December 2017 archive

2017 – A Year to Remember

This is a good time to reflect on 2017, a memorable year. I always think about these man made arbitrary boundaries such as weekends and end of the year which influences how one feels. We all get excited on Friday about the next two days and the same way we look forward to a new year during the last few days of December. And we make New Year’s resolutions which have a tremendously high failure rates.

In this piece titled “The Only Way to Keep Your Resolutions“, the author says “By Jan. 8, some 25 percent of resolutions have fallen by the wayside.” The author makes an argument that keeping up resolutions requires willpower and self-control which are extremely hard. Instead he proposes that we cultivate social emotions. “In nudging the mind to be more patient and more selfless, they benefit everyone whom our decisions impact, including our own future selves. In short, they give us not only grit but also grace.” As a skeptic of the typical New Year’s resolutions, this sounds like a plan to me!

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Net Neutrality

I hope everyone enjoyed Thanksgiving. We had a great time as always. Whereas for each of us there is a lot to be thankful for on the personal front, there is very little to be happy about in terms of what is happening around us in this country. One of the most disturbing topic (really mild in light of some of the other despicable news) is this administration’s resolve to revoke the net neutrality provisions that were passed in 2015. That in itself was a close call that many don’t seem to remember. I wrote about a court ruling that preceded FCC’s ruling in 2015 here. In short, the Federal Appeals Court’s rulings were based on the way the Internet Service Providers were classified and FCC basically reclassified the ISPs to make sure that the net neutrality can be imposed on them. The new chairman of the FCC wants to reverse them. This administration, whose only coherent message seems to be “reverse everything that the Obama administration did”, claims that deregulation is the key to innovation.

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