think or thwim

If you are interested in learning the basics of daytrading take a look at Chairman MaoXian’s Trading for Dummies series. In 2003 he posted 95 examples. Start with the first one and just keep going through them until you get it. Each one only takes a couple of minutes, and after only a few I think you’ll understand.

The chart is actually from Trader Mike, but I don’t think he’ll mind. He says he switched from swing trading to daytrading after reading MaoXian’s site for a while.

“Now a Democrat, I am a former Republican who left that party after a sitting US Republican Representative, Tom Feeney, asked me to build a prototype computer program that could, without detection, flip the votes on an electronic voting machines.”

-ClintCurtis.com

In 2004 computer programmer, Clint Curtis, testified before the US House Judiciary Committee that Tom Feeney (R-Fl) hired his company to rig the Florida Election:

Curtis was disheartened when nothing changed after he testified. Now Feeney is up for reelection, and Curtis is running against him.

Anytime there’s a system people are going to game it, but this really struck a cord with me for some reason. Feeney might not have actually done anything to rig the election, but this proves to my satisfaction that he would find that acceptable. I’m sure he sees it as what needs to be done to make sure the good guys win, just like Nixon did and Rove does.

Curtis seems to be an honest person. If you’re feeling rich and indignant, send him some money so he can buy a vote or two. If you live in Florida, please vote against Feeney for any other person of your choice (but use a mail-in absentee ballot).

Update:

Feeney 123,557 votes = 58%

Curtis 89,672 votes = 42%

Jimmy Wales is not the Queen of England. He is the founder of Wikipedia, one of the best ideas ever. His TED presentation is now on-line. He talks about the rules that make it work and how it’s evolved. Here’s the Video.

Personally, I like the fact that the Wikipedia logo is a nearly completed deathstar.

This Vanity Fair Article is a play-by-play of what happened at NORAD. It includes audio from their recorders. Honestly, “the Air Force shot it down” was my first thought when the news reports said United Flight 93 crashed in a field. The audio proves that they would have, but they couldn’t find it.

It also reveals that Air Force Generals lied to the 911 commission to cover up the total lack of control on that day. The article contains mp3s of the actual recordings.

Good stuff from Charles Wheelan, author of Naked Economics. One of my favorite books.

Article: A Moral Hazard of Global Proportions

Summary: Its easy to support a war if it doesn’t cost you anything personally. To make our society more thoughtful about resorting to violence:

1. Reinstate the draft, but make it include everybody. Anyone between 18 and 65 should be drafted for desk jobs, cooking, etc.

2. Create an all-volunteer humanitarian branch of the armed forces for situations like Darfur. Soldiers who have additional special training in “peacekeeping, solving humanitarian crises, and the like.” They’d be volunteers because they would not be directly defending the US, but trying to keep world peace.

Of course you want young men full of testosterone fighting wars, and not everyone thinks the US has a moral obligation to be the world’s police force. But, I agree with Wheelan.

These 10-20 minute videos are worth your time.

“TED was born in 1984 out of the observation by Richard Saul Wurman of a powerful convergence between Technology, Entertainment and Design.The first TED included the public unveiling of the Macintosh computerand the Sony compact disc, while mathematician Benoit Mandelbrot demonstrated how to map coastlines with his newly discovered fractalsand AI guru Marvin Minsky outlined his powerful new model of the mind.Several influential members of the burgeoning ‘digerati’ community were also there, including Nicholas Negroponte and Stewart Brand.” - From TED.com

There’s a wide range of subjects, and they are all great. Start with Hans Rosling at the bottom of the page and you’ll be hooked.

:: TED Talks

Stephen Colbert is my hero. All blogs should be required to link to this speech.

I think he spoke for quite a few people.

“Speak from the balls, not from the diaphragm.” -Stephen Colbert

Dr. Richard Swanson, one of the cofounders of Sunpower did a presentation a the Palo Alto Research Center PARC Forum:

Solar PV: The Path From Niche to Mainstream Supplier of Clean Energy

Key points (from memory, so I may be off a little):

• Sunpower and Sanyo make the most efficient solar cells at 23%. Most manufacturers are in the 15-20% range.
• Theoretical maximum efficiency is 33%.
• This year the photovoltaic industry passed the computer chip industry in use of silicon.
• Like all commodities, there’s currently a shortage raw silicon because the silicon “refineries” haven’t kept pace with the growth of the PV industry. However, they are currently building more capacity.
• In 1979 PV cost was $30/watt
• Now cost is $3/watt
• Cost has had a linear relationship with the number of cells produced. Every time we double the number of cells produced, the cost drops by 18% (the important thing is: its linear).
• That projects $1/watt in 2012, which makes photovoltaics located on a roof used to power a house cost competitive (without any govt subsidies) with traditional fossil fuel generated electicity from the grid.
• At $0.67/watt PV will be cost competitive in megawatt scale solar farms to replace fossil fuel fired power plants.
• The embedded energy also falls in the same linear relationship. It currently takes 3 years for a solar panel to generate the amount of energy that it took to get the silicon and make the solar panel.
• The largest PV markets are currently Germany (#1) and Japan (#2).
• Sunpower sells panels to Japan’s largest home builder, who offers solar as an upgrade. Last year 1/2 of the houses they built had solar power.
• As with everything else, China will be a huge market pretty soon.
• When we get to the point that somewhere between 3 and 30% of power on the grid is from solar, storage will be a big problem to deal with.
• Solar cells don’t fail. The soldering that connects the individual silicon wafers does. Most solar panels have 25 year warranties.
• In solar systems, the inverter that converts the power from DC to AC is what fails 95% of the time (because they have electrolytic capacitors in them). The mean failure rate has been 5 years. Newer versions should be around 10 years.

As you go through life you are going to have many opportunities to keep your mouth shut. Take advantage of all of them.

-James Dent

Welcome to the first post. The internet tubes are already full of narcissistic poorly-spelled nonsense, so why add to it?

Until now, I’ve avoided contributing to the noise, but I’m an infojunkie. I think that makes me as qualified as anyone to link to delicious morsels of intratube goodness. This web log is a list of things that I think everyone should see. I thought I’d try putting it here rather than spamming my friends with it.