As Price of Lead Soars, British Churches Find Holes in Roof (NYT)
Pretty wild story that's been making the rounds lately, about how soaring commodity prices have led to commodity-related petty theft and vandalism. It's an old story, really. Back in 2005, stories about theft of copper wire and tubing were fairly common and at the time we wondered how long that could possibly last (ha!). Anyway, the hook here is a church in England, where thieves have been tearing out holes in the roof because there's lead in them thar roofs. Heathens.
Lost your luggage? RFID tags could help (News.com)
Wow, was this story written in 2002? The hopes and dreams, that RFID tags could end lost luggage has been around for awhile, and for the most part hasn't really gone anywhere. Part of the problem: it's expensive. Good luck finding someone to shell out for the tags right now, when they're not even going to spring for in-flight almonds. And, even high tech tags have a hard time compensating for extreme human error, which is often a big problem.
Erich Doerr Gets it Right!!! (Wages of Wins)
Congratulations Kansas! We were actually rather mixed on who to root for last night. We had Kansas winning our bracket, so that's cool, but the rest of our bracket was in utter shambles, so it hardly matter. We came in near the bottom of our pool. On the other hand, we got offered a scholarship to go to Memphis back in the day. We made the right choice in going to Texas, but Memphis might've been fun. You know, Poplar St. and all. Anyway, from what we understand, this year was a good year for statistics wonks. The guy here picked the winner and the loser of the final game using some Montel Carlo sims. And if we recall, Carl Bialik also gave props to the math nerds this year.
Intel Capital Bets on China Growth (WSJ)
Intel Capital, the famed VC arm of the big chip company, has raised a $500 million China fund, which will be invested in the country over the next several years. It will support a range of investment themes, including alt energy. The main point for us: see, we can invest over their too.
America's Mortgage Problem And Sarbanes-Oxley (Alan Meckler)
We've been impressed with the blog of Jupitermedia CEO Alan Meckler. For one thing, there aren't a lot of CEOs who blog (that's probably a good thing, because by and large, it could be argued, it's a waste of time). But Meckler's post come off as fairly unvarnished and, well, dashed out in a couple seconds -- which is exactly how we like our blog posts: quick and dirty. Anyway, this entry is particularly relevant, cause he's bashing SarbOx, which, as a public company CEO, is cool.
U.K. House Prices Fall the Most Since 1992, HBOS Says (Bloomberg)
House prices fell 2.5 percent from February to March in the UK, the worst monthly drop since 1992. They ain't seen nothing yet.
Detroit Sets Bold Goal: Exporting U.S. Cars (WSJ)
Combine a weak dollar and a lower cost basis, and what do you get? An auto industry that's looking abroad for fresh sales growth. WSJ trumpets the fact that Detroit automakers are actually hoping to sell cars -- the product that they get paid to sell -- to markets around the world, including Latin America. It's pretty audacious when you think about it. Either that, or depressing that this is even such a big story. But we're long past the point about being depressed about the auto industry, so we'll just go back to thinking it's audacious.
Google App Engine readies for brawl with Amazon (VentureBeat)
You've probably heard, at some point or another, about Amazon's S3 web services -- the offering that allows internet startups easy access to their entire infrastructure for hosting their own services. Anyway, Amazon's sort of gotten a free ride in that the other internet companies -- i.e. the ones you'd naturally expect to take up the game -- haven't really come out with an alternative. Anyway, it appears Google has with something called App Engine. Read all about it.
Argentine Beef Crisis Is Perhaps At An End
Interesting piece about the politics of the beef market in argentina. If there's one thing you read today...
Giving Away Content (Big Picture)
Here's some very inside the financial blogosphere baseball stuff that we're intentionally putting last, so you can avoid it. Anyway, Barry Ritholtz, probably the biggest of the true financial bloggers discusses his frustrations with the site Seeking Alpha. We won't bother to list his complaints -- you can click through. Anyway, he's not the first person we've seen complain. Other bloggers, wondering what benefits there are on the site, have brought up issues as well, and pulled their content from it. Anyway, something interesting to watch for sure. Our guess is that plenty of folks will continue to want their stuff on there, but for Seeking Alpha -- which practically owns the whole space, certainly some interesting issues to wrestle with.
Posted by ab , Apr 08, 2008 8:33AM
Beef Magazine?
Posted by guest , Apr 08, 2008 9:14AM
Congratulations Kansas! Rock chalk!
Posted by guest , Apr 08, 2008 9:25AM
Superman cant see through Lead, so, my guess is that the criminals are planning something big. Like surprising Superman with a lead coated piece of kyptonite.......those bastards are always thinking of something...maybe its ex-BSC traders
Posted by guest , Apr 08, 2008 9:41AM
Superman is flying over Lois Lane's house one day and uses his telescopic vision to see that she is sunbathing nude on a large beach towel in her backyard and doing what appears to be abdomen exercises. Thinking she wouldn't mind a bit of a shag, he zooms down and enters her. After a quickie, he says nothing and flies off. Lois Lane then exclaims, "What the hell just happened??. The Invisible Man replies, "I don't know but boy, my ass is sore!"
Posted by guest , Apr 08, 2008 9:43AM
What no codywillard plug yet? Or is he sleeping in?
Posted by guest , Apr 08, 2008 9:50AM
Until you have: generated 500% returns annually for 8 years with $10bn under management; recorded 5 platinum heavy metal albums; won 4 oscars and 12 emmys; and killed a tiger with your bare hands ... you have nothing to say to Cody!
Posted by guest , Apr 08, 2008 10:27AM
Joe - Glad to see a fellow Longhorn. - Hook 'em
Posted by guest , Apr 08, 2008 10:48AM
And Kansas had a token 'white guy'! Memphis seemed to just have 'thug-looking' playas. Word! Kansas played as a team. Memphis seemed to play 'streetball' (i.e. F-off if you want me to pass you the ball).
Posted by guest , Apr 08, 2008 11:22AM
@ 10:48 -
Actually, Memphis has the best player in the country, Derrick Rose. When you have the best player and he plays the point, you want the ball in their hands as much as possible.
Kansas won because Calapari did a terrible job coaching. He refused to adjust his offense, not to mention not fouling on the last possession of regulation.
Posted by guest , Apr 08, 2008 11:40AM
We just need to knock China back to the stone age so they stop taking all of our precious commodities.
Posted by guest , Apr 08, 2008 11:47AM
The most active Memphis players, who were not thuggish looking at all (just very tall, thin young black men) all said in interviews after the game that Kansas had beaten them because Kansas had the will to win that night. Calapari also said that he was trying to get his team to foul on the last possession of regulation, but that Kansas was on to his game and the Kansas team was running away from his players.
Let's face facts: Kansas won last night because they played a superior brand of basketball. Memphis was the favorite, but too bad, things didn't work out their way.
Posted by guest , Apr 08, 2008 12:17PM
superior brand of BB? Come on, winning in OT means it was all but a tie.
Posted by guest , Apr 08, 2008 12:17PM
superior brand of BB? Come on, winning in OT means it was all but a tie.
Posted by guest , Apr 08, 2008 12:30PM
@11:42 - that was me at 11:22
I agree completely with you, Kansas won that game. Their players executed down the stretch while Memphis did not, ie make a free throw.
However, its a coach's responsibility to put his players in the best position to win. Calapari did not do this. Thats all I was trying to point out.
Posted by guest , Apr 08, 2008 2:03PM
OK, 12:30pm. Thanks. I admit I'm a little punchy on the subject of Kansas. I thought they were a great team and played some phenomenal basketball. It seemed to me that the talking heads were so pro-Memphis that I got irritated. Incidentally, I heard this morning on CNBC that T. Boone Pickens wants to hire Self away for Oklahoma State.
Posted by guest , Apr 08, 2008 2:03PM
Puh-leeze, Kansas didn't win; Memphis choked at the foul line and lost. Pretty lame champion in my book.
Posted by guest , Apr 08, 2008 6:32PM
@2:03pm. I guess in your book the Patriots won the Superbowl, and Tom Brady is the Superbowl MVP.
When the OT buzzer went off, Kansas was seven points ahead of Memphis. The Memphis players said later it wasn't choking at the foul line that cost them the game, it was the way they played the whole game that defeated them.
Things turn out differently than you expect. That's why we have this thing called "games." Otherwise, let's just have the experts predict for us who the winner will be, and we'll all go home early.
Face it: Kansas won. It is an uncontestable, incontrovertible, indisputable, indubitable, undeniable, unquestionable, and unequivocal fact.