Brian Rosenthal's Weblog

This is the coolest idea I’ve seen, possibly in my entire life, and the best gift idea that I’ve ever seen:

http://www.kiva.org

Kiva.org is a new idea in economic development. It’s peer-to-peer micro-lending, the way Skype is peer-to-peer telephony.

What the developing world needs most is access to capital, and this site lets you loan as little as $25 to small businesses around the world, to buy farming equipment, inventory for stores, etc.

My wife and I loaned money to street vendor can buy more inventory in her soda business in Nigeria:
http://www.kiva.org/app.php?page=businesses&action=about&id=3847

The idea is: let people loan money to entrepreneurs around the world, interest free. You can basically browse entrepreneurs (like facebook) and see what businesses they run, and what they want to expand.

And the coolest thing is you can give a gift to someone, and they get to choose who gets the loan, and when the loan is repaid, you can either take the money out, or re-loan it to another entrepreneur.

Kiva loans almost $500,000 / month to entrepreneurs in the third world, through interest-free loans to non-profit banks that act as loan officers.

Check out:

NYTimes:
NYT coverage

CNN:
CNN Coverage

I learned about this through Matt Flannery, the founder, and now my friend Zvi Boshernitzan, is now helping them scale up their web site. (I’m pretty impressed at its speed… Kiva.org is super-fast)

There are three things that will follow you your whole live - your body, your soul, and hopefully, your family. Everything else is temporary.

Ubiquitous wireless access: That is the key innovation that’s enabling this…

You know, wireless area scramblers would be a good countermeasure against this…

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xg078_robot-sentinella

Just like many people who grew up in the 60’s and 70’s resisted the Internet and computers in general, only to decide that they had to catch up later, our generation is missing the use of the Internet in collaboration.

Every single person should learn:
1. How to create a wiki and use it to keep notes on projects.
2. How to use del.icio.us bookmarking.

1. This is really interesting to compare the difference between this bubble and the last ones. Perhaps we’re just able to borrow more money now.
Click here to see the image

2. Map of the United States and people taking out adjustable rate mortgages:
http://www.businessweek.com/common_ssi/map_of_misery.htm

3. A recent BW article on Adjustable rate mortgages

4. Another housing-bubble article:
http://www.counterpunch.org/whitney08302006.html

http://davidseah.com/tools/ett/alpha/

This has got to be the neatest thing I’ve ever seen. It uses my time tracking strategy.

This is something that really makes me happy… that something so good could be so successful.

That something that is really moving humanity in the right direction could also be something that turns a profit (it’s being given to charity, but it didn’t lose money… in fact, it made a lot of money), and it’s just turned out to spread the message so well.

I honestly had wiped my mind from thinking about global warming before this. It changed my mind.

In general, there are two trends that are happening in the world that we simply cannot ignore:

(a) The impending climate change warming the earth and threatening to raise sea levels.
(b) The growing fuel shortage of oil

Within America, there are two other trends that we can’t ignore:
© The growing US trade deficit which will one day cause a crash of US treasuries which will cause a crash of the dollar
(d) The “outsourcing” of US business service jobs.

All of these are “inconvenient” truths that we don’t have solutions for, so we’re just ignoring them… and, they all need to be really dealt with…

Wow. I thought that was going to kill their customer service. I just called them, though, and they were the best company in terms of customer service that I’ve ever seen in the e-commerce space.

It seems like we could save a tremendous amount of money as a country if we used mainly nuclear power plants and drove electric vehicles that we charged through the grid.

I simply don’t understand why we’re not doing this.

I can’t think of any explanation other than graft from powerful interests in not having efficient cars.

Bill Moyers makes the case well:
http://www.washingtonspectator.com/articles/20060401cleanmoney_1.cfm

Other articles on electric vehicles:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_vehicle
http://dontcrush.com/

Top 46 Free Windows Utilities:
http://www.techsupportalert.com/best_46_free_utilities.htm

DPKG Primer:
http://linuxhelp.blogspot.com/2005/12/concise-apt-get-dpkg-primer-for-new.html

http://thesurrealist.co.uk/slogan.cgi?word=robocommerce

http://www.listible.com/list/online-tools2C-generators2C-checkers

http://cooletips.de/htaccess/

http://www.althack.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=24&Itemid=27

I want a desk where I can type while stretching my hamstrings… anyone have any ideas about that?

One of the core reasons why the United States has been successful is that its natural resources have been developed by companies whose failure isn’t that big a deal.

Compare if you will US private enterprise with African governments that have tried to develop their own resources. An entity borrows money, tries engage in oil exploration. If it doesn’t work, it sure is nice if it isn’t a government and can declare bankruptcy.

“Efficient Enterprise Programming”

Chapter I: Introduction

No field suffers more from redundancy and re-invention than software development.

The goal of this book is to provide a software developer with a paradigm to eliminate as much risk as possible from developing new software for the enterprise. In this book, we attempt to outline techniques that can make some of the most time-intensive and error-prone parts of software trivial and easy.

Each technique is explained with (a) a discussion of the issue it addresses, (b) a theoretical description of the technique, © a recipe for implementing the technique.

Some of the techniques in this book are new and developed by the authors. Others are well-known and humbly described based on our experience.

The structure of this book will be:

Chapter II: Measuring programming techniques

One standard is that programmers, when they adopt these techniques, rarely ever go back.

Intent.
You’re writing software for someone else, possibly another developer, possibly a future you.

Conciseness.

Chapter III: Languages - necessary features of a language for efficient enterprise programming.

Chapter IV: Programming the data layer of enterprise applications
- dbentity

Chapter V: Testing
A. Unit Regression Testing: Build a growing library of regression tests.

B. Funcational Testing: Embrace functional testing tools
- Selenium

Chapter VII: User Interfaces
- Model View Controllers
- Templating

Chapter VI: Specification-driven programming
- Forms
- Reports

Chapter VII: Data Manipulation
- Transforms - a higher level language

Traditionally most programs spend most of their time manipulating objects, arrays, and dictionaries. Here, I describe a technique to eliminate most of that.

Chapter VIII: Programming with ledgers
- The core ideas behind ledger-based programming
- Types of ledgers - operational and double-entry

I must admit… I thought that everyone was getting a bit over-excited about Hurricane Rita. My parents, for example, have boarded up our house, stocked up on water and canned goods, and are emotionally prepared for the worst hurricane Houston has ever imagined.

At first, I thought that Hurricane Katrina was simply driving people to be paranoid, but take a look:

Houston Chronicle
Dr. Stephen Fadem’s page about the hurricane

http://www.stopjunkcalls.com/script.htm

http://www.xs4all.nl/~egbg/counterscript.html

We wrote a script to automatically post hurricane news for the renal community here:
http://katrina.szf.com

“Personal Computing Tips”
- Acrobat Speedup

“Market Research and Strategy Tips”
- robocommerce.com/support … market research tools.

“Crisis Management Center”
- Hurricanes

What a terrible disaster. Hurricane Katrina hit Mississippi more directly than New Orleans, but the levies broke protecting the city of New Orleans, which lies below sea level, from Lake Ponchotrain, which flooded the entire city.

CNN’s coverage

Washington Mutual is offering 4% CD rates which means they think that interest rates are going up, which means they think we’re headed for inflation.

I think it’s time to buy gold.

I don’t understand why people keep saying that the destruction of the casinos in Mississippi will hurt the economy in the South. Yes, the state won’t collect taxes there, but the residents also won’t lose the money, and the people of Alabama and Louisiana and Georgia who would have traveled to Mississippi won’t lose their money either.

Honestly, I bet the economy of Mississippi would be helped in the longterm if this destroys the casinos, but it won’t, because they’ll rebuild them, just like they always do.

One of the questions I get a lot here at the Black Mountain Group is why I make my employees take vacations.

I’ll tell you what I tell my employees: You should take one day off, every five years, because after working 14-hours a day, every day, plus every weekend and holiday, you deserve it.

http://www.codecubed.com/map.html

http://www.michaelbach.de/ot/

http://www.math-atlas.org/

There are general topics that go in and out of fashion and have a positive effect on stock prices.

Oil, Healthcare, telecommunications, Internet, ERP / enterprise software, real estate, …

The problem is that it is easy to find the ones that are in fashion, but useless, because if you want to invest, you want the ones that are out of fashion.

Today, it’s energy and real estate, and we’re probably poised for a bubble in those markets.

But, you want to buy value, not things about to bubble, and I wonder how to find that.

Ben Edelson passed away recently, and he was one of the nicest people I have ever met. He and I were both Presidential Scholars, and we met during recognition week in Washington, DC. From the week of 140 people, I kept in touch with Ben and maybe a handful of people when we went to Harvard.

At Harvard, Ben literally helped me through Organic Chemistry. Organic chemistry was so difficult for me. I couldn’t understand how to think about it. There were so many things it seemed I was just expected to understand that I didn’t. Ben was the person who explained them to me.

Ben and I lived in separate crowds in college, but I would see him often, and we would always take the time to catch up. He was studying with this Nobel Prize winner, really into chemistry research.

He was funny. Really funny. So funny, that I remember that whenever I would see him, he would say something that would make me laugh. Women flocked to him because he was not only funny, but smart, and also so deeply nice. He would always make time for people.

I don’t understand how someone like Ben could not be with us anymore. He is someone that I wanted to reconnect with, after the hectic race to feel comfortable about our careers.

The following is a response to a recent debate surrounding comments that Larry Summers, President of Harvard, made about differences between men and women.

I just want to say that I hate the concept of censorship, and I’d like to see more open debate on these things (the changing role of women in families and jobs, how women have been able to handle the burden of having to think about both and be happy, when women should have children if they want to balance a family and a career, etc.)

So many women I know are dealing with this particular issue and need support thinking about all of these things. When I was at Harvard, many women told me that when they wanted to talk about balancing work and family, they were looked at as if they were deviants. Family? They should have gone to another university.

Summers is right on target for the need for this debate.

He’s right. I know more men than women that are interested in working 80-100 hour weeks. Of the professionally successful people I know, I know more unhappy women than men. Women do disproportionally gravitate away from the hard sciences, especially math and physics (although, I know a lot of brilliant women mathematicians and physicists).

I’m disappointed in the faculty at Harvard for not taking Larry Summers’ comments and using them to foster a rich, intelligent debate about how women can be happier.

And, isn’t that what a good leader should do, provoke important discussions?

Some friend and I just signed this petition in support of Larry Summers

http://www.alumniforharvard.com

The following is a response to a recent debate surrounding comments that Larry Summers, President of Harvard, made about differences between men and women.

Larry Summers has been a wonderful President of Harvard. He has encouraged students to travel, made the basic math and sciences Harvard offers more rigorous, and opened access to Harvard for more people by increasing financial aid packages and starting programs to help widen access to college from underprivileged communities.

But, a small but vocal number of people have decided that not matter what the good things he has done, because he believes that we should entertain the notion that women and men may have different genetic strengths, he isn’t a good President.

Forget aout whether we should censor important topics from debates, although it’s a shame that Summers’ comments were not used as a starting point to engage in a debate about how women can receive more support, so that women can better realize their potential.

It upsets me to see people not looking at Summers wholistically.

The argument, “Summers cannot be a good president because he brought up this issue, and it’s not politically correct” is simply lazy. Let’s talk about Summers’ record (which includes policies that support hiring more tenured women faculty members).

It’s like when people criticized the Boy Scouts of America for being a terrible organization because they had a discriminatory policy disallowing gay scout leaders. I mean, it was a stupid policy. But, the Boy Scouts of America volunteer tens of thousands of hours a week to help foster homes, old age homes, and hospitals. They teach young children to be honest, hard-working leaders. Scout troops do not teach discrimination, in any way, and are in fact involved in anti-defamation organizations. How can you criticize them without keeping that in mind?

Rally behind an argument without wholistically keeping a big-picture view of the situation is really dangerous because there is an assumption that other people are making the counter-arguments, and I just don’t think that is necessarily true.

It’s why the working poor vote, detesting instances of social immorality, vote for Republicans, or why first-amendment supporters found themselves all of a sudden opposing advancing democracy in Iraq. We need as a society to develop more wholistic political viewpoints, recognizing that people on both sides of most debates are well-intentioned and need to better understand that single issue politics on any issue is distorting to the truth.