Long Bets

Long Bets is an interesting idea. The site hosts predictions of the future and allows netizens to vote and debate the predictions -- their viability, their implications, and whatever else comes to mind. The predictions have an best-before due date, which is where the betting part comes in. If your prediction is realized before the date, you win -- and there is real money at stake. The person making the prediction antes up $50. The person betting has to drop $200. The winner gets to choose which charity receives their winnings. The real money aspect keeps out the rift-raft, but allows anyone to join the discussions. This concept is similar to market concept, where the merits of ideas and opinions are bought and sold for virtual money. [Thanks for the link Darren.]

Hubble Images

ESA, ESO and NASA are making raw hubble data available to the masses. Data from the telescope comes in Flexible Image Transport System (FITS) format -- and is a standard for the astronomical community. I remember the format from my observing days at university. Programs to use the FITS format however have not been accessible. The ESA/ESO/NASA team however, have created a FITS plugin for Photoshop that allows FITS formated data to be interpreted. Once you've loaded the plugins, you'll need to download the FITS datasets to your computer. Having broadband would come in really handy, as the datasets are huge. Image processing will take some work, but the beautiful images that will result are worth the effort. [This came via The Caretaker blog.]

Navel Gazing

This week's BusinessWeek magazine did some navel gazing for bloggers with a cover article on blogs and how they will change your business. If you're a blogger, you're already a believer -- granted some of you do some rather personal navel gazing in the public blogosphere, and probably don't get the difference between blogs and personal journals. The article contends that blogs are a prerequisite, "not a business elective."

Why? Consider the following argument. Businesses in the past have controlled their image and public perception. They had much more control in the past, especially with media in the hands of the few, who were also businesses. With freedom of the press and media control shared amongst the conglomerates and some smaller players, business lost some control of the shaping of public perception. But, they still had significant control. They controlled their image by buying media time -- one way or another -- via commercial time, or by bullying the free press. To some degree, the public is still under the barrage of business propaganda. Blogs are changing that however. Suddenly, media is not controlled. Media has been disseminated to the masses via blogging tools. Everyone has become a publisher. The court of public opinion is lot more powerful that the court of law. Media can make or break a company. Blogs can make or break a company.

What are businesses to do? Blog. Already some businesses are setting up blogs, and are engaging in public discourse with their customers, potential customers and the denizens of the blogosphere. It is expected that as businesses see the potential of the blogosphere, that huge portions of its real estate will be bought out. You can already find business presence on personal blogs via advertising and paid blogging -- where businesses pay bloggers to write about them. There is danger for the blogosphere in this change. Right now, the loose nature of the blogosphere is scary. Who do you trust? Which blogs are reliable news sources? Many blogs cater to further marginalization of society. What happens when businesses realize that they can play this wild-west environment for their own advantage? Consider the possibility of businesses setting up "unbranded blogs of their own to promote their products -- or to tar the competition." How will one tell the difference between editorial content and advertising in disguise?

There are questionable uses of blogs -- exploitation of blogs is quite possible, and in today's environment it's probably easy to accomplish. The bigger potential for businesses using blogs exist however in the very nature of blogs. Blogs are unlike the static pages that make up the rest of the internet. The blogosphere is an entity that's alive. It's constantly changing, reshaping itself and evolving. When a topic enters the blogosphere, it either dies quietly, or it grows and evolves via the cross-posting, linking via other blogs and the public discourse the ensues. Consider the December tsunami that hit Asia. The blogosphere was taken over for a couple of months as bloggers broke news, shared opinions and pressured governments into action. Imagine this living entity that is the blogosphere being mapped -- think of an opinion map that is overlaid on some physical map that represents geography or age or sex or whatever else -- imagine a business being able to tap into this rich source of information. Suddenly, a business could know if conditions are right to launch a particular product or service; or they could have up to the minute feedback on what the world is thinking -- what the world is thinking about their product. The possibilities are endless. And it doesn't end with businesses -- governments, public interest groups, etc., all have something to learn, gain and exploit.

BusinessWeek, listening to their own prophecy, have created their own blog: Blogspotting.net. Check it out.

Prospecting for Lunar Water

In the 1990s, the Lunar Prospector and Clementine found signs of ice in the shadowed craters never the Moon's poles. There has been no substantial evidence for ice however. NASA's future plans for lunar colonization hinges on finding water on the Moon. Water would be useful for lunar colonists as drinking water, water to grow food, provide oxygen and rocket fuel, as well, water is very effective in blocking space radiation. In 2008, NASA will launch the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter to map the lunar environment. It's hoped that the LRO will confirm water on the Moon, and will set the stage for the return to the Moon in 2020.

Dangers of MS Excel

The Register has an article about the dangers of spreadsheet misuse in the business world. Spreadsheets have achieved ubiquity in businesses. There isn't a business manager who could function without them -- and if you're a business manager who functions without them, chances are, you're not a real manager because you don't know you are using them, whether directly or indirectly (and I actually know some these strange beasts). The dangers with spreadsheets isn't the software, but the misuse of the software. Usually no controls governing the information, analysis or computations done within spreadsheets. An indispensable tool that too often is being used to enable critical business processes, spreadsheets also fall into a grey area for support -- most IT organizations could care less about them or their use/misuse. Often IT is busily enforcing controls on the huge ERP packages that business managers couldn't misuse anyway, and completely forget the millions of Excel spreadsheets and Access databases that run the business. PWC and KPMG estimates that 90% of corporate spreadsheets have material errors costing businesses anywhere from $10,000 to $100,000 per month. Will anything be done about it? Probably not. It's all a matter of control. Business managers are unwilling to give up control of their sacred spreadsheets and the problem is too scary for IT to throw controls over it.

For more information, check out this white paper.

Virtual Assistants

If you've got some computer skills, a high speed line to the internet and are looking for a job, a home business as a virtual worker may be just the thing for you. According to the Canadian Telework Association, 1.5 million people in Canada have virtual jobs -- charging a rate of $25-40 per hour. For those looking to provide administrative duties, check out the Canadian Virtual Assistant Connection. [Thanks for the link Garry.]

Stupidity

I just read on Hammer & Nail of State Rep. Daniel LeMahieu's proposed bill in to "prohibit health care facilities on campus from dispensing, advertising or prescribing birth control to adult female students" in Wisconsin. Apparently, LeMahieu thinks that birth control “encourages women to be promiscuous.” WTF?

Ballmer Wades in on Gays

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer sent out a letter to employees to clarify Microsoft's and his preferred position on gays and specifically, their position on anti-discriminatory legislation being debated. Ballmer says that Microsoft and he himself, remains "hardcore" about diversity and "rigorous about having a non-discriminatory environment." OK Steve. Down boy. Ballmer went on to say that Microsoft decided to narrow their legislative focus rather selfishly on matters that had a direct impact on their business. In no way did they cave in when Rev. Hutcherson demanded that the two Microsoft employees that testified in support of the anti-discriminatory legislation, be burned at the stake, because from Ballmer's experience, gays don't burn well -- and further, the demand that Ballmer should do a public dance in support of taking away all gay rights was just ludicrous. Ballmer questioned whether public companies should be taking a position on social issues that have strong support on both sides of the camp from their employees -- no matter how right one side is. In such cases, he suggests that Microsoft will continue to be a place where employees are respected, treated fairly and he personally, will swing both ways. Ballmer recognizes that some employees will be "frustrated by the position" he takes, but that he just likes to "wrestle" with everyone -- regardless of their sexual orientation.

Beyond Fermat's Last Theorem

Indian mathematician, Chandrashekhar Khare, has made an important leap in number theory with the publishing of a proof for the level-1 case of the Serre conjecture. Late last year, Khare and J.P. Wintenberger published a two part strategy to solving Serre conjecture. The strategy builds on the work of Andrew Wiles and Richard Taylor, en route to proving Fermat's last theorem. Khare is at work on the final proof of the Serre conjecture, although there is no timeline for the publication of his result.

For more information, see the following:

Mod l representations of arithmetic fundamental groups: Part I (An analog of Serre's conjecture for function fields) [PDF]

Lectures on Serre's Conjectures [PDF]

Fermat's Last Theorem: After 356 Years [PDF]

Born Again OS/2

OS/2 World, an OS/2 online community, is looking to bring OS/2 out of the closet in a resurrection. The community is petitioning IBM to open source the entire OS or components of it. It's not a bad idea. Let's face it -- IBM dropped the ball with OS/2 and is letting it die a slow and painful death. OS/2 however, seems to have a cult following -- how else would you describe these guys? Giving it away may lend new viability to the product, and may also serve to drive innovation. The Linux community for one, could probably gain from some of the code in OS/2.

the Flash Mind Reader

Check out this little piece of wizardry. It doesn't always work, but when it does -- well ... [Thanks Darren -- another 5 minutes wasted.]

iPod Killers?

Music is about to hit North American cell phones in a really big way. In Europe and Asia, cell phones are already well versed in MP3 playback -- but in the large North American market, they've had only a passing interest from mobile carriers. That's about to change however. The music industry and mobile carriers are teaming up to deliver music downloads directly to cell phones that are about to become the new digital jukeboxes. Every large mobile carrier is busy at work on their music stores, and the major labels, having missed the boat on the internet, are quickly reading their catalogs for the cell phone market.

iPod and iTunes have been the most successful digital music foray, but consider the numbers: there are 1.4 billion people with cell phones, and to date, only 10 million iPods have been sold. The iPod can hold 60GB of music -- your entire music collection; but Samsung already has a 3GB phone on the market and is developing a 10GB version. How long will it be before they hit 60GB as well? Cell phones also have the advantage of readily available downloads, while on the run -- whereas with the iPod, you have to connect to your computer. Increasingly as well, the ringtone market is also becoming more important. Artists are readying ringtone versions of their hits in conjunction to their regular releases.

In defense of the iPod however, the mobile and music industries does have a few things to learn. 1) Nothing beats cheap or free. Xingtones can transform your MP3s to ringtone format. Why buy ringtones when you don't have to? 2) iTunes is cheap at 99-cents a song. The mobile industry has been stealing money from their customers, charging $2 per ringtone, and with plans to charge $2-3 for song downloads. 3) Songs download to a cell phone can't be transferred to another device -- other than maybe another cell phone, and then, it might cost the user after the first couple of plays. 4) And lastly, who really need to have their entire music collection on their cell phone? Already, cell phones have had a huge antisocial impact. Do we really need this? Like it or not, it will be sold to us, but we don't have to buy it.

Downsizing the CEO

BusinessWeek has a cover article on the downsizing of CEOs -- especially in Corporate America. The resizing of CEOs are coming as a result of the bad apples being thrown out -- from Enron, WorldCom, and Fannie Mae to the recent shenanigans of AIG's former boss, Maurice R. Greenberg. More power is being wielded by the directors, auditors and lawyers, who in the past have played the advisor role to CEOs, in helping them helm their companies, and are now questioning, countering and generally being confrontational. Why the change? Fear. Sarbanes-Oxley alone has gone the distance of making the advisors accountable for shareholders and the public. Now, there is liability. Advisors can find themselves in the hot seat just as much as CEOs. This is all a great thing. Public accountability -- the stymieing of bad accounting practices, lying to investors and breaking of the law. But it also has a downside. More and more, the advisors are commanding higher fees, and are curtailing potential risky and lucrative moves by CEOs. That translates to CEOs becoming risk-averse, steering the companies along safe but unwise paths.

The opposite view of course is to return back to the good ole days, where CEOs did as they wish and were above reproach. A big proponent of this world is Thomas J. Donohue of the US Chamber of Commerce. According to Donohue, "An accounting error should never be seen as a crime." He represents the extreme, and his flippant views would take us back to the glory days when Enron's executives milked their investors and laughed as they committed their crimes. I don't think so.

Somewhere there must be a middle ground -- a balancing of public accountability with risk taking and agility. I may be over oversimplifying it, but I think honesty, transparency and ethics might just be the magic formula. What I don't get is, when did those words become a burden?

Microsoft to Gays: "Use Linux!"

Microsoft, a firm supporter of gay rights in the past, has quietly retreated from its position due to pressure from the religious right. Apparently, Microsoft was supportive of a bill protecting gays from discrimination in the workplace in Washington State -- but backed away when pastor Ken Hutcherson of Antioch Bible Church of Redmond threatened to organize a national boycott of the company's products.

Nopir-B

I just picked this up from Mocking Music -- apparently a new malware has hit the internet. Nopir-B bills itself as a DVD-cracking program that gets your around DVD copy protection. What it does instead is take control of your machine, deleting all MP3s it finds, then hunting down P2P programs and some other apps and wiping them out. Anti-virus vendors are updating their products, but expect this piece of crap to hang around the P2P world for some time. Personally, I think the RIAA or MPAA are behind it. No hacker would build this for fun -- the hacker community would take them apart for it.

Interesting Reads

Some interesting articles of note from last week's BusinessWeek magazine:

MBA Applicants Are MIA -- Tuitions for business schools are on the rise, the job market is again healthy and, is there really value in getting an MBA? Or, to qualify that -- is there really any value in getting an MBA without work experience? I'm of the firm belief that an MBA is lost on those without experience -- which would include a few good failures along the way. It's not the death knell for MBA schools, but it sure is to be a good kick in the pants.

AIG: Get Ready for Starr Wars -- in case you haven't been following the news, it goes something like this. Former AIG CEO & Chairman Maurice "Hank" Greenberg ran a great company. It made profits while its competitors were at a lost trying to catch up. It also sold insurance that wasn't really insurance, and made a killing. Now NY Attorney General Eliot Spitzer is out guns blazing and is set to get his man. Ooops. Greenspan it seems was smart. He created a private company called Starr International Co. (or SICO for short), which he helms, named other AIG executives as executives and directors of SICO, managed to transfer 12% of AIG shares to SICO. He's now giving Spitzer the finger. I'm betting Spitzer wins. Evil never triumphs.

The Church's Challenges -- this piece was written before Cardinal Poo-poo-Pants got promoted to the Grand Ecumenical Pointy-Hat-Wearing Poopie-One (GEPhWaPO). It tries to make the point of why the catholic church needs to change to be relevant. Oops. I think we all know what the GEPhWaPO is about. Scratch change. Scratch relevancy -- especially in the established enclaves of the developed nations. But lo -- here comes some 3rd world primitives, ready to defend the wacko faith from change. I can envision the day when the ass-backwards down trodden decide to lash out at the world for the injustices visited upon them centuries ago instead moving on. Fundamentalist catholic terrorists strike! Hey, maybe GEPhWaPO does know what to do. Here comes the crusades! (I'm rambling, just read the damn article.)

Parents Go Crazy for Cramming -- the Japanese could once pat themselves on the back for getting higher marks in math and science than North Americans. Not anymore. They've been dropping when compared to the world [PDF, 5.67MB]. Their kids must have that lazy sickness that North American kids have. The Japanese aren't about to take the low score sitting down -- they're cramming.

How Ampex Squeezes Out Cash -- you've probably never heard of Ampex, but right now it's milking cash from Sony, Sanyo, and Eastman Kodak. Ampex owns the patent on how digital images are displayed on just about every electronic device out there. Sounds like another case of "patent trolling."

Combat Over Collaboration -- Microsoft and IBM are duking it out for the workplace collaboration market. IBM has the better technology and experience. So what? Microsoft is going to win. IBM had OS/2, and it was better than Windows. IBM dropped the ball. IBM had Lotus 123 and an entire Office Suite. They dropped the ball. IBM has Notes/Domino and are dropping that ball. Disagree if you wish, but it's true.

The Coming Chip Revolution -- is there nothing carbon nanotubes can't do? Apparently not. Nano-processing is coming.

Welcome Aboard SeaCode

Picture this: a cruise ship off a major coastal city of an industrialized country, in international waters. The vacationers are not on vacation, but are at work. They come from many of the developing countries that are now supplying the brains to the next wave of innovation -- India, China, etc. They get the same amenities as a guest on a cruise ship would, except they work in two shifts, get paid more than they would at home -- and technically, it is offshoring -- only it's local. This ship was dreamt up by Roger Green and David Cook, who have now formed SeaCode and are in the market for a cruise ship to anchor Los Angeles and clients who need cheap, highly skilled labour. Uh-huh. I'll believe it when they turn a profit.

Deadly Moondust

Astronaut Harrison Schmidt complained of having "lunar dust hay fever" after a moonwalk during the 1972 Apollo 17 mission. His symptoms were gone in a day, and the episode drifted from the limelight. The astronauts of that mission had brought dust from the Moon into their spacecraft and it had become airborne, entering their lungs. Dust particles less than 10 microns wide can block the exchange of oxygen and carbon dioxide in the lungs, and the lungs can't clear out the dust by coughing or mucous. Further, white blood cells are destroyed when they try to take sharp-edged particles away in the bloodstream. This all leads to silicosis -- effectively, the slow suffocation of the victim. Moon dust isn't poisonous, just dangerous. Martian dust on the other hand may be toxic to humans and even corrosive to equipment. With future missions to the Moon and Mars possible, NASA is busy figuring out how to keep the dust out.

All interesting, but I also wanted to post this summary because it included the cool picture below! ;-)

Celebrate the New Pope

With your own Pope Hat! Yes, with one of those funky hats, you can walk around mumbling in what passes for latin and blessing people. [This came from moxiegrrrl.]

Google Maps

OK, it's nothing new. I'm sure it's been around for a while, in Beta ... but it's damn cool! (Although it didn't find the local PizzaPizza from my house ... oh well.) If you really want to see cool, select Satellite from the top, right hand corner, then type in an address to seach for. Amazing!

Early Universe the Perfect Liquid

Work at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) at Brookhaven National Laboratory have revealed that free quarks and gluons form a new state of matter, behaving like a perfect liquid. Quarks and gluons are the building blocks of the atomic nuclei, and in the early universe have been thought to have been in a gaseous state before cooling to form atoms of hydrogen. The observations from collisions of gold ions fits the theorectical predictions for a quark-gluon plasma -- the type of matter thought to have existed microseconds after the Big Bang. In the observations, the trajectories of thousands of particles from collisions move collectively, responding together to pressure variations. This motion is akin to fluid motion and can be described by the equations of hydrodynamics.

For more information, check out:

Hunting the Quark Gluon Plasma [PDF, 9.5MB]

Lunch with Mikhail Gorbachev

Ray Kurzweil had lunch with Mikhail Gorbachev when he was in the US to deliver a keynote address at Massachusetts Software Council. It's an interesting conversation, especially for Gorbachev's take on where he sees technology and science playing a role in the furthering of Russia (and the world) in economic and social development. [Thanks for the link Darren.]

New Pictures

My wife and I went out last weekend, and the weekend before that. I took some pictures while we were out. The first album contain some squirrels we encountered at Edward's Gardens -- a park in Toronto, at Leslie and Lawrence. There wasn't much growing, the park still looked dead. The sun was out however, and the parking lot was filled with Torontians coming from winter hibernation. That was the weekend of April 10th. This past weekend, my wife and I drove up to Bracebridge. It was actually my idea. Go figure. Bracebridge is known for its falls. Quite a few of them, but they're all small. We took some photos.

Population Genetics

A friend from IBM was telling me about this on Friday. IBM and National Geographic are pooling efforts into a five year project to collect at least 100,000 DNA samples from people around the world in order to build a public database of anthropological genetic information. The effort, on IBM's part, is in keeping with their push into business transformation services -- in this case, IBM is counting on their donated effort to bear fruit in future contracts in the lucrative life sciences market. The effort has its detractors, who fear that the world isn't ready for the study of human history, race and genetics. As well, there are general concerns around genetic studies, especially since they could lead to more of humanity being patented by businesses.

Despite the concerns, the Genographic Project is taking off however, and promises to create the largest DNA database of the human species. The data could lead to a higher resolution image of human migration out of Africa 50,000 years ago. The project is also looking to build public support and participation. Kits are available for $100 that would allow anyone to send their DNA sample for the project to analyze.

Beyond Blue

BusinessWeek magazine has an in depth article on IBM's transformation journey from a computing company into one that provides "business-performance-transformation-services." Spurred by IBM's CEO Samuel J. Palmisano, IBM is attempting to shake off its dependence on the $1.2 trillion computing industry with a growth rate of 6% annually, and join the business process outsourcing industry -- a move that Palmisano hopes will pull IBM out of trenches where they're battling for commodity dollars, and instead, place them in the position where they can not only oversee the entire computing industry, but all industries, all businesses. It's not that IBM will leave the computing industry behind. It still has a huge stake and reaps lots of profits from its hardware and computing services businesses. It has a huge patent library and thousands of research scientists dreaming and innovating. What IBM expects however is that margins will continue to decline in their traditional base. They face stiff competition as ever, and commodity players like Dell and Asian manufacturers are also slowly pushing into the low end of IBM's high end businesses. Margins in the outsource processing business -- or the bigger picture of business transformation that Palmisano is hocking -- is higher.

IBM gained a leg up in their new future with the acquisition of PWC Consulting in 2002. With PWC came an infusion of tens of thousands of business focused employees. IBM's business consulting staff are at 50,000 today -- about 15% of their workforce, and growing at a clip of 10,000 per year. Existing employees are also being retooled. Business people with the technical know-how is a potent combination. A cultural shift is also underway. Gone are the days when different divisions had tunnel vision for their vertical. Now, any IBM initiative has the ability to leverage on expertise across the entire enterprise.

It all sounds like great news for IBM's future, but its still a gamble. Firstly, there is competition. Accenture is already entrenched in the industry IBM is going after, although they lack the technical breadth that IBM has. Wipro and Tata Consultancy of India are challenging both IBM and Accenture, with low costs. As well, some of services IBM is targeting are already on the radar of other computing companies and are likely to become commodities themselves. Secondly: IBM's promises reengineering. There isn't certainty there that businesses may want to have their operations so transformed that they grow a dependency on an outsourcer and are unable to cut the cords if needed. Lastly: do you believe IBM can actually pull this off? It sounds like a world-domination scheme, but there isn't certainty that IBM can do it.

IBM just got out of the PC business because they could no longer compete in it. Dell was beating the pants off them, and IBM was stuck selling PCs via some very inflexible channels. With the cord cut, Lenovo may stand a chance by going head to head against Dell by playing Dell's game of driving operational efficiency and lowering costs. However, if IBM's business-performance-transformation-services was so great, why couldn't IBM leverage it for its own operations to transform IBM into a better computing company? I'm not convinced that IBM has what it takes -- yet. And then, I would still have reservations about giving away any key operations, especially those that are a strategic differentiator, to an outsourcer that will turn around, leverage on the expertise they've gained on my payroll and help my competition. At the end of the day, this is good for IBM -- and may have short term payback for their customers, but is not strategic.

American Bimbo

Speaking of the ethical treatment of people ... this has been generating a lot of noise, and rightly so. Christina Aguilera has decided to join Skechers in removing some of the progress women have made over the last couple of generations. She's appearing in a series of print ads, portraying a nurse, schoolgirl and police woman, and in each instance, sexualizing the role she portrays. I'm not going to blame society for this. Nor am I going to blame Skechers -- like most businesses, it treats morals and ethics as commodities to be traded for profits. I blame Aguilera.

People for the Ethical Treatment of People

I have mixed feelings on this. I'm not anti-war, nor am I anti-armed forces. I'm all for the armed forces, and I'm all for going to war -- when it is the right thing to do. Somehow, this ad I saw for the US Navy bothers me however. It features a series of images: missiles, a jet fighter firing a missile, a ship firing a missile, and more ships firing missiles. The captions:

Studying rocket science is more fun when you actually have rockets.
NAVY - Accelerate Your Life.

Silliness

This came via a budding newshound, who scours the net for ... well ... click and find out:

Your Unitarian Jihad Name

Unintentionally sexual comic book covers

SCIgen - An Automatic CS Paper Generator

American $2 Bill

This is amusing. Recently, a man was arrested in a Best Buy in Baltimore, MD, for paying an installation charge in 57 $2 bills. Apparently the cashier was not amused. In fact, the cashier was downright stupid. The police was called, and the man was arrested and held in custody until it was verified that the $2 bills were real.

American Moron

Read this -- it will make you laugh, cry and want to bludgeon American morons. Let's face it -- America is like our big brother -- but every now and again, you've got to wonder -- did the big guy just got hit one too many times in the head? [This was brought to you via the Canadian Cynic.]

Ornamism

Ornamism, is defined as "fusion of Ornament and Organism." The site provides a visual treat by creating a virtual organism on screen for you, then mutating it. Watch as some of the most interesting patterns are rendered as your virtual organism grows, evolves and mutates. The author, Mario Klingemann, has also built other visual treats, which are available on his site. They're pretty.

Ornamism is created using Processing, a visual development language and environment created for the art and design folks. It's a free download.

Genes, Race, and Medicine

The Finnish Disease Database

Human Population Genetics: Lessons from Finland [PDF]

Discover Magazine continues its three part "Learning Series" of articles on the influence of genetics and race on medical science.

The second part of the series profiles the "boring Finns" and their unique contribution to genetic medicine. The people of Finland are fairly unique in that there is uniformity in their genes due to the centuries of isolation and intermarriage -- the result of which has left Finns with a large set of hereditary disorders. Their uniformity is great for researchers since the human race as a whole hasn't changed much since we emerged from Africa 50,000 years ago. We all carry the same genes -- the same genes that make us susceptible to many ailments -- and they are the same genes that have been around for 50,000 years. In the Finns however, a hereditary trail for ailments can be traced -- to parents, grandparents -- across generations. The rest of the world has interbred so much, or has such poor medical records over generations, that such a trail would be near impossible to find. The Finnish boon for researchers is helping to find genetic links to many ailments that are universal to the human population. The research will hopefully lead to new treatments and understanding of the many disease of the human race. Hopefully the understanding of genetic homogeneity will lead to tolerance for our heterogeneity -- after all, the way we look is only our genetic response to our environment.

China's Wasteful Ways

China is paying for its inefficiencies in energy consumption -- through hard dollars and the havoc be played out on their environment. China's wasteful ways:

It consumes three times the world average in energy to produce $1 of GDP

Its steelmakers use twice as much energy as Japan or Korea per ton of output

Only 5% of its office & residential towers meet its own energy conservation standards

Fuel consumption grew 1.5 times its economy in 2004, while the rest of the world is 1 times or less

Inefficient fuel use is tagged at $120 billion in lost output and pollution related health problems annually

True, China is a developing nation as much as it an industrial nation. It's caught between the 3rd and 1st world, and is rapidly changing. Comparisons with the productivity and efficiencies with the 1st world nations are sometimes unfair, just as it's unfair to use its competitiveness for comparison.

China has a lot to do, and a big push is being made of have Beijing presentable for the 2008 Olympics. China is also looking to reduce its dependence on coal and oil, revving up use of natural gas and building upwards of 30 new nuclear reactors in the near future. China is also experimenting with hybrid vehicles at a more pressing pace than the developed nations -- they need to. By 2020, the number of vehicles on their roads is expected to quadruple to 100 million, accounting for 60% of China's energy consumption -- doubling what it is today. China does have a clear advantage over the developed nations in this respect -- they don't have the transportation infrastructure -- so building a clean transportation infrastructure that is not dependent on oil should not be a hard thing. But do they have the will?

For further reading, check out the following links:

International Energy Outlook 2004

Environment Matters -- World Bank

The Environment and China -- World Resources Institute

China’s Transportation and its Energy Use

Bobcaygeon and Fenelon Falls

My wife and I journeyed up to Bobcaygeon (and then, onto Fenelon Falls) a couple of weekends ago. My only reason was because I had never been. Her reason -- she likes going out of the city. Upon reflection, it was crazy. I took some pictures. Click on the thumbnail to see them. There wasn't much to see. Winter was slowly fading, so everything had that "dead, waiting for resurrection" look.

Web Mobs

Baseline Magazine has an article profiling Shadowcrew, an online criminal organization that, in its heyday, had 4,000 members, and trafficked in stolen credit cards and identities. It was shutdown by the US Secret Service in the fall of 2004, but not before its crimes had cost businesses upwards of $4 million in damages. Shadowcrew is a web mob, and it was most likely not the largest, well organized or effective as the others that exist out there. Web mobs exist online, and they steal identities, credit card information, and sell them for as little as $1 online. They also provide the framework to facilitate the online sale of stolen information. They are a menace to businesses hoping to leverage the internet for e-commerce. Read the article for Baseline's dissection of web mobs -- learn how they operate, how easy it is to become a victim and how little there is that crime fighters can do against them today.

Gigabyte Factory Tour

Ever wonder how motherboards (and other boards) are made? Take this photographic tour of a Gigabyte factory in Nan-Ping, Taiwan. You'll be amazed by the automation and the number of different machines that are involved in putting a motherboard out.

Underdogs

Wired Magazine has a great article on four undocumented Mexican highschoolers in Phoenix, who took on University engineering students in the third annual Marine Advanced Technology Education Center's Remotely Operated Vehicle Competition last year, and won -- against great odds. The four highschoolers are incredibly smart, and championed by two exceptional teachers. They are however, up against great odds to repeat their competition success in life. As undocumented residents, they are illegals. To go to University, they have to pay tuition fees that foreign students would have to pay -- even though on average, they've been living for 11-years in the US. They are also living in poverty, and they can expect little help from their parents. They represent great potential however -- and it makes you wonder how much potential is being thrown away due to similar circumstances. After reading the article, if you'd like to contribute to a scholarship program set up to provide these kids a future, jump to PayPal and donate.

Noteable Articles

Here are a few articles that distracted me from the hordes on the subway this past couple of weeks:

Your Next TV -- American TV manufacturers think they have chance to take back the television market from the Asian manufacturers. Read this article to find out if they stand a chance ... and see what they'll be marketing to you in the coming years. Believe it or not, your next TV could have the Dell or HP brand slapped on it.

Major Hangups Over the iPOD Phone -- Motorola and Apple were slated to release the iPOD phone, but something went horribly wrong with their plans. The mobile carriers wanted no part in it, as there was nothing there for them. Motorola and Apple wanted to allow you to buy and upload your own music into your phone from your computer. The carriers wanted you to buy your songs from them, like you do with your ring-tones today. Both sides are greedy, and both sides want your money. Because they can't agree, you're not getting an iPOD phone.

Here Come the Wal-Mart Wannabes -- Indians are heading in droves to their new big box stores, and surprisingly, the banner over the stores don't say Wal-Mart or Carrefour -- instead, they carry the homegrown names of Big Bazaar, Westside, Shoppers Stop, Spencer's and others. Does the western giants stand a chance in these emerging markets?

Corporate America's New Achilles' Heel -- Financing is quickly becoming the profit generator for American companies, contributing to 30% of all profits as of the 3rd quarter last year. That's not just from banks and other financial institutions, but more and more from manufacturers and retailers. As these companies grow their dependency on financing for profits, the risk to the financial industry poses a greater risk to the economy as a whole.

The Sage of Mexico City -- Carlos Slim is the 4th richest man in the world, with an estimated value of US$23.8 billion. He owns bits of Altria Group, Global Crossing, Saks, MCI, CompUSA, American Movil, Telmex and more. He's also Mexican.

A Whiff of Terror in Bangalore -- thinking of outsourcing processes to India and other parts of Asia? Think of the potential risks to your business. How exposed is your business to acts of terrorism when it's so far offshore?

Golf, Sushi - And Cheap Engineers -- North American companies aren't the only ones exploiting the cheap and smart labour of Asia -- the Japanese are doing it too. Dalian, a city on the Chinese coast, could easily pass for a Japanese city.

The Immelt Revolution -- Jack Welch left GE with a culture that steeped in process and attention to the bottom-line. That culture is now in for a rough ride with new CEO, Jeffrey R. Immelt. To continue growing GE, Immelt is stressing risk-taking, marketing and innovation. He's even done the unthinkable -- he's brought outsiders into the highest ranks at GE -- and is now tying compensation to customer satisfaction and sales growth. Will GE survive the change?

The Digital Hospital -- what does the future of health care look like? Efficient and cost effective, thanks to the use of technology. Health care has been one industry that's been left behind the digital revolution, but catch-up is coming fast, though not soon enough. In the US today, health care accounts for 15% of the economy and hospital errors result in 98,000 deaths annually, while productivity has only been rising at about 2% annually since 2001. There's a lot of potential gains for health care in exploiting information technology.

Meet the Best and Brightest -- America continues to lag behind the world in scienc