Transcendental Generalization

This article on NPR discussed an interesting idea: a camp or conference for laid off workers where volunteers would discuss money-saving, coping, and job-search techniques. Their wiki is here. If any reader has experience organizing large (400+ people) conferences or events, then we should add our fair city to the list!

The weather is cold, the economy is tight, and Valentine’s Day is tomorrow. Gourmet hot chocolate is a relatively inexpensive thrill the whole family can enjoy. (However, my children turn up their noses at anything but Swiss Miss. It even has history!)

Courtesy The Oregonian, Thursday, January 22nd:

Name	Address	Phone
Sahagun	10 NW 16th Avenue	(503) 274-7065
Cacao	414 SW 13th Avenue	(503) 241-0656
	in the Heathman Hotel 712 SW Salmon St.	(503) 274-9510
Coffeehouse Northwest	1951 W Burnside	(503) 248-2133
Sweet Masterpiece	922 NW Davis	(503) 221-0055
Moonstruck Chocolate Cafe	526 NW 23rd	(503) 542-3400
	608 SW Alder	(503) 241-0955
	700 SW Fifth	(503) 219-9118
Mio Gelato	828 NW 23rd	(503) 241-9300
	25 NW 11th	(503) 226-8002
Alotto Gelato	931 NW 23rd	(503) 228-1709

Andina used to serve xocolatl, but I don’t know if they do anymore

And if you prefer the comfort, convenience, and warmth of mail-order, Lynne Rossetto Kasper recommends the following:

L.A. Burdick Hot Chocolate, Dark
L.A. Burdick Chocolate
P.O. Box 593
Walpole, NH 03608
Tel: 800-229-2419
www.burdickchocolate.com
$11.50 for a 12-ounce bag with small whisk, $30 for a 2-pound refill bag.
MarieBelle Aztec Hot Chocolate, Aztec
MarieBelle
484 Broome Street, Ground Floor
New York, NY 10013
Tel: 212-925-6999
866-925-8800 (toll-free)
www.mariebelle.com
$18 for a 20-ounce refill bag
Vosges Haut-Chocolat Couture Cocoa, La Parisienne
Vosges Haut-Chocolat
520 North Michigan Avenue
Chicago, IL 60611
Tel: 312-644-9450
888-301-9866 (toll-free)
773-772-5349 (mail order)
www.vosgeschocolate.com
$20 for a 16-ounce package

After getting laid off, one of the first pieces of professional advice I received was, “Get business cards with your contact information on them!” I had a box of 500 business cards from my employer, so it was, frankly, strange to think that they would be completely useless just when I needed them most.

The first thing I did was print up basic, black-and-white cards on a sheet of Avery Business Cards (5371) I had lying around. They were ugly, but they got the basic job done: I could easily leave my contact information with people I met.

Lo and behold: what in my inbox should appear but an offer from Overnight Prints for 100 free business cards! (Sorry, the offer expired on January 11th, but keep an eye out!) Unlike other vendors, they would not print their own logo on the back. I could design my own card, and I would only have to pay shipping. Similar offers are available from VistaPrint, Prints Made Easy (Coupon code: First One Free), and GigglePrint.com. A couple of people have also recommended MOO.com.

When you think about product marketing, you naturally think about marketing collateral: pamphlets, brochures and data sheets that help spread the word about your product. If you treat the job search as an exercise in marketing and selling yourself, you start to think about establishing a personal brand, creating a memorable impression, and making your collateral stand out from the mix. I’m fortunate to have talented graphic designers among my friends, and I tapped them for design suggestions.

For excellent examples of straight graphic designs, this series of books is available from the library:

There’s a limit to what you can do when you’re just uploading an image, but here’s one of my favorite designs from this site:

Here’s another favorite from this site:

Here’s what I settled on for myself:

I may do something more low-key next time around.

This showed up in my inbox…

Once there was a little island country. The land of this country was the tiny island itself. The total money in circulation was 2 dollars as there were only two 1-dollar coins circulating around.

There were 3 citizens living on this island country.  A owned the land. B and C each owned 1 dollar.

B decided to purchase the land from A for 1 dollar. So, now A and C owned 1 dollar each while B owned a piece of land that was worth 1 dollar.

The net assets of the country were now 3 dollars.

Now C thought that since there was only one piece of land in the country, and land is a non-producible asset, its value must definitely go up. So, he borrowed 1 dollar from A, and together with his own 1 dollar, he bought the land from B for 2 dollars.

A had a loan to C of 1 dollar, so his net assets were 1 dollar.

B had sold his land and gotten 2 dollars, so his net assets were 2 dollars.

C owned the piece of land worth 2 dollars, but with his 1 dollar debt to A, his net residual assets were 1 dollar. Thus, the net assets of the country were now 4 dollars.

A saw that the land he once owned had risen in value. He regretted having sold it. Luckily, he had a 1 dollar loan to C. He then borrowed 2 dollars from B and acquired the land back from C for 3 dollars. The payment consisted of 2 dollars cash (which he borrowed) and cancellation of the 1 dollar loan to C. As a result, A now owned a piece of land worth 3 dollars. But since he owed B 2 dollars, his net assets were 1 dollar.

B loaned 2 dollars to A. So his net assets were 2 dollars.

C now had the 2 coins. His net assets were also 2 dollars.

The net assets of the country were 5 dollars. A bubble was building up.

B saw that the value of land kept rising. He also wanted to own the land. So he bought the land from A for 4 dollars. The payment consisted of 2 dollars borrowed from C, and cancellation of his 2-dollar loan to A.

As a result, A cleared his debt and he got the 2 coins. His net assets were 2 dollars.

B owned a piece of land worth 4 dollars, but since he owed C 2 dollars, his net assets were 2 dollars.

C loaned 2 dollars to B, so his net assets were 2 dollars.

The net assets of the country were 6 dollars even though the country had only one piece of land and 2 dollars in circulation.

Everybody had made money and everybody felt happy and prosperous.

One day, an evil thought came to C’s mind. “Hey, what if the price of land stopped going up? How could B repay my loan? There are only 2 dollars in circulation. I think, after all, the land that B owns is worth at most only 1 dollar, and no more.”

A also thought the same way.

Nobody wanted to buy land anymore.

In the end, A owned the 2 dollar coins. His net assets were 2 dollars.

B owed C 2 dollars. The land he owned, which he thought was worth 4 dollars, was now worth 1 dollar. So he had a net liability of 1 dollar.

C had a loan of 2 dollars to B, but it was a bad debt. Although his net assets were 2 dollars, his heart was palpitating.

The net assets of the country were 3 dollars again.

So, who had stolen the 3 dollars from the country? Of course, before the bubble burst, B thought his land was worth 4 dollars. Actually, right before the collapse, the net assets of the country were 6 dollars on paper. B’s heart was palpitating.

B had no choice but to declare bankruptcy. C had to relinquish his 2 dollar bad debt to B, but in return he acquired the land which was worth 1 dollar now.

A owned the 2 coins; his net assets were 2 dollars.

B was bankrupt; his net assets were 0 dollars. (He lost everything)

C had no choice but to end up with land worth only 1 dollar

The net assets of the country were 3 dollars.

This is the end of the story, but there was a redistribution of wealth. A was the winner. B was the loser. C was lucky to be spared.

1. When a bubble is building up, the debt of individuals to one another in a country is also building up.
2. This story described a closed system in which there was no other country and hence no foreign debt. The worth of the assets could only be calculated using the island’s own currency. Hence, there was no net loss.
3. An over-damped system can be assumed when a bubble bursts. In this case, the land’s value did not go below 1 dollar.
4. When a bubble bursts, the fellow with cash is the winner. The fellows owning the land or extending loans to others are the losers. Their assets’ value could shrink. In the worst case, they go bankrupt.
5. If there had been another citizen D either holding a dollar or another piece of land, and if D refrained from taking part in the game, he would neither win nor lose, but he would see the value of his money or land go up and down like a see-saw.
6. When the bubble was in the growing phase, everybody made money.
7. If you are smart and know that you are living in a growing bubble, it is worthwhile to borrow money (like A) and take part in the game, but you must know when you should change everything back to cash.
8. The phenomenon described in the story applies to stocks as well as land.
9. The actual worth of land (or stocks) depends largely on psychology (or speculation).

This is the film that, for me, elevated animation above cartoons into serious art.

Viva YouTube!

Wordpress Wordpress CMS

Very cool…

Be sure to try out Pandora. It’s essentially a music referral service, fun and easy to use, and pretty good at finding new music you like.

The Creative Generalist mentioned this service on the same day as Greg Hughes - dot - net discussed it.

What I find strange is that Pandora uses a manual process (described here) to extract the “genome” from music.

Firefly from MIT was one of the earliest recommendation systems.

I got up at 3:00 AM yesterday to view the lunar eclipse. It was interesting to view with the naked eye as well as through a telescope. National Geographic had a very nice infographic on the event.

A few years ago, Volkswagen introduced a turbocharged version of their New Beetle. To promote the car, they gave away postcards like this:

I love the styling of this car, so I kept one of these cards on a pegboard in my office. Recently, I decided to make a similar card for my dream car, the 2005-2007 Porsche 911 Carrera S:

It only seemed appropriate, since the original Beetle was designed by Porsche’s founder, and the original Carrera was its “sporting evolution”. When Giveaway of the Day gave away Morpheus Photo Morpher, I was thrilled to try showing this evolution visually.

I seem to see too many movies to write a review of each, but this one is priceless.

In the lives of Ashoke, Ashima, and their son, we are given a complete view of the immigrant experience, from the hopes and troubles that motivate naive young people to rebuild their lives in a foreign country, to their longing for the familiar faces and routines of home, to the humor of misunderstandings between cultures, sexes and generations, to the difficulties for the new generation of being completely assimilated.

The story is a series of such incidents laid out like a string of pearls. I had not read Jhumpa Lahiri’s book, on which this movie is based. Having read (and reviewed) Lahiri’s Interpreter of Maladies, I found many of the characters familiar, yet they remained realistic, multi-dimensional, and loveable. There is no strong-armed activism or political commentary in this story. By treating every character with compassion and every event even-handedly, Lahiri captures an essentially Indian perspective on life.

I was not immediately impressed by Mira Nair’s direction. The intentional use of grainy film seemed erratic, and the positioning of the camera to separate people seemed overt. But upon further reflection, I realized it is the direction and editing that so powerfully communicates either the closeness or the separation between the characters and their homes.

For Kal Penn, this is certainly a step up from Harold & Kumar Go To White Castle. A masterful performance is given by Irfan Khan who superbly plays the absent minded professor and awkward father and husband who is so gentle and loving at heart. But the star of this movie is Tabu, whose character we follow from youth through marriage, motherhood and finally matriarchy.