My Scrapbook

• 2013-05-21

  Certainly, Europeans have protested austerity. But despite some scares, no country has left the euro. Support for remaining in the common currency remains high, even though there is widespread disenchantment with the European Union. Over 60% of Spaniards, Greeks, Italians and French want to keep the common currency.

  — 

  Don’t Cry for Me, Euro Zone - WSJ.com

  This doesn’t only mean that people in those countries love the Euro, it just means that we are more scared of our own politicians than we are of Eurpean ones. But I agree with the mail thesis of the article, this support may come to an abrupt end anyday.

  Source: The Wall Street Journal

• 2013-05-20

  Greece Isn’t Turning the Corner - Bloomberg

  I agree, a few investments don’t make a recovery. They may only mean that there are big opportunities in a big crisis if you have the cash. Or investors maybe making big mistakes. Anyway, this are just my theories, the journalist is just skeptical about a recovery but doesn’t provide an explanation for the investments.

• 2013-05-10

  As I reported in 2011, travelers are told to turn off their iPads and Kindles for takeoff and landing, yet there is no proof that these devices affect a plane’s avionics. To add to the confusion, the F.A.A. permits passengers to use electric razors and audio recorders during all phases of flight, even though those give off more electronic emissions than tablets.

  — 

  Many Air Passengers Never Turn Off Electronics, Survey Finds - NYTimes.com

  It’s time to chnge the rules!!

  Source: The New York Times

• 2013-05-08

  But if Ford and other auto executives see the technology with a Jetsons like optimism, they have darker concerns, too. Fifty years ago Detroit misgauged consumer appetites and lost its way amid an invasion of fuel-efficient Japanese cars to U.S. soil, and it almost never recovered. With 100 million new cars expected to have some form of connectivity by 2025, the companies who build and sell them quietly fret that if they don’t spend billions developing this new market, they may lose it to disruptive young rivals in a pattern painfully familiar to newspaper, music and television companies. Detroit versus Silicon Valley. The war is on.

  — 

  Silicon Valley vs. Detroit: The Battle For The Car Of The Future - Forbes

  They are right to be concerned. Software companies will eat automakers. They are thinking about tech in the car, but the car is just a part of someone life. People will demand integration of the car with their existing uses of technology and automakers can’t do that.

  Source: forbes.com

• 2013-04-27

  Nigel Marsh: How to make work-life balance work | Video on TED.com

  There are thousands and thousands of people out there living lives of quiet, screaming desperation who work long, hard hours, at jobs they hate, to enable them to buy things they don’t need to impress people they don’t like.

• 2013-04-18

  She was famously considerate to people like secretaries and cleaners at Downing Street and notoriously brutal toward her Cabinet ministers and her aides.

  — Margaret Thatcher And The Importance of Being Prickly | New Republic (via pegobry)

  (via pegobry)

  Source: newrepublic.com

• →

  Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face.” —Mike Tyson

  — Of the most true quotes, this is simply the best. (via awaldstein)

  Source: awaldstein

• →

  Vigilantes have organized themselves on Reddit for a manhunt. They want justice served. And they’re openly debating suspects on the site. They’re gonna solve the case! Like real cops on television.

  But they are not real cops. They are well-meaning people who have not considered the moral weight of what they’re doing. This is vigilantism, and it’s only the illusion that what we do online is not as significant as what we do offline that allows this to go on. Imagine if people were standing around in Boston pointing fingers at people in photographs and (roughly) accusing them of terrorism.

  — Alexis Madrigal, on why it’s a terrible idea to “hunt” for Boston bomber suspects online. (via theatlantic)

  (via pegobry)

  Source: The Atlantic

• 2013-04-13

  Sales managers generally don’t have issues with firing poor performers, so sales people go fast. I have a friend who was fond of saying, “We have two kinds of sales people: rich and new.

  — 

  Sales is much tougher than people think!

  Through The Looking Glass: Hiring Sales People | TechCrunch

  Source: TechCrunch

• 2012-09-24

  Priceonomics Blog: What Happens to Stolen Bicycles?

  priceonomics:

  At Priceonomics, we are fascinated by stolen bicycles. Put simply, why the heck do so many bicycles get stolen? It seems like a crime with very limited financial upside for the thief, and yet bicycle theft is rampant in cities like San Francisco (where we are based). What is the economic…

  Source: priceonomics