The Ponderings of Woodrow

Time + Processing Power + Genius = E8 Solved

All I can say is congratulations to the team of 19 mathematicians who successfully mapped out E8. 

• 19 mathematicians
• 4 years
• 248 dimensions
• 205,263,363,600 entries
• The textual equivalent of Manhattan in 10-point type font
• WOW

I can think of quite a few hedge funds that would be interested in talking to this group if they ever decide to forgo purely academic pursuits.

e8 solved matrix quants woodrow

Pluto's not a planet?...and other reasons why young parents may be giving their kids misinformation...

Yesterday, a coalition of leading astronomers declared that Pluto is no longer a planet. According to the International Astronomical Union, Pluto falls short of inclusion under newly ratified guidelines:

RESOLUTION  5A
The IAU therefore resolves that planets and other bodies in our Solar System be defined into three distinct categories in the following way:

(1) A planet¹ is a celestial body that (a) is in orbit around the Sun, (b) has sufficient mass for its self-gravity to overcome rigid body forces so that it assumes a hydrostatic equilibrium (nearly round) shape, and (c) has cleared the neighbourhood around its orbit.

(2) A dwarf planet is a celestial body that (a) is in orbit around the Sun, (b) has sufficient mass for its self-gravity to overcome rigid body forces so that it assumes a hydrostatic equilibrium (nearly round) shape², (c) has not cleared the neighbourhood around its orbit, and (d) is not a satellite.

(3) All other objects³ orbiting the Sun shall be referred to collectively as "Small Solar System Bodies".

Pluto, by virtue of its orbital relationship with Nepture, falls short and will now be part of a new group of "dwarf planets" (see above) which also includes Ceres and Xena (note: Charon didn't make the final cut).

As interesting and scientifically well-founded this argument may be, it's murder on parents of young children (myself included). In our busy lives there are certain things you just KNOW. When your son or daughter comes to you and asks, "What's 2+2?" or "Why is the sky blue?" you simply rattle off the answer without regard for the potential change in scientific interpretation.

Now, how many parents are going to teach their children about the "nine planets" only to have their eager progeny come home from preschool with a dejected look on their face as they proudly displayed their knowledge of the solar system only to be corrected for their "mistake" by the teach.

This got me thinking about some of the other "truths" parents my age may be wrongfully passing onto our children...

• There aren't "four food groups"...it's a food "pyramid"
• There was no such thing as a "brontosaurus"...it's an "apatosaurus"
• There aren't just 108 elements...we've now found 116
• There aren't just four oceans...there are five

I would love here your examples of where the things we learned as kids are no longer considered factual...what's next? We won't live in fear of communism?

pluto planetl dwarf astronomy parenting woodrow

Wanna be the next George Soros? Avoid polysyllabic company names...

Who knew? I've been spending the better part of a decade focused on cash flow statements, balance sheets, income statements, industry due diligence, sales checks, market internals and the occasional technical indicators and all I really needed to do in order to be the next mega-investor was K.I.S.S. (Keep It Simple Stupid).

The latest entry into the "I Can't Believe Someone Funded That Study Department"...two psychologists from Princeton University have determined that fluency of a company's name was highly correlated with a stock's performance.

To check, Alter and Oppenheimer did a second study looking at 89 real stocks that were traded on the New York exchange between 1990 and 2004. They asked 16 undergraduates to grade the fluency of the stock names on a sliding scale. Then they checked on the stocks' performance.

As anticipated, the more complex a share's name, the poorer it performed on the first day of trading. The effect appeared to wane as time went on; after 6 months, when more information about the stock was presumably available, the name alone couldn't be used to predict a single stock's performance.

Hmmm, so why we're all wondering what James Simons and T. Boone Pickens have that we don't; I wouldn't have expected it to be a preference for monosyllabic company names. :)

Was E.M. Forster right?...Are we becoming slaves to "The Machine?"

In 1908, E.M. Forster penned a short story, "The Machine Stops," that was first published in The Oxford and Cambridge Review in 1909. The story is of a future where humans live beneath the Earth's surface and reside in tiny, individual rooms with little to no physical human interaction. "The Machine", a virtualized and quasi-sentient technological construct caters to humanity's every need:

• Someone feels ill, a medical system comes out of the wall and feeds the appropriate medicine
• Physical contact is generally abhorred, people communicate "ideas" through a virtual network of holographic immersion
• When someone is hungry, food is provided through tubes
• When someone is tired, a bed (tailored to their personal tastes) floats out of the wall
• When someone is near death, the Machine grants their request for euthanisation (as long as the death rate doesn't exceed the birth rate)
• Physical strength and fitness is not only a rarity, it's considered a dangerous trait in young children

While this may not seem like a ground-breaking concept in an era of "The Terminator" and "The Matrix," it was absolutely revolutionary in 1908.

• Television hadn't been invented (Campbell-Swinton and Rosing had both posited the use of cathode ray tubes for image transmission in 1907).
• Rotary telephones weren't standardized until the following year.
• Konrad Zuse wouldn't invent the Z1 for almost 30 years.
• Bob Metcalfe wouldn't pen the 'Ethernet Memo' for another 65 years.

Yet, Forster was forewarning us about the dangers inherent in our growing obsession with technology and virtual interaction.

Without sounding alarmist (I am, after all, a technologist to my core and fan of just about every technology gadget I've come across), Forster's story resonates with me more and more as I step back and look at societal trends:

• We're all carrying iPods with hundreds of hours of music, podcasts and movies at our disposal
• Bluetooth headsets are a fixture on our ears
• Online advertising is growing exponentially and virtually every media and technology company is focused on how to extend that model because that's where our eyeballs are these days
• We no longer are content to sit and watch TV on our couch, but we want our favorite TV shows and movies available on any device, at any moment
• Myspace has 70+ million registered members, gets more than 20 million page views a day, and is the 5th-largest website according to Comscore Media Metrix
• 85% of U.S. college students have accounts at Facebook, spend (on average) more than 50 minutes per day on the site, and 70% of students say they visit the site at least once a day
• According to GameDaily, upwards of $880 million has been spent on imaginary goods and services for use in MMOs
• World of Warcraft has more than 5 million subscribers, paying $13.99 (or more) a month for the right to immerse themselves in the virtual world
• Linden Labs' Second Life has grown to 170,000 users and raised a big VC round (and was the subject of a BusinessWeek cover story for its real world economics)
• On average, MMO players spend 22 hours per week inside the virtual world of their choice

Meanwhile, obesity rates in children have doubled, and 60% of Americans are overweight...

When is enough, enough? At what point does our consumption of media, gaming, the Internet and virtual environments start eroding the fabric of our society? Is interacting inside a MMO, or spending 10 hours a day on MySpace and Facebook simply an evolution of face-to-face human contact, with its own benefits and challenges? Can we rely on our children to police themselves and strike a balance?

I'm not sure I have the answers. But I do know that we need to collectively do a better job of maintaining a balance. Human interaction is vital. Even today, most business deals are done face-to-face. Sure, people may buy goods and services online, but strategic partnerships, large sales agreements, hirings, firings, acquisitions are still primarily done face to face.

So here's some free advice from me to you. For every IM chat or Skypecast you engage in, end the call with definitive plans to meet face-to-face. The next time you're on a train, bus or in an airport, take five minutes to look around, or strike up a conversation with someone nearby instead of popping in yet another movie into your PSP. Rather than impressing the "hot girl" in Facebook, ask her out for a drink at a real bar on your campus. After you download the latest music video to your iPod, buy some tickets for the band's next concert. Instead of spending another two hours on your favorite message board forum, attend a lecture or gallery opening or charity benefit. Every time you level up in WoW, do 50 push-ups or sit ups. Take your kids to a park, a ball game, the beach, the mountains. Go for a jog. Surprise your wife with a vacation to that place you read about online the week before.

Note: The crews at Terra Nova and The Daedalus Project have devoted a wealth of time and energy on the virtual world phenomenon, they're worth adding to your blogroll if this topic interests you.

Related Posts:

• Wiki on "The Machine Stops"
• Complete Text of "The Machine Stops"
• Terra Nova: What Are You Missing?
• Terra Nova: Alone Together in World of Warcraft?
• Ross Mayfield: WoW 60
• The Daedalus Gateway: MMO Player Demographics

emforster internet usage myspace facebook advice terra nova social networks WoW Second Life virtual balance

A Bubble of a Different Color...aka Zubbles

File this under "That's Cool!"...I had a strategy session with a group of colleagues off-site on Friday and one of them, a Minneapolis native, mentioned a "cool little company" called Zubbles. As background, my colleague is a marketing/brand management guy with very little domain expertise/interest in the world of technology investing...he gets marketing, he gets brand, he gets consumer products and services.

So what are Zubbles? They're vibrant, colored bubbles that don't stain. Sounds simple, right? But soap bubbles have been around for more than 60 years and no one has been able to create a colored bubble before. You can see a video demo here.

Zubbles, as it turns out, is the name of the product not the company [that would be Ascadia, Inc.]. The key players in Ascadia are Guy Haddleton, Tim Kehoe and Sue Strother, the team behind Adaytum; which was sold to Cognos in 2002. At first glance, it would seem odd for this trio of financial software executives to turn their attention to colored bubbles, but there is more here than meets the eye.

Tim Kehoe was a toy designer first and foremost, joining Adaytum in 1999. He has been working on the colorization of bubbles for more than 11 years. As it turns out, the chemistry behind creating a colored bubble that didn't leave any residue or stains upon popping was a complex scientific task...from the Popular Science article:

It turns out that coloring a bubble is an exceptionally difficult bit of chemistry. A bubble wall is mostly water held in place by two layers of surfactant molecules, spaced just millionths of an inch apart. If you add, say, food coloring to the bubble solution, the heavy dye molecules float freely in the water, bonding to neither the water nor the surfactants, and cascade almost immediately down the sides. You'll have a clear bubble with a dot of color at the bottom. What you need is a dye that attaches to the surfactant molecules and disperses evenly in that water layer. Pack in more dye molecules, get a deeper, richer hue. Simple. Well, on paper anyway.

Bubbles are big business. According to Popular Science, more than 200 million bottles of clear soap bubbles are sold annually. Toy companies have been chasing this idea for as long as Kehoe, in fact, several sources suggest Hasbro has worked on a non-stain colored bubble for at least two years.

As a father of two and someone who appreciates when science leads to tangible business opportunities, this is a company I'll be keeping an eye on...whether it turns out to be simply a "that's cool" or the precursor to a much larger opportunity remains to be seen.

zubbles ascadia woodrow consumer tech toy science toys adaytum