Category Archives: Web/Tech

Seriously, why don’t more people watch / talk about Charlie Rose? His interviews with big name people are consistently the best on television. This is due not only to his spirited, soulful interviewing style but also to the fact that since he’s on public television each interview lasts 20-30 minutes. Say goodbye to vapid sound bites and hello to in-depth discussion.

Of late, no one has covered the financial crisis on TV better than Charlie Rose. Who else has had in-depth discussions with Paul Volcker, Warren Buffett, Hank Paulson, Maria Bartiromo, Robert Rubin, Larry Summers, Peter Thiel, Martin Wolf, and so many others? There’s a reason people of these caliber go on his program — they know it’ll be a conversation of substance and length.

The diversity of his guests shows a real intellectual curiosity. I have recently enjoyed his interview with David Foster Wallace (a rare video appearance) and Adam Gopnik (interesting thoughts on having kids), Chris Rock, and many others.

As a plus, his web site is wonderfully organized, videos load fast and are clearly labeled. I don’t watch TV. I only know Charlie Rose on the web. Just search for a name or browse the guests page.

If you wanted to spend a Saturday watching stimulating video, you could do worse than watching Charlie Rose online, then heading over to TED Talks, and finishing with a few good Bloggingheads episodes.

Quick links, cheap shots, bon mots…

1. Larry Lessig, the most eloquent commentator on issues of law and technology, publishes an excerpt from his new book Remix. Worth reading.

2. Is the freemium business model over?

3. Jason Calacainis’ widely read Start-up Depression post was a bit over the top, in my opinion, but contained some great pointers including this line on execution:

Execution is the easiest thing to fix, and you can do it one of two ways: get the people in your organization to perform at a higher level, or get higher-level folks into your organization. It really is that simple: folks can either step up or step out.

4. Soon to be college-grads who were first thinking Wall Street are now studying for the LSATs. Here’s a surprising stat about lawyers and what they make after law school in this blog post:

Nine out of ten law students will make $60-70k after graduation, and only a select few will make $140k…[T]he kids making $140k right out of school have a 10% chance of making partner in their firms.

5. How to fight a rumor. If you want to deny it, don’t just issue a denial — come up with a rebuttal that “will create a new truth, including an explanation of why the rumor exists and who is benefiting from it.”

6. A video of George Bush 10 years ago in the Texas governorship debates. He’s shockingly articulate. What happened? The video is titled “Is George Bush Getting Alzheimer’s?”

Airline Industry News

1. Here’s an interesting Reason Foundation report on the next generation of air traffic control technology. Its premise is that building lots of new runways at airports ain’t going to happen for political / environmental reasons. This sucks because, at least according to this book, 25 new runways would eliminate most air travel delays in America. So, this report asks, “What kind of technology can we implement within our existing airports that would solve our problems?”

2. New York airports are going to auction off landing slots. Notwithstanding airline protests, this is a smart move.

3. The New Republic had a doomsday article recently titled The End of Aviation. It argues that the end of cheap oil and rise of environmentalism (specifically global warming concerns) may mean the end of mass, commercial airline travel. It’s a sobering read. I’m still bullish on the long term prospects of the industry. Here are some stats from Felix Salmon about how airline travel is outstripping population growth.

4. The air taxi model continues to evolve. Here’s the latest from Southern California –on-demand flights from a choice of 40 different airstrips.

I’ve posted nearly 900 messages on micro-blogging service Twitter. Each update is limited to 140 characters. I use it to post quotes, single sentence thoughts, and more personal updates. It also serves as my Facebook status update.

Here are some recent Tweets:

• Reading the Bible. No, not The Economist, the religious one.
• Not everyone should include a middle initial when signing their name. Generic names must. For others it depends – sometimes it’s pretentious
• I’ve lost track of the number of people I’ve inspired to close social transactions with "take care." It’s a great all-purpose line.
• Small airports don’t sell water after security, which tortures waterholics like myself. TSA should require a water vendor after sec
• I find listening to music rarely changes my mood but can intensify whatever mood / emotion I am already feeling at the time.
• "I can be bought. If they paid me enough, I’d work for the Klan." – Charles Barkley
• "We are in the business of kicking butt and business is very, very good." – Charles Barkley
• Minneapolis airport en route to Wisconsin to give a couple talks. Do twin cities have big Japanese pop? Signs in eng and jap
• idea for what to name a bar: "Pacific Standard Time" – patrons could abbrev to PST.
• Great ad placement by Zappos: the bottom of TSA bins that go thru x-ray.
• Co-founder of RealClearPolitics today at Claremont: Obama and McCain have 14,000 lawyers btwn them ready to litigate on election day.
• Just got back from dinner where Karl Rove spoke. He’s been on campus all evening. Not surprisingly, a smart guy.
• I think I called a wrong number, but got this hilarious voicemail greeting. Call: (906) 875-6770. Spoof mental hospital.
• Especially in teenagehood, girls heavily discriminate in favor of similar physical attractiveness when picking friends.
• People who wear glasses and fancy themselves smart like adjusting / touching the frames.
• Testimonials with just the first name or just initials look worse than no testimonials at all.
• Christopher Hitchens in a debate on the existence of God: "There are no statements worth arguing here; all you can do is underline them.”
• Every time I read the FT I think of and pine for int’l traveling — it was my main source of news while overseas.
• Philip Roth, Tom Friedman, Bob Woodward, Stephen King, and Malcolm Gladwell all have bks coming out in the fall.                        
• When you expose yourself to an expert’s work, you feel both inspired by what can be and depressed by your own lack of natural ability.             
• "Once you have a mission you cant go back to having a job." – Shai Agassi, frmr SAP exec
• "The sole cause of man’s unhappiness is that he does not know how to stay quietly in his room." – Pascal, Pensées, 136.
• Zinger from Palin: "I guess being a small town mayor is sort of like a community organizer, except that you have real responsibilities."                            
• "In part, conservatism believes you can’t perfect humans or society. Suspic of do-gooders who think they can, who underrate complexity."                            
• Facebook has rendered the "happy birthday!" note un-special. People get inundated on their b-day. Unexpected greetings are best.
• September in non-coastal Southern California: waaay tooo hot. Am I really doomed to only being able to thrive in SF-like, foggy climates?
• Southern accent in children is endearing.                              
• I’ve seen more fat people in last hr in Pigeon Fordge, TN than in last month in all SF.
• Just ate hickory smoked pig shoulders (smoked for 11 hours) with BBQ sauce. Feeling very Southern.
• Participated in Laughter Yoga session today — totally bizarre and very amusing. You laugh with others for 30 minutes: http://tiny.cc/etxVt

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I’m speaking in Waterloo on October 4th and have some time for dinner in Toronto that evening before my flight. Email me if you want to meet up.

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I’ve been blogging for more than four years. Check out the "Best Of" page of selected posts from the archives. Some good stuff.

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You can access a mobile version of this blog by visiting mobile.casnocha.com on your phone to get a stripped-down site with just the posts.

From Clay Shirky, one of the more eloquent commentators on the increasingly participatory nature of the internet:

Digital and networked production vastly increase three kinds of freedom: freedom of speech, of the press, and of assembly. This perforce increases the freedom of anyone to say anything at any time. This freedom has led to an explosion in novel content, much of it mediocre, but freedom is like that. Critically, this expansion of freedom has not undermined any of the absolute advantages of expertise; the virtues of mastery remain as they were. What has happened is that the relative advantages of expertise are in precipitous decline. Experts the world over have been shocked to discover that they were consulted not as a direct result of their expertise, but often as a secondary effect — the apparatus of credentialing made finding experts easier than finding amateurs, even when the amateurs knew the same things as the experts.

Also try his speech on Gin, Television, and Social Surplus — this is where he compared time spent watching TV with time spent building wikipedia.

Quick links, cheap shots, bon mots…

1. Snopes.com calls "subliminal advertising" a myth — it is not effective, let alone even exists in the way people think it does. The scientist who conducted the study which gave rise to the term forged all his results.

2. Felix Salmon writes two terrific posts on saving vs. spending that every 20-something should read. Here’s part 1, here’s part 2. He confronts the typical advice that a young person should save as much money as possible and specifically start saving for retirement to take advantage of compound interest. He says it’s when you’re young that a little money can go a long way (ie, $100k usually means a lot more to a 25 year-old than a 40 year-old). I would add that when you’re young you should try to accumulate unique experiences and expose yourself to bulk, positive randomness while the cost of failure is low…even if this means delaying a long-term investment strategy.

3. David Zetland over at Aguanomics shows his colors as a pragmatist: "When 95% of the population knows more about long showers than food production, you have to be careful about asking them to reallocate water. That’s why most of my policies proposals are extensions and modifications of the status quo — not revolutionary ideas — e.g., complete water privitization with distribution of water vouchers to citizens." Here here. It’s tiresome to hear high level gripes about how dysfunctional some domain is (water rights in the west or public education in the U.S. to name just two) and then the cries for a utopia that will never happen given the existing political framework. The atomic bomb cannot be used. For issues that involve interest groups (read: everything) we must reform we what we have, make some compromises, and iterate toward the ideal.

4. Cal Newport reminds us that "traditional" jobs, while often skewered in the self-help blogosphere and how-to business literature, can in fact be fulfilling for many.

5. Slideology – the presentation blog of Nancy Duarte et al, the team which designed Al Gore’s global warming PowerPoint.

6. Bobby Fischer video interview from when he was in his 30’s. This is the somewhat famous clip of Fischer on a park bench. The end oozes a delicious self-confidence: "Even when I lost to Spassky I was still better than him…I’m not afraid of him – he’s afraid of me but I’m not afraid of him."

7. Never ever ever talk to a cop about a crime even if you’re innocent. This has been making the rounds. It’s a 45 minute video clip of a law professor explaining how even the smartest most innocent people incriminate themselves by talking to a cop. It’s worth watching.