Florida School Board Shooting

I wanted to quickly mention the recent Florida School Board Shooting. Now before I begin, these are just my reactions. Don’t get me wrong; I truly believe that anyone who takes a gun to an unarmed individual and furthermore kills himself afterwards is a coward who probably doesn’t deserve to live. Now to the incident.

Ginger, you really should have thought things through before using a purse to attack an armed gunman three times your size. Nonetheless, kudos to your courage (if reckless) and I don’t know if I’d have it in me to do the same.

If there was a hero from this shooting, aside from guard Mike Jones who brought Duke down with two shots, I believe it was Superintendant Husfelt. He remained level headed and tried to reason with a clearly illogical man whose only counterargument was to raise a gun and fire. Even as Duke raised the weapon and aimed it point blank, Husfelt didn’t outwardly panic. I truly respect his efforts and his, self-endangering leadership in a crisis situation.

Lastly, I’d like to address the red V Duke painted on the wall. While watching the video I immediately recognized the V from the movie V for Vendetta. In the movie, an outlaw whose intelligence, morality and ability to reason far surpass this gunman, takes action against an unjust and oppressive government. Duke believed that this movie somehow provided an explanation for his actions. Now, V for Vendetta is one of my favorite movies and if you haven’t seen it, you’re really missing out. So naturally, I was upset when this was cited during the shooting. Though the media has begun to critically analyze the movie, I firmly believe that the news world needs to understand that this only goes to show Duke’s irrationality. This is a man who cannot find the true meaning in a masterpiece of cinema, and whose idea of expression of grievances involves not listening to and then trying to kill a righteous citizen.

           So there you have it. Now I’ll leave you to form your own personal interpretation from the video if you haven’t already seen it.

YouTube Top Picks! Watch them. NOW.

Some of my very first blogs mentioned the new 4g iTouch I got and one of the many awesome things I can now do is watch YouTube conveniently whenever and wherever I want (as long as I’m in wifi). And thus I have been enlightened as many great videos and channels have come to my attention.

Over the past few months, I have collected 24 very deserving videos and several great channels that I ought to mention but I thought I’d share some of the very best.

Watch Marcel the Shell With the Shoes On. Now. DO IT. Right now, I’m honestly not kidding, this isn’t an option. Com'on I linked it three times and its to the right for heavens sake. Before I rant about her awesomeness I’d like to say that to all the people I’ve seen who don’t really react to this video or call it stupid, you’re stupid! Next, no matter what anyone says, Marcel is a girl not a guy! Ok rant time; Marcel is in her own way the cutest creature I’ve ever met. I’m a guy so I know I’m not allowed to say cute but Marcel is cute. I could quote her a million times and it would never get old and besides she has a lint dog named Allen. I could go on but the point is watch the video now!!!

As for channels, my favorites would probably be Nigahiga, Smosh and one that recently caught my attention, =3 or as you know it, RayWilliamJohnson. If you haven’t seen him, Ray takes viral videos and couples them with his great sense of humor. It just can’t fail I mean you’re taking videos you would want to watch anyways and making them funnier. I will admit that he’s a bit “inappropriate” at times and some of his humor is repeated but these are the quirky things that really distinguish his videos. Those and other small things like his genuine nature, comment question of the day or his songs (which you can see on his other channel FattySpins) have made his my favorite channel not to mention earned him 2.2+ million subscribers and a collective 500+ million views.

So those are my current YouTube top picks. I’m sure there are many others right now and yet to come and I might blog about it again some other time.

PS Watch those videos!

Hate to break it to ya, but you're not Warren...

You’ve probably heard of Warren Buffett alongside Bill Gates as the world’s richest men and as of March of this year, according to forbes, Buffett was worth $47 billion. So what is the source of his tremendous wealth? Berkshire Hathaway and his own investment genius. Basically, through BRK for which he is the chairman, CEO and primary stakeholder, Buffett has earned the title of the Sage or Oracle of Omaha by making shrewd and seemingly risky investments that have netted him and the company billions of dollars.

So the obvious thing to do would be to gather a few thousand dollars, take a good solid look at the BRK portfolio, start investing and become filthy rich. Simple enough right? Wrong. Money magazine took an interesting look at the validity of copying Warren and came up with two key reasons for why most people who try to do so, either fail or see only meager profits.

The first, discouragingly unattainable fact is that Mr. Buffett has earned privileges that you simply haven’t. He’s the big shot whose name everyone knows while you simply exist. Most any company would and have gone to great lengths to secure a spot upon Berkshire’s portfolio. Not only does it mean that all of us copycats are going to follow suit and buy shares, but to the fiscal world, the company has received the financial security of a firm with billions at their disposal and the endorsement of one of the world’s greatest investors. This allows BRK to cut deals that often greatly their own side, and through the very purchase, increase the value of their purchase. In simpler words, you could go buy a new car for a substantially lower price than anyone else, and the fact that you bought it makes it worth even more.

Of course you could easily argue this; after a while, the brand “BRK” just can’t be enough and how did Warren himself start out? This brings us to the second reason which is that Warren is most likely smarter than you. His efforts aren’t just focused around giving promising companies the capital they need to boom, but also involves delving far deeper into common stocks, preferred shares, currencies, distressed debt, merger arbitrage, fixed-income arbitrage etc. I personally don’t know half of the things I mentioned, and even if you do, I doubt many out there are capable of successfully investing in such securities.

The point is, (this is the ending for every get-rich-quick scheme) copying Warren simply won’t rake in the dough.  If you’re going to play the stock market, be smart, careful, independent and who knows, if everything works out right, you just might strike it rich.

PS Check out Money magazine's new blog which I've linked to to the right.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (P1)!!!

A few weeks ago the Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part One was released and though it’s probably impossible to fully live up to JK Rowling’s masterpieces, the movie was AMAZING, LEGENDARY, AWESOME, MAGICAL, SCRUMDIDLYUMPTIOUS, (insert all-caps, italicized word here)! I will admit that I was a bit depressed to have not seen some of the characters we are so accustomed to and Hogwarts but I think it was the varied settings that really defined what a change this movie represented. Harry, Ron and Hermione (I love how Hermione is a word according to MS Word 2007) are now travelling the world away from the comfort of Hogwarts. As a result the plot strays from the classic, but never boring, ending in which everything culminates into a brief encounter between Harry and Voldemort (now I’m disappointed that Voldemort isn’t a word in MS 2007). This allows HP7 to explore new dimensions and makes it more action packed than ever before which is very fitting as death-eaters draw ever closer, and their task becomes increasingly important.

So I f you can’t tell, I really, really, really love the Harry Potter series. I got off to a rocky start when in the first grade my mom gave the Sorcerer’s stone and I couldn’t get past page two. Three years later when we moved, I came across the book again and gave it another shot and this time I loved it. Within a couple of months I read the remaining published books and have stayed on top of the series ever since. I’ve read each book about two times and thanks to the wonders of digital video recording coupled with ABC families Harry Potter weekends, and I’m not kidding here, I’ve seen each movie at least five times through. The seventh book was the one I most anticipated and undoubtedly my favorite one. I pre-ordered it and got it on the release day and finished it within the second day (though I’m sure there are the crazy fans who cleared it with the day). As you can guess, I really wanted to go to the midnight showing of HP7 but as is my luck, it fell on one of our school’s finals nights.  Yup out of the 365 days in an year, the movie just had to be on one of six finals nights we have over the entire school year. And so I and most of my fellow unlucky classmates were kept home during this most special occasion. Nonetheless I got to see the movie by Saturday and have vowed that I will watch the midnight showing of the last movie (just watch now it’s going to be on finals again or some other impossible day). It occurred to me that right now is the greatest point of one of the greatest sagas of history (in my opinion J). HP7 part two will be bittersweet and when the movie ends, I just might break down. But not to worry, the series will undoubtedly live on for generations to come, and if not I’ll make sure my children read it.

In all the talk leading upto this most sacred event, I discovered that some people whom I knew very well did not dearly love and cherish the series. I feel it very important to briefly mention that if you fall into this class of individuals, no matter how great a person you may be, this is one fatal flaw that you really have to address.

And so I await the ending. Until then I’ll keep re-watching the movies on ABC and checking the mail for my letter from Hogwarts.

PS Youtube has enlightened me once again; I don't know if I'm super impressed or just scared but at least I now truly know who the biggest Harry Potter fan in the world is http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I0VlIjXj9NA

Galleons, Sickles & Knuts

The unprecedented success of the Harry Potter series is reflected through the millions of fans including myself and the individual in the video I’ve linked below. So what numbers does this sensation translate to; well let’s take a look.

Apart from Harry Potter actors Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson and Rupert Grint and author J.K. Rowling are amongst the most memorable personas of this series. Prior to the release of part one of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, each had amassed a wealth of £42 million, £22 million, £20 million and over $1.1 billion respectively. And the grand total thus far in sales for the entire series; approximately $6.5 billion! To put that in perspective, that would mean that each of the roughly 4,200 brilliant pages crafted by J.K. Rowling translated to about $1,550,000 in revenue of some form.

Here are a few more interesting tidbits: the print series which is available in 69 languages has netted over $400 million (I’m truly sorry to the numerous publishers that denied J.K. Rowling prior to Scholastic), 30 owl species are endangered in India after adoption as pets spiked, part one of HP7 sold out 2000 theaters prior to the actual show time, there are over 400 major Harry Potter brand products and 46 teams competed in this year’s fourth annual Quidditch World Cup in New York City.

If anything, these numbers are just another testament to the true greatness of Harry Potter.

$700,000,000,000: Is It Really Worth It?

President Barack Obama recently announced a $700 billion tax deal meant to put money back in Americans’ pockets and to hopefully stimulate the economy. Though it is undisputed that this will give Americans hundreds of dollars back and prevent the removal of existing tax cuts, NPR’s Planet Money turned to the Congressional Budget Office’s January report to assess how much of an economic boost the deal would offer.

There are three key facet’s to the new plan the first of which is an extension of unemployment benefits. This measure accounts for a mere $56 of the $700 billion but should have the greatest pay off for the economy. Why? Because those who receive unemployment benefits tend to, out of necessity, spend what they receive immediately. And consumer spending, as you’ve probably heard on the news, is the key to fiscal stimulation.

The second part is to reduce the federal payroll tax from 6.2% to 4.2% and will consequently give money back to every taxpayer in America. This measure may seem to be the most popular as it benefits everyone rather than any particular sect, but isn’t the most effective. Unlike the previously listed measure, the $120 billion invested in this one will not for the most part return to the market as constituents are equally likely to use the money to pay debts or save the money.

The last and most significant ($500 billion), of the primary aspects of the deal is the extension of Bush tax cuts. This piece justly extends tax cuts to the entire populace but in the name of equality, applies to the wealthy as well. The result; $120 billion of the entire $700 billion deal result from highly inefficient cuts for high earning individuals who already experience few of the inhibiting effects of the recession. Thus, this substantial portion of the entire plan is also the least useful by CBO measure.

These are the major parts to the Obama Tax Deal and though it will undoubtedly offer a boost, we have yet to know if it justifies the $700 billion price tag.

Pirating Music: How Can the Legal Industry Survive?

Pirating music; I’m sure all of us have heard of it and a good number of us have at some point directly or indirectly done it. And it’s easy to see the appeal; creating a sizable music library and keeping up with ever-changing trends can rack up hundreds of dollars in CDs or off iTunes. Hence it’s no small wonder that governments and the music industry are unable to shut down rapidly proliferating file sharing websites. The problem has come to the point that many would rather put up with commercials than pay even small monthly subscriptions for services like Pandora, Spotify etc. As The Economist puts it, all in all, we live in the “world’s toughest recorded-music market”.

This problem has come to a head in China where music revenue is disproportionately miniscule in comparison to other large economies. Last year sales accounted for a nearly invisible less than 0.005% of the country‘s GDP at $75 million while the United States netted $4.56 billion and the nearby nations of India, Indonesia and South Korea each raised $104, $51 and $145 million respectively. In what can be considered desperate attempts, Chinese entrepreneurs have gone as far as to offer free, download-able music simply with advertisements running alongside. Yet search engines such as Baidu and other simple alternatives have sent the revenues of even these most generous companies, into the red.

One such company, Top100.cn has taken an innovative approach to attract the frugal Chinese consumer market. Founder Gary Chen’s solution can be compared to the success of a newspaper or magazines which take stories that can often be found online for free, and compiles them into edited, convenient, well-presented groups with reviews and additional information. Mr. Chen wants to apply the same principle to music to offer consumers similarly packaged, appealing selections. Furthermore Top100.cn is trying to increase the versatility of these bundles to load and play them on the various electronics in use by today’s generation rather than simply iPods or mp3 devices.

The question remains if people will pay up for this new service but for now, such efforts have brought China to the forefront of innovation in the music industry.

Why Gold?!

In my blog I’ve frequently talked about the value of gold as a commodity. Look at the periodic table and you have 118 building blocks to everything you could ever and can’t even think of. So why out of all these incredible pieces have we humans isolated Au to be ours to cherish as singularly ours? To answer this, NPR’s Planet Money approached chemical engineer Sanat Kumar at Columbia University.

So of course they pulled out a periodic table and began crossing eliminating elements. Start with the right side of the table. Some of these elements are extremely stable but all are gasses. So basically as soon as you contain your money everything’s great but you’re just an open lid away from being broke. Plus I’m not sure how you’re going to give a cashier some gas for the week’s groceries. So gasses are out. Now over to the far left where we run into highly reactive metals; basically if you were to expose any of your money to the air you’d have a spontaneous fire. Not good. Similar less severe spontaneous reactions rule out more elements. Next we look at the two rows of elements at the bottom of the periodic table. Unfortunately for us, all of these elements are highly radioactive and carrying any of them around would deform and/or kill us.

Our list is getting pretty small. Now we want our element to be somewhat rare so it’s actually cool to have it so we lose some more elements. At the same time we don’t want our element to be too rare like osmium which occurs when meteorites bring some in when they crash into the earth. So can’t disappear right in front of our eyes, can’t explode the moment we take it out, can’t kill us, and has to be acceptably rare; we’re not asking for too much but that only leaves us with rhodium, palladium, silver, platinum and gold all of which we love.

So let’s narrow it down further. Rhodium and palladium weren’t discovered until the 1800s so that takes them out of much of our history. Silver tarnishes so it can’t be good enough even though we do like it. Platinum is more valuable than gold today but, due to its 3000 degree melting point, was pretty useless until modern powerful furnaces. And there you have it, GOLD. It was just meant to be.

Debt: Is it Really That Bad?

Across Europe it is becoming more and more expensive for countries to borrow money; and this includes Italy, Spain and Portugal (as well as France and the UK to a lesser degree) rather than just the extreme cases of Greece and Ireland. As I’ve addressed in previous posts, government’s receive loans by issuing bonds. These bonds are often considered the safest form of investment but usually yield very little interest to the holder. Therefore, as bonds become harder to sell when countries suffer economic collapse or similarly destroy fiscal trust, states are forced to increase the interest rate to attract buyers which in turn makes paying off debt even harder.

In today’s economic crisis, stocks and funds obviously seem scary to the average investor with little tolerance for risk on savings. So people turn towards select investment in safe commodities (such as shares in Wal-Mart), gold and in government bonds. Hence, in times like those we face now, people around the world turn towards treasury bonds, particularly towards those of the US. Though Europe has illustrated some of the worst disasters of this economic recession such as Spain’s 20% unemployment and Ireland’s impractical bank bailouts, the fact is that the overall debt as a percentage of economy remains similar between the US and many European states. And yet US bonds hold and have held for decades, some disproportionate value that has drawn government revenue even in the bleakest times. This means that as other countries accrue high interest rates and are forced to dig holes within holes, the US holds fairly “cheap debt”.

Government debt today is often driven by demographics as retirement age individuals draw out of health care and social security. Even in this arena, Europe has and is forecasted to have a higher ratio of older people to younger than the US as a result of their quicker demographic transition.

In the end, no one can say that the Unite State’s almost $14 trillion is even remotely acceptable, but in some ways, we may be better off than others.

Facebook and Money

It’s been just over a half decade since Facebook’s launch and yet the social networking site has five headquarters stretched across the globe to serve over $500 million current active users from all walks of life. So I couldn’t help but wonder how much revenue this web giant generates and where from.

In 2009 Facebook’s revenue amounted to about $700 million from four primary sources centered around advertising. The biggest source is performance advertising which involves interactive banners such as FarmVille, social games etc. which offered about $350 million.  Brand advertising along the website’s side banners has grown sharply to nearly $250 million as more users translate to more commercial’s worth more money. The Microsoft sub-advertising sect alone added another $150 million and virtual goods (gifts) translated to a real $20 million.

All-in-all $700 million is comparatively small for a website second only to the Google empire which through its search engine and subsidiaries such as YouTube, amassed over $23.6 billion in 2009. Nonetheless, Facebook has much potential considering it is 7 years younger than Google, still only requires less than a tenth of Google’s current staffing, occupies a still unfulfilled niche and is almost doubling in revenue every year with next year forecasted at $1.1 billion.