Category Archives: Current Affairs

If I Was a Business Editor

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Since I have a job and don’t have time right now to do the research I’d like to, I had this fantasy today about stories I’d assign reporters at the Winston-Salem Journal if I was their editor.  Here’s my short list:

  • Look at how many companies have gotten incentives to locate their companies in Winston-Salem/Forsyth County over the last four or five years, figure out how much those incentives totaled, how many jobs they created and the direct benefit to the city/county’s coffers.  I know there are indirect benefits tied to it, but I’d tell them to focus on the hard numbers (there are after all some indirect costs associated with businesses too).  Maybe come up with a nice cost-per-job number and an annual-revenue-per-job number.  Avoid drawing an "incentives are evil" conclusion, just pull together as much quantifiable data as possible and provide some perspective, then let people draw their own conclusion. 
  • Figure out how many companies in the city/county have dropped or decreased employee health coverage.  Look into what that means for city/county agencies and institutions that deal with health issues.
  • In the most recent issue of Wired magazine they do a story on the rising "megalopolis’" in the US, and identify 10 regions where these things will grow.  The I-85 corridor between Raleigh and Atlanta is identified as one of these, and the rising bio-tech industry is projected to be the main economic engine for the region.  What does this mean for W-S and its nascent bio-tech industry?  What’s the impact of the recent announcement about the Kannapolis development?

I figure that could keep them busy for a while.  I just wish I had the time to do it myself.

Reading List October 25, 2005

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  • You’re Pre-Approved = A Real Family Application (The Post Money Value) – Rick Segal points out something I’ve been saying for a long time: while there are services out there that people can use for sharing family information (shared blog, shared photo, etc.) there isn’t one that is really non-techie, geared to people who have just gotten used to email.  He smells opportunity and so do I.
  • What Did Cheney Know? And When? (Taegan Goddard’s Political Wire) – Did the VP lie when he said he went on Meet the Press two years ago and said "I don’t know Joe Wilson. I’ve never met Joe Wilson…. And Joe Wilson
    — I don’t know who sent Joe Wilson. He never submitted a report that I
    ever saw when he came back." Three months earlier his chief-of-staff had documented a conversation with the VP about Mr. Wilson and his wife.  Hmmm.
  • The Earthquakes Changed Kashmiri Politics (StrategyPage.com) – The US has the opportunity to make strong inroads into Pakistan and the region in general via its relief efforts in response to the earthquakes in the Kashmir region.
  • Innovation is Bursting Out Again (Don Dodge) – Microsoft’s emerging tech guy looks at some of the areas that are seeing a burst of innovation, and highlights some of the companies providing said innovation.
  • White House Insisting on Torture (Bayosphere) – Links to a piece in the New York Times about the Bush administration’s stance on a pending bill before congress, and an amendment proposed by John McCain in particular.  "Stepping up a confrontation with the Senate over the handling of
    detainees, the White House is insisting that the Central Intelligence
    Agency be exempted from a proposed ban on abusive treatment of
    suspected Qaeda militants and other terrorists."      Make sure you read the comments.
  • Dickless: W Without Cheney (Davenetics) – Not a particularly revealing post, but I kind of like the headline.

US Senators Outperform the Market by 12% Annually! Shocking?

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Once again you’re going to be shocked – shocked I tell you! – by the apparent genius of our elected officials.  According to this article in the New Yorker a professor in Georgia has done a detailed study of over 6,000 stock transactions made by US Senators between 1993-1998 and has found that the Senators outperformed the market by an average of 12% annually.  As the author says:

Over that time, senators beat the market, on average, by twelve per
cent annually. Since a mutual-fund manager who beats the market by two
or three per cent a year is considered a genius, the politicians’
ability to foresee the future seems practically divine. They did an
especially good job of picking up stocks at just the right time; their
buys were typically flat before they bought them, but beat the market
by thirty per cent, on average, in the year after.

To further enhance our grasp of the obvious the author writes:

Are senators really that smart? The authors of the study suggest a more
likely explanation: at least some senators must have been trading
“based on information that is unavailable to the public”—in other
words, they were engaged in some form of insider trading. It’s
impossible to pin down exactly how it happened, but it’s easy to
imagine senators getting occasional stock tips from corporate
supplicants, and their own work in Congress often deals with
confidential matters that have a direct impact on particular companies.

I wonder how many of them are heavily invested in energy companies these days?  Come to think of it how many are heavily invested in defense contracting companies?

Just asking.

Political Statement 2005 Style

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Today’s generation of grassroots political commentators may not have its marches on Washington ala the Vietnam era, but it does have its own unique form of commentary which has been enabled by all the cheap audio and video editing software that’s out there and the ability to distribute the resulting product via the internet.

A great example is what a guy who’s dubbed himself DJ RX has done with a mix or "mashup" of President Bush singing U2’s Sunday Bloody Sunday, which you can listen to here.

Genius.

Reading List October 24, 2005

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  • The Entrepreneurial Mind Set (Moore’s Lore) – Dana Blankenhorn is entering the entrepreneurial realm himself and it has caused him to take that position that countries like China and India are developing more entrepreneurs, the US education system stinks and the Baby Boomers have killed the golden goose (the last are my words, not his).  It’s an interesting take on our society right now.
  • The Fall of the Warrior King (New York Times Magazine) – The story of Col. Nick Sassaman, his role in Iraq and how it led to his fall from grace.
  • Good News: People are Social Animals (Fractals of Change) – Tom Evslin talks about why peer-driven services on line have developed, and how/if they will continue to work.

Hometown Heroes?

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In a stunning display of PR-prowess (my tongue is firmly planted in cheek) Winston-Salem’s own corporate goliath, R.J. Reynolds, allowed Tom Delay to fly to his arraignment in Texas on one of its corporate jets.  It also seems that the company has contributed $17,000 to Delay’s legal defense fund.

Well I guess it is fitting that the 2nd-largest US manufacturer of cancer sticks is jetting Congress’s own melanoma around the country.

Mom was right; you are judged by the company you keep.

Reading List October 20, 2005

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Reading List October 18, 2005

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  • Quote of the Day (Blog on the Run) – "… by refusing to ridicule the ridiculous, by watering down every
    criticism into a mannered circumlocution, we have created an
    environment where idiots thrive unchallenged." — PZ Myers
  • The Times Speaks, Kinda, Sorta (Blog on the Run) – Lex Alexander, a fine journalist in his own right, takes the New York Times to task for their handling of their own story – the journalist who was held in contempt in the Plame case.  Basically he says they screwed the pooch.
  • Thinking of Joining a Startup? (A VC) – Fred Wilson points to a checklist of questions you should answer to determine if joining a startup is right for you.
  • Rethinking Reed’s Law (A VC) – Some really smart business people talk some serious math re. network effects and make my brain hurt.
  • While Boomers Were Busy Watching Their Retirement Accounts (Matt McAlister) – An interesting look at the differences between the Boomers’ form of rebelliousness and Gen X’s form of rebelliousness.  Actually it’s more a comparison of what they rebelled against.

Dorks Got Jealous, Pay-Per-View Event Ensued

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It seems that some grown up dorks got jealous of the jocks getting all the pay-per-view moolah, so someone put together a debate between Wayne LaPierre of the NRA and Andrew Butler of PETA and decided to charge $9.95 for anyone to watch it via pay-per-view.  You may think I’m being unfair by calling them dorks, but I would have to disagree.  They’re dorks because they’re debating;  they’d be cool if they actually fought it out and spilled a little blood.

If they did fight it out I’d have to put my money on the PETA dude, because the NRA guy is like the average hunter; take the gun out of his hands and he’s just another fat, cholesterol-ridden puss who’s never met a fair fight he wouldn’t run away from.  Of course PETA-boy’s probably another granola-eating tree hugger who’d blow away in a stiff wind, but he’d just dance around the NRA dude and jab him to death with little girly punches until the NRA dude croaked from a coronary as he struggled to cover up while simultaneously holding up his holster-less Wranglers.

Now that I’d pay good money to see.

Reading List October 17, 2005

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  • All the News That You Can Use. And More. (New York Times) – A new service called Inform aims to be a better Google News.
  • ADPrentice (Feld Thoughts) – A venture capitalist spends a little time giving back to his fraternity at MIT, and it was a lot more than beer.  I think it’s a useful template for how any of us can create ways to give back to the groups that helped form us.