Funny
Our Christmas gift came in the form of two reader-suggested articles, yesterday’s and today’s. To make us even happier, keep the suggestions coming… On a lighter note: funny article on Slate about how to maximize value in giving presents.
At Buysiders.com, a picture is worth a 1,000 words. Goals vs. the harsh reality. Tip of the hat to the folks at The View From the Blue Ridge.
That David Einhorn is a poker fan is not news, and his great book “Fooling Some of The People All of the Time” has been out for a while. But since there’s a new epilogue for the book, the DealBreaker blog did a fun interview with Einhorn over a few hands of heads-up poker – a game about which the reporter didn’t know the first thing. That’s a lesson in risk management right there. You won’t find brilliant investment insights or killer poker tips, but if you haven’t yet read the book and this post makes you finally do it, we’ll be happy.
We’ve all heard about the Social Network movie, but a better time allocation is the Web2.0 Summit interview with the man himself, The Time Magazine Person of The Year, Mark Zuckerberg. Before we poke some fun at Facebook, here’s a thought: we do make fun of what’s relevant to us the more mainstream it gets, yet it doesn’t necessarily mark the end of an era. Think of Microsoft Windows, the OS we all have loved to hate for the last 25 years or so and it’s still there. The “winner takes all” aspect of the network effect in Facebook’s case is a fragile argument – what network are we talking about, and why will we have to interact with it the Facebook way? Just because we can’t see today what could topple Facebook, it doesn’t mean something – or likely a combination of “things” – won’t.
As we return from the November 15th holiday, we highlight a few of the interesting “building blocks”-pieces we’ve read or watched, in this case “watched”. Some more useful and actionable, some to keep in the back of our minds and “ruminate” on and see if later “clicks” with other issues in our minds. “The day only has 24 hours” for sure, and yet we must find the time to expand horizons and read widely as well. We’ll start things lightly with these two videos…
“Irony”: High-level corporate strategy consultants need to review their business models to survive. The Financial Times article may be just a sign of worldwide corporate spending cuts, so don’t read too much into it, but the fact remains that the downturn is driving consolidation in what is already a relatively concentrated market (useful chart in the story).
OK, funny things first: Buffett playing Axl Rose is awesome. Less impressive is him playing a hip-hop artist, but it’s alright (both videos embedded inside). Viral videos can be a smart marketing tool, and these work. Back to seriousness: Business Week had a cover article by Alice “Snowball” Schroeder interviewing CEOs who have had Buffett in their boards. Interesting read.
We can’t resist repeating this funny story about change – and we suspect more than a few readers will relate to it. But ultimately this is about how feeble our attempts at forecasting really are. For some things we are way too pessimistic and tend to ignore the exponential aspects of some innovation curves. For others, we are way too optimistic. The trick then is to not rely on either.
David Pogue’s presentation at TED in 2006 was pretty funny and carried an important message for designers: simplicity sells. The iPhone wasn’t even out, but the trend is clearer than ever. The talk starts slowly but quickly builds momentum. As we always stress: view it critically, play with the idea, try to contradict it or apply it in some other field(s).
In this April 2002 classic, the investor education site Motley Fool pokes fun at the daily ramblings about why the market has behaved the way it has. People need to make sense of market activity and embrace the nuttiest explanations, so the joke almost rings true.
