Kitty Maps!

Lions that have collars that transmit their position by text message, and a map is automatically created? Sweet.

The original article mentions the text messaging but the collar manufacturer's website shows a bunch of different methods of communication: UHF/VHF radios or the ARGOS, GLOBALSTAR, and IRIDIUM satellite networks. And not only is GPS data sent but also data from other sensors: accelerometer, mortality, hibernation, virtual fence, proximity, and temperature.

Like I said, sweet.

Thankfulness

Thankfulness:
1. Transit oriented development
2. Mexican food
3. Craft beers
4. Electromagnetics
5. Local businesses
(6. Friends and family)

Unthankfulness:
1. Parking lots
2. Politics of austerity
3. Nimbys
4. Housing prices
5. Concussions (mostly in football, but also in general)

IDOTN!

To those who say that there are no good nachos (or Mexican food for that matter) on the East Coast (specifically Boston), and in honor of the International Day of the Nacho 2011, I humbly present the following:

Atlantic Beer Garden

Game On!

Also some IDOTN 2011 Recipes:
Turkey
Vegan(?!?!?!?!)

Metro Green Line Meeting: 4/14/2011

Some Notes from the 4/14/2011 Green Line Extension (GLE) Meeting
William Green Elementary School, Lawndale, CA

There were four types of commenters:
1. Anti GLE in any way
2. Anti GLE in Lawndale
3. Anti GLE on Right of Way (ROW), pro GLE on Inglewood or Hawthorne (most on Hawthorne)
4. Pro GLE in current configuration

The first couple of speakers fell into camps 2 and 1 and got a lot of support from the crowd. Someone from a transportation organization (not the BRU or the Transit Coalition) got up and spoke and was booed resoundingly. Another guy who was 22 was in the #4 camp, and said some poorly worded (and offensive) things and was booed and heckled. Things calmed down somewhat after that but most of the people still were in camps 2 and 3.

People were really concerned about safety.
Some were concerned about other effects (traffic, noise).
A couple mentioned 'inevitable' cost and schedule overruns.

The people in the pro camp talked about how much it would save their personal commutes, thinking about the future (especially the younger commenters), and getting off oil.

A really interesting facet that I was surprised at was how many 'Lawndaliens' felt like this was being rammed down their throats by Redondo Beach. They were very sensitive to perceived benefits going to Redondo (via tax revenue at the South Bay Galleria) and Lawndale bearing the brunt of ill effects because of the route choice.

It also seemed like there is a lot of willful ignorance - not believing anything in Metro's presentations, dubious of studies, etc. A suggestion I wrote on a card was to present a little more data but I'm doubtful it would have swayed many of the people there - especially not at the meeting itself.

Also there were many Lawndale City Council members in attendance but none spoke and it seemed like there was someone taking notes and people's names - maybe a reporter for the Daily Breeze?

My two cents:
Lawndale city leaders could have done themselves a HUGE service but interfacing with both their community and Metro long before the meeting tonight. If the community had been more organized they could have helped influence Metro's analysis of the Hawthorne ROW. For example - if Lawndale were to put a special redevelopment district along Hawthorne BLVD to get more transit oriented development, in areas that they would like stations, and shared that information with Metro before Metro did its ridership analysis, that would have positively affected the Hawthorne corridor ROW analysis. Metro could have also done a better job of engaging the different cities - but I'm late to the process so I'm not sure of the entire history.

Another option would be for Hawthorne and Lawndale to pursue a light rail/streetcar up and down the Hawthorne ROW, independent of Metro, but involve Metro for synergistic effects. Lawndale could also look into pursuing more funding (either grants from State/Fed govt or passing a bond measure) to help Metro choose the Hawthorne route - say a public/private partnership to develop a station and TOD with the developer getting tax breaks, building a station that Metro wouldn't have to, and Lawndale getting some new development to increase the tax base. It seems like they're in reaction mode instead of being proactive.

Metro Link

Make Money!

Playing Poker! Like my previous post these locations were also from the latest issue of ESPN the magazine. I was actually surprised that so many places were in LA. The only time I was in the Hollywood Park Casino it was surreal - especially when you're used to stumbling through a Vegas casino at 4 in the morning. Also, Berlin played a concert that night which was the strangest concert I've ever been through (note to self: don't wait to hear Take My Breath Away for any length of time no matter your love of Top Gun). And I've never been at a 'real' card table so there's that. Also, these places have nothing on the Cayucos Tavern (complete with MySpace page!). Liquor in front, poker in the rear. Heyo!


View Top 10 Places in the Country to Make Money Playing Poker in a larger map

Book Report: Cloudsplitter

I just finished Cloudsplitter by Russell Banks. It tells the story of abolitionist John Brown from the point of view of is son Owen. You can get salient links from the Wikipedia page. It's a monster book - 758 pages - that I was reading on and off for a couple months. I'm not sure I have a ton to say about it that isn't included here or here.

I liked it because it covered a historical subject that I had learned about from US History classes in high school and college but really paints the scene of how society worked and the motivations that (perhaps) could have been the cause of such an important piece of our history.

This is not what we do on Baseball Trip

I realize this is a bit out of character for this blog (misogyny anyone?) but after getting the September 20th issue of ESPN the magazine (The List Issue) and reading Bill Simmons' tweet about Edge James' favorite strip clubs, I had to make a map. (And no, I haven't forgiven James for 1998). Get Bill's first book: Now I Can Die in Peace, or his second: The Book of Basketball.


View Edge James' favorite Clubs in a larger map

Holy Mother of BSE!

Here it is almost Labor Day and not one single Best Summer Ever post?!?!?!?!?! First off I highly recommend four wheeling in the country. I spent a week in central Illinois and had a blast: cousin's wedding, side trip to Memphis (and Graceland!), a family reunion, and a great drive through the countryside on ATVs. The coolest part was when, after driving through countless fields of corn and soybeans, we came across a shack that was built on stilts because it was next to the Sangamon River (in case of flooding, right?). So this shack is total redneck fishing cabin - no running water, an outhouse, random bones everywhere, no real road to get there, etc. But once we took the ATVs to a sandbar on the river it was amazing. You couldn't see a single hint of civilization, not counting sandy beer cans (even oldies with pull tabs). But this was great because of the sense of history: you see, Abraham Lincoln was the Postmaster General of New Salem, Illinois, not 10 miles up the river. He lived in those parts before becoming a lawyer in Illinois (and getting into that whole politics thing). His first love, Ann Rutledge, is buried in the same cemetery as my grandparents (and great grandparents, and relatives that came from Denmark to the new world). So yeah, that was pretty great.

Also I've been to Vegas a couple times for bachelor parties, been to some weddings (and took the train to one), had a couple of work trips in Salt Lake City, went to the Strawberry Festival in Oxnard (good corndogs and strawberry shortcake bar but big crowds), did a baseball trip to Southern Florida in May (the real start of BSE round these parts), played hooky to see an Angel game on a Wednesday (Ferris Bueller style), and am wrapping up a beach volleyball league.

Makes me tired just thinking about it!

Book Report: Mind over Money

My most recent financial book was Mind over Money: Match Your Personality to a Winning Financial Strategy by John W. Schott. It's not exactly recent - published in 2000. Schott's advice lies somewhere between day traders and buy and holders - tailored to specific personality types. It was published before the recent wave of behavioral economics books (to wit: Mind over Money: Overcoming the Money Disorders That Threaten Our Financial Health, which I have not read but was published in late 2009.

I didn't really feel like I matched any of Schott's personality profiles but there were a couple of things I like. First a quote:

Wealth accrues from a pattern of generally right behavior, not from trying to extract the maximum profit out of each and every situation, since one never knows what the maximum might be.

Which I liken to my baseball analogy: it's better to hit singles and doubles, get men on base and move the runners rather than hit a home run at every at bat. The next part I liked was Appendix B: Net Present Value: A Calculation for Confident Buying. For awhile I've been looking for methods to calculate values of companies that is short of getting an MBA. This is a great 3 page start.

Oh give me a home....

Every time I either drive or fly in and out of Los Angeles I think about moving. I grew up in a small town and being surrounded by so many people and so much stuff can be kind of clausterphobic. Plus it's hard to imagine having a family here. And houses cost a LOT of money. So I was interested when Barry Ritholtz (an investment professional cum financial blogger) commented on a site at Forbes about where Americans are moving (using IRS data).





(Look, people move to LA from the east coast and then from LA to the South and the west coast).

This tool would be a great compliment to Richard Florida's "Who's Your City" website (and book too, although I haven't read it). Choosing where to live is a multi-dimensional problem that is hard to contemplate. These sites are a great start.

Somewhat randomly the Wikipedia entry on Who's Your City says that my boy Tim Harford has been critical of the book. This couldn't be verified because Wikipedia's source was an article in Canadian Geographer (which I don't have access to) and the only mention I could find was Tim referencing Florida's work.

Book Report: The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest

The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest finale of Stieg Larsson's Millenium Trilogy and my 13th book of the year. A great book but bittersweet because of Larsson's premature death from a heart attack. Mostly the same characters as The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo and The Girl Who Played With Fire. Start reading now!

Book Report: The Girl Who Played with Fire

The Girl Who Played With Fire, book two of Stieg Larsson's Millenium Trilogy. I finished this book on a bus/train ride from San Luis Obispo to Union Station (Amtrak!). Then I took the FlyAway Shuttle from Union Station to LAX. Fun!


View Bus/Train Fun! in a larger map

I want to FlyAway

At one point I thought I had posted about a trip I took on the Metro from Pasadena to El Segundo but it's still sitting in my 'not completed' file. That trip consisted of the Gold Line, Red Line, Blue Line, to the Green. Which was cool because I got to go through Union Station, the 7th Street Metro Center, and the Rosa Parks station. The uncool part was that it took about 1.5 hours and required a separate ticket for each hop (although now I find out they have day passes). Obligatory Metro link.

Today I had a similar mission: get from downtown to the SouthBay. I could have done a similar trip but I wanted to try something I had only read about called the FlyAway bus service. It is operated by Los Angeles Regional Airports and consists of shuttles that go from all the regions airports to Union Station and other population centers. My experience was great. I asked some very nice people at Union Station where the kiosk was and after a short walk and seven dollars I had a ticket in my hand. Buses leave every half hour and although the driver told us that the trip would be longer because it was rush hour it only ended up taking about 35 minutes (and even went over my second favorite interchange: 110 south to 105 west carpool lane - booyah!). I waited longer for my friends to pick me up at the Southwest terminal.

Map of where the FlyAway kiosk is:


View Los Angeles Union Station in a larger map

Also here's are a couple of ideas: how about taking and rating all the different transportation agencies in Southern California? Or how about some enterprising young programmer puts a database together of all the timetables of said agencies along with the cost for different hops and transfers and walking times, uses a little Dijkstra magic, and figures out routes that are either cheapest or fastest (or better yet let you weight each). Kind of like the Metro Trip Planner but cool and useful. Has GoogleMaps done this yet? Actually, can I have that job? Thanks...

Stupid video link even though the stupid record company won't allow embeds

Treme Recap

Treme season 1 over. Read some reviews:
one
two
three

Compared similarly to The Wire. I hope they get a few more seasons - the music is great and like The Wire did for Baltimore, Treme makes New Orleans a central character.

Book Report: 9, 10, and 11

Reading my 9th book of 2010, Babbitt by Sinclair Lewis, was a taxing ordeal. It's a satire of American culture in the early 20th century but with everything happening now (hello income gap!) it was basically super depressing and made me read magazines for a couple months.

Fortunately I borrowed the hot novel The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson from my mom and tore through it in a couple days. Very cool noirish story set in Sweden. It's the first in a trilogy so hopefully I can get to the other two pretty quickly. Unfortunately Steig died unexpectedly a couple years ago. (Also he was a socialist so watch out!)

To round out my latest trilogy I pulled The Perfect Storm by Sebastian Junger from my bookshelf which I probably 'borrowed' from my mom as well. Great piece of reporting/writing and of course the movie starts George Clooney so I'll probably watch that too.

Treme!

Well Treme has started and it does not disappoint. Start watching.....

Book Report: The Undercover Economist

The 8th book I've read this year was The Undercover Economist by Tim Harford. I initially read Tim somewhere on the internet and liked his writing style enough to buy his book.

The Undercover Economist was thoroughly enjoyable although I wanted to understand it so I took my time reading it. In addition, some of it I had to take with a grain of salt. I don't know that any book will convince me that markets are inherently free and that taxes are simply inefficiencies in markets. Experience would dictate that markets are under constant flux because of both government and market participants and taxes can be ways of either correcting for inefficiencies of market structure, forcing participants to address externalities, and (yes) inefficient in and of themselves. He glosses over the example of how Singapore provides health care to its citizens but that seems to me the crux of the type of question his book can help to answer: requirements by governments that in effect create a market. How can this market be created so that consumers win and no monopoly rents can be generated?

That being said, this book was excellent at pointing out ways in which economics can be useful in explaining why prices are what they are (scarcity power driving up rents, barriers to entry, extracting information, and even auctions to name a few) and other such interesting economic phenomena (like congestion pricing - which is good!). It really gave me a lot to think about in how to think about a lot if that makes sense.

Book Report: The House of Mirth

Financial advice from Edith Wharton that Thomas J. Stanley and William D. Danko would be proud of:

"You asked me just now if I could understand why Ned Silverton spent so much money. Of course I understand-he spends it on living with the rich. You think we live on the rich, rather than with them: and so we do, in a sense-but it's a privilege we have to pay for! We eat their dinners, and drink their wine, and smoke their cigarettes, and use their carriages and their opera-boxes and their private cars-yes, bu there's a tax to pay on every one of those luxuries. The man pays it by big tips to the servants, by playing cards beyond his means, by flowers and presents-and-and-lots of other things that cost; the girl pays it by tips and cards too-oh, yes, I've had to take up bridge again-and by going to the best dress-makers, and having just the right dress for every occasion, and always keeping herself fresh and exquisite and amusing!"

Book Report: The Four Pillars of Investing

I just finished an excellent book on investing: The Four Pillars of Investing, by William J. Bernstein. His style is very engaging, especially for a subject that is inherently technical. There are a lot of ideas and I especially like learning about the theory of investing (pillar 1). Here's a brief synopsis of the pillars:

Pillar 1: The Theory of Investing

Risk and reward are inexorably linked no matter what the asset class (stocks, bonds, etc.) and it is relatively easy to determine long term expected returns. Results touted by money managers and mutual funds are almost all due to luck, not to skill. Portfolio theory and diversification are the names of the game.

Pillar 2: The History of Investing

Markets can become irrational with both optimism and pessimism. As recent events have shown, this boom/bust cycle has not ended (nor will it). And the counter intuitive point "is that at times of great optimism, future returns are the lowest; when things look bleakest, future returns are highest." Just like risk and return predict.

Pillar 3: The Psychology of Investing

The biggest obstacle to success in investing is you the investor, and our nature of of looking for the next Microsoft or lottery ticket. This leads to high trading churn (enriching traders rather than ourselves) and making poor buy/sell decisions.

Pillar 4: The Business of Investing

The incentives of most brokers and mutual fund companies are not aligned with the interests of the investor. They exist to make money - your money.

Investment Strategy: Assembling the Four Pillars

Most small investors are deficient in the areas of theory and psychology. As defined benefit plans (pensions) are being replaced by contribution plans (401k) it is increasingly important for 'average investors' to educate themselves on investing.

Health Rules

I read this article of Health Rules by Jane Brody in the New York Times. She quoted Michael Pollan, which I will recycle:

"Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants."
"If it came from a plant, eat it; if it was made in a plant, don’t."
"Cook"
"Stop eating before you’re full"
"No snacks, no seconds, no sweets — except on days that begin with the letter S."

All good advice. But the last one is terrible. I do love Sthursdays though.