Seeking investors for my new business venture

If Ikea thinks they can sell solar panels in England, I can damn well sell ski equipment in Oklahoma! Check out the cool logo that RKG dug up for me:

Annals of perplexing decisions: Ikea Edition

People, Swedish mega-retailer Ikea is going to start selling solar panel in their stores.......

but only in the UK.

CRIKEY!

Thats kind of like opening a ski shop in Oklahoma, innit?

All the government subsidies in the world won't help you if the sun never lights up the damn panels.

Maybe from the viewpoint of Sweden, England is a sunny tropical paradise?

Take the skinheads bowling

One of my alltime favorite bands is Camper Van Beethoven. Turns out their front-man, David Lowery also has a head for business, as he was involved in the founding of Groupon which just sold itself to Google.

Here is Lowery on the subject:

"In 2008 I was appointed to the board of advisors of a small web startup called www.the point.com. The site the brainchild of Andrew Mason was a " tipping point" mechanism, a social networking site that allowed people "commit" to take group action. In particular the hope was they would take group action for social change. The investors quietly noted there was not a clear way to monetize Andrew’s experiment. However they hoped that by watching the way users used the tipping point mechanism, a viable way to monetize this website would present itself.

I was asked to start a campaign on www.thepoint.com."To get a feel for it". Not being very socially conscious I decided that I wanted to use The Point for my own narrow self interests.

Cracker and Camper Van Beethoven have a festival, The Campout. It’s rather remote and since we produce the small festival ourselves we take considerable financial risk. While the previous years had been marginally successful we were worried about the rapidly deteriorating economy (I believe Bear Stearns had just gone bankrupt). So I started a campaign to get a "break even" amount of CVB and Cracker fans to commit to attend the festival. In this way our fan’s promises to attend would become a sort of promissory note. no pun intended. While you couldn’t exactly peg it’s value, these collective promises to attend at some point seemed to be worth enough to go ahead and book the flights, PA, lights, and port-o-potties.

Other successful "campaigns" on The Point also involved similar commitments for group purchasing. It wasn’t long before The Point became Groupon."

Wow, Elvis Presley died and David Lowery got paid?

Hat tip to DG!

All Hail John Covil

For he is the winner of the KPC reader appreciation new tagline contest. His entry now sits astride the KPC masthead like a colossus.

John is also a blogger. You can check his blog here.

He will be receiving his custom designed, KPC-themed Starbucks gift card as soon as it is approved by the Starbucks censors!

Congratulations John and thanks to all our contestants and readers.

Smart Groups

Evidence for a Collective Intelligence Factor in the Performance of Human
Groups

Anita Williams Woolley, Christopher Chabris, Alexander Pentland, Nada Hashmi
& Thomas Malone, Science, forthcoming

Abstract: Psychologists have repeatedly shown that a single statistical factor — often called "general intelligence" — emerges from the correlations among people's performance on a wide variety of cognitive tasks. But no one has systematically examined whether a similar kind of "collective intelligence" exists for groups of people. In two studies with 699 individuals, working in groups of two to five, we find converging evidence of a general collective intelligence factor that explains a group's performance on a wide variety of tasks. This "c factor" is not strongly correlated with the average or maximum individual intelligence of group members but is correlated with the average social sensitivity of group members, the equality in distribution of conversational turn-taking, and the proportion of females in the group.

Surprising, and also easily testable. Corporations with boards, or top executives, that have these features should on average be more profitable. And if the effect is as strong as suggested here, then ALL corporations should have such decision structures, because to do otherwise would be much less profitable. Any company that uses a different firm would be competed out of existence, or bought out in a hostile takeover. At worst, these schmoes could start their own company, with this decision structure, and rule the world. The fact that the they don't means that they know these idiotic results are no bigger than the third order of smalls.

I should note that government, on the other hand, since it faces no profit constraint or takeover discipline, could continue to use whatever system it wants.
So the schmoes should take their little paper over to the government, and suggest that their system be adopted there.

(Nod to Kevin Lewis)

Onions

President O sure has 'em!

Consider this. His administration is now demanding that BP pay the salaries of oil workers who are not working because of the Administration's moratorium on deep water drilling!

Really.

You guys remember that classic, close the barn door after the cows are all gone moratorium, right? The one that was "peer reviewed" by a panel of experts?

Ooops. Turns out the moratorium was added to what the experts reviewed ex-post and the experts do not agree with even having a moratorium.

So I guess this all works out, at least on the "two wrongs make a right" theory of justice.

Oh Noes!

I got a Mac in the office now. It's a bit too much fun....

Tony, I promise I'll get that paper written up real soon!

Congress tries a hostile takeover of Obama Motors!

So the Obama administration takes over GM, hammering bondholders, handing over huge chunks of taxpayer money and more or less calling the shots in GMs restructuring.

GM decides to reduce the number of models it offers and close down a bunch of marginal dealerships (2000 or so).

Local dealerships support local congress people, and apparently many of these marginal dealerships want to stay in business with GM even though GM doesn't want to be in business with them.

Congress then passes a law requiring an appeals process for dealers who want to keep the family together.  

1100 dealers appealed!

GM has now decided to re-instate 600 or so of them on the grounds that it's less costly to put up with unprofitable dealerships than it is to fight Congress about closing them.

Meanwhile, the Obama management team for GM opposes the legislation and appeals process because (obviously) it is going to make it that much harder for GM to get a chance at someday being profitable.

So the executive branch tosses billions to bail out GM and the UAW and Congress then mandates that some of that money flow (indirectly) to unprofitable dealerships as well.

AAAAAAARRRRRRGGGGGGHHHHHHH!!!

I feel like Casey Stengel wondering "can't anybody here play this game"?

  

 

The secret to true happiness

Markets in everything: Stepford Wife edition

Mrs. Angus and I had been debating whether Tiger's wife would leave him or stand by her man. Turns out she is planning to lease herself to him:

Elin and Tiger Woods had a prenuptial agreement, as expected. The couple is undergoing marital counseling, as you'd also expect. And now The Daily Beast is reporting that Elin Woods is renegotiating that prenup to get an immediate $5 million payout from her husband and as much as $55 million more to stay with him for two more years.

The initial prenup was worth $20 million after 10 years of marriage. However, the Chicago Sun-Times' Bill Zwecker has reported that Elin Woods will receive an immediate payment "into an account she alone controls," and that the 10-year timeframe -- which began when they married in 2004 -- has been shortened and the value increased "substantially."

The Daily Beast quotes "a lawyer familiar with the couple's negotiations" in reporting that the term of the prenup has been shortened to seven years, and that a series of staggered payments could increase the total value to $75 million.

But apparently there's also a behavioral component to all this: Elin Woods must "be a dutiful wife in showing up with him at social events and in public as if they were still the perfect couple, and sign a nondisclosure form that will prevent her from ever telling her story."

YIKES!

This pretty much negates any of the sympathy I had for Mrs. Woods, but I am surprised (guess I am naive) that Tiger's reaction to this situation is to just try to buy his way out of it.

Deans can't read, but they can count

In a new NBER working paper (ungated version here) Hammermesh and Pfann show that citations and not number of publications affect economists' reputations, but the number of publications and not citations affect economists' salaries, thus demonstrating the fundamental truth expressed in the title of this post.  It is a fun paper, well worth reading, though I am not enamored with their proxies for reputation.

Prize!

A fantastic KPC contest, with a FAAAAAAABulous prize!

The 500,000th hit on this site will receive a free, collectible "Munger for Governor!" t-shirt from the 2008 campaign.

So go out there and click like crazy! The current count is in the red box, on the right side, about two screens down.

(Winner has to REALIZE s/he has won, and send me an email with her/his snail mail address, to qualify)

UPDATE: A commenter points to this. Nice.

Also, another commenter notes that the "counter" does not update. Yes, there is a pretty long lag. But all hits are recorded at the Sitemeter website, and so I will have the IP address of the BIG WINNER. All we need is for the winner to send me the physical address, and I'll check to see that the IPs match.

Plus, let's open this up. ANYONE who comes in between 499,997 and 500,003 is a winner. Just check sitemeter to see if you are in the lucky interval, and then claim your FAAABULOUS prize! As the xkcd folks note, the 500,000th person, or any specific number, will likely be some schlep looking for a graphic on "Google Images," and will never even know that s/he qualified!

UPDATE 2: Only about 500 hits away from that FAAABULOUS PRIZE! Just check at Sitemeter

Dilbert goes to Mumbai

What happens when you apply professional US-style management to Indian textile factories you ask?

A hint of the answer can be found here, along with lots of amazing photos of what Indian textile factories look like before the pointy haired ones come in and start managing.

I worked in a factory in rural Ohio in the 1970s that I thought was a dump, but it looked like the JPL compared to these contemporary photos.

Hat tip to Gabriel M.

The Jobless Recovery

from the WSJ:

"The economy is experiencing another huge increase in productivity in the third quarter. Nonfarm labor productivity grew at an annual rate of 6.6% in the second quarter. Look for something in that eye-popping range for the current quarter. Here’s a rough sketch of the numbers: Today’s jobs numbers showed that the Labor Department’s index of aggregate hours worked by Americans was at 98.9 in August, down steeply from a second quarter average of 99.7. That’s from a combination of job cuts, reductions in overtime and other cuts to work shifts. Let’s assume there’s no change in hours worked in September. That would mean the total amount of hours that Americans worked in the third quarter would be down at about a 2.8% annual rate. The economy seems to be on track to grow at an annual rate of 3% or more. More output and fewer hours worked means more productivity in the neighborhood of 6%. You’ll be hearing a lot of talk about a jobless recovery in the months ahead. The upside is that this is good for corporate profits. The downside is that workers will suffer even after the economy comes back."

YIKES!

Unchain my heart

Word is that Apple is going to try a multicarrier approach for the IPhone in the USA within a year or so! That sounds like pretty bad news for AT&T

I want to ride my bicycle.....

Freddy Mercury would have been very very pleased with this:



Plus for a few Euros more you can add..... KARAOKE!!!

Blighty: where men are men and......

From our good friends at the AP:

LONDON – A British farmer who paid a new world record price for a sheep says the animal is the finest specimen he has ever seen.

Farmer Jimmy Douglas shelled out 231,000 pounds ($347,000) for the 8-month-old Texel ram called Deveronvale Perfection at an annual sale in Lanark, Scotland.

Douglas says the ram has "a great body and strong loin."

The British Texel Sheep Society says the fee paid Thursday is a world record, eclipsing a 205,00-pound price paid in Australia in 1989.

Society member John Yates says the ram will likely father pedigree lambs worth millions of pounds (dollars) for his new owner.

Breeder Graham Morrison, of Banff, Scotland, says he was staggered by the price but insists Deveronvale Perfection lives up to his name.

Man oh man oh man. "A great body and a strong loin"???? Really??? Does that guy realize he said that OUT LOUD???

Links

1. Best.Meal.Ever.

2. Happy days are here again?

3. Bears are better than beards!

4. When did Tyler become a behavioral economist?

Confused on the concept

Wow. The house across the street from Chez Angus has had a long and bizarre history. Now it is up for sale again, but the sellers seem a bit confused about what kind of market they are facing as evidenced by this bit of signage we saw in front of the place this morning:



Have any of y'all ever heard of a 20 minute open house before?

Campus Corner

1. The Chronicle has a fun article, "13 reasons why colleges are in this mess"

Some of my personal favorites are #5 "overbuilt", #6 bowed to boosters, and #11 built duplicative centers.


2. The WSJ has a sobering article about the financial counter-productiveness (for most schools) of the upcoming NCAA basketball tournament. Here's a nugget:

"Amid this cornucopia, the schools themselves are usually the losers. According to the NCAA's latest Revenues and Expenses report, in 2005-06 the median Division I men's basketball team generated revenue of $480,000 and had operating costs of $1.33 million, yielding a net operating loss of $850,000. If capital expenses and full university overhead were included, these results would be even more dismal."


3. James Joyner has bad news for academic job seekers. Here's a lovely excerpt:

“This is a year of no jobs,” said Catherine Stimpson, the dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences at New York University. Ph.D.s are stacked up, she said, “like planes hovering over La Guardia.”