Peter Bromberg's UnBlog

I can write the saddest poem of all tonight. Write, for instance: "The night is full of stars, and the stars, blue, shiver in the distance." The night wind whirls in the sky and sings. I can write the saddest poem of all tonight. I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too. On nights like this, I held her in my arms. I kissed her so many times under the infinite sky. She loved me, sometimes I loved her. How could I not have loved her large, still eyes? I can write the saddest poem of all tonight. To think I don't have her. To feel that I've lost her. To hear the immense night, more immense without her. And the poem falls to the soul as dew to grass. What does it matter that my love couldn't keep her. The night is full of stars and she is not with me. That's all. Far away, someone sings. Far away. My soul is lost without her. As if to bring her near, my eyes search for her. My heart searches for her and she is not with me. The same night that whitens the same ...

You have often heard the expression "a leopard can’t change its spots" when talking about someone else’s behavior. We know it is impossible for anyone to change someone else, but it is ok to point out to someone how their behavior impacts you and them and how they could consider modifying it. Now, we may be told to get lost or we may plant a seed of thought in that person’s head that leads to some sort of change in their behavior. The first step in any personal change is becoming aware of and accepting what it is you want to change. It is then seeking the help and support you need to make that change. That may be friends, family, a therapist, self-help books, clergy. You may feel strong enough to make the change unaided, if so, good for you. We are not leopards so we can change our "spots"; we can become whatever we want to be, it is our choice.

Being comfortable in your own skin means to be satisfied with yourself. Often, in American culture, and certainly for women, this is interpreted in terms of appearance. However, true satisfaction and self esteem reflect your ability to cope with whatever challenges life has for you. Being "comfortable in your own skin" means to have self-confidence and inner peace. People who are centered like this do not need to make Google+ or Facebook posts about "me-me-me" and then wait for the inevitable adulation of +1's and comments from the peanut gallery of followers that they have developed in order to feel good about themselves. Read the following quote from a woman who finally found this out: "From the time I was a little girl, people told me I was pretty, but I never believed them.  Instead, I scrutinized myself in the mirror searching for ways to look better, not realizing that what I was really looking for was a way to be me and feel good about myself. As I f...

I find it disturbing that someone could let social media control their life to the point where it becomes so intolerable for them that they feel compelled to delete their entire profile and all of their content. But I just saw it happen to somebody whom I had regarded as a good friend. Google+ and other social media sites are tools. Used carefully and correctly, they can help you to build rewarding, meaningful relationships with real people, even though you are participating in a "virtual" world. Used improperly, they can make your life completely miserable and make you feel powerless to control your life and your destiny. When you have reached the point where you feel compelled to delete yourself and your online presence, you aren't just getting rid of the "bad" - you're throwing away all the good, too.  In other words, you may have sequestered yourself, but that doesn’t solve your problem, because all the personal issues that caused you to take this dr...

Not all or even most friendships need to fit all of the boxes (personal, professional, emotional, intellectual). But the best friendships — the intimate ones — do, especially both the emotional and intellectual areas. What do I mean by "intimacy"? Intimacy is a concept that is not exclusive to romance. It's also a potential descriptor of high-wattage interactions, feelings, and trust between two platonic friends. In a romantic relationship intimacy can be conveyed via physical contact — just snuggle up with her/him. In a platonic friendship intimacy must be expressed mostly via words and body language. So it can be hard to pin down in a friendship. Here's one possible sign of intimacy: When you're interacting with this friend, does your best and most natural self come out? Does being the person you want to be become effortless?  Do you feel a sense of trust and being able to confide in this person? Intimacy in friendships is one of those things...

I see a number of obviously married women (and some men) who post the kind of immature sexual-innuendo-laden silliness posts that if their spouses could read their posts, it would never have been posted. Of course if both spouses have an account and they can laugh about it, that's different. But I bet in a lot of cases these are just people who are unhappy in their marriages and are using G+ as a kind of sexual escape from that. The ones who have happy marriages you usually don't see doing this because they are busy enjoying the company of their spouse. I note this as a person who was once happily married and is now single. I don't want to speak in absolutes, but you can see this kind of stuff and i find it a little annoying, especially from married women. There are even these "eCard" sites that seem to capitalize on this quasi-sexual snarkyness. I must see a half dozen people i follow doing this, primarily women. If you are bored  and don’t have social contact ...

Abortion is unlike any other issue debated today. Millions of American women have aborted a child, and the pain, loss, and emotional need to justify what was done, both on the part of the mother and on the part of her loved ones, is strong and deep. This means that, in any debate, you may face an invisible thumb on the scale so that even the best logic will fail to persuade. The best you can do is arm yourself with the facts and deliver them in what you hope will be a winning way for your audience -- meaning you will need to make your case, in most instances, not in the language of faith or religion but in the language of the post-modern secularist. Arguing from Science The "classic" arguments from the other side collapse under the weight of science . Establishing the evidence of the beginnings of human life will ground your argumentation in science, giving you a much firmer foundation for additional arguments and preempting the charge that you are basing your position on fa...

I’ve been involved with the stock market since the early 80’s when I was a rookie broker with Merrill Lynch in Orlando. In fact probably the main reason I got out of stock trading and into programming was because I spent more time looking at the technical indicators than selling stocks and mutual funds! Back in the 1970’s legendary market guru Norman Fosback developed a “Daily Market Forecast” index that had an uncanny accuracy with predicting the direction of the next day’s market. Most of the items I have in this article were included in that index. There is a page on Yahoo Finance, http://finance.yahoo.com/advances   which provides most of these indicators daily. Another page on the WSJ, http://online.wsj.com/mdc/public/page/2_3021-tradingdiary2.html   provides the daily TICK and TRIN (Arms index) that are also components of Fosback’s indicator. I put together a console application that can be run daily via Task Scheduler to scrape these values daily and store them in...

When it comes to the alleged “fiscal cliff”, both supply-siders and Keynesians are in agreement that jumping off would bring tragic economic consequences. However, conventional wisdom is nearly always wrong, and I believe it’s wrong here. We won’t reach the fiscal cliff because the incentives that drive politicians ensure a deal. With the economy still limping, very few politicians will want to be on record as having voted to raise rates of taxation. Every member of the House of Representatives is up for re-election in 2014, a third of all senators are, and they’re not going to vote for large tax increases. Considering spending, though it nearly always occurs at the expense of growth, politicians exist to spend our money. We’ll never jump off the "fiscal cliff". For Keynesians like Obama and his advisers, they’re deluded by the false belief that government spending is an economic stimulant. So automatic reductions in spending by the feds would directly subtract...

“Fiscal cliff” is the popular term used to describe the conundrum that the U.S. government will face at the end of 2012, when the terms of the Budget Control Act of 2011 are scheduled to go into effect. Among the laws set to change at midnight on December 31, 2012, are the end of last year’s temporary payroll tax cuts (resulting in a 2% tax increase for workers), the end of certain tax breaks for businesses, shifts in the alternative minimum tax that will take a larger bite, the end of the Bush tax cuts from 2001-2003, and the beginning of dozens of new taxes related to Obamacare. These tax changes affect everyone -– not just “the rich”. At the same time, the spending cuts agreed upon as part of the debt ceiling deal of 2011 will begin to go into effect. According to Barron’s, over 1,000 government programs – including the defense budget and Medicare are in line for “deep, automatic cuts.” This bill was signed into law by Barack Obama on August 2, 2011 . Republicans should allow th...