Presentations

This week on National Geographic is Earth: The Biography (A-). The series is hosted by Ian Stewart (the host of "Hot Rocks") who is quirky yet interesting. I really like this series because it is somewhat filmed like Planet Earth (maybe not as good) but it also contains some of the most recent scientific data and insights that are missing in a lot of the older specials still on TV.

So far the most interesting part for me was during the Atmosphere show. I have never considered skydiving because I think it would be a minute of pure terror, however I never knew that at the start of the space program around ~1960 someone jumped out of a special balloon 90 miles above the earth. It took them 15 minutes to fall back to the ground and they were so high that when they jumped there was no wind resistance of any kind blowing on them until they reentered the lower layers of the atmosphere.

The series has reminded me of the importance of a good presentation. More impressive to me than the HD images has been the sequence of the presentation. If you had to do 1 hr on Ice, what topics would you cover and how would you flow between them?

The book Made to Stick should be required reading before being able to install Power Point at work. I would grade the avg presentation at work to be a D with some of the better ones a C or C+. It does take a lot of time to create a good presentation and it makes some of the best, like An Inconvenient Truth, so interesting to watch.

Here is a great presentation on 3rd world myths.

Flipping Out

NBC, ABC and CBS are terrible (except for the office).

Cable, specifically A&E and Bravo have some great shows.
Flipping Out we've discovered through watching The Soup.
It is about an OCD guy who flips houses for a living. At first I thought he was part of a big team like Landmark, but it's just him.
He does have 3 full time personal assistants to take care of him and his home.

Enjoy some of these clips...

Good Morning...

This week, the battery in the remote of our Bose alarm clock died.
It is impossible to shut of the alarm without the remote, so I have been using a travel alarm.

This has ended my streak of over 2 years of waking up to this song:



Any new suggestions?

I'm writing about Coach purses...

In Toronto, I read a great article about Coach (purses, etc.)

Most luxury goods hold up well during a recession because recessions don't impact the highest earners to the same degree as everyone else.

Coach looks to be an exception to that. The article talked about how terrible their sales were this year. (Only Jim may be interested in this) Sales have been impacted to the point where they no longer report separate results for their main stores (expensive) and their discount outlets, they now lump those sales together. (Jim Cramer would say Sell, Sell, Sell).

I think what was missing from this article is what the company's performance says about those who actually buy their products.

If Coach can't hold up during a recession it means their target shopper isn't really the luxury segment, it was those aspiring to be or giving that appearance.

I think this is a great case study of how to ruin a brand by running a public company that has to report to the street.

I'm not into fashion, Coach may have been a luxury brand at one point. Somewhere they started using tricks from Trading Up to broaden their buyers from just affluent to those who are aspirational and willing to trade up beyond levels they could afford in other categories. Now they are impacted by a bad recession and respond by increasing sales at their outlet stores which will only dilute the value of the brand.
They claim to be responding this fall with a premium bag collection that has a lot of "bling" on it.

The only question is which Brand will replace Coach as the next luxury purse to have if you and your friends happen to be on The Hills?

Toronto

First, 2 movies:
Lions for Lambs (A) - A must see movie from Robert Redford about the different angles of the war. Basically a series of conversations between a politician and a CNN reporter, a student and Poly Sci professor etc. It's kind of sad that a movie like this that should be made, probably was only able to be made because Robert Redford has enough pull to do it after making a lot of money for the people who think a new Incredible Hulk movie was long overdue.

Day Zero (B) - I don't know why we are in a war theme at home, but this movie asks what if we brought the draft back now. It follows 3 people who were just drafted and you see how they handle it.

I spent most of the week in Toronto. We were delayed a day which gave us the first opportunity to run around the city. We went to a Blue Jays game:

We did the tour behind Niagra Falls:

We saw a nice rainbow that I had to send to my wife:

On my brother Mike's reco, we ate dinner 800 ft in the air at the revolving restraunt:

(I'm just waiting for Mike to sign off on my $110 dinner)

And learned something sad about the falls:

In the picture you can see the huge cloud of mist that rises out of the falls. The falls used to be clear of most of this mist as it stayed down low. They did a study and found that all of the construction around the falls (hotels and casinos) changed the airflow over the falls. Now instead of blowing out any mist that comes up, the air dives into the falls and causes it to rise higher blocking the view.

Indy 500

Last weekend I went to my first Indy 500.
I am not a big racing fan but I have won my Fantasy NASCAR league.
The track is so much bigger than I had expected, only by walking into the infield do you get a sense of just how big it is. Even then the cars make a lap in about 45 sec at 200mph (they reached 222 mph).

The race started and at first I was a bit disappointed:

Then I found out they do 2 slow laps before they actually start racing:

The sound is very impressive and walking along the wall you get very disoriented as they go by.
Everyone ended up being safe so I can say it was neat to have 2 wrecks right in front of us. It is crazy to think that these drivers survive at 200 mph when the first casualty of a car accident was hit at 4 mph.

As a new type of sporting event for me, the main thing I really enjoyed was being able to bring your own cooler. Rachel's Dad packed some sandwiches and drinks. At first I thought this was a very American, Non Commercial, gesture by racing to let you bring your own stuff but I imagine the logistics of trying to feed 400,000 people would be impossible.

The only downside to racing is despite 400,000 people you feel somewhat isolated. The sounds and earplugs make casual conversation impossible. During a yellow flag when they slow down most people take out their ear plugs and start talking.

The strategy of Indy racing also interested me. From casual NASCAR experience I know teammates like to draft off each other. However in this race the first 2 cars were on the same team and they never drafted each other. In fact after yellow flags the #2 car would drop back quite a bit from the #1 car. I figured this could only be true if the Indy cars were so aerodynamic that drafting was irrelevant. And the #2 car was just trying to keep the #3 car back off the #1 car to prevent him from being passed in a restart.

It was a good day and a must see event like the Kentucky Derby.

Freakonomics - Gas

I am a big fan of the Freakonomics blog I have in my list here.

Not too long ago they had a blog about gas prices and how maybe we should lower the speed limit to save gas.

I disagree. Lowering the speed limit may slightly lower your gas consumption but will cause you to increase everyone else's gas consumption by making traffic worse.

The biggest waste of gas is sitting in traffic. Yahoo had an article a while ago that a distracted driver (cell phone) only needs to slow down 2-3 mph to have a significant impact on the flow of traffic.

Rachel's new car is the first I have ever owned that gives your instantaneous mpg. I love measuring anything, so I pay attention to this. We have fun contests to see who can drive more efficiently (last date night, I was totally about to win until I hit the train in Glendale). On the highway her car gets 30 mpg (great for an SUV). I have yet to see the mpg drop due to increased speed, I'm sure it is true but I have not seen a significant impact (I'll let you know after I test cruise control on our trip to Hocking Hills).

If anything we should all speed up.

Or support as many people as possible to work from home 1 day a week reducing their gas consumption and decreasing everyone else's by having less traffic.

In general, I have to physically be at work to make product (unless the FDA allows a PRL in my basement). However, Thursdays are my day of meetings (all day CPS scheduling meetings). It would be possible for me to call in and net meeting.