Decks.

The market is shifting from Reverse into Drive, CEOs are being laid off by the Federal government, and capital is creeping out of the Sealy’s and Serta’s, and all Mr. Krugman can come up with is another deckchairs metaphor?

“It’s a plan to rearrange the deck chairs and hope that that keeps us from hitting the iceberg.”

.
I jest, and I think Krugman understands the capital markets better than anyone, but critique is always cheaper than praxis. Krugman was not appointed by the Nobel committee to be the world’s economist, though he seems to be knighted as such by the major media.

Angela.

It’s snowing and raining and gray here in ol’ Winnipeg, Canada.
This pretty much captures the spirit of the world.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EAOxo8qH_AQ&hl=en&fs=1]

Fusion Fun.

Thomas Friedman, in his ongoing attempt to push the boundaries of innovation in the U.S., argues for a push on “fusion” as a way to have a purchase on a massively game-changing energy source.
In his piece today, The Next Really Cool Thing, he writes:

Last Monday at 3 a.m., for the first time, all 192 lasers were fired at high energy precisely at once — no small feat — at the target chamber’s empty core. That was a major step toward “ignition” — turning that hydrogen pellet into a miniature sun on earth. The next step — which the N.I.F. expects to achieve some time in the next two to three years — is to prove that it can, under lab conditions, repeatedly fire its 192 lasers at multiple hydrogen pellets and produce more energy from the pellets than the laser energy that is injected. That’s called “energy gain.”

It’s also called “playing with fire” (pun intended). A few years ago, a physicist warned that that we simply don’t know what we’re doing by forcing elements together that previously didn’t exist together on Earth. Sure, it would be “cool” to have a “miniature sun” just fifty miles east of San Francisco. But do these scientists know how to capture, confine, and control that sun? What happens if this new sun created so much energy that it consumed the state of California, the North American continent, or the planet itself?
While I reserve some respect for Mr. Friedman and his desire to pursue “clean” energy, this is the kind of “reporting” that gave us a nice war in Iraq, a worldwide economic crisis, and a greenhouse warming. Are we all a bunch of suckers, hoping that we’re going to gain free energy—without risking the very structure of the planet?
If journalists like Friedman can’t ask the hard questions of these scientists, I worry not for the future of journalism but for the future of our little existence.

Wolfram|Alpha.

Wolfram Research is planning on launch its Wolfram|Alpha in May. If it’s real (and I have some small doubt that it can truly work as planned), it could change the way we interact with the Web, find information, and experience ideas online. Wolfram|Alpha is a computational tool that can answer natural language questions by digging deeply into the known informational universe and provide meaningful answers. Computation over lookup is its model.
Nova Spivack has a detailed description of it but, in a nutshell, here’s what he says Wolfram|Alpha is:

Where Google is a system for FINDING things that we as a civilization collectively publish, Wolfram Alpha is for COMPUTING answers to questions about what we as a civilization collectively know. It’s the next step in the distribution of knowledge and intelligence around the world — a new leap in the intelligence of our collective “Global Brain.” And like any big next-step, Wolfram Alpha works in a new way — it computes answers instead of just looking them up.

Spivack, who got a tour of the system recently, also says the following:

One of the most surprising aspects of this project is that Wolfram has been able to keep it secret for so long. I say this because it is a monumental effort (and achievement) and almost absurdly ambitious. The project involves more than a hundred people working in stealth to create a vast system of reusable, computable knowledge, from terabytes of raw data, statistics, algorithms, data feeds, and expertise. But he appears to have done it, and kept it quiet for a long time while it was being developed.

It appears that Wolfram|Alpha is a perfect compliment to Google’s search tool and a more trustworthy friend of the Semantic Web. Although it’s billed as a computational model, this new product/service may offer a more reasoned and humane approach to Google’s in that it allows a the praxis of questioning the logic of conclusions. It would be nice, for instance to be able to ask “When do most economists predict an end to the current credit crisis?” and get an answer based on a set of real, if biased, known data. I’m eager to find out more.
UPDATE: I tried out its competitor, [true knowledge] (what is it with the extra characters in these new systems?) by asking the following questions and receiving the following XML responses:
How many stars are in the milky way?

completeness unknown
100,000,000,000

How big is eifel tower? [purposely mis-written]

completeness unknown
324 Meters (1,062.99 feet)

Stewart on CNBC.

If you want a good laugh-cry, check out The Daily Show with Jon Stewart on March 4, 2009. He skewers, in one fell swoop, Wall Street, Rick Santelli, and the horrible pundits on CNBC. UPDATE: Will Bunch, at The Huffington Post, provides great commentary on Stewart’s research-based reporting.
For those not in Canada, the video should appear here:
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Clients.

I usually spend my birthday, in some form or another, giving thanks. I’m super-thankful for my family, small and extended both, and for all of my friends, close and far. I’m also superbly thankful for friends that I’ve re-met via something called Facebook.
What with the global economy in a Faustian struggle with its own structural integrity, I wanted to publicly acknowledge all of the companies, organizations, and individuals that have been my clients during the past seven years. The follow is a list of entities that have literally put bread on my table and, depending, new synapses in my brain or gray in my beard.

  • 2aTEE
  • 3RingPress
  • 9 Boutique
  • Acumen Fund
  • Amphetameme
  • Art Net
  • Accessible Systems, Inc.
  • The Andrea and Charles Bronfman Philanthropies
  • AtlantisArts
  • Barneys New York
  • Bespoke Information
  • Barbara Fazio Salon
  • Big Picture Partners
  • BlendedValue
  • BraTenders
  • Brown University, New York City Chapter
  • Bullseye
  • Buttercup Beauty Bar
  • Camp Wasaga
  • Canada’s National History Society
  • Steve Cannon
  • Canopy Designs
  • Community Alternative Systems Agency (CASA)
  • Charles B. Wang Community Health Center
  • Congregation Beth Elohim
  • Council of Canadians with Disabilities
  • CEI
  • CISD Aquatics Center
  • Climbers Rock
  • Columbia University
  • CommAlert
  • Connie’s Cookies
  • Dandelion Eatery
  • Danny Schur
  • Denise Keim
  • DesignStudio
  • Developing World Markets
  • Doubet Consulting
  • Down-to-Earth Finance
  • dtkResources
  • Eko Asset Management Partners
  • Europa Technologies
  • ExecMPower
  • FeltGoods NYC
  • Flamenco Vivo Carlota Santana
  • Flatiron Partners
  • GC Global Research
  • Garrett Creek Ranch
  • Global Document Solutions
  • Generation Investment Management
  • Generation Foundation
  • Global Justice Center
  • Global Health Partners
  • Hendrickson Custom Cabinetry
  • HeartShare Human Services of New York
  • Heather Tamir
  • The Hendrickson Group
  • Howell Benefits
  • Intuit
  • ISM
  • Johnson & Johnson
  • Jackfish Media Group
  • Jake Dobkin
  • Jewish Education Service of North America
  • Jezra Kaye
  • Keftec
  • Ken Rosenzweig
  • Kims Video
  • Kole Assets
  • Larkin Logistics
  • Lelia & Andrea
  • Luminous
  • Maciej Toporowicz
  • MANOVERBOARD
  • Marden Consulting
  • Mayer Consulting
  • Mind Alliance
  • Montessori Learning Centre
  • Metropolitan Montessori School of New York
  • MIT
  • Monik Lozinska Lee
  • NancyNancy
  • NGO Working Group on Women, Peace and Security
  • Nigel Freeman
  • NoFlake Paint
  • New York Foundation for the Arts
  • Oak Hill Advisors
  • Of Record
  • OpportunityTV
  • Organza Natural & Organic Market
  • Parkway 360
  • Paula Ochs
  • Phytomedics
  • Pixie & Ivy
  • Public Knowledge
  • PolicyLink
  • Primedia
  • Private Label Interactive
  • Project Peacemakers
  • The Province of Manitoba
  • Red Three Consulting
  • The Research Initiative on Social Entrepreneurship (RISE)
  • RM Marketing
  • Roche
  • Rosanne Pugliese
  • Russ Martin
  • The Santa Fe Group
  • Ska Capital
  • Smallbiztechnology
  • South Osborne Nursery School
  • Souls Journey
  • The Spacialist
  • Special Places Travel
  • Spondizo
  • State University of New York
  • Stewards Plumbing
  • stone circles
  • Stonewater Control Systems
  • The Art Bureau
  • Teachers Count
  • The Breakers
  • The Silver Word
  • The Tapestry Group
  • Therese Murdza
  • Thomas Sullivan, Ph.D.
  • True Majority
  • United Nations University
  • Vault Gallery
  • Verdeo Group
  • Waiting Room
  • Xu Bing Studio
  • Youth Communications
  • Za Za Zsu

And for all my current clients, thank you and speak with you soon.

A Photo.

If a “Photo speaks 1,000 words,” then a panoramic photo of every important American political figure (and a lot of other folks) during Obama’s inauguration speech speaks one million or so.
Check out the pursed lips on former President Bush and the sleeping Clarence Thomas. Mr. Cheney looks a bit anxious and Mr. Clinton looks a bit miffed. Mr. Gingrich seems bored. Ms. Obama’s got a bible. The Secret Service appear as if they have nothing to do.
Hey, who are all those people that got front-row seats before the Marine band? And there’s a nice automated stitching error that the photographer notes well.