squonk

I am not sure if it is irony, or destiny.

How much of Japan's population syndrome is directly assignable to Japan's unique policies, versus the nature of first world countries in general?

Japan's population has been essentially flat for the last 6 years: 127,773,000 in 2005, 127,817,000 in 2011. It is headed south as long as the birth rate remains so low. So no question that the rest of the world needs to understand the effects of negative population growth. A decreasing population will test many economic policies that relied on monotonically increasing population to be effective. I doubt we can predict all of the policies that will break.

That's pretty disingenuous. 23 million Americans have used drugs/alcohol to the point of needing treatment: http://thechart.blogs.cnn.com/2011/09/08/study-22-million-am... That's 7% of the population, including children under 12. Take the pre-peer-pressure group out and it starts to look more like Russian Roulette. I'd hardly call that a risk worth taking.

I keep imagining the technology used with recreational vehicles. Spend a day as a tourist in Chicago. Hop in the RV and go to sleep. Wake up in Memphis. Visit Elvis, enjoy waffles & fried chicken, then hit the hay and wake up the next day in Orlando. No down time.

Here's another Internet Fiction Discovery. You may recall it: http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/k067x/could_i_des...

For 10 years I've been driving home from work in Silicon Valley thinking, "I am living in the future."

Not sure about the logic of this: "They will live in a world where China and India will have 50 percent of the world GDP. They will live in a world where, if they cannot function successfully in the Asian culture, they will pay a heavy price."

Today, the US + EU have about 50% of the world's GDP. Do Chinese kids pay a 'heavy price' because they cannot function successfully in the Western culture? It seems more like the heavy price is paid due to lack of economic integrity and opportunity in China. The importance is in getting a solid education. There will be plenty of work to do here in the US and in China.

Related topic: The Hong Kong Chinese don't want their kids to learn about about China: http://news.yahoo.com/hk-drops-china-education-plans-mass-pr...

Data Points:

Since 1970, global population increased by 91% Since 1970, global aggregate GDP increased by 540% (in constant $)

I think that means that 540/1.91 = ~2.8x increase in per-person productivity on a global basis over the last 40 years. I would contend that capitalism drives productivity increases to a greater degree than communism or socialism, simply based on the fact that 8 of the top 10 economies in the world are arguably capitalist. (counting France as socialist and China as something else, not sure what at this point).

A better statistician than I can weigh in with wealth distribution, and I am betting that the average world citizen is better off today than 40 years ago, primarily due to capitalism.

Retail is not going away. It is evolving.

Big box stores killed the mom & pops. Online retailers killed the big box stores: Circuit City, Barnes & Noble, Borders, Blockbuster, Tower Records.

WalMart is right to be concerned.

Consumers benefit from online shopping: - Skip the ride to the store and back - Seemingly limitless selection in a few searches - Confidence in pricing by comparing

Brick & mortars need to do their homework and understand the psychology of shopping in an Internet world.

There will always be those who: - Want it right now - Enjoy the social interaction of shopping with friends - Want to talk to someone who knows what they are talking about - Want to be 'seen'

They need to wind down and market to that segment of the population. That is where they are headed anyway.

Facebook will apply the data from each account to the Turing Test. Start with a database of 67.5 years of e-mail, tweets, photos, voice mail, video mail, geo-location, blogs, purchase history, social networks, all from one person. Then add AI and a remote presence device, and we can all live on.

Maybe not a surprise, but definitely unexpected, was the number of systems where, over time, the incremental features had overtaken the original architecture, but the vendor would not fund a new implementation. I've seen 15 year-old systems that were so byzantine, every feature change broke two others, and attempts at improvement caused entropy. It was both a huge time sink and customer satisfaction debacle.

Here is an idea for CSCI 344: Identifying When to Throw that Shit Out

There are attributes of American society that enable the country to excel, and which have nothing to do with quality of public education. First, parents in general are less active in managing their kids' time than other countries. Kids have more leeway to determine what they do with their time. Many do slack off, or get into trouble, and sometimes it is serious. But many others find out what really interests them. They are not told they have to prepare to be a doctor, lawyer or engineer. They are more likely to be able to try everything and see where their mind returns to over and over. No cookie cutters or escalators.

Second, we have a different view of failure than many other nations. The relatively low social and legal consequence of failure allows Americans to stand back up, shake off the failure and try again. Think about how many restaurants there are and the number that will fail within a year or two. It is millions of failures annually. In Germany, for example, if a business does not notify its creditors 30 days before running out of cash, the president can go to prison. In the US, a business has no requirement to ever notify their creditors at all. We seem to see failure as a consequence of taking a risk, not as a scarlet letter. To never fail, is to never try.

If you combine the two, we have a society where people not only have a better opportunity to discover their passions, they feel much less encumbered by the prospect of failure than in other countries. Passion drives innovation, creativity, persistence and the competitive spirit. Can you imagine Apple, Microsoft, Walmart, Amazon, MacDonald's or any other 'huge success' without a passionate, risk-taking founder? Even Subway has such a story.

The product of our education system may not do as well on tests as their peers from other countries, but when they get into college and choose a major, they are more likely to be passionate and self-motivated and excel in their chosen curriculum.

Our educational system needs help, there is no doubt. Since my grade school days, funding for the arts has completely disappeared. Schools are run down to the point of being shameful. But the key ingredients that produce greatness are still there.

First, this is a message to middle school kids. It is a solid message: Determine what you love to do and give it all you have. It is true that what you achieve in that pursuit will be mitigated by your actual talent for it, life circumstances, responsibilities and resources, not to mention luck. But even if you can't make a living at it or even get to it very often, doing what you love for its own sake will make your life more satisfying than not.

True?

You need to call. Recruiters are verbal. Reading? Not so much.

There is some truth to this. I've been receiving 'delayed' notices on mail to aramco.com e-mail addresses for several days.

Going from Kickstarter/prototype to China is too big a step. Small companies can not manage the constant hops across the Pacific to keep things moving. Prototyping shops like http://www.techshop.ws/ are/will feed directly into US-based contract manufacturers that specialize in building the supply chain, assembly instructions, QA/QC checks, and the myriad details that can then bridge to China when volumes are sufficient.

It is a compassionate approach.

It's really about management. Companies evolve as they grow and the magic sauce that took them from Start up to Successful is not the same sauce that takes them from $1 Billion to $10 Billion and then $10 Billion to $100 Billion.

Moreover, the techno-guild at Exxon is going to have a different mandate than Cisco's or Disney's.

Managing growth, competition and markets is the job of management (CEO) and understanding the role that technology plays in their business, and then ensuring that foresight is available (CTO) to them to act on, is what they get paid for.

A Bozo at Amazon might be a god at Delta Airlines.

I told her not to move and dashed for the camera. Then we talked about what she wanted to sell (ice cream) and who she wanted to sell it to (people from Germany [I was traveling there frequently at the time]).

I work from home when not traveling and we still talk about customers, partners and even some of the challenges that come up and what we're doing about them. Not sure exactly how it will manifest when she is an adult, but I am certain some good will come of the exposure.

You are absolutely right, don't discard those moments.

There is an awesome one at Tokyo Station (Chuo line?) Up about two stories, then horizontal for 10 meters, then up another two stories. Ya, I could spend hours on that one....

Implies that conversations will no longer center on facts. Will we find ourselves talking more about politics, love, art and philosophy?

I've become interested in evolutionary psychology. Not at all expert, but when one considers the survivability of children in ancient (pre-historic) environments, seems logical that children increased the likelihood of survival by mimicking the adults they see; figuring out how to do the basics like feeding themselves, finding a safe place to sleep, taking cover during inclement weather, and generally assimilating adult behavior. The sooner they learned these skills, the better their chance of survival if they became separated from adults. Evolution selected for such behaviors. That conclusion is a thought experiment, and I haven't dug up scientific evidence, so an anecdote: I once came home from work to find my 6 year old daughter in my closet. She had put on one of my shirts, a tie and my shoes. She was holding an old briefcase. When she saw me, she said, "daddy, let's go do some business!". I believe that kids have a genetically driven need to emulate their parents and that need is rooted in evolution and is much more profound than we realize. Regrettably, the modern parenting and schooling systems squelch that need. Here's another anecdote: http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/books/2012/07/02/12070...

Haven't played it, to my regret.

Seems like, loosely speaking, chasing down sunken treasure, or possibly wildcatting for oil can offer precedent in some form. The notion of 'international waters' perhaps can apply to space. However, someone, sometime owned the treasure that was lost and may lay claim to it.

My real question is, apparently, nations can not claim ownership of asteroids. But they will have to mutually define the legal ways any citizen or corporation on Earth can acquire ownership. What is the most likely method, once they all agree on it?

Planetary Resources is at the same time forcing the issue by proceeding with their endeavor, and, making a pretty big bet that when the laws are in place, they will have legally acquired their booty.

The technology to discover and retrieve minerals from asteroids is likely to be simpler than resolving politics and economics of it:

In order to sell the minerals, there must be a way to attain ownership.

How does one come to own an asteroid, or the minerals it contains?

A land grab under a single government is manageable. When there are 200 sovereign states, who decides which asteroids are owned by whom? First to discover? First to land? First to return minerals? Passed though a parsec I have rights to? Or perhaps you don't own the minerals until you cross low-earth orbit with them in your possession. Sign me up as an asteroid pirate.

If a company does attain ownership of an asteroid, can they sell the asteroid before ever landing on it? Will asteroid futures be traded on the CME?

If an asteroid is found to contain 100 tons of palladium, what happens to the palladium market? (Cha-ching! I hold put options on Pd!)

Ya, far more interesting....

Wired started a dialog with: http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/05/opinion-asteroid-m...

Discussed ownership, but there is no answer.

The Economist touched on it: "The most important members of the team, then, may not be the entrepreneurs and venture capitalists who put up the drive and the money, nor the engineers who build the hardware that makes it all possible, but the economists who try to work out the effect on the price of platinum when a mountain of the stuff arrives from outer space."

http://www.economist.com/node/21553419