Anyone who lives on the Upper West Side of Manhattan knows what it's like to walk across Broadway when the sign says WALK and then narrowly escape being hit by a delivery guy coming through on a bicycle. Or riding the wrong way down a one-way street.

There's a simple explanation. The delivery guys have been given the right at any time to regard themselves as either cyclists or a pedestrians. When the traffic light is green, they regard themselves as vehicles and ride. When the light is red they define themselves as a pedestrian who just happens to have wheels. They can choose whatever is advantageous at any time. Who can blame them? Life is short and they need the money.

I am reminded of this when I read rumors that some of the investment banks want to give up their bank holding company status now that their funding crisis is over.

I agree that they interact, but I think they should be kept as separate as possible. If you are a political hypocrite who preaches conventional moral behavior but doesn't practice it, I like to think that's relevant, but I could be persuaded otherwise. But I feel in my heart that the world of investors has no right to know Steve Jobs' sexual orientation or what he took sick leave for. If they need to know that, then maybe they also need to know the state of his personal relationships in general, and whether his family gave him a hard time last night, since these things certainly those affect his capacity to do his job.

2. I subscribe to breakingviews.com which I like because they keep you up to date without too much newspaper reading and because they take a somewhat moral approach to economics.

Here's something recent I agree with:

"Banks may have suffered inadequate pain. With green shoots sprouting around the world and mega-bonuses for bankers on their way back, there’s a risk that the industry may be returning to normality too quickly. There’s even a chance that governments won’t be radical enough about reforming the financial system, the UK Financial Services Authority’s Lord Turner has warned.

The general public will be outraged if bankers go back to the trough again, so soon after bringing the global economy to its knees. But it’s naïve to expect financiers to act as moral creatures. They are behaving perfectly rationally in pursuing their own self-interest – taking full advantage of the cheap money and support operations that governments have provided to them.

Given that an appeal to some higher interest won’t work, there are really only two ways of regulating bankers’ behaviour. The first is to make them suffer pain if they make bad decisions. Some of that has happened. Bankers in the City of London and on Wall Street were clobbered pretty badly in 2008. But most of them survived. Without the authorities’ aid, there would have been a near total wipe-out.

The second option is to regulate. And there is definitely quite a bit of regulation in the works. But enthusiasm for this detailed, slightly mind- numbing task could wane as memory of the crisis fades. The banks will also soon get their mojos back and start lobbying the politicians. Turner thinks there is a “real danger” that the authorities won’t seize the opportunity to fix the system provided by the crisis. Hopefully, he is wrong – because otherwise it won’t be too long before the industry runs amok, again."

A few days later I received an email link to the billing at my health insurance company.

He billed $140 for "office visit".

He billed $135 "lab services".

He billed $480 for "office surgery".

I was initially appalled at a total of $755 for a fairly routine visit, grateful as I was for the help. I was especially appalled at the billing for an "office visit" since it seemed to be double counting with the rest of the treatment.

Then I looked more closely at what the insurance company had paid out, and felt better.

They disallowed the office visit, saying quite correctly that this service was included in other procedures performed on the same date of service.

They allowed $40.17 for the lab services, which I take to be the nurse's treatment.

They allowed $208.72 for the office surgery, which I assume is what the doctor did to me.

The total they allowed was $248.89 and they paid 80% of that, which came to $199.12. I may be responsible for the mismatch, $49.77.

The end result is an arguably unsurprising charge for a routine visit to a doctor of your choice in Manhattan. I don't understand why he had to bill $755 to get paid a third of that. And I wonder if he would have billed me the same amount if I didn't have insurance.

Walking on the West Side this morning, I saw on Broadway the bus illustrated in the upper part of the photograph above. The nyc-atheists.org are having their say.

But then I made my way over to the East Side and there, outside the building I was heading to, was the truck shown in the bottom part of the picture.

God works in mysterious ways. His followers are forbidden from writing his name accurately for fear of committing blasphemy, but he doesn't have to pay for advertising.

I will keep you posted as I learn more.

If the time axis in classical physics is of cardinality Aleph 1, that of the continuum, which is noncountably infinite. then what is the cardinality of the number of memories you can have? Are they countable or uncountable?

It feels like for any given memory, you can always go "one decimal place further" or one level more granular in the details of the memory, and therefore there is no way to order them, and so they must be uncountably infinite.

But maybe this is an illusion and if I try it I will hit rock bottom in granularity, even though associations will keep coming.