Sideways is a movie about wine. “Two men reaching middle age with not much to show but disappointment, embark on a week-long road trip through Californiaʼs wine country, just as one is about to take a trip down the aisle.” source: Amazon The movie was a huge success on a petite budget. It was made on a $16 million budget but earned over $100 million at the box office worldwide. The movie has 5 nominations and won “best adapted screenplay” at the 77th Academy Award (2005). Moreover, its success influenced California’s viticulture in a substantial and unexpected way. ...

When working with images in blog, one might need to adjust image size to fit different layouts and screen sizes. Here’s the hack: (delete the space at after double {{) {{ <figure align="center" src="/path/pic_name.jpeg" caption="caption_text" width="50%">}} Or, by pixel size: {{ <figure align="center" src="/path/pic_name.jpeg" caption="caption_text" width="300px">}}

Here’s a summary of the paper Persuading Customers to Buy Early: The Value of Personalized Information Provisioning, by Kimon Drakopoulos, Shobhit Jai and Ramandeep Randhawa, published online @ Management Science, in 2021. The paper studies the persuasion and pricing problem for a seller with informational advantage about its inventory level. Model: a seller sells a single good over two period to unit-demand buyers, out of inventory $Q$. The inventory level might be low (type L) or high (type H). The paper takes the assumption that there is a unit mass of buyers, with their private type of valuation for the product distributed according to $v\sim F(\cdot)$. Inventory level H = 1, and L < 1. ...

Apple music classical has a marvelous collection of Vladimir Horowitz’s piano recitals—all the years, all the remarkable concert halls and performance: Vladimir Horowitz: The Unreleased Live Recordings 1966-1983 This recording CD costs minimum of $250 on Amazon, but now it’s free and available in highest possible stereo quality on Apple Music Classical. Run, Rach lovers. Vladimir Horowitz: The Unreleased Live Recordings 1966-1983 is an extensive collection of 50 CDs, documenting Horowitz’s live performances across 17 years. This set includes performances from the world’s most prestigious and iconic venues (mainly across the United States and Europe), including Carnegie Hall in New York City, Constitution Hall in Washington, D.C., and the White House; and Royal Festival Hall in London, for the queen. ...

Steinway-piano dot com has the story of the meeting of the two perhaps most influential musicians among the piano community of the first half of the 20th century. Horowitz: the rising of a star Vladimir Horowitz and Sergei Rachmaninoff had each suffered great losses in the Russian Revolution of 1917. “We lost absolutely everything,” Horowitz told author, radio personality, and Steinway Artist David Dubal, as reported in Dubal’s book, Reflections from the Keyboard. “In 24 hours, all we had we lost.” ...

In Horowitz, fire sings through metal, glass, water and ice. The Carolina Philharmonic has the story “Zen and the Art of Piano | Vladimir Horowitz”, by David Michael Wolff. It’s about the artistic style of pianist Horowitz and his inspirational friendship with Rachmaninoff. The time was around the beginning of the 20th century—artists flee from the war and revolution in Russia to arrive in US: The young Horowitz had just landed off the boat in NYC and with all the sights the New World had to offer, his first stop was Rachmaninoff’s Manhattan apartment. The next day they met at the now famed basement of Steinway Hall so that Rachmaninoff could hear what the young artist could do with his colossal Third Concerto. They played through the entire work at two pianos. Can you imagine what that must have sounded like - these twin giants of 20th century pianism - their languages blending and playing off each other! ...

Andante Cantabile, generally means “singing and walking”, is a musical term—a descriptive marker atop a score to delineate the mood or tempo intended by the composer. It . This trend is particularly poignant in compositions of grand scale, where each movement, each phrase, carries its own distinct direction. Among the luminaries of the Andante Cantabile, Tchaikovsky’s String Quartet No. 1 in D Major resonates profoundly, a masterpiece that I’ve previously explored in an older post. Yet, even this pales in comparison to what may be the zenith of this expression: ...

landscape A significant portion of blood donations in China comes from college students. In 2016, 14 million people donated blood, with donation rates per thousand population among civil servants, college students, army personnel, and medical staff notably higher than the national average of 10.5—reaching 69.2, 78, 55.8, and 52.5 respectively, according to Xinhua News. Do a little bit more math unveils how much college students account for blood donation: in 2016, total Chinese college student is 36990000, so total people who participated in donation is 2,885,220—so, about 20% of blood donation comes from college students. Comparing to civil servants (total 7167000 civial servants in 2016), they contributed to about 3% of total donation. ...

This is one of the scenes that resonates with my current phase and inspires me a lot. [Joe] (After the successful performace) So uh, what happens next? [Dorothea] We come back tomorrow night and do it all…[pause] What’s wrong, teacher? [Joe] It’s just i’ve been waiting on this day for my entire life. I thought I’d feel different. [Dorothea] I heard this story about a fish. The fish swims up to this older fish and says, “I’m trying to find this thing they call the ocean.” ...

Strava, a fitness-tracking company, faced criticism after its global heatmap unintentionally exposed the locations of sensitive military bases worldwide. The heatmap aggregates and anonymizes public data from users who share their exercise routes, but in remote areas, this data can reveal concentrations of military personnel. Strave included a total 1 billion activities from all Strava data through September 2017. They claim to have a global heatmap that is the largest, richest, and most beautiful dataset of its kind. Indeed, look at the light up running paths on Stanford: ...