Last minute blogging before my work week begins...

• Wednesday was a hang-out-around the house day.  It was cloudy and thunder could be heard, although there wasn't that much rain.  Still it was enough to make me feel lethargic, and not do more than I had to. 
• I did take Tony for one bike ride and later, a walk.  We scooted to the newly opened branch of the bank at which my salary is deposited.  Tony actually did not run away as I was doing some transaction on an ATM.  It was fortunate for me in these circumstances that Tony has an interest in ATMs - he likes things that you have to press buttons to operate. 
• The walk with Tony in the afternoon just around the complex was very enjoyable.  Tony has developed a liking for throwing things in water.  Imitating me, he looks about the apartment grounds for stones to throw in the fountain pools as well as in the canal, that runs through the center of the apartment complex.  We had a fun session of jumping off a short  20 inch high embankment.  I would hold Tony by the hands and count to three at which time, Tony would jump onto the ground even tumbling at times but laughing all the while.  We encountered a grandfather with seven-year old grandson about to go on a bike ride.  I was with my limited grasp of Chinese able to ascertain that he had been a math teacher.  I told him, in Chinese, our basic details like my being Tony's father, his mother being Chinese, and Tony being nearly two years old.  I just rattled off this information even if I wasn't sure what he was asking.  When I told him I was from Canada, he kept saying the Chinese word for "cold" a lot.
• Other than this, I can say I have nearly finished my power-reading of Micheal Crichton's Timeline.  But when I say power-reading, you must understand that Tony constantly interrupts.  In a world without Tony, I would have finished the novel in one or two days.  With Tony, it is saying something if I can finish a novel in a week.
• Here is another article on the wild randomness a la The Black Swan.  The article asks this question:  How to explain the volatility of prices when production levels remain essentially the same?  Anyone who has studied the Supply and Demand curves at all should know.  The Supply and Demand curves take into account subjectivity of the participants in the market.  And as I can recall Conrad Black saying recently, psychology plays a big part in Economics.  And yet these Nobel-prize-winning financial models didn't predict the financial crisis last year because they seemed to have forgotten that humans and mobs can go irrational en masse.  Thankfully, these financial necromancers have been discredited.  But the damage they have done to Economics' reputation as a legitimate field of study will take years to overcome. 
• Today was a having to find something day for me.
• An image of Obama the Joker.