On Fire! The Fireball Research & Marketing Blog

The Bailout: What Would Capitalists Do?

Now that it appears that all the cards are on the table, it's time to consider a few things.

1.) Where did that $700 billion number come from?  This was especially odd considering that no one could come up with the value of the companies that collapsed.  According to Paulson, he arrived at $700 billion because he needed a really big number.  Can I apply that philosophy to my checking account?

2.) Why is it that we constantly hear that socialism is bad, yet when the banks do exactly what they accuse lower income Americans of doing, i.e. being irresponsible and managing their money poorly, they run toward socialism with open arms?

3.)Can it be argued that the failed companies involved (i.e., being bailed out) were not truly capitalistic enterprises to begin with, as a capitalistic business demands that it be managed properly to as to avoid any need of government intervention?  Can it be argued then that the crime here, greed, is the real culprit?  Producing profit for the executives at all costs, including those of the shareholders, that this indeed is not capitalism, but theft?

Just wondering.  Mull this over and let me know.  On your mark, get set, go.

The Genius Pattern: What Geniuses Have In Common

Years ago when I was in high school, one of the popular science publications, I think it was Discover or possibly Scientific American, published an article on geniuses. The conclusion was that geniuses shared two things in common.

The author compared everyong from Newton and Einstein to... uh... well, other geniuses. Wile E. Coyote was excluded for obvious reasons. They tried looking at all kinds of anatomical and physiological clues and found nothing. They looked at nutrition, environment, and schooling and saw nothing across the board. But they did find two things that all geniuses appeared to do.

I am writing this as I try, in my scattered free time, to finish reading an article in Sci Am about geniuses that was published in their October 2008 issue. I decided I wanted to write about this earlier article I had read before finishing this current article so I could do a nice comparison without muddling the two together. Such as the recent studies on gene comparisons. Dang.

I know what you are thinking. You are dying to find out what those two things are. It's just killing you. You are thinking, "Just get to it! Quit Ryan Seacresting the answer and spit it out!"

Geniuses usually get into a field and produce a lot. Einstein is famous for his papers on relativity, but in reality he produced a lot more. He perfected the thought experiment, for example. This sounds like Paul Harvey's advice about not giving up and persevering. This is something everyone could do in the field of their choosing, therefore, everyone could be at least 0.5 genius.

To become a full-fledged genius, one must have widely varied pursuits outside of their chosen field. Having activities that are completely different forces one to use their brain differently. They develop that genius ability to make connections and see things that the rest of us don't.
 
An example of this can be pulled out of my experiences with the BIO 210 class I took my sophomore year of college. The course was about DNA and genetics. The more I learned about DNA, the more it appeared to operate like a railroad. DNA replication was close to a conductor reading a switch list and building his train in a yard from the cars available. DNA repair enzyme was the switcher fetching a mis-sorted car that had been placed in the wrong train. mRNA's zipping about the cell with Poly-A tails and start codons sounded just like a way freight or a transfer run with locomotives and a caboose. Unknotting the coiled up DNA strands resembled sorting out cars in a hump yard. Ribosomes reading mRNA and using tRNAs to producing a polypeptide was similar to taking an empty unit coal train to a flood loader and loading it with coal for a power plant or a steel mill. Conjunction Junction, what's your function?
 
No one in class had the experience with railroads that I had, so they pretty much had to take my word. Of course, none of them had thought of it like that, either. Genius? I don't know, but it sure made it easier.

Magic Revealed: Is It Lost Or Not?

Everyone loves watching David Copperfield. Traditionally, a magician never reveals how they did it. Supposedly, that ruins the trick. I disagree.

I love to figure out how a trick works. I love to see how a trick works. For me, the magic isn't lost. It's still there in being able to come up with the idea in the first place, and pulling off the illusion the first time around. The really good magicians then come up with a twist at the end that defies what they showed you, like dessert after a fine dinner. I usually get inspired to practice a new trick and/or design a new trick. It's fun and it exercises parts of your brain.

I thought of this topic based on Sean D'Souza's comment to my Genius blog post, that there is no such thing as genius. Well, I doubt anyone will stop calling it genius or stop being marveled by it, but I also see his point. There isn't any magic associated with genius, it's all explainable and potentially replicable. The same applies to (most) magic tricks. All explainable and potentially replicable.

Agree? Disagree? Share.

On your mark, get set, go.

Failing Your Fans

Sports marketing is, at times, different from the rest of the marketing universe.  Building a fan base may require some unique efforts, and unlike many business ventures, one's success is dependent upon team performance and other factors that do not exist in other industries, like player injuries, weather, and the success of other teams.  Boeing never lost profit due to an injury to an engineer, the weather hasn't affected McDonald's sales of french fries, and no business I can think of has depended on another company's success like the team leading its division by a narrow margin depends on the last place team to sweep their second-place division rival. 

There are a few team owners who seemingly abuse their fan base.  I see them in baseball and football, and I'm willing to bet they are in hockey, basketball, and elsewhere.  While this is good for the bottom line in the short term, it is terrible for business in the long term.  People who wreck enterprises like this shouldn't just be forced to give up their team; they should be banned from business.

Here is what these owners do.  They keep payroll extremely low.  Rather than build a team to win with talent, they focus on the cost of player salaries.  If the team wins, even better.  That's more people walking in, buying tickets and food.  If the team loses, the owner is just as happy.   Costs have been controlled.

They do not spend on free agents.  If they do, it's low cost.  That one high-priced player who might put them over the top is ignored.  Problem players are kept, or if they are cut, they are brought back to "save the team".

They lack a scouting department or have a paltry, minimal scouting department.  The emphasis is to fill the roster at the worst, or find young talent at the best.  Get the fans excited about the newest young player who is "going to" take their team to the postseason.  Once that player gets good and is eligible for free agency, he is discarded for the "next" young player to repeat the cycle.  The head coach or manager is cheap, not known for winning, and is touted as a "fresh face" or someone who can take the team in a "new direction".  It's all about keeping the ticket and merchandise sales up, keeping the fans hopeful, but refusing to reinvest in making the team a winning team.  It's business at its best, just not sports business at its best.

The business of reaching the postseason and winning it all is a big one.  It is a business that is expensive, yet yields fantastic profits.  Yet it is also a business that several team owners opt out of before the season starts.

Eventually the fans will catch on if they haven't already.  Eventually they will look elsewhere for their desire to win to some other team whose owner "gets it".  And their money will follow and it won't come back.  When the kids grow up not remembering their team winning big games, they will grow the fan of a different team.   The fan base will shrink slowly over the years.  The owner is probably not paying enough attention to realize this, and likely isn't smart enough to understand the disaster he has created. 

I should know.  I am one of those fans.

These owners make a fatal mistake.  They believe they are supplying the demand for sport in their regional market.  They believe the fans follow as they lead.  In reality, it is the other way around.  The fans are supply, giving the team revenue.  Without the fans, the team dies.  Without the team, the fans will go about their lives, perhaps following another team.  It is the team that is dependent and the fans who are in control, not the other way around. 

Good luck getting the fans to realize this and act accordingly.  It's much easier to cave in.

More on Tidal Energy

Why don't we have power plants on the coast generating electricity?

The moon's pull on the Earth creates an up and down movement of water we all know as tides.  This movement is free energy.  It will last as long as we have a moon (apparently crucial for the stability of this planet), it costs us nothing to use, it creates no emissions or harmful waste products (spent uranium fuel rods, anyone?), and it appears to require no complex technology.  Cheap and easy to build, it's the sort of thing we could have been doing in 1900.  So why weren't we?

Here is how I would build it, just as a rough draft.  As the tide moves up and down, the water could move a float, similar to the one in your toilet tank.  As the float moves, it could crank a turbine through a set of gears, converting vertical motion to rotational motion in the turbine.  As in conventional power plants, the spinning turbine produces an electrical current as the wire is spun within a magnetic field.  This electricity is then sent out to customers by conventional means.

I also think tidal motion is probably too slow for this to work, but it's a start.  Anyone else got any better ideas?

Training Videos

Training videos these days seem to be almost all alike.  They are chocked full of "We do not condone..." and other such statements.  Things that ought to be common sense, like not juggling babies while working with heavy machinery. 

I understand this dumbing down has its roots in the idea that if something isn't expressly forbidden in print, then it's okay to do.  I'm not sure how this idea got started, but it has taken a ten minute training video and made it a whole day.  Why do we need a video telling us that sexual harrassment is wrong if it's already against the law?  Why must I be penalized just because someone's parents failed to properly educate him or her?  Why do I consider four hours of boring videos to be a penalty?  How effective are these videos at stopping these undesirable behaviors, or, as I suspect, do they simply give the employer an easy out if someone must be fired?

For that matter, if a business forbids firearms, why must I watch ten minutes of video before I am deemed ready for the workplace?   I got it when I saw the sign on the door.  I got it with the first sentence, "Firearms are not allowed on company property."  I'll bet the woman in Fairfield, Ohio who brought a gun onto company property and shot co-workers a few years ago wouldn't have done so if she had only known that firearms weren't allowed on company property.  Of course, then there was that whole shooting part.

Spam

I saw this recent spam e-mail that I had to share.  I think it is hauntingly accurate.  Enjoy!

Halloween Costumes

On Sunday while driving to church I spied a billboard that made me think.  It was advertising Hallloween costumes.  I listed three kinds in stock at the store: Scary, Sexy, and Silly.

The first and the third ones I get (for small children, Casper the Ghost, et al.).  But sexy?  Whaaat?

This has been a long time trend, but it didn't exist ten or fifteen years ago.  In my years as a high school teacher, I noticed more and more students dressing inappropriately in general, but especially so for Halloween.  I failed to understand how administrators would allow children to wear costumes with the mind-numbing mantra, "It's just a costume.  It's for Halloween."  Indeed, with clothing standards as low as they were enforced, everyday was costume day.  Even the parents were on board with this "It's just a costume" excuse, perhaps weakened with the whining.

Vampires, ghosts, and politicians would have been understandably scary, and lions, tigers, and bears would have been understandably creative.  Dead cheerleaders?  Britney Spears?  Vampire hookers?  And we are supposed to be okay with this?  Just because fake blood and fake teeth are added? 

Even more disturbing is how this practice was "okay" on Halloween itself.  Now it's overflowing into several days before and after, creating a whole week of this.  At what point does it stop being just a costume for a night of candy collection?

Since when did Halloween become the "sexy" holiday?  I've researched the history of Halloween before, reading about Samhain (pronounced "SOW-en") and various customs and myths.  But this is yet another way that American marketing has thrown out other methods and resorts to selling sex.  The loss of creativity is saddening.  Selling sex is easy.  It doesn't require any work or creativity. 

Apparently we are little more than reproductive machines, just like Tardigrades or something.  Commercialization has assaulted and battered Halloween, and the holiday lays bleeding to death at its feet.

Media Marketing

In this day and age of MSM and "this channel is biased" this way and "that channel is biased" that way, here is an interesting experiment, though probably too late for this election.

In January, when I started paying attention to it, I only listened to candidates themselves.  Not to news stories from any source.  Just quotes.  The longer, the better, because it's harder to place them out of context.  Preferably entire speeches.  That way, I stayed away from spin and fear-based claims.  Of course, the accusations that one candidate was actually Muslim, etc. caught me totally by surprise (yes, I did know about his father and his middle name, but similarly, having the name "John" doesn't necessarily make one Christian, either).  Researching the facts truly is key here.

Later, I added two online sources: FactCheck and Politifact.  I don't always agree with their splitting of hairs, at least they are trying to be fair.  Is it Half-True, or Barely-True?  Maybe I should start my own website.

I always thought the McNeill-Lehrer News (PBS and NPR in general) was well-boiled down to facts devoid of editorial.  I also stand by my assertion that The Daily Show is very good.  Seems like whenever they do a story, life imitates them.  If it's stupid or embarrassing, they will cover it and not let you forget it.  They don't so much as choose sides as they seek out the humor.  If one side creates more material for them than the other... well, there is no accounting for that.

Out are ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, and Faux, I mean, Fox News.  The latter, in particular, has made too many "errors" (and here) to be even humorously considered journalism.  They are an embarrassment to watch and think, "The world sees this as American journalism.  Eegads.  Can't we do  any better?"  One thing the MSM is good for it comparing their coverage to see how differently stories are covered and what gets left out.  One thing Fox seems to do consistently is belittle and insult the Democrats.  I used to consider that unbiased and fair.  Now I see it as childish and unprofessional.  I have learned that both sides are important to solving problems.  The only thing crazy about one side over another is the coverage.  Things always look different once you follow the whole story and get ALL of the facts.  That embarrassment at getting it wrong just because I assumed that Republicans were heroes and Democrats were insane was just too much to bear.

The major media outlets are just starting to hint that many reporters and other people were illegally arrested without probable cause and charged with felonies during peaceful protests at the RNC just for talking, holding a camera, or other non-threatening activities.  Look it up, a lot of it is on Youtube.  I never read about anything like that going on at the DNC.  If this indeed went on in St. Paul, why are they waiting until now to say something?  It's this after-the-fact reporting that causes me to distrust them.  If laws were broken by the police, the non-coverage was accessory to the crime.

It is enlightening to read and listen to stories by foreign reporters.  Many foreign peoples are scared to death of this country, no longer seeing us as an ally to help, but as a schoolyard bully.  That concerns me.  I don't want to wake up some day and realize I live on the Death Star.  Remember the end of the movie, "The Day After Tomorrow".  If another 9/11 happened, would the world cry with us, or laugh at us and cheer?  Right now, I think the latter.

So... the candidates with respect to my newfound research approach.  I was impressed by both candidates early on.  McCain in the 1990's as someone who broke from the ranks, the sign of a thinker.  I was disappointed by his failure to understand how passenger rail companies make more money where they are well-funded enough to attract riders and how he didn't seem understand why it was important to have clean air.  Perhaps living in Arizona and not LA is responsible for that.  All the recent errors concerning the SEC, FEC, SIPC, etc. are not helping, nor is the chance of recurring skin cancer.  If he is diagnosed with another melanoma before November, how can one consciously vote for him?

I was impressed by Barack Obama when he appeared on Oprah in 2005 or so.  I atypically came home from school before 4 pm and happened to catch it on accident as I rarely pay attention to the TV.  Here was a guy talking about his guiding influence in life being his mother, teaching him to put himself in someone else's shoes and to think about how they would feel if he were them.  We desperately need more politicians who think of others and not their own disconnected desire of personal gain.  We need politicians who can bring people together and realize that they are a part of the greater whole.  To be fair, I have tried to find reasons to disagree with him.  Logically, it's very difficult to do without believing what scared bloggers say about his middle name, etc.  I think using one's name, skin color, etc. as a way of choosing who to vote for is very "elementary school".  There are more informed reasons to choose.  I do not vote based on fear.  I vote based on facts and ideas for solutions.  Devoid of a reliable Truth-o-Meter, this is the best one can do.

Though I have deviated somewhat from my original experiment, in today's world it was only a matter of time.  If the media were more impartial, I'm sure this would be easier and at the same time, not an experiment.

Try this experiment in 2012 and see how it works for you.

Energy Questions

I just read this quote attributed to Ginny Brown-Waite from Florida's 5th Congressional District:

"In the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) the United States Geological Survey (USGS) estimates that there is over 10.4 billion barrels of recoverable oil. In the Gulf of Mexico, the USGS estimates that there are over 3.6 billion barrels of oil and over 21 trillion cubic feet of natural gas that are currently of limits. In total, the Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) is estimated to contain more than 88 billion barrels of oil and approximately 420 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. While opening these areas to energy exploration would surely make a dramatic impact, they do not include the estimated 8 trillion barrels of oil shale locked up in the Green River Formation, which encompasses parts of Utah, Colorado, and Wyoming. To put these numbers in perspective Saudi Arabia's proven oil reserves are at 259 billion barrels."

This is what gets me about the numbers game, whatever one estimates the numbers to be.  Once we have drilled for and pumped out all that petrol and gas... what then?  We are right back at the same problem.

Any real energy solution needs to be something not measureable in numbers.  Like infinite.  Think: sunshine, gravity, tidal forces, wind.  Everything else is just lipstick on an oil well.