lyndon.

Global markets | Bearish battalions | Economist.com

Almost everything that could is going wrong for world stockmarkets

THEY rarely ring a bell at the bottom of bear markets. Investors who thought they had heard a tinkling sound when Bear Stearns, a failing American investment bank, was bundled into JPMorgan Chase in March have been disappointed. The Dow Jones Industrial Average is now weaker than it was in the spring (see chart).

The American stockmarket had its worst month since 2002 in June and is now down more than 20% from its peak, the definition of a bear market. It is not alone. According to Standard & Poor’s, a rating agency, the value of global stockmarkets fell by $3 trillion during the month, thanks in particular to a 10% decline in emerging markets.

Share prices are suffering because of the outlook for four forces that impel stockmarkets: economic growth, profits growth, interest rates and inflation (see article). At the moment, the first two seem to be slowing while the last two are rising. That is the worst possible combination.

globeandmail.com: What’s in a name?

All you need is $100,000 to be master of your own domain

The plan was foolproof.

It started fermenting in our heads after a radical online shakeup was announced this week. As of next year, it seems, we’re going to be freed of the shackles of .com, .net, .org, and their cronies. To date, every Internet address has had to end in such “top-level domains,” be they generic like .com, or country-specific domains like Canada’s .ca. Under the new rules, however, every top-level domain under the sun will be up for grabs.

The top level domains will reportedly cost upward of $100,000, one of those funny numbers that’s either two years’ salary or pocket change, depending on where you find yourself. Someone with the wherewithal will be able to buy the .dog domain, and then rent out subdomains to anyone wanting to put up their poodle site in style. Someone else could snap up the .camera domain, and hive off chunks of it to camera makers and photography sites alike.

Companies will spend millions snapping up domains for their own trademarks. Pornographers will deploy the genius for clever names that’s become the hallmark of their profession (besides the porn). And opportunists will pounce.

Hmm, interesting. I posted a story on this a week ago, but I didn’t realize you could actually buy outright the entire top level domain. When you consider that some domains have sold for a few million dollars each (vodka.com anyone?), $100,000 doesn’t look too bad.

I want .lyndon so I can use lyndon@lyndon.lyndon as my new email address. vain? maybe. pure genius? damn right! I wish my name was shorter though, oh like my three letter named friend (you know who you are).

globeandmail.com: Bell undercuts iPhone plans with unlimited Instinct

The smartphone that has been hailed as “the iPhone killer” by online pundits is coming to Canada on Aug. 8.

The Samsung Instinct, which has many of the same features as the Apple iPhone, differs from the iPhone in one major way: Its monthly price plan, which will dramatically undercut the iPhone plan announced last week by Rogers Wireless.

A subscriber can buy the Instinct for as low as $149.95 and then pay less than $40 a month for a modest voice plan accompanied by an unlimited data plan on Bell’s high-speed data network.

In contrast, Rogers Wireless’s cheapest iPhone plan costs $60 per month, and includes only 400 megabytes of data.

$10 unlimited data on EV-DO (excluding voice). Damn it Rogers! Get it together.

I hate it when they label something the [insert Apple product] killer. It never is.

Why Most Sunscreens Don’t Work | Newsweek To Your Health | Newsweek.com

Sunscreens were seriously burned this month, when a new ranking of more than 700 sunscreen products found that 84 percent did not provide adequate sun protection. The study, conducted by Environmental Working Group (EWG), a Washington-based nonprofit, looked at over 400 peer-reviewed articles on sunscreen ingredients. It found that many of the most popular sunscreens break down quickly in the sun or are not blocking many harmful ultraviolet (UV) rays.

Rankings in the July 2007 issue of Consumer Reports revealed a similar problem: not all sunscreens are created equal. Rather, they found that sunscreens with the same sun protection factor (SPF) ran the gamut from “excellent” to “poor” in their overall ability to block ultraviolet rays.

While many people rely solely on SPF when selecting a sunscreen, these rankings show that the single number only tells half the story. SPF measures a sunscreen’s ability to block UVB rays. But it says nothing about its strength against UVA rays, an equally damaging form of radiation that causes wrinkles and, more seriously, skin cancer. And unlike UVB rays that cause sunburns, UVA rays do not leave an immediate mark.

Sunscreen that do work

The Local - No more free education for non-Europeans

Sweden is to start charging tuition to non-European university students, according to comments by higher education minister Lars Leijonborg in the Svenska Dagbladet (SvD) newspaper.

Today, Sweden is one of the few countries in the world which does not charge tuition to students from other countries.

Leijonborg has thus far avoided taking a stand on the controversial question, but now says that the government is in total agreement on charging fees to university students coming from countries other than the EU member states, Iceland, Liechtenstein, and Norway.

“Our primary argument is that it is unwise of a country not to benefit from a payment system which obviously exists. Why should these students pay money to American or British universities, but not to Swedish [ones]?” Leijonborg explained to SvD.

The fees will be based on the costs incurred by the universities themselves. At the same time, a system of stipends will be implemented for students lacking sufficient funds to pay tuition.

I knew that it was free to attend a Swedish university if you’re a resident, but I didn’t realize this applied to foreigners (or other Europeans) as well. Damn. Now, I feel a little ripped off for having to pay tuition. Well, I guess that’s about to change anyways.

Modern Love - Instant Message, Instant Girlfriend - Series - NYTimes.com

FOR several years I had a problem unusual among Internet geeks: I had too much success with women. I used the Internet as a means of communication with women I had already met offline in order to overcome my social awkwardness and forge romantic relationships.

Sounds healthy? It wasn’t.

It started in my sophomore year in high school. I went to one of those big Eastern public schools that pumps out students in a way that would make 19th-century industrialists throw their top hats into the air and shout “Huzzah!” Even we students thought of ourselves as a faceless mob of subproletarians waiting for the next episode of “American Idol” to take away the pain of our meaningless existence.

I was at the bottom of the barrel: a plump, silent, painfully awkward dweeb who clung to his Latin textbook as if it held the secrets to existence. The only good thing that happened to me that year was meeting Chelsea.

AKA: How to get a girlfriend/boyfriend by using instant messaging.

What a player! A well written and interesting article from the NYT. I wonder how much truth there actually is in this piece. Good read nonetheless.

Is Watermelon A Natural Viagra?, Researcher Says Popular Summer Fruit May Have Viagra-Like Effect On Blood Vessels - CBS News

(WebMD) Men hoping for some fireworks in their love life this Fourth of July may want to skip the burgers and beer at the barbecue and eat plenty of
watermelon.

Watermelon may be a natural Viagra, says a researcher. That’s because the popular summer fruit is richer than experts believed in an amino acid called citrulline, which relaxes and dilates blood vessels much like Viagra and other drugs meant to treat erectile dysfunction (ED).

“We have known that watermelon has citrulline,” says Bhimu Patil, PHD, director of the Fruit and Vegetable Improvement Center at Texas A&M University, College Station. Until recently, he tells WebMD, scientists thought most of the citrulline was in the watermelon rind. “Watermelon has more citrulline in the edible part than previously believed,” he says.

How could watermelon be a natural Viagra? The amino acid citrulline is converted into the amino acid arginine, Patil says. “This is a precursor for nitric oxide, and the nitric oxide will help in blood vessel dilation.”

So, the burning question: How much watermelon does it take?

“That is a good question,” Patil says. Unfortunately, “I don’t have an answer for that.”

Just reading the names of those amino acids bring back horrid memories of Biochemistry! It’s the urea cycle in case anyone is wondering.

Buffett’s Berkshire Has Worst First Half Since 1990

July 2 (Bloomberg) — It must be a bear market because even billionaire Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc. has slumped 20 percent since December.

The decline exceeds the drop of the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index and marks the worst first half for the Omaha, Nebraska- based investment and holding company since 1990. Price competition has driven down revenue at Berkshire’s insurance units, which account for about half of its income.

Berkshire is “close to getting more fairly priced,” said Charles Hamilton, a Nashville, Tennessee-based analyst at FTN Midwest Securities Corp., who has a “neutral” rating on Berkshire. “I wouldn’t say it presents a buying opportunity right now.”

Ken: From Dec 28 to Jun 30, BRK.A dropped ~13% - which means, we both outperformed Warren Buffet! If that’s any consolation.

In other financial news, at least one analyst is expecting the Dow to go below 10,000. This would represent a 29% drop from it’s October high (currently at around -21%). I suppose a further 8% drop isn’t too far fetched with oil hitting all time highs every other day it seems.

globeandmail.com: Sweden tops world’s most wired countries

European countries, including other Nordic nations Denmark and Iceland, occupy most of the top 10 spots

Sweden may be better known for cars and couches than computers, but when it comes to access to broadband and cellular networks, it’s tops. The Scandinavian country leads the world in “technological readiness,” according to the World Economic Forum.

To rank high on the list — one of 12 included in the WEF’s annual Global Competitiveness Report — countries need to have tech-friendly government policies as well as high tech usage.

Yay! Now, they should just get rid of that new wiretapping law.

I’ve been looking into their network data plans (thanks Google Translate) and they offer unlimited 3G at 7.2MB/s for $33 a month (cell phone or computer). That’s faster than a lot of people’s home Internet connection! Unheard of in North America.

Sarcasm Seen as Evolutionary Survival Skill | LiveScience

Humans are fundamentally social animals. Our social nature means that we interact with each other in positive, friendly ways, and it also means we know how to manipulate others in a very negative way.

Neurophysiologist Katherine Rankin at the University of California, San Francisco, has also recently discovered that sarcasm, which is both positively funny and negatively nasty, plays an important part in human social interaction.

So what?

I mean really, who cares? Oh for God’s sake. Don’t you have anything better to do that read this column?

According to Dr. Rankin, if you didn’t get the sarcastic tone of the previous sentences you must have some damage to your parahippocampal gyrus which is located in the right brain. People with dementia, or head injuries in that area, often lose the ability to pick up on sarcasm, and so they don’t respond in a socially appropriate ways.

Presumably, this is a pathology, which in turn suggests that sarcasm is part of human nature and probably an evolutionarily good thing.

This is the most amazing news ever! /sarcasm

The Internet almost killed sarcasm. Fortunately, we have a tag for that now.

How to confuse an Idiot - Nerdcore

Read the rest of this entry »

globeandmail.com: What’s Twitter doing right now? Investors would like to know

For an upstart Internet company, one couldn’t ask for better endorsements than Barack Obama using your service to update his supporters or NASA’s Phoenix Mars Lander utilizing your network to declare to the world that it has found evidence of ice on the Red Planet.

That kind of exposure is helping Twitter Inc., a quirky micro-blogging service that has become a staple within the tech community, to attract the attention of mainstream users and investors.

Investors, however, want to know whether Twitter has what it takes to become the next Internet darling capable of an initial public offering, or whether it is simply the latest in a long line of Internet startups that are long on potential but prove short on real-world value.

Venture capitalists, hoping to discover the next social networking phenomenon like MySpace or Facebook, are investing heavily in companies such as Twitter that they believe can translate rapidly expanding user bases into cold, hard advertising dollars.

Prediction: location-aware Twitter on the iPhone/Blackberry will be a big hit (a la Twinkle). I also like the idea behind a new Twitter-like service called nrme (near me).

Here are some Twitter users worth following.

It’s Called epMotion by Eppendorf

The PCR Song by Bio-Rad

These are too funny! So geeky yet so good. I wish working in a lab was this entertaining.

Oh, Snap. Now they’re stuck in head. “PCR, when you need to find out who the daddy is…”

Source: 1 and 2