Chris Farris

“Sleeping around, to continue our metaphor, can actually be useful for large derivatives dealers because it assures them government aid if trouble hits. In other words, only companies having problems that can infect the entire neighborhood – I won’t mention names – are certain to become a concern of the state (an outcome, I’m sad to say, that is proper). From this irritating reality comes The First Law of Corporate Survival for ambitious CEOs who pile on leverage and run large and unfathomable derivatives books: Modest incompetence simply won’t do; it’s mindboggling screw-ups that are required.

More iPad tastiness – “The iPad Will Be The Best Thing To Happen For Desktop Virtualization & VDI Adoption” – Liberty Technology Blog. Excellent read on the iPad as a desktop virtualization thin client. If you’ve seen any science fiction (StarTrek, Babylon 5, etc) they all use iPad/tablet like computers. The traditional laptop/desktop form factor requires you working at a desk. If you’re doing anything standing up, normal computers fail.

Note to self: VMware ESXi performance monitoring with Cacti | Bernhard Bock.

I like to buy companies I use. Some stocks I’m considering: VMWare – Cloud infrastructure provider. Amazon – Not of the consumer shopping, but because of all the neat stuff they’re doing with EC2, S3 and Mechanical Turk. Citrix – Xen masters and purveyors of Go To Meeting and Go To MyPC. Apple – the iPad is the laptop killer for causal couch use. It’s a multimedia Kindle. Sucky name though.

@lance (an ATDC startup guy) pointed me to a pretty good Op/Ed from Thomas Friedman in the New York Times. Let me say that of all the NYT people, I respect Friedman the most. His Lexus and the Olive Tree sits up there with Mystery of Capital as one of the best economics books of recent years. It also sits up there with The Pentagon’s New Map as one of the best national-security books of recent times.

I’d like to donate to the Haitian relief efforts. However I don’t know who to donate to. I’m not going to text some number to some other number and let some slimeball phone company keep $7 of the $10 like I’ve seen going across twitter. I’ve donated to the Salvation Army and Americares in the past, but based on the sheer amount of junk mail (and blankets – yes Americares sent me a fucking blanket) I’m pretty sure my contribution went to nothing more than killing trees to send me snail mail to donate more money.

George Mason University Economist Tyler Cowen: TO put it bluntly, if the United States takes one step back and the rest of the world takes two steps forward, even in purely selfish terms we should consider accepting the trade-off, if only for the longer run. Most of us gain from the wealth and creativity of other countries, even if we can’t always feel like the top dog. via Economic View – For Much of the World, a Good Financial Decade – NYTimes.

Now this is what we should be spending our R&D money on. Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor Fuel Thorium and uranium fluoride solution Fuel input per gigawatt output 1 ton raw thorium Annual fuel cost for 1-GW reactor $10,000 (estimated) Coolant Self-regulating Proliferation potential None Footprint 2,000-3,000 square feet, with no need for a buffer zone via Uranium Is So Last Century — Enter Thorium, the New Green Nuke | Magazine.

What Xenophobic ass-hats like Pat Buchanan don’t say is that millions of people – who would otherwise have nothing better to do than hate America and start wars with us – are now able to feed their families, educate and vaccinate their children, and possibly even retire before laying on their death-bed. To describe world GDP in percentages is to assume that economic development is a zero-sum-game and for others to win the US must lose.

One of the most remarkable things about the way we lie to kids is how broad the conspiracy is. All adults know what their culture lies to kids about: they’re the questions you answer “Ask your parents.” If a kid asked who won the World Series in 1982 or what the atomic weight of carbon was, you could just tell him. But if a kid asks you “Is there a God?