OverMatter

Dr. Brown's Baby Bottles

"The secret to Dr. Brown's Baby Bottles, apparently, is the tube system inside -- it prevents the infant from swallowing air, which makes for a happier baby (and by extension, happier parents). As baby eats and the bottle drains, the internal tube directs incoming air to above the bottle contents, so the young one's not working against a vacuum." (Cool Tools)

Silicon Valley Gas

"“Elsewhere, if people in a large organization think you have potential, they offer you a job, trying to save you from the uncertainties of a start-up,” said Mr. Sengupta, who himself has worked at Oracle, Microsoft and General Motors. “In Silicon Valley, they say, ‘Can I join you?’ ”

Mr. Sengupta now has six “employees” working for BeyondCore without salaries. Only in Silicon Valley, he said, do “people have confidence that if you act on great ideas, the money will come.”

Predictions of the Valley’s demise have become a perennial, said Mr. Morgan, the Mayfield venture capitalist. “Every five years, Time or Newsweek runs a story: ‘Silicon Valley is Dead,’ ” he said. “But Silicon Valley is bigger and more vibrant and better at creating companies than it has ever been.”

Silicon Valley is not “bigger” in a literal sense. In fact, it remains geographically contained by the Santa Cruz Mountains on one side and San Francisco Bay on the other. The physical features of the place help explain the Valley’s vitality.

MR. JOHNSON, the venture capitalist in Palo Alto, noted that the greater Los Angeles area also has a pool of talented engineers (working at aerospace companies like Lockheed, Northrop and Hughes) and great universities (notably Caltech and U.C.L.A.) and plenty of money to invest. “But in Los Angeles,” he said, “people are scattered across a wide area; everything is more spread out.”

It’s harder for entrepreneurs to meet with one another and with investors, he added. And that means connections take longer, deals move slowly, fewer companies are formed. “Like a gas, entrepreneurship is hotter when compressed.” he said."

(It’s Not the People You Know. It’s Where You Are. - New York Times)

Robber Barons

"As common as it is to speak of "robber barons," most who use that term are confused about the role of capitalism in the American economy and fail to make an important distinction — the distinction between what might be called a market entrepreneur and a political entrepreneur. A pure market entrepreneur, or capitalist, succeeds financially by selling a newer, better, or less expensive product on the free market without any government subsidies, direct or indirect. The key to his success as a capitalist is his ability to please the consumer, for in a capitalist society the consumer ultimately calls the economic shots. By contrast, a political entrepreneur succeeds primarily by influencing government to subsidize his business or industry, or to enact legislation or regulation that harms his competitors." (The Truth About the "Robber Barons" - Mises Institute)

The design lesson of the iPod

"Look at the design of a lot of consumer products — they're really complicated surfaces. We tried make something much more holistic and simple. When you first start off trying to solve a problem, the first solutions you come up with are very complex, and most people stop there. But if you keep going, and live with the problem and peel more layers of the onion off, you can oftentimes arrive at some very elegant and simple solutions. Most people just don't put in the time or energy to get there. We believe that customers are smart, and want objects which are well thought through." - Steve Jobs, CEO, Apple Computer (Q&A: Jobs on iPod's Cultural Impact - Newsweek Technology - MSNBC.com)

Dilbert's 9-point financial plan

"Fortunately for America's 95 million investors, Adams' secret nine-point formula was finally revealed in "Dilbert and the Way of the Weasels." Notice its simple brilliance in the exact reproduction of his formula:

1. Make a will
2. Pay off your credit cards
3. Get term life insurance if you have a family to support
4. Fund your 401k to the maximum
5. Fund your IRA to the maximum
6. Buy a house if you want to live in a house and can afford it
7. Put six months worth of expenses in a money-market account
8. Take whatever money is left over and invest 70% in a stock index fund and 30% in a bond fund through any discount broker and never touch it until retirement
9. If any of this confuses you, or you have something special going on (retirement, college planning, tax issues), hire a fee-based financial planner, not one who charges a percentage of your portfolio

Adams boldly states that this is "everything you need to know about personal investing." In just 129 words, nine simple points, one page you have the unabridged "Unified Theory of Everything Financial." That's it. Everything!

Thanks to Adams' formula, the average irrational investor can ignore Wall Street: "Everything else you may want to do with your money is a bad idea compared to what's on my one-page summary. You want an annuity? It's worse. You want a whole life insurance policy? It's worse. You want to invest in individual stocks? It's worse. You want a managed mutual fund instead of an index fund? It's worse. I could go on, but you get the point."

Check the bottom line: A portfolio with an asset allocation of 70% in Vanguard's Total Stock Market Index and 30% in the Total Bond Market Fund is doing just fine, performing remarkably close to the S&P 500 index. Moreover, that simple two-fund portfolio is perfect for the vast majority of America's 95 million investors who are passive much as Adam's Dilbert character."

('Dilbert's' 9-point financial plan worthy of economics Nobel - MarketWatch)

Law against stupid laws?

"Any random group of 535 nerds is smarter than the 535 members of the U.S. Congress and able to circumvent ANY regulation if there is enough profit incentive to do so. Well the U.S. Congress has just created such an incentive where there was none before. And once these various payment schemes start appearing, what's to say some of them can't be equally used to finance terrorism? Of course they can be used for that purpose. Thanks a lot Senator Frist.

Here's a law that purports to end Internet gambling but will instead enable it, a law that is intended to make certain types of financial transactions harder to do but will ultimately make them easier, a law that says nothing about terrorism but will ultimately abet it, making us all less secure in the process.

There is, to my knowledge, no center for Al-Qaida hacking, nor is terrorism as an industry big enough to attract much third-party software development. But ally the interests of terrorists and Internet gamblers who all want to be paid, that's a $20 billion incentive to corrupt the world financial system -- an incentive that didn't exist before last week.

And what will be our institutional response to these obvious flaws when they come to light? More regulation of course! More scrutiny of financial transactions, not less. But as we've seen in recent years, this greater scrutiny often comes with lax or unequal enforcement, depending on your campaign contributions.

Once again, Congress is proposing to regulate something it ought not to -- something that in any practical sense is probably beyond its power. And the result will be only bad, not good. And Congress's response will probably be even more regulation, not less. And all this to push one man's presidential ambitions?

There ought to be a law against THAT.'

(PBS | I, Cringely | Risky Business)

GooTube

"The stock had already gained about 2 percent on Friday, when reports emerged that a Google-YouTube deal was in the works. In the last two trading days, Google has added nearly $4 billion in market capitalization -- or more than twice what the company has agreed to pay YouTube." (Google Agrees to Buy YouTube for $1.65 Billion - New York Times)

"For Google, the deal has been an immediate success and a big hit with investors. While $1.6 billion may seem like a lot to spend, it really isn't--not when the deal is all stock. Shares of Google gained $8.50 on news of the deal today, driving the company's market capitalization up by more than $2 billion. So at least for the day, Google made more than $400 million on this deal." (YouTube 2.0 - Forbes.com)

Imperial History of the Middle East

Who has controlled the Middle East over the course of history? Pretty much everyone. Egyptians, Turks, Jews, Romans, Arabs, Greeks, Persians, Europeans...the list goes on: