SEARCH AND CURATION

we currently live in a world of too much information. there is just too much stuff. too much books, movies, music, restaurants, photos. we dont live long enough to intelligently take even the best part of it in. and it is only going to get worse. the amount of information created and stored is now measured in exabytes and zettabytes. in such a situation the only answers lie in search and curation. search needs to get alot better. word, image, spoken, phrases etc, need to be integrated and get much better. today when we make a google word search we get a million answers and never leave the first page. we are not getting the best, unbiased, unbought nor personalized answers. search needs to and will become amazing. and Curation. letting trusted experts recommend stuff to us. at the end of each year, hundreds of entities, people, periodicals etc come out with their best of lists and even just relying on such, there is too much stuff.somehow or other i managed to see about 5 of the LA Times "best" movies of 2012. i know the latimes is not the apogee and i will try to see Amour and Zero Dark 30, but i stray. curation is critical. we need more of it and we need better curation. maybe the answer is to figure out how to increase the rewards for excellent curation that's it. in a world of too much information, we need to rely on search and curation.

EVERYTHING IS MOBILE; THE MAGINOT LINE FAILED

everything and everyone is mobile. this is a problem for nation states and states. the french built the Maginot Line to block a German invasion after WW I. they used static analysis. it failed. the Germans merely went around it in a flanking maneuver and took France in 6 weeks many years ago i flew from New York to Frankfurt on Lufthansa, business class, non-smoking. the only problem was that what separated non-smoking from smoking was just an aisle. the smoke didn't know it wasn't supposed to go across the aisle and ruin my flight. the UK recently increased the tax rate on "millionaires" from 40% to 50%. this was to increase tax receipts. what happened was that the number of millionaires in the UK declined from around 16,000 to around 6,000 and the total amount of taxes and the % of taxes from this group actually declined significantly. they left. and they probably took their money California recently raised a bunch of their taxes to balance their budget; which is out of balance because expenditures are up by 60%. what do you think will happen? some people will leave. people who have national businesses will focus their growth outside of California. if you had the choice between trying to grow in California or actually growing in Texas; which would you choose? Texas. labor is mobile it will follow the jobs, though there is some friction entrepreneurs are mobile capital is mobile all these elements will tend to flow towards policy that encourages economic growth and value creation, which includes wealth creation and away from those places like california and france that dont. the UK just lowered the rate down from 50% to 45% to lure some of those bad millionaires back we will see

ELECTORAL COLLEGE HAS TO GO; DISENFRANCHISEMENT

most of us studied american history in grade and high school and were told versions of the birth of our nation and its form of government. its been awhile but i seem to remember that the electoral college was put in place because we were an agrarian society and we didn't have have speed train yet so we needed "electors" instead of a direct popular vote. i thought it was a little iffy at the time but let it pass. but it doesn't get a pass anymore. its got to go. we have a situation now in this country where 10 states will determine who the next president is. and that might be generous; it might be 4 states, Ohio, Virginia, Wisconsin and Colorado. the rest of the states and the rest of US, don't matter. the principal reason for this is the winner take all allocation of electoral votes by the states. so if your Romney, you basically ignore California and New York in terms of campaigning, other than fund raising, but there is not way for him to win in those 2 states. and the reverse holds true for red states like Texas. this is ridiculous. its time for a popular vote. the vote of republicans in California and democrats in Texas should count. we could change the allocation of electoral votes on a proportional basis but that is tantamount to a popular vote; so lets get rid of this silly, anachronistic, disenfranchising relic next we will discuss daylight savings time!

WHO LOST SYRIA? ITS ABOUT TO BE US!

time and time again, nationalists who want to take their country back from dictators reach out the US and the west for help, with very mixed results. ho chi minh was a nationalist before he was a communist. we wouldn't talk to him; the chinese and russians did. here we have syria. a 2nd generation dictator and bad guy, assad, committing genocide against his own people. getting direct support from Iran and tacit support from china and russia. the UN goes in and calls for a cease fire when one side has all the weapons. and the syrians are doing what they must to defeat assad. without more support from the west and moderate arab states, al queda and the such will continue to come in and assad will fall but the outcome will be not what anyone would want nor what was and is possible. who are we afraid of? iran? china? russia? syria matters. aside from the humanitarian issues; the geopolitical are immense. it represents an opportunity to weaken iran's influence over syria, lebanon, etc. lets not blow it

A MODEST PROPOSAL: TRADE HAWAII FOR CHINSES HELD DEBT

this is not actually my idea. i was having lunch today with a friend and i was bemoaning the fact that we cant keep running billion dollar deficits. he agreed and suggested that we swap Hawaii for all US debt held by China. i just checked and it says they hold about $1.2 trillion. if we swapped with the Chinese, we cover our deficit for one more year, so we kicked the can down the road and don't have to make hard decisions for another year. and whats the downside? we can still go to Hawaii on vacation. the surf will still be there. we will get better Chinese food. what's the downside? upon reflection, i think we could sell Hawaii for more; maybe $2 trillion. what do you think? just saying.

NYPD; THE GANG WHO COULDNT SHOOT STRAIGHT?

the morning we were all getting the first news reports of the shooting in front of the empire state building, aghast. here we go again. and then a little later it appeared that most of the shoots were fired by the nypd; that most of those hit were hit by the nypd, my assistant immediately observed, don't they teach them how to shoot? isn't that their job? well do they? clearly there was an armed man on the streets. action needed to be taken. but? i am sure there will be an investigation. we will see. but i bet we will find that the nypd used poor judgement and worse marksmanship. get these guys on to the range and teach them to shoot the bad guys; not the citizens!

SAY IT AINT SO LANCE!

another fallen idol.so what is lance's legacy? did he dope? probably. probably EPO and blood transfusions of his own blood. did everyone at the top do it? pretty much. is that an excuse. i guess not. was lance a remarkable, once in a lifetime rider? yes. here was a guy that almost died from metastasized cancer. any normal person who survived would be taking gentle walks in the park. but no. he won the Tour de France 7 times in a row. do you have any idea how hard is to win once? its inhuman. your capacity for pain and suffering is not normal. am i disappointed. yes. is lance the greatest rider of all time, yes!

WHY NOT MANIPULATE LIBOR?

so the latest financial scandal is about banks manipulating LIBOR. it will be interesting to see what comes out. but a little perspective. in 1991 Salomon Brothers was caught putting false bids into a Treasury auction to get a greater allocation and likely caused a distortion in the Treasury yield curve. they were fined $290 million dollars and got warren buffett as a opportunistic, savior. interestingly enough there was little litigation. i thought at the time there were fun lawsuits to be made given the zillions of dollars of securities that were price off the curve. now we have libor. well this time the lawyers figured it out and there will be plenty of lawsuits. ah, for simpler times! anyway, to my point. ever since 2008 when the financial crisis really hit, governments around the world have been manipulating interest rates and yield curves. what do you think QE, quantitative easing, does? it is governments buying securities for the explicit purpose of changing interest rates to try to change behavior. at this point the entire treasury yield curve is manipulated. there is nothing market based about it. unless you define the market as one influenced by all players including governments. which i guess we should, its the new normal. back to libor. we will find out what various banks did; maybe why. but i will tell you something. the Bank of England knew that the libor quotes were bs. you have to try to remember that the world financial system was close to meltdown. banks weren't actually lending to each other. libor was a joke. there was no market; there was no rate at which they would lend to each other. and all the central banks didnt want to have that visible and scare the hell out of everyone. lastly, in a world of manipulated rates, why pick on the bankers? they were merely doing what all the governments and central banks around the world were doing!

KOFI ANNAN HAS BLOOD ON HIS HANDS

i am sure kofi annan is a nice, well meaning man. or at least i am willing to assume so. however, his naive mission to syria only contributed to the violence and massacre of syrian citizens by the Assad regime. one can say that that was not his intention, that he meant well, etc. but actions and outcomes trump intentions. anyone with any common sense could have seen/ known that his or anyone's peace keeping mission was a fools errand that assad embraced because he knew nothing would come of it and it would give him time to change facts on the ground. to try something stupid and fail is not noble; it is just stupid. i think we need to re-examine the whole UN peacekeeping mission process so that it is more than a bunch of guys watching genocide and doing nothing

NCAA; PENN STATE; CRAVEN HYPROCRISY

i have no connection to penn state. neither i nor anyone in my family went there. i am not a fan of college football. i am writing about the NCAA nuking Penn State to make an example of it. and the school bending over and taking it. possibly destroying the school. now let me further disclaim and note that i have zero tolerance for the abuse of children. they should be annihilated! back to the narrative the ncaa has been part of an unholy alliance that has captured a portion of the higher education system in this country and turned it into a farm team for the NFL. with untold millions of tv dollars flowing in, this is big business, not higher education. that much money inevitably will create corruption,powerful elites and other bad stuff. the question is should an entity such as the ncaa which is complicit in this corruption make an example of penn state? how about making an example of itself. joe paterno was a man. not a god. he happened to run a hell of a football program. and unlike most of the other bastards who ran other programs, he really cared about his players and their getting a real education. look at the stats. more graduates and higher gpa's than any comparable program in the country. the ability to have a first class program and get an education is rare and commendable. like many great men, he left the stage too late. and it turned into a tragedy. but there is little proof that he aided and abetted Sandusky or covered it up. and he has been disappeared. his name ripped off buildings, his statue removed and replaced by trees. wild stuff. if penn state violated ncaa rules, let them be punished, consistent with past practices, for every violation. but dont punish it for the sins of a country, for the sins of the ncaa. if you want to reform college football then reform college football; all of it. dont just burn down one college and say shape up or this could be you. what happened was shameful. sandusky was convicted and hopefully will not have fun in jail. and the administration needs to be run through a criminal and civil gauntlet and let the chips fall where they may. but for the ncaa to jam a deal down the throat of the school, threatening them with annihilation if they dont agree to the deal is not right. it deprives them of due process. and they caved in a cowardly fashion. what a tragedy

THE INTOUCHABLES; CE MAGNIFIQUE!

go see this movie! its nearly perfect. the story, the actors, the music, everything. its in french with english subtitles but you get so into it you think you are listening to it in your native language then again you could see MIB 3

FACEBOOK IPO FLUB DUE TO GREED

FB is currently trading at $34.67, down from its offer price of $38. this is should not be a surprise. it was the culmination of a series of steps that built on each other. these steps include the following they drove the underwriters to an all time lowest underwriting commission. i think 1%. many applauded this as the new young tech kids showing those greedy bankers. however, there is a reason for the commission. one of which is to use it to help support the stock in the after market. but with such a low commission, they didnt have much fire power and dropped away from the bid and the stock went down. they increased the price range, not in the face of huge demand but because their ego wanted to top $100 billion in valuation. they increased the amount of shares offered to retail. this was a sign of weakness. in hot deals, institutional demand is in multiples of the deal size and people get a fraction of their request. offering more to retail was not generous altruism. it was a cynical tactic in the face of institutional resistance to price. retail investors are less sophisticated they then increased the number of shares. this was so more insiders could sell shares, not more money for the company. peter thiel thanks you they priced it at the high end of the range, after having the temerity of trying to increase the price even higher than the new higher range having said this. its just an ipo. the company can still do well and prosper. it needs to execute. remember the google ipo. its was a mess also. the genius tech guys showed those greedy bankers also. they decided to do a dutch auction, which nobody understood, which led to a low price. they recovered by executing. earning googles of money. personally i dont think facebook was worth 100 billion and will have trouble justifying the price. sometimes the smart kids arent so smart. just another bunch of greedy ego driven idiots

SYRIA; SOMETHING MUST BE DONE

Rwanda, Bosnia, the Holocaust. at some point brutality becomes genocide. it must be unacceptable.

Assad must go; its not OK the slaughter your own people. china and Russia are against it for self interest. we are all self interested. Russia views Syria as a client state; they sell them arms and its one of the few Arab countries they still have influence with in the region. and both china and Russia looked at the Libya mission which really was mission overstep. it went from protecting lives to regime change. now it was a regime worth changing; but china and Russia are obsessed with social unrest that leads to regime change. so it is a problem. we need to reach out to china and Russia, give them a role, assurances, arms deals in the future, whatever.

and stop the killing of civilians!

GREECE WILL FAIL

i think the Greek legislature passed the austerity bill required for their bailout to proceed. the people are rioting.

it will fail.

the economy is shrinking; people are leaving Athens for the country to subsistence farm.

Greece will default. they should never have been allowed into the euro, they should never have been loaned hundreds of millions of dollars. and by the way, the 100 billion haircut covers only private sector holders of Greek debt, not entities like the IMF or the ecb. why? why are their bonds better than private bond holders bonds?

by the way, the Greek economy is comparable to Delaware,

WHEN LIFE FAILS US, THERE IS STILL ART

DANCE, DANCE, OTHERWISE WE ARE LOST. a new movie and labor of love by wim wenders, is an amazing, uplifting, glorious, 3D documentary about the dance of dancer and choreographer Pina Bausch.

are you tired of obama, romney, gringich, global warming, the euro crisis, iran, the economy, etc?

stop whatever you are doing and go see this movie

you will feel better!