Blog Readers (for Reading RSS Feeds)

RSS feed readers are the best way to keep up with blogs you want to read, in my opinion. You subscribe to those blogs you want to follow and can group them into categories (management, engineering, travel, investing, funny, etc.). Google Reader become the most popular way to manage your subscriptions. But Google is closing down reader this week.

If you read blogs and are not using a RSS feed reader you really should try using a reader. It something I can't imagine doing without.

Thankfully one of the things Google does well is to let you retrieve the data you put into there various products. So you can download your subscriptions (which you should do). But now you are left to go find a replacement.

Last year I got Reeder to improve the experience of reading my feeds. But Reeder used Google Reader as the database for blogs you subscribe. I still like them, but they have done a pretty horrible job of providing details on what you are suppose to do given the imminent demise of Google Reader. I might just drop using Reeder.

The best option I found for me, is The Old Reader (which is super easy to setup and import your Google Reader setting from). I would make sure whatever option you chose has an export option (to get your subscriptions out). Some companies do not support good export options - I would pass on those companies products (for readers and other things).

Options include:

Top choices:
• Update (2014): I now use inoreader. 
• NetNewsWire - [new addition] - free and open source RSS reader for Mac, iPhone, and iPad
  
• The Old Reader - easy import, provides export, free, web based
• Feedly - easy import, web based (and plugins), also has Android and iOS apps, can integrate with Reeder (and other front ends), $6/m (2022)
  
• Feedbin - $5 a month (2022), integrates with numerous front ends Including Reeder)
More choices:
• NewsBlur - free version (then $3+ /month), web based and iOS and Android apps.
• Reeder - iOS and Mac front end to access your feeds (looks like they are going to allow some backend options but the information is sparse (Feedly is one option)

Separated Bike Lanes Reduced Injuries by 45% and Increased Retail Sales 49% (for nearby stores)

Urban planning can greatly increase our quality of life. This report has some good ideas and shares results of tests of improvements - Measuring the Street: New Metrics for 21st Century Streets.

Results from first protected bicycle lane in the US: 8th and 9th Avenues (Manhattan):

• Injuries reduced 45%
• Retail sales increased 49% (near the new lane, compared to 3% increase for the whole "borough" - essentially the large surrounding area)

Related: The Case for Physically Separated Bike Lanes (2007) - The Rebirth of Cities - Designing Cities for People, Rather than Cars - The Economic Benefits of Walkable Communities

Police State

The USA (and maybe other countries) seem to think that police states are only police states if the police are consciously, actively, only interested in evil. Most of those creating and maintaining police states are not evil. They are just doing what they can within the system. The individual actions make sense to someone trying to do good. They just neglect liberty a bit in order to get things done and then a bit more and then a bit more but don't see themselves as creating a new police state.

The USA constitution has fairly good protections in place. McCarthyism gives a extremely clear example of the dangers when those with power allow a few to abuse the system. And we have many more than a few abusing the system now.

I doubt most of those in the KGB wanted the KGB to have more and more power to be evil. They wanted the KGB to have more and more power because they saw challenges to what the KGB wanted to accomplish and giving the KGB more power would help. And they really believed that this would be good for people. If they could just stop the troublemakers then thing would be better.

I believe most of those required to carry out the security theatre of the TSA are repulsed by what they have to do. They need a job though. And so they do what people do in those situations they justify the behavior to themselves. They attempt to justify their behavior to themselves in order to make it tolerable to participate in such behavior. Many will suffer as the attempts to mask their true feelings are far from perfect. A few will actually enjoy mistreating others. And some will not see a problem - there are plenty of people that happily go along with things many others believe they have to be corrupt to go along with (but that assumption is wrong, they see things differently and most often have overly simplistic world views that work pretty well for keeping them happy, I just do what the TSA tells me and whatever they tell me must be good because they are in charge).

Not that this is 100% of what everyone thought that everyday, but this is the main model of those police states. Sure you have a few deranged people that see a system ripe for abuse and they have power and take advantage of it. And sure, authoritarian police state administration will attract more power hungry psychopaths that don't have much respect for individual liberty. But I still think the main force is just people trying to get by and if the rules are such that authoritarianism and disrespect for individual liberty are allowed they go along because such thinking has been made acceptable (not because they think they are being evil and they like it).

The police state apparatus builds an ethos that freedom is risky and must be monitored - not to be evil - but to help. Those in the USA perpetuating the police state are not doing so to promote big brother government. They just got trapped into a system where they see the dangers of freedom and they believe they are on the site of right and good.

The danger of authoritarian government was understood. The constitution puts barriers in place to protect society. But those with power see the barriers are mere inconviences to avoid. In the last 10 years the extent of our slip into a police state has been dramatic and is critically dangerous to our society. But the most important point is once you reach a point where this is beyond all reasonable debate it is far far far too late. Corruption of liberty must be addressed early on. If the police state is allowed to grow it becomes nearly impossible to turn back. I fear we are already too late in the USA. But who knows where that fulcrum really is. Maybe we are not too late.

Totalitarian thinkers don't like freedom of citizens, so they are likely to outlaw using tech that doesn't allow the police state full access. So the most totalitarian states won't allow citizens legal access to protection from the state. My guess is many states are going to take extreme totalitarian views on this. It sure seems the USA couldn't be more totalitarianism in their current stance on this issue. It appears to be that you have no rights to freedom if technology is involved.

It is hard to separate that thinking from evil-big-brother-thinking but I think it is a mistake to think that those wanting big brother style government intrusion think they are trying to create the big-brother-government from Orwell's 1984. They have convinced themselves that really we are just trying to get a bit of information why can't you just trust us to be different than all those warnings you have that actions such as ours (police state) are bad. We are not like all those others that did it for bad reasons (either in history of literature) we are doing so because how else can we control dangerous risks. This is true for the SWAT team members crashing into innocent people's houses over and over and over. And it is true for the politicians that really seem unable to both appeal to voters and think effectively about policy.

And is probably most true for leaders of those at the DHS, NSA, FBI, CIA, NSC and in the White House. They are so fearful of all the risk and they have so much trust of their government organizations that they can't see the obvious comparison of what they have created and a police state. They know they will be blamed if catastrophes happen. Eliminating the risks of those events in the short term is nearly 100% of their focus. Concerns about individual liberty just don't enter their thoughts. They don't see themselves as big brother. They see that as ludicrous, not worthy of consideration. Certainly not something to moderate their behavior. That is the risk. That is the danger. And we have already created such a powerful police state that dialing back the big brother thinking is going to be extremely difficult, if it is possible at all.

The recent news on the NSA has sparked outrage and fear but this doesn't seem like much news to me. The police state mentality of the last 10+ years has carried with it this type of thinking. I find many of the previous revelations much more troubling than this latest one.

Related: Librarians Standing Up to the Madness (2009) - Freedom Increasingly at Risk (2008) - Security Theatre Thinking is Damaging the USA - Watching the Watchmen (2008) - Tired of Incompetent Government Harassment (2007) - Failure to Address Systemic SWAT Raid Failures (2007) - Lawmakers now use so much 1984 Orwellian speak you can't trust what they say (2005) (check them with trustworthy authorities EFF and others)

We Should Build Secure Software Systems

Once again Bruce Schneier is insightful and provides much more sensible advice than that given by the homeland-security-complex that spends billions to provide massively inconvenient and ineffective security theatre.

It's impossible to build a communications system that allows the FBI surreptitious access but doesn't allow similar access by others.

The FBI wants a new law that will make it easier to wiretap the Internet. Although its claim is that the new law will only maintain the status quo, it's really much worse than that. This law will result in less-secure Internet products and create a foreign industry in more-secure alternatives. It will impose costly burdens on affected companies. It will assist totalitarian governments in spying on their own citizens. And it won't do much to hinder actual criminals and terrorists.
...
When it comes to security, we have two options: We can build our systems to be as secure as possible from eavesdropping, or we can deliberately weaken their security. We have to choose one or the other.

Related: Governments Shouldn't Prevent Citizens from Having Secure Software Solutions - The last thing you want to do is increase the amount of hay you have to search through - Bad Security on Government Required RFID e-passports

Security Theatre Thinking is Damaging the USA

The simplistic security theatre thinking that pervades USA actions for "homeland security" is damaging to society and ineffective at providing security. Two extremely important aspects are the trumping of liberty by bureaucrats focused on theatre and their own power and control over those they are suppose to serve and disrespect for evidence based thinking.

The high school girl arrested for an school experiment gone wrong wrote a great article: Why a Science Experiment Gone Bad Doesn't Make Me a Criminal

I was really hurt and scared. I was crying. They didn't read me any rights. They arrested me after sitting in the office for a couple minutes. They handcuffed me. It cut my wrist, and really hurt sitting on my hands behind my back. They took me to a juvenile assessment center. I was sitting in this room with no clock so it felt like years of me sitting there. When my mom came, she didn't say anything. She just had this really disappointed look, and told me I lost privileges. But she's really been supportive of me. I don't know what would have happened if I didn't have my mom.

We need our watchman to care about our society. We need them to see themselves as servants of society. We don't need bullies. We need to stop accepting horrible practices from proponents of security theatre and we need to find watchmen in the vein of Sheriff Taylor not those that see SWAT teams as a sensible reaction thousands of times a year.

The security theatre and SWAT team thinking pervades our policing today. We desperately need to learn from those like former Madison, Wisconsin chief of Police, David Couper a much better way of thinking for policing society.

Related: Freedom Increasingly at Risk - Tired of Incompetent Government Harassment - The last thing you want to do is increase the amount of hay you have to search through - Exposing Bad Behavior

Governments Shouldn't Prevent Citizens from Having Secure Software Solutions

It has always seen obvious to me if you force a system to be designed to have a backdoor (to allow spying) that you have created a security hole. It seems to me these security holes are being misused all over the world by governments and others. How the FBI’s online wiretapping plan could get your computer hacked

They make it easier for the U.S. government to spy on the bad guys. But they also make it easier for the bad guys to hack our computers and spy on us. And, the researchers say, the Internet’s decentralized architecture makes it particularly hard to build effective and secure wiretapping capabilities online.

The track record of governments worldwide using these backdoors properly seems very poor to me. They make up tiny exceptions for when they will supposedly spy and then use the backdoor they created far more often. Then you have funny situations where the different governments expect their spying to be respected by everyone but don't like it if other governments want to have backdoors to allow spying themselves.

Certainly in the USA I can't see any reason why we should accept insecure software solutions because the government wants to be able to spy more readily. If they governments track record showed a respect for citizens rights maybe I would consider the tradeoff worth debating but given the realities of how poorly the government has explained their spying so far I don't see any reason to even consider crippling the security of USA citizens.

I am not as familiar with other countries - if their constitution have liberty as secondary and authoritarianism is accepted then sure crippling citizens security to make the state have an easier time of spying would be consistent. I don't see how it is arguably consistent with the US constitution.

I said, after 9-11, that if the government actually believes terrorism is a critical threat they had to extremely careful to not use fear as an excuse for non-terrorist related restrictions on liberty. Human history has shown governments abuse power. The US Constitution was created with this in mind. If you want to have citizens except restrictions on liberty their is an huge duty to provide evidence you are not just going to be like almost every other instance where government abused the power. Failing to do so, would mean people have to restrict government abuse, even at the risk of security.

The obligation was on government to show how seriously they took the risk to behave differently and not abuse the power they had. Instead the last two administration have been worse than any other (with the possible exception of the Nixon administration) with respect to abusing the liberty of citizens. This is a very sad state of affairs. They have chosen to rely on the ability of fear mongering, hiding behind false claims of "necessary secrecy" and the ability so many previous governments have had to take away liberty and get away with it (McCarthyism, KGB, all sorts of dictators that either the USA supported or apposed over the last 50 years and many many more). The problem with this option is that the citizens suffer while the bureaucracies get what they want. This isn't a good model. And it means thinking people should appose the government as they attempt to impose such models on their country.

Both administrations have done an absolutely atrocious job of making the case they would avoid political and authoritarian abuse while claiming terrorist justify the governments actions (Orwellian "Free Speech Zones" violate the constitution, Systemic SWAT RAID Failures, Watching the Watchmen, 2/3rd of USA Population Lives in Limited Constitutional Rights Zone According the Obama Administration - the DoJ is secretly enabling AT&T and others to evade wiretapping laws, Bikinis For Liberty, Our Internet Surveillance State, Justice Department Subpoena of AP Journalists Shows Need to Protect Calling Records). They consistently abuse liberty, using fear mongering and have lost any reasonable claim that their claims should treated as trust-worthly without much more evidence than they have been providing. Sadly it is not surprising that neither administration could put the security of the country before their personal interests, but the evidence is clear that they did not do so.

That evidence means we risk further losses to liberty without any evidence that security (rather than politics and the frequent tendency for bureaucracies to desire absolute power) will be enhanced.

I do think lots of great things are done to fight real threats. And those had been done for decades prior to 9-11. Some of the additional measures after 9-11 were wise. Huge amounts of the efforts are mainly about security theatre and gaining bureaucrats power at the expense of the liberty of citizens. This path is not one we should continue to reward. Sadly we currently are mainly going along with the politicians who have a long track record of being anti-liberty.

Relying on demagoguery and people accepting the government taking away their liberty does have a long history of working for governments. Relying on that risks the citizens getting so tired of government abuse of liberty that the citizens react by not only taking away the governments power to judiciously use power but take away significant sensible powers from government also. I fear that is where we are headed. This is the result of two administrations failing to take security seriously and instead just behaving as so many governments have in the past to amass bureaucratic power at the expense of citizens and the country.

It is a lot to ask those in government to put the well being of the country above the human nature to abuse power. It has certainly been far too much for the last two administrations to make it a priority to prevent abuse because the risks of doing so were so high.

The anti-liberty side is definitely winning. I hope we turn it around before I have to see how people must have felt as they experienced similar failures of will in the past (such as McCarthyism). But I think we may well have already past that point. It is just a matter of time before we have the distance of time to acknowledge and accept how horribly we have failed yet again to prevent abuse of power to go to extremes that are nearly incomprehensible looking back on them later. I remember thinking how unbelievably pitiful it was that the USA allowed McCarthyism to take place, yet not much later we are well on our way to repeating the same types of failures (though, as always, the exact clothing the abuse of power takes is somewhat different).

Related: Librarians Standing Up to the Madness - Preaching False Ideas to Men Known to be Idiots - Freedom Increasingly at Risk - Liberty Again Denied, It is Sad How Little We Seem to Care

Universities Again Abandon Fans/Mission to Increase Pay to Administrative Staff/Coaches

If a business wants to limit access in order to increase revenue that is their choice.  When a university wants to limit access to their sports teams to increase revenue that is their choice.  But what really happens with all the millions of increased revenue schools get from football and basketball?  Essentially it goes to pay coaches and staff more money.  And they can spend more on fancy weight rooms and the like.  That is it.  

The schools don't use the millions to lower the ever increasing costs students must pay.  They don't tell donors to stop giving money because they have gotten so much by selling rights to athletics.  They don't lower the price of tickets to the games - in fact they mainly have raised them.

So the tradeoff for schools in deciding to remove March Madness games (including in the NCAA final four) and bowl games from broadcast television to massively overpriced cable TV is the tradeoff between fans and paying coaches and administrators even more than the extremely large salaries they get now (many university football programs have many assistant coaches paid more than any professors at the school).

Blocking alumni and fans from watching on broadcast TV by limiting those who can watch to those paying massively inflated cable TV bill makes perfect sense for a business trying to maximize the income they can take from fans.  I have enjoyed college basketball and put up with the greedy behavior by the administrators and coaches of these programs but I think it is time to give up and focus on other sources of recreation.

I have given up on others who seek to maximize their income to such an extent it destroys the experience.  I think the level of greed from the coaches and staff that have gotten the schools to put huge payments to those people above alumni and fans has risen to such a level as to make even college basketball (which I really liked) not worth the time.  It is a sad state of affairs.

TBS will now air national semifinals in 2014, ’15

CBS and Turner announced Tuesday that the 2014 and 2015 national semifinals would be aired on TBS rather than CBS.
...
Cable subscription fees, which over-the-air networks don’t collect, are a driving factor in who can afford these rights and why prices for them keep climbing. As long as all cable viewers, regardless of interest in sports, continue to subsidize sports watchers, this is how things are going to work.

Related: Penn State Scandal is Horrendous and Points to the Very Deep Corruption of Our Leaders - Many schools continue on the ego driven spiraling costs - Harvard Steps Up Defense Against Abusive Journal Publishers

It is Refreshing to See Our Government Protecting Us

I have been very disappointed for at least 2 decades in how little interest our attorneys general and judges have in protecting citizens for abuse by those using fraud and abusing the legal system to harm people and society.

One judge has done a great job investigating abuse he suspected.  His suggestion that those responsible be tried criminally might get action due to the publicity involved.  But I wouldn't be amazed to see once again the abuse ignored by those who are tasked with protecting society from such abuse.  I hope my fears prove to be un-warrented.

Prenda hammered: Judge sends porn-trolling lawyers to criminal investigators

In today's order, Wright finds that:

• Prenda shell companies like AF Holdings and Ingenuity 13 were created "for the sole purpose of litigating copyright-infringement lawsuits." They have no assets other than the pornographic movies they sue over. And despite their legal trickery using offshore vehicles, "the Principals [Steele, Hansmeier, and Paul Duffy] are the de facto owners and officers."
• Their strategy of identifying IP numbers, issuing subpoenas to ISPs, and sending demand letters offering to settle for about $4,000 "was highly successful because of statutory-copyright damages, the pornographic subject matter, and the high cost of litigation." Steele, Hansmeier and Duffy got "proceeds of millions of dollars due to the numerosity of Defendants." And Wright added, "No taxes have been paid on this income."
• The Prenda lawyers engaged in "vexatious litigation designed to coerce settlement." They showed little desire to actually fight when a "determined defendant" showed up. "Instead of litigating, they dismiss the case," notes Wright. "When pressed for discovery, the Principals offer only disinformation—even to the Court."
...

• Wright concludes: "Plaintiffs’ representations about their operations, relationships, and financial interests have varied from feigned ignorance to misstatements to outright lies. But this deception was calculated so that the Court would grant Plaintiffs’ early-discovery requests, thereby allowing Plaintiffs to identify defendants and exact settlement proceeds from them. With these granted requests, Plaintiffs borrow the authority of the Court to pressure settlement."

The harshest penalties are saved for last. First, Judge Wright suggests the Prenda lawyers should be disbarred, writing "there is little doubt that Steele, Hansmeier, Duffy, [and] Gibbs suffer from a form of moral turpitude unbecoming an officer of the court." In many states, including California, crimes reaching the standard of "moral turpitude" lead to automatic disbarment. Wright will be referring the four lawyers to every state bar in which they are admitted to practice.

Related: Police Failing to Enforce Law If Lawbreaker is a Police Officer - Watching the Watchmen - Capital One Bank Agrees to Refund $150 Million to 2 Million Customers and Pay $60 Million in Fines - Don't Excuse Immoral Looters - Disregard for Society by FedEX and UPS - Businesses Tell the IRS They Are Not American but Executives Stay in USA

Blind justice - Why have so few bankers gone to jail for their part in the crisis?, The Economist magazine

For better or worse, many people would love to see more bankers behind bars for their role in blowing up the West’s financial system. In Britain not one senior banker has faced criminal charges relating to the failure of his institution. A handful have faced the lesser sanction of being barred from running another bank or company, or agreeing in settlements with regulators not to do so.
The prosecutorial coyness of British and American authorities contrasts with the harder-charging approach taken by their predecessors and by authorities elsewhere. During America’s savings-and-loans (S&L) crisis in the 1980s more than 800 bankers were jailed. A decade later directors of Barings, a British bank that was felled by the rogue trader Nick Leeson, were barred from holding directorships despite having no direct connection to his wrongdoing. Other countries, such as Iceland and Germany, have taken a more muscular approach in this crisis.
...
But if locking people up for incompetence goes too far, regulators could still get a lot tougher. Summary justice isn’t desirable. Some justice is.

Like so many instances the connection between those giving large amounts of cash to politicians and favorable treatment seems to indicate the obvious - that people are buying favors for all the cash they give. Some times that amounts to favorable tax treatment, subsidizing mansions built in dangerous areas (flood plains or in the path of hurricanes). Sometimes that amounts to using the justice system as an arm of corporate policy. Sometimes that amounts to not prosecuting, or even seriously investigating, illegal acts committed by those that give lots of cash while prosecuting plenty of others (the USA has over 2 million people, .7% of the population, in prison and jail - far more than anywhere else - also nearly 5 million more are on probation or parole).

The last thing you want to do is increase the amount of hay you have to search through

Continually growing the "security-inustrial-complex" decreases safety. Bruce Schneier again explains the insecurity our leaders are creating with their poor understanding of how to make society safer.

Piling more data onto the mix makes it harder, not easier. The best way to think of it is a needle-in-a-haystack problem; the last thing you want to do is increase the amount of hay you have to search through. ... Before we start blaming agencies for failing to stop the Boston bombers, and before we push "intelligence reforms" that will shred civil liberties without making us any safer, we need to stop seeing the past as a bunch of obvious dots that need connecting.

Sadly it is not only security we sacrifice due to our leaders failures but also the core principles our nation supposedly stands for: "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness."

It also wastes huge amounts of money to create security theatre that we don't have to waste. That we allow so many billions to be used to deny our liberty and decrease our safety is disastrous.

Related: The TSA doesn’t give a hoot about security - Society is being shaped for us while we are busy making other plans - Liberty Again Denied, I am Sad at How Little We Seem to Care - Anti Liberty Sentiment in Congress

Good Journalism Aids Society by Shining the Light on Corruption

Journalists do a great deal of good, even if much of what their employers publish is useless (or worse). In this example, Journalists at the Sun Sentinel wrote a 3 part series documenting

the shocking behavior of law enforcement officers behind the wheel. The reporters found nearly 800 officers who reached speeds of 90-130 mph, many of them while off duty. The accidents caused by officers driving at high speeds had caused at least 320 crashes since 2004, killing or maiming 21 people.

That police departments cover up abuse by their own to the public is pitiful. So many good police officers serve these systems that are failing to stop criminal behavior against the public. It shouldn't fall to journalist to protect the public, but when the police perpetrate such bad practices journalists are a potential protection to the public. If we don't support real journalism we risk great damage to our society.

Related: Real Journalism Exposes Bail Bond Corruption - Tired of Incompetent Government Harassment - SWAT Raids are Failing Society Systemic - Watching the Watchmen - Society is being shaped for us while we are busy making other plans - USA Falls to 47th in Press Freedom Ranking

PageRank MozPageAuthority for Various Sites - February 2013

Google pagerank is a measure of the number and importance of pages that are linking to the page (with the public page rank lowered by Google if they don't like some things the site/page does). One measure obviously has huge limitations for capture the nature or value of any page (for more info see previous post).  But it does tell you something.  But I still find it fun to look at the pagerank values - except when they go down for my sites :-(  Now I also track the similar Moz Page Authority and can take some solace if the MozPA goes up :-)

I didn't pay much attention at first to the SEO Moz ranking details.  I tried to figure out what they were measuring then gave up because it wasn't clear and figured MozRank must be the equivalent of pagerank.  Well MozRank isn't (I still can't figure out what it is a measure of - maybe primarily just measuring links without factoring in the "authority" the links) but anyway Moz Page Authority is the measure that is equivalent to Google PageRank.  So in the chart below the MozRank is shown inside [ ] for October 2011, while Jan 2013 I updated to MozPA /10 (because SEO Moz also decided to scale MozPA up to 100 while Google PageRank caps out at ten).

Site	Feb 2013 [MozPA]	Oct 2011	April 2011	Dec 2010	Dec 2008	July 2008
PageRank 5 and MozPA > 5
Curious Cat Management Blog	5 [6.3]	5 [5.5]	5	4	3	3
Curious Cat Engineering and Science Blog	5 [6.1]	6 [5.3]	6	4	5	5
John Hunter	5 [5.3]	4 [5.4]	4	4	4	4
Management Dictionary*	5 [5.2]	5 [5.4]	5	4	3	3
PageRank 4 and MozPA > 5
Curious Cat Investing and Economics Blog	4 [5.9]	4 [5.3]	4	3	4	4
Curiouscat.com	4 [5.4]	4 [5.6]	5	4	3	3
Curious Cat Management Improvement Connections*	4 [5.4]	5 [5.5]	5	4	3	3
The W. Edwards Deming Institute Blog	4 [5.2]	-	-	-	-	-
Curious Cat Travel Photo Blog	4 [5.1]	3 [4.9]	3	-
Six Sigma Management Resources*	4 [4.9]	4 [5.0]	4
Public Sector Continuous Improvement Site*	4 [5.1]	5 [5.0]	5	4
Investment Dictionary*	4 [5.0]	4 [5.2]	4
PageRank 4 and MozPA > 5
CSS 4 Free	4 [4.9]	4 [5.4]	4	4	4	5
PDSA Improvement Cycle*	4 [4.9]	4 [4.9]	4
Lean Management Resources*	4 [4.9]	4 [5.0]	4	4
Mortgage Rate Article*	4 [4.7]	4 [3.8]	4
The Future is Engineering*	4 [4.6]	4 [4.7]
The Engineer That Made Your Cat a Photographer*	4 [4.4]	4 [4.7]	5	4	3
Curious Cat Code (programming)	4 [4.3]	4 [4.2]	0	0
Management Articles*	4 [4.3]
Curious Cat Gadgets	4 [4.3]	-	-
externs.com - internship directory	4 [4.4]	4 [5.2]	4	4	4	4
Living in Singapore	4 [4.3]	3 [4.0]	-
Architecture and home design inspiration	4 [4.2]	-	-
Life and Legacy of William Hunter (my father)	4 [4.1]	4 [4.5]	4	4	4
Living in Malaysia	4 [4.2]	3 [4.1]	-
Management and Leadership Quotes	4 [4.0]	2 [5.2]	2	2
Statistics for Experimenters	4 [3.9]	3 [4.5]	3	4	3	4
Curious Cat Web Directory	4 [3.6]	4 [4.7]	**	3	3	4
Management Matter (my book)*	4 [3.5]	-	-	-	-	-
Alumni Connections*	4 [2.6]	4 [5.0]	4	4	4	5
PageRank 3 and MozRank > 3
Deming's Management Method*	3 [5.0]	4 [4.5]	4	4
Credit Card Tips*	3 [4.8]	4 [4.6]	3
Curious Cat Management Comments	3 [4.5]
Rocky Mountain National Park photos*	3 [4.3]	4 [4.8]	4	3	-	2
Multi Site PageRank Checker	3 [4.1]	3 [4.7]	2	2	1	3
Good Process Improvement Practices*	3 [4.1]	3 [4.1]
Hexawise Software Testing Blog	3 [4.0]	-	-	-	-
Curious Cat Comments (this blog)	3 [4.0]	- [3.8]	-		3	3
Management Improvement Resources	3 [3.4]	3 [3.8]	3	3	3
Best Research University Rankings*	3 [3.4]	3 [3.8]	3	3	4
Curious Cat Travel Destinations	3 [3.2]	-	-	-	-	-
PageRank 2 and MozRank > 2
Parfrey's Glen, Wisconsin Photos	2 [3.6]	2 [3.8]	2	2	-
Johor Bahru Real Estate	2 [3.2]	-	-
Curious Cat Travel Destinations: Marina Bay Sands (Singapore)	2 [3.0]	-	-	-	-	-
Hexawise.tv	2 [2.9]	-	-	-	-	-
No PageRank
My Kiva page	u [6.2]	- [4.0]	-			3
Economic Strength Through Technology Leadership***	u [4.5]	4 [4.7]	5	4	4
CuriousCat Wordpress	u [3.6]	-	-	-	-	-
Justin Hunter (my brother)	u [3.4]	2 [2.9]	2	2	2
Curious Cat Travel Destinations: France	u [1.9]	-	-	-	-	-
Curious Cat Travel Destinations: Australia	u [1.8]	-	-	-	-	-

* internal pages
** new url, old url forwarded
- didn't exist yet
u unranked
[blank] I don't know what the pagerank was, sometimes the site didn't exist yet.

***I have noticed my high pagerank blog posts can be at PR of 4 for years and then have no page rank at all. Meanwhile MozPA doesn't seem to disappear the authority of those page. The PageRank can often reappear in another update (I even think they may come back in between updates but I might be mistaken).

 Related: Google Page Rank Updates for November 2012 - Google and Links - Using Twitter Data to Improve Search Results

Living Abroad

One lesson that many people learn is that everywhere has idiots and jerks.  Everywhere has things some people like and those same people don't like.  While thinking of escaping, it is often easy to ignore (or be ignorant of) the things you won't like about the place you are going to.  It isn't as easy to ignore the things you don't like about where you are now.

Characteristics that has a huge bearing on whether someone enjoys being abroad or not is tolerance for what they don't enjoy and excitement at exploring new and different things.  Also it is helpful if you are not looking for someone that is missing annoyances and instead looking for somewhere to enjoy for a while.

A few people do find the perfect place for them, where all the common annoyances of that place happen to line up with stuff that person doesn't care about and all the things they most enjoy are present and abundant.  But most of the time you will find places that are possible to enjoy but that also have plenty of flaws.

I am living in Malaysia and it has many advantages for me but it is not perfect.  I find it a huge advantage to be in a new place.  I like a break from some of the annoyances of home.

I really like being able to travel around SE Asia (though I have been doing much too little of that - my plan is to do more in 2013).  Of course my plan was to do more traveling in 2012 than I did.  I think the prospects for 2013 are better, but we will see.


 Related: More tolerant not more considerate - Travel to Cambodia: Angkor Wat... - Travel to Indonesia: Borobudur... - Travel to Thailand: Khao Lak... - I Want Out subreddit

Decades of Failure by Those Responsible for USA Health Care System Needs to be Addressed

The reasons for the failures of the USA health care system are complex. Given decades of failure those with leadership positions (hospitals, doctors, politicians, insurers) all have failed. Drug companies I would put below those 4 (they mainly just take advantage of lots of weak politicians to buy bad policy, for the country, that favors drug companies). Exactly what percentage of the failure to put at each groups footstep is hard to judge, but the collective failure is obvious. It is something we couldn't afford in 1980 and the damage to us grows every year. The USA health care system costs twice as much as other rich countries and the results are mediocre. Big business has some responsibility but mainly they just have ignored the problem and not done anything to help (versus actually intentionally sustaining the broken system). Voters have a huge responsibility for decades of re-electing those that maintain the broken system.

Related: International Health Care System Performance - Overview of 5 Nations Health Care Systems - USA Health Care System Remains Broken, Neglected

Reasonable Accommodations Becoming Unreasonable

Reasonable Accommodation: A Cautionary Tale

The slippery slope is a familiar one for any HR pro. Company values talented employee, stretches to make accommodation, then things go south. Attendance is usually the issue front and center, and due to the knowledge of the disability in question, the accommodation that was made, etc, things fester. Decisions aren't made. The employee states that yes, they didn't show up as expected, but that's part of the condition in question.

Of course, not coming to work was never part of the reasonable accommodation. But the accommodation provides an official awareness of the condition/disability in question, so dealing with the situation is now a legal mess that takes time.

That's called a slippery slope where I come from. Or "holding the bag".

Which means the next time around, willingness to make a reasonable accommodation from the hiring manager or HR pro is much more limited. There's a business to run.

Note that I am aware of many, many talented individuals with disabilities who are among the best employees at their company. But the slippery slope outlined above happens more than anyone wants to admit, which is why you see so much resistance on the accommodation front.

Good thoughts. The biggest problem is that of going to extremes which are often encouraged by the way the legal system works. The larger the consequences of extreme measures the more likely people will want to avoid them.

I think most people would like to see reasonable accommodations. Often bureaucracies get tied to their normal procedures and could use more flexibility.

It is a reality that if those who are part of a interest group you care about expand the demands to far then people will just choose to remove dealing with that group at all. It might not be fair but as you say people learn from their experiences. I think those who advocate a certain interest and don't speak out against abuses of that interest make a mistake. Without limiting the unreasonable measure people just learn to realize if they start down the slippery slope they will be stuck with unreasonable demands. So they will just seek to avoid it - even if that means denying those who wouldn't be unreasonable opportunities.

Another example of this type of slippery slope is when unions stop supporting what is in the interests of all workers and instead defend workers that are abusing all the other workers by not doing their job. I know my experiences have made me much less sympathetic to unions after I saw their behavior was to reward unreasonable behavior and punish the workers (most of them) that were trying to do a good job by making them carry along workers that were just abusing the system. Unions still have a place if they would just focus on providing value to workers but they seem to often think they need to defend anyone (no matter how unreasonable) if that person is against what to many unions see as their enemy - management. Unions should see that they need to protect workers not just from abuses by management but from abuses by other workers that are being unreasonable.

Related: Action Is More Important Than Sympathy - Society is being shaped for us while we are busy making other plans - Acting Consiterately

Page Rank Updates for November 2012

The pagerank google displays is mainly a fun measure, rather than a measure of much importance. But I still find it fun to look at the pagerank values - except when they go down for my sites :-(  Now I also track the similar MozRank and can take some solace if the MozRank goes up :-)

Pagerank is a value given to the links coming into a web page on a logarithmic scale. So a PR of 2 is 10 times greater than PR 1 and 100 less than PR 4. MozRank is a similar measure, developed by a separate company that is updated much more frequently. See more details on this topic in my previous post: Google PageRank and MozRank of some of my pages (Oct 2011).

Google updates the visible PageRank occasionally (often about every 3 months). The real pagerank Google updates much more frequently (it is only the pagerank shared with the rest of us that is only updated occasionally.

Check the current pagerank on your sites using our related site: Multiple Site PageRank checker.

Site	Nov 2012 [MozRank]	Oct 2011	April 2011	Dec 2010	Dec 2008	July 2008
PageRank 5 and MozRank > 5
Curious Cat Management Blog	5 [5.6]
Curious Cat Engineering and Science Blog	5 [5.6]	6 [5.3]	6	4	5	5
John Hunter	5 [5.5]	4 [5.4]	4	4	4	4
CSS 4 Free	5 [5.5]	4 [5.4]	4	4	4	5
Management Dictionary*	5 [5.2]	5 [5.4]	5	4	3	3
Public Sector Continuous Improvement Site*	5 [4.8]	5 [5.0]	5	4
PageRank 4 and MozRank > 5
Curiouscat.com	4 [5.6]	4 [5.6]	5	4	3	3
Curious Cat Management Improvement Connections*	4 [5.4]	5 [5.5]	5	4	3	3
Curious Cat Investing and Economics Blog	4 [5.4]	4 [5.3]	4	3	4	4
Investment Dictionary*	4 [5.3]	4 [5.2]	4
externs.com - internship directory	4 [5.2]	4 [5.2]	4	4	4	4
Management and Leadership Quotes	4 [5.1]	2 [5.2]	2	2
Alumni Connections*	4 [5.1]	4 [5.0]	4	4	4	5
Curious Cat Travel Photo Blog	4 [5.0]	3 [4.9]	3	-
Credit Card Tips*	4 [5.0]	4 [4.6]	3
Lean Management Resources*	4 [5.0]	4 [5.0]	4	4
Curious Cat Code (programming)	4 [5.0]	4 [4.2]	0	0
Curious Cat Gadgets	4 [5.0]	-	-
PageRank > 4 and MozRank < 5
Six Sigma Management Resources*	4 [4.9]	4 [5.0]	4
Economic Strength Through Technology Leadership*	4 [4.9]	4 [4.7]	5	4	4
Living in Malaysia	4 [4.9]	3 [4.1]	-
Statistics for Experimenters	4 [4.8]	3 [4.5]	3	4	3	4
The Future is Engineering*	4 [4.8]	4 [4.7]
Living in Singapore	4 [4.8]	3 [4.0]	-
5	5
PDSA Improvement Cycle*	4 [4.7]	4 [4.9]	4
Curious Cat Web Directory	4 [4.7]	4 [4.7]	**	3	3	4
Architecture and home design inspiration	4 [4.7]	-	-
Life and Legacy of William Hunter (my father)	4 [4.6]	4 [4.5]	4	4	4
Management Matter (my book)*	4 [4.6]	-	-	-	-	-
Multi Site PageRank Checker	4 [4.6]	3 [4.7]	2	2	1	3
Mortgage Rate Article*	4 [4.5]	4 [3.8]	4
Management Articles*	4 [4.4]
PageRank 3 and MozRank > 3
The Engineer That Made Your Cat a Photographer*	3 [4.9]	4 [4.7]	5	4	3
Hexawise Software Testing Blog	3 [4.9]	-	-	-	-
Curious Cat Travel Destinations	3 [4.8]	-	-	-	-	-
Rocky Mountain National Park photos*	3 [4.8]	4 [4.8]	4	3	-	2
Deming's Management Method*	3 [4.6]	4 [4.5]	4	4
Best Research University Rankings*	3 [4.4]	3 [3.8]	3	3	4
Curious Cat Management Comments	3 [4.1]
Curious Cat Comments (this blog)	3 [4.1]	- [3.8]	-		3	3
Management Improvement Resources	3 [4.0]	3 [3.8]	3	3	3
The W. Edwards Deming Institute Blog	3 [3.8]	-	-	-	-	-
Good Process Improvement Practices*	3 [3.8]	3 [4.1]
PageRank 2 and MozRank > 2 (or no MozRank for new pages)
Johor Bahru Real Estate	2 [4.7]	-	-
Curious Cat Travel Destinations: Marina Bay Sands (Singapore)	2 [4.5]	-	-	-	-	-
Justin Hunter (my brother)	2 [4.0]	2 [2.9]	2	2	2
Parfrey's Glen, Wisconsin Photos	2 [3.7]	2 [3.8]	2	2	-
CuriousCat Wordpress	2 [3.1]	-	-	-	-	-
No PageRank
My Kiva page	u [4.0]	- [4.0]	-			3
Hexawise.tv	-	-	-	-	-	-
Curious Cat Travel Destinations: Australia	u [3.6]	-	-	-	-	-
Curious Cat Travel Destinations: France	u [3.6]	-	-	-	-	-

* internal pages
** new url, old url forwarded
- didn't exist yet
u unranked
[blank] I don't know what the pagerank was, sometimes the site didn't exist yet.

Related: PageRank Updates for August 2012 - Web Page Authority - Google's Search Results - Should Factors Other Than User Value be Used

Capitalist Markets v. Markets Investors Want for Their Companies

A Failure of Markets and Other Observations from Asia by Kevin Meyer

Observing how capitalism is thriving in supposedly communist countries is interesting. China is an easy example, and many argue that capitalism is now more vibrant in China than in the U.S.. I thought Laos would be different, but it’s not. Markets thrive (even when shopkeepers are asleep) and entrepreneurial folks are setting up new shops and services to get tourists to part with their dough.

Even in the boonies there are stories. Such as the tiny Hmong village downriver from Luang Prabang. A collection of thatched one-room huts with dirt floors… each with a TV. TV? Power? The government didn’t bring power to the outlying villages. An entrepreneur came up with a way to pay for the infrastructure, deliver power to people with no money but with rice to barter, and make a profit. The “people’s” government frowns but tolerates it.

As an economics major one of the things that annoys me is that the biggest difference between capitalism and what we have has nothing to do with what the politicians talk about (too many regulations or whatever).  The theory of capitalism fundamentally relies on "perfect competition" which essentially means no-one has "market power."  If anyone tries to charge more than the market rate people will just buy from the next place.  The markets are a extremely good example of this.

In the west I would say a vast majority of transactions are done with businesses that have huge market power (often sustained by government action and government failure to restrict businesses from creating market power) - (Verizon, Comcast, GM, Google, Apple, Sony, Toyota, Exxon, United, Fed Ex, Bank of America, NBC, Visa, American Express...).

As a businessman perfect competition is horrible.  You can't get huge profit margins with perfect competition.

There is a difference between market power based on monopolistic tendencies (which is most of the problem currently) and price differentiation based on better offerings.  Looking at say why Four Seasons can charge a great deal to those that can afford it.

Businesses want to grab market power in every possible way.  Adam Smith understood the danger in businesses using this to sap the societal benefit of free markets.  The current politicians don't even understand that.  But even if they did it wouldn't matter.  They are not interested in capitalism they are interested in whoever can give them the biggest stacks of cash.  And those with market power (almost always aided by past acts and refusals to act by the government) have the most cash to give the politicians).

The beautiful nature of capitalism to provide the economic benefits to society is most easily enhanced by reducing market power and increasing competition.  Sadly it is almost diametrically opposed by our political nature to allow those with the gold to make the rules.

As an investor looking for companies that have market power (which has great overlap with Buffett's "moat") is wise.

I love some of the solutions to get electricity to those in need: Solar Power Market Solutions For Hundreds of Millions Without Electricity - We Need to be More Capitalist and Less Cronyist - Anti-Market Policies from Our Talking Head and Political Class.

Follow Wise Advice

Comments on: Leading By Example and Some Mistaken Beliefs I agree that you should follow your own advice. I tend to like to look at things a bit different than others. The advice you give is not uncommon - be honest, be consistent, don't be a hypocrite. Good advice. One of the things I find funny is that everyone accepts that people are excused from following your advice if you don't. I think that is stupid. If your parents tell you not to smoke but they smoke. There advice is equally good. They are less good than a person that is wise enough to follow that advice. But the advice itself isn't any more or less good based on whether the person giving it follows it, or not. I find it much more sensible to evaluate advice based on whether it is wise than based on whether the person providing it is wise (or foolish) enough to follow the advice. Related: Do What You Say You Will - Arguing For Different Policies Doesn't Mean You Have to Change Behavior Before the Policies Are Adopted - Performance without Appraisal

The Wonder and Curiosity of Children

The Birth of the Scientific Method

She examined the box empty, and examined it again with all the jacks inside it. She picked up one jack on the palm of her hand, and held it out to me, saying, “Dat?” (Which is her request for information about a thing). I said, “That’s a jack.” “Jahk,” she said. And she said it again, touching various jacks: “Jahk, jahk.” 

As I sat watching her, I realized in a way I hadn’t since my own kids were small that play at this age is entirely purposeful. She was learning everything she could about those objects and how they worked. She was creating and testing hypotheses as fast as her little fingers could try them out.

I love experiencing the curiosity of kids. It is so pure and wonderful. They see the world and want to understand it. You are absolutely right about how deeply this curiosity is within us. Sadly we can still have it stomped out by our lives. It doesn't have to be, but it often is. And I think we miss that wonder, even if we don't know that is what we are missing.

I have written about this topic on my science blog: Growing Curious Children - Naturally Curious Children - Sarah, aged 3, Learns About Soap - Playing Dice and Children’s Numeracy

Fruitful melding of advanced theory and technology

I like this sentence, and think it is conveys meaning.  From  Google Spanner's Most Surprising Revelation: NoSQL Is Out And NewSQL Is In

Only Google solved the problems in a typically Googlish way, through the fruitful melding of advanced theory and technology.

That statement does a good job of capturing Google's strength and weakness.  I think Google is not very good at solutions that are not the combination of those two items (with a bit of an engineering mindset focused on maximum economic benefit thrown in).  It seems to me Google wants an "unbiased" measure of performance and uses profit in that way (this is my view as an outsider).

Google has continued to struggle greatly with customer focus, as I see it.  It might be we need to get much better academic research on the value of customer care before Google will be able to adopt strategies consistent with valuing customer service - more than the throw away way they general do now.

Research fits Google's theory and technology focus.  Once it can be arguably be measured in the marketplace I think Google gets uncomfortable.  They plug away, but it seems like they are out of their natural element in this situation - until it is easy to find market measures of value.  Some things immediately go from research to production.  Some things have to be developed quite a bit - I think Google gets uncomfortable in this space, they want to hurry up and let the market tell them: and not have to rely on judgement of people doing the work.

Google's appreciation for theory is shared by leading thinkers at the most innovative organization of the last 100 years (Bell Labs etc.) but in most organizations MBA's hold sway and MBA's (in general) don't have a clue about the value of theory.  

I think the MBA's failure to understand the value of theory is largely is due to the failure of basic scientific literacy in our society.  Which then leads to people confusing theory in a scientific context and theory in a I have this odd ball idea I thought up in the shower last night that I call a "theory."  Disrespecting the 2nd kind of theory is fine.  When you can't understand the difference between a well supported theory and ignorant pontification that is a big problem.


Related: Richard Feynman Explains the PDSA Cycle - The Illusion of Knowledge - Bogus Theories, Bad for Business

Reducing Corruption

Corruption is a significant problem.  It directly reduces the lifestyle people deserve and it greatly impacts economic progress.  Poor countries often are hampered by a large amount of petty corruption and large political corruption.

It seems to me corruption normally reduce as more wealth is created in the society.  As more people have power it is harder to enforce petty corruption against them.  And the effort taken to extract corrupt gains can be productively deployed more effectively to get higher gains doing less corrupt things.  So if you are competent you go earn money by providing value.  Leaving bozos and super lazy people to be corrupt who are not very good at anything they try so they are lame at being corrupt too.

Obviously this doesn't work perfectly but it seems to me that the correlation between wealth (especially with good wealth distribution) and reduced corruption is high.  It is true this is a dynamic process and what leads to what is not as clear - as one gets better normally the other does.

I do believe one good strategy is just to pursue economic growth and good things will happen.  It can be pretty ugly at first - it might not seem to be working.  One thing that happens is there is so much more wealth that at first corruption can seem to be growing because the corrupt are richer than ever.  But I think, even then, the level of corruption is really going down.  It is a lower proportion of the economy even though it grows in absolute terms at first.  Over time 10-20 (or more) years significant declines are made as those with power are not willing to tolerate systems burdened by huge levels of corruption.

A free press is a huge help.  Strong support for entrepreneurs is a huge help (versus big established businesses that can actually use corruption to suppress competition - this happens still in the USA all the time, using the congress to create and allow monopolistic markets for your industry).

Petty corruption is the type that is most easily reduced by wealth. The corruption that is more easily hidden with back-room deals are tougher to reduce. In my view this type of systemic corruption has increased in the USA in the last 30 years. There is more and more very economically damaging practices that are only possible with the cooperation of "leaders" and the situation doesn't even seem to be a serious consideration for most people.

Petty corruption (paying cash to a police officer to get out of a ticket [or to get out of a false ticket], demanding cash to process your passport, demanding cash to approve your building permit) is not very high in the USA I don't think (or Northern Europe, Singapore, Japan...). But corrupt practices at the core of how our financial system is run, how legislation is written... are extremely damaging. So we have largely eliminated corruption from most people, but leaders seem have taken to corrupt practices with a new zeal lately - unfortunately. In the USA we can stop this whenever we want. Just vote out the corruption. But it is so institutionalized in the political parties it doesn't seem likely anytime soon.

The leaders have figured out the way to make corrupt practices palatable is to impose the burden of the corruption on society and pay the benefits to a small group that then pays the politicians for the benefit they were provided at the expense of society. For those interested in corruption in a wealthy society this is the smart model to use. So at least our leaders are smart at figuring out the best way to be corrupt given the system they are operating in. This likely means they would react sensibly if we were to vote against those politicians providing benefits to those giving them cash, at the expense of society. But until then they seem to be interested in how to maximize their gain, not in ethics or helping society.

My comment on Reddit discussion on reduction of corruption throughout history.

Related: Taking What You Don’t Deserve, CEO Style - Why Congress Won’t Investigate Wall Street - Systems Design Can Create Perverse Incentives - Society is being shaped for us while we are busy making other plans

I Don't See How the Ponzi Scheme Economy Doesn't End Badly

I am very worried about the ponzi scheme like action of the governments of the rich western countries the last 10 years.  I don't see how this is not going to end badly.

I also can't really figure out how it will end badly.  The first or second or third order effects shouldn't be too hard.  Eventually those getting the ious stop believing the ponzi creator and won't accept their promises anymore.  So then interest rates on debt sky and currencies collapse.  "Real assets" (I prefer real estate to gold) should do well.

But is the massive ponzi scheme so huge the economy breaks so completely that normal economic collapse history is useless.  Does it turn more into what happens with normally poor, corrupt, broken states?  How does that play out with the massive wealth the rich countries accumulated prior to the ponzi scheme "solutions?"  I really am not sure.

Does the failing cripple countries like Singapore, Malaysia, Brazil, Ghana, Indonesia, Korea?  The old model is the rich countries have so much wealth when they mess up they suffer a bit and others suffer a ton.  Does that happen again?  I am not so sure.

I can understand desire to avoid consequences.  That is what blew up the special favors to those giving lots of money to politicians into the ponzi scheme style in the first place.  But I don't understand how people believe this can work - just throw out more ponzi promises and avoid the consequences.

Sure something similar works fine if you can afford to just give away a bunch of money you saved for a rainy day to get through the tough times.  But we didn't.  Heck, even if you just hadn't gone hugely into debt in the boom times to give even more to those giving large amounts of cash to politicians and instead of saving for a rainy day just didn't go hugely into debt even during your boom times.  But we did go hugely into debt during the bubble times.

The USA is still extremely rich.  As is much of Europe and Japan.   But it sure seems to me that we are hugely rich but have been spending much more than we have been making by pretending these ponzi promises have actual value.  When the markets stop accepting that it sure seems like things could be VERY SCARY.  So scary and unpredictable I can't even figure out what the SAFE investment plays are.

By far the best hope is that I am just wrong about how rich we are compared to what seem like ponzi scheme promises to me.  If we are lucky the ponzi part is but a blip on top of a rich foundation.  I am very worried that the ponzi part is not a blip at all.  It is huge.

Diversity in investments helps when you are clueless (and also other times but specifically when you are clueless is important to me here).  I really can't see any way long term bonds are good now.  So that doesn't help in my opinion - of course if I am wrong about that the portfolio will suffer.

I don't like gold.  I don't like assets that are not capable of providing earnings.  For some amount of store of value if currencies lose most value fine.  But unless you are very wealthy I can't see putting much here.  Speculating in it, fine, but it seems to high to speculate to me (but I could be wrong).

Real estate I like though I am worried about what happens in a much much worse economy than we have had since the great depression.  Still putting some there is sensible to me.

A fair amount of cash just trying to not lose too much makes sense given this super risky ponzi atmosphere.  Savings account at a credit union seems the best place .  I trust the government will cover any real loses but my guess is the value of the $ will plummet if things get bad (at first it will rise as people think that is what you do in a economic crisis - buy $).  I can't see $ being the sensible thing if the ponzi scheme is no longer accepted but we will see.

Trying to figure out what companies should actually stay profitable is another sensible place.  Even if they earn less some companies will stay profitable.  While others may well go under.  Companies that have fairly low fixed costs to carry in bad times seem appealing.  I really think if companies like Google, Apple and Costco are not making actual profits things are so bad only the super lucky are doing well.  The tricky part is figuring out which companies are those that will remain profitable - I may have the theory right and still pick the wrong companies.  I would definitely be diversified globally (and Apple and Google do that for you, among other things).

Obviously, in order to work as an investment to be valuable in a ponzi collapse the company has to be profitable in very hard times.  I think another key is they can't need outside cash - I think likely currencies would collapse and interest rates would sky.  Solid cash flow, even in hard times is key.  Small, nimble companies can do well.  That is much harder for huge companies.  But small companies can also go under quickly.  After the fact seeing the nimble smarts is often easy.  Predicting the winners in advance is hard.

I am very worried about China too.  India still refuses to get serious about reducing corruption and taking sensible steps to build infrastructure, improve education so I am not very positive there either.  It has potential but big problems.  I am most optimistic about countries growing into mid income (Malaysia, Thailand, Brazil, Ghana [early], Indonesia...) of high income (Singapore…along with Canada, Korea and Australia, maybe).

If you have good ideas for investments based on much more significant economic problems than we have seen let me know.


Related: The USA Doesn’t Understand that the 1950s and 1960s are Not a Reasonable Basis for Setting Expectations - Economic Consequences Flow from Failing to Follow Real Capitalist Model and Living Beyond Our Means - We Need to be More Capitalist and Less Cronyist - The USA Economy Needs to Reduce Personal and Government Debt

Google and Links

I have read over the years Matt Cutts (Google Guy) say that as long as you don't get paid cash other things that would have the exact same indication whether a link should be trusted are not penalized.  So if you bought the entire site and then added links to link to you (as large companies can do) that is fine (so if some large company buys a small company and then links to the corporate parent).  But paying a fee and getting links is not.

Similarly if you pay a speaker to speak at your conference and they add a link to your site I think Google says is fine.  Or if you win a scholarship and you link to the sponsor or the school from your site that is fine.  And in my opinion all 3 of those obviously should be fine.  They provide valuable insight I would want to include if I were deciding what are relevant links.

Google is trying to collect useful data from the web to make judgements for search rankings.  They decided that to make their jobs easier it would be better to stop some forms of influence in adding links.  But there are no clear sensible places to draw the lines.  So Google uses what people used to call FUD by Microsoft (casting fear, uncertainty and doubt) to aid Google's interests.

Google has a tricky task to try and decide what links to give value to.  Their decisions on how to treat certain kinds of influence seems wrong to me.  But it seems to be something they can chose to do.  Google also claims (I believe) that they don't bother to value links that would obviously provide value if those links are made nofollow by the websites (so say the links on Twitter that would obviously be useful to gage pagerank as it was discussed years ago).

Google seems to still claim that they are better off not using links that could be used by an algorithm to provide valuable insight because to do so would downplay their anti-spam efforts.  It is a hard spot they are in.   Until another search engine takes away a significant portion of their traffic I think they will stay on their current model.  If wonderfulnewsearch.com grew to 8% of the market by December I bet Google would use nofollow links to judge merits of links next to immediately.  It is a rich source of information that is being ignored.  They decide the search result quality can sustain that dilution in order to put pressure on those that try to manipulate the results by playing to the algorithms.

It is a dynamic, evolving contest where Google tries to gain insight and others try to figure out how to take advantage of how Google gains insight to gain favor for themselves.

Google can't say how people should run their businesses.  All Google says is if you link to sites in a way that we don't like we will then punish your site in our search results.  Of course that clearly means that Google is willing to provide worse results to users in the case when the best results for you as a search user are from a site that did something that Google didn't like.  As long as search users accept degrade search results Google can do this.  If degraded search results caused users to flee Google they would stop this method of trying to influence sites.

But they have a tricky balance of trying to degrade the search results just enough to force sites into being fearful of having their traffic harmed but not so much that users of the search engine get tired of the degraded results and go elsewhere.  The punishment portion is solely about the trading of worse search results to users today in order to get sites to follow the behavior Google wants to see.

The question of Google improving search results by devaluing links that are not valuable is a different, though related, question.  That doesn't result in degraded search results.  But that also has nothing to do with a site following Google's decision on where to draw the line of what is an influence that means you should mark your web links to tell Google that you don't value the page you are linking to.  Deciding how much to value links is a tricky business.  Google has a lot of money invested in doing that well.  The decided to have guidelins and punishment in search results for how links are done.  That seems to be Google's business.  If you want them to be happy with you, you follow their guidelines.  So for example if you want to get links you can do so in many ways, including many ways that are very similar to directly purchasing them but you can't do the one that is exactly directly purchasing them and not tell google that they shouldn't follow the link.

I am obviously critical of some of what Google is doing FUD :-) but I understand the difficult task they have.  I can understand the way they are trying to tilt the terms of the "game" to help them provide search results that are useful.  I am sure Google understands the points I make.  They just look at the situation and make a few calls that are slightly different than I would make.

Comment posted on: Why did our PageRank go down?

Remove Popup Ad Sites From Search Results

My feedback to DuckDuckGo:

I would like to be able to have popup ad sites flagged/removed. 

Maybe let me set no popups (then on the far right column (or something) show the sites you skipped because they are flagged as popup ads so I can click them if I don't like any of the non-user-hostile sites. 

Obviously this means getting a list of popup sites and maintaining it.  Would be a challenge but would great improve search results.  Lots of the big sites now are using popup ads (just ones that get around the users opting out of popup ads on their browser).

I would love it if the other sites (Google, Yahoo, Bing) would do this too, but Google is not likely to unless they are copying one of the others.  I understand sties want to make money by using popup ads even if they know users said don't do it (using browser settings).  This is why all the major sites now use popup ads that circumvent the browser settings).  I don't mind the sites choosing to how readable or customer unfriendly they want to be.  I just wish search engines wouldn't give me results as if popup ads are no a negative that should reduce the suggestion of using a site.

Related:  6 years Later Goolge Acts To Let Me Block Sites I don't want to see from 2011, does anyone else have this missing most of the time now? - Improvement ideas for Google (2006) - Web Search Improvements (2005)