March 2009 Archives
There's a good entry on the Economix blog about why there are so many buildings in New York that are in a state of pause (after all, the price of apartments in Manhattan are still higher than the cost of building one). While the hypothesis is interesting (developers work mostly on borrowed money and getting financing is super tough at the moment), the opening line of the piece (which has nothing to do with real estate really got me): "Thinking like an economist often means coming to regard mundane, obvious things, like the prices of corn or cars, as great mysteries."
I love that. It's how I try to approach everything all the time (not that I'm always successful).
Leave a Comment
Tags: nyc, realestate, thinking
I got an email from Ryan yesterday asking me if I had any thoughts on the TechCrunch internet advertising is dead post. I hadn't read it yet (I kind of suspected it wasn't that good when everyone was linking to it ... plus, how much could I really add), but then I left it open on the plane and read it en route to Boston last night.
I wrote Ryan a long and rambling email, and then this morning I read Rick's post over the Barbarian Group site that pretty much sums up my rambles in coherent bullet points (thanks Rick). I added three points in the comments that I thought I'd share as well:
- The most interesting stuff on the web for a brand to do will continue to be not "advertising" (using the definition of buying space to spread your message) but rather everything else a company can do on the web (example: most of our work).
- The vast majority of people don't need to/want to make money on the web. This is a problem for 1% of the web world (if that). BG.com makes plenty of money as a promotion tool for the company, we don't need to put ads up (though I guess we could if we really wanted to). I feel like he totally glosses over this point.
- He says advertising is dying because print publications are going out of business. This is plainly untrue. Many of those print publications relied on classified ads in addition to the big full page stuff. Those classified ads have moved online in both a free and paid way. They are doing exceedingly well (how many people do you know who have found an apartment from the newspaper lately?). This is a place where advertising excels (job classifieds is another one). No one ever talks about this, but this is advertising and it's working even better than it did offline on the web!
Leave a Comment
Tags: advertising, internet, marketing
What happens when you take dynamics from one medium and apply it to another? (And other random questions.)
Even before my McLuhan post a few days ago I had been thinking a lot about the idea of hacking a written medium: Essentially using it in different and news ways that it might not have been originally intended.
In the link to my recent Boards Magazine article I mentioned, "Also, I started the article with this, 'If you don't feel like reading this article here are the talking points.' Which made me laugh, but also it was kind of my way to hack a printed article. (As a side note, I've been noticing that when I write I use a lot more parentheses than ever before, especially in print. I kind of think this is in place of hyperlinks.)" Essentially it was an attempt (not necessarily a good one) to apply the dynamics of one medium to another (just as I mentioned using parentheses a lot more lately, which seem like the closest thing writing has to a hyperlink).
Anyway, the comments to the McLuhan post made me think more about it (if you haven't read them, I highly recommend it, as Adam, Charles and Barbara's comments are all deserving of a post on their own). The first paragraph of Adam's comment actually sent me reeling. (And on how many other sites do comments come in paragraphs? You guys are all so awesome.)
I've long maintained that communication online is 'talking' not writing. As you've explained, It's the real-timeness coupled with multimedia-ness that makes it accoustic in nature. Some may think that typed words means writing, but if you were to have a conversation of tapped dots and dashes (morse), or gestured shapes and motions (sign language) you would summarize that experience as having just 'talked' to someone not 'written' to someone (though you have indeed just 'written' information onto a medium even if it were only air). The real-timeness, the wideness of bandwidth to stimulate multiple senses, that's what makes it talking regardless of the tool being used.
Which got me thinking about what other ways I could mess around with the medium. For awhile I've been toying with the idea of doing email back and forth entries (of which I hope to have the first, I conversation with Johnny Vulkan, up soonish). In addition I've been thinking about questions and answers. But that seemed too straightforward, so I just thought I'd generally ask you all, what's on your mind? What have you been thinking about? What should we talk about?
No idea if this will work. Also, if you'd like slightly more tough brief (as we learned from Brian Eno, limitations are helpful), I'm going out to Montana in a few weeks to talk to a class about technology, media and the internet. What should I talk about? I figure I'll go back through the archives to get a sense of what I've been thinking about, but I also thought it was worthwhile to open up the question.
So yeah, that's about it. Not a ton of rhyme or reason here, so feel free to talk about whatever you'd like in the comments.
Leave a Comment
Matt almost perfectly sums up my relationship with Google reader: "Here's what I've come to realize about myself: I fully accept that there's not a particular link in that ridiculous heap that will change my life. It's been a while since I worried about missing a single killer post or app or XKCD or whatever; if it's valuable enough, it'll find me, I got it."
Later on he also wonders something I've been asking myself (and some reader folks) since I got started: "Google, I want you to give me a button labeled 'Compress into diamonds.' When I click that button, spin your little algorithmic wheels and turn my reader into a personalized Memeorandum. Show me the most linked-to items in the bunch, and show me which of my feeds are linking to them. And take it a step further. You've got all that trends data that reflects the items I'm reading. Underneath the hood might very well be data about the links I click on in those posts. Use that information about me to compress my unread items into diamonds I will find uniquely wonderful."
Google Reader is already turning into an awesome personal search engine, why shouldn't it also act as your personal memeorandum? (And if it doesn't, I've been thinking for a long time this is a really good idea for a startup.)
Leave a Comment
Tags: google, rss
This is brutal in a sort of hilarious way: IRS Topic 357: Tax Information for Parents of Kidnapped Children. Just in case you thought the IRS was heartless, the topic concludes, "This tax treatment will cease to apply as of your first tax year beginning after the calendar year in which either there is a determination that the child is dead or the child would have reached age 18, whichever occurs first."
Leave a Comment
Tags: kidnapping, taxes
You know the Hyundai assurance program where the company will give you your money back if you lose your job? Well, looks like no one has taken them up on it yet: "On Friday, Hyundai spokesman Dan Bedore confirmed that so far no one has used the program. It's still early in the plan's lifecycle and final March figures have not come in, but the fact that no buyer has taken advantage of it says that at least the 55,133 people who bought a Hyundai this year probably still have their jobs."
As Consumerist points out, it's easy to conclude no buyers have lost their jobs, "But perhaps it just means people who are financially secure enough to be in a position to buy a new car got there by making secure bets, so they would gravitate towards a program that provides buyer protection." Fair point. Either way, the strategy seems to be working pretty well.
Leave a Comment
Tags: cars, economy, marketing
Crooked Timber had a quote about comments that pretty much reflected my own experience, "The number of comments a post gets is not, in any way, analogous to the importance attached to the post by commenters. ... Comments are not a reflection of how much your audience cares about a topic. They are a reflection of how much they have to say on it."
Since I started this site I've been amazed at my inability to predict what kind of content people will comment on. When I think I've written something super interesting it will get no comments and then when I think I've written something super throw away, it will get fifteen. I don't think that's a good thing or bad thing, just a thing. I generally agree that the more out there a post is, the less easy it is to respond to and that probably causes people to abstain. I also think I'm going to go with something similar to the comment system Buzzfeed has when I redesign this site (coming really soon). In addition to text comments, they now have "reactions" which you can choose from a pre-populated list (for them it's like, LOL, OMG, CUTE!, etc. ... Probably be a little different here.)
Leave a Comment
Tags: blogs, comments
In my mind, the sign of a good article is that it sticks with you. The first time you read it maybe you thought it was moderately interesting, but then you find yourself repeating it's points to other folks. That's what I've been doing with Joe Nocera's New York Times piece about the government pounding on AIG (two Nocera references in one week ... whoa). The kicker of the article comes in this paragraph:
In other words, it is in the taxpayers' best interest to position A.I.G. as a company with many profitable units, worth potentially billions, and one bad unit that needs to be unwound. Which, by the way, is the truth. But as Mr. Ely puts it, "the indiscriminate pounding that A.I.G. is taking is destroying the value of the company." Potential buyers are wary. Customers are going elsewhere. Employees are looking to leave. Treating all of A.I.G. like Public Enemy No. 1 is a pretty dumb way for a majority shareholder to act when he hopes to sell the company for top dollar.
Yeah, that kind of sucks. Related: American Grandstand on The Daily Show.
Leave a Comment
Tags: economics, politics
There's a really good post over on the OUTLIER site about why they use merino wool: "Here's how it works: Merino fibers have a complex structure with a hydrophobic exterior (water repelling) and a hydrophilic interior (water holding). This makes the fabric dry to the touch yet wicking moisture away from the body at the same time. Combined with your body's ability to create heat, the fabric dries much faster creating a cycle of moisture evaporation. Not only that but it's also odorless and stays that way by being naturally anti-microbial. This means odor doesn't bond to the material because bacteria can't find a solid environment to grow on."
Not that I'm overly surprised, but OUTLIER has nailed brand blogging (their style wouldn't work for everyone, but it's perfect for their site/audience).
Leave a Comment
Tags: fashion
There's an interesting article from the Times about the paper's misuse of anonymous sources. Clark Hoyt, the public editor, opens up with this: "The Times has a tough policy on anonymous sources, but continues to fall down in living up to it. That's my conclusion after scanning a sampling of articles published in all sections of the paper since the first of the year. This will not surprise the many readers who complain to me that the paper lets too many of its sources hide from public view." He points to three recent examples, a woman grant anonymity after describing a NYC apartment lobby as a "den of hell", a Yankees official who got to anonymously shit on Alex Rodriguez and a general lack of expalantion around the granting of anonymity ("The policy says rote references to sources who 'insisted on anonymity' or 'demanded anonymity' should be avoided because they 'offer the reader no help and make our decisions appear automatic.'")
He also mentions David Brooks granting Obama anonymity (he listed him as a "top government official") when he went to visit the White House. The nytpicker took Brooks to task for this (as well as for telling everyone he got Obama's autograph), explaining "at the risk of seeming excessively purist or humorless, accepting Obama's autograph at an off-the-record encounter strikes us as kind of wrong. It was bad enough that Brooks let the president go off the record, but we'll leave that to Hoyt to sort out. The autograph issue may seem less egregious, but as symbolism it's hard to ignore. Can you imagine Frank Rich or Maureen Dowd or Paul Krugman bragging to readers about accepting an autograph from a sitting president? Of course you can't." The inner workings of newspapers are really interesting (it's really a shame the last season of The Wire sucked so bad).
Leave a Comment
Tags: journalism, newspapers, nytimes
Some random thoughts inspired by Marshall McLuhan.
When I feel like I haven't been thinking to my potential I like to go read some McLuhan (I'm not kidding ... I'm a nerd). Anyway, figured I'd share a few quotes from an essay I just read called "The Media Fit the Battle of Jericho" from Marshall Mcluhan-Unbound
.
Before I continue, let me just say that this was written in 1956.
The new media -- the new languages -- which have increasingly supplement writing and print, have begun to reassemble the multiple sensuousness of integral speech. Touch, taste, kinesthesia, sight and sound are all recreating the acoustic space which had been abolished by phonetic writing.
Under these conditions, prediction and evaluation are merely substitutes for observation. A basic feature of acoustic space is its inclusiveness. Visual space is exclusive. As our world recreates acoustic and oral culture by simply pushing on with devices of instantaneity and simultaneity, we need not fear the suppression of visual and written culture.
Lots of stuff in this one, I like the idea that the speed of new media brings us closer to the auditory traditions of communication. The speed starts to remove some of the levels of mediation. With that said, it doesn't destroy the other media, just pushes it in new directions. Neither print nor TV are even close to dead, just ask all those people out there hankering to see their names in either medium. They both still carry a weight that the web doesn't yet have. As Mcluhan explained in another essay I read this evening ("Notes on the Media as Art Forms"), "Reportage takes up the ordinary events in which we all participate, and changes them simply by virtue of the medium of print and photography." (Though the essay doesn't come out and say it, it's clearly a precursor to his tagline: "The medium is the message.")
The second quote hits on something I'v had on my mind for the last few months:
Any change in any medium always causes modifications in all other media or languages within the same culture. Today in our simultaneous world such changes are felt as abrupt and drastic. They always were. But now we notice.
It's the "they always were" that struck me. I've had a theory (certainly shared by others) that the web provides an amazing metaphor for how our brains work. Having a good metaphor, I believed, helps us to optimize our thinking. Now I'm not sure I don't believe that anymore (especially the second part as I think metaphors do great wonders for understanding complexity), however, I've been thinking lately that every generation is always sure whatever they have around is a great metahpor for whatever it is they're thinking about (in this case the brain). When the first book was printed I would be the common belief was that it was a perfect metaphor for a brain, nicely broken into chapters and verses, just as our thoughts are.
Now I do certainly still believe that the ability to visualize, understand and discuss networks is a huge boon society, it's hard to know what you don't know and in this case that's precisely how the brain functions.
Leave a Comment
There is a fun little argument over at the Boxee blog between Mark Cuban and Boxee CEO Avner Ronen. I have to say I generally think Cuban's arguments are pretty solid (basically that the fight is a lot tougher than Boxee may care to admit and if the cable companies pull their heads out of their asses they can have a knockout punch pretty quick). I thought this point from Cuban was especially interesting:
The concept of "users always want choice" really really sounds nice. It makes for a great panel argument. But the reality is that its not true. Ultimate choice requires work. Consumers like to think they have choice, but their consumption habits say they prefer easy. Youtube is the perfect example. Millions upon millions of choices that never get seen. The videos that get posted and expected to be seen are the ones from traditional media and providers that already have an audience, ala jon stewart. The rest have to fight for an audience.
Oh, and while we're on the topic, here's an article I'm sure I've pointed to before where Joe Nocera points out the issues with a la carte pricing.
Leave a Comment
Tags: cable, internet, video
There's a great interview with Brian Eno over at the Telegraph site. While the whole thing is worth a read (he makes a point about limitations that's awesome), one thing in particular popped out:
"When people reach a certain level of success," he says in soft tones that retain the flavour of East Anglia, "there are a lot of people encouraging them - nearly always to do more of the same. And when you're working in the studio as a band, it is cheering when things come up that you recognise: 'Oh, great! We know how to do this.' But at the same time little shoots keep appearing of stuff you don't recognise. They look promising but pretty clumsy, because new ideas always look clumsy at first. And you don't know what to do with them, how to connect them. And I'm the one cheering for those things. 'Let's not do what we've done before, let's do these new things!'"
Especially in relation to this little piece from Tyler Cowen asking, "Do influential people develop more conventional opinions?" His answer comes in six bullet points. Here are two highlights: "3. As people become more influential, their opinion of the status quo rises, because they see it rewarding them and thus meritorious." and "6. Influential people are asked to write increasingly on general interest topics ("How to Be Nice to Dogs") and thus they find it harder to be truly unconventional. They cultivate skills of conventionality because that is what they are paid for or allowed to express." Good stuff.
Leave a Comment
Tags: culture, influence
I've clearly got traffic on the brain. This time in the form of an article from Scientific American about Braess's Paradox. It explains, "The brainchild of mathematician Dietrich Braess of Ruhr University Bochum in Germany, the eponymous paradox unfolds as an abstraction: it states that in a network in which all the moving entities rationally seek the most efficient route, adding extra capacity can actually reduce the network's overall efficiency. The Seoul project inverts this dynamic: closing a highway--that is, reducing network capacity--improves the system's effectiveness."
The article doesn't stop there, though, it also mentions a phenomena similar to something I wrote about a few months ago, "Another kind of anarchy could actually speed travel as well--namely, a counterintuitive traffic design strategy known as shared streets. The practice encourages driver anarchy by removing traffic lights, street markings, and boundaries between the street and sidewalk. Studies conducted in northern Europe, where shared streets are common, point to improved safety and traffic flow. ... The idea is that the absence of traffic regulation forces drivers to take more responsibility for their actions."
Generally I love reading about this sort of stuff as it's a nice intersection between design, psychology, culture and economics.
Leave a Comment
Tags: economics, traffic
Ever since I read the really long Weekly Standard piece on Detroit I have been fascinated by the city. Here are two little photo tours that paint a bleak picture: Time's Detroit's Beautiful, Horrible Decline and the Belle Isle Zoo which was closed in 2002.
Leave a Comment
Tags: detroit, photography
I've had a page ripped out of the New Yorker sitting on my desks for the last two months meaning to write about it here. It comes from a piece about the New York City paper The Village Voice, specifically the part where they talk about Jules Feiffer, whose weekly comic strip ran in The Voice from 1956. As the article explains, "Feiffer's strips are about borrowed ways of talking, about the lack of fit between people and words, about the way that clichés take over." Basically they were about the very people who read The Village Voice.
With all that setup out of the way, here's the line that got me: "It's sometimes said of this kind of humor that it succeeds by getting people laugh at themselves, but this can't be right. People don't like to laugh at themselves. This kind of humor succeeds because it gets people to laugh at people who are exactly like themselves." I thought that was a super interesting insight. People never think about "themselves" in that situation: They always have a friend pop into their head. One who despite being exactly like them, is somehow different enough to be the character in the comic, movie or story. Not sure what to do with that, but thought it was worth sharing.
Leave a Comment
Tags: culture, insights, psychology
I wrote an article about social media that's up on the Boards site now. I tried to add a little fresh flavor to the topic: "We're left with this funny in-between space where individuals are able to communicate with large groups but keep the intimacy of an interpersonal exchange. For lack of a better name, I've been thinking of this type of communication as interpersonal communication with scale. Blogs are a perfect example: individuals can talk to groups of hundreds, even thousands, with many in the audience feeling as though they've had a personal exchange. I've been told many times by friends that they feel as though we talk all the time because they follow my blog, to which I usually respond, 'But I'm the only one doing the talking.'"
Also, I started the article with this, "If you don't feel like reading this article here are the talking points." Which made me laugh, but also it was kind of my way to hack a printed article. (As a side note, I've been noticing that when I write I use a lot more parentheses than ever before, especially in print. I kind of think this is in place of hyperlinks.)
Oh, and I will start writing here again instead of just posting links to things I've written elsewhere. I promise.
Leave a Comment
Tags: me, socialmedia
Two funny facts about Utah that may or may not be coincidental: Utah is the happiest state in the US and Utah downloads more porn than any other state.
Seriously, though, the second of the two reports sounds pretty interesting. The Salt Lake Tribune points out, "Online porn subscription rates are higher in states that enacted conservative legislation banning same-sex marriage or civil unions and where surveys show support for conservative positions on religion, gender roles and sexuality, according to an analysis published in the Journal of Economic Perspectives."
Leave a Comment
Tags: happiness, porn, sex
I wrote a little piece over at the AdAge DigitalNext blog about how display advertising sucks. Those familiar with this site may remember some of the ideas from "Random Thoughts on Online Advertising" (oh, and big thanks to those who commented on that post and helped me get some thoughts in order).
In my mind, this is the crux of the piece: "Without thinking about where the display is sitting, the creative is left focusing on a totally-out-of-context consumer. The big problem I have with this is it pretty much gives up the biggest advantage the web has over other media: the ability to target smaller groups affordably with discrete messages. As soon as we go with a single message across all these sites we're left with a glorified TV ad." Hope you enjoy.
Leave a Comment
Tags: advertising, internet
Looking at the two wars being fought in Afghanistan.
As I mentioned last week, I've been reading The Forever War, which is a chronicle of life in Afghanistan and Iraq by Times columnist Dexter Filkins. Anyhow, it's been intense so far, but there's one particular thing I wanted to share (mostly because I heard it before and it's been playing in my head since).
A few months ago I was watching the Fareed Zakaria GPS podcast. The interview was with counterinsurgency expert David Kilcullen and one thing he said has stayed in my head:
In the middle of 2006, a special forces patrol was ambushed in Uruzgan. And a number of Americans and Afghans were pinned down in their valley for about six hours. The reason they were pinned down was because locals from three different villages within a few kilometers of the ambush site ran home, got their rifles and came back, and joined in the fight. And after the fight, our guys said to them, "You know, we thought you didn't support the Taliban." And they said, "We don't." And they said, "Well, why were you fighting us?" And they said, "Well, you have to understand how, A, how boring it is to be a teenager in a valley in Afghanistan. This is the most exciting thing that's happened in our valley for decades. And if we're going to wait this fight out and sit on the sidelines, that would be dishonorable." But if you're going to join in, you're not going to join in on the side of the foreigner. You're going to join in on the side of the Afghan. And so, these are what I call accidental guerillas. They're people who are fighting us, not because they hate the West, but because we just turned up in their valley with a brigade, and the extremists come to them and say, "Whose side are you on?" And they choose their own people rather than the infidel foreigner. And I think that's a perfectly understandable reaction by Afghans, but it's one that we have to figure out a way to break. How do you get in there and provide security to the population, co-opt those who can be co-opted, and, frankly, kill or capture those who prove themselves to be irreconcilable, which is a very small number?
When I read some similar passages in Filkins' book, I knew I had to post them. Towards the beginning he writes this about the war in Afghanistan:
Men fought, men switched sides, men lined up and fought again. War in Afghanistan often seemed like a game of pickup basketball, a contest among friends, a tournament where you never knew which team you'd be on when the next game got under way. Shirts today, skins tomorrow. On Tuesday, you might be part of a fearsome Taliban regiment, running into a minefield. And on Wednesday you might be manning a checkpoint for some gang of Northern Alliance. By Thursday you could be back with the Talibs again, holding up your Kalashnikov and promising to wage jihad forever. War was serious in Afghanistan, but not that serious. It was part of everyday life. It was a job. Only the civilians seemed to lose.
Now I don't think I can add a lot of commentary to that, so I won't really try. But I do find it striking that the common demoniator between the two quotes is the idea that both sides are partaking in different activities. The United States is fighting a War (capital "w"), Afghans are engaged in something entirely different.
While I haven't read it in a few years, I remember being equally struck by this Rand Corporation piece called "Cyberwar is Coming" (hopefully it holds up).
Leave a Comment
In the spirit of things our friends have written on the internet, Emmet Connolly took his Instapaper backlog and printed it as a book with Lulu.
Needless to say, I'm super jealous of both these ideas, as I've been dying to come up with a good idea to get printed up on real life paper.
Leave a Comment
Tags: analog, books
It's rainy and nasty here in New York (after a beautiful weekend). With gray skies looming large, I figured it was appropriate to share some fun: (1) Scanwiches: Scans of sandwiches, (2) CMYK pen, (3) Passive Aggressive Anger Release Machine aka a vending machine full of glass plates and the like and (4) rules for tracksuit bottoms.
Leave a Comment
Tags: fun, random
Is there really such a thing as an individual ant?
A month or so ago some fellow Barbarians and myself were having a conversation about bees. We all got to realizing that you hardly ever hear about predators to bees, which eventually led the conversation to animals that pretty much only exist in colonies. (For the record, a quick Wikipedia search of course turned up bears as a bee predator. You'd think all those cartoons would have taught us that.)
Anyway, we basically ended up talking about how ants don't really ever exist on their own. All their power comes from their ability to organize themselves in groups (perfectly illustrated by this video). Basically I got to thinking that the animal is the group, the individual ant is just a component, not unlike an arm or leg for us.
I mention all this because I was just reading an interview with a researcher who studied ant traffic. One paragraph in particular stood out: "For my paper I was working with Isca ants, and they carry food, like big leaves. The ants that carry food are slower; the ants who are behind have to adjust their speed to the loading ants. But it's funny--and quite unexpected--they never try to overtake the loading ants, even if the loading ants were very slow. Because the loading ants are always given the right of way on the trail, if the others just stay behind the loading ants, they took the benefit of that too." In other words, they always operate in the best interest of the group.
Now thinking of ants not as individuals, but rather as limbs of a larger being, that makes sense. They all work toward the optimization of the whole at all times (not unlike our own bodies who can redirect things to different places when needed). Not surprisingly, this makes me think about humans. What if we are just components of the larger culture?
I'm pretty sure an interesting connection could be drawn between this and what Susan Blackmore has to say in her TED Talk or Mark Earls talks about in Herd (which I really still need to read, sorry Mark). Unfortunately I'm on the train with a pretty crappy connection and having quite a bit of trouble thinking, so I'm going to put a stop to this post early. Feel free to add your two cents.
Leave a Comment
I don't know what's funnier about this infographic on the credibility of The Tipping Point, Black Swan and Long Tail, the fact that it's in Wired or the fact that it's 100 percent accurate.
(Not for nothing, but Chris Anderson gets serious points in my book for posting this. A little self-deprecating humor goes a long way.)
Leave a Comment
Tags: books, business, funny, visualization
Back in October, This American Life did a great episode explaining the economy in plain english. I know for me this is still what much of my understanding is based on. Well, the guys behind that one came back and did a refresh, this time focusing on banks. Once again it's well worth a listen (it's an hour).
Generally I think there's a dearth of this kind of information (which they actually bring up at the beginning of the show). I suspect it's because there aren't that many people with a clear understanding of what's going on (I always think back to the Einstein quote, "If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough."). While we're on the topic of simple financial explanations, I also highly recommend checking out the Marketplace Whiteboard video series. It's just a dude in front of a whiteboard explaining things simply enough that I can understand it. (Oh, and one more good one: The last section of this TAL episode is an awesome explanation of why everyone is talking about John Maynard Keynes.)
Leave a Comment
Tags: economics, finance
I've always just assumed that a layover is cheaper for the airline and therefore cheaper for the consumer. Which, according to the Economix Blog was the case until 2006 (mainly due to the economies of scale afforded by all the extra routes). However, they quote some research on why there was a shift three years ago: "The cost advantage of connecting flights disappeared in 2006. Conditioning on other cost shifters, the marginal cost of a connecting flight was $12 more expensive than that of a direct flight. The change is probably driven by the increasing fuel cost in the sample period. Since the fraction of fuel consumed at the takeoffs and landings could be as high as 40 percent, rising fuel costs offset the benefit of denser traffic created by connecting flights."
Leave a Comment
Tags: airplanes, economics
I've been noticing myself doing something really funny recently: When I start reading a ton about something on the web I end up avoiding it at all costs. I'm not quite sure why, but this week it's been the credit crisis visualization and the new Skittles site.
No idea why that's interesting, but thought I'd share.
Leave a Comment
Tags: internet, me
That's So Yummy has a really interesting list of ways restaurants optimize their menus (originally in Food Network Magazine which isn't online). They include: No dollar signs (average check goes up $5.55 without them), staggered prices (that way you won't go looking for a cheaper dish) and high-profit zones (the highest profit dishes go at the top and bottom of the menu because that's what people remember).
Leave a Comment
Tags: economics, food
A little over a week ago a bunch of NYU students took over a room in the student center and let the school know its list of 13 demands. My buddy Dave has a great two part multi-part roundup (one, two, three, four) of the ridiculous festivities. (For an idea of just how dumb the whole thing was, check out this video of the school "breaking in" to their room.)
Anyway, part two of Dave's series is classic as he goes through the 13 demands. Here are some highlights: "Full amnesty for all participants" (Dave says, "Including this in your manifesto at all undermines your bargaining position by making you look weak much less leading with it which indicates you are only doing this till it stops being fun or you get distracted by news of a Yeah Yeah Yeahs reunion.") and "The establishment of a student elected Socially Responsible Finance Committee that will have full power to override all financial decisions of the school the Committee deems socially irresponsible, including investment decisions." (Dave says, "What kind of coddled, out of touch idealist morons came up with that one? You are gonna ask the country's largest private universities, the second or third largest landowner in New York City, a multi-billion dollar entity to give a group of elected students (as proved by TBNYU, silly immature and woefully naïve) in a notoriously apathetic and uninvolved student body veto power over the schools investment decisions????") All in all a very good read.
Update (3/2/09): Part 3 is up. It's long, but worth it.
Update (3/3/09): The story comes to a stirring conclusion.
Leave a Comment
Tags: funny, nyu, politics
I'm a terrible note taker. I have been since high school, when I realized that I never actually looked back at any of my notes. In college, every notebook was filled with about three pages of notes (I always started the semester with best intentions) and another forty pages of random drawings (mostly shapes and lines and strange flowing graffiti-like things). I am always trying to hold myself back from doodling during business meetings (though sometimes I can't help myself and start drawing).
I only mention all this because Wired recently covered a new study that concluded doodling helps people concentrate. As explained by one of the study's co-authors, "It takes a large cognitive load to daydream. That has a big impact on the task you're meant to be doing ... Doodling takes only a small cognitive load, but it's just enough to keep your mental resources focused on the main task." Retribution!
Leave a Comment
Tags: brain, drawing, psychology
Hi, I'm 