Brent

I have a recent interest in sake, and I have been researching some details about it recently. One thing I learned is the Japanese custom that you do not pour your own sake, but that your dinner / drinking partners pour your sake for you. This happen often, as you drink sake out of tiny little cups, and refill them with a small flask that sits on the table. The process is actually very formalized in Japan, but a loose, social Americanized adoption of this custom sounds fun: if you notice that your buddy has an empty sake cup, just pick up the sake flask and fill it up for him / her.

A day or two after reading this, I engaged in a tea party with my daughter. While in the company of a stuffed horse and bunny, I sipped pretend tea out of a tiny tea cup. My little cup was refilled a multitude of times from a small pitcher by my 3 year old daughter.

So, drinking sake is very much like an adult tea party. I’m a pretty big fan.

Sometimes our behavior completely ignores hidden costs implicit in our decisions. Out of those listed, I am most guilty of ignoring number 3.

1 – Commute costs. The time cost of a long commute is astounding. Ever since middle-class America moved to the ‘burbs, commute times have increased dramatically. People have just come to accept long commutes, but I’m not sure that everyone considers the opportunity costs. If you could convert 50% of your commute into paid working hours, how much of a raise do you think you could get? (Here’s a hint, 1 hour a day would translate into a 12% raise). Other than time costs, there is obviously the additional transportation costs (whether it be train fare or gas/vehicle wear, etc.). People talk about a long commute being therapeutic, helping them shift gears from job to home. I think that many of these people are lying to themselves, especially the ones who drive very far in thick traffic.

2 – Storage costs of personal property. We like to accumulate and keep stuff. It’s part of the consumerism / gift-giving culture. The problem is, we often accumulate more stuff than we will ever need or use. The first cost is the additional time to move extra stuff to find things that we often use. Another cost is that clutter is simply unattractive. However, instead of getting rid of underused stuff, we simply buy a bigger house with bigger closets.

3 – Social network decay. There are activities in our lives that lend to strengthen social networks: college, organized sports, charity volunteerism are examples. Meaningful connections take time to build, and when it comes to building relationships, there is just no substitute for working hard alongside someone else. However, when situations change and these activities cease, most of the relationships formed simply peter out into non-existance. Once we get settled in with careers and kids, it is too easy to forgo the effort to maintain these relationships to focus on other less less valuable but immediate time pressures. A strong network is valuable, and waiting until you need a network to try and build a network is pratically worthless.

If you don’t know who Liviu Librescu is, you should find out.

Thank the good Lord, that in many stories of tragedy, you will find a glimmer of hope and goodness.

According to the prevailing wisdom, it is because the demand for cognitive based labor has fast outgrown the demand for motor-skill based labor. I think that a casual observation of the US job market would easily demonstrate this as well. However, this does an inadequate job of explaining the entire gap.

I believe one explanation is that those with highly demanded skills are able to better leverage those skill due to technology. Information is more available, feedback loops are tighter and any marginal difference between skills and effort is multiplied by technology. Middle management has been consolidated into fewer, more productive managers with smaller staffs. Upper management has fewer middle managers that deserve a share of corporate payroll and perks.

On the other end, a comfortable life is easier than ever. If you don’t have the talent or the drive, it’s easy to put in your 40 - 45 hours a week, make a decent living, and spend lots of time on your hobbies and/or life outside of work.

Credit card companies are the subject of a lot of disdain. They lend money to individuals based on algorithms based on your credit and personal information. Then they dangle the temptation of consumerism right in front of their customers, and penalize over-spending with wicked high interest rates. The American culture is such that the average American is just not prepared to combat those temptations, and the amount of unsecured consumer debt is astounding. The returns on effectively providing that debt are pretty hefty, as well.

Have you as an individual investor ever wanted a piece of that action? Well, now you can, through the website Prosper.com. Individuals apply for unsecured loans over the website explaining the purpose for the proceeds. The site displays a credit rating and a debt to income ratio for each of the borrowers, and you can bid to fund as much or as little of the requested debt as you want to. Think ebay meets Citibank.

The site also draws from the lessons learned by the microcredit market by establishing groups of people who can vouch for each other. While Prosper is not really about enabling those in underemployed poverty, it does have a micro credit feel to it.

The idea is interesting because it uses the web to create a market of many individuals in an industry that has typically relied on a institutions to consolidate transactions into a larger portfolio. Furthermore, by allowing scrutinizing individuals to make decisions on a case-by-case basis, rates are not unilaterally set by some algorithm created and tweaked up by some econometric nerd somewhere. This gives individuals who fall foul of those algorithms for explainable circumstances an opportunity for more personalized banking. Furthermore, by allowing individuals to fund small percentages of loans, it allows the lenders to spread their default risk among many individuals.

I haven’t had an opportunity to look into all the details of prosper yet, but the idea is intriguing, and a great example of a Web 2.0 opportunity.

Hattip to Newmark’s Door.

At age 29, I am right at the beginning of the Y generation. One distinct difference between my generation an the X’ers is that, thanks to the Nintendo 8-bit NES, we grew up knowing about video games. Not surprisingly, as my generation has grown up, the target consumer for video games has followed us. The average age of a player is now in their mid 30’s (however, I would be surprised if the median is not significantly lower). As the target audience has aged, so have the subjects of video games. Instead of Mario Cart, we now also have NCAA sports and Grand Theft Auto.

Furthermore, while the target market is still men aged from 16 to 35, other demographics are starting to garner attention. As detailed in this New York Times article, a new target audience has appeared: retirees. It’s a perfect fit: video games are a great way to remain mentally stimulated with no real physical activity required. In addition, with the online social aspects of video games increasing every year, it is another way for retirees to interact with people without leaving the house (even if it’s only on an avatar to avatar basis). Is it really that surprising that Yahoo! Dominos usually has thousands of people playing?

Consider for a minute how this has and will continue to impact the consol industry. Over the past decade, games have increasingly become more complicated with steeper learning curves. For an example, just compare the NES controller, with one directional keypad and two action buttons, with the current XBOX 360 controller, with up to 12 separate buttons and two analog joysticks. As seen by both their complicated controllers and available game selection, Microsoft’s XBOX and Sony’s Playstation have fully entrenched in the war to attract button mashing, graphics-loving hard core gamers.

However, Nintendo has taken a different approach with the Wii. It’s simple controller is remenicent of the old NES square pad, and has the added ability to sense the movement of the controller. The games offered by Nintendo are also less complicated to learn. The Wii and its games are also cheaper. While it was obvious to everyone that the Wii is marketed as a consol for younger players and casual gamers, it is also uniqely positioned to become the consol of choice for older gamers as well.

Did Nintendo take the older generation into consideration in its market research and product design? I’m not sure. Nintendo’s new consol does an excellent job at zeroing in on markets that Microsoft and Sony have largely marginalized. And, not suprisingly, the Wii has been a huge success. Nintendo has carved out nich markets in the consol industry without directly compting with the big players. Furthermore, since the Wii is not competing on the technological attributes that cost the most, it can price cheaper and still make more money on hardware sales than either Microsoft or Sony.

So, my wife and I are big fans of CSI (well, Rebbecca might be just a little bit bigger fan, but I think that it is an excellent show, and I enjoy watching it with her very much, but this is beside the point). However, we are both crazy busy, and the idea that we could carve out some weekly timeslot to watch a TV show is pure fantasy. Therefore, we have been enjoying CSI via Netflix, a great source of on-demand television via DVD.

Last week someone stold our CSI DVD out of our mailbox, so we had no CSI to watch during an evening in which we specifically carved out time to spend together. So, I acquired a license for a couple of CSI episodes from a very unlikely source: my XBOX 360.

For 240 Microsoft points each (which comes out to just a little less than $2.40) I was granted a license do download HD versions of two CSI episodes, so long as they were only played on the original XBOX that downloaded the show.

At this time, the Microsoft Marketplace has a fairly limited selection of TV shows and movies that can be downloaded, but you do have that option. $2.40 seems kind of expensive for 45 minutes of entertainment, but I was more than happy to pay it in a pinch.

My point is, true on-demand television is just around the corner. As soon as content producers (like CBS) and content providers (like your local cable company) can figure out a digital rights management model that works, I beleive that television will have a whole new market. However, the cable companies better get busy or that market is going to be plucked from their laps by Microsoft and/or Apple.

So, I am a frequent consumer of Dessert Gallery cookies. In July 2005, blogged that these cookies were quite possibly the best known to man.

Well, recently, the quality of the Dessert Gallery cookie has decreased significantly. The cookie is not as big as it used to be, which is not really a problem, because they used to be HUGE! However, the amount of chocolate has not seemed to decrease proportionally with the cookie’s size. Now, instead of a delicious chocolate chip cookie dipped in a thin layer of chocolate, I have a bunch of cholocate and just a little bit of cookie. I like cookie, and now there is less of it.

Therefore, I am regretfully pulling my endorsement of Dessert Gallery cookies. They still have excellent lunch foods, and I am particulary fond of their sandwich wraps, but I can no longer call them the best cookie known to man. They are now the company that used to make the best cookie known to man. I weep for the memory of them.

Today will be Acie Law IV’s last time to play basketball in Reed Arena. I will be sad to see him go. It is senior day for the A&M basketball team, and I am sure that he will receive a very warm farewell.

Acie has been a very good player for the last four years, but this year, he has been amazing. There is no player in the country that defines clutch on such an amazing level as Acie. He not only has an ability to sink killer 3-point shots at the end of the game, but his ability to completely take over a game in the final minutes is amazing. Here are some of the highlights of his clutchiest shots:

• Against Texas University last year in College Station, Acie hit a game winning three. “The Shot”
• Against Kansas this year in Lawrence, Acie hit a game winning three. “The Shot II”
• Against Texas Tech in Lubbock, Acie hit a game tying three with 6 seconds left. Texas Tech got a quick basket and won, but the shot was still huge.
• Against Texas in Austin, Acie hit a game tying three to end regulation. The entire country knew that Acie was going to take the shot, and he still made it.
• In the same game, Acie hit a game tying three over Kevin Durant in the first overtime to send it to a second overtime. Again, the entire nation knew Acie was going to take the shot, and he still made it. In the press conference after the game, the Texas University coach stated he ordered the team to foul Acie to prevent him from taking the shot. Kevin Durant chose to play defense against Acie instead, and Acie dropped an amazing bomb over the kids head. The shot was a huge rainbow with very high trajectory to get over Durant’s long arms, and it had that Acie Law no-rotation style. Although Texas went on to win the game, if Acie winds up winning Big XII player of the year, I think you can point to that shot as the tiebreaker between two excellent players.

Acie hits the big shots. Period.

A Texas University fan expressed his impression of Acie on an unnamed message board:

“He reminds me of Jason from the slasher movies. You can run over him with a truck, electrocute him, tie him up with barbed wire, hang him, chop him up with tree shredder, feed him to a pack of hyenas, and just when you think it is safe to take a breath…he jumps up out of a shallow grave and drains a three. Yes, I think he may actually be Jason.”

Thanks for the entertaining last four years Acie. Good luck this March, good luck in the NBA, and Gig’em.

Update:

Kevin Durant is amazed at Acie as well. Here is a quote from an ESPN chat:

Question: What were you thinking when Acie Law made that incredible 3 over you to send the game into OT?
Kevin Durant: (3:23 PM ET ) I was just in awe. I wasn’t expecting Acie to hit that. I was just in awe. I didn’t know what to do.

These guys have designed an entire play that is essentially one big jab at Keanu.

The play is called Point Break Live, and the lead role is played by someone you have never heard of:

What is unique about the stage take is that the role of Utah (played by Reeves in the film) is played by an audience member (selected at random each night) who is thrust upon the stage (guided by a PA — who also serves as stunt double) and given his/her lines on cue-cards. “Keanu Reeves roles demand a special kind of acting,” explains director [James] Hook, on the show’s concept. “Essentially, in every scene, you have to look like you’ve just been dropped into a room and you have no idea what’s going on.”

Golden.

…will rip your heart out, serve it with a light plum ragout and wash it down with a delicious Fresca. –per Jonah Keri on ESPN Page 2.

Shelby Matcalf was the Texas A&M Men’s basketball coach from 1963 through 1990. During that time period, he won 6 Southwest Conference championships and took the Aggies to the sweet 16 in 1980. Besides being a good baskball coach at a university where football was king, Metcalf was also known for his wit. Below are several quotes that have been attributed to Metcalf:

“Randy was a hell of an athlete, and it was track season so he was throwing the shot put. I got in great shape when I was recruiting him, because the only way I could spend any good time with him was to retrieve his shot put throws during track practice. I’d do that for an hour or two, wait for Randy to shower and then take him out for an ice cream. You could do that back in those days. After all that, I would drive back to College Station. It made for a long day.”

To a player who received four F’s and one D: “Son, looks to me like you’re spending too much time on one subject.”

After signing Claude Riley, the Crockett Rocket, Shelby said, “I’m just glad he wasn’t from Tucker.”

After recruiting John Reynolds (no relation to yours truely) by taking him fishing for two days on the Brazos: “You just can’t get real good players with catfish anymore.”

Years later, Reynolds became the superintendent of the Groveton Independent School District. It was there where Reynolds helped influence a talented young running back named Rodney Thomas to go to Texas A&M.

Said Metcalf: “Turned out to be a pretty productive fishing trip when you throw Rodney Thomas into the mix, don’t you think?”

“Abe (Lemmons, tu basketball coach) was playing Arkansas and the game was in Fayetteville. The game was going badly for the Longhorns and the officiating was one-sided according to Abe. During a time-out, Abe walked up to the head official and asked ‘If I called you a son-of-a-*****, would you give me a technical?’. The official responded, ‘Why, yes, in that instance, I would have to give you a technical foul’. Abe then asked, ‘What if I just THOUGHT you were a son-of-a-*****, would you still give me a technical?’. The offical said, ‘I can’t give you a technical just because of something that you think’. Abe then said, ‘OK, I think you are a son-of-a-*****!’. The official was so flustered he didn’t know what to do, but he didn’t give Abe a technical”

About fans: “One day they’re naming a street after ya…the next day they’re chasin you down it”

About the NCAA going from 2 refs to 3 ” 3 blind mice are not any better than 2 blind mice!!”

When RC Slocum was fired: “Lucky guy, Bob Gates usually makes people dissappear.”

Want to watch an episode of this seasons CSI, The Unit or Survivor? All you have to do is visit the CBS website, and they have all of this season’s episodes that have already aired available for stream. It’s a baby step in the direction of on-demand media, but it is a sign that it is coming. All we need is a nice little hack that lets me stream that video to my XBOX via media center, and I have free, on demand viewing of television programs over the internet. I give it 12 months, tops, until it is fairly easy. I give it 24 months until normal TV’s have access to internet feeds.

Today’s scary statistic is brought to you from I, Cringely.

“Looking at this problem from another angle, right now somewhat more than half of all Internet bandwidth is being used for BitTorrent traffic, which is mainly video. Yet if you surveyed your neighbors you’d find that few of them are BitTorrent users. Less than 5 percent of all Internet users are presently consuming more than 50 percent of all bandwidth.”

I can not imagine a future in which the distribution of video over the internet is not widely adopted. If it is true that internet video from BitTorrent is using up 50% of the Net’s bandwidth, the world is going to need more bandwidth.

Here is my theory: being good at Hold’em is difficult to most people because being really good at hold’em is pretty boring. In a table with 8 or more people, you should only play something like 1 in 10 hands, probably less.

Furthermore, even if you do get a good enough hand to play, there is a good chance you should fold prior to the showdown, depending on the cards being dealt and the betting information from the others playing.

Also, if you want to really be good, you should be paying close attention to the hands that you are not playing, trying to gather information to help you decide what to do when you really should be playing a hand. This is difficult, because more often than not, there is no real useful information revealed in a hand, but if you wait until the hand is almost over to perk up, you have missed the boat.

So, to recap: a good player has great patience, and pays close attention to the game so that he makes good decisions after the flop.

Here is the real kicker: unless the person playing is a skilled professional or has a substantial gambling problem, he probably values the time it takes to play poker effectively more than the amount of the money he will win or lose. Most people that play poker get together with their buddies on the weekend. In my opinion, it is much more fun to drink beer and shoot the bull while playing than to sit quietly and observe the game. Face it: folding is boring. If I only get one night a week or month to play poker, and I am 3 hours into our 4 hour session without really playing any hands, I’m much more likely to stick with a sub-par hand because I value my leisure time much more than the $10 to $30 I have in front of me on the table.

To consolidate: for the recreational player folding is a cost that affects the enjoyment of leisure time. Depending on how much an individual values their leisure, the aggregate cost of folding properly throughout an entire session is probably higher than the value of his or her stack. This is of course not the case for truly serious players, but most of us aren’t really all that serious about poker.

Craig Newmark had a link to an article that discusses a professor who lied to his students in order to keep their attention. The professor is quoted as saying:

“Now I know some of you have already heard of me, but for the benefit of those who are unfamiliar, let me explain how I teach. Between today until the class right before finals, it is my intention to work into each of my lectures … one lie. Your job, as students, among other things, is to try and catch me in the Lie of the Day.”

The article illustrates an important point: college should be 90% learning how to think and learn, and 10% learning a knowledge base that can be expanded on through experience and post-graduate study. Too often, the key to course success lies mostly with memory of a few facts or methods, mainly because that is the most efficient thing to test. Purposely implanting a fallacy in the lecture shifts the class focus more towards critical thinking, I think appropriately.

I’m sure it takes a certain type of professor and a certain type of student body to pull off appropriately, and I’m sure most administrators would probably cringe at the idea. If not executed effectively, it could also come off as gimmicky and condescending. I personally think that any technique that increases student participation in a classroom setting and shifts the class away from the talking head professor is worth trying.

So, there is an MP3 file floating around of a guy “singing” O, Holy Night. It seems to be a legitamate attempt, but it is the worst thing I have ever heard in my life.

Just when you think it can’t get any worse, it does. More than once. It is astondingly bad, in a very funny way.

Some guy made up some zombie animation and created a You Tube to add just a little somthin’ to the experience. The animation is cute, but the “singing” is hilarious.

I love going to get-togethers organized by my friend Shannon. First of all, I love seeing Shannon. Second, Shannon always has people at his party that are much smarter than I am, and, like Shannon, they are facinating to talk to. So, I always leave Shannon’s parties feeling smarter than when I got there. Partly because discussion is good, partly because Shannon invited me.

Honestly, how many people didn’t see this coming?

I just can’t bring myself to comment on this new research from our friends in Austin.

Changes in Men’s Testosterone Levels
Predict Competitiveness After a Loss

Dated November 30, 2006