AC Milan - Parma 4-1

AC Milan scored 4 goals again tonight to clinch a comfortable win over underperforming Parma. Similarly to the game on Sunday (Lecce-Milan 3-4), an AC midfielder scored a hat-trick (Nocerino). More importantly I see a genuine willingness on the side of the team to fight back after the bad start of the season. There are a lot of people that think that AC Milan managed to clinch a draw on Camp Nou just because of LUCK. Well, I choose to disagree - I see a team of fighters that keep pushing even if all hope seems gone. I'm for once really optimistic for Milan's future in the CL. The team seems to have regained the motivation and the belief in their own abilities that lacked so much last year against Tottenham. I'm not afraid of the challenges to come - bring them on: our Prince and Zlatan will be ready!

On Time Invariance and Quote of the Day, Day 2 and 3

Most physical processes are time invariant - i.e. they are as likely to happen backward as they are to happen forward. The general notion of an arrow of time exists mostly because of the Second Law of Thermodynamics. This law stipulates that the entropy of an isolated system cannot decrease with time. That is the processes that increase entropy are favored over those that decrease it and the universe is therefore moving inescapably from a state of order to a state of chaos. Entropy is not time invariant - entropy is actually time itself.

The human life seems to somehow contradict the Second Law of Thermodynamics - as we accumulate knowledge, we increase order. However, this is only one side of the process. With every breath we take, we also wear off a little bit more the cells of our body. We are decreasing the entropy on a macro level but be pay be increasing the entropy on a micro level.And then comes the big singularity. Sooner or later, we all die (regretfully in the last few weeks we've lost a lot of great people in the worlds of computing and motor sport). In an instant the entropy increases significantly. Describing his own fear of death, Steve Jobs said:

2."I want to believe in an afterlife, that when you die, it doesn't just all disappear. The wisdom you've accumulated. Somehow it lives on. But sometimes I think it's just like an on-off switch -- click and you're gone."

This quote is from the article "How to live, and die, like Steve Jobs" by Mashable's Pete Cashmore for CNN. I think that somehow he is write - we do not suddenly become chaos - the order that we create lingers on. There are people whose life, we've touched (in the case of Steve millions of them). Steve's legacy is the increased understanding of not only computing, but also marketing and strategic management. Some could say that because of his life the entropy in the communication and technology sector decreased. And somehow his spirit lives in all of us that are willing to learn from his lessons. For Marco and Dan, I can only say that they leave as a legacy the love and adoration their fans felt for them - making the lives of so many people a little happier. We should all remember what Yoda once said:

3."Death is a natural part of life. Rejoice for those who transform into the Force. Mourn them do not." (Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith)

We should all celebrate the life of those we lost because, while becoming a part of the increasing entropy (i.e. heat), they also left order and love behind for us. I hope that this will be the last death-related post. It was certainly not my intention but things outside my control happened. So long champions :(

Interesting Quotes Day 1

I decided to start (hopefully) daily running list of interesting, inspirational or just funny quotes. The first one is from Steve Jobs, who also recently passed away (such a sad month).

1. You can't just ask customers what they want and then try to give that to them. By the time you get it built, they'll want something new.

This quote is from the article "The Entrepreneur of the Decade" by Bo Burlingham and George Gendron for Inc.'s April 1, 1989 issue. Funny title when you ponder it from perspective. What should be interesting for marketers is the distinction between needs and wants that it underlines. I belief the cause of Apple's amazing turnaround has been precisely the understanding of universal needs. Wants can be culture or time specific, they are only one possible way of satisfying a need. Needs, on the other hand, are general and not related to a particular context. So no, it is not that Apple does not do market research - they simply look for the underlying need and come up with a new way to fill it. You could say that this is precisely the desired "feedforward" loop in research.

RIP Marco

Another sad day in the history of motor sport. Last Sunday, we lost Indicar champion Dan Wheldon and today we mourn MotoGP youngster Marco Simoncelli. So long Marco, rest in peace. I looked back today on what Michael wrote about Dan on his website (http://www.michael-schumacher.de): "All of us, we try to convince ourselves constantly that motor sport nowadays is so safe that nobody has to lose his life, but then unfortunately that`s still wishful thinking. I have heard this morning about the terrible accident which caused Dan Wheldon to die, and it just left me shocked and speechless. My thoughts are now with his family."

I sincerely hope that this will be the end of the sad news for the next couple of years because it is too much and I can't stop wonder - "What if? What if this happened in F1?" The last Formula 1 race was just 7 days ago but it seems like forever. The sport is different now and I pray that this sadness does not leave a mark on the India race.

Losing this young cyclist is so terrifying that I couldn't even process the Manchester derby properly. 1-6. I am speechless. It was on Old Trafford and I've never seen them so unable to fight back. The defense was horrible and I'm slowly losing trust in De Gea's ability to wear Van der Saar's gloves.

Economy and Math

Economist have a very strange relationships with mathematics. They love it when it serves their purpose but when it suggest that the current economic system is a complete rubbish they conveniently disregard it. So when they look at the normal distribution and it conveniently predicts that a market meltdown is an outlier, they really love math. However, when it suggests that you cannot just print more money because 0 does not equal 1,000,000,000, they tend to disregard math because it does not help their case.

The problem with the present economic theory is that it is based on the flawed assumption that just because the mathematics of a certain hypothesis is beautiful or ease then it is necessary true. This is based on the erroneous principle called Occam's razor that the easiest explanation is the true one. This assumption works really well to refute a lot of wrong representation of reality that have too many assumptions that invalidate them but it is contradict by a fundamental part of physics theory. The math of quantum mechanics is not easier then the math of the classical mechanics, exactly the opposite, but it is the true one. Just because an explanation since complex from the point of view of ordinary human experience does not make it a priori wrong. The same holds for mathematical beauty: reality is not judged on the basis on how nice the mathematics seems, it is based on the empirical evidence that supports the math.

The problem is that there is empirical evidence that suggests that the normal distribution and the random walk theory are not applicable to the real world (i.e. you cannot really have 25 standard deviation events three days in a row and assume that the model still holds - such events are assumed to happen only once in the history of the human race) but the economist would not abandon their nice assumptions because "it does not make sense" and "it is not logical" or "it contradicts everything we have been taught by now." Well the thing with science is that sometimes everything you have been previously taught is indeed WRONG and instead of "patching" the old theory, one should start from the ground up and challenge all his assumptions.

Economy is a lot like religion: it produces dogmas in which you have to believe even when they contradict experience. The problem is that it affects the lives of all people on this planet in a way in which even the Roman Catholic church couldn't have dreamed of in the Middle Ages.