If "Trainspotting" had been set in Utah…
31-May-02
I'm addicted to chewable children's multi-vitamins.
Thank goodness they don't have iron in them…
I'll be peeing orange tomorrow…
Maybe I should go to bed now.
Happiness is….
31-May-02
Ghost Call
29-May-02
I was at the Laundromat last Tuesday. It was around 11:00 p.m. I had just finished washing some clothes for the Hurrydate the following day.
My cell phone rang. It was my Dad.
Normally, this wouldn't be strange, except that my parents were on a two week long road trip to see my sister Rachel and her husband Ted in Phoenix, then to see my sister Heather and her husband Jay in Fort Collins, then back to Idaho.
Moreover, they're almost always in bed by 11:00 p.m.
[Me, surprised] Hi Dad, what's up?
[Dad, relieved] Hi Son, are you all right?
“Yeah…why do you ask? What are you doing up so late?”
“Well, your sister Jen called. She said that she got a call from you, but that there was no answer. All she could hear for several minutes was a vigorous rustling sound. Then at the end, she thought she hear someone whisper, '…help me…' She freaked out. She thought you were getting killed. So she called me to check up on you.”
“Well, I had my cell phone in pocket. I tried to call Jen earlier, and her number was still in memory. I probably accidentally pressed the dial button when I was getting my keys out of my pocket. The rustling sound she heard was my phone getting jostled in my pocket as I was moving clothes around.”
“Yeah, that's probably it.”
“I have a question though–why didn't she call me directly?”
“She didn't want to hear you getting killed.”
Tools for Development
26-May-02
http://www.forbes.com/global/2002/0527/036_print.html
Capitalist manifesto
Kerry A. Dolan, 05.27.02
If you give a machine tool away, it will collect dust. If you sell it, it
can cure poverty.
The ramshackle facade of Christopher Wilson's two-room home in the gritty
Southside neighborhood of Kingston, Jamaica, doesn't raise great
expectations. But through the rickety wooden gate and beyond the drainage
ditch lies a new, freshly plastered extension to his house and woodworking
shop.
Wilson, 36, who has a wife and two young children, brings in $800 a month
making cabinets, tables and chairs for a furniture store and for neighbors.
His business got a big kick six months ago when he bought a used drill
press and lathe for $650. It doubled his productivity, which in turn
allowed him to purchase the materials for the extension and hire a mason.
Wilson bought the tools, at a 20% discount from their secondhand value,
from a nonprofit called Tools for Development. Started 15 years ago by Roy
Megarry, 65, the former publisher of Canada's prestigious Globe & Mail
newspaper, Tools for Development has a simple but powerful premise: Make
secondhand equipment available to poor entrepreneurs at an affordable
price. There are no handouts. The entrepreneur pays for the tools either up
front or on credit, with interest rates slightly lower than banks charge.
Today there are three Tools operations, in Quito, Ecuador; San José, Costa
Rica; and the newest, in Kingston. So far 2,500 entrepreneurs have used
Tools to buy 6,000 pieces of equipment for $1.2 million. In the process,
says Megarry, they have created or helped sustain 10,000 jobs. The
institution's annual budget is $90,000. The $1.2 million from the sale of
tools was used for loans, training and shipping expenses.
Megarry was inspired during a 1983 visit to a slum outside Lima, Peru,
where he was attending a publishers' meeting. “I was born in a slum in
Belfast, but I had never seen Third World poverty on this scale,” recalls
Megarry. “I shed a lot of tears that day. I thought, 'I've got to do
something.'”
A few years later Megarry was visiting a technical school for boys in Lima.
The Canadian priest who ran the school told him that it needed saw blades
and drill bits, the parts that wear out. Megarry wrote to the president of
Sears Canada and in exchange for the donation of new drill bits and other
parts, gave Sears advertising space in the Globe & Mail.
He later ran ads in the paper to solicit donations of tools from companies
in the Toronto area and was swamped. The project continued to grow. In 1992
Megarry quit his career as a publisher to devote more time to Tools. He
drums up tool donations from companies at events such as meetings of the
Rotary Club.
He doesn't ask for money but is sometimes offered it anyway; he gladly
accepts it. Last year Megarry got an arm of Rotary International to pick up
75% of the cost of shipping tools from Canada.
At first he gave the tools away to small entrepreneurs. But he found that
many of the tools sat idle. So Megarry and CARE (a partner in the Peruvian
program) decided to start charging for them, although on easy credit terms.
“I realized we needed to be in the development business, not the charity
business,” says Megarry. He also realized that people attach more value to
something they've paid for.
The average purchase is $800; 80% of the recipients pay up front; the
remainder buy on credit. In Quito and San José the default rate on $20,000
of microcredit that has been extended so far is 3%. Tool's interest rate in
Quito, on sucre-denominated loans, is 19%; in San José, on loans in colone,
it's 25%.
“Most Jamaicans are wary of banks,” says Alain Williams, the project
manager in Kingston, not least because banks remind them of loan sharks.
They don't get those vibes from a tool seller.
Sewing machines are buzzing at Janet Shepherd's Cool Garments Creations
shop in Kingston. Shepherd, 48, bought four from Tools to add to the six
she already owned. The $650 she spent (plus another $175 for repairs) is
enabling her to more than double production of school uniforms, to 750 a
season. In the summertime, her busiest season, Shepherd clears about $4,300
making school uniforms. That's on top of the $100 a week she nets with her
regular business throughout the year. She's been in business for 20 years.
Megarry has bigger ideas as well. He would like to tap U.S. corporations
for tools. And he makes it clear again: “This is not a charity. We're
fostering entrepreneurship.”
Marketocracy: an index fund with brains…
26-May-02
[Note, in what follows, I'm speaking for myself, not my company.]
I don't talk about it much, but my company, Marketocracy, is very cool. I'm writing now, because a) we have something to crow about and b) I'm going to shamelessly ask y'all to help me stuff some ballots.
“Five years after making the biggest bet of his life, John C. Bogle, founder of the Vanguard Group, collected $25 from Robert Markman of Markman Capital Management.
In 1995, after Markman had been had been criticizing the foolishness of passive index investing for years, Bogle, a longtime proponent of passive index investing, challenged him to the bet.
The Moderate Allocation Fund that Markman chose was outgained by the Vanguard 500 index fund 226 percent to 156 percent over the five-year period. With taxes figured in, the margin was even greater, 214.3 percent to 113.5 percent.
While gracious in sending the check to Bogle, “I trust you will invest it wisely,” he complained that he had chosen the wrong fund. The Markman Aggressive Allocation Fund returned 240 percent (pretax) over the same 5-year period.
“He says he bet on the wrong one,” Bogle said, “That's like saying I bet on the wrong horse.”
(Bogle Wins $25 Bet Index Funds Staff.)
Unfortunately, a lot of people are betting on the wrong horse.
Research sponsored by Lipper shows that, for the 10-year period ending June 30, 2000, only 26 percent of actively managed U.S. stock funds outperformed the S&P 500.
According to the Investment Company Institute, as of 2001, the combined assets of diversified equity mutual funds totalled more than $3.42 trillion. 84% of that money is invested in actively managed stock-picking funds.
Why do active investment managers perform so poorly?
First of all, looking the market as a whole, it's mathematically impossible for more than 50% of actively managed funds to beat a broad based market index–even if you ignore fees.
Why?
According to William Sharpe,
“….Assume that you in this room constitute the entire universe of investors in the French stock market. About a fourth of you will be passive indexed investors, while the rest will be active investors. Collectively you hold all the stock on the French market. Now let's pick a time period — say a year. And let's say the market as a whole returned 10.0% in that year. Before costs, what did each passive investor get? Exactly 10.0%. Obviously, before costs that average passively managed Euro returned exactly 10.0%.
What about the active investors? One might have made 15.1%, another 3.4%, yet another -23.0%, and so on. But what did the average actively managed Euro invested in the French stock market return before costs? The answer has to be exactly 10.0%. Why? Because the passive part returned 10.0% and the total market returned 10.0%. So the active part had to return the same.
We conclude then that in the French stock market the average actively managed Euro must have the same return before costs as the average passively managed Euro….”
(Indexed Investing: A Prosaic Way to Beat the Average InvestorWilliam F. Sharpe. Presented at the Spring President's Forum, Monterey Institute of International Studies, May 1, 2002)
In actual practice, as illustrated above, actively managed funds don't even come close to the theoretical limit. In part, this is because actively managed funds must pay several costs not borne by passive funds, including:
- Research Cost: Analyzing and identifying stocks to invest in requires a substantial amount of time and effort. These research activities can be self-performed, but it would be hard to compete, from an opportunity-cost perspective with a specialist's expertise and economies of scale. Most mutual fund managers charge between one and two percent of assets under management as research fees.
- Tax-Inefficiency Cost:Active trading is tax-inefficient as capital gains are due each year as stocks are bought and sold under active management. Placing a number on this cost is difficult as individual tax status and tax rates differ, but a quick and dirty estimate is at least one percent a year.
- Transaction Costs: Brokerage commissions and bid-ask spreads detract a lot more from the performance of active funds due to their much higher frequency of trades. A rough estimate puts it at a little over one percent a year.
- Undiversified Risk Cost: Sub-optimal diversification of an active fund adds risk to a portfolio that could have been avoided by investing in an index fund. This risk cost is estimated to be about one percent per year, similar to the transaction and tax costs.
These four costs of active management result in about a four percentage point handicap per year, compared to passive investing. (The Inefficient Markets Argument for Passive Investing”
by Dr. Steven Thorley Dr. Steven Thorley Indexfunds.com. 1999.)
average expense ratio for actively managed funds is around 1.46% vs. 0.46% for passively managed funds.
e've developed the first farm system for mutual fund managers.
Here's how it works.
We operate stock market simulation on our web site, Marketocracy.com.
Here's the results of our fund since inception, compared to the S&P 500.
IMPORTANT CAVEAT! We've only been in operation since November, 2001.
Cloudhopping
26-May-02
Yet another item to add to my “Things to do before I'm pushing up bubbles” list:
“Gee whiz, ” you might say, “..it's just another hot air balloon.” But if you look closely, you'll see that there's no gonodola. The guy's dangling directly from the balloon, with 15 gallons of fuel strapped to his back. On land, he can bound 20 – 40 feet at a time.
That's so cool.
3 hours. 3 minutes. And 43 women.
25-May-02
So I went to the Hurrydate on Wednesday. It was held in the basement of Kell's Irish Pub on Jackson street in San Francisco. Registration began at 6:35 p.m.; the event itself started at 7:00 p.m.
I wandered around the bar. Sharon, the organizer, noticed my “lost look” and asked if I was there for the “HurryDate”.
“Yes.”
She gave me a name tag and a sheet of paper, both emblazoned in bold Sharpie with my name and a big number 58. At the top of the paper were 80 checkboxes numbered 1-80 with “y” or “n” written under each number; the bottom half was empty for notes.
Surprisingly, they were short on guys. Sharon asked me if I wanted to go for the second round as well.
“Sure”.
As people came in, they clumped along gender lines, women at the bar, men at the tables, eyeing each other cautiously. While we waited for the event to start, I chatted with an elegantly dressed Asian guy. Although I would guess he was no more than 28 years old, he and his 32 year old sister run their own Chinese medicine import business.
Before we could chat much longer, Sharon began bellowing out instructions through her headset microphone. “O.K., everyone, listen up. Go to the bathroom now, 'cause for next 90 min, you won't have time. Ladies, find a seat with a letter in front of it. Guys, find a seat across from one of the ladies. When I ring this bell, guys, you must get up and go to the next lady. You have three minutes. That's it, three minutes. If at the end of three minutes, you decide you want to see this person again, circle “Yes” under their number. If you don't, circle “No”. In a couple of days, we will e-mail everyone who matched with your names and phone numbers. If you have questions, ask me, or one of my two assistants. O.K., everyone, Go!”
The room erupted into a roar of conversation. You had to shout and lean in, in order to hear the other person.
“What's your name…”
“Hi, I'm Chris…”
“Whew, this placed is packed…”
“Sally. So where did you drive in from….”
“My name's Bob…”
“…Redwood City, but I'm originally from Queens, N.Y.”
“So how did you find out a …”
“What do you like to read…?”
“….my girlfriend Pam, over there, signed me up..”
Ding! Ding Ding! Three minutes goes by really quickly. The guys made a mad scramble to get to the next table.
At first I thought 3 minutes was far too short a time to get to know someone. And it is. But even though all but one of the women were pleasant and nice, I was surprised at the number of women who I strongly doubted I would be compatible with. For example, I asked one women what question she was asking most of the guys.
“I used to ask guys 'What do you like to do when it's a rainy day'. But then I thought about how I would answer that question. I hate rainy days. I love to be outside, playing tennis, biking, and running. I hate to be sitting inside.”
Now I like to get out once in a while too. But as a movie-lovin', Internet-surfin', book-readin' fool, I could foresee frequent problems if we had to jointly decide what to do on lazy Sunday afternoon.
Ages ranged from 25 – 35, though I think the ages were skewed toward the upper end of the range. Physical appearance varied from “Sandra Bullock” pretty to “Sarah Bernhardt” ugly.
The were a few sparks intellectually. Two of the women listed Ayn Rand as a favorite author. Another and I both agreed that the David Sedaris book, “Me Talk Pretty One Day”, was hysterical.
I got bored with the standard “where you from/where do you live/what do you do” questions. So I started asking questions like “Were you raised religious?” These questions often seemed “tinny” and awkward, because they're not the questions you would normally ask in the beginning of a conversation with a stranger.
My mouth got dry quickly from the constant conversation, so I drained my water glass frequently. By the time the first round was over, I desperately needed the bathroom. At the end of the last “date” in the first round, I turned in my paper, and rushed to the bathroom. I hope I didn't seem too eager to leave.
By the time I came back, they were already about to start the second round. This time I felt more relaxed. I didn't ask any unusual questions, just let the conversation flow.
So how many did I agree to see again?
All of them.
I was curious to see how many women, out of a quasi-random population, would respond to me. I figured if I didn't want to see them again I could just tell them, but I wouldn't have an opportunity to get their numbers again.
So how many wanted to see me again?
Out of roughly 40 women, 9 of them agreed to see me again. About 23%.
Interestingly, twice as many women from the second round as from the first wanted to see me again.
So would I do it again?
Yes. It's a very intense experience. I found it quite fun, even though I don't think I particularly connected with any of the women there. One thing it made me realize is just how self-selected most of my friends are. I tend to forget that there are people who can barely use e-mail, let alone know what the DMCA is, or why it's important.
But I think I'll do it again nonetheless.
Punchie and Pikachu
25-May-02
Okay, so I'm easily amused.
Brave New Chicken
24-May-02
http://www.reuters.com/printerfriendly.jhtml?type=sciencenews&StoryID=984309
Naked Chicken Plan May Make Feathers Fly
Last Updated: May 20, 2002 12:30 PM ET
Print This Article
By Megan Goldin
JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Chickens could fly even faster to the dinner table if an Israeli geneticist gets his way and develops the featherless fowl.
Avigdor Cahaner, from Israel's Hebrew University, has crossbred a small, bare-skinned bird with a regular boiler chicken as part of a research project to develop succulent, low fat poultry that is environmentally friendly.
Cahaner's red-skinned chicken looks a little ridiculous, but the lack of feathers keeps the birds cooler and leaner than their feathered cousins — useful in hot countries.
The hybrids, the geneticist believes, could revolutionize the chicken business.
“(Boiler chickens) consume a lot of energy in order to grow rapidly but in the process they generate a lot of heat and they have to get rid of it otherwise their internal body temperature will go too high and they will die,” he told Reuters on Monday.
“That's why the growth rate of boiler (chickens) is significantly reduced in hot seasons or hot countries and that is why the poultry meat is expensive in these countries.”
By keeping the chickens feather-free, the birds would direct their energy to growing larger rather than keeping cool.
Cahaner's naked birds would also save poultry farmers large amounts of money on ventilation to prevent their chickens from overheating. The lack of feathers would conserve large quantities of water used to pluck chickens at feathering plants.
“This water is full of feathers and drainage of fat from the carcasses. We believe that this part of the pollution can be reduced and feather plants can be completely eliminated,” Cahaner said.
LESS WASTE
The featherless fowl would be well suited to poor countries where farmers can ill afford to lose birds to overheating.
“It's called sustainable agriculture,” Cahaner said. “Feathers are a waste, the chickens are using feed to produce something that has to be dumped and the farmers have to waste electricity to overcome the fact.”
Cahaner has already produced several dozen featherless birds but hopes to perfect the still diminutive fowl so they stand as tall as the normal boiler chickens that are the mainstay of the poultry industry.
“My objective is to transfer this (featherless) trait to modern fast-growing boiler chickens and learn and study the effects on growth rate, other aspects of welfare and its development and of course of the meat characteristic,” he said.
But featherless chickens would not be suitable everywhere, Cahaner concedes. They might catch cold in chillier climates.
“It would harm them if we forced these chickens to be outside in cold weather…This is not a chicken for the open fields of England in the winter time,” he said.
Speed Dating
20-May-02
The market for mates is highly inefficient. Consider the process most people go through to find a date. First, you have to find a pool of single prospective mates. How do you find someone who's eligible? Friends of friends, parties, weddings, classifieds, co-workers, clients, online matchmaking services. Second, you have to screen through the pool of prospective mates to find someone who a) shares some similar interests b) offers value in proportion to the value that you offer them c) shares similar goals and values d) makes you all hot and bothered.
A typical date costs a fairly hefty amount time and money. Let's assume that it's a standard “dinner and a movie” date. Let's assume for the sake of argument that both individuals are cheap dates, s o $10.00/person for the meal. Now add $7-9.00 for the movie plus popcorn. So assume $20.00/person, plus gas and grooming costs. Time involved? Say 2 hrs each for dinner and movie. That's 4 hrs. All to find out if a single individual is someone you w ant to see again.
That's why I like the idea of speed dating. Apparently, it's been popular for a while, but I found out about it recently when I came across the book
Speed Dating by Yaacov and Sue Deyo. Yaacov is a rabbi, so the book is targeted toward Jews, and the companion site SpeedDating.com, is for Jews only. However, several companies offer similar services for gentiles (see below).
Here's how it works:
- A group of singles–an equal number of men and women–gather at a location (cafe, hotel conference room, church classroom) that has been rented out/borrowed for the evening.
- The room is filled with “tables for two” and each table is numbered. When you arrive at the event, you'll receive a name-tag, a dating card (this is where you'll write the names of the people you meet), and your table assignments. Yo u write your first name and number (i.e. Alex 848) on the name-tag and dating card.
- At the appointed time, one man and one woman are paired up at each table, where they have 8 minutes to talk. Participants are also given suggested topics on the dati ng cards to help break the ice.
- At the end of 8 minutes, a staff member rings a bell and all dates come to a halt. Participants are asked to write on a form if they would be interested in seeing this person again. This entails simply checking a 'y es' or 'no' box.
- If both sides checked off the 'yes' box, organizers let participants know within 48 hours which matches have been made, and give each side the other's phone number.
- The men then get up from their seats and move to the next tab le, where another woman is waiting to meet them.
- After 90 minutes of SpeedDating, each participant has met 7-8 people of the opposite gender.
Costs range from $25 – $40.00. Event organizers often hold specialized events according to age ranges (25 – 35), et hnicity (Asian, black), gender (straight/gay/lesbian/bi), and religion (Jews, Christians, etc.)
Verboten Topics
- You're not supposed to talk about your work or where you live. This is supposed to eliminate judgi ng the other person on their current life circumstances.
- You're not supposed to ask for names, phone numbers, or a date. This eliminates the pressure and awkwardness that often accompanies the decision to exchange contact information.
Sug gested Topics
- What is the most important lesson you know about life?
- Who is your hero (anyone from history) and why?
- Who is the most interesting person you ever met? What made them so?
- If you won the $50 million lottery, what would you do (afte r you've travelled the world)?
- What is your most prized material possession?
- What single political or social issue is most important to you?
- Who is your role model of a good marriage?
- Is there such a thing as a “sou l mate?”
- What o ne thing would you want your date to appreciate about you?
- What is the key to keeping passion alive in a marriage?
- Do you believe in the afterlife?
- What was the single greatest day of your life?
- What you do wi sh your parents would have told you?
Speed Date Organizers
Hurry Date
8 Minute Dating
QuickDate
Speed Dating. (Jews only)
Seattle Great Date (Seattle Specific)
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