*michael parekh on IT*

ON ECONOMIC FOOD FOR THOUGHT

"...THE REASON WHY"

Barron's this weekend has a timely list of recent Economics books for end-of-year reading.  Here's how they introduce it*:

"'TIS THE SEASON FOR MY ANNUAL LIST OF ECONOMICS-related books worth giving -- or better yet, getting -- as gifts. Works on the economic crisis are of special interest this year. Unfortunately, my inner Grinch won't let me recommend any from the raft of those recently published -- because all deal with economic crises superficially.

But I can recommend seven books -- two titles I've cited previously that are indispensable for understanding 2008's dismal economy -- plus five others, including a highly topical critique of democracy from an economic perspective, and even a novel written by an economist."

The one that stood out the most for me in these extraordinary politically-driven economic times was this one:

THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION makes George Mason economics professor Bryan Caplan's scintillating The Myth of the Rational Voter (2007) especially topical. It's subtitled Why Democracies Choose Bad Policies, but actually focuses on why democracies choose bad economic policies.

Caplan's explanation is mainly that the mass of voters are economic illiterates. He does grant that special interest groups can wield anti-democratic power that leads to bad decisions. But even this cannot happen without tacit approval of the voters. For example, businesses enjoy tariffs that protect them from foreign competition, which harms the domestic economy. But tariffs wouldn't get very far if the public didn't already suffer from an "antiforeign bias" that views tariffs as relatively benign.

In a chapter wittily and appropriately called "Rational Irrationality," Caplan explains why people tend to behave irrationally as voters, but far more rationally as consumers. Consumers feel the direct material consequences of making bad decisions with their dollars. But their chances of affecting the outcome of an election or referendum with their votes is effectively nil. So they can enjoy the psychological benefits of voting their biases, while ignoring consequences that would, in any case, require a rational grasp of economics to fully appreciate.

"Democracy lets the individual enjoy the psychological benefits of irrational beliefs at no cost to himself," Caplan declares on page 206. "This of course does not deny the value of psychological benefits. But the trade-off is not socially optimal; democracy overemphasizes citizens' psychological payoffs at the expense of their material standard of living." Caplan therefore proposes more laissez-faire and less democracy to determine economic outcomes."

Understanding the process may not make the end result of what we're going through much better, but it sure makes for one well-informed journey.

* Image source.

ON COOL AND THRIFTY GIFT LISTS

HAVE IT ALL

It's that time of year again, when most of us are rapidly realizing how soon the holidays are going to be upon us, and that we really need to execute on our gift lists.  So lists for gift ideas of course abound in media all around us. 

The one that caught my eye today was this "10 Cool Ideas under $50" from PC Magazine, which of course really means some cool geek gift ideas. 

There are some whimsical, off-the-beaten path items on here even for the most jaded gadget lover. 

Two that stood out for me were this Groovetoons alarm clock system for any iPod Nano and this digital thermometer pan.

I also liked these customizable headphones for the "stylish teen", from EarPollution, that apparently comes in 200,000 configurations of colors and patterns.

Oh, and you can apparently get it in a couple of days.  Now that's a last-minute bespoke gadget.

Here's to more creative, budget-oriented gift lists like this to bring some fun into an otherwise sobering year.

ON UNIQUE ARCHITECTURE IN BEIJING

BOXY PRETZEL

It's refreshing to see that not every major city in a fast, growing, developing country is racing to build the tallest skyscrapers around. 

There's a unique form of skyscraper going up in Beijing that will be re-defining how we think of skyscrapers.  This New Yorker piece by Architect critic Paul Goldberger explains:

"(Ole) Scheeren is the co-architect, with Rem Koolhaas, of the most eagerly awaited building in Beijing, the headquarters of the Chinese television network CCTV, a monumental construction that has become world-famous long in advance of its completion, scheduled for late this year.

A vast structure of steel and glass, it is a dazzling reinvention of the skyscraper, using size not to dominate but to embrace the viewer.

The building will contain more office space than any other building in China and nearly as much as the Pentagon, but, as skyscrapers go, it is on the short side, with just fifty-one floors.

Looking from a distance like a gigantic arch, it is a continuous loop, a kind of square doughnut."

Or a boxy pretzel...pick your snack food.

Mr. Goldberger goes on to say:

"When you get closer, you see that each horizontal section is made up of two pieces that converge in a right angle. The top section, thirteen stories deep, is dramatically cantilevered out over open space, five hundred and thirty feet in the air, and it seems to reach over you like a benign robot.

The novelty of the form—some Beijingers have taken to calling it Big Shorts—takes time to comprehend; the building seems to change as you pass it. “It comes across sometimes as big and sometimes as small, and from some angles it is strong and from others weak,” Scheeren said. “It no longer portrays a single image.”

This gentle giant of a structure, when finished, will have about 4.1 million square feet of office space, a little more than the Empire State Building (2.8 million sq. ft.) and Chrysler Building (1.2 million sq. ft.) combined.

They're racing to finish it in time for the Summer Olympics in Beijing, which kick off in less than 40 days.  It's definitely going up on my list "must visit" places, on the next trip to China.

ON A SMALL STEP FORWARD FOR U.S. BROADBAND

SPOT OF SUN-LIGHT

Broadband consumers in the U.S., have had a spate of bad news, both on the wired and wireless fronts in the past year.  If you haven't been keeping track, let me count some of the ways:

1. Our world rank in the provision of broadband relative to the price paid, has slipped to the mid-teens in recent years.
2. The wired and wireless broadband providers are experimenting with putting caps on the amount of bandwidth consumed by their customers at given price points.  In fact, most of the wireless broadband providers like Verizon, AT&T, Sprint et al, have already started to put on caps to their "unlimited" data plans.
3. The wired broadband providers have been implementing technologies in their networks to throttle down high-bandwidth applications like P2P (peer-to-peer) video services.
4. The broadband providers continue to aggressively use their hefty lobbying capabilities with Beltway regulators on the network neutrality front.
5. On the wireless front, efforts to provide municipal Wifi services across the country have been scaled back for a wide variety of reasons.
6. Also on the wireless front, the widespread deployment of next generation Wimax wireless technologies by providers like Sprint, have also seen setbacks.
7. Recent signs that carriers like Verizon, which won the recent wireless spectrum auction, maybe backing away from some of the open access conditions of those auctions.

So it was good to see a minor bit of good news on the wired broadband front today, from none other than Verizon on it's FIOS fiber broadband roll-out across the country.  Here's an excerpt from DSLReports:

Verizon...has now expanded their 50Mbps/20Mbps FiOS tier into their entire footprint.
The company will also be expanding their symmetrical 20Mbps tier, previously only available in some States, to all of their users starting next week. The push is likely a pre-emptive strike against cable competitors like Comcast, who've only just begun deploying faster DOCSIS 3.0 speeds.
The 50/20 Mbps service will be available in New York and Virginia for $89.95, and in other States for $139.95 a month with an annual service plan. The 20/20 Mbps FiOS tier is available in all FiOS markets for $64.99 a month with an annual service plan (press release here, forum discussion here)."

It's not cheap, but it's increased competition for the cable broadband providers, and that's a good thing.  Verizon's FIOS service has been a multi-billion investment initiative that has been the one small bright spot in the rolling out of relatively affordable, true broadband services in the U.S. 

Not clear from the initial reports if FIOS has any bandwidth caps associated with the various pricing tiers.

We need a lot more  competition from a host of other providers, but this is a small step in the right direction.

ON CREATIVE ENDEAVORS

SPARKS OF SUCCESS

My sister mentioned in a casual phone call yesterday, that her six-year old son came home from school the other day and announced that he wanted to be an artist. 

Of course, that is about the most traumatic thing an Indian mother could hear, especially from a son, regardless of age.

She of course immediately tried to convince him on the merits of a career in engineering, business, medicine, or even architecture, like his Dad.

But young Neal wasn't having any of it.  He emphatically kept repeating, "I like to draw".

I tried to console my sister that times had changed, that yes, it was possible for artists to be millionaires.  Sometimes.

It's a sentiment eloquently captured in this cartoon by Hugh McLeod, who in a recent post announced he was writing a book.  It builds on an online work he published some time ago on "How to be Creative".

Like so many of his fans, I was introduced to Hugh's work via blogging, and am a keen follower of his writings and trademark back-of-a business card cartoons. 

My business card sports one of his cartoons.

I wish Hugh all the best in his current endeavor.  And look forward to his success as both an artist and a businessman.  How could he not, given this eloquent summary of his upcoming work:

"If I had to condense the entire work into a single line, it would read something like, "Work Hard. Keep at it. Live simply and quietly. Remain humble. Stay positive. Be nice. Be polite."

A role model indeed for young Neal to follow.

ON A REALLY HANDY TRAVEL SITE

ON THE GO AGAIN

My favorite new site discovery of the week has to be Flightstats Mobile, which I found thanks to a helpful "tweet" by  Stuart MacDonald on Twitter. 

It's a simple but very useful aggregation of some critical websites one might need traveling in a week like this, with record snow-storms in the middle of the country.

Here's what the home-screen looks like:

"FlightStats Mobile Home Main Menu

1. Flight Status
2. Departures & Arrivals
3. Flight Status By Route
4. Airport Chatter - New!
5. Airport Information
6. Airline Information
7. Security Wait Times
8. Weather Center
9. Current Airport Delays"

I've already book-marked the site on all my cell-phones.  Now I'm armed for bear on my next trip in inclement weather.  Thanks Stuart!

P.S.  Like many, I'm finding Twitter increasingly helpful in discovering new things that interest me.  I've also started to post many things that interest me , much more frequently there as well.  You can follow them either at my Twitter site, or in the pink box in the right side-bar of this blog.

ON SOME TOUGH PRESIDENTIAL MATH

DOUBLES AND SNAKE-EYES

Following on the heels of yesterday's results in the South Carolina Democratic primary, and as we all get ready for "Super Tuesday" on February 5th, this simple conclusion is becoming more clear than ever, for supporters of both major parties.

And that is if the majorities of both parties, (aka "the Base") go with their gut instincts, as they likely are to do, they're likely to hand the Presidency to the opposing party in the General Elections in November.

The New York Times' Frank Rich explains this from the Democratic perspective, in an op-ed titled "The Billary Road to Republican Victory".  It's a very readable piece, with one of the punch lines being obviously that a Hillary nomination would be much easier for the Republicans to counter in the General Election, especially if they had John McCain as their nominee.

Ironically, the Republicans are likely to fall in the same trap as the Democrats, given that their majority (base), is likely to vote for Mitt Romney, who would be a much easier opponent for the Democrats to counter with Hillary Clinton as their nominee.

But amazingly enough, each party also has a strong "aspirational" candidate this election, that can also draw votes from Independents and moderate members of the opposing party.  Of course that'd be Obama for the Democrats and McCain for the Republicans.

So here are the predicted outcomes given the possible scenarios,

Base vs. aspirational from each party:

1.  Clinton vs. McCain:  good for Republicans.
2.  Romney vs. Obama:  good for Democrats.

Aspirational vs. Aspirational

3.  Obama vs. McCain:  tough for both Base and Independents.  The Base in both parties have two unpalatable choices, and Independents and Moderates have two pretty palatable ones.

But the most likely scenario given that mainstream, majority voters from each party are likely to be short-sighted and vote their embedded inclinations gives us this outcome,

Base vs. Base

4.  Clinton vs. Romney, bad for Independents and moderates from both parties.

Of course each of these four scenarios could look change a lot as they're paired up with various running mates to season and off-set the perceived negatives of each candidate to their base and Independent/moderate voters.

But it really is ironic that in one of the most interesting Presidential races in recent times, voting for the candidate that most appeals to the base of a given party is likely to be a positive for the opposing party.

I'm an optimist in most things, but as a moderate voter, I'm girding myself for the most likely scenario after the primaries and nominations are done, i.e., the last scenario above. 

Especially during tough, unsettled times, when human nature is likely to drive voters more by fear than hope.

P.S.  This analysis obviously precludes other "out-of-the-blue" scenarios like potentially Al Gore and/or Michael Bloomberg joining the race.

ON THE NATURE OF LIGHT

SEEING BEFORE BELIEVING

Saw this pop up as a quote of the day in my iGoogle page early this morning, as I slowly recover from Christmas day.

"There are two kinds of light--the glow that illuminates, and the glare that obscures.

              - James Thurber"

It made me think of the top ten stories of 2007 as reported by the AP I posted about a few days ago.

In particular, it made me go back to the list to see how many of the stories were illuminated vs. obscured by the glare of media generated attention. 

It also raised the second derivative question of how many of those stories became stories due to the efforts of specific vocal minorities who had an ax to grind.  Which narrow constituencies benefited, which broader ones lost.

It made me think especially about the ninth story on AP's list, the immigration debate, which I've worn on my sleeve in my blog posts of late.

And it's not just the top stories on the AP list, but any other list we're likely to read as we close out this year.

Today is the day after the day of good will towards all.

Let's think about the issues we're passionate about in the light that illuminates.  And the good of the many, not the few.

ON STARTING TO REVIEW 2007

RANKING TIME

Just ten more days to the end of 2007, and we know what that means.  Plenty of reviews of the year that has almost gone by. 

JibJab has a 2007 in review animated short that lives up to what JibJab does best.  Check it out here, or watch it on YouTube here.

For a more straight up review of 2007, there's always this list of the year's top stories from the Associated Press.  Here's how they summarize it:

"The massacre of 32 people at Virginia Tech by a mentally disturbed student gunman was chosen the top story of 2007 by U.S. editors and news directors in The Associated Press' annual vote.

The rampage, which prompted colleges nationwide to reassess their emergency response systems, received 82 first-place votes out of 271 ballots cast for the top 10 stories.

The mortgage crisis, which roiled the U.S. housing market, was the No. 2 story, and the war in Iraq placed third. Iraq was the No. 1 story in 2006, and has finished in the top three since 2002 — the year of the prewar buildup."

The full list can be reviewed here.  It hits most of the big highlights. 

We all have our own views on how the stories should be ranked or the ones that should even be in the top ten. 

But it's a good start to think about how 2007 should be remembered.

ON ULTIMATE SPENDY DVD SETS AND STORAGE

DIGITAL DREAMS

For lovers of TV and movie fare, Amazon has an enticing list to peruse titled "The Ultimate List of Spendy DVDs".  These are not your average boxed sets of DVDs, but the "Ultimate" sets. 

For example, top on this list is "Seinfeld-The Complete Series", which is every Seinfeld episode done of course, plus a lot of extras.  Amazon's selling it for around $205.  Here's what it includes:

• DVD Features:
  • Available Audio Tracks:  English (Dolby Digital 5.1)
  • Features 32 DVDs with all 180 episodes
  • More than 104 hours of amazing extras
  • The Official Coffee Table Book: a 226-page bound anthology filled with photos, quotes, and trivia from every episode
  • Bonus disc featuring the reunion of the cast plus Larry David on the ninth anniversary of the series finale
  • Packaged in a handy collector's case that will look great on your shelf
  • Documentaries for all nine seasons
  • Inside looks
  • Not That There's Anything Wrong With That (bloopers)
  • In the vault (deleted scenes)
  • Yada Yada Yada (commentaries)
  • "Sein-Imation"
  • Notes about nothing

That's about $6.40/DVD for 32 DVDs of entertainment about nothing.
And that's just the first set. 

Others in the list include the complete and ultimate sets of everything from James Bond to the X-Files to Star Trek (most of the series) to Ray Romano.

It's not just TV or movie franchises from a specific brand title.

How about the UA (United Artists) 90th Anniversary collections of 90 movies for $650?

Or the Warner Mega Classics Collection of for $3,800?

A veritable cornucopia of pop American culture.

Amazon's even got a convenient button at the bottom if one wanted to buy all forty "ultimate spendy DVD box-sets.  Just add them to the shopping cart with one click.

It'd run you about $14,000, or an average price of $350 per "ultimate spendy" set.

Wouldn't be too portable though, with 40 "ultimate splendy" DVD sets easily filling up most of the bookcases in the average home library.

I did some back of the envelope calculations based on some assumptions.  Here some resulting observations:

1.  Assuming that the average set has about 30 DVDs, this would be about 1200 DVDs.
2.  If each DVD takes about 2 hours to watch, and one sets aside that much time per day to watch a DVD, one would be done with this collection in a little over 3 years.   One set would take 60 hours of non-stop viewing.  We're talking about 2400 hours of programming here.
3.  Each physical DVD would cost about $12 per DVD.  Note that most of these are regular DVDs, not HD or Blu-Ray High Definition discs, which typically retail for more per movie or TV show.
5.  If each DVD represents about 4.5 Gb of data, the whole collection would be about 5.4 Terabytes. 

With hard drive vendors like Seagate promising 37 Terabyte hard drives by 2010, we may be actually be able to put these drives to use.  As this piece in Blorge.com points out:

"Seagate says a 300 Terabit hard drive, or one that stores 37 Terabytes, will be available to purchase by 2010. That means over 6000 Blu-ray discs on a single hard drive!

The way technology moves forward, 37 TB on a 3.5-inch hard drive may not seem so big in 2010. But here in 2007, it’s a lot of data, especially when Seagate’s largest single hard drive capacity is a paltry 750 GB in comparison."

We could probably get an iPod that'd have a 5-6 Terabte hard drive by then.

Consider this prediction by a Google executive at a conference in Asia a few days ago, via Macworld UK:

"In the foreseeable future, all the world's content will fit in the palm of your hand, according to Google, which made some fascinating IT predictions at the 2007 Captains of Industry Conference held in Singapore in November.

The forecasts came from Sukhinder Singh Cassidy, the vice president of Google's Asia Pacific and Latin America Operations. She told the conference, entitled "Innovation Drives Growth & Creates Opportunities in the Marketplace" that...

"...if this trend continues, and the cost of storage continues to decrease, we estimate that somewhere around 2020, all the world's content will fit inside an iPod, and all the world's music would sit in your palm as early as 2015," Cassidy surmised, "rendering the CD format unnecessary."

We'd better get the media industry working on how to price that ultimate splendy collection.