A hotel owner is suing a hurricane expert for predicting hurricanes in Florida.
Dr Gray may not be the best weather forecaster in the world, but I’m pretty sure that this kind of lawsuit would be pretty destructive to anyone who makes a forecast.
Only shoots 35 feet or so, so the quest for true foam tipped arrow accuracy continues.
What was the reaction of the stock market to the initial announcement that Steve Jobs, now regarded as one of the most valuable CEOs in the world, was becoming CEO of Apple?
John Bird and John Fortune explain the subprime crisis.
A useful guide, especially if you imagine financial markets make any sense…
A particularly annoying species of headline writer has been out and about lately. That’s the one who likes to write headlines like:
Stock market loses $10 billion.
Grrr!
It’s silly, lazy journalism. The economy hasn’t ‘lost’ any money. Any losses are either purely theoretical (gains that were never realised), or are offset by the gains of some other party. Sure, some people may have a share portfolio worth a bit less today, but it still owns the same share of the same companies, with the same capital and assets. The market has just decided it’s worth a little bit less now.
No money has gone missing - bank accounts are just the same, other than the people who had to cover their margin calls. But all that money just went straight back into someone else’s bank account.
The reason this is bad journalism is that it distracts us from the real story. People think ‘oh no, a lot of money has been lost’. But really there’s nothing bad about that in itself. The real question is why the stock market went down.
And because the answer for that is mainly ‘fears of a US recession’, that’s bad news for everyone. Telling a story about the massive losses on the stock market creates an illusion that it’s just a problem for ‘rich people’. But the underlying causes of the fall might be a problem for everyone.
I’d rather have the Veryon, of course.
How to play the Swedish beach game Kubb.
Bit of DIY involved to get the bits, but it looks like a good fun game to play.
At no possible point during this story could the government official have been thinking clearly.
What would happen if a watch mated with a scorpion.
Beautiful stuff (in a certain way), and reasonably priced too…
This is turning out to be a love it or hate it film so far. But I have to say that (to date) no one whose opinion I respect has seen the film and not liked it unless they suffer from motion sickness problems from the shaky-cam.
A graphical history of the Batman logo.
(That was the Batman theme, in case you were wondering).
Two mathematicians explain those traffic jams which seem to happen for no reason.
A nice bit of analysis, but I kinda thought this one had been solved years ago.
Ten tips to make eating and drinking easier.
I particularly like the coke can cooling trick. I think I’ll try that later today…
The first 30 pages of Muirhead’s Guide to London, 1928.
Interestingly, the guide suggests tipping of 20 per cent, which is quite a bit more than the current suggestion for London. So perhaps the direction of tipping is not all in one direction as it sometimes seems.
Forgotten films of great directors.
Most of these are pretty good films, of course. But not the kind of thing the director usually made.
This weekend I went to see the new movie from JJ Abrams, Cloverfield.
I went in with fairly low expectations - I enjoy monster movies, but don’t really enjoy Abrams’ work very much.
I’m happy to say that I was completely blown away. This is a superb film, which anyone who can stomach it should see.
(When I say ’stomach it’ I mean two things - firstly, it’s a tough film, and reportedly very tough for people who were in New York on September 11. Secondly, there have been a lot of reports of motion sickness from the handheld camera work).
I’ll put the rest of this review on the post page, so I can include some spoilers from this point on. Read the rest of this entry »
Conmen in India set up a fake Government office to collect money.
Taking the ‘taxation is theft’ thing a little too far, I think.
US restaurants are looking to phase out the main dish.
Amazingly enough, reading this was the first time I’d learnt that in the US the main is called an entree…
Missed one, so clearly I need to go back to watching SF movies for another few days.
Send the company your plans, and they’ll mail you back the pieces laser cut from their factory. The fundamental problem here for me is that I’m not actually a very good furniture designer, so I think I’ll stick with the pre-made stuff. But it’s a clever idea.