Healtcare - is more better?

Riveting piece of writing from New Yorkers' Atul Gawade. He parachutes into McAllen, TX and tries to find out why the county has the highest healthcare costs per capita in the country. I wont even try to distill what he has to say - worth reading every single word.

Free the markets? ... Now right now, not right now.

The housing crash has encouraged the government to get very hands on in managing the economy and put the free market principles on hold indefinitely. Calculated Risk has a list of government programs that are in place that impact the housing pricing.

The US government is now in the business of propping up house prices, and that is going to be bad for the economy and taxpayers in the medium and long run. The true price of housing is very hard to figure out right now - and certainly prices will be lower if these programs go away. And many of these programs are extremely inefficient, costing the taxpayers 10X more than the actual benefit delivered to the homeowners. And the artificially low interest rates are also wreaking havoc on many parts of the economy and causing a boom in risky assets - and that bubble will pop sooner or later. The quicker these distortionary policies end, the better off the economy is going to be. Until then, rational people will stay clear of investing in anything that has to do with housing - that puts your financial fate on the hand of the government, a risk that caclulates out to be not worth taking.

Steve Jobs Keynote Marathon

Watching a series of Jobs' keynotes at Macworld after he took over the reins in 1997. A summary of his presentations:

1997:
* Select a new board of directors
* Create meaningful partnerships (adobe, intuit, and MICROSOFT)
* Focus on being great, and not on competitors
* Key message in sober tone - focus on survival

1998:
* Kick off talk with Maslow's hierarchy of needs - survival, safety, social, esteem, self actualization - and how apple is progressing in these areas
* iMac
* Simplify product lineup (Pro/Consumer, desktop/laptop) - Classic!
* Transition from Os8 to OsX

1999:
* Quicktime streaming server (limited impact, but contributed to iTunes)
* Os9 (key feature: Sherlock). This was a stopgap anyways until OsX.
* iMac (new usb devices, software - including Halo, IBM Viavoice, MS Office 98)
* The big announcement is iBook - the consumer laptop. (Kodak Moment: It has a ... HANDLE. crowd goes nuts)
* And ONE more thing - Airport wireless networking (crowd goes nuts again)

2000:
* Mac OsX. Single OS strategy.
* Carbon, Cocoa, Aqua
* ... you spend months working on a button ...
* Red, yellow, green traffic lights for close, minimize, maximize.
* Key technique - set up a challenge for yourself and blow it away. (But how do you view the dock if its too small --- well we have something called magnification - crowd goes nuts)

2001:
* Retail stores
* powerbook titanium g4
* OsX launch in summer
* iTunes - more powerful yet simpler. And iPod. The shoots of apple's media strategy.

The story is pretty clear - Jobs focused on what was key at any given point in the company's history and put his all and his best people into that problem. He obsessed over it - and out thought everyone else. The results are nothing but spectacular.

The presentation technique is outstanding as well. No bullets. The projector is to show graphics, and not a mnemonic device. The audience is there to listen to you, and not to read stuff off the screen. His style is thoughtful and respectful - he makes the audience believe that he is in analysis mode and their feedback is valuable. The phrasing is precise - with emphasis on key phrases, which are reinforced on screen. The excitement comes through. There is very little focus on self, and everything is about the products.

California vs Texas

Couple of months ago Economist did a cover story comparing California and Texas, and now I noticed another article harping on the same topic.

The net migration out of the state is troubling. If it were not for the immigrants (both high tech and low tech), the state would be significantly shrinking. A few of the contributing factors are: budgeting by ballot, 60% majority required to pass budget, ceiling on property tax (which is pretty much older californians voting themselves a tax cut), and a mushrooming prison population. The high tech ecosystem is still well and alive, but with the education system falling behind, its not clear if we are going to be able to compete with the likes of bangalore and beijing. And unless there is a catastrophic crisis - things wont change.

Pinker on Decline of Violence

As we get caught in the constant focus on negativity in the media, its hard to lose track of the grander picture. Violence has been on decline over the ages, centuries, decades and years. Thanks, Professor Pinker for not limiting your talks to linguistics!

Eight Best Questions from Venture Capitalists

Great post on Techcrunch by Redfin's Glenn Kelman.

1. What’s your deadly sin?
Sequoia’s Roelof Botha said he only invests in companies that let consumers indulge in one of the seven deadly sins. He rattled them off with alarming familiarity. “You don’t want to be the site that people should use,” Roelof said. “You want to be the site they can’t stop using.”

... and many more.

Cautionary Tale of How Not to Respond to Critical Questions

When Michael Arrington (or any media rep) asks a tough question, its better to be transparent and respectful, rather than take the route of aggression and denial. The CEO in question here responded with french, and started a war of words with the TechCrunch head. It was quite futile really - as a friend of mine said - "People listen to Bloggers, not to bland CEOs".

It started out here:
http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/10/31/scamville-the-social-gaming-ecosystem-of-hell/

And ended with this:
http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/11/05/scamville-new-offerpal-ceo-admits-mistakes-makes-bold-promises/

Its all quite tragic really - a founder who probably worked years to build their company gets edged out because of a public faux pas. However, it was not just the outburst that led to the demise, but really shady business practices that were spotlighted because of the vehemence of the response. And most people, including investors, figured there must be something behind all of this.

In order for online advertising to gain legitimacy and share of budget proportional to attention share, there must be transparency across the whole value chain - all the way from the users, to the site publishers, to the ad networks, and advertisers. Thanks to Michael, this conversation has been initiated - lets see where it goes from here.

Vacation Stress Level

From Piled Higher and Deeper

Public Relations - Propaganda's Teenage Cousin

Interesting Google tech talk.

"People's perception of sizes of risks are based on emotional and not national factors"
"Managing the outrage is more important than managing the hazard"
"Marketing is a battle of perception, not products. Truth has no bearing on the issue"

What we have seen in the last decade, or even the last few weeks, is that we are still quite susceptibility to propaganda techniques. While people may think and claim to be rational and logical, they are inherently biased and tend do gravitate towards opinion sources that line up with their own. There is also the herd effect or the tipping point type behavior that still is stronger than ever. Framing tactics are still used frequently and effectively both by politicians as well as corporations.

Question authority and your own instincts, ask for facts, separate the message from the messenger - and encourage everyone else to do so. One day, we will, as a species overcome the shortcomings of our fish brain.

I Learned Everything About History From Cartoons

Somewhat less, lets say ... polished, than the Cartoon History of the Universe but equally enjoyable - World War One: Simple Version and World War Two: Simple Version.

Charlie Wilson's Movie

Re-watching Charlie Wilson's War on HBO. A movie that truly gets better each time you watch it, and its chock full of good quotes and WTF moments. Just in the last 15 minutes:
* Gen Zia gets introduced in his fete as "Zia didnt kill Bhutto"
* A bellydancing baptist girl entertaining an Egyptian minister
* Gust Avrakotos to Joanne Herring: "I dont see god within miles of this conflict, but if you sleep with me I may change my mind mighty quick" and
*"As long as the press sees sex and drugs behind the left hand, you can park a battle carrier behind the right hand and no one's gonna f***ing notice. "
* Israeli arms dealers shipping tanks to the Pakistani government
* A US Senator lecturing the afghans on how America is always on God's side and they respond with Allahu Akbar.
* Kovraktos to Wilson: "Youre not really stupid, just in congress"
Truth, as always, is stranger than fiction, and if a good storyteller presents it, a whole lot funnier as well. Related: Wag the Dog

Motivational Rewards - DONT WORK (well most times)

When it comes to complex cognition oriented tasks, rewards actually hinder progress rather than facilitate it. In the kinds of challenges we deal with in a knowledge based economy, pay for performance is precisely the wrong way to structure compensation. A better model to understand performance : Autonomy, Mastery, Purpose. Align your organization to these goals and values, and you are more likely to succeed. Case in point: Britannica vs Wikipedia (ie unpaid unmanaged yet self motivated hordes create a product that makes obsolete a product created by experts over many decades).

Warring Economists

The eighty years of peace and the great moderation is over, and the battleaxes are out - Paul Krugman reports that hostilities are breaking out among the Freshwater and Saltwater economists. Good overview of evolution of economic thinking over the past century, and how finance and economics play off of each other. Some choice quotes:

"...because a two-quart bottle of ketchup costs twice as much as a one-quart bottle, finance theorists declare that the price of ketchup must be right."

“the market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent.”

"Larry Summers once began a paper on finance by declaring: “THERE ARE IDIOTS. Look around.”"

Crowdsourcing Awesomeness

In addition to showing traffic on the highways, Google Maps now shows it for city roads as well. The awesome part is how they do it - they compute the speed of geolocation enabled phones to figure out what the average speed on a given stretch of road is. All this without needing to dig up roads and installing sensors - pure genius!

Lectures on Godel, Escher, Bach

MIT Open Courseware has lectures from a course in GEB, one of my favorite books. Havent watched any yet, but intend to do so over the weekend.

Nominating Michael Pollan

... to be the secretary of food. A compelling investigation into how Americans devolved from cooks to spectators.

The usual Pollan arch-villian, corporations, are of course to blame. On a meta level, the concept is not limited just to cooking. There are a lot fewer doers compared to watchers. Thats why Nike switched from "Just Do It" to "Witness" (I despise those commercials and tshirts). Why bother to get your bottom off of the couch, just watch someone gifted perform - and make sure you wear whatever they are wearing. Now where is my copy of No Logo ?

New Money in An Ancient Land

A fleeting, ethereal piece published on Granta about the newly rich in Delhi. Quite a strikingly different world from the one that used to exist a couple decades ago. Just like in Russia, Brazil, and China - the economic liberalization has produced a new strata of newly rich who are grappling with what to do with the seemingly endless wealth that is now on their fingertips. A sales girl in the article blurts out:

‘When someone comes in here looking to buy a Bentley, we don’t ask him what he’s driving now. Just because he drives a BMW doesn’t mean he can afford a Bentley. We ask if he has a jet or a yacht. We ask if he has an island.’

And as usual there is the predictable lamention of the existing rulers who see the crass attitudes of the newcomers:

'You see, there are two kinds of rich. There are people who’ve had money for a long time and they don’t give a f*** who you are. They’ll be nice to you anyway. Like I’m nice to people. You may get bored being around them, because all they talk about is how they’ve just got back from Cannes or St-Tropez, but they won’t kick you out. But the people who’ve got rich in the last five years, they turn up at a party and the first thing they do is put their car keys down on the table to show they have a Bentley. They don’t know how to behave.’

Very different portrait of a city from that of Mumbai, which was painted so vividly by Suketu Mehta in Maximum City. I hope Khuswant Singh writes a contemporary update to his absorbing historic novel about Delhi someday.

And now the AIG post-mortem

Another piece of the jigsaw puzzle - as the world pieces together the making of the subprime bomb. Michael Lewis writes about the dealings at AIG.

Nadal (and Kobe)

Couple of weeks ago, I watched last year's epic Wimbledon final: Federer vs Nadal. It was quite a match - a contrast of styles, an upstart knocking on an established champion's door, ebbs and flows of competitors hitting their strides, and the microscopic margins of error. Made me wish for something that provided a background for Nadal like Chuck Klosterman's piece did for Federer. It is now here - this week's NYTMag has a superb feature on Rafa. It is a solid article touching on his game style, character, and upbringing. The most interesting part was how he was coached (and raised) by his uncle Toni Nadal. It just appears to me that what makes Kobe Bryant a brilliant athlete but a fatally flawed character, is the lack of someone like Toni in his life. Never has any article about Kobe mentioned a mentor in his life that taught him how to be a human being - everyone around him exists solely to remind Kobe that he is untouchable. Kobe's is an otherwordly talent supremely unmatched by his inability to become a inspiring man in his life outside the court. Lets hope there is still time left for him to figure this out.

Clay Shirky on the Changing Nature of Media

How social networks and blogging/microblogging are changing the media landscape.

Tom Vanderbilt on Digital Traffic

Tom Vanderbuilt, who wrote the entertaining "Traffic: Why We Drive The Way We Do", now has a piece on the virtual digital traffic. "Data Center Overload" profiles how companies are managing server farms that number up to 45000 machines in a single location. Data centers are the factories of the internet age, and for companies that rely on computation - their efficiency directly translates into the bottom line (Amazon estimates that each average 100ms delay per page load decreases their sales revenue by 1 percent).

The trend these days is to move more and more software infrastructure to the cloud, which means that data centers will migrate to locations that have the lowest energy and bandwidth costs. There it is - an opportunity for economically depressed towns with excess power generation capabilities ...

California High Speed Rail

I was driving down to LA from San Jose this weekend, and it took a good six hours of mind numbing driving through the monotone central valley landscape (farms on both sides flanked by foothills close by to the west and more further out the east). So I was quite excited to notice the NYT Magazine article that has the details about the route, challenges, and timeline for the recently funded high speed rail. It seems somewhat absurd that it is so difficult to build a new train line in the relatively sparse and flat california landscape when they have been built decades ago in the dense european and asian capitals. Here's hoping that the impediments raised by petty politics (e.g the city of palo alto refusing to play ball), tough forecasting (imagine estimating ridership in 10 years), and inexperience (acela is the only other high speed line in the nation) - will not hold us back and we will take a bold steps towards creating a blueprint for modern long distance public transportation for the United States. LA to SF in 2 hrs 40 minutes - si se puede!

Succeed - Iterate

Short and to the point TED video about success.

Pico Iyer on the Simple Life

Pico Iyer writes about his choice to live a monastic life in Japan and why he renounced New York. Its been very interesting to experience how his prose has evolved towards simplicity over the years - it now resembles a late Mondrian, or a piece by Miles Davis. Sparse, with all clutter and ornaments removed - probably very similar to how his life in Kyoto is.

The good, the bad, and the hard to decipher

NYT usually does a good job with their infographics, but this one is an absurdity. The chart comapres mall retailers' quarterly revenue between 2008 and 2009.Using a mall visual to dress up the data adds nothing but confusion. It is hard to find the stores you want to look up (just like in the mall, but the mall designers want it that way - unlike designers of this graphic). And once you have found the store, you have to scroll all the way down and find the corresponding metric for the current year. In this case, a simple bargraph might have sufficed - the polygons and color coding add very little value.

Insurgent Strategy

Insurgents need to be socially disruptive - not play by the rules or at least not play how the game is "supposed" to be played. Do things that incumbents do not expect, and hit them where they least expect it. The insights are not jaw dropping, but the examples are fabulous coming from basketball, TE Lawrence, and war simulations - another vintage Gladwell piece: David vs Goliath.

Net Migration

Turns out net migration to California in the last couple years is negative - surprising. Great data set from the Pew Research Center.

Godin on Presentations

Some of the best things in life are free, and I just discovered one of them - Seth Godin's blog. He just posted a brilliant bit on presentations. Key point - presenters should get respect from the audience and give them love. So if you are not a world renowned celebrity (a la Thatcher, Robbins, Patton), establish early in the presentation why the audience should listen to you (experience, background, achievements) AND be genuinely excited that this roomful of people is here to hear you. Respect and Love. Amen.

Barry Schwartz on Rules and Practical Wisdom

Another excellent TED talk - among other things, Barry Schwartz makes the obvious yet profound observation that rules prevent disasters but encourage mediocrity. In asia, rules are few, disasters many, but a story like "dad forced to leave house because he served mike's hard lemonade to son not knowing it contained alcohol" would never ever happen. You do lose something by programming the people to follow rules, and then coming up with many of them that do not generalize well, and leave little room for thought, responsibility, or improvisation.