Analysts and economists like to fixate on two metrics for personal finance, income and net worth. They are in some sense a measurement of slope, and of the volume under the curve minus spending and debt. I don’t think either are a meaningful gauge for really understanding why the poor are frequently stuck being poor.
Posted: December 26th, 2010
at 2:24pm by Koookiecrumbles
Categories: the column
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The thing about people abilities is that they aren't singular. There is no single skill that makes a guitarist exceptional, someone a 5 michelinAstar cook, or someone an exceptionally programmer. There is more like a set of skills of which some are more important than others. I would call some of them primary skills and some of them secondary skills. The thing about primary skills is that they are usually very hard to evaluate quickly, because they show their actually value in medium to long term projects. The secondary skills on the other hand are the skills helping the person express his primary skill easier and without unnecessary distractions.
Posted: December 26th, 2010
at 2:20pm by Koookiecrumbles
Categories: the column
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Patri Friedman : The Seasteading Institute
Patri Friedman, founder of The Seasteading Institute, which believes that governments could be far more diverse and innovative. Currently, there is no open space for political experimentation, which is why we work every day towards opening the oceans as the next frontier for human civilization. Ocean cities will function as "startup countries", competing to find the political and social systems of the future. Current projects include research into engineering, law, business models, and locations, as well as building a global movement of seasteaders, all directed towards the audacious goal of seeing the first seasteads this decade.
Posted: December 25th, 2010
at 11:28pm by Koookiecrumbles
Categories: development,philanthropy
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Basu (2006) argues that the prevalence of 99 cent prices in shops can be explained with rational consumers who disregard the rightmost digits of the price. This bounded rational behaviour leads to a Bertrand equilibrium with positive markups. We use data from an Austrian price comparison site andA results highly compatible with Basu’s theory. We can show that price points - in particular prices ending in 9 - are prevalent and have signicant impact on consumer demand. Moreover, these price points are sticky; neither the price-setter itself wants to change them neither the rivals do underbid these prices, if they represent the cheapest price on the market.
Posted: December 25th, 2010
at 11:20pm by Koookiecrumbles
Categories: the column
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Yiying Lu Makes Splash with Twitter’s ‘Fail Whale’
Yiying Lu’s most famous illustration thus far is linked with failure - and that has turned out to be a good thing.
The young artist is the bubbly brainchild behind Twitter’s "fail whale," the image that appears when Twitter is overloaded and can’t function. In the picture, a flock of birds carry an enormous, smiling whale over the water.
Through Twitter, the whale has become a sign of the times. This year, the popular San Francisco microblogging service sent an astonishing 25 billion messages of 140 characters or fewer and added 100 million new users.
Though the fail whale doesn’t appear as frequently as it once did on Twitter, it lives on. It has inspired a fan club, two parties and at least one tattoo. Last month, for the premiere of his new show,�Conan O’Brien commissioned Lu to create the "pale whale," which depicts the comedian riding on top of a whale as it is being carried by birds.
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Posted: December 25th, 2010
at 8:19pm by Koookiecrumbles
Categories: art,#twitterisfothebirds,fail
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Samsung Outsourcing to Toshiba?
SAN JOSE, Calif. - In a major surprise, South Korea’s Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. has gained another foundry customer: Toshiba Corp.
Japan’s Toshiba will outsource an undisclosed percentage of its leading-edge logic production to Samsung, according to Reuters, which cited the Nikkei business daily as its source.
The reported deal is a surprise: Samsung and Toshiba are bitter rivals in the NAND flash and logic markets.