I found this fascinating the other day. I got something in the mail which I ended up showing my my cousin over at Chill Yo Islam Yo. He wrote up a good piece on it and I’ll quote a little below with the picture of the mailing:

When I met Shaykh Hamza Yusuf at the ISNA convention this year, I told him maybe if McDonald’s and Burger King started serving Halal across the states, more Muslims would start eating it, more halal means less haraam. He said “it’s good it’s not halal, it’s bad for your health anyways, you shouldn’t be eating it regardless”. Ha-ha.chillyoislamyo.com, Chill Yo Islam Yo, Jul 2009

You should read the whole article.

“Taste zyada, price kum” means ” More tasteful, less pricey”

Popularity: 15%

A bitter sweet announcement by Stevens regarding the first ever undergraduate program for Quantitative Finance in the country. My only disappoint is that it wasn’t done four years ago when I first came in to Stevens. I already know of one person who is interested and I am certain it is going to generate more interest as the years go by. Kudos to Stevens on this one.

Program in fast-growing, multi-disciplinary field to begin in fall semester 2009

By John Holl
Special to the Stevens News Service

Beginning in September 2009, Stevens Institute of Technology will launch the first undergraduate program in Quantitative Finance in the country.

This fast-growing, multi-disciplinary field is based on applying modern science, mathematical and engineering methods, and advanced technology to model and execute decisions in the financial domain. Quantitative Finance applications extend from classical investment portfolio management and the design of sophisticated hedging strategies to mitigate business risks.

“Quantitative Finance is becoming essential in the business world,” said George M. Calhoun, Executive-in-Residence at Stevens. “It is not simply enough to stand on the trading floor. The next generation of finance experts will come up with ways to out think the market.”

Quantitative finance – typically used with hedge funds – is more than just analyzing stock portfolios. It is at the heart of all modern financial strategies and operations, from managing pension funds and insurance companies to controlling operations operational risks at manufacturing companies and modeling the behavior of financial markets.

Offered through Stevens’ Howe School of Technology Management, the four-year Bachelor of Science undergraduate program will have a heavy emphasis on math and statistics, but will also teach student to get the understanding of the underlying economic substance of financial decision making, said Calhoun.

This has been quite a mess in Hoboken of a first month by Mayor Peter Cammarano where 33% of our last 3 mayors have NOT been arrested by the FBI – a pretty fascinating statistic courtesy of http://www.hoboken.org/ and probably a telling sign of the state of the cities in New Jersey.

Take a look at the portion of an e-mail that I have quoted below which shows Hoboken Revolt vehemently trying to educate their followers about laws in place regarding situations like this in Hoboken and in New Jersey:

If he (Cammarano) doesn’t resign and he has to take a leave of absence to attend to a personal matter, he can appoint an interim Mayor. That interim can be any one of his Directors or the Council President. At the moment, he has two approved Directors – John Pope and James Farina. Under the Faulkner Act, he has the right to appoint his Directors on a temporary 30 day basis that he can renew ever 30 days. Getting approval from the Council on his Director choices is really just ceremony.

Therefore, he can appoint Terry LaBruno, Angel Alicea, Todd Poole, etc. today if he wanted to so that he can appoint one of them Mayor should he decide to take a leave of absence. We would not be able to recall a newly appointed Mayor for the first year of his/her term as Mayor.

I wasn’t too familiar with The Faulkner Act and even when I tried to look it up a couple of places it seemed a little vague. So I went to the one person I knew would be able to tell me about it — Professor Wharton at Stevens. If there is something you want to know on politics, he’s your guy at Stevens. He even wrote a chapter once upon a time regarding the Washington Nationals and the role politics has played and plagued with that franchise.

I finally made my first trip down to Orlando to see Universal Studios and a couple of the Disney Parks and my initial and last reaction was: anyone who wants to be a kid again, certainly can be at these parks.

That statement is probably more true for Disney then for Universal simply because Universal seems to be geared more towards roller coaster rides and less towards the characters and cartoons we grew up around in our very young ages.

It is probably no coincidence that more parents and the older folks tend to enjoy Disney parks like Magic Kingdom and Epcot more because they often see characters walking about and around the park that they, themselves, knew when they were young. I can’t remember the last time my parents went out to an amusement park or any park in general with such attractions and really had a great time. From the 4D shows of Mickey and his orchestra to Mission: Space to Universe of Energy with Ellen Degeneres and Bill Nye the Science Guy.

For me, those were the two parks I visited (Epcot and Magic Kingdom) and as much as I loved the attractions such as Mission: Space and Soarin’, I was a bigger fan of getting my picture taken with the characters I grew up watching on television. A couple of characters that I wanted to run into while I was at the parks were Stitch, Donald Duck, Goofy and Buzz Lightyear. I was lucky enough to get three out of the four and I was quite disappointed not seeing any Toy Story characters or attraction but I will not complain too much. As you can clearly tell from the pictures I have attached at the bottom of the post, I don’t seem very disappointed in not running into Buzz, Woody and the gang.

As many of you are aware, I am part of the web-casting crew for Stevens Athletics on Empire8.tv. As a broadcaster, I have always felt that I can be as critical as appropriately necessary of a team (Stevens or otherwise) irrespective of the fact that I am hired by the Stevens Athletics Department. I think it is fair to say that my bosses have been more than fair regarding broadcasting practices that we do our best to provide as unbiased of a portrayal of a game as humanly possible. I think that accepting constructive criticisms is a part of growing up that allows programs to develop more thoroughly than just positive reinforcements of things they are doing correctly.

However, I have been thinking recently in conjunction with a friend of mine to start a discussion blog solely dedicated to talking about a given sport like soccer for which I am a big fan of and something that definitely has the most intense fan base on campus. This is a team that is less than 8 months removed from going to the National Championship game and has just released a very ambitious schedule of the 2009 regular season.

The moment the idea came to fruition, I had a feeling there might be some conflicting but legitimate issues that might arise. I don’t think any of the following issues are deal breakers in me trying to accomplish what I want to in the short run but could be more problematic in sustaining long term. I think the only reason this issue arises is because D-III is not nationally known as much as the D-I programs, so anything available is generally more than what’s out there for an average team.