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Jul 26 2005
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Slate article gives up civil liberty argument half way through

Posted by | media | No Comments

I wonder if this Slate article, Are Subway Searches Legal? – The rules for searching bags. By Daniel Engber was written by someone that : thought he had a point then realised that his argument was flawed; added the paragraph at the bottom marked ‘bonus explainer’ which tries and fails to defend against the flawed logic in the main piece; ran the story anyway. There are very real civil liberty concerns post 911, they highlight the fact that democracy is built from a peaceful society. But cummon, screening bags for bombs before travelling is not one of them. There is nothing that takes away your liberty more than being blown to pieces. Summary – piece highlights a claim that searching subway bags is ‘unconstitutional’, realizes that could be argued that is no diff from air travel searches. Tries to say that air travel is different because: 1. You have other…

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Jul 21 2005
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How many blogs are spam blogs?

Posted by | technology | No Comments

Verisgn estimate that at least one in 50 new sites is a spam site. Given that the total number of weblogs is normally measured by those that are actually posted to, this does not account for the growing number of spam blogs. I suspect that spam blogs actually account for an alarmingly high percentage of the total, and people like Technorati have to index them. A reputation system for blogs could effectively weed out this load. Verisign reports that it: “will change the way it reports the size of its domain name business, in terms of active registrations, because of the amount of speculation going on. It will reduce the size of the reported registrations by about 2%” “Names are being bought and then tested against traffic analyzers,” Sclavos said. “The ones that can generate more than the $6 or $7 [registration] fee per year are kept, the other ones…

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Jul 21 2005
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Bullshitter’s investing guide

Posted by | business | No Comments

My bullshitters investing guide, based upon absolutely no analysis or experience. I don’t even know if ‘Hearst’ is public – I don’t care. Iwonder how it will do? I’ll check back in a year. Pharma and cosmetics. L’Oreal They make proper sunscreen that the FDA haven’t yet approved, apparently. Or so some geezer down the pub said. Buy All the best deals are here, but nobody understands it, including professional investors. Buy into the people that make lab coats instead. ————— Media Hearst If big media doesn’t own little electronic media – Sell Clearly all media is undergoing a massive revolution everything big is going tits up. But the small stuff that will replace it is not public. So only big people who can invest in VC funds etc. will make money out of the little guys. ————— Commodities: Oil There is no way that the Saudis are telling the…

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Jul 21 2005
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Yuan more dollar.

Posted by | half baked ideas | No Comments

Looks like the pressure will continue for the Chinese Yuan to revalue. In true stupid amateur punter mode, am looking at a few possible investments. Maybe I should be reckless enough to buy stock in a dotcom like Ctrip.com (CTRP), a consolidator of hotel accommodations and airline tickets in China. They would benefit from Yuan revaluation in the short term if they don’t buy too many Aeron chairs or hire people who used to work in enterpise software. Q&A: what price the yuan? – Markets – Times Online

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Jul 19 2005
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Map of the World’s Abortion Laws

Posted by | Uncategorized | No Comments

The thumbnail shows where abortion is legal in green and blue and illegal in red and orange. Nothing shows more clearly what an anomaly it will be if the US joins the red and orange gang being pretty much the only member in the northern hemisphere or anglosphere. Interestingly it also serves as an accurate map of fervent Christianity and Islam. (For the record, I think if you are religious then an anti-abortion stance is entirely logical, and I respect that. I do believe that raised taxes to provide support for single parents or abandoned children follows. I am not religious and not likely to ever be pregnant.) Some example countries below. Some of the countries where abortion is illegal (many, many scary places with a few exceptions such as Ireland): Afghanistan Angola Bangladesh Brazil Central African Rep. Chile Colombia Congo (Brazzaville) Dem. Rep. of Congo Egypt Indonesia Iran Iraq…

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Jul 19 2005
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RSS ads ten times less effective?

Posted by | Uncategorized | No Comments

Very useful lowdown from Fred Wilson on poor performance of RSS ads. This is to be expected. Ads are about persuasion, and they need to be seductive, which is why the average TV ad costs more per minute to make than a feature film. In the context of search, text ads work because people are looking for things to be spelled out simply. They rely solely on a seductive slogan. On a destination site, the picture becomes more blurred – but the fact of the matter is that the sites with the most traffic do not generate the most revenue from CPC based text ads, like Adsense – it comes from CPM based banner or rich media ads or brand sponsorship. Adsense ads can be made to perform better by placing them in different positions on the page, but the performance will rarely be as good as rich media ads…

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Jul 18 2005
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Two thirds of blog readers don’t know what a blog is.

Posted by | technology | No Comments

BuzzMetrics/Mouthpiece has a fantastic statistic – further analysis of a survey of awareness of the term ‘blog’ showed that two thirds of blog readers had never heard of the word blog or did not know what a blog was. This is great news, it spells ubiquity. Memes need a buzzword to catch on, but by now blogs are more than online diaries. The weblog publishing model, with built in syndication, tracking, real-time search, permanent, item based archiving and linking and easy to use publishing tools is the way everything will eventually be published on the web. With magazines and professional websites being blog driven, blog refers to the way something is published not what. There is no more need to know what a blog is than know what an internal combustion engine is if you drive a car. This is a paradigm shift as important as the browser. Web 1.0…

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Jul 15 2005
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How to debate creationists, without being boring, part 2: defending the ‘you are so scientific and unspiritual’ manoeuvre.

Posted by | religion | No Comments

If someone asks you to debate Evolution over Intelligent Design, scientifically – don’t. If you lose on technical grounds, then you probably shouldn’t be out unsupervised, and if you win you will get some variant of this: “You are too scientific and rational, one day you’ll understand the true nature of the importance of being spiritual”. The counter argument to this, makes a much better opening move: Believer: “If evolution is true and birds are descended from dinosaurs, can you tell me why there was a maintenance of hepatic-piston diaphragmatic lung ventilation in theropods throughout the Mesozoic?” Atheist: “No”. Atheist: “Why do the insides of evangelical churches look like Donald Trump’s bathroom?” Believer: “Its what happens in a religious building that matters, not the architecture, think of all the music”. Atheist: “What, like the Osmonds, all the stuff Cat Stephens did when he converted to Islam or Uncle Harry’s Bar…

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Jul 14 2005
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Are Levis back?

Posted by | predictions | No Comments

Ten years ago, I started a design company and our biggest client was Levis. Levis were trendy and they fed the trend by sposoring DJs and independent record labels and bands. We got the gig for Levis, in fact, because my business partner knew the manager of Massive Attack and Levis were involved in promoting Massive Attack’s climb to fame. Five years Later, when I moved to the US, Levis was in the process of a big fall from grace – and the business guys blamed it on late outsourcing and bad design. Last month, I noticed that a few trendy people were wearing Levis in NY, in an almost ironic anti-fashion way. A bit like the daft Trucker Hat fad. When New York bounced back from its 70’s ‘Taxi Driver’ nadir, Giuliani was given credit for its revival, people proposed all sorts of theories, such as a trickle up…

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