The first 200-250 words of
this article boggled Our Man’s mind; read them, then take 30 seconds to think
about what just transpired…it’ll likely blow your mind too! As regular readers have likely gathered, Our
Man is fascinated by human behaviour (and especially its impact in economics
and on stock market moves) and this article illustrates that in pickpocketing,
psychology and persuasion of the mind play as large a role as any physical
skills. (Adam Green, The New Yorker)
With a new baby in the Our
Man household, this March title and article on the science of sleeplessness seemed
awfully well-timed!
(Elizabeth Kolbert, The New Yorker)
The 21st century
has already been described as the era of “Big Data” and recently we looked at
how data-driven electoral sites (whether
it was 538,
RCP, Pollster, or my personal favourite Votamatic) were far more successful than
professionals at predicting the recent US election. Unsurprisingly, with data far more prevalent,
accessible and storable than ever before, its usage and analysis is being used
in other fields to challenge long-held assumptions and beliefs. Over time, it’ll be interesting to see if any
of the vintners will produce ‘better’ wine as a result, or merely just more of
it. (Jeffrey M O’Brien, Wired)
Way back, in Mar-10,
Our Man mentioned his interest in the LED theme (as part of the Energy
Efficiency book) – sadly, he never ended up doing much with it as it appeared
that while the long-term cost advantage of LED bulbs seemed clear the tipping
point when the initial cost was palatable to consumers seemed a little too far
away. With Cree just announcing a bulb
that retails at a more than affordable $10, perhaps it’s time to dust off those
files. (Nayantara NAraryanan
& ClimateWire, Scientific American).
The great, and almost always false,
promise in finance is something that offers high returns (or yield) while being very safe. A large number of the frauds
and collapses have been based around this implicit (or explicit) promise –
think Madoff, LTCM or even the likes of Enron.
One of the typical models of offering this promise is to take a low risk
asset and create a structure around it that creates higher returns through
levering it up (or by ‘ponzi finance’ through continually raising capital) . Roddy Boyd takes a deep investigative look at
Brookfield Asset Management, a high flying Toronto-based company, which has an
exceptionally complex structure and is viewed by skeptics as another of those
false promises that are all too common in finance. (Roddy Boyd, Southern Investigative Reporting
Foundation)
