It appears that Facebook is winning:
Talent War
Category: Current Events
TripAdvisor Going Public
I recently learned that Expedia is planning to spin-off TripAdvisor, with hopes of an IPO later this year. My initial reaction: this is a win-win-win. Expedia gets to cash out, and use the proceeds however they wish. TripAdvisor (employees) will likely have more flexibility to be more aggressive and daring without having to worry about what the parent company says, or whether there are conflicts of interest.* And most importantly, if the company gains the capacity to be more innovative, we’ll all have an even better travel site. I briefly worked at TripAdvisor in the summer of 2005. From my limited experience, I got the impression that it’s a well-run company, with dedicated, serious, and smart employees. In fact I once overheard
Yeast, Unite!
Two of my favorite topics are evolutionary biology and brewing. It’s rare that they overlap in the same article. It looks like brewer’s yeast has been coaxed to evolve to do more than make beer: IN JUST a few weeks single-celled yeast have evolved into a multicellular organism, complete with division of labour between cells. This suggests that the evolutionary leap to multicellularity may be a surprisingly small hurdle. Multicellularity has evolved at least 20 times since life began, but the last time was about 200 million years ago, leaving few clues to the precise sequence of events. To understand the process better, William Ratcliff and colleagues at the University of Minnesota in St Paul set out to evolve multicellularity in a
My Favorite Economic Dashboard
An update of one of the simplest and most useful economic dashboards I’ve seen. You need to click through, but take a quick look: I would still love to see a dynamic version of this, updated daily. It’s not quite as relevant as it could be when it’s released June 22nd with data as of May 31st. Nonetheless, I like it.
Cowen: How Would A Greek Transition Out of the Euro Go?
Tyler Cowen has some thoughts: Forget about the macroeconomics for now, I am thinking about the sheer mechanics of it. If Greece announced it was leaving the euro, it might declare a bank holiday. For some number of days, no one can pull their euros out of the bank (otherwise all euros leave the Greek banking system). The government would have to put a money stamping technology in place fairly rapidly. Once the banks are reopened, withdrawn money gets a stamp and it is now a “Greek euro” or “drachma euro,” trading at a lower value of course. Is there an indelible, irreversible money stamping technology and how long would it take to distribute it to every Greek bank? How
Clarence Clemons
I just heard the sad news that Clarence Clemons, the sax player from the E Street Band, died over the weekend after having a stroke last week. I remember discovering how great rock saxophone could be when I first heard Clarence playing on The River about ten years ago. Here’s a small tribute: And this is classic:
Vancouver Riots
I was completely blown away when I saw the pictures from the Vancouver post-loss riots. I had envisioned some variation of the Red Sox 2004 Kenmore Square riots (the crazier ones were after the ALCS, not the World Series). But no. This was on an entirely different scale: More here. I wish my brother, who is a big Bruins fan, luck when he moves to Vancouver in the fall.
Consider My Enthusiasm Curbed
Via my brother’s blog, this is very exciting news:
The North Korean Global Happiness Index
At first I found this amusing, but it’s also just kind of sad: China is the happiest place on earth(!!) according to a new global happiness index released by North Korea’s Chosun Central Television. China earned 100 out of 100 points, followed closely by North Korea (98 points), then Cuba, Iran, and Venezuela. Coming in at 203rd place is America (or rather “the American Empire”, 美帝国), with only 3 happiness points. South Korea got a measly 18 points for 152nd place.
Tyler Cowen and The Great Stagnation
I’ve long been a fan of Tyler Cowen’s blog, Marginal Revolution. It’s interesting, off-beat, and is a great source of lesser publicized news stories and research findings, with plenty of thoughtful commentary thrown in. I had been meaning to read Tyler’s recent book, ‘The Great Stagnation’, for a while now. Then the other day, while sitting in an airport, I caught this Business Week article about Tyler, titled ‘Tyler Cowen, America’s Hottest Economist.’ It’s a fascinating article about what makes him one of the more quirky and unique economists, and made me much more eager to read some of his published work. ‘The Great Stagnation’ is about why our economic growth trend has all but come to a standstill, and why