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.

Entrepreneurial Survival

Bad things happen to good startups, and frequently. The worst being having to live through a downturn. Online realestate site Redfin CEO Glenn Kelman writes about how he is getting through it. A lot of it is quite sound advice. My favorites: "Compete with your successor" and "Be a Roman".

Books that correlate with high or low sat's

Interesting analysis, bad tagline. I think a more modest and accurate heading would have been "Books that high/low SAT scorers tend to read". Check out the list here . Could be easily extended to movies, bands, hobbies - hours of fun.

Sculpting with Words

Every now and then you come across a performance, a product, a skill - so sublime that it leaves you with your mouth open in awe and a sinking realization that no matter how much you practice, however much you study for the rest of your life - you will never be quite as good. Steve Nash on hardwood, BB King on the guitar, Roger Federer on the court. This piece by David Foster Wallace is an apt example. In an abstract way stylistically reminiscent of Tom Wolfe (The Electric Cool Aid Acid Test) it captures the spirit, mood, and soul of a luxury cruise. I dont think will be able to step foot on a cruise ship and not look at it with his eyes - full of curiosity, fear, and bewilderment. 5/5 stars.

Finally an explanation ...

... of how these MBSs became worth hundreds of times worth more than the mortgages they were based on. Keep up the good work, Michael Lewis. Article.

Capitalism Defined

Capitalism: The system under which the government provides bailout capital when large rich firms are about to go out of business. Article.

Booming Economy != Rising Stock Market

Shanghai Composite index plunged from 6000 to 2000 in a matter of months - with no fundamental changes in the Chinese economy. Another year, another bubble. Reminds me of this hilarious onion article. I'd be laughing if my emerging market funds were not scuba diving.

Ambient Awareness

... and here we have it, a new term to describe what Facebook news feed and Twitter are creating.

Talking Head Accountability

Historically news anchors have a hard time keeping up with talking heads as they spew out facts and opinions real time. But these days, shows like the Daily Show and Colbert Report can dissect, fact-check, and rip apart these pontificating blowhards. Case in point:

Blogs I follow

A good blog is hard to find - most of them are not worth checking out twice. Here are a couple I find myself going back to periodically - because they have solid information and/or interesting opinions.

* Calculated Risk
* Greg Mankiw
* TechCrunch
* VentureCapital Wire

Now I know why the Wazzup ... ads were playing

Its all about forming habits (in this case - drinking with your buddies). Great NYT article

Faith In The Economy?

Kevin Philips argues that official CPI, GDP, and Unemployment numbers are all fudged. Not a conspiracy, but just a result of desire of governments to report things as being better than they are in reality.

Airports

Its good to be back in asia and experiencing the firsthand the changes that are afoot (sorry, that was bad - I know). The two airports I just passed through - Singapore Changi and Seoul Incheon - were both equally impressive. Seems like while the US is busy spending money on bombs, oil, and health insurance - Asia is plugging away building infrastructure and making money. What will be the competitive profile in twenty years? I will just say that my 401(K) is mostly in emerging markets.

Brooks on Religion

David Brooks has a unexpected and eclectic NYT OpEd on the scientific/religious debate. Key quote:


"In their arguments with Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins, the faithful have been defending the existence of God. That was the easy debate. The real challenge is going to come from people who feel the existence of the sacred, but who think that particular religions are just cultural artifacts built on top of universal human traits. It’s going to come from scientists whose beliefs overlap a bit with Buddhism."

Deploy Cognitive Surplus? Yes please ...