On Transparency

Being transparent and sharing information about yourself is almost always beneficial. For one, you can’t lie when all of your thoughts are out for the world to see; too many holes would show if dubious people were publicly forthcoming about their goals and actions.

My thoughts on transparency have been strengthened recently by the stonewalling tactics of others. When I witness failure (in this case, the policy of not being forthcoming), I’m often motivated to question and change the offender.

On Wednesday night, I met with a group of portfolio managers from a local investment advisory firm that manages ~$1.5 billion. They were telling me about their methods for investment, how their operation differs from the brokerage houses:

In the brokerage model, industry-specific research analysts in New York and San Francisco keep their eyes on individual industries with extreme depth and pass along their research to the brokers, who interpret the research to their clients and make investment decisions. In this model, the brokers are pretty much clueless. They just do what they’re told, recommending whatever their research department is recommending that week or month. At the firm I was meeting with, each broker is a research analyst, responsible for covering 11-26 stocks from various industries. They’ve combined the researcher and broker into one: there is no research specialization by industry.

Their approach sounds different, even novel, so one would think that their innovative model would reward clients with above-average returns, and that they would tout this fact to the public. Not so. When asked about their performance, they were silent.

I’m guessing that their lack of transparency is due to the fact that they match or underperform the returns of the broader market. They don’t want to compare themselves to others, because that’s not where they excel. They excel in other things, like taking their clients out to lunch once every three months and keeping them happy. Surely, their client retention has nothing to do with exceptional performance and everything to do with a planned propaganda campaign they call “relationship management” whose aim is to keep clients complacent with mediocre performance.

If someone isn’t being forthcoming, they’re probably hiding something.

Stonewalling is a pretty common tactic in the investment world. Nowhere is it more common than at Venture Capital funds. Michael Arrington recently posted the story of one venture capitalist, Union Square Ventures’ Fred Wilson, who does tout his performance publicly. In the last 17 years, through 32 investments in ventures, 20% of those investments completely failed. 40% of his deals (11/32) ended with a 5x or more return on investment. Clearly, Mr. Wilson has reason to be transparent, as his performance speaks for itself. Does this mean that only the successful should be forthcoming about their performance? Hardly. I believe that anyone and everyone should be forthcoming, because it’s in this fashion that we as humans can best choose those who provide services to us. If you can’t easily compare service providers, it’s not as easy to choose the most suitable candidate. Being transparent benefits everyone, with more resources going to those who can use them most effectively, and less to those who are less suited. Those less suited - those who fail - will be reminded by their failure that they ought to go out and find something that they are good at. In this way, we each can find our niche in life.

I often tell people that if I knew that I was the best man at mowing lawns, I wouldn’t be in the asset management business. I’d be out there mowing lawns, building a business in something that I knew myself to be the best at. And I’d be happy doing it.

The rest of the world needs to do the same, find out what they’re best at, and do it. The world would surely be a much better place.

Military Tech Getting Scarier By The Day

Check this quote from this month’s issue of Wired:

“Network-centric wars would be more moral, too. [...] Network-enabled armies kill more of the right people quicker. With fewer civilian casualties, warfare would be more ethical. And as a result, the US could use military might to create free societies without being accused of imperialist arrogance.”

Now, the preceding is a logical argument: targeted warfare would, theoretically, have less unintended consequences (like blowback). Less unintended consequences in warfare may be slightly more ethical, but that’s not a pretext for preemptive war, invasion, and reshaping of governments and societies.

Link.

Amazon Kindle: Pulling A PlayStation

Like the Sony PlayStation 3, Amazon’s Kindle eBook reader is $399. They’re both bound to be popular sellers this holiday season. But Amazon is making the same mistake with the Kindle as Sony initially did with the PS3 launch: it’s just too damn expensive.

At the outset, the PS3 was $599 (or $499 for one with a smaller hard drive). The competition was cheaper (XBOX 360, Wii). Sony learned quickly that this pricing structure wasn’t going to work. Anyways, consoles are always sold cheaply at a loss and offset by shares revenue from game titles. Who cares what your initial loss is at the outset, when the amount of consoles out there will drive game sales into the future?

Sony recently added a model for a more modest $399 and has seen sales skyrocket.

Amazon should do the same. If Amazon wants to drive adoption of its gadget and solidify themselves as the leader in the eBook/eMagazine market as Apple has done with music, they should make the device more accessible to consumers.

To be fair, Amazon doesn’t have much competition in the space (Sony’s Reader is the only challenger) whereas the PS3 had, arguably, two strong competitors. Also, Apple came to prominence selling iPods at a profit (like Amazon is trying to do with the Kindle) and doesn’t make most of their money selling iTunes content. Still, just because Apple’s doing it successfully with iPods doesn’t mean Amazon should use it for eBook readers. Amazon should adopt the model already in use by wireless carriers and gaming consoles - subsidizing the device and raking in money brokering content. That model skyrockets you into the lead because it makes the device more accessible. Amazon needs the network effect to work in its favor here, and this is the only way to do it.

More info on the Kindle at Engadget.

Edit: Perhaps Amazon is really pulling a Wii!  According to the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, the Kindle is sold out after 5.5 hours on sale!

The LG Shine: Coming soon to AT&T!

I first saw the LG Shine in Las Vegas at CES, and I immediately fell in love with it. It’s as revolutionary of a design as the famed Chocolate, and it takes the shine to mirror-levels. It’s so chic, so metallic, and so beautiful. I’m so glad that AT&T is finally bringing it to our shores. It seems AT&T has gotten exclusive deals (or is first to launch) with just about every important handset of late. It’s like they’re trying to have a monopoly on sweet phones so that they can charge whatever they want for plans and people will pay it. Seems to be working.

(click to enlarge)

Read more over at Engadget.

Sprint: An Oxymoron

The faltering wireless carrier Sprint, I’ve discovered today, is an oxymoron. Far from being quick and speedy as their name might suggest, they’re really quite tortoise-like.

They’re sending me a demo unit (the HTC Touch), and I was told to expect it in two business days (which, at the time, meant delivery by Friday, November 16th). I called in today to inquire about my demo unit and was told that it was “about to ship.” I asked if it was normal for Sprint to wait five days before shipping out a product. Their response (if you can call it that) is that “it takes 2-3 business days to receive your product once shipped.” I didn’t ask about UPS or Fedex or whoever, I asked about why it hasn’t left the warehouse.  They didn’t want to elaborate on their slow-as-molasses order fulfillment.

Now I’m starting to understand why Sprint lost 337,000 customers last fiscal quarter.

Ingles: El Idioma Universal

La búsqueda de un idioma universal es antigua. La maldición bíblica de la Torre de Babel siempre nos ha asolado. Los idiomas son barreras que impiden circular las ideas, la cultura y el desarrollo.

El inglés ha tenido un período de dominación amplísimo. Primero por la fortaleza del imperio británico y después por la hegemonía estadounidense.

Frente a estas lenguas francas exportadas por una metrópoli surgieron diversas iniciativas de un idioma universal. Primero fue el esperanto y a continuación una larga lista: Ido, Occidental, Interlingua,… Ninguna con éxito. Probablemente porque nunca han tenido una base suficiente de población que haga interesante aprenderlo.

El uso del inglés está tan extendido que se puede encontrar hablantes en cualquier lugar del mundo. Un idioma que permite comunicarse a un colombiano con holandés y posibilita acceder a un gran número de fuentes de información.

El problema radica que las personas cuyo idioma materno no es el inglés pocas veces llegan a dominarlo como los angloparlantes. Por esa razón a un italiano le resulta más sencillo entender a un coreano hablando inglés que a un australiano.

Han surgido otros idiomas de comunicación independientes del inglés oficial. Ahora está de actualidad el globish. Un idioma que tiene unas 1500 palabras en inglés y se originó en los años 80 cuando Nerriere trabajaba para IBM en París junto a colegas de 40 nacionalidades distintas, alli en el medio de una reunión comenzaron a comunicarse en una forma de “inglés desnaturalizado”.

Pero no es una iniciativa nueva. En la década de los 30 del siglo pasado se creó el BASIC (British-American Scientific International Commercial English). Sus defensores argumentan que un buen manejo del inglés normal requeriría de siete años de estudio, el esperanto de siete meses y el inglés básico de siete semanas. Existe una wikipedia que utiliza dicho idioma.

En 1959 la emisora Voice of America del gobierno de los Estados Unidos de América comenzó sus transmisiones internacionales utilizando el Inglés Especial, usando un vocabulario reducido, formas gramaticales simples y una pronunciación cuidada y lenta del idioma inglés.

También existe el Inglés Simple creado por la industria aeronáutica para ser empleado en los documentos y manuales de mantenimiento. El principal objetivo es mantener los textos tan simples y legibles como sea posible.

Via El Blog Salmon.

Davis Cup Tennis Final Coming To Portland

USA advanced to the final with a 4-1 victory over Sweden in Gothenburg and will bid to end a 12-year drought in the final in December, which will be held in USA for the first time since 1992. USA won the 1992 final, defeating Switzerland 3-1.

USA won the inaugural Davis Cup and has since won the title on 31 occasions, but not since 1995, marking the longest period without success in US Davis Cup history. It also held the trophy from 1920 to 1926, recording the most successful defenses.

After defeating Czech Republic, Spain, and Sweden, it’s on to the final against Russia.  Russia beat us last year in the quarterfinals, so it will be interesting to see if Andy Roddick, James Blake and the Bryan brothers can pull off a win in the finals here.

The great thing is that the finals are happening this year in Portland’s Memorial Coliseum from November 30th until December 2nd.  I’m planning on going down to watch.  It’s the best opportunity we’ll have to see world class tennis in the Northwest anytime soon.

Link.

If Earth Was A 100-Person Village

Canadians Commit Murder Too.

Well, perhaps they don’t kill on the same scale as the good ole’ USA, but a few weeks ago, a Polish man was tasered to death in the Vancouver, British Columbia airport by police after spending 10 hours stuck in the airport with no-one helping him because he spoke no English.

To be sure, the police were right to defend themselves when confronted by a batshit-crazy man who throws chairs around at the airport, but they should’ve thought about how to defuse the situation instead of escalate it.

It might’ve been better if they’d gotten a translator in there to defuse the situation.

Waiting 15 minutes for a translator is an exponentially better solution when a man’s life is on the line.

Be warned, the man writhes on the ground and screams for a long time before he dies. It’s disturbing.

Check out the video here, courtesy CBC via Boing Boing.

Amazon Understands Sales

Upon checking in at Amazon.com to update my Wish List for the holiday gift-giving season, I came upon one of their new gimmicks to get you coming back day after day: Customers Vote. Combining Democracy with the Black Friday, Customers Vote allows you to vote for which Black Friday deals will be available next week. Ingeniously, there is a new deal each day from November 22nd to 28th (sans Sunday the 25th), and you’ve got to check in right at midnight to see A) if you’ve been selected to receive the deal in question, and B) to buy the damn thing before it’s sold out (at these ridiculous prices of 50-75% off and with only 100-1000 units available, they’ll be gone before 12:03am, guaranteed).

Deals include a Nintendo Wii ($79), a 40GB PlayStation 3 ($139), an XBOX 360 ($99), a Panasonic DSLR ($499), an HD Camcorder ($299), a RAZOR Electric Scooter ($29), a Tivo ($89) , HD-DVD and Blu-Ray players ($149), an HP Laptop ($299), an in-car GPS unit ($99), a pair of 1 carat diamond earrings ($499), and a 46″ 1080p HDTV ($719), among others.

Amazon is playing Black Friday just like Best Buy is, trying to get tons of attention and store traffic using crazy discounting. Personally, I’m glad they’re doing it. This year, after all, is without the launch of a major game console like we’ve had the past two holiday seasons with the XBOX 360 and the Wii/PS3, so these stores need something to keep the visibility up, something to keep people waiting in lines all night and getting in fights over who gets what.

Check it out at Amazon.com.

Que le monde est petit !

Today, I was walking down Fifth Avenue, dribbling my soccer ball home, when all of a sudden a car honks at me. I see its window rolling down, so I peer into the car, and some guy yells out “Cameron! Is that you?”.

Immediately I realize it’s Steven, a young man I met in Nice less than three months ago, and ran into at Gare du Nord in Paris by chance the next week.

It’s a small world.

It reminded me of some other small world stories I’ve experienced.

My roommate Nathan introduced me to Ben A, one of his schoolmates. Ben A has a cousin who goes to University of Oregon. Nathan and I went to Whistler over Martin Luther King weekend, and we ended up randomly meeting a group of girls from the University of Oregon who we hung out with for the remainder of the trip, and one of them, it turned out, was Maddie - Ben A’s cousin.

It’s fantastic when these kinds of stories get a little more interesting. It did. In August, I was sipping a doppio espresso at Starbucks on Avenue de l’Opera in Paris, and was startled to hear a young lady’s voice blurt out “Cameron?!?”

I turned around, only to find Ben A’s cousin Maddie again, a world away from the snowy Canada where we’d met.

Que le monde est petit !

Upon telling another friend, Stephanie, about my small world experience in Whistler and Paris, she went ahead and trumped mine:

“My junior year of high school I had a class with a Belgian exchange student who was studying at Ballard High School for the year. She left and after that and I thought I’d never see her again. On my first day of class at the University of Granada in Spain, guess who sits down right next to me??? The Belgian exchange student herself.”

¡Qué casualidad!

In an trivial yet interesting twist, Stephanie’s long lost friend from elementary school, Asia, by chance ended up in the same study abroad program in Granada - even though they go to different universities back home. By chance, I know Asia through my old roommate Nathan, the same Nathan who introduced me to Ben A in the first place.

Evolution: Fighting Fire With Fire

Should we refer to evolution as the theory of evolution, or the law of evolution?

Clive Thompson has penned a fantastic little article about the polemic for Wired:

Creationists and intelligent-design boosters have a guerrilla tactic to undermine textbooks that don’t jibe with their beliefs. They slap a sticker on the cover that reads, EVOLUTION IS A THEORY, NOT A FACT, REGARDING THE ORIGIN OF LIVING THINGS.

This is the central argument of evolution deniers: Evolution is an unproven “theory.” For science-savvy people, this is an incredibly annoying ploy. While it’s true that scientists refer to evolution as a theory, in science the word theory means an explanation of how the world works that has stood up to repeated, rigorous testing. It’s hardly a term of disparagement.

But for most people, theory means a haphazard guess you’ve pulled out of your, uh, hat. It’s an insult, really, a glib way to dismiss a point of view: “Ah, well, that’s just your theory.” Scientists use theory in one specific way, the public another — and opponents of evolution have expertly exploited this disconnect.

Turns out, the real culture war in science isn’t about science at all — it’s about language. And to fight this war, we need to change the way we talk about scientific knowledge.

Read on over at Wired.

How We Read

“The human eye is capable of focusing on only a very small area at one time - what is called a perceptual span. When we read, we are capable of taking in only about one key word and then four characters to the left and fifteen characters to the right at any one time. We jump from one of these chunks to another, pausing - or fixating - on them long enough to make sense of each letter. The reason we can focus clearly on only that much text is that most of the sensors in our eyes - the receptors that process what we see - are clustered in a small region in the very middle of the retina called the fovea. That’s why we move our eyes when we read: we can’t pick up much information about the shape, or the color, or the structure of words unless we focus our fovea directly on them. Just try, for example, to reread this paragraph by staring straight ahead at the center of the page. It’s impossible.”

-Malcolm Gladwell, The Tipping Point, pg. 108

Obvi: First Private A380 Owner is a Saudi

Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal of Saudi Arabia, the man who bailed out Citigroup (the world’s most profitable bank) when they were in trouble in the 90’s, is now the first private jet owner to call an A380 his own personal aircraft. He already owns a Boeing 747-400, and as soon as his new A380 is outfitted to his tastes, this will be a grand replacement.

List price: more than $300 million.

Meet The Google Phone

Here’s Google’s open source operating system, Android, in action. Forward ahead a one minute so you can skip Mr. Brin’s intro, his sidekick Mr. Horowitz will show you the phones.

The second phone really reminds me of the iPhone, but just slightly less-polished. Perhaps with the open platform, Android will have cooler apps and will, someday, be more desirable than the mighty phone from Cupertino. Game on.

Night At The Elysian

(click to enlarge)

A friend had his birthday at the Elysian Brewery in Capitol Hill last night, and I was lucky enough to be able to sample their Night Owl Pumpkin Ale. It’s brewed with 150 lbs. of pumpkin in each batch, green and roasted pumpkin seeds, and pumpkin in the mash. They spice it with nutmeg, clove, cinnamon, ginger and allspice, so it ends up tasting like pumpkin pie, rich and smooth.

1221 E. Pike St.
Seattle, WA 98112
(206) 860-1920

Norman Mailer Bites The Dust

“He drank, fought, smoked pot, married six times and stabbed his second wife, almost fatally, during a drunken party.”

“He had nine children, made a quixotic bid to become mayor of New York, produced five forgettable films, dabbled in journalism, flew gliders, challenged professional boxers, was banned from a Manhattan YWHA for reciting obscene poetry, feuded publicly with writer Gore Vidal and crusaded against women’s liberation.”

Should we really be celebrating this guy? I can understand celebrating his books if you enjoy them, but due to the withering of appreciation of the serious novel and its arguable replacement by epic film, how many of us really care?

Norman Mailer was full of himself. He believed that it was his Esquire piece alone that led to John F. Kennedy’s win over Richard Nixon.

All he seemed to do was align himself with revolutionary ideas, no matter how right or wrong they were. His opinions were different, confusing, complex, and difficult to challenge because of their duality. He called technology: “insidious, debilitating and depressing,” and said that nobody in politics had an answer to “[technology's] impact on our spiritual well-being.” Seriously? To challenge technology, all that is physical manifestation of progress, only because it embodies change? Mailer’s prescription, to have politicians debate the impact of technology before allowing its use would slow innovation and adoption to a halt, and is a challenge to our individualist right to choose. People use what they want to use, it’s a question of value and utility. Mailer is too resistant to change; he blindly attaches himself to the counterculture’s alternative viewpoint without thinking about the ramifications or its correctness. He was a simple cheerleader, addicted to the attention he got when society went one way and he shimmied opposite, a perpetual dance whose aim was only to selfishly heighten Mailer’s visibility as an avant garde enfant terrible.

I will admit, just because Mailer was a wild, unapologetic counterculturist, we shouldn’t neglect to honor his contribution to written fiction and journalism.

Via AP.

When ‘Keeping It Real’ Goes Wrong

Manhattanite Natavia Lowry, 26, was at work, slaving away as the under-appreciated personal assistant for successful-yet demanding-real estate agent to A-List stars Linda Stein. Linda’s clients always seemed to want to buy, and buy big. Madonna, Angelina Jolie, Sting and Steven Spielberg all splurged on Manhattan real estate at her urging.

Linda’s day hadn’t gone too well; her 2:30 showing of a $4 million pied-a-terre ended with the buyer deciding he’d “think it over a little bit,” which is as good as a no in the real estate business. Mrs. Stein decided to settle down for the remainder of the afternoon and fetched from her drawer a meticulously-rolled marijuana cigarette. She lit it and took a few puffs as smoke collected near her window, looking out above Fifth Avenue from her posh perch.

Her assistant Natavia entered, used the smoke by now, and asked a reclining Linda how her appointment was. “Shit. Complete shit-the asshole didn’t know whether he wanted to buy a home or a tennis racket.” Mrs. Stein, now starting her daily stretching routine, still puffing away, clearly wasn’t in a mood to talk. “Would you like me to bring you someth-” “No! Does it f***ing look like I want anything?” she snapped, driven irrational by her cannabis. “You sure you don’t want me to order up some food or somethin’?” Mrs. Stein glared at Natavia angrily and began shouting: “Get out of my office this instant you f***ing n***er!” while blowing marijuana smoke in Ms. Lowry’s face, unapologetically.

Natavia Lowry had a decision to make. She was insulted insensibly by her loud, overbearing boss, and this wasn’t the first time. She could have chosen to just leave, offer her resignation in the mail, and find new employment. But this time, it was different. Natavia’d had enough of being pushed around by some self-important, rude old woman. She decided right then and there that she was going to keep it real.

“F*** this. I’mma keep it real,” Natavia declared aloud.

Grabbing the weighted stretching stick out of Mrs. Stein’s weak hands, she bashed the elderly real estate maven a dozen times, swinging wildly at the face and skull.

“I got you good, b****.”

Linda Stein is now dead.

For deciding to keep it real, Natavia Lowry is now in police custody, awaiting a trial that will keep her behind bars for decades.

Via NY Daily News.

American Apparel Going Public (Kinda)

I wrote the following post today for FashionInvestor.com, click here to warp over and read it there:

Endeavor Acquisition Corp. (AMEX: EDA), a blank-check company, has revised its offer for American Apparel due to the fact that sales and earnings at AA have increased significantly since the original buyout offer was made. Dov Charney, American Apparel’s quirky founder, has some newfound reasons to smile, as the agreement brings his annual salary from $1 to $750,000, includes a $100 million life insurance policy, more than triples the amount of shares to be given to AA employees, and allows Charney to hold on to his 55% share of the company. Also, the debt ceiling pre-transaction has been raised from $110 million to $150 million, as American Apparel needs the money to finance the company’s huge expansion. Another new inclusion in this deal is that Endeavor will purchase all of the shares owned by the other American Apparel shareholder, Sang Ho Lim, for approximately $67.9 million in cash when the deal closes.

The special meeting of stockholders to consider the transaction is expected to be held Wednesday, December 12, 2007. With the approval of Mr. Charney, the founder and controlling shareholder, this deal is pretty likely to go through, barring any last-minute drug-fueled reconsiderations. Watch out for big moves in Endeavor stock in the next month or two.

Lululemon Gets Squeezed

Here’s a short piece I wrote for FashionInvestor.com about Lululemon Athletica’s major price drop recently:

“One of our favorite stocks (not to mention a strong, growing brand), Lululemon Athletica, has been getting hammered in the stock market of late. Just over a hour into the trading day, it’s down slightly over one percent at 40.85, a nearly 29% drop from its recent high on October 22nd at $58.00.

Why the drop when Lululemon is expanding and growing sales at a lightning-fast pace? A lot of things are weighing on the stock, one of them is profit taking. Those who were able to secure IPO shares at $18 have been selling to cash in on rising shares, some having profited more than 200% in under 3 months. In addition, Lululemon has so much going for it that investors have bid up its shares to a sky-high valuation, and Lulu would need to grow much faster to deserve this kind of price premium.

Long term, we still have bullish sentiment for Lulu, but investors beware, whenever you make a big gain, others will often run for the exits to take profit, and this is something you must factor in your decision making.”

I didn’t go into further detail about valuation: another big reason for Lululemon’s fall is that it’s priced into the sky by almost any measurement. Forward price to sales is roughly 11, whereas other popular apparel stocks like UnderArmor and Crox sport P/S ratios around 3.

Link via FashionInvestor.com.

Tallest (and Shortest) Dogs

Via The Daily Mail.

Venture Spotlight: Picnik

One of the best ways to support your local entrepreneurship community (and venture capital community) is by using their services if they’re useful. One of the most promising Seattle-based ventures is Picnik.

Picnik is an AJAX/Flash in-browser photo editor, and, though it isn’t as powerful as Adobe Photoshop, it’s arguably much simpler and convenient, especially for non-professionals. It’s got a beautiful interface and it integrates with Flickr/Facebook/Picasa/Photobucket/Webshots albums for simplicity. Flickr has actually chosen Picnik to be its sole image editing tool.

The basic tools I tried got the exact result I wanted, and I was able to export into any common image format. Picnik hopes to make money by charging $24.95/year for its Picnik Premium service, which adds more fonts, editing tools, shapes, and effects to the basic tool. Considering that Picnik doesn’t require any software downloads, is easy to use and is well integrated with people’s photo storage partners, Picnik will probably do quite well if they can continue to advance their offering and define themselves as the premier in-browser image editing solution. One of their only competitors to date is Berkeley, California-based FotoFlexer, which also has a great in-browser editing suite and a healthy number of users.

Picnik is self funded to date, but may be open to taking on some money in a venture round at some point, as some journalists have noted.

Burberry Blues

I wrote an article on the demise and resurgence of the resilient British marque over at FashionInvestor.com:

“I’ve been seeing more and more glamorous people sporting the iconic Burberry (LON: BRBY) plaid pattern lately in and about town, and it’s gotten me wondering if Burberry isn’t in the early stages of a full-scale comeback.

Why was I so bearish on Burberry? I saw the fall of the fabled marque in the late nineties; what I witnessed is summed up well by the Wall Street Journal: “Plaid overexposure. In recent years, the company attached its plaid to too many products and its brand image slid, with even British soccer hooligans wearing it. Exacerbating the problem were counterfeit goods.”

During some research on the famed British marque, I found that Burberry is currently taking London Fog parent Iconix Brand Group (NASDAQ: ICON) to court over use of its check pattern used in coats and scarves. Burberry developed the trench coat on a commission from the British War Office in 1914, and first used the famous patented check to line its trench coats in the 1920s. London Fog likewise has been using its own similar check pattern to line trench coats since the 20s, so this puts Burberry in a tight position to explain why they didn’t fight it out in the courtroom, say, 80 years ago. We’ll see how it plays out.

Via Counterfeit Chic”

Check it out at FashionInvestor.com.

The Office: Fans Awkwardly Meet In Scranton

Fans of The Office compete in The Office Olympics in Scranton, Pennsylvania last week.

Must Have: Ibarra Mexican Hot Chocolate

My uncle Jeff and his wife Kim have introduced me to many a must-have, and this counts as one of the most memorable.

Mexican chocolate is made from dark, bitter chocolate mixed with sugar, cinnamon, and sometimes nuts. Chocolate is frequently purchased in “disks” although it is also available in bars and syrups. Ibarra is what I use, and, though some find it a little too sweet, I like it just fine.

Mexican Hot Chocolate
serves 4

1 quart milk

2 tablets Ibarra Mexican chocolate* (3.3 oz each), broken into small pieces

Heat milk until just about to boil, do not allow to boil over.

Place half of the chocolate in a blender. Pour half of the milk over the chocolate, hold cover down with dishtowel and blend on low speed until well-combined.

Repeat with remaining milk and chocolate.

Serve immediately.

Usos sorprendentes del teorema de pitágoras

Haciendo esto (Doing this)

resulta que (it ends up that)

El área de un círculo de radio 5 es la misma que la suma de las áreas de dos círculo de radios 4 y 3.

The area of a circle with radius 5 is the same as the sum of the area of two circles with radii 4 and 3.

Como cuentan allí, esto se puede aplicar a otras fórmulas que tengan otros «factores cuadráticos», por ejemplo la Ley de Metcalfe, más conocida como «efecto red». Resulta por ejemplo que una red de 50 personas conectadas entre sí (red de teléfono, red de contactos, red social, etc.) es tan «valiosa» como la suma de dos redes más pequeñas de 40 y 30 personas conectadas únicamente entre sí (pero independientes). Aunque 30 + 40 > 50, el favor cuadrático del «efecto red» proporciona el mismo «poderío» a una red con sólo unas pocas más personas.

As they explain here, you can apply this to other formulas that have quadratic factors, for example, Metcalfe’s law, better known as the “network effect”. For example, it ends up that a network of 50 people (a telephone network, rolodex, social network, et cetera) is just as powerful as the sum of two smaller networks of 30 and 40 people, respectively. Even though 30 + 40 > 50, the network effect’s quadratic form gives more weight to a network with those few additional members.

Via Microsiervos.

SuperSonics Moving To Oklahoma City

This is just about the stupidest idea I’ve ever heard of: the new owners of the Seattle SuperSonics led by Clay Bennett, an Oklahoma billionaire, are moving the Sonics from Seattle (the 14th largest domestic media market) to Oklahoma City (the 45th largest).

ESPN’s Jim Caple has written a very fine article on the move, and here are some choice quotes:

“Bennett formally announced his intention to move the Sonics to Oklahoma City less than a day after the tip-off to the team’s home opener. ‘Welcome to the 2007-08 season, Sonics fans! And will the owner of a Prius hybrid please move your car — you’re blocking the owner’s U-Haul vans.’”

“How about a little venom for Howard Schulz? Here’s a guy who built a worldwide coffee empire from Seattle and he rewards the city by selling the Sonics to an out-of-town buyer. Thanks a lot. This was pretty much Schulz’s attitude at the time of the sale: “I am committed to finding a local owner who will keep the Sonics in Seatt… — WHAT? $350 MILLION!!! DON’T LET BENNETT OUT OF THE OFFICE WITHOUT HIS SIGNATURE ON THE BOTTOM OF A BINDING CONTRACT!!” Good grief. You own Starbucks! How much money do you need?”

Anyways, it’s a pretty crazy story, click here to read it over at ESPN.

Mukesh Ambani Buys Wife $59M Airbus A319

His wife’s custom jet is “fitted with a plush bar with mood lighting, a master bedroom, showers and a state-of-the-art entertainment cabin.”

Now men everywhere have a new level of gifting to live up to. Thanks, Mukesh.

Via International Herald Tribune