Designing better futures

unsung hero who kept you alive.

My wife and I just watched the classic film called FailSafe with henry Fonda.  It is all about the cold war, get it on netflix. 

Fail safe is a great movie about the reality of the situation of nuclear war.  Another Great movie about nuclear dynamics is the  documentary Fog of War about Robert McNamara, reviewed earlier here.  McNamara indicates that there were 3 times that we came to the brink of thermo nuclear destruction on his watch.  Most people  barely remember the one public event during the Cuban Missile crises.  The median age in the U.S. is now 34.  So half of us really have no idea what that very real fear was like.   

A little known fact is that in 1983 we almost had a nuclear war, but one man stopped it.  He currently lives on a $200 a month pension outside of Moscow.  Read about him here.  Shouldn't there be a statue or something for this guy.  Many of you reading this today may not even be here unless Stanislav Petrov hadn't acted.  Read more here.  James Bond types  in films make millions while the quiet hero's who  save the world fade away... 

plant a tree....

I Just got some information on the Tree I bought as a gift.  It has been planted in Niger, Africa.  A baby Boabab tree is now growing in the desert becuase of me :)  These trees can live up to 1,000 years and  are part of a fun charity project called tree-nation. 

I would recommend giving someone a tree via tree nation.  They can think and ponder about it. If they are really adventurous they can visit their tree.  It makes a good newborn shower gift.
I spent a month in Niger crossing the country and living in various villages with peace corp volunteers. It  is a great place to learn how the other half lives and in the process appreciate what you have. 

You can learn a lot about humanity, culture and the important things, when you sit around and eat dinner by the fire with a Nigerian family.  Niger is officially one of  the poorest country on earth according to the  UN.  If you want to plant a tree  for them and for you, go to this webstie. 

One of my favorite quotes paraphrased...."be the kind of person who plants a tree today so that another may sit in the shade tomorrow."

Hey wow a gene hole.....

OK a big move on the path to the $1,000 genome this week.   Some researchers from Harvard and Arkansas have come up with a way to drill a hole (pore) into silicon and pull a single strand of DNA through it.  While they pull the DNA through the pore, they can measure the base pair types, thus rapidly sequencing the strand.  This means we are getting closer to the $1,000 genome.  Here is the popular press article.

Here is the real science article for the nerds.  I thought it was a very cool read, probably one of the best paper's I have come across in a few years. In a very clear and straight forward process these guys are really pushing the science of genetic sequencing  forward by leaps and bounds. 

I was explaining to my wife, that our current mechanisms for treating genetic illnesses such as cancer are incredibly crude.  Being able to sequence a cancerous cell or mass will allow us to get out of the middle ages in terms of diagnoses and treatment. 

Our current knowledge of cancer at both the detection, taxonomic and medical response level, will be seen as barbaric and medieval within 7-10 years.  The whole label cancer is as sophisticated as lumping all of the tropical illnesses together and telling a victim they have "tropicitis". 

Today's doctor's treat cancer with the same knowledge and tool set that a 14th century naval surgeon treated scurvy.  They do their best, but your average practitioners ratio of humility to knowledge is seriously out of whack.  Chemotherapy by and large is only slightly better than leeches or the laying on of hands in terms of efficacy and true healing. Let's hope that cheap sequencing combined with advances in functional genomics, pharmacokinetics and patient therapy live up to the average physicians current self belief.

Genetics demystified

I am now an associate with an investment fund and thought I would brush up my knowledge.  I am focusing on technology, Clean tech and genetics.  Our fund is a classic value player, we buy $1 bills for $0.30 or $0.50.

I bought the book genetics demystified to see how my knowledge was holding up.  The book has a lot of typos. I should know a lot about this  I am sloppy this way as well.  By and large genetics demystified does a fairly good job of introducing the basics of genetics, genetic related diseases, cancers and the basics of genetic technology. 
Each chapter has a quiz at the end and their is even a final.  I read 2-3 books a week on the train and this was a pretty fun one. 

If you want a primer on genetics get genetics demystified, it covers a lot of ground fairly quickly and accurately.  Just make sure you read carefully there are a few typos and some of the Quiz answers are wrong or transposed.

about vista.......

That steaming pile known as vista is now allowing people to pay for the privilege of downgrading to XP after purchase.  OEM's are nwo also allowed to sell XP for at least 5 more months.

MS office 2007 has a steep learning curve and excel can't do math....MSFT=$20/share in 12 months.  Roughly a loss of $70billion on paper.  The days of the OS being important are fading fast.  In 5 years it won't matter.  Do you have any idea which operating system your, car, ATM,  phone, GPS or MP3 player are running.  Why should you really have to care about your PC.?

Let's sum it up..Vista is the new New Coke.

Comparables valuation tool

Years ago I built a valuation tool for running Comparables.  This was a way of looking at an industry and assessing the comparable valution of other companies.  I am now a value investor, which means the comparable is now the effective T-Bill yield vs intrinsic value as calculated from free cash flow.

This tool took me 30 minutes to build in 2002.  It is free anyone to use here.  The comparables table needs updating, but may be interesting for someone all the same.  Again if you are an investment professional or consultant and this adds value to your life please make a donation to Reporters without borders in the amount you feel worthwhile.  My suggestion is $500.  the download is here Download valuationsheet.xls .

a tool for corporate due diligence

for all of you consultants out there here is a fill in the blank tool, I used to assess start-ups when I was doing some VC screening in London many years ago. 

Basically just fill in the tabs :marketing, sales, management etc. and you get a report and ranking from 1 to 10.  How you use it is up to you?Download due_dilf_ullreport.xls

If you like it and get value from it.  Please assess its value and make a donation rounded to the nearest $500  to reporters without borders  this is donation ware. :)

information shadows the invisible you.

I found some old stuff, while I was cleaning up my soon to be sold Windows XP laptop.  I am going to post it to the ole blog.   Here is a piece, I wrote in London 2001 about your modern shadow.
Invisible you.

The things that count today & tomorrow are invisible. With the exception of immediate family and peers, you can’t see, feel or smell the most important things now or in the future.

These things vary depending on geography and beliefs. But here they are, get ready, the invisible you will show up more often in your life. Invisible you follows you around, visits places you have never been and tells people things you don’t even know about.

Information: 

You have an invisible trail, an invisible tail really, it’s growing every day. You are watched, tracked, tagged and monitored. For good or bad there is a mounting pile of data about you, an invisible outline of your life and actions. 300 images a day if you live in

London

by some estimates.

You can’t touch your invisible tail, don’t know that most of it is out there, but your life depends on it. Your right to fly, drive, get medical care, make a purchase, access certain areas and privileges is all determined by information.

This information is bought, sold, created, stolen, copied and manipulated by people and machines you will never see or know about. The matrix is thin today, but growing exponentially thicker.  Today your tail follows you, tomorrow it may lead. Fear it or revel in it, the invisible tail grows and the digital forest entangles you a little more everyday.

Messages & media:

 

You like Coke! You don’t ask why. Your body and sense of taste don’t actually count in this matter. Your head and the messages do! 

If blindfolded and offered a drink, you, like a majority of people (true fact) prefer Pepsi 60% over Coke 30%. 

Yet if shown the label and logo in a taste test you will (60% chance) prefer coke.   

Who is in charge? You ask for, consume and enjoy Coke because you see messages telling what you like. 

These messages work when you aren’t paying attention. One of Coke’s market reach goals was to have a Coke available within 75 feet of every man woman and child. Bet you have one around now. 

Who is in control you or the messages.  Can you escape coke? Do you want to? It is surrounding you right now. Are you in the Coke matrix, try and get out.

It doesn’t matter. You have seen enough messages to like Coke. The value of this fact and the messages in your head mean Coke has over $40 billion in brand value as a company. There are one billion 8 oz. servings consumed everyday. Think about that. 

The value of Coke is derived from a slice of gray matter in your head that drives your behaviour.  Guinea pig.

The most valuable real estate in the world sits on the necks of 6 billion people. Because most of these heads are poor, the biggest industries are only interested in the rich necks. Wouldn’t you be? Who do you try to influence in your life?

 

Creating invisible worlds of information:

A tree falls in the forest and a CNN cameraman isn’t around to report it. Does it make a sound?

A bomb blows up 10 miles away, no one is hurt and the media doesn’t report it. Did the bomb really blow up? 

You experience fear, anger, excitement, desire and beliefs based on what you see and are presented with. It’s all digits, ink and glowing phospher on screens. You can probably count the real celebrities, crimes, famines and wars you seen on 2 hands. 

These things might not ever come into your reality, yet you still care, why, most likely because you think others will care or interested as well.  

Try reading the websites from a foreign country. www.rediff.com (

India

), www.gulfnews.com (

dubai

). The world looks different there. 

Yet for most people the world presented through a glowing box is reality. 

Without these messages you wouldn’t know that you were in danger, had an opportunity of a lifetime or were supposed to dress in a certain way and eat the right food to live a little longer. 

Messages are cheap and everywhere. You live in the modern world and like most people will see over 2,000 messages advertising messages today.  Who pays for them and how do they affect how you see and act in the world? To busy to think? It becomes invisible, part of the background.  

Visit a 3^rd world country and see how fast things shrink when the messages disappear. You may also notice other things become a lot more vivid and real, the moon at night, the rise and fall of the tides, the people around you.

We are social animals (advanced primates really) and act according to the group. But what if the group doesn’t exist, but is digital.  Ever wonder why people know more about the lives of people on the TV show Friends than their own relatives? 

DNA:

"This above all. To thyne own self be true."
- William Shakespeare

Tarot cards, psychics and mediums are big multi-billion dollar businesses. One psychic telephone hotline in the

US

was worth more than $1 billion. Now, imagine if they were proven scientifically accurate and effective, well DNA is. 

You can’t see it, but it will tell who you really came from. It will tell you, what you are capable doing. Ask DNA nicely and it may even tell you how long you have got to live. 

 You are going to face challenges to be truer to yourself than ever before. Do you tell your wife you could die at 50, or that your children might have red hair and an 20 extra IQ points? Do you tell your boss, the government? 

 You leave a trail of this information every time you sit in a chair, move, drink a class of water or visit a restroom. 

 You can’t stop releasing this information. Soon we will all be able to read it. Nervous? 

 DNA diagnostics will be the biggest challenge to Shakespeare’s quote in the near future. The invisible you will start talking a lot more publicly. Are you ready?

 

Law: 

We behave publicly in a certain way, and in democracies we decide the right and wrong ways of behaviour should be fixed and apply to everyone. This social convention is law. 

Hernando

de Soto

estimates that in the 3rd world there are over $9 trillion in assets that can’t be used due to bad property laws. $9 trillion wasted due to bad group behaviour and invisible legal codes.

The invisible power of law keeps some in power, some in poverty. Learn about it, change it and release the 3^rd world from its own invisible shackles. 

It is not the rich that make the poor, poor, it is rights. You can’t see them, can’t touch, but woe be he or she who loses them. 

Some will die to get them. Some travel to new lands seeking this invisible service. New technology and with it new questions mean that these rights and new ones will become more important. Who decides your future, your children’s?

Invisible you is more important than regular you.

These invisible things act in the realm of what is known as collective culture. Our overlapping group identities and beliefs determine how and when we participate with the invisible you. 

So, who are you? Who is the invisible you and what is the invisible future going to offer you? Can you stop it? Do you want to?

Beijing mall...really amazing ceiling

check out this amazing $32million dollar ceiling in a mall in Beijing.  Remember this is the ceiling. 

here is the source of all this interesting stuff: trendhunting magazine

interesting way to travel

this will be too loud for any consumer application, but for commuters replacing helipads, would be handy. It would also make a good emergency vehicle.

Scary stuff

My wife is from Hungary and every once in awhile she will use an idiomatic expression with a word transposition that is incredibly unusual and yet insightful.  On occasion she warns me of being a "scarce monger" now the intent is most likely to ward off my "scare monger" bias, but being a scarce monger is more typically a truer reflection of the intent.  I have been bearish for 5 years about real-estate and money in the U.S. and for 4 years and 11 months, I have been wrong. 

Interestingly enough Alan Greenspan has been making allusions to the panic of 1893.  Now for those of you not aware of this panic....hmmm aren't that many people around who are over 120 years old.  This particular panic was real-estate based and created 20-25% unemployment.  Now any other person bringing up a historical anomaly like this, would rightly be written off as someone who has invested all of their funds and sanity in a " survival condo" in Idaho with 20 years of baked beans in the fridge and gold coins buried in the corner.

Alan Greenspan is different, he is not only a great central banker, but a musician as well :)  If you want to read a treatise of what happened in 1893 from a fresh 1907 perspective have a look here.  This is a book from the Stanford library that explains the whole mess.  Lets hope Mr. Greenspan's allusions are mere historical allegory than analog.  After all the 1% money provided by the fed after the tech bubble and the poor oversight in lending practices on his watch precipitated whatever may have been going on now.  Greenspan's retirement may look like another case of uncanny timing by the old fellow.  Who knows a decade from now people may be positing conjectural histories such as what if Greenspan had made it in the big band era?

For those of you not nervous about global financial risk, stop looking at the silly Dow Jones Index and watch the TED spread.  The smart money knows that if the Dow drops 300 points, its called Tuesday, i.e. a non-economic event.  However the TED spread is like watching global bankers anxiety levels.  When this thing jumps you can smell the fear.  The TED spread is hopping up pretty fast and liquidity is drying up.  This Wall Street barometer hopefully won't become a mainstreet event, but if it does, it will be very ugly, 1893 indeed. 

cult of Mac: it just works.

The image to the left is the original Apple Computer Logo.  It is Newton under a tree at the magic moment.
I have just started a new role with a money management firm in New York. I get to analyze and select public firms to invest in.  As part of the job, I had to choose a new computer.  I chose an Apple Power mac.  This might sound silly to the PC people out there, but was a considered choice.  The first computer I ever wrote a program for was an Apple IIE when I was 9 years old back in Iowa at the public schools "computer camp".  It was great.  The first company I bought shares in was Apple in 1983 at the age of 10.  The first balance sheet I ever reviewed was from them.  At age 20 in 1990 I co-founded a mac only software firm in Iowa with friends.  I left the Macintosh fold in 1993.  I am now back.  The experience was bizarre, the mac allows for freedom's and choices in action and fluidity that are different from the PC.  I was frankly a fish out of water, for the first day.  I now realize, the clunky cage of my Windows experience had taught me to expect certain things.  I now realize how things can be.  Here is a little list of things that were surprising:

1. I unpacked the box plug in the machine, 1 cord, one Ethernet cable and it just works. NO crapware from affiliates etc.
2. A printer in the office that required a 550MB driver on windows was automatically identified and just worked.
3. I downloaded skype and the built in camera and speakers automatically tone down my music when a call comes in.  The image and voice from Sweden were crystal clear.
4. My PDF files open instantly and just work.
5. I installed open office albeit with a little hiccup after getting X11 installed.  It just works, I can open powerpoints, spreadsheets etc. no problem.
6. My web based applications, just work.

For $1,500 I got a machine that is faster, smoother, better looking, more versatile and flexible than anything, I have worked with in years.  I may even put Ubuntu Linux on it, if I get time.  I have been busy working so far.
My advice, Vista is the best reason yet to buy a mac.  It just works.