The question isn’t who’s going to let me; it’s who is going to stop me? —Ayn Rand (1905-1982), Russian-born American writer and philosopher The intense and hostile clash in the Oval Office among US President Donald Trump, Vice President JD Vance, and Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelenskyy has astonished many observers. For
I first heard about John Nash from Professor Andrew Gelman, his former student—who also taught my Bayesian Nash Equilibrium lecture. On day one, he assigned A Beautiful Mind, Sylvia Nasar’s biography of Nash. It’s a hell of a book—459 pages of brilliance, madness and redemption. Nash cracked game theory, spiralled
‘My life has the tendency to fall apart when I’m awake, you know?’ — Ernest Hemingway It sparked a financial panic, spooked many of us and seized the attention of the entire world. It wiped out a trillion dollars of market value in a single day. That was the week
“Time for some Vitamin Sea” “My wife, Jillian” LOOKING at all the fancy private yachts, catamarans and boats at the marina in Langkawi, Kedah I wondered who owned each vessel (there’s one called Sea-E-O), and how wonderful it would be if they allowed us to use one of their boats
A new report, citing an unnamed official, revealed that the Employees Provident Fund (EPF) attracted a whopping RM13 billion in voluntary contributions last year from over 1.2 million members. That’s about 7.5 per cent of the EPF’s more than 16 million members or 14 per cent of its 8.7 million
The essence of mathematics lies in its freedom – Georg Cantor (1845-1918) German mathematician SINGAPORE is a country that takes the Internet seriously. Last week, its Ministry of Defence granted a deferment for the country’s compulsory National Service to a Singaporean teenager so he could finish competing in the finals
‘Not all those who wander are lost.’ – J.R.R Tolkien Even though Chinese New Year has passed, I still want to wish all my Chinese friends and those I have known throughout my life – a happy Chinese New Year. Many things about this country disturb me and I thought
Asian countries that have been enjoying trade diversion since the start of the trade war between China and the US in 2017 may not have it easy going forward. A large part of it will depend on how the US views trade diversion. The real question is what Washington will
Organisms need, to use the metaphor of Marcus Aurelius, to turn obstacles into fuel—just as fire does – Nassim Nicholas Taleb, American mathematical statistician. On Friday, I had never heard of an investment banker named Liang Wenfeng. By Monday, I was scrambling to decode an algorithm he’d built — one
So there I was, at yet another Bank Negara Malaysia (BNM) event, just a day after our first monetary policy committee (MPC) meeting of the year, when an investment bank CEO, dressed to the nines, pulled me aside for a chat. Oddly enough, he was the only person at the
