Stunning Meomi

This is some of the nicest web design and illustration I've ever seen. These are the folks responsible for designing the mascots for the 2010 Olympics in Vancouver. Their style is, I imagine, what an LSD trip at a Japanese costume party would be like.

It’s better because you don’t even have to roll down the windows

A new biker gang is roaming the streets of Queen's. Strapped to the bikes of urban youth are huge speaks which put out 5, 000 watts of sound to the neighbourhood.

More Photos/Video/Story (NY TIMES)

via the new shelton wet/dry

Chip Shot

This weeks market action reminds me of a passage from the very excellent New Market Wizards:

“On that day, I spoke to Paul Tudor Jones, who had just returned from participating in a round table discussion sponsored by Barron's. He told me that eight out of the eight participating money managers had said they were holding their highest cash position in ten years. I'll never forget that the S&P was near 310 and Paul said, “340 is a chip shot.”

As of Friday at Noon the S&P is up 5.5% from Monday's close.

ACT-R

Act-R is a complicated and fascinating thoery of human cognition. The Carnegie Mellon University website has a series of tutorials on the subject as well as an excellent overview of the theory.

"ACT-R is a cognitive architecture: a theory about how human cognition works. On the exterior, ACT-R looks like a programming language; however, its constructs reflect assumptions about human cognition. These assumptions are based on numerous facts derived from psychology experiments."

Simons at Renaissance Cracks Code, Doubling Assets

This is easily the most interesting finance article I've ever come across:

"Nov. 27 (Bloomberg) -- On a hot afternoon in September, Renaissance Technologies LLC founder Jim Simons is too busy to take a phone call. It is, he says, from Cumrun Vafa, a preeminent Harvard University professor and expert on string theory, which describes the building blocks of the universe as extended one-dimensional filaments..."

(in the same league as this one)

Cockroach Controlled Mobile Robot

The Macroeconomics of Going Green

I think a dream scenario is unfolding for clean energy stocks in the United States. Here's why:

1. The mortgage meltdown is great news for clean energy. Thanks to lower interest rates the young companies that make up the majority of this sector have access to cheap capital for research and development and to expand their operations. These same low interest rates devalue the USD and raise the cost of energy for Americans, creating incentives to seek out alternate sources of fuel.

2. Owning clean energy stocks functions as a hedge against an oil shock scenario. If things turn ugly in the middle east and oil goes Ahamadinejad, speculative money will start flowing into this sector and offset at least some of the market risk.

3. Betting website Intrade.com gives the Democrats 65% odds of winning the next presidential election, and Hillary 70% odds of being the Democratic nominee – Hilary has a husband who has an ex. business partner who has a Nobel Prize...

4. The scale of transformation that will take place has not been seen since the industrial revolution. You thought dot com was big? You think China is big? Well guess what: this will be bigger. Imagine a scenario in which nearly every government, corporation and individual in the world makes significant changes to every aspect of their daily lives.

Jim Rogers talks about how, at the turn of the century, when everyone was talking about dot com stocks, he was looking at commodities and China. Now its 2007. Everyone is looking at commodities and China. Where are you looking?

The trick here will be not to select individual companies, because the fortunes of any one of these 5 or 10 years out is entirely unpredictable. Instead make a play on the theme. PBW, PBD...buy them all and hold on for the ride. It's a bet that will be difficult to lose.

What Really Happened to Long Term Capital Management

"Rarely in the course of human events have so few people lost so much money so quickly..."

Econbrowser: Oil and the Dollar

"The dollar falls and oil prices go up. So the two must be related, right?..."

This morning i woke up with a sore throat - Reed Barrow

Power and Terror: Noam Chomsky in Our Times

'Power and Terror', a compilation of interviews in which Noam Chomsky talks about 911 has been uploaded to YouTube in its entirety.

Scale: Glaciers in Africa & Underground Experiments

Listen to audio slideshows by photographer Simon Norfolk speaking about bringing an 8x10 camera up Kilimanjaro, capturing images of the LHC, and more.