Great finance blogsFast Paced / News Oriented http://abnormalreturns.com/
Private Equity - Half Analytical / Half Gossipy (one of my favorite online blogs on its good days) http://equityprivate.typepad.com/
World's tallest man saves plastic-eating dolphins
Sorry to be back with such a frivolous post, but I can't get this out of mind. From cnn.com
BEIJING, China (AP) -- The long arms of the world's tallest man reached in and saved two dolphins by pulling out plastic from their stomachs, state media and an aquarium official said Thursday....
Attempts to use surgical instruments to remove the plastic failed because the dolphins' stomachs contracted in response to the instruments, the China Daily newspaper reported.
Veterinarians then decided to ask for help from Bao Xishun, a 7-feet-9 herdsman from Inner Mongolia with 41.7-inch arms, state media said.
I just can't get my head around how this all worked. You are working on saving a dolphin, your surgical instruments aren't perfect, so you think: "I know, let's call the tallest man in the world to help out"? It sounds straight out of a comic strip...
Technology lost - for 1,000 years
An ancient Greek lunar calculator - the first "computer" - is found to be more complex than expected.
But a century ago, pieces of a strange mechanism with bronze gears and dials were recovered from an ancient shipwreck off the coast of Greece. Historians of science concluded that this was an instrument that calculated and illustrated astronomical information, particularly phases of the Moon and planetary motions, in the second century B.C.
....
Dr. Charette noted that more than 1,000 years elapsed before instruments of such complexity are known to have re-emerged. A few artifacts and some Arabic texts suggest that simpler geared calendrical devices had existed, particularly in Baghdad around A.D. 900.
It seems clear, Dr. Charette said, that “much of the mind-boggling technological sophistication available in some parts of the Hellenistic and Greco-Roman world was simply not transmitted further,†adding, “The gear-wheel, in this case, had to be reinvented.â€
Hard to imagine this type of technology gap ever reoccuring short of a planetary catastrophe.
Full article from the NY Times (free reg required)
Nearly $2B per year in self-improvement
"Americans will spend $750 million on self-help books this year and more than $1 billion on motivational speakers." cnn.com
my initial reaction is to say, "wow, that is a lot", but is 0.02% of US GDP in the attempt to improve a ridiculous figure? if it was viewed as subset training and adult education, it would seem perfectly normal...