SE Asian tycoons

A short excerpt from a book about the godfathers (mostly ethnic Chinese) of commerce in SE Asia (includes Hong Kong). Golf and willing slaves keep things moving.

Cheapest days of the week to buy certain items

Watching for discount and inventory cycles.

Homage to John Woo -- Oneway Ticket

Winner gets play on Spike TV. This one is the best on repeat viewing (2:30) -- apparently done by a professional shop. Via Julio (I would've linked, but nothing's happening).
STRANGLEHOLDS TRUE TO JOHN WOO SHORT FILM CONTEST

Add to My Profile | More Videos

Respectance -- online memorializing of loved ones who have passed on

Profile with video, photos, memories comments pages.

The collapse of the USSR

The seeds were there near the beginning. A couple of leaders were positing maintaining private agriculture back in 1928-29. Stalin said no, even if it possibly meant civil war. Eventually, the burgeoning urban population strained already plummeted grain productivity. Oil revenues could buy food for a while, until the Saudis decided to stop propping up oil's price. The article makes a parallel with the Spanish empire when mentioning establishment of empires on unstable resources:

The Spanish empire, without losing a single battle on the ground for fifty years, managed to lose all of its possessions in Europe outside of the Pyrenees...

Link to whole article here.

Balloons covered in solar cells

Helium-filled, two should suffice to power a house. Would cost less than conventional cells per unit area.

Detacho -- toy design which incorporates the issue of divorce

A slice and a lapdance

Hidden in the back of a pizzeria in NY, $10 can get construction workers and traders some exotic dancing relaxation.

Teach a man to fish: Stop (?) the aid to Africa, part 2

But don't prevent him from fishing by cutting his line and squaring him in the balls once he gets a clue. Maybe some fairer trading from the wealthier nations would help (speaking of fishing, check this). Actually, the question mark is in the title because I can't believe that funding has gone beyond patchwork tokenism up to now, even if cumulatively large over time.
The article is properly dismissive of celebrity conceit not considering Africans as agents in the improvement of their lives. However, Jeffrey Sachs is lumped in with Madonna and Gwyneth Paltrow. His expertise shouldn't be regarded quite that askance -- note his coverage of weather-linked bonds and co-op loans to buffer farmers' crop risk, a development that could use encouragement.
The news seems to be getting better for sub-Saharan Africa: '04-'06 GDP growth at ~6%/yr, private capital inflow surpassing aid, elementary education expansion at twice the rate of Western experience; Nigeria's judiciary is starting to flex; and hopefully ideas like a charter establishing auditing standards for resource extraction and distribution will catch on.
For their part, wealthier citizens of the world can push their governments for fairer trade arrangements, and push companies to demand transparency from corrupt dictators in order to do business. There needs to be more noise about these points in the mainstream press.

Unexpected uses for bathroom items

With baby oil, and dental floss, antacid tablets, and cotton swabs.

Gallery called Living in Three Centuries: The Face of Age

Usually with excerpts of things they've seen in their lifetimes. Navajo woman at 104 years:

ThumbStrips -- page history filmstrip in browser

Now you can visually remember what pages you've looked at before. An extension for Firefox.

Law and economics of pirate organization

Even criminal organizations have observable laws and codes to maintain profits. In fact, a pirate ship was more democratic than the tyrannical legitimate navy and merchant vessels where the captain was accorded too much power.
The original paper here.

Politically incorrect but true facts of human nature

Well... These "truths" are based on an evolutionary biology interpretation of behaviors. It claims that suicide bombers in a Muslim society are more likely because of the greater violence from polygyny (seen in other cultures), and because of the promise of 72 virgins (mates) in the hereafter (What? Too broad a stroke. In a young male, testosterone can fuel hatred and self-aggrandizement to absurd levels, too. All battle sacrifices can be seen as helping a broader, threatened genetic strain with which the individual identifies.)
However, the point about a male's midlife crisis having to do with the wife's age rather than the man's -- they make it sound sensible.

Things your grocery store would prefer you not know

Basic marketing, but also mentions how fresh food prep could be suspect for microbial contamination.

China has to worry about an aging population too

The urban, blue collar, retirement age is 50 for men and 55 for women; five year bump up for govt or higher-grade professionals. Little early, huh? The one-child policy introduced in 1980 helped to make this catastrophe-in-development happen. Of course, having too many children is a catastrophe itself.

Jet-propelled kayak

Speeds over 30 mph, steering only with paddles. Actual footage of the kayak in action begins about 3 1/2 minutes into the video.

Wiki's potato famine entry

Linked to the Wikipedia entry on the famine. Some controversy on British role. Just wanted to show the picture here:

Caution with soy

I have heard that fermented soy, like miso, natto, tempeh, is okay in smaller portions (East Asian diets consume regularly, but not in huge North American portions). No very specific details here, but an intro to those unfamiliar with the issue.

Avoiding ID and data theft

Tips from heavy users and experts, including Frank Abagnale, made famous in Catch Me If You Can.

The biotech future

Wealth will no longer be concentrated in urban areas. Household energy generation and the coming of domesticated (like computers) green (mostly genomic here) tech will slow down the mass migration from underdeveloped rural areas to cities by providing economic opportunities.

Air-conditioned bed

Don't cool the whole room. Just cool the bed.
They have a USB-powered, cooling shirt as well.

90+ music and audio sites

Jamming, remixing online, identifying a track you've recorded from somewhere, ...

Four-foot-nine, 88 lbs., 75 years old, menace to the corrupt

Deeply loyal to the communist revolution in Vietnam, damned if 75-year old Le Hien Duc is going to allow corruption to defile it:

Like many others of her generation, Duc joined the revolution as a young woman. During Vietnam's war against French colonialists, she spent years in the jungle, decoding messages for the army.

``We gave our blood, sweat and tears,'' she said. ``There is no excuse for anyone to abuse their authority..."

Her fallback technique is getting home addresses of government officials, including ministers if necessary.

Ways to deal with mosquitoes

Spray garlic powder and water all over your yard?

For the guys -- Roadbag portable urinal

This link goes to Neatorama which has a link to the German product site. It's 4 euros for three of them; less per unit if you get the larger quantity packs. There's some polymer to soak up the urine.

Swarm theory

Call it the wisdom of crowds, or crowdsourcing, or mass collaboration. How collectively, stupid units with only a few rules can display intelligent behavior. Each individual unit collects only local information from a neighbor and never sees the big picture, but impressive results are achieved.
We see such self-organization in resource collection of ants and bees, and in the movement of fish schools and bird flocks. There are applications to human group behavior, too. To my knowledge, it is the basis of AI. I mean, really, how intelligent is an individual neuron, all by itself?

Scrub off antigens to make type O blood

Machine using enzymes from two different bacteria, the sugar molecule antigens are taken off the surface of type A and B red blood cells. And voila -- immunologically neutral type O blood.

Things you didn't know you could do with Wikipedia

Like Cliffs notes-type summaries, stock image collection and a search trend tracker.

A people only in the now

This is probably the most fascinating post so far. The Piraha (pron. pee-da-HAN) language not only has no numbers, fixed color terms, terms for "left" or "right," nor quantifiers like "all," "each," "every," "most," and "few," they have no abstract thought at all. They live only in the sensate present. This means no tradition of art or history past a couple of generations, nor any mythology/religion.
This cracks my presumption that all earlier cultures had more accessible intimations of the Divine, more spirituality, as seemingly suggested by Joseph Campbell. Isn't mythologizing and yearning for the greater a natural function of the brain, like language (but read on below)? The Piraha's apparently deficient state, however, also shows up all the the vanity and pride other people put into the stories and identities they weave about themselves, especially collectively. Such an urge or cultural habit would appear to be unnecessary.
The language is somewhat rudimentary as it does not seem to have recursion. This is a phrase inserted in another phrase of the same type for infinite variation (e.g. The man who is wearing a hat is walking down the street), the only feature that Noam Chomsky whittled down to being the essence of universal, built-in-brain grammar that distinguishes humans from animals. The allegation is that culture/environment plays a more fundamental role than supposedly inviolable Chomsky doctrine allows -- acquired rather than built-in. That's decades of widely accepted "truth" upended.
It's a New Yorker piece, so it's long. Just take it in bites.

Update on counting from MIT team here.

Insanely useful US government watch websites

Including a campaign contribution tracker.

Legendary landmark scams

How do you rent out the White House?

World's oldest car to be auctioned

Steam-powered, from 1884, estimated at between $1.5 to 2 million. I guess keeping it well-maintained for the very long run overcomes that depreciation!

15 uses for baking soda

Mostly cleaning this or that, but also to smooth skin, put out a small fire (fabric examples given), ...

When killer cops walk

After being tasered seven times, US Marine Hale was shot point blank in the chest three times by police Lt. William Browne:

Browne claimed self-defense. But Hale was no threat to anyone when he was killed. He didn't resist arrest. He had no weapon.

More detailed account here.
You have to wonder what kinds of individuals become constables. If you remember the Stanford Prison Experiment that induced "normal" students to become cruel when cued as guards, consider this revisit of the volunteering process -- you can guess what happened:

Carnahan and McFarland ... re-ran the volunteering part of the study to see what sort of people would volunteer for a two week study ‘of prison life’, compared to those volunteering for a study described in an identical manner but with the ‘prison life’ bit taken out.

Roswell PR officer leaves affidavit confirming ET craft and bodies

Lieutenant Walter Haut was the guy who issued the original disc capture press release and the subsequent ones with the change in story. He denied everything his whole life and left an affidavit to be opened after his death. In it, he confirms that he saw some egg-shaped craft and strange bodies.

Returning To Our Visual Roots (book)

Just for this quote, an Amazon link to Thinking Like Einstein: Returning to Our Visual Roots with the Emerging Revolution in Computer Information Visualization. Alleged thoughts from Socrates on technology:

Long ago, Socrates described some second thoughts he had about the new and questionable technology called a "book". He thought it had several weaknesses. A book could not adjust what it was saying, as a living person would, to what would be appropriate for certain listeners or specific times or places. In addition, a book could not be interactive, as in a conversation or dialogue between persons. And finally, according to Socrates, in a book the written words "seem to talk to you as if they were intelligent, but if you ask them anything about what they say, from a desire to be instructed, they go on telling you just the same thing forever."

ETF bubble

Well, when you have a Georgia ETF and the HealthShares Infectious Disease Index, liquidity is being spread a little too thin, and speculative spiking becomes more likely. The premise is that a frenzy eventually ensues, involving many funds.

New Real Player launches

The new player adds a “save this” button to any video playing in your browser. When you click it, Real will download the file in the background as you surf regardless of format.

Melting wall clocks for purchase

You can get the ant or fly if it pleases you.

Virtual game hires real economist

As the lead economist for EVE, my duties will include publishing economic information to the EVE-Online community. My duties will also be to coordinate research cooperation with academic institutions as the academic world has expressed quite an interest in doing research on this phenomenon (which shows how important MMOGs might become in future research into economic and human behavior).

Previous post on EVE's economy.

Class- and boardroom projectors could be damaging to eyesight

Some investigation needs to be done on how damaging even peripheral capture of over 1500 lumens could be.

Age of scientific ignorance

Concerning scientific illiteracy. Downbeat (regarding society) coverage of Natalie Angier's The Canon: A Whirligig Tour of the Beautiful Basics of Science, a pop primer on the scientific ideas any person needs to know. It then turns optimistic when interviewing John Brockman, who started up the previously posted edge.org. Stats claimed in this article:

Forty-two per cent of Americans in a recent survey said they believed that humans had been on Earth since the beginning of time.

and

... in the UK ... 20 per cent of people still believe that the Sun revolves around Earth

So you wanna make a movie?

Really, for a few thousand dollars and plenty of chutzpah, you can communicate a story through the screen.
Also, some screenwriting books from the same blog.

How to ace a test for facts: memorization technique

Essentially, make notes in complete sentences and progressively memorize more and more sentences, reading out loud. Optimal for up to six pages of notes.

Algorithmic arms race on Wall Street -- goodbye traders

Short, overview article on how even the more conservative, traditional firms are on the bandwagon now. Traders are becoming irrelevant. The IBM study mentioned is here (haven't read).
Also, this Institutional Investor article more specifically covering dark pools and algorithms for trading execution efficiency, rather than for strategy (I read some headline somewhere about applying peer-to-peer tech to orders). There's a lot of in-house order routing to dark books going on; not necessarily getting the best price in the world. There seems to be less and less point to a displayed, depth quote screen.
Regulation cannot help but lag.

Belkin's washable mouse

This one has horizontal scroll capability as well.
Keyboards and mouses (correct plural for the device) are excellent media to transmit microbes. My customer service days around trading stations can attest to that.

MizPee -- need to find a restroom while you're out?

To your cellphone's browser. User-contributed database of locations. Unfortunately, it looks like they have no times of availability, nor even a Google map, but it's a start. Don't know if there's anything for beyond the States.
Cleverly includes promotions for nearby businesses as a menu option.

Wow-cleaner to scrub industrial emissions

Given the development rate of behemoths India and China, this interim technology is required:

Wow's technology was shown to remove 85 - 95% of heavy metal pollutants and up to 85% of carbon dioxide from emissions, compared with other scrubbers, whose technologies only removed an average of 50 - 60% of mercury from emissions.

The technology works by first cooling the emissions and then adding chemicals to allow them to be converted into water soluble, non-polluting compounds and solid particles that can then be washed out. It is highly versatile: it can be installed on coal-fired power plants, furnaces, incinerators, gasifiers, gas turbines and a bevy of other utilities.

However, note the comments.

Adequate sun exposure no guard against low vitamin D

Fifty-one percent of the 93 studied in Hawaii had abundant exposure, but still low vit D levels.

Zentation: Online video and PowerPoint get married

You have to be online, but surely there have been times you would have liked to apply PowerPoint to a video.

Is The Office's Ricky Gervais already a has-been?

We have to bear in mind that each of the two seasons were only six episodes long and that he and Merchant declared to the world that they had run out of stuff to write. So, the man does understand quality over quantity. Ergo, he can be held culpable for his present desperation.

Rise of libertarianism: Affluence giving rise to hippies and then right-wing fundamentalists

A review of the book, The Age of Abundance: How Prosperity Transformed America's Politics and Culture. The self-denying, Protestant work ethic provided the material stability for self-realization to become a common goal. However, this generally meant reaction against the very institutions that allowed it to arise in the first place. Then came the right-wing backlash self-realization.
This article, by the book's author himself, goes over more blow-by-blow of each side and concludes that they have both made their marks on society and that what middle exists today are libertarian inclinations. One of the more interesting lines regarding the right:

(Oral) Roberts now saw: God wants us to be healthy; God wants us to succeed; God wants us to be rich!

This alignment of Christian fundamentalism with money is apparently recent, antithetical to the tone of 19th century belief.

I haven't had the time to go over it, but here's an essay on types of libertarianism and why it's not workable.

Finally, here are the Nine Circles of Libertarian Hell for those who think they care about liberty.

Cylindrical rooftop wind turbine from Australia

Five of these in Perth can take care of a house's needs; surplus sold to grid. Of course, you can mix and match with solar or other sources instead.

Time's interview with Rupert Murdoch

This was in anticipation of picking up the Wall Street Journal. Some of that history plus some personal psychology.

Pay to see your friends humiliate themselves on the internet

Socially networked, Jackass lite. A few categories like romantic, challenging (?), and X-rated.

Using drugs to intentionally loosen memory's grip

Presumably good for PTSD and the like.
One of the side effects of the hypertension drug propanolol is memory problems. This treatment experiment, however, administered the drug during measured stressful recollection of trauma that occurred ten years back. Apparently, by disrupting the phase of restoring a memory after recollection, the researchers were able to reduce the anxiety associated with the memory.
Although the second experiment mentions that the U0126 drug used is known to induce limited amnesia, there's otherwise nothing in the article to suggest that a memory itself has been erased; it could be just the emotional association.

Swaptree -- swap books, CDs, DVDs, video games

Limited bartering. You only have to pay shipping.

Future urban boom chance to set things right

The great thing about concentrating population is efficiency of information dissemination. Resources need to be targeted to women, who actually take care of the local community. Having easier access to information on health, education, family planning will make the huge difference.
The UN report notes that to avoid shanty town sprawl, investment is needed now in basic urban infrastructure for housing, as well as the laws to mitigate unscrupulous landlords.

Bad airline seat

A handwritten note complaining of seat 29E. We need to find out which aircraft this is.

Quartz knuckles

A two-finger ring meant for ornamentation, I guess, but it more says, "watch out,"
to me.

100 most mispronounced words/phrases

Like saying pronounciation instead of the proper pronunciation.

The spread of sushi as good globalization

A review of the book The Sushi Economy, which shares history and tramps around the world to make the connections for us with cool anecdotes of the trade of moving fish and sushi.

Dirt cheap, wall-sized whiteboard

With parts from Home Depot, for $28.

Excise HIV from infected cells

Nowhere near in vivo yet, but "the discovery of the Tre recombinase proves that enzymatic removal of integrated HIV-1 from human chromosomes is a current-day reality." Present treatment is suppression of load, but HIV can remain dormant in infected host DNA, reactivating later.

World clock of birth, death, forest loss, ...

Number cumulatively ticking up to tally things like divorce, cars produced, etc. Extended subtable for types of death.

Protect the soil, release less carbon, slow global warming

With organic farming techniques like no tillage and winter cover crops, carbon is better sequestered in the soil. Carbon dioxide emission for the States could go down 10% if all US farmland went organic.

Shots of water as fire

How to get ketchup out of a normal, glass bottle

Itemizing of the wrong ways, and a bit of physics.

The story of the record industry's decline

Opportunity after opportunity blown. The big entertainment industry, for all of its supposed hipness, has too few gatekeepers from insular circles without an ear to the ground. New distribution is punishing their arrogance.

Fragile X mental retardation reversed in mice

With fragle X syndrome, the subject's mutation in a particular gene on the X chromosome leads to cognitive difficulties, all the way to mental retardation in the extreme. At the synaptic level, the dendrites seem to be thin, stubby and immature, impairing signal transmission.
A protein, actin, helps to shape dendrites (as well as other parts of the neuron). Actin, in turn, is regulated by the enzyme, p21-activated kinase (PAK). The researchers speculated that by knocking out PAK activity (genetically in this case), actin production would go up and make for healthier dendrites. Indeed, fragile X mice without PAK production showed more normal cognitive behavior.
So, theoretically, if PAK production could be inhibited in fragile X humans with a drug or something, things could look better for them. Who knows, however, about side effects.

PC World's 100 loved blogs

Auto to fashion to media to politics ...

Does GDP matter?

Real income is the proper measure of our command over resources. Using this figure instead, a nation doesn't have to increase productivity, just buy cheap. Of course, to buy something, you have to actually sell something, rather than taking out another mortgage or auctioning more T-bills.

Plastic back into oil

Using an industrial microwave.

The Hauntening

Some harmless, minute-and-a-half of fun.

Gladiator truths counter movie myths

Gladiators were bean-eating vegetarians who fought barefoot, participated in refereed matches and suffered floggings if they became inebriated or behaved inappropriately with women, new findings suggest.

Confessions of Staples drones

Guide to some insider stuff for shopping at Staples.

The Netherlands restricts drugs and prostitution -- liberal identity expiring

It's especially organized crime's involvement which is making the trades appear more lurid. Not just the orthodox Christians are raising the alarm:

Increasingly, politicians from the more center-left Labor Party are among the most outspoken proponents of closing some brothels and marijuana shops -- known here as "coffee shops."

The Harold & Kumar sequel will appear out of step when released.
Update: Now going after mushrooms.

Waitress beating experienced hands at picking stocks

A 46-year-old waitress is close to the top performer for a million-dollar CNBC stock contest prize. Results today on July 8? She plays earnings moves. Has never touched the markets before.

How Facebook could crush MySpace, Yahoo! and Google

The opposing view to the earlier one which I had neglected to credit to Jason Kottke. You can indeed sit in one place and do many things -- like third-party Lending Club -- but you also get updated as to what friends are doing.

Sure, the other portals incorporate Gmail and BBC headlines and YouTube searches and podcast directories. By adding a social context to all of this content, however, Facebook would immediately trump its main competition. With Facebook's News Feed, it's elementary to see when your friends sign up for a new product or service. That means the best add-ons become viral instantly...

Kottke argues, though, that like AOL, Facebook closes off public browsing and participation (yes, its reason for its growth) and that limits how much of a success it can be in the Wild Web. It personally makes sense for me if the friend activity update functionality (news, links, events, products, services, ...) would just fit as a fancier looking feed in my reader. They need to widget parts of it so it can fit into other platforms.

Gene therapy success for Parkinson's patients

A cold-like virus is used as a vector to deliver genes that help convert glutamate into gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA) and thus calm down the subthalamic nucleus. Three months after injection, all recipients had at least 25-30% improvement in symptoms.
Apparently, Parkinson's patients are notoriously prone to placebo effects, though.

Yotel - tiny hotel room

Small (though not capsule small), but very modern-looking and with internet access and entertainment wall in future iterations. Looks something like a boat cabin, no?

The Middle East -- middle of nowhere

Experts on the the Islamic Belt (I don't have a better term since it covers North, East Africa as well as Southwest Asia; the author seems to have no problem lumping Algeria into the region) are overestimating the region's importance and fighting capacity in their dramatic pronouncements.

With neither invasions nor friendly engagements, the peoples of the middle east should finally be allowed to have their own history—the one thing that middle east experts of all stripes seem determined to deny them.

He's actually quite disparaging of the region, calling it "backwards", but at least he acknowledges history:

The middle east was once the world's most advanced region, but these days its biggest industries are extravagant consumption and the venting of resentment.

3D foot measurement device rolling out

It's six 3D cameras which link to a database to recommend a best fit.

Credit is way too loose -- Austrian economics coming back

So, to avoid a serious depression, jack interest rates to curtail even more debt failures than will occur with all those leveraged money losers out there? But how can a choked money supply be okay for profitable businesses? I think we've painted ourselves into a corner. They had better get this right.
I didn't realize there was any dichotomy or distinction between a credit view and a money supply view of the Depression.

Evolution of style for the rich

Between the lines, I think it's saying that the moneyed class now do not avoid activities of the lower classes, but get to do and have more.

List of Web 2.0 lists -- for now

Hopefully, this one stays stable for a while.

The Guardian's top 1000 films

However, Ace Ventura and Heaven's Gate are on the list.

How the Maya vanished

It wasn't bad enough to have an environmental catastrophe; they had to engage in warfare during it.

Create a backup copy of your immune system

Keep frozen some white blood cells drawn when healthy (for a monthly fee) and multiply with natural growth factors when needed. For autoimmune, immunocompromised, or chemotherapy cases.