Emily Remler

Born in 1957 (that was a good year), Emily Remler passed away in 1990. Check out the video of Emily playing "How Insensitive".

In an interview with People magazine, she once said of herself: "I may look like a nice Jewish girl from New Jersey, but inside I’m a 50-year-old, heavyset black man with a big thumb, like Wes Montgomery." ~People Mag. 1982~

Neat Mascot - Nasty Product (opinion)

I haven't been to Burger King in a long time. It hasn't sounded like a good idea. I've done the golden arches a few times but no Burger King. I needed to get something quick and there it was. - Burger King. I'm not sure what I ordered (I'm sure it had a name - I think the word stack was in it) but it consisted of the typical white bread bun (limp) with two 1/10 of a pound patties, some precooked bacon and a cheese that I think was ladled on (that's what it looked like). In the cheese were some small fragments of what might have been something (maybe a pepper). It looked bad but I ate it anyway.

It was one of the worst things ever served or eaten by man. It was almost tasteless. What taste came through was not pleasant. This was bad stuff. I'm not talking about nutrition here. I mean - this assemblage was just plain lousy. My guess is that this was the intended offering and not the fact that I got a mistake. It was ... what's the word?... Gross. I only ate the burger with the cheese and bacon (no bun). Maybe it was 3 - 4 ounces of matter. It sat inside me - heavy and unsatisfying. I was however, no longer hungry.

I really don't think I'll ever return to "The King". I'm not sure why I went in the first place.

NYSE: BKC - Burger King Holdings is selling for $18.97 / share. It's 52-week low is $15.61. This should be a good issue to short. There - I'm making the call "Short BKC". Don't ask me how short or what duration to play - you have to do some of the work yourself. However, I would say that a new low in the next 12- months would make sense - based on the crud I swallowed today.

Finding Population and other data for a defined area

I thought there would be a tool out there on the web where I could pick a location (address) and then pick a radius (10 miles, 20 miles - whatever) and get the population, demographics and maybe some other granular data about the area within the circle. Apparently there is nothing for free. Maybe that is a project / business waiting to happen - although, free is a tough climb. It looks like I can buy tools (CD/DVD) or buy a subscription to get down to "block" level. Not city block, but census block (used for elections etc).

The best I could do for free was a database at the US Census Bureau Factfinder . There is some good information here and it's probably close to accurate. ZipSkinny is another site that seems nifty. It pushes essentially the same data - presented by zip code. Zip code sorting could be more helpful or less helpful but it's another pile. ZipSkinny can deliver side by side comparisons - nice. The source is most likely the 2000 census. I can see a way to create the kind of data I'm looking for by making some assumptions. If I want to look at a relatively small region, say - Southeastern, NH it wouldn't be too tough. For example: if the 10 mile radius from a particular address swallowed up 15% of a neighboring town, we could say that 15% of the population was within the radius section. Yes indeed, we could be slicing off the heaviest concentration of a particular town or the lightest. This would fuzz our % of the town conclusion but it would still be a decent representation. If the radius clipped pieces of a few towns, the errors +(-) about concentration would tend to offset.

If you know of a site where this data is organized as I've described, let me know. That would be worth ten bucks to someone.

Sir on the equities - Over-sized Gains in the Past

About the nice market pop in 2009 and prospects for 2010 - Sir said, "The over-sized gains of '09 are now in the past".

Too bad. That was fun.

That's all I have for now. Will 2010 still manage to give us a little? Don't know. Maybe it's a picker's year.

It's not the rats

It's not the rats you need to worry about

If you want to know if a ship is going to sink, watch what the richest passengers do.

iTunes and file sharing killed Tower Records. The key symptom: the best customers switched. Of course people who were buying 200 records a year would switch. They had the most incentive. The alternatives were cheaper and faster mostly for the heavy users.

Amazon and the Kindle have killed the bookstore. Why? Because people who buy 100 or 300 books a year are gone forever. The typical American buys just one book a year for pleasure. Those people are meaningless to a bookstore. It's the heavy users that matter, and now officially, as 2009 ends, they have abandoned the bookstore. It's over.

When law firms started switching to fax machines, Fedex realized that the cash cow part of their business (100 or 1000 or more envelopes per firm per day) was over and switched fast to packages. Good for them.

If your ship is sinking, get out now. By the time the rats start packing, it's way too late.

27 days at sea - no ports, just sailing and sailing and sailing

Jaimie touches land for the first time in 27 days:

Woody

I ran into Isosceles. He had a great idea for a new triangle!

Cuppla Quotes from some guy I know

"Luck plays a big part in business. Not having a good business is bad luck."

"Don't kid yourself. There will be pain. Isn't that encouraging?"

I see a little silhouetto of a clam...

Can you say too much? I think you can.

"He only shuts his mouth long enough to change feet."

Story Story Story

Did we forget how good it is?

Vee Dubbya Spot - The Fun Theory

Mighty Sam McLain

Health care math

If total US health care cost are 2.2 trillion (2,200,000,000,000) and there are 308 million (308,000,000) people in the US; that is $7,143 / person per year - or $595 / month / person.

If elective procedures account for 26% ($1,857), then non-elective costs become $5,286 / year - or $440 / month / person.

Keep in mind that the numbers include profit margins for health services, doctors, pharma etc. While it is a gross over-simplification, we might say that $440 / month would cover everyone for everything that is not elective. You'd have to pay for your own facelift.

Okay - now say we toss in a deductible of 15% transferring $66/ month to the actual consumers of health care. The "EE" (everyone for everything) cost goes down to $374 / month / person.

USA Today reports that the average health insurance policy (varying coverages and deductibles) is $402 / person / month.

Now, we start shifting the cost around based on risk factors and we get a range between $125 and $675 / person / month.

There you have it.

Some days are better than others

Nice stuff Louis

Nice stuff Louis C. K.

Take off

Soaring is good.
Swooping is good.
Finding a landing spot is good.

Taking off could be the best part.

Leaping priorities - the hierarchy

It looks like this:

1. Attitude
2. Approach
3. Goals
4. Strategy
5. Tactics
6. Execution

We spend all our time on execution. Use this word instead of that one. This web host. That color. This material or that frequency of mailing.

Big news: No one ever succeeded because of execution tactics learned from a Dummies book.

Tactics tell you what to execute. They're important, but dwarfed by strategy. Strategy determines which tactics might work.

But what's the point of a strategy if your goals aren't clear, or contradict?

Which leads the first two, the two we almost never hear about.

Approach determines how you look at the project (or your career). Do you read a lot of books? Ask a lot of questions? Use science and testing or go with your hunches? Are you imperious? A lifehacker? When was the last time you admitted an error and made a dramatic course correction? Most everyone has a style, and if you pick the wrong one, then all the strategy, tactics and execution in the world won't work nearly as well.

As far as I'm concerned, the most important of all, the top of the hierarchy is attitude. Why are you doing this at all? What's your bias in dealing with people and problems?

Some more questions:

• How do you deal with failure?
• When will you quit?
• How do you treat competitors?
• What personality are you looking for in the people you hire?
• What's it like to work for you? Why? Is that a deliberate choice?
• What sort of decisions do you you make when no one is looking?

Sure, you can start at the bottom by focusing on execution and credentials. Reading a typical blog (or going to a typical school for 16 years), it seems like that's what you're supposed to do. What a waste.

Isn't it odd that these six questions are so important and yet we almost never talk or write about them?

If the top of the hierarchy is messed up, no amount of brilliant tactics or execution is going to help you at all

Godin writes

More leaping strategy

I never enjoyed listening to people who bounce along on "attitude" intentionally blind to real things. You can't just imagine your way around obstacles. If you don't have the skills, can't acquire them or don't think there will be ugly patches and times that require tough decision making (at least good guesses and the willingness to push), then your attitude is just an annoying deception.

However, when you accept that risk is a necessary part of reward and you decide that now is the time to take a leap, mustering up the confidence and determination has to include commitment. You can't be blind and stupid, but the right approach does have to come with attitude.

Even if you quake with fear, keep it to yourself. Your effectiveness as a leader (winner of others confidence and effectiveness) depends on it.

This comment from Godin is spot-on. He writes:

All the evidence I've seen shows that positive thinking and confidence improves performance. In anything.

Give someone an easy math problem, watch them get it right and then they'll do better on the ensuing standardized test than someone who just failed a difficult practice test.

No, positive thinking doesn't allow you to do anything, but it's been shown over and over again that it improves performance over negative thinking.

Key question then: why do smart people engage in negative thinking? Are they actually stupid?

The reason, I think, is that negative thinking feels good. In its own way, we believe that negative thinking works. Negative thinking feels realistic, or soothes our pain, or eases our embarrassment. Negative thinking protects us and lowers expectations.

In many ways, negative thinking is a lot more fun than positive thinking. So we do it.

If positive thinking was easy, we'd do it all the time. Compounding this difficulty is our belief that the easy thing (negative thinking) is actually appropriate, it actually works for us. The data is irrelevant. We're the exception, so we say.

Positive thinking is hard. Worth it, though.