Books, Books, Books

So here is a picture, very messy might I add, of my book collection.  I would like to think that I read quite a bit, although not as much as I'd like.

Chuck Palahniuk is in there along with some Kurt Vonnegut, Koontz, Tolkien.  

Preference wise I am all over the place, in fact I just finished Tippin Point by Malcom Gladwell.

A definite must read for anyone who is into psychology and/or marketing.  The book discusses certain social trends and at what point they became a must have item.  He analyzes items from Cigarettes, all the way to the Children's show Blues Clues. 

The most interesting chapter was about cleaning up NYC using the broken window theory by cleaning up the graffiti, and stopping turnstile violators.  The theory of the book is that very small adjustments eventually snowball into total Social Epidemics.  

I will attempt to keep writing about what I am reading giving brief overviews and possibly some insight depending on how drained I am from a day of writing about the financial world.

Next book is Liars Poker by Michael Lewis, writer of now famed movie The Blind Side.

Revenue Increase Inspite of Piracy

So read any of my Blogs at my job, World Market Media concerning piracy, and you will find that I am a repetitious violator of copyright law.  Sorry.

yea yea, I was on napster when it came out, and bear share, and limewire, and mininova, and thepiratebay.

I found this article on the front page of Digg and found it very interesting  link its from torrent freak and is written by the writer Ernesto.

The Article states that regardless of rising pirating, revenue for the music industry continues to increase through digital sales and although CD sales are down, mobile and digital downloads through mediums with revenue traction such as Apple's iTunes are astronomical.

So what does it mean?  It means the situation is very blown out of proportion, and that piracy is greatly out shined by those who have bought music.  The pirated music has to come from somewhere, it is not all leaked, and someone at one point goes out and buys the CD or the Album online, strips the DRM and uploads it to rapidshare, youtube or their favorite torrent hosting website.  On top of all of this the prevalence of mixtapes and free songs is increasingly  popular on the internet, just ask DeadMau5 and Lil Wayne.

I have always justified my "stealing" by saying that I support musicians by going to see them live.  It is by far my favorite activity, seeing live music is one of the best events you can spend your money on, and when they come through the NYC or South Florida area, I always make it a point to see my favorite artists.

I am really not even sure what "The Man" is even complaining about when reading that graph.

Memento

Last night I watched the movie memento which was recommended to me by a friend named Renny. In case you are unaware of the plot of this movie it concerns a man who has experienced an accident in his life which damages his brain in a way that disallows him from making new memories.  He proceeds through the movie's trial in pursuit of his wife's killer.

Memento is one of those movies that makes you step back and go, wait a minute what?

The movie is a total head fake, It had me leaning one way the whole time  all of the sudden at the end pulls back for the three pointer in your face at the buzzer. It had me stunned. I hate to spoil the movie for you if you have not experienced it so I wont go into the plot too deeply. Upon reviewing the movie laying there in bed, I got to wondering how the staff of that movie, the writer and producer included, kept all of the scenes straight in their head. It must have been a long briefing meeting before they started shooting, with a very complex story board.

The plot is shot backwards incrementally with flash forwards and flash backs that are very dificult to explain in text but understandable on screen. On another note, the tone was so eerie. I felt really odd upon completion of the movie, almost disturbed. Because, what are you without your memory? It touched some inner chord in my personality and really had me think about the foundations of reality based upon perception. Deep right?

Anyway, this movie is a must see as long as you are not a victim of head trauma or clinically depressed

The Matrix Has You

"Have you ever had a dream, Neo, that you were so sure was real? What if you were unable to wake from that dream? How would you know the difference between the dream world and the real world?"

Scuba Steve

This is my long time friend Steve Christophoro.

He all the sudden got it together and just graduated from some crazy dive school that specializes in underwater welding and such.  Apparently it is one of the most dangerous jobs on the planet.  Regardless, I love this picture.  The suit somewhat reminds me of Tim Burton's Nine.

Things that I despise

Apathy

Ignorance

Gluttony

Untimeliness

Indecisiveness 

Immaturity 

Ash Over Western Europe Hopefully Not Ruining My plans

On May 10th I am planning on traveling to Dubai for business/vacation visit with my school.  Our plane will be departing from Miami to Heathrow Airport and then onward to Dubai International.  


Hopefully by then the Ash over Europe will be cleared otherwise I am not sure what we are going to do.  They are estimating that British Airlines are losing over a million dollars a day after cancelling thousands of flights.  The volcano ash cannot be seen on radar and is as course as sand which instantly can seize jet engines.  


They are not citing that some planes have been doing some test flights without passengers and have had no problems.  According to the WSJ, not one weather balloon has been sent up to test the conditions. "NATS said Sunday that the closure of U.K. airspace would continue through 0600 GMT Monday."


Link


Hopefully some nice weather will roll through and push the ash out before any real harm to my plans, to the airlines and to the environment is done

Some pics found early this morning

High Frequency Trading

Here is a post by a fellow Blogger Tyler Durden, I like him a lot, and his whole Fight Club theme aint bad either 

In very broad terms, high-frequency trading (also known as HFT) refers to the buying and selling of stocks at extremely fast speeds with the help of powerful computers. Using complex algorithms, these computers can scan dozens of public and private marketplaces simultaneously, execute millions of orders a second, and alter strategies in a matter of milliseconds.^[1] In the U.S., high-frequency trading firms represent 2.0% of the approximately 20,000 firms operating today, but account for 73.0% of all equity trading volume.^[2]

Here is the link

Labor, What Ends the Cycle?

Today as I left my workplace at 10AM to grab an overpriced coffee from Starbucks around the corner, I noticed a “Black” man sitting on the stoop of a storefront eating a bag of chips and reading a tattered newspaper. 

I have not deciphered if he was homeless or not, but he did have a few bags on his person and his clothing was pretty worn and dirty.  Usually I pay no attention to these scenes, being from the North East and living in West Palm Beach Florida; you run into homeless individuals quite often. 

For some reason,  I got to thinking about the labor situation here in America.  Although our President is now “Black” which even that is under debate, and there are quite a number of Minorities who have positions of power, for the most part minorities are still the slaves, they just get paid now.

Don’t get me wrong, this is not a blanket statement, I am not racist in any way and if you take a deep breath and think about it, it is true, and no one is to blame.

Who cuts your lawn?

Who fixes your Laundry Machine? (mine broke the other day)

Who builds your computer?

Who sews all of your clothes?

Who does all the stuff that you don’t want to do?

Minorities. 

A further question, where is the end game?  Think of the industrial revolution here in America in the 1700’s.  Everyone busted their asses every day, children were working in sweat shops, men were working all day on Farms, Women spun cottonm, until after a few hundred years we all get to sit at our kooshy desk jobs, passing the hard work onto someone else.

Moving further along in history, the two biggest developing nations in the world, China and India rely heavily on manufacturing, especially China.  As time has gone on the emergence of a strong middle class working predominantly in an office setting, service oriented workplace is beginning to gain traction.  Pretty soon, these countries are going to be passing the work along to someone else. 

So where does the cycle reach its end?  When is everyone in the world so educated that they don’t want to do any manual labor. Maybe America will experience some crash, and We’ll be the one making mice for Microsoft, Washing Cars, and Mowing Lawns.  Or maybe we will be so advanced that it will all be done by robots, it sounds really Matrixy but that is the way this planet is moving.  They’ll call it the “age of convenience."

Here is a link to some working conditions in China. 

I know it’s a sobb story and I do think that a country must go through this process in order to be more advanced, and I do not agree with how these individuals are treated.  Enjoy, its long.