Estadísticas

El post anterior (escrito ayer) my hizo pensar sobre las estadísticas:

Torture numbers, and they’ll confess to anything.

-Gregg Easterbrook

Statistics are like bikinis. What they reveal is suggestive, but what they conceal is vital.

-Aaron Levenstein

La estadística es la ciencia según la cual si tu tienes dos gallinas y yo ninguna, ambos tenemos una gallina.

(Statistics is the science in which, if you have two hens and I have none, then we each have one.)

-Frikipedia Español, Estadísticas

En la Ciudad del Vaticano hay dos Papas por kilómetro cuadrado.

(In the Vatican City, there are two popes per square kilometer.)

-Ivan Skvarca, en Estadísticas Tramposas

Estadísticas papales – Microsiervos
Estadísticamente hablando – Microsiervos

An Unscientific Poll

The following is a graph of my Facebook contacts’ political support by candidate, sorted largest to smallest:

Barack Obama seems to be winning when it comes to the support of people I know by quite a large margin. This isn’t surprising, as I tend to know young people who often support Obama over his opponent.

One big surprise was that both Ron Paul and John Edwards found more support than Hillary Clinton, though Edwards is no longer in the race. Also, Clinton ties Michael Bloomberg, who has not entered the race in the first place.

Support still exists for Reagan, showing that there is indeed support for the election of a dead president. Whether he’d be effective at governing from the grave is yet to be proved.

On The Record: Dave Reichert

Yesterday, I wondered aloud why the United States continues to shower Israel with billions in aid. Israel is a country blessed with a very high standard of living when compared to the global average, and we ought to allocate our aid dollars elsewhere.

One of the idiots in Congress who supports this reprehensible giveaway of our tax dollars is Dave Reichert, Republican Representative from Washington’s 8th district. From his website:

“Congressman Reichert supported the FY06 Foreign Operations Bill that included $2.52 billion in assistance for Israel.”

Another gem that I came across is that Congressman Reichert is an original co-sponsor of the Charitable Giving Act of 2005.

Reichert is charitable indeed: supporting irresponsible and massive giveaways of my hard-earned dollars to a well-off and undeserving foreign government.

Perhaps being charitable isn’t such a positive thing – the determinant is who you’re being charitable to.

Dave Reichert – Israel

Reshaping Foreign Aid

As President Bush embarks upon his 6 day tour of Africa, visiting Benin, Tanzania, Rwanda, Ghana, and Liberia, I find it a good time to reflect on America’s aid to developing nations.

I’ve heard quite a few criticisms of the way US foreign aid is doled out. For instance, with regard to country appropriations, political considerations often trump the demonstrated needs of countries for aid. One common example of this is our financial support of Israel. Israel comprises just .001 percent of the world’s population yet receives 1/3 of U.S. foreign aid. Is Israel a third-world country desperately in need of aid? Not in the least. Israel has one of the world’s higher per capita incomes. Israel’s GNP is higher than the GNPs of Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, and Palestine combined. At $28,800, Israelis enjoy a higher per capita income than oil-rich Saudi Arabia, and are on equal footing with Monaco, Greece, and Spain. In 2007, the Bush administration asked Congress for $20 billion in foreign aid: $2.4 billion to Israel, while Ukraine (with 1/10 the GDP per capita of Israel and much more need for aid) received $71 million, 1/35 of Israel’s haul. This amount does not include loans to Israel that are often forgiven. With these loans taken into account, the much needier Ukraine gets 1/100th the financial support given to Israel.

Why does Israel get 100 times the amount of aid given to its poorer neighbor?

Another common criticism of our foreign aid is our food aid program, which has caused quite the controversy. The U.S. insists that its food aid be grown at home, and this extra demand for domestic grain amounts to a subsidy to American farmers. “Many European NGOs argue that this policy, coupled with the U.S. law that 75% of food aid be carried by U.S. ships, means food often arrives too late, floods local markets and damages indigenous farming.”

Flooding local markets and damaging indigenous farming doesn’t equate to help. Isn’t help what aid is supposed to be?

Food aid shouldn’t exclusively come from major mechanized producers, it should be grown locally to where it is distributed. This is a more permanent kind of aid because it encourages farmers to build a sustainable infrastructure that will pay dividends far into the future by stimulating farm employment. Reporter Eben Harrell says that E.U. policy reflects this sentiment: “less than 10% of [the E.U.'s] food-aid budget is [...] reserved for European-grown food.”

Obviously, something needs to be done to change our foreign aid system, whether it is distributed as hard-currency or food. And the man asking for change may surprise you.

It’s none other than George W. Bush.

“We have also revolutionized the way we approach development,” Bush said Thursday. “Too many nations continue to follow either the paternalistic notion that treats African countries as charity cases, or a model of exploitation that seeks only to buy up their resources. America rejects both approaches. The United States demands clear results for the billions of taxpayer dollars [sent] to Africa.” He accused other nations of exploiting the continent’s resources or irresponsibly offering aid as charity, according to the Associated Press. “America is serving as an investor, not as a donor,” Bush said.

“The between-the-lines message is that countries that shower budget support on all countries, such as the World Bank and the Europeans, are often merely pouring good money after bad,” said Joel Barkan, a specialist in African issues at the Center for Strategic & International Studies. He said Bush’s comment was also likely a “not so subtle dig at the Chinese,” who are a major investor in the African continent and a competitor for oil and other resources.

Along with trade and education initiatives, Bush is touting a broad investment package that, in his view, shows the generosity of the American people.

This package may be just what the doctor ordered.

Time Magazine – CARE Turns Down U.S. Food Aid
Israel still top recipient of US foreign aid
Bush Says Paternalism Over in U.S. Aid
Fiscal Year 2008 Budget Request (PDF)

Your Eyes’ Gaze Mapped: Newspaper

This is what a map of your gaze while reading a newspaper looks like:

The Newspaper via Microsiervos.

Punched

Mike Tyson, on risk management:

“Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the face.”

Happy Valentine’s Day

 Thanks to Washington Mutual for lighting Seattle up properly.

Innovation On Sale

One of the things I like most about being an investment manager is winning. Winning when it’s easy.

Over the course of the year, I predict that investors who overweighted their investment portfolios to equities in late January or early-to-mid February will come out as some of the biggest winners this year.

The market has had a row of negative sentiment, and, when that happens, it’s often an overreaction. I believe that’s the case right now. Stocks have been battered into value territory, and I intend to capitalize upon it.

Innovation is on sale. Take a look at Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL). It’s off more than 35% from its December high, and it’s gaining market share quickly with its Mac computers as well as breaking into whole new industries with the iPhone. Apple’s trojan horse is surely the iTV, which allows HD movie downloads and rentals without going to one’s mailbox like NetFlix customers do. NetFlix is planning a competing device in collaboration with LG, but it might be too little, too late. Apple is trading at a price/earnings multiple of 28. That’s richer than I’d like to see, but for the amount of growth and opportunity you’re buying with these shares, hardly a stretch. You’d do well to take a look at Apple’s historical price/earnings multiple, which has hovered as high at 85 (ouch!).

I hate to say this, but Google’s getting closer to an accurate valuation. It’s trading today at $527/share, down from its November high of $741. Google’s got a potential upside boost in Yahoo!, as the smaller fish in search has been rumored to be switching/outsourcing to Google for ads (Google wrings two times the amount of money per search as Yahoo! does). This would make sense for both Google and Yahoo!, and Yahoo! is going to be pressured to do something radical to drive earnings and share price after they snubbed Microsoft’s generous buyout offer which would’ve greatly benefited shareholders.

Motorola’s been more than cut in half from its highs, and their current handset offerings (specifically the RAZR2 and the Q9) are fantastic and selling well.

I’m going super-long equities right now.

(Full disclosure: author owns shares of Apple and Motorola.)

The Sony-Ericsson XPERIA X1

I’m not the biggest fan of Sony-Ericsson phones (with the exceptions of their fantastic high-resolution cameraphones like the K850i, but they’ve certainly proved me wrong today with the introduction of their new XPERIA X1 mobile phone.

This is a huge step for Sony-Ericsson because it’s a departure from their usual OS (UIQ/Symbian) to Windows Mobile which is one of my favorite phone operating systems due to the large amount of software available for it.

This isn’t just any regular old Windows Mobile phone, however. Sony-Ericsson took the road paved by HTC with their touch Touch of customizing the user interface running on top of Windows Mobile to make it more usable with fingers. Their proprietary “Panel Interface” looks quite a bit like Seattle-based Zumobi’s UI, with shrunken representations of program windows so you can see what programs are running and switch between them.

It’s got a 3.2MP camera, a 3 inch WVGA touchscreen (that’s more pixels than the iPhone with a little less screen area), A-GPS, Wi-Fi, EDGE/UMTS/HSPA data on all bands you’d find around the globe (oddly including 1700 MHz, which matches up with T-Mobile’s AWS spectrum for HSPA in the United States, a truly rare frequency offering on a global mobile phone).

Press Release – Sony Ericsson

Article on Engadget Mobile

Microsoft Fails

All of my contacts on my Motorola Q9C were deleted today by Microsoft’s own software.

This is ridiculous.

A few months ago, I plugged my Q into my MacBook running Vista, and couldn’t sync any contacts between my computer and the device. That’s called failure, Microsoft.

I found out that I had to install Outlook in order to sync contacts. So I downloaded a trial, installed it, and synced my contacts from my previous Verizon Q onto my new shiny Sprint one.

A few days ago, the Outlook trial ended, and, when I plugged my phone into my computer, Windows Mobile Device Center (another piece of utter failure) couldn’t find any contacts on the computer to sync, so it DELETED ALL OF MY CONTACTS OFF MY PHONE WITHOUT ASKING ME.

WHAT THE !@#$?!?!?!

I honestly feel like this is theft. Digital theft. Somebody is responsible, and I want my contacts back.

Microsoft, try harder next time. I won’t be buying your garbage that doesn’t work anymore, I’ll just move 100% to BlackBerries.

Dynamically-Sized Offspring

“…Animals have evolved a balance between offspring and effort. Some can even adjust how many offspring they produce, depending on whether they are under stress or live comfortably.”

Why have a large brood when food is scarce?  For humans, the same question should be asked when the economy isn’t provident, or when the cost of raising a child well is more than one’s income.

“Ruth Mace, an expert on family size at Imperial College London, argues this week in the journal Science that humans are governed by the same kinds of rules as animals. When the standard of living goes up, the cost of living goes up too. It takes a family in Addis Ababa (the urban capitol of Ethiopia) a lot more money to raise an additional child than a family out in the Ethiopian countryside. That may be one reason why the population is exploding in rural Ethiopia, while in Addis Ababa it is actually shrinking.”

I’m a strong proponent of quality over quantity with regard to human reproduction. More time and resources should be spent educating our children so that they can flourish. Having more children is a statement that says just the opposite.

Carl Zimmer has written a brief but fantastic article on the varied state of reproduction around the globe:

The Natural History of the Only Child – Wired

Insider Buying Shows Its Hand

If any of you thought that insider buying wasn’t a fantastic predictor of/factor in stock outperformance, do go ahead and check out this link to Bespoke Investment Group, who’ve gone through the trouble of highlighting big insider sales/purchases and the subsequent change in stock value in homebuilding stocks like Toll Brothers and Hovnanian:

(click to enlarge)


(click to enlarge)

A New Line of Business For The Homebuilders: Stock Trading – Bespoke Investment Group

Sprint’s ‘Unlimited’ Plan That Isn’t

Today, Sprint has made its unlimited plan available beyond the initial trial markets it launched last year, and for $120/month, subscribers across the U.S. will get unlimited voice minutes, web access, email, MMS, and SMS.

Why is it that I get roughly the same plan through Sprint for only $49.99? And why would Sprint announce this after MVNO Helio just anounced an unlimited plan for $99?

This shows how out of touch Sprint is with the marketplace. When you launch a new offering, you make it better or cheaper than the competition, and adoption will soar. Sprint’s offering is $20 more expensive than Helio’s, and offers the same or perhaps less services, considering Helio phones all have free, built-in GPS and EVDO 3G data.

Another gripe about Sprint’s new plan is the farcical statement on their microsite, sprintunlimitedaccess.com, that plainly states that the $119.99 plan with unlimited data/email is “Available on all Sprint phones.” This is a bold-faced lie. BlackBerry users are out of luck; they’ll have to tack on $39.99/month extra to this (and indeed any) Sprint plan to get wireless data/email.

That’s ridiculous.

If Sprint wants to sell more BlackBerries and stop hemorrhaging customers, they’ll have to stop penalizing BlackBerry users.

Sprint Unlimited Access

Undersea Cables The New Oil Pipelines?

Now that a fourth undersea cable has failed, conspiracy theorists really do have some cannon fodder. How did these cables go out of service? Were they cut by someone bent on doing so?

Today, the cause of the problem has been fingered as being an anchor, “but what if it is sabotage tomorrow?” asked Colonel R.S. Parihar, the secretary of the Internet Service Providers Association of India. “These are owned by private operators, and there are no governments or armies protecting these cables.”

My question is, keeping in mind the US Military’s mandate to protect American interests abroad (i.e. oil supply in the Persian Gulf), will the US Military also enlarge that mandate to include global data flow? After all, the nearly universal ideal of free, open society is best served by a free press and equal access to data. Certainly by severing data transmission cables, enemies of open society might’ve score a small win.

Perhaps this isn’t an ideological battle between open society advocates and fascists — the fight may be a little more personal.

Allow me to explain.

In 2006, one of India’s largest private-sector firms, Reliance Industries, was split between its two heirs, Mukesh Ambani and his brother, Anil Ambani. Anil calls his part Reliance ADA (standing for Anil Dhirubhai Ambani) Group, which just happens to own two of the undersea data cables that have been cut this last week.

Could his brother, Mukesh Ambani, be at all responsible for disrupting Reliance ADA’s business? Or perhaps someone else holding hostility towards Anil Ambani?

Hopefully, culpability will be further investigated soon, and data to India and the Middle East normalized.

IHT – Ruptures call safety of Internet cables into question

Anheuser-Busch Promotes Drunk Driving

During the Super Bowl (which I’m now watching), Anheuser-Busch ran a humorous spot that has a subtle reference to drunk driving — and even makes the practice look admissible.

The ad starts when a couple arrive at a quiet, pedestrian wine and cheese party. The women are all in the living room, socializing, and the men have commandeered the kitchen. The arriving man is holding a gigantic cheese wheel, but, once safely in the company of his fellow males, the man lifts the cheese-wheel cover/façade to reveal a hidden six-pack of Budweiser. The other men follow suit, cracking their baguettes open and disassembling their boxed wine to reveal hidden Budweisers.

It was all fun and good, until the last scene.

Presumably after drinking the six-pack of Budweiser in the kitchen, our male character heads for the front door and tells his spouse that he’s off to the store to get more cheese (obviously referring to a secret beer run).

I assume he’s driving to the store after downing a six-pack.

Did Anheuser-Busch just f*** up big time?

I mean, it’s a funny ad. It’s not serious. But Anheuser-Busch sells alcohol, and they’ve got to be ultra-sensitive about this.

They could’ve solved this easily by making it clear that the man was walking to the corner grocery store, or taking a taxi.

I think they ought to make a little donation to Mothers Against Drunk Driving to compensate. Doing that at least is a step in the right direction. And next time, Anheuser-Busch should choose an ad agency that is sensitive to their unique moral responsibility, being in the alcohol-bottling business as they are.

Edit:

Apparently, insensitivity is popular this year. Salesgenie.com’s halftime spot features a Panda family and their business, and all of the pandas have really deliberate and almost comical Chinese accents, and characters named Ling-Ling. Really, this isn’t a big deal (I don’t think the Budweiser ad is anything to cry over either). I just think that, in each case, both the advertiser and the marketing firm should’ve thought more about potential negative reactions (including overreactions). Have they learned nothing from the overreaction over Jar-Jar Binks?