Nick Denton’s crowd thinks this is “fugly”. I couldn’t disagree more, and think it looks great, especially the shorts.
On the Shanghai World Expo.
Since I’ve been spending so much time thinking about China recently, I have been paying a lot of attention to the upcoming Shanghai World Expo. I just wanted to take a moment to educate my readers on something which I didn’t know basically anything about until just the past couple of weeks, and that is the World Expo. Apparently it happens every two or three years, in a different city. The purpose for the event is to showcase the world’s various cultural achievements in the arts, science, food, and technology. For some context about how huge it is, the Space Needle in Seattle is a leftover artifact from the World Expo held there in 1962. The Eiffel Tower in Paris is a leftover artifact from the Expo in 1889. According to Wikipedia, “Some critics of the time wanted the tower dismantled after the fair’s conclusion”. Imagine that.
More amazing pictures showing preparations can be found on The Big Picture at the Boston Globe: http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2010/03/shanghai_prepares_for_expo_201.html
So far, China has spent more on the World Expo than they have spent on any other single event in their history, including the 2008 Beijing Olympics. Imagine that.
Jiao Fellows Program will be doing a program as part of the Shanghai World Expo. Stay tuned!
-K
Greg’s Blog: Das Racist – Shut Up, Dude
Das Racist first popped up on my radar with their infectious hit “Combination Pizza Hut Taco Bell,” a full song dedicated to, you guessed it, combination Pizza Hut Taco Bells. Of course, I didn’t think of them as very cerebral until reading their meticulous take down of New Yorker…
Nice! My buddy J-La produced the famous Wallpaper remix for Combination Pizza Hut Taco Bell. They’re the Yin to Vampire Weekend’s Yang. Refreshingly raunchy, irreverent, but witty and exceptionally talented all the same.
On Financial Fraud
This story is going to break over the weekend, potentially sooner. It’s somewhat unclear to me exactly how big it is, as my experience with commodities trading is very limited. But having spoken to a few people who have done similar commodities trading with such firms as Barclays Global Investors and Morgan Stanley, I can confirm that the accusation holds water, which automatically makes it a big story. When David Anderson starts pushing the story, I’ll have more to say about it. For now, suffice it to say that a government unit and a large financial institution colluding to everyone’s financial detriment, on this scale, is totally bad.
First mainstream article on the subject: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/nathan-lewis/its-ponzimonium-in-the-go_b_519893.html
UPDATE: ‘Shadow banking’ is apparently what this system is called, it is not necessarily nefarious, according to Michael Woods, a former BGI principal. “The central claim that banks expand the money supply via poorly overseen derivatives is spot on, but not such a big story.” It obfuscates accounting, but isn’t a crisis. Whew!
Real Estate Investment is one of today’s great tragedies: http://bit.ly/c5vMSI I hope traditional “real estate development” Doesn’t recover.
http://goldengazelle.com/Brig/03%20Angeles.mp3?plead=please-dont-download-this-or-our-lawyers-wont-let-us-host-audio
http://kanyi.tumblr.com/post/503508161/audio_player_iframe/kanyi/tumblr_l0hldutdUa1qatcg0?audio_file=http%3A%2F%2Fgoldengazelle.com%2FBrig%2F03%2520Angeles.mp3
Elliott Smith – Angeles. Haven’t heard this in ages. In college he was a staple.
On iPad, ctd.
John Doerr and some of the KCPB guys have some good thoughts in a Techcrunch guest post. If Bill Joy says lower power is the key to performance, then lower power is the key to performance. Before hearing what Steve Jobs actually thought the confluence was for his company, I would always have called it the intersection of Hardware and Software. The fact that they are revolutionizing design, software, and hardware all in one with their proprietary low-power chip, multi-touch screen, and incredibly fast processing, is quite something.
Minority Report is one of my favorite science-fiction movies ever not so much because of the “PreCogs” and “PreCrime”, but because of how they envisioned the “Brave New World” of UEX in computing. The notion that I can use my hands to create and manipulate “data” that exists in “space” remains a remarkable achievement in science to me. I’ve been a loyal iPhone user for years, and I still haven’t gotten over it. A friend of mine just let me know that his brother is on the plane today, and there are some 30 iPads, and it is madness among those who are craning and straining, trying to get a glimpse. Brave New World, indeed.
Guy Kawasaki with a wonderful interview on NYT: http://nyti.ms/d7vRhV
JFP applications open, hiring underway!
Applications are open for the Jiao Fellows Program, starting this summer. Check it out at www.jiaofellows.org!
We want recent grads who have a sense for the changing global landscape to go out to Shandong Province, in the “real China”, and get engaged with Chinese citizens in a way that is productive for both parties. This is meant to be more than a simple teaching job, where mercernary “backpack teachers” get mediocre and ineffective curricula, and use it as an excuse to travel, and are treated poorly by their sponsoring staff. We have integrated our social programs deeply and directly with both our teaching curriculum and with the programming around our Chinese students. We want to help forge an ethos of partnership and fellowship between two countries who have long been antagonistic, and do so through the most sacred of acts: educating youth. We have partnered with The Giving Tree (givingtreechina.org) and Social Venture Group, and are looking for more partners in the space. If you have any interest in joining us as a partner, or your Chinese organization needs support from young entrepreneurial talent, please email partners@jiaofellows.org or drop me a line.
-K
A documentary about Banksy. Awesome.
(Source: https://www.youtube.com/)
Musings 