http://blog.nathanng.com incipient thoughts of an engineer Mon, 11 May 2009 08:06:32 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en It has been said that there are 4 ways to make a movie: Man vs. Man Man vs. Animal Man vs. Nature Man vs. Self Within these categories, the zero-to-hero motif is very common. After viewing many of these type of movies, I have discovered the formula that the movie writers use to construct these ... http://blog.nathanng.com/?p=30 I read an article a few years ago that in a small town somewhere in the South, a Wal-Mart store opened. A few years after it had opened, all the mom-and-pop stores that sold commodity items went out of business. Many local residents lost their jobs. Competition dried up and ... http://blog.nathanng.com/?p=29 I once overheard a coworker informing his friend that he was ecstatic that his entire 401K portfolio dropped by -15% in just over a few months. Hearing a reaction like that would have baffled any eaves dropper; I know I was. What investor on earth would love to hear that ... http://blog.nathanng.com/?p=28 Whether you favor Obama or not, today's inauguration is history in the making. The road before President Obama will  be a long one. Although he has made many promises, I hope he is able to keep half of them. Good luck. The above picture is my personal tribute to our President. http://blog.nathanng.com/?p=27 About two years ago when I was in Berkeley, I was sleeping in my bed when all of a sudden I woke up and felt like I was drowning; there was a constant flow of liquid going down my throat. I was forced to swallow the unknown substance. ... http://blog.nathanng.com/?p=21 Paying items by credit card is much better than cash. Here are my reasons: No Pennies: No need to cringe when the total comes out to being $10.01. Also, I hate carrying change in my pocket for several reasons: they're heavy & dirty, they make too much noise, and they tend ... http://blog.nathanng.com/?p=20 Often times, I get confused between some celebrities for other celebrities. And even after years of seeing some of them on television, I still cannot tell them apart! Here are some of the celebrities that I am talking about: Tyson Beckford and Tyrese Sean Faris and Tom Cruise Reese Witherspoon and Christine Taylor Patrick ... http://blog.nathanng.com/?p=19 Conventional wisdom tells us that athletic people have high metabolism while nonathletic people have low metabolism, right? After all, many of us can recount the times in which we ate the same amount of food and perform the same amount of activity as a friend throughout the day, yet you ... http://blog.nathanng.com/?p=16 In Statistics class the other day, we were learning Baye's Theorem and the concept of the theorem is heavily used in the medical field to find the probability of an individual having a disease after being tested positive. What was interesting to learn is the fact that a 99% ... http://blog.nathanng.com/?p=15 This quarter is probably by far my busiest. Between TAing a course (attending class, working out HW solutions, hosting discussion and office hours), taking two classes, auditing another, taking two seminars, doing research again (more meetings to attend to), studying for business cases, running everyday and still making it to ... http://blog.nathanng.com/?p=14