of the world allows alcohol consumption starting at 18. They are offended that it contributes to a massive market in false identity papers and believe it contributes to  'anarchical' consumption behavior for  alcohol.

In effect, under age students not being allowed to frequent bars legally, they would consume a great deal of alcohol during 'house parties', or again 'frat parties'. This uncontrolled and excessive consumption of alcohol would be partly responsible for sexual aggressions on American campuses, a widespread phenomenon. Obviously, one needs to take care evaluating these suppositions, and there are no studies, to my knowledge, linking excessive drinking and sexual aggression on campus.

One American friend, having spent some time in Europe confided to me that Europeans seem more mature in their alcohol consumption. European societies are more permissive with respect to alcohol, and students would learn to be more responsible. Whatever, Europe takes no back seat in the massive consumption of alcohol among students.

Noteworthy is that alcohol consumption reaches a peak during Spring Break, a week of vacation between March 8 and 15 where a number of American students - not all - leave for exotic destinations (Mexico and the Dominican Republic) where the legal drinking age is 18. As for myself, I am staying in the U.S. but heading for Miami Beach, Florida. It will be a pleasure for me to convey to you how this apparently necessary episode in the life of an American student,  transpires.


         

High Tide

Here is my current desktop background, a picture I quite like. It shows St-Malo,
the coastal city in France from which Jacques Cartier sailed. The tide gets very high
every eighteen years, and this is such one. The highest tide is predicted for March 23, 2015,
at 119 (out of a possible index to 120)

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News!

So she's a prototype, and will no doubt be very controversial. But hey, dancing politicians are the future.

Other element in the news: France has just legislated, after Germany, (and over and against its senate) that animals are not property but sentient beings.

More to come...

RedDress

The best red dress I have seen in this season, where they are quite the rage, is
this one (a St-Laurent, I believe) from the Oscars' show.

And to complete the family picture, I recently came across - while researching figures of speech -
this one, which made me laugh out loud.

Movies

As I wait for signs of Spring  - or at least the possibility of leaving my appartment for a bit of outside time - I have taken to watching  movies on YouTube. And I did make a discovery: unwatchable movies can actually be gone through if one takes them a bit at a time. Interesting. (Are movies made with this in mind in the Internet Age?  Another discussion, no doubt).

My first was an English movie, with Michael Caine as a retirement-age vigilante, Harry Brown. Was it pappy-porn? No doubt it could be seen as such. Yet the grit in which Harry and the lot live in this government-housing East London is well beyond what poverty, laziness, neglect or what-not could generate. It is pollution, environmental pollution which stains everything. And shrouds things in hopelessness. A transition movie, then.

My second find was Chicken Tikka Masala (from a scenario by an 18 year-old) and featuring a mix of English and Bollywood actors. The movie makes little immediate sense from an English perspective and neither, I am willing to bet, from an Indian one. The clue to that is in the title: Chicken Tikka is a spicy Indian chicken dish on a skewer.

The Masala version, eaten in England, is served in a gravy-ish tomato sauce to English tastes. Remind me never to order that!!

The hero is an Indian student in England whose Indian family joins to arrange for him a  traditional  marriage. Problem is, bloke is a homosexual living with his bfriend and English family. Hilarity ensues until, at the end, his confesses his true orientation and his family accepts his condition. Where’s the rub?

The mix of characters is odd at many levels. The Indian hero is played by someone from Trinidad. He and his chosen bride form an extremely odd couple. He  also pretends to be the lover to a larger blue-eyed English woman whose daugther calls him daddy. The long marriage ceremony which the family consents to is daunting, yet in moments, beautiful. One almost wishes for it be true, and for these bewildered souls to find peace together. But of course this is impossible, political correcteness will prevail.

The movie plays out a bit like an absurdist construct, each character living his own version of things in the face of reality. (And the folks reviewing the movie are having some trouble: is she the boyfriend’s mother, sister, aunt?) A suffering large woman made the butt of jokes of all can never be a comic stock charcter because this involves a double layer of insult: one is laughing at someone who is being laughed at. Vanessa is an advanced vodka alcoholic, foul-mouthed to drown out every insult and smirk around her. I like her.

No doubt the evil of arranged marriages is a well-worn meme of Indian cinema. Yet do we ever appreciate the immense richness of the culture. England has nothing to teach India about sexuality. One reads up on something as esoteric as transgender and India has Gods and Festivals on the case going back centuries. An interesting movie.

All Week!

Every year, it is the same sad tale. February comes around and I weigh in
(on the scales). And determine that I need to lose x kilos if I am to get into
my white jeans or what have you at the end of March.

So I need to diet. Yeah, yeah, it's weight maintenance and not weight loss,
based on good habits and plenty of ... you know.

Yet there is cosmic injustice here. February where I live is -20, dark, snowy,
and full of short-tempered people everywhere one goes. (You too, Madame?)
A nice fruit salad is a wonderful thing, but not in a blizzard!!

Just wanted to share that thought. Happy Poutine Week to all!!