Hilarious and useful. Can it get any better?

This is a video that has me in stitches. The moves are incredibly useful, but the actors and presentation are hilarious. Watch the whole thing below or skip straight to my favorite part here (clip is SFW and make sure your speakers are on!).

Video via Geekologie

Do you have 10^100 good ideas? Let’s start with 1

I had an idea for a website that would cover one issue per day. Clean and simple; just one issue per day. The idea came after I got frustrated with the amount of clutter on various news sites, and while there is a lot of overlap, to really keep up with the world you have to visit a number of websites per day. Instead, why not have one thoughtful, easy to read post per day. Intellectuals could meet at the water cooler and discuss the topic. We’d gain exposure to important, interesting ideas all through a simple central location.

I never got very far with my project, but Google is doing a similar thing with their 10^100 campaign. To celebrate 10 years, Google wants to raise as many helpful ideas as possible. Google and CNN are collaborating, so the star power is there; now we just need some good ideas!

Chi.mp

A while back I read about Chi.mp, a site that promises to aggregate personal data and represent you. I got into the beta so now I am officially https://chi.mp/s/sethholloway.mp/ or http://www.sethholloway.mp.

This is all part of the shady control of all domain names owned by the Northern Mariana islands (read more at wikipedia). A crafty business person is trying to make .mp the domain for social networking.

Despite all that, I like the idea of having one portal to myself. That’s why I bought the sethholloway.com domain; however, I understand the reasoning for a random person, with or without their own domain, to have an official portal. I’ll give the Chi.mp beta program a shot and see how I feel later.

The Financial Crisis Pt. 2

Yesterday I gave a couple ideas for why America is in a financial crisis. This was on the heels of Wednesday night when we (finally) heard from President Bush who acknowledges the problem by saying,

“For more than a decade, a massive amount of money flowed into the United States from investors abroad. This large influx of money… made it easier for Americans to get credit… there were also some serious negative consequences, particularly in the housing market. Easy credit — combined with the faulty assumption that home values would continue to rise — led to excesses and bad decisions… Optimism about housing values also led to a boom in home construction. Eventually the number of new houses exceeded the number of people willing to buy them. And with supply exceeding demand, housing prices fell. And this created a problem: Borrowers with adjustable rate mortgages who had been planning to sell or refinance their homes at a higher price were stuck with homes worth less than expected — along with mortgage payments they could not afford. As a result, many mortgage holders began to default.”

Basically, the housing market was overinflated; it crashed, and took everything with it. Bush then goes on to outline a plan.

“Under our proposal, the federal government would put up to $700 billion taxpayer dollars on the line to purchase troubled assets that are clogging the financial system… markets have lost confidence in mortgage-backed securities, their prices have dropped sharply. Yet the value of many of these assets will likely be higher than their current price, because the vast majority of Americans will ultimately pay off their mortgages. The government is the one institution with the patience and resources to buy these assets at their current low prices and hold them until markets return to normal… as these assets are sold… we expect that much, if not all, of the tax dollars we invest will be paid back.”

The way I read it, the government will buy houses that are currently in trouble. Because he is not specific, I don’t know how they will really put the money back in the economy. My vote is to give taxpayers the money directly. Anyone with a bad mortgage can pay down their debt, others can buy a home, the rest of us buy like there’s no tomorrow and prop up the economy.

My economic stimulus round two is silly, but buying houses seems like a good solution. That way Wall Street is not directly helped; instead, consumers are bailed out and the entire system benefits. I’d rather the government control a collection of houses than a few corporations. The government could do a lot of good things with houses or whole neighborhoods:

• use the homes as government offices,
• sell homes to consumers for the amount of back taxes due
• give homes to veterans
• subsidize housing for teachers
• make a block into a military base

I am curious to see how the proposed plan will unfold. Ultimately, I think America needs a greater sense of personal responsibility and disincentives for failure. We all bought the bad debt that we did not understand, so we are all in this together. Companies that are in trouble should face the reaper instead of being bailed out.

I have to wonder, if our companies are too large for the government to let them fail, who will save our mammoth government when it fails?

The Financial Crisis Pt. 1

Different people have different takes on the financial crisis in America. Here’s an article that describes risk management, which a federal requirement, and how analysts learned to manipulate the data to produce results they wanted–risky or not. The risk engines would have warned that the decisions being made were imprudent, and traders would have averted the crisis. I’m not sure that bypassing risk predictions was the root cause, but I’m sure it did not help our current situation.

So what do we do now? Some readers believe that the analysts should be supervised by ethics advisors or receive greater ethics training. The problem is not ethics. You cannot solve this by teaching ethics. The managers and traders knew what they were doing was worng and all the ethics in the world won’t overwhelm greed. Ethics don’t make money unless they’re legislated, and the last thing we need is government intervention. Instead, we should be teaching finance students that the blind pursuit of gains led them to much larger losses. “You gain more when you play it safer” would appeal more to analysts than “you gain more when you’re ethical.”

There’s another take on the financial crisis that I find interesting. The author points out five problems and the nation’s ridiculous solutions. The sarcasm ends with a plain, simple description of our problem:

“There is only one thing necessary to understanding what is happening and it is this: no one at US banks, no one at the Federal Reserve and no one in politics can accept the reality that real estate assets in this country remain oversupplied, overpriced and overleveraged.”

The description makes sense to me, at least at face value. A lot of people got rich off of real estate, but speculation and data manipulation lead to a skewed understanding of home values.  Let me explain with some numbers:

• In 2006 there were 126.7 million homes in America.
• About the same time the estimated population was 301 million
• Of those 301 million, approximately 200 million were over the age of 18.
• Of those ~200 million over 18, about 16 million were in college

If everyone over the age of 18 lived in a house, there would need to be 200 million homes. If everyone over the age of 18 was married, there would need to be 100 million homes. Realistically the number of people who could live in a home is somewhere in between–say 170 million. Now take out people in apartments, nursing homes, their parents’ basement, etc and account for roommates. On the other end of the spectrum from cohabitating hippies, some people will own more than one house. For example, McCain has at least four houses, although he’s a little shaky on the exact number. I’m not convinced that enough people own multiple homes to make up for the glut of housing.

I found a blog that uses similar data and a little math to determine that in 2006 there was an excess of 1.7 million homes. Since then new home starts continued trotting along at a nice pace while the number of foreclosures skyrocketed, so the excess must be much larger now. It seems that, indeed, America has a serious glut of housing!

A simple question (please answer in comments)

I’m interested to see what other people think the answer is. Don’t overthink it. What’s the first (relevant) thing that pops into your head for this question: “What are the 2nd-to-last 4 digits of the sequence: 123456789?”

No peeking at other people’s work first!

Edit: Put a question mark at the end of the supposed question.

And I thought our finances were bad!

The Russian stock market has lost over 64% since July. I guess I don’t feel so bad anyway. One interesting point is that a falling stock market is a vicious cycle that reinforces its own failure. I’d love to find out how we’ll stop the same problem here.

Meme Timeline is the new hotness

Wired said that the Internet Meme timeline is becoming a meme itself. I support the cause, so peruse the timeline and see how many memes you know!

For those of you who are wondering, “What’s a meme?”:

• “The term Internet meme is a neologism used to describe a catchphrase or concept that spreads quickly from person to person via the Internet.” — Wikipedia

Confused? Think of any viral video, picture, or buzzword you’ve ever been forwarded–it’s probably a meme.

Still confused? Here’s one of my favorite examples featuring a poorly dubbed Genesis game and some amazing Photoshop work:

The future of mobile devices

Google has a nice writeup on the future of mobile devices today. The article is aimed squarely at phones which may seem like an odd distinction. Despite the proliferation of mobile devices, phones are important because few handhelds can function as a phone. The Nintendo DS, for example, has WiFi capabilities, but no calling features. Also falling into this category are traditional PDAs, the iPod Touch, the Asus P735. Phones can add the ability to do many things (play games, stream media, chat, and cruise the web) easier than other devices can integrate calling.

Some futurists advocate specialized devices instead of the Swiss Army knife. The best example I’ve heard is that a serious photographer will never use an integrated device like a camera phone. However, the average person doesn’t seem to care–there are tons of camera phone pics being published online. Consumers generally decide by voting with their dollars and they’re voting for all-in-one devices like the iPhone. The researchers may have a point, but there aren’t many research articles that are as easy to read as the Google description

No matter where the market goes, I’m happy to be part of such a promising field! Horray for mobile computing!

Oh, if you’re wondering why Google would care, check out the Google-backed open handset initiative, Android, which debuts this week.

Hamlet 2 is funny

We saw Hamlet 2 last night. It was funnier than expected, and I am now a fan of Steve Coogan! I’d give Hamlet 2 a 7/10. The rest of the world feels about the same:

• IMDB gave it a 6.4/10
• Rotten Tomatoes gave is a 63/100
• Metacritic critics gave it a 5.4/10 while users gave is a 6.5/10

If you want to laugh, go watch Hamlet 2–and keep an open mind