Jinn of Quality and Risk

Guardian: His work epitomized seductive disco music, also known as "make out" music. The heavyset musician enjoyed three decades of fame for songs like You're the First, the Last, My Everything and It's Ecstasy When You Lay Down Next To Me. White's deep, butter-smooth vocals and throbbing musical tempos emphasized his songs' sexually charged verbal foreplay. His 1975 song Love Serenade began with the purring, first-person lyrics: I want you the way you came into the world/ I don't want to feel no clothes ... 

Computerworld: Paul Mockapetris is surprised that the DNS (Domain Name System) hasn't changed more in the 20 years since he invented it, but he doesn't expect it to run out of steam any time soon. ... DNS is the distributed database system that reconciles domain names with IP addresses, sending Web surfers to the correct sites and e-mail to its intended destination. 

NYT: Dr. Paulos also offers an example of how an investing strategy can produce phenomenal returns on average, but leave most of its practitioners almost broke. Going back to the late 1990's, he imagines buying the initial public offering of a new company every week, selling the stock at the end of the week, then using the proceeds to buy and sell another I.P.O. the next week. For simplicity, assume that half of the I.P.O's increase 80 percent in their week of trading and half of them drop 60 percent. Start with $10,000. After two weeks, there are four equally likely outcomes for this strategy: both stocks gain (and the $10,000 investment jumps to $32,400); the first stock gains, the second drops (ending with $7,200); the first drops, the second gains (again producing $7,200); and both stocks drop (leaving just $1,600). Note that three of the four outcomes result in the investor's losing money, yet the average result ($32,400 + $7,200 + $7,200 + $1,600 / 4) is $12,100, a healthy gain. Continue this strategy over the course of a year, and that disparity between average gains and likely losses widens. The average final value of the $10,000 investment is $1.4 million, but the most likely result for investors is that the $10,000 has dwindle[d] to $1.95. What seems to be a paradox arises from the fact that most anyone can lose the $10,000, while the few very big winners bring the average up.

It should be obvious from the example that one is highly unlikely to recover from the quick initial losses... and that the same decrease is likely to result from further gambling. 

Andrew Zolli: Next year, the pixel is turning fifty. Though it may seem like a more recent creation, the pixel first appeared in New Jersey in 1954, the same year that Elvis cut his first record and the transistor radio was invented. At Princeton's Institute for Advanced Study, mathematicians and engineers created the first computer graphic--and the first instance of digital typography--on a computer the size of a Manhattan apartment. 

The classical speech I use every year to celebrate Independence Day: Gentlemen may cry, Peace, Peace — but there is no peace. The war is actually begun! The next gale that sweeps from the north will bring to our ears the clash of resounding arms! Our brethren are already in the field! Why stand we here idle? What is it that gentlemen wish? What would they have? Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!
— Patrick Henry (Son of Thunder) 

Today we celebrate one of the most important political documents in human history. It is so crucial to the freedom and prosperity we enjoy that one should properly kneel in awe in its presence — as I have proudly done.

By action of Second Continental Congress, July 4, 1776, the unanimous Declaration of the thirteen United States of America: WHEN in the Course of human Events, it becomes necessary for one People to dissolve the Political Bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the Powers of the Earth, the separate and equal Station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent Respect to the Opinions of Mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the Separation.

WE hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness — That to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed...

While the Declaration of Independence was the blueprint for America, the 1789 Constitution and Bill of Rights are its architecture.