Maps in a Mirror
Orson Scott Card
8.8.2006

While traveling on business I finished my book. (The aforementioned Neverwhere, by Neil Gaiman.) So I swung by the nearest bookstore, and walked away with this.

And was immediately disappointed. I’d read some of the stories before, in another book. One of the stories, Fat Farm, was disturbing. Really disturbing. Well, in this compilation, he speaks about his writing style. This story was in a collection titled Tales of Dread. Card has this to say about dread.

…the most potent tool of storytellers. Fear. And not just fear, but dread. Dread is the first and the strongest of the three kids of fear. It is that tension, that waiting that comes when you know that there is something to fear but you have not yet identified what it is...

He’s right. What I didn’t like about that story was what he didn’t say- it left you wondering, which can be scary.

It’s an interesting compilation. He’s got stories about dread, holiness, pure good old fashioned sci-fi, and even some of his old stories from the Ensign and such. He’s a great writer, and borrows liberally from existing stories- and makes them very personal. I started out disappointed because I’d read some of them before. But there was plenty there I hadn’t read- and I wound up liking a majority of it.

My favorite part? The original story of Ender’s Game. One of my favorite books, it was fascinating to read the short story that it all came from. The novelization is much, much better. If you like Card, you’d like this book.

Fair warning: He engages in a lot of twist endings. Off the top of my head, four or five stories have shocking twists right at the end. I’m not averse to these (in fact, done well, I love them, like in Ender’s Game, the novel, not the short story) but if you loathe O. Henry, you’ll loathe Card too.

Origins of the Crash
Roger Lowenstein
8.10.2006

pp 103 goes over Amazon’s earnings… or to be specific the absolute lack thereof.
pp 117 he discusses a “virtuous circle” the semantic opposite of a vicious cycle.
pp 160 an awesome quote from an executive at Global Crossing who was cognizant of his firm’s duplicity: “The stock market can be fooled, but not forever.” – Leo Hindery Jr.
pp 167 in a chapter all about Enron, nothing is more damning than this: From 1996 to 2000, Enron’s net income rose from $1.08 per share to $1.12. Staggering.

A couple years ago I was able to hear an economist from Saloman Brothers speak. He was highly critical of the Internet Bubble, and how it unwound. He made some derogatory comments about Greenspan’s reign, and how he’d made unfavorable decisions with the FOMC to impact and deepen the Bubble “bursting” in 2000. After his remarks, we chatted, and he suggested the book When Genius Failed as a resource. I bought it and loved it- review coming one day soon.

Well, I loaned it to a friend of mine, who was impressed with the depth of knowledge and information about Hedge Funds it offered, so he rushed out (to Amazon, I imagine) and bought some of the author’s other works. He then loaned this one to me.

He literally builds a case suggesting that the Crash of the internet market was quite similar to the Crash in 1929. Irrational exuberance, rampant speculation and easy money are similarities between these two events. Further, in both instances, the government reacts. In reaction to the events of 1929, the SEC was created. In reaction to the accounting scandals of the late 1990’s and early 2000’s, the Sarbanes-Oxley Act was created.

I think most people would be cautious about removing all checks and balances in our marketplace, but I’m not sure that adding layer upon layer of insulation is any real protection either. Lowenstein shows that not only were investors deceived blatantly, they also let themselves be seduced by some of these equity prices. He doesn’t lay the blame solely at the feet of men like Lay and Ebbers, but also at the feet of the analysts who quieted their own fears, and even the average investor who in the heyday of the 90’s booming bull market perhaps forgot the one salient point that Keynes made:

“Markets can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent.” – John Maynard Keynes

And my evil robot army grows by one...

Available this morning on Woot.

A Scooba. We already have a Roomba Discovery. It's awesome. The kids named it Artie (the Strongest Robot... In the world!)

I don't know what they'll call new one. Personally, I wanted to call them Erm. Evil Robot Masters. I'm sure we'll take a vote when it gets here.

But if it's left up to me, I'm naming it Voltron.